"Least resistance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... instrument in effecting the reconciliation of sinners to the Divine Love, but it rested with Him to decide whether He would be that instrument or no, and the course He chose was not that of {170} mechanical necessity, nor was the decision to which He came a following in the line of least resistance. In accepting the pain and shame of the Cross, Jesus worked His Father's will; but that will was not imposed upon Him from without, but freely responded to from within. As the author of the Theologia Germanica has it, a man should strive "to be to the Eternal Goodness ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... they shown the least resistance those brigand chaps would have killed them off like rats." He beckoned to the head man. "Take us back to Bala Khan in the morning, and we promise that no harm shall befall you. Now, find us ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... The line of least resistance has changed in some measure, and the energy which formerly found a vent in predatory activity, now in part takes the direction of some ostensibly useful end. Ostensibly purposeless leisure has come to be deprecated, ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... man. It was habit, I guess. It was just the line of least resistance. It was the quickest way out of a box—I didn't think, and bang!—first thing I knew I'd gone and done it! I'm a good deal older than you, Harrie, I'm twenty-one. I was a pretty bad kid until Prof. and Mrs. Brewster got hold of me. I've managed to get most of the worst devils under. And I ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... is aware. I write a 'man' advisedly as women never drift into wifehood. In these cases it is generally their set and deliberate purpose that has steered the man into the conjugal harbour unknown to him. He has merely followed the line of least resistance and found to his surprise that it leads to the altar. Mr Bernard Shaw has given a very amusing, and, in spite of itself, convincing, picture of this manoeuvring in Man and Superman, where he also expresses his conviction that 'men, to protect themselves . . . have set ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... discipline of this family must be maintained. There can be but one command in a house, and I must be the mistress of mine. You will punish this refractory boy, Mr. Ward, as we have agreed, and if there is the least resistance on his part my overseer and ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... salaries are sure; If needs must be, cut down and slyly pare Along the line where least resistance lies, And on our predecessors throw ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... terrible earnest, about all this—I mean life and what to do with it. That is a great day when a man comes into his own, no matter how paltry the pittance may be the gods have given him—when he comes to know just how far he can go, and where lies his path of least resistance. That I know. I am tremendously sure of myself now, and, like your good business men, I go about my affairs and dispose of my life with its few energies in ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... parts must be covered, some way should be provided for convenient observation. It is the obscure departure that is the most troublesome, and it is the obvious thing that offers the least resistance to progress. ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... be it; of having sought from the beginning to captivate the reader's fancy as well as convince his reason. He had never been satisfied with being plain and direct; he had constantly wished to amuse as well as edify, and following the line of beauty, as that of the least resistance, had been his practice if not his precept. If he counselled his correspondents otherwise, he would be uncandid, and when he had imagined putting them off in that fashion he was more ashamed than he had ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Bretagne, Comte de Richemont, with the Comte de Dunois and some two thousand horsemen, were waiting for them; the first twenty men introduced through a little postern gate opened the great doors and let down the drawbridge, all the cavalry trooped in without meeting the least resistance. "Then the Marechal de l'Isle-Adam mounted upon the wall, unfurled the banner of France, and cried 'Ville ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... of indifference infuriated him. He must compel her to feel—he must give that indifference the lie—and at once! He caught her in his arms. He rained kisses upon her pale face. She made not the least resistance, but seemed dazed. "I will teach you to love me," he cried, drunk now with the wine of her lips, with the perfume of her exquisite youth. "I will make you happy. We shall ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... whenever anyone reported "tracks," Mac and the Boy would hasten to the scene of action, and set a new snare, piling brush on each side of the track that the game had run in, so barring other ways, and presenting a line of least resistance ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... with you, Eustace. I give him into your charge. If he struggles, or offers the least resistance, stab him ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... family, was of a mild, easy-going nature, incapable of resisting tyranny. Since her marriage, her naturally submissive mind had become an echo of her husband's, although she was not always in agreement with his opinions; yet it was the line of least resistance, and "anything for a peaceful life" was her motto. Her greatest comfort had come with the birth of her daughter, who, later, was reared by her maternal relatives in England. They had means, while the Meeks had barely enough for their own needs, so Elsie had received a good education ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... he said that all the affairs of the East were not worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier. But Germany, retaining Bismarck's former impulse, went straight on and rushed forward along the lines of least resistance to east and west: on the one side lay the route to the Orient, on the other the empire of the sea. But in so doing she virtually declared war on the nations which Bismarck had managed to keep allied or friendly. Her ambition looked forward to the ...
— The Meaning of the War - Life & Matter in Conflict • Henri Bergson
... plant bearing a good size, fine quality chestnut much easier and in a shorter time than one can be developed through hybridization from an inferior nut. I am usually, like most folks, looking for the path of least resistance. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... him with everything. At such times the thought of holding the slim, warm, ineffably feminine body in his arms was most distracting. He rather feared for himself. If such a thing were to happen,—and it might happen if the impulse seized him at the psychological moment of least resistance,—the result in all probability would be disastrous. She would turn on him like an injured animal and rend him! Alas, for that leveller called reason! It ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... is the most important: I give it to the reader in the words of Sir John Moore:—'The French cavalry from Burgos, in small detachments, are over-running the province of Leon; raising contributions; to which the inhabitants submit without the least resistance.' Now here it cannot be meant that no efforts at resistance were made by individuals or small parties; because this would not only contradict the universal laws of human nature,—but would also be at utter variance with Sir J.M.'s repeated complaints that he ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... along lines of least resistance; absorbing by comparatively petty conquests, decaying or scanty peoples; reaching Kamchatka in the Far East with more ease than she reached the shores of the Baltic; never flinging her legions far and wide ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... have heard of so much, and which was followed with real ardor and with unquestioning zeal by crowds of devotees for years, beginning with, perhaps, 1840, was an attempt along the most obvious lines,—along what seemed to be the line of least resistance, to change the metaphor. To develop anew an old art, which had flourished so greatly in the past,—how easy! and how certain! How certain were the enthusiasts of that time, that by earnestly poring over and closely analyzing ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... asked Jules inquisitively, "what's to happen? We are still a precious long way from France or from any of the neutral countries. It's time, I should think, that we made a plan for the future, for up to now we've followed the road, as it were, of least resistance; we took the direction which seemed best under pressing circumstances, and did not head ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... the gospel message of all definiteness, and to make professors and students disseminators of doubts. Many a professor has found teaching preferable to preaching, because he lacked the initial Christian experience which gives to preaching its certainty and power. He chooses the line of least resistance, and becomes in the theological seminary a blind leader of the blind. Having no system of truth to teach, he becomes a mere lecturer on the history of doctrine. Having no key in Christ to the unity of Scripture, he ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... crater radius is equal to the line of least resistance, the mine is termed common; when this radius is greater than the line of least resistance, the mine is termed overcharged; and when the radius is less, undercharged. A mine of small dimensions, formed by sinking a shaft ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... in the boat they only waited for me, of which the master at arms informed Christian, who then said: "Come, captain Bligh, your officers and men are now in the boat and you must go with them; if you attempt to make the least resistance you will instantly be put to death" and, without further ceremony, with a tribe of armed ruffians about me, I was forced over the side where they untied my hands. Being in the boat we were veered astern by a rope. A few pieces of pork were thrown to us, and some clothes, ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... the matter?" she exclaimed, with terror in her looks. "Good Heavens! are you ill? I conjure you, sit down; sit in this chair." She almost forced me into one; I was in no condition to offer the least resistance. I recognized but too truly the sensations that supervened. I was lying back in the chair in which I sat, without the power, by this time, of uttering a syllable, of closing my eyelids, of moving my eyes, of stirring a muscle. ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... property; but when it came to charging for use of their ways, they claimed to be only private carriers, authorized to bargain as they pleased. Indeed, it grew to be considered a mark of efficient railroad management to extract the largest revenue possible from the people, along the lines of least resistance; that is, by taxing most heavily those individuals and localities which could least resist. And the claim by the railroads that they might do this as a matter of right was long upheld by the courts,[2] nor have the judges even yet, after a generation of revolt ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... Miss Kindermann, she recognises the possibility of transmission of thought in certain cases (e.g. when Lola is tired or is unwilling to "work" any more). According to her it would be a question of a line of least resistance, along which the "work" of the animal becomes more easy. Hence arises the necessity, as she maintains, for the investigator to be very careful of the danger of falsified results and to abstain with this object from any intentional thought. But these are the very conditions which "mediums" impose ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... physical sense, and call vices, in the individual, the qualities which may prove detrimental to his own preservation, and virtues those which may contribute to it; in which case we should be obliged to consider him as most virtuous, who made least resistance against the simple impulses of nature. But without deviating from the usual meaning of these terms, it is proper to suspend the judgment we might form of such a situation, and be upon our guard against prejudice, till, the balance ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... tension of some force seeking to expand itself. What force? The Universal Life-Principle, for "the Spirit is Life." In the language of modern science this "seeking" on the part of "the Father" is the expansive pressure of the Universal Life-Principle seeking the line of least resistance, along which to flow into the fullest manifestation of individualised Life. It is a tendency which will take manifested form according to the degree in which it ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... the horse is not a noble, intelligent animal with a vast comprehension of human talk and sympathy for human woe. For the Great Goer pulled up so suddenly that I nearly went on without him in the line of the least resistance. Then he stood still and went to nibbling grass as placidly as though he had not been doing racing time for three miles, and I should have gone on forever believing in his wondrous wit had I not turned and realised that he was standing in ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... beneath the horny frog become bruised or the sensitive tissue pricked by a nail. It is commonly termed "gravelled." Pus rarely breaks through the thick horny tissue, but follows the wall and breaks through the skin where it meets with the least resistance. Corns may be considered a serious unsoundness ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... very apparent that the two advanced Indians who let down the bars were backed up by a strong party. The signs of Indians, discovered afterwards, proved this beyond a doubt. Their reserve party were posted where the least resistance on the part of the sentinel would have been followed by his quick and certain death. This successful theft was, no doubt, considered by the Indians a cause for great rejoicing. It may have formed the basis ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... turned these facts over in my mind, endeavouring to hit upon some theory which could reconcile them all, and to find that line of least resistance which my poor friend had declared to be the starting-point of every investigation. I confess that I made little progress. In the evening I strolled across the Park, and found myself about six o'clock at the Oxford Street end of Park Lane. A group of loafers upon the pavements, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Ghost's commission is concerned, and this covers the whole drama. He is master and umpire of his circumstances, so that when two or more lines of action, or a line of action and a line of inaction, appear equally efficacious, he can select the one which appears to be of least resistance. But subsequent to that point of time, he is no longer the arbiter of his own situation, but rather the puppet of circumstances. There are no more divergent roads; if he desires to leave the one he has chosen, he must break blindly through a hedge of moral antagonisms. His alternatives ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... hardly believe her eyes, for in his mouth he held a little live rabbit as if for her to take it. To make sure she was not dreaming, she stretched forth her hand for the rabbit. Duke let her take it without offering the least resistance. In fact, he looked at her as much ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... men to move in the line of least resistance. And that any man should ever have put his safety in peril by questioning the authority of those able and ready to confiscate his property and take away his life is very strange. Such a person must ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... future pains and pleasures as to speak of our being nourished to-day by to-morrow's dinner. The 'future pleasure' does not exist; the anticipated pleasure acts by making the present action pleasant; and we then move (as it is said) along the line of least resistance. Certain conduct is intrinsically pleasurable or painful, and the future pleasure only acts through the present foretaste. When, however, we regard the pleasure as future and as somehow a separable thing, we can only express these undeniable ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... she wishes to adopt, as is her brother in similar case. If she is intelligent, well-trained and eager to study, her natural impulse is to go to college, and to get there, it is still usually the line of least resistance to say that she wishes to become a teacher. When there are pecuniary difficulties in the way, the decision must be taken still earlier. The unfortunate child in the elementary school used to be compelled to make her choice at the ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... in the line of least resistance. Though it may suffice for the acts of animals and children it is sadly deficient ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... before shown. Then there is the spoken word, the performer telling the onlookers to observe some certain object or action, and the effect is to cause them to watch it, as they are told. They follow the line of least resistance. The combined effect upon the spectator of the spoken word and the eyes ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... presented his pistol at one window, than his companion, after firing a brace of balls over the coachman's head, did the like at the other, which so surprised the fine gentlemen within, that without the least resistance they surrendered all they had about them, which amounted to about one hundred pounds, which Barton put up. Come, gentlemen, says he, let us make bold with your fire-arms too, for you see we make more use of them than you. So, seizing a brace of pistols inlaid with silver, and two ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... echo. The deeper ground for Toleration is the nature of creation, which, as we now know, proceeds by evolution. Evolution finds its way by experiment; and this finding of the way varies according to the stage of development reached, from the blindest groping along the line of least resistance to intellectual speculation, with its practical sequel of hypothesis and experimental verification; or to observation, induction, and deduction; or even into so rapid and intuitive an integration of all these processes in a single brain that we get the inspired guess of the man of genius ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... present was the line of least resistance. It was ten past ten, and Poppy Grace was "on" from ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... and drive them into the middle of the enclosure. The finest are taken alive, by being deprived of food for a short time. This renders them so obedient, that they quietly allow a noose to be thrown over them, and then follow the tame elephant without the least resistance. The others are then either killed or set at liberty, according as they possess ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... who, in his leisure moments, dwelt in a delectable realm from which she was excluded. She was still acutely conscious of his force, but what she now felt was its lack of direction—save for the portion that drove the Chippering Mills. The rest of it, like the river, flowed away on the line of least resistance to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and an ostrich-feather ruff, some traces of her former good looks might be visible. She still affected tight corsets, high heels, enormous hats. But Emeline's interest in her own appearance was secondary now to her fierce pride and faith in Julia's beauty. Drifting along the line of least resistance, asking only to be comfortable and to have a good time, Emeline had come to a bitter attitude of resentment toward George, toward the fate that had "forced" her to leave him. Now she began lazily to fasten upon Julia as the means of gratifying those hopes and ambitions that were ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... the circumstances and the difficulty of the case, more prolonged in one instance than in another. Like the old pioneers of National Factory legislation, the Association has proceeded along the line of least resistance: not because it lacks courage, but for reasons of sheer prudence. If it was to become, in the words of M. Millerand, the present French Minister of War, one of its oldest and staunchest members, 'the laboratory in which international treaties are made', it ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... a theorist; he was skillful to persuade men, and to organize and lead a party. His general tendency was "along the line of least resistance,"—the summoning of men to free themselves from oppressive restraint; and he was highly successful until he called on them for severe self-sacrifice, when his supporters were apt suddenly to fail him. Virginia gladly followed his lead in abolishing primogeniture and entail, and overthrowing ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... offer more or less resistance to the flow of an electric current. Silver offers the least resistance, and German silver the greatest. Temperature also affects the flow. It passes more easily over a cold ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... If it seems difficult it is due to our clumsy way of stating it. Thought, like melodies, should run on the line of the least resistance. In the following pages I have eschewed all mystifying polysyllabic verbiage, and as Mark Twain once said, have "confined myself to a categorical statement of facts unincumbered by an obscuring ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... on which I could draw my sketches of books and of life. I believe that my work on newspapers and reviews is more characteristic of me, and intrinsically better work than what I have done in fiction; but when I began to wield the pen, the novel was the line of least resistance. When I was introduced in 1894 to Mrs. Croly, the oldest woman journalist in the United States, as an Australian journalist, I found that her work, though good enough, was essentially woman's work, dress, fashions, functions, with ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... nothing but Cambridge to depend upon, it would have been still worse. Now he must settle down to county business if he could, and clear his mind of all foolish regrets. Love and marriage—he was ten years too late! He had dawdled on, taking the line of least resistance, and he was now revealed to himself in a true and unsparing light. He paced swiftly on, and presently entered the wood. His feet fell soft on the grassy road ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... had always been vague with him and now his habit of following the line of least resistance had drifted him into this mill-pond. Sometimes, he would give himself up to bitter self-reproach, disgusted that he should be so satisfied, so non-resisting in a lot in every way the reverse of that which he had marked out for himself. ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... were in favor of prescribing a property qualification and limiting the suffrage to freeholders. It was finally decided, however, to accept the qualifications prescribed by state law. In adopting this plan the Convention followed the line of least resistance. The qualifications of voters in the various states differed.[2] Most states required a property qualification, but some did not. It was felt that to attempt to impose a uniform rule on all the states would arouse opposition and create one more obstacle to be overcome in the formidable ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... the knowledge would advance us little. The psychology of imitation is still impenetrable and likely to remain so. The simple interpretation of our troubles as a form of sloth—a travelling along lines of least resistance—can scarcely be maintained. For first there have been times when learning and science were the fashion. Whether society benefited directly therefrom may, in passing, be doubted, but certainly learning did. Secondly there are plenty of men who under ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... sort of instinct that impels a glacier to creep surely toward a lower level. Not content with owning half of Europe and all of Northern Asia, the Russian glacier was moving noiselessly,—as all things must,—on the line of least resistance, toward the East. ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... long words and stilted phrases, while in conversation one's thoughts seek expression through lines of least resistance—familiar words and short sentences. But in writing, these same thoughts go stumbling over long words and groping through ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... blazing eyes Erebus, taking the line of the least resistance, sought the princess. She found her lying back drowsily against ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... case, that offence has to be given to people whom you love and honour for their works and character and sacrifices. In this world, however, unpleasant things have to be faced, and frequently the line of least resistance leads in the end to the greater trouble. It is even more unpleasant to have to disappoint the hopes, and discourage the desire for service, of some young aspirant whose piety and devotion you admire; but it is better ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... Salvador Opera Company, a period of hotel second-story work, and then a career as a professional palmist, jumping from town to town. For, like other professional palmists, every time he worked the Heart Line too strongly he immediately moved along the Line of Least Resistance. Though Etienne did not confide this to us, we surmised that he had moved out into the dusk about twenty minutes ahead of a constable, and had thus encountered the snow. In his most sacred blue language ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... horizon, bound the same way; and it was singular how, despite the apparently unbroken calm, we got away from one another and disappeared. Ships lying with their heads "all around the compass" flapped themselves along in the direction of their bows, the line of least resistance. ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... rivers have been the lines of least resistance to the advance of man. Civilization has developed first along the great rivers. The valleys were first settled, and up these valleys man carried his industries and commerce far inland. Thus the Euphrates and Tigris ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... was then badly beaten with guns, &c. In the meantime, my friend Craven, who was defending himself, was shot badly in the face, and most violently beaten until he was conquered and tied. The two young brothers of Craven stood still, without making the least resistance. After we were fairly captured, we were taken to Terrytown, which was in sight of where we were betrayed. By this time I had lost so much blood from my wounds, that they concluded my situation was too dangerous to admit of being taken further; so I was ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... officers were out of the ship, Christian said, 'Come, Captain Bligh, your officers and men are now in the boat, and you must go with them; if you make the least resistance you will be instantly put ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... gum, which varies in nature according to the nature of the soil upon which the cotton is grown. The tubes of the fibre seem to be open at one end only when the fibre is of normal length. When, therefore, the cotton is subjected to the action of the mixed acids, the line of least resistance seems to be taken by them, viz., the insides of the tubes constituting the fibre of the cotton, into which they are taken by capillary attraction, and are subject to change as they progress, and to the increased resistance from the oil or gum, &c., in their progress, and ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... struggles with his rebellious material, wisely preferring to let what he has done speak for itself, simply and without commentary. But the artists know that the pathway to achievement is never along the line of least resistance; and they smile when they hear Mascarille, in Moliere's little comedy, tell the affected young ladies whom he is seeking to impress that all he did "was done without effort." By this the artists at once perceive the fellow to be a pretender, who ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... person in the neighbourhood was interested in Arthur Wemyss's new home which he had built on the bank of Plover Creek, a small stream that dawdled aimlessly across the prairie from Lang's Lake to the Souris River. Plover Creek followed the line of least resistance all the way along, not seeming to care how often it changed its direction, but zigzagging and even turning around and doubling on itself sometimes. Its little dimpled banks, treeless save for clumps of silver willow, gave a pleasing variety to the ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... extreme will surely find the other. The religious sentiment in women is so strong that the revolt was headed by them; this was inevitable in the nature of the case. It began in the most intellectual city of the freest country in the world—that is to say, it sought the line of least resistance. Boston is emphatically the women's paradise, numerically, socially, indeed, every way. Here they have the largest individuality, the most recognition, the widest outlook. Mrs. Eddy we have never seen; her ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... suspected to us, because we see them animating the present opposition of our children. The faults which grow out of the luxuriance of freedom appear much more shocking to us than the base vices which are generated from the rankness of servitude. Accordingly, the least resistance to power appears more inexcusable in our eyes than the greatest abuses of authority. All dread of a standing military force is looked upon as a superstitious panic. All shame of calling in foreigners and savages in a civil contest is worn off. We grow indifferent to the consequences ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to elaborate their romance, if it was such, from this point. Gradually, hastened by the awful propinquity in a third-rate boarding-house, Haldane really came to believe—as along the line of least resistance—in his personal incapacity and his loneliness; gradually Ida Locke began to realize that, for the first time, this Love she had read of and dreamed of doubtfully had become a reality for her. She was not a little amazed and gratified ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... been brought up in a family, became extremely attached to the oldest child, a little boy who was very fond of playing with her. She bore with the utmost patience all the rough treatment of the mischievous child, without ever making the least resistance. As the cat grew up, she used to catch mice, and bring them alive into the room where the little boy was, to amuse him with her prey. If he showed an inclination to take the mouse from her, she let it run, and waited to see whether he was able to catch it. If he ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... called 'the mould-board of least resistance;' and the inventor had gone into a very profound mathematical demonstration, to prove ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... doubtful situations. The three important factors, school, newspaper, and theater, have reached an extraordinary degree of power. People apperceive, think, and feel as these three teach them, and finally it becomes second nature to follow this line of least resistance, and to seek intellectual conformity. We know well enough what consequences this has in law, and each one of us can tell how witnesses present us stories which we believe to rest on their own insight but which show themselves finally to depend upon the opinion ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... where the river was hollowing out one bank and building new shore on the opposite one, so as gradually to shift its channel; by clipper-shaped islands, sharp at the bows looking up stream, sharp too at the stern, looking down,—their shape solving the navigator's problem of least resistance, as a certain young artist had pointed out; by slumbering villages; by outlying farm-houses; between cornfields where the young plants were springing up in little thready fountains; in the midst of stumps where the forest had just been felled; through patches, where the fire of the last great ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... over the pig. 'Pigs,' he says, 'always seem to me like a fallen race that has seen better days. They are able, intellectual, inquisitive creatures. When they are driven from place to place, they are not gentle or meek, like cows and sheep, who follow the line of least resistance. The pig is suspicious and cautious; he is sure that there is some uncomfortable plot on foot, not wholly for his good, which he must try to thwart if he can. Then, too, he never seems quite at home in his deplorably filthy surroundings; he looks at you, ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... mass of undergrowth. Not long afterward another interwoven brush wall blocked the way, and this time the leader veered to the west. Not until an opening appeared did he resume his southward course. It dawned on McKay that the savages, having no bush knives, were accustomed to follow the line of least resistance. This ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... with a dexterous flip of fin and tail to the protecting shelter of an overhanging root, as the placid pool was agitated by the passage of an enemy, following the course of the stream as the path of least resistance. ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... sharply; it will do for your friends as well as for us. Then fire if there is the least resistance, close with them, and let's get them under hatches. But I beg pardon, ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... unable to travel, but otherwise sound? Did he go limping about over the landscape, to attract enemies from afar, and be quickly shot by a man or torn to pieces by wolves? Not he! With the keen intelligence of the wounded wild ruminant, he chose the line of least resistance, and on three legs fled downhill. He went on down, and kept going, until he reached the bottom of the biggest and most tortuous coulee in his neighborhood. And then what? Instead of coming to rest in a reposeful little valley a hundred ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... not stand for this, and so he began to back out, following the line of least resistance, which in this case was the tunnel by means of which they had crept ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... arrangement was to pass over the highest walls at Cape Diamond. Here there was a bastion. This was at a distance of about half a mile from any succour; but being considered, in some measure, impregnable, the least resistance might be anticipated in that quarter. Subsequent events tended to prove the soundness of this opinion. In pursuance of the second plan, Major Livingston, with a detachment under his command, made a feint upon Cape Diamond; but, for about half an hour, with all the noise and alarm ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... off," he continued. "When we come across a man like a bar of steel tempered in the English fashion, there is always one resource left—we can kill him if he takes it into his head to make the least resistance. We are reckoning on several methods of killing Collin to-morrow morning. It saves a trial, and society is rid of him without all the expense of guarding and feeding him. What with getting up the case, summoning witnesses, paying ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... indirectly. The monasteries given to the friars did not become their property; so soon as the proprietor should desire to take them back or anyone else should wish to take possession of them, they were to be given up without the least resistance; but on drawing near to Bologna he learned that a house was being built, which was already called The house of the Brothers. He commanded its immediate evacuation, not even excepting the sick who happened to be there. The Brothers then resorted to Ugolini, who was then in that very city for ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... person shrouded in night, a soundless whisper, the unseen lover who came to Psyche in the darkness. And sometimes that person became more distinct, less mystic and more companionable. Perhaps because imaginations have a way of following the line of least resistance, it took upon itself something of the form, something of the voice and bearing of Mr. Brumley. She recoiled from her own thoughts when she discovered herself wondering what manner of lover Mr. Brumley might make—if suddenly she lowered her defences, freed his suffocating pleading, took ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... greater refinement that I now let the Capuchin church go on long un-revisited. It was, for one thing, too instantly and constantly accessible across the street there; and it is well known human nature is such that it will not seek the line of the least resistance as long as it can help. Besides, I could hardly believe that it was really the Capuchin church which I had once so hastened to see, and I neglected it almost two months, contenting myself with the display of those hand-bills on the convent walls, spreading ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... him and send their shot whizzing across his bows, the sailor, in his fixed resolve to evade the gang at any cost, resorted first of all to the most simple and sailorly expedient imaginable. He "let go all" and made a run for it. That way lay the line of least resistance, and, with luck on his side, of ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... natural air in the world. The geese were the victims of this imaginative effort of Mr. Curtenty's. They took him seriously as a gooseherd. These fourteen intelligences, each with an object in life, each bent on self-aggrandisement and the satisfaction of desires, began to follow the line of least resistance in regard to the superior intelligence unseen but felt behind them, feigning, as geese will, that it suited them so to submit, and that in reality they were still quite independent. But in the peculiar eye of the Barnacle gander, who was leading, an observer with sufficient fancy might ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... shows him clearly not the formalist and slave of conventions he has been called, but a man of highest moral courage. What he stood for was not forms, conventions, reules, proprieties, or anything of the sort; but the liens of least resistance in his high endeavor to lift the world: lines of least resistance; middle lines; common sense.—As ususal, there was nothing to be done with the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... both arms, without his offering the least resistance, pushed him into a fairly large room containing no furniture but three rush-bottomed chairs, an armchair, and a table covered ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... "Music Study in Germany." Deppe was a remarkable pedagogue and had excellent ideas upon the foundation of a rational system of touch. He sought the most natural position of the hand and always aimed to work along the line of least resistance. My mother instilled Deppe's ideas into me together with a very comprehensive training in the standard etudes and classics within my youthful technical grasp. For those years I could not have had a better teacher. Lucky is the child, who like Gounod, Reisenauer ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... his doom and farther from the camp. A dozen paces Bill followed him, crowding threateningly to enforce the right direction. And then Bill halted, not wishing to risk causing Jan to dodge and double backward toward the camp. And because his persecutor stopped when he did, Jan followed the line of least resistance, lumbering on down the slope into the deep wood for twenty paces more before lowering himself again with a grunt for the repose which, to his glutted sloth, seemed more desirable now than all the meat in the world, aye, ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... should be misunderstood. There was evidently a mystery somewhere; and if no solution to it could be found, the doubt would be cast on someone. In such cases the guesses of the majority are bound to follow the line of least resistance; and if it could be proved that any personal gain to anyone could follow Mr. Trelawny's death, should such ensue, it might prove a difficult task for anyone to prove innocence in the face of suspicious facts. I found myself instinctively taking that deferential course which, until the plan ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... indispensable to another. And in the case of Poland it was more urgent than in the case of France, because if Germany were again to scheme a war of conquest the probability is infinitesimal that she would invade Belgium or move forward on the western front. The line of least resistance, which is Poland, would prove incomparably more attractive. And then? The absence of Allied troops in eastern Europe was one of the principal causes of the wars, tumults, and chaotic confusion that had made nervous people tremble for the fate of civilization in the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... was M. Berthelot. Gauging aright this insidious appeal to the centrifugal forces of the political mind, he turned a deaf ear to von Schoen's suasive efforts and kept the ship of state on its course, without swerving. In this way what seemed to the Berlin politicians the line of least resistance was adequately reinforced and a formidable, because crafty, ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... vibrations that demand coarse and dense matter. If an evil thought, projected with malefic intent, strikes such a body, it can only rebound from it, and it is flung back with all its own energy; it then flies backward along the magnetic line of least resistance, that which it has just traversed, and strikes its projector; he, having matter in his astral and mental bodies similar to that of the thought-form he generated, is thrown into respondent vibrations, and suffers the destructive effects he had ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... possible market for certain sorts of Cummings goods, as J.W. learned in the business quarter of the city. He wanted more opportunity to see how the goods he dealt in could be used, and, having by now learned the path of least resistance, he appealed to a missionary. It was specially fortunate that he did, for the missionary introduced him to the secretary of the largest mills in the city, an Indian Christian ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... Cameron dropped dead. All these things happened, it might be said, in the same moment of time. The soldiers rushed forward and seized Hamish, who, seeming petrified with what he had done, offered not the least resistance. Not so his mother, who, seeing the men about to put handcuffs on her son, threw herself on the soldiers with such fury, that it required two of them to hold her, while the rest secured ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... yielding caked surface of the stream bed. They were as clear as tracks in caked snow. Then the path of the dried up waterway petered out in an area of rocks and pebbles and beyond that there was no clearly defined way; the brook had evidently trickled down into the lower land taking the path of least resistance ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... was doing so. But the fervor which Plonny had imparted to it, and the respect which he had for Plonny's knowledge of practical conditions, stood by him, unconsciously guiding his thoughts along the line of least resistance.... Though nobody dared admit it publicly, the party was facing a great crisis; and it was in his hand to save or to wreck it. All eyes were anxiously on the Post, which wielded the decisive power. The people had risen with the unreasonable demand that progress be checked ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... self-control and considerable self-denial. Those who go in the line of least resistance are on the road to destruction. It is often necessary to overcome habits which produce ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... front of a burning Broadway store, one night, when the back-draught blew out the whole front without warning. It is simply an explosion of gases generated by the heat, which must have vent, and go upon the line of least resistance, up, or down, or in a circle—it does not much matter, so that they go. It swept shutters, windows, and all, across Broadway, in this instance, like so much chaff, littering the street with heavy rolls of cloth. The crash was like a fearful clap of thunder. Men were knocked ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... reformers, in their books, write too exclusively of the earliest years of the pupil. These lend themselves better to explicit treatment; and I myself, in dwelling so much upon the native impulses, and object-teaching, and anecdotes, and all that, have paid my tribute to the line of least resistance in describing. Yet away back in childhood we find the beginnings of purely intellectual curiosity, and the intelligence of abstract terms. The object-teaching is mainly to launch the pupils, with some concrete conceptions of the facts concerned, upon the ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... new form of hole the stone is under high tension, and being elastic it will naturally pull apart on such lines of weakness as grooves, especially when they are made, as is usually the case in this system, in a direction at right angles with the lines of least resistance. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... made it very clear. The document, or documents, never left the bank's premises; it never left the bank's vaults except when in the possession of the bank's president in the latter's private office. Clarke had therefore chosen the line of least resistance—the bank president's office! And that accounted, he, Jimmie Dale, understood now, for the sudden failure of the Tocsin's plans three nights ago, since it accounted evidently for the sudden disappearance of Hunchback Joe, which had checkmated her on that night and on subsequent ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... slight rainfall, there had been a general failure of crops, the yield of gold and silver had been small, and there was much unemployment. There had been riots in the East and discontent and much resentment were rife. The line of least resistance seemed to be the clothes-line. The Chinese, though in no wise responsible, were attacked. Laundries were destroyed, but rioting brought speedy organization. A committee of safety, six thousand strong, took the situation in hand. The state and the national governments ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... and most economical. The bank is topped with a plashed hedge of white thorn in which sallow, ash, hazel and beech are planted for "firing." The fencing practice of the American farmer has followed the line of least resistance and is founded on the lowest first cost: the original "snake" fences of split rails, upon the making of which a former generation of pioneer American boys qualified themselves for Presidential campaigns, being followed by woven wire "made by a trust" and not the most enduring ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... found a vestige of the old Indian trail, and this made him doubly sure of being right. He did not need to have Wildfire's tracks. He let Nagger pick the way, and the horse made no mistake in finding the line of least resistance. But that grew harder and harder. This bare rock, like a file, would soon wear Wildfire's hoofs thin. And Slone rejoiced. Perhaps somewhere down in this awful chasm he and Nagger would have it out with the stallion. Slone began to look ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... impulses differ in every member of the class,—take infinite variety from individual sensitiveness to environment: the line of least resistance for one being that of greatest resistance for another;—no two courses of true nomadism can ever be wholly the same. Diversified of necessity both impulse and direction, even as human nature is ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... witnessing gun plays from the front end. The tenderfoot riz up in his chair, and snatchin' a stack of reds in his off mit, dashed 'em into 'Curly's' face just as he pulled trigger. It spoiled his aim, and the boy was on to him like a mountain lion, follerin' over the table, along the line of least resistance. ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... be very difficult to say which was greatest, my fright, or Mr. Brown's consternation; who ventured not to make the least resistance, though his uneasiness made him tremble almost as much as myself. I would instantly have withdrawn my arm: but it was held so tight I could not move it; and poor Mr. Brown was circumstanced in the same manner on the other side; for I heard him say, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... courier and his escort made their appearance. At the proper moment the disguised ladies sprang from their bushy covert, and presenting their pistols, ordered the party to surrender their papers. Surprised and alarmed, they obeyed without hesitation or the least resistance. The brave women having put them on parole, hastened home by the nearest route, which was a bypath through the woods, and dispatched the documents to ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... fellow was an arrant coward, and he would never have offered the least resistance unless convinced that he was in imminent peril ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... ghosts, get rain, or thwart disease). They may be used to buy a wife, or to buy a step in the secret society of the men, or to pay a fine or penalty to the chief. The differentiation of goods starts emotion on the line of least resistance, and the predominant goods are the ones of widest demand. Often the predominant ware has a gain from taboo, probably on account of relation to the dead.[296] A thing which is rare and hard to get may become intragroup money. In Fiji the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... obstacle which the adult will encounter at the moment of exit. To lessen the difficulty of opening it, the grub takes the precaution of gnawing at the inner side of the skin, all round the circumference, so as to make a line of least resistance. The perfect insect will only have to heave with its shoulder and strike a few blows with its head in order to raise the circular door and knock it off like the lid of a box. The passage of exit shows through the diaphanous skin of the pea as a large circular spot, which ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... their eyes, but with the remark that if my father had known my present circumstances and fair prospects, (and had not got different and false impressions by means of a kind friend,) he certainly would not have written to me in such a strain as to render me wholly incapable of offering the least resistance to his wish; and in my own mind I thought, that had I not been exposed to so much annoyance in the house where I lived, and the journey come on me like a sudden thunder- clap, leaving me no time to reflect coolly ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... The line of least resistance seems against it; our laziness, and our wish to think well of ourselves merely because we are ourselves, undoubtedly go against it, as they do against everything in the world worth having. In our own day certain ways of thinking, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee |
