"Pliable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mr. Twotongues. Nor is his schoolmaster, one Mr. Gripeman, of the market town of Lovegain, in the county of Coveting, a stranger to us. Obstinate, with his dogged determination and stubborn common-sense, and Pliable with his shallow impressionableness, are among our acquaintances. We have, before now, come across "the brisk lad Ignorance from the town of Conceit," and have made acquaintance with Mercy's would-be suitor, ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... morning, they on afresh; because they had intercepted a letter tied to the leg of a dove, wherein the Persian emperor promised present succours to the besieged. The Turks cased the outside of their walls with bags of chaff, straw, and such like pliable matter, which conquered the engines of the Christians by yielding unto them. As for one sturdy engine, whose force would not be tamed, they brought two old witches on the walls to enchant it; but the spirit thereof was too strong ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... disappointed, considerable candor and allowance. Especially they will be candid, and I believe that there are many such, who have occasionally tried their own strength in this bow of Ulysses. They have not found it supple and pliable, and with me are perhaps ready to acknowledge that they could not always even approach with it the mark of their ambition. But I would willingly, were it possible, obviate uncandid criticism, because to answer it is lost labor, and to receive it in ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... had rather follow a priest than what they call the leaders of society. No life can better than that of Pepys illustrate the dangers of this respectable theory of living. For what can be more untoward than the occurrence, at a critical period, and while the habits are still pliable, of such a sweeping transformation as the return of Charles the Second? Round went the whole fleet of England on the other tack; and while a few tall pintas, Milton or Pen, still sailed a lonely course by the stars and their own private compass, the cock-boat, Pepys, must ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not reply to his father. He did not know what to reply. His mind was still in the pliable state, and he found that he was being infected by his father's passion. But he had been taught at Rumpell's to believe in Invention, in Progress by the Development of Machinery, and so his mind reeled a little under this sudden onslaught on ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... highways and in the forests, than in the streets of Paris or London. "When in foreign countries," says an old author, "I fall in with a man too helpless for a Frenchman, too ceremonious for an Englishman, too pliable for a Spaniard, too lively for a Dutchman, too cordial for an Italian, too modest for a Russian—a man pressing towards me with oblique bows, and doing homage with ineffable self-denial to all that seems of rank; then my heart, and the blood in my face, says, 'that is thy countryman.'" ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... comforteth himself with the hope that between the factions and partialities nourished by his industry, and musters among the towns, especially in Holland and Zeeland (where he is persuaded to find some pliable to a reconcilement) and the disorders and misgovernment of our people, there will be yet occasion offered him to make his profit and advantage. I find that the gentleman hath here many friends indifferently persuaded of his innocency, notwithstanding the closing ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... strain his hands, and marred his delicate fingers, yet could he not once stir the string. Then called he to the attendants to bring fat and unctuous matter, which melting at the fire, he dipped the bow therein, thinking to supple it and make it more pliable; but not with all the helps of art could he succeed in making it to move. After him Liodes, and Amphinomus, and Polybus, and Eurynomus, and Polyctorides essayed their strength, but not any one of them, or of the rest of those aspiring suitors, had any ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... hovels at Terra del Fuego, and in some respects they are inferior even to them. At Botany Bay, where they were best, they were just high enough for a man to sit upright in; but not large enough for him to extend himself in his whole length in any direction: They are built with pliable rods about as thick as a man's finger, in the form of an oven, by sticking the two ends into the ground, and then covering them with palm-leaves, and broad pieces of bark: The door is nothing but a large hole at one end, opposite to which the fire is made, as we perceived by the ashes. Under these ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... utilized for posts when very small. When green the wood rots very quickly in contact with the soil. Poles for posts should be cut in summer and peeled and dried before setting. The wood becomes very tough and pliable when steamed, and is of value for sleigh runners and for ribs of canoes and skiffs. Together with white elm (Ulmus Americana) it is extensively used for barrel staves in slack cooperage and also for furniture. The thick, viscous ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... his eyes, that resembled soft, black pansies, and his jet-black, stubborn hair, that grew like a thick, velvet cap above his smooth forehead, were all his own. His hands, likewise, were such as had never been seen upon a Blashkov. They were white and hard, but pliable as rubber, their fingers extraordinarily long. In fact, they were hands for which any musician, teacher or virtuoso, would, had such commodities been marketable, have bought at any price. And this fact had early been recognized by Ivan's ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... find at—Gigi's costume-class. Then came an ironmonger, whose wares were all made by hand, even the smallest nails; for machinery, as yet, is in its first infancy around Rome. At this stand, Roejean stopped to purchase a pallet-knife; not one of the regular, artist-made tools, but a thin, pliable piece of steel, without handle, which experience taught him was well adapted to his work. As usual, the iron-man asked twice as much as he intended to take, and after a sharp bargain, Roejean conquered. Then they came to a stand where there were piles of coarse crockery, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... himself. Over his deer-skin vest he had drawn the coat of mail—that steel tissue, as pliable as cloth, as hard as diamonds; next, clothing his arms and legs in their proper armor, and his feet in iron-bound buskins, and concealing all this defensive equipment under loose trousers and an ample pelisse carefully buttoned, he took ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... if it was to preserve the distinction which its editor still desired. Jewdwine had no need of the poet; but of the journalistic side of Rickman he had endless need. It was a baser faculty, but his care must be to develop it, to train it, to handle it judiciously, until by handling he had made it pliable to all the uses of his paper. Jewdwine had a genius for licking young men into shape. He could hardly recognize that band of awkward and enthusiastic followers in his present highly disciplined and meritorious staff. None of them were like Rickman; none of them had done anything ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... conserving properties of the mud ooze is remarkable. The “Philosophical Transactions” mention a human body dug up in the Isle of Axholme, of great antiquity, judging by the structure of the sandals on its feet, yet the skin was soft and pliable, like doe-skin leather, and the hair remained upon it.-—“Lincs. N. & Q.” ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... expelled (expiration). Life depends on this chink being kept open. The windpipe is composed of a series of cartilaginous or gristly rings connected together by softer tissues. These rings are not entire, but are completed behind by soft tissues including muscle. It follows that this tube is pliable and extensible—a very important provision, especially when large movements of the neck are made, during vigorous exercise, and also in ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... in his room at the hotel his mind went back to the old days in New York, when he was hand and glove with the biggest set of sharks in the city, and a pliable tool of Tammany when well paid for his nasty work. What little conscience—and most men have some stored away—he possessed revolted at his intentions toward Jane Thrush—not that they were entirely dishonorable, but he ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... soft, thin skin; and soft cartilage at the end of the breastbone. Long hairs denote age. (b) Turkeys.—These should be plump, have smooth, dark legs, and soft cartilage. (c) Geese.—These should be plump and have many pin feathers; they should also have pliable ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... which friendship is an empty name. For the essence of friendship being that two minds become as one, how can that ever take place if the mind of each of the separate parties to it is not single and uniform, but variable, changeable, and complex? Can anything be so pliable, so wavering, as the mind of a man whose attitude depends not only on another's feeling and wish, but on his ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... contributing to their happiness; perhaps no person in existence has seen more of the world and life in its various phases than himself. His manners are naturally to the highest degree courtly, yet he nevertheless possesses a disposition so pliable that he finds no difficulty in accommodating himself to all kinds of company, in consequence of which he is a universal favourite. There is a mystery about him, which, wherever he goes, serves not a little to increase the sensation naturally created by his appearance ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... doubts, no scruples shook him. Of the license which advocacy draws from sympathy with the feelings of those it represents, he made full use, with unhesitating power; for his reason, of 'large discourse,' was as pliable as the affections of the most sensitive nature. Nor was he diverted from his aim by any figure or fancy: if he neither exalted his subject by imagination, nor illustrated it by wit, nor softened its details by pathos, he never made it the subject of vain attempts at the exhibition ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... not know how to smile. They look more or less benevolent, more or less pleased, more or less love-smitten; but they are not pliable or subtle enough to smile. A woman who is not sufficiently prudent to mask her features, gives away her soul in a smile. I have known women who revealed their whole ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... in this second group includes cases in which the tips of the fingers are fairly pliable and intact, yet due to the presence of wrinkles in the skin, complete impressions cannot be obtained. This condition can be corrected by the injection of a tissue builder, procurable from a dealer in undertaker's supplies. If this is not available, glycerin or water ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... carried on by authority." "That is what I was saying," replied he, "that there is no room for philosophy in the courts of princes." "Yes, there is," said I, "but not for this speculative philosophy, that makes everything to be alike fitting at all times; but there is another philosophy that is more pliable, that knows its proper scene, accommodates itself to it, and teaches a man with propriety and decency to act that part which has fallen to his share. If when one of Plautus' comedies is upon the stage, and a company of servants are acting their parts, you should come out in the ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... manufacturing cards for carding wool, and as he invented an improvement in the process of their production, he is said to have made a very good business of it for some time. A rich manufacturer of Chemnitz once gave him a large order to be delivered at the end of the year: the children, whose pliable fingers had already proved serviceable in this respect, had to work hard day and night, and in return the father promised them an exceptionally happy Christmas, as he expected to get a large sum of money. When the longed-for time arrived, however, he received the announcement of his ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... willing to leave the wheel in charge of his brother, for he was painfully conscious that he could not always be trusted. Ben was not often in so pliable a frame of mind, and the little captain could not help suspecting that he had some object in view which was not apparent, for he had twice declared, that if he was not captain of the Woodville no one should be. He was not prepared to believe that Ben would run the boat on the rocks, ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... with the odour of paints, varnishes, turpentine, and fixative; he opened the big window, let in air and sunshine, and picked up a sheaf of brushes, soft and pliable from a fresh washing in ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... for ready cash, Charles was at last obliged to call Parliament together once more. It met in April of 1640 and showed an ugly temper. It was dissolved a few weeks later. A new Parliament convened in November. This one was even less pliable than the first one. The members understood that the question of "Government by Divine Right" or "Government by Parliament" must be fought out for good and all. They attacked the King in his chief councillors and executed half a dozen of them. They announced that they would ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... inside bark of the linden or American basswood. In June, when the bark slips easily, strip it from the tree, remove the coarse outside, immerse the inside bark in water for twenty days; the fibres will then easily separate, and become soft and pliable as satin ribbon. Cut it into convenient lengths, say one foot, and lay them away in a dry state, in which they will keep for years. This will afford good ties for many uses, such as bandages of vegetables for market, &c. Matting that comes around Russia iron and ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... a theory of the universe they commenced by postulating an arche—a first principle or element out of which, by a vital process, all else should be produced. "Accordingly, whatever seemed the most subtle or pliable, as well as universal element in the mass of the visible world, was marked as the seminal principle whose successive developments and transformations produced all the rest."[402] With this seminal principle the living, animating principle seems to have been ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... firmness to the strained muscle or stretched skin. Out of this model of his, this plain old burgess, he and his docile friend the light, could make quite a new thing; a new pattern of bosses and cavities, of smooth sweeps and tracked lines, of creases and folds of flesh, of pliable linen and rough brocade of dress: something new, something which, without a single feature being straightened or shortened, yet changed completely the value of the whole assemblage of features; something undreamed of by nature in moulding that ugly ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... similitude affected by the two surmounting tips of eagle feathers. He was arrayed in much splendor, according to aboriginal standards; the fringed seams of his hunting shirt and leggings, fashioned of fine white dressed doeskin, as pliable as "Canton silk crape," were hung with fawns' trotters; his moccasins were white and streaked with parti-colored paint; he had a curious prickly belt of wolves' teeth, which intimated his moral ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... settling nowhere." Robert Southey, whose prose style was the perfection of neatness, and who was intimate with Coleridge throughout his life, laments that it is "extraordinary that he should write in so rambling and inconclusive a manner;" his mind, which was undoubtedly very pliable and subtle, "turning and winding, till you get weary ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... grandparents repressed as best they could their apprehensions as to what other hunters, what other disconcerting incident, might follow; for catholic France very generally believed that the Huguenot leaders had a scheme for possessing themselves of the person of the young king, known to be mentally pliable. Meanwhile they led him to their daintiest apartment, with great silver flambeaux, that he might wash off the blood with which not his hands only were covered; for he hunted also with the eagerness of a madman—steeped in blood. He lay there for a few ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... tablespoonful of the crumbs of stale bread into a gill of milk, and give the whole one boil up. Or, take stale bread crumbs, pour over them boiling water and boil till soft, stirring well; take from the fire and gradually stir in a little glycerine or sweet oil, so as to render the poultice pliable when applied. ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... distinguish him from the whole fraternity; for in him we beheld the most uncommon, and the most delicate sentiments, arrayed in the softest and finest language imaginable. Nothing could be so easy as the turn and compass of his periods; nothing so ductile; nothing more pliable and obsequious to his will, so that he had a greater command of it than any Orator whatever. In short, the flow of his language was so pure and limpid, that nothing could be clearer; and so free, that it was never clogged or obstructed. Every word was exactly in the place where it should be, ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... acquainted with, one at least never failed to right his humour; and that one was yonder flabby, pallid fellow with the velvet collar to his coat, and the rings on his fingers, and the gold hair, named Pliable, who sat beside Mr. Stubborn on the settle by ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... holy sprinkling which gives them, dying early, to a Christian immortality; launching our thunders upon the bold, softening the hearts of the errant, mingling with our unbending creed the more pliable ethics of worldly graces, and, in a word, walking like Saint John on the savage border of civilization, to thrill the brutal and unlettered with the tidings of one just day to come—our itinerant lives drift ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... the guide into another small chapel, which bore the name of Henry VII. upon the door. Surely they were great builders and great designers in those days! Had stone been as pliable as wax it could not have been twisted and curved into more exquisite spirals and curls, so light, so delicate, so beautiful, twining and turning along the walls, and drooping from the ceiling. Never did the hand of man construct anything more elaborately ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... his noble efforts, which had continued unceasingly through ten years of self-imposed privation. India-rubber was now seen to be capable of being adapted to at least five hundred uses. It could be made "as pliable as kid, tougher than ox-hide, as elastic as whalebone, or as rigid as flint." But, as too often happens, his great discovery enriched neither Goodyear nor his family. It soon gave employment to sixty thousand artisans, and annually produced articles in this country alone worth eight ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... with mere Constitutional work: wherein, unluckily, fellow-workmen are less pliable than, with one who has completed the Science of Polity, they ought to be. Courage, Sieyes nevertheless! Some twenty months of heroic travail, of contradiction from the stupid, and the Constitution shall be built; the top-stone of it brought ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... used, three or four inches square. It is cut into a circle and the edges carefully pared thin. A hole is made in the centre and a piece of string or top twine is knotted and run through the hole. The sucker is then soaked in water until it is soft and pliable. The object of the sucker is to lift stones or bricks with it. This, too, is of especial interest in New England towns, where there are brick sidewalks. The sucker is pressed firmly on a brick by means of the foot, and it will be found to adhere to it with sufficient force to lift ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... him; but having no small companion on whom to exercise his valor, he amused himself for a short time in hewing down imaginary foes, and then cut the reeds in slips, and plaited them to form a whip for Lightfoot. The leaves seemed so pliable and strong that I examined them to see to what further use they might be put. Their tissue was composed of long silky fibers. A sudden thought struck me—this must be New Zealand flax. [Footnote: New Zealand flax is not real flax: it is a plant of the lily family, the fiber of whose ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... interrupted Hia. "Women do not entice men—though they admittedly accompany them, with an extreme absence of reluctance, in any direction. In her youth this person's feet undoubtedly bore her occasionally along a light and fantastic path, for in the nature of spring a leaf is green and pliable, and in the nature of autumn it is brown and austere, and through changeless ages thus and thus. But, as it is truly said: 'Milk by repeated agitation turns to butter,' and for many years it has been this one's ceaseless study of the Arts whereby she might avert ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... had made them out of thin plates of gold and attached them in place by means of stitches through tiny holes bored in the metal. Gold is the most common metal in the Land of Oz and is used for many purposes because it is soft and pliable. ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... home-thrust, and for the moment threw the little casuist off the track. She carefully folded up the idea, and laid it away on the inner shelves of her mind till she could think more about it. Pliable as she was to all outward appearances, the child had her own still, interior world, where all her little notions and opinions stood up crisp and fresh, like flowers that grow in cool, shady places. If anybody too rudely assailed a thought or suggestion she put forth, she ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... thinner sorts of the same species of kulitkayu owe their difference to their being taken nearer to or farther from the root. That which is used in building has nearly the texture and hardness of wood. The pliable and delicate bark of which clothing is made is procured from a tree called kalawi, a ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... hours for years at machines. When one's body is young, it is very pliable, and hard work will mould it like putty according to the nature of the work. I can tell at a glance the trades of many workingmen I meet on the street. Look at me. Why am I rolling all about the shop? Because of the years ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... everybody on this coast. The best made cost 340 dollars, or about sixty guineas, and fifty pounds is not at all an uncommon price to pay, though the inferior kind may be had for two pounds. Those ordinarily worn by the gentlemen here cost from twenty to thirty pounds each, but they are so light, pliable, and elastic that they will wear for ever, wash like a pocket-handkerchief, do not get burnt by the sun, and can be rolled up and sat upon—in fact, ill-treated in any way you like—without fear of their breaking, tearing, or getting out of shape. For ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... traditional witch, though the broomstick on which she will ride through the air is en evidence. She is a demoniac being, knowing her own power, and full of devilish instinct. The marble is full of life, and one seems to feel the warmth of her delicate, powerfully chiselled, though soft and pliable limbs." ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... business always is uppermost with you. I sometimes wonder if you think a woman has a soul. As for my marriage—you saw that Tom could be useful to you. He had the various distinctive points you have mentioned. Better than that he was pliable, capable of being molded to perform your work, to manipulate machine politics and procure for you the legislation you desired. You did not consider what kind of a husband he would make for your daughter whom you did not know. But you gave your ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... military boot comes half-way up the calf of the leg and the trouser is tucked into its top. They are without laces and pull on to the foot like the American "rubber boot." They are made of heavy, undyed leather, singularly soft and pliable, and thoroughly waterproof. The soles are shod with hobnails, but the boot is not very heavy. We often noted dead Germans who were bootless, their footgear having been appropriated by some victorious Frenchman, who had left near-by his own ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... he found several good-sized trees, stripped and bare, which had been brought down stream by the spring floods, and left stranded upon the bank. With considerable difficulty he managed to fashion these into a rude raft, binding all together with strong, pliable willow withes. As a boy he had often made rafts, and the knowledge acquired then served him ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... with her mouth and claws, she will seize one of the eight scales that hang from her abdomen, and at once proceed to clip it and plane it, extend it, knead it with her saliva, bend it and flatten it, roll it and straighten it, with the skill of a carpenter handling a pliable panel. When at last the substance, thus treated, appears to her to possess the required dimensions and consistency, she will attach it to the highest point of the dome, thus laying the first, or rather the keystone of the new town; for we have here an inverted city, hanging ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... taken from the drier, vegetables should be rather brittle and fruits rather leathery and pliable. One method of determining whether fruit is dry enough is to squeeze a handful; if the fruit separates when the hand is opened, it is dry enough. Another way is to press a single piece; if no moisture comes to the surface the piece ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... among rocky mountains, where the troops can only pass in single file, and the climate is very moist and rainy. The inhabitants are armed with long lances, having stone heads about an ell long, which have two edges as sharp as razors, and they are defended by pliable shields which cover their whole bodies. They are extremely nimble, and give signals to each other by loud whistlings, which echo among the rocks with inconceivable shrillness. Their province is named Tiltepeque[2]; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... helpless Huguenots in the prison was first proposed to the public hangman. He refused to take any part in it: this, he said, was no duty of his office, and he would consent to perform it only when all the forms of law should have been observed. Other persons were found more pliable, and, under the leadership of one Perremet, the bloody scenes of the prison of Meaux were re-enacted, on Thursday, the fourth day of September, in that of Troyes. How many were the victims we know not; we have, however, the names of over thirty, apparently the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... liberty churches proved more pliable than States. The authority of nearly all the leading denominations was directed against the abolitionists. The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church passed in 1836 a resolution censuring two of their members ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... this great Contest to a happy Conclusion the next year.—Altho' the Enemy have gaind the Possession of Charleston, they have not succeeded to their Wishes in that Quarter. They do not find the People so pliable as they flatterd themselves they should. Notwithstanding Cornwallis' boasting Letter to Lord George, of "a compleat Victory obtaind the 16th Instant by His Majesties Troops under my Command, over the rebel southern Army," that brave Army checkd ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... friends? If their own father, of whom they always speak with the greatest veneration, asked them to lend him fifty francs for a month, they would say to him as they do to every one else: 'We are rather cramped just now; but see that rascal B——.' And that rascal B——, who is the most pliable tool in existence, will, providing father N—— offers unquestionable security, lend the old gentleman his son's money at from twelve to fifteen per cent. interest, plus a ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... 9 feet, and a top of 5 feet, making together 14 feet in length, as the most useful; a fir root, and top of good sound lance wood, well painted, ringed and varnished, makes a neat and serviceable rod. For trolling, your top should be stiff and strong. For worm not so pliable as ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... pressed ivory becomes soft, and losing its hardness, yields to the fingers, and gives way, just as Hymettian wax[41] grows soft in the sun, and being worked with the fingers is turned into many shapes, and becomes pliable by the very handling. While he is amazed, and is rejoicing, {though} with apprehension, and is fearing that he is deceived; the lover again and again touches the object of his desires with his hand. It is a {real} body; the veins throb, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Vallandighams and Pendletons of Ohio, the Voorhees and Dodds of Indiana, the Judds and Greens of Illinois, and others of like ilk in other States, obtained the chieftainship of the party and inveigled its too pliable ranks into the prostituting embrace of this foul conspiracy, to overthrow the government and crown with success the cause of the confederate arms. It must be readily seen by every honest man of ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... inclined, even if themselves unmusical, to uphold plain-song and the Elizabethans and only such modern work as is inspired by something like a similar spirit, aloof and strong, so those whose religious mentality is of a more pliable type are, if musically indifferent, generally inclined to uphold the practical accommodation afforded by the inclusion of at any rate a certain quantity of music that is consciously adapted to the more immediately obvious emotions of the ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... toil of living twenty-four hours longer by the comparative ease with which he found himself going through the usually painful process of bestirring his rusty joints (stiffened by the very rest and sleep that should have made them pliable) and putting them in a condition to bear his weight upon the floor. Nor was he absolutely disheartened by the idea of those tonsorial, ablutionary, and personally decorative labors which are apt ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cylindrical basket, very neatly plaited of thin and very pliable strips of rattan, is used for carrying the few articles which a man takes with him in travelling — a little rice and tobacco, a spare waist cloth, a sleeping mat, perhaps a second mat of palm leaves used as a protection against rain, a roll of dried banana leaves for making cigarettes, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... attempted no witticisms and indulged in no oratorical claptrap. His address was pure argument. Douglas's manner was one of excitement, and accompanied and emphasized by almost continuous bodily movement. His hands and his feet, and especially that pliable face of his, were all busy talking. He said sharp things, evidently for their immediate effect on his audience, and showed that he was not only master of all the arts of the practical stump orator, but was ready ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... for belts has been brought about during the last few years, by the introduction of improved processes for currying and the subsequent treatment. Paterson has worked successfully a patent for rendering belt leather more pliable, and lessening the tendency to stretch. Under this treatment the leather is either curried or rough dried, and then soaked in a solution of wood, resin, and gum thus, or frankincense, first melted together, and then dissolved, by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... of Leatherwood Creek had opened the primeval forest to their fields of corn and tobacco on the fertile slopes and rich bottom-lands. The stream had its name from the bush growing on its banks, which with its tough and pliable bark served many uses of leather among the pioneers; they made parts of their harness with it, and the thongs which lifted their door-latches, or tied their shoes, or held their working clothes together. The name passed to the settlement, ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... had set for himself may look easy to the average reader, but it was not altogether so, and the major realized this. The willows were old, and old trees often have rotten limbs which break when least expected. Moreover green willow limbs are very pliable and bend and twist beyond expectation. Under ordinary circumstances, Deck would not have minded a tumble into the stream, but he knew that a tumble now would bring a shot meant to be fatal and one which ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... regions where the wilder Negritos live the breechcloth and saya are made of the inner bark of certain trees which is flayed until it becomes soft and pliable. ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... answered Agnes, with a smile that crept over her young lips like a viper. "The old General is more pliable than the son. Oh, yes, when he began questioning me of the whereabouts of our kind friends who think so much of us, you know, I put forth all the accomplishments you have taught me, and wiled him from the ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... at home, should be so delightful at Bessie Mather's, neither could Eyebright explain it, but so it was. This portrait-painting father was one of Bessie's chief attractions in Eyebright's eyes, but apart from that, she was sweet-tempered, pliable, and affectionate, and—a strong bond in friendship sometimes—she liked to follow and Eyebright to lead; she preferred to listen and Eyebright to talk; so they suited each other exactly. Bessie's hair was dark; she was not quite so tall as Eyebright; ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... is acquainted with the pliable condition of the cranial bones at birth, will readily conceive how effectually this apparatus would mould the head in the elongated or cylindrical form; for, while it prevents the forehead from rising, and the sides of the head from expanding, it allows the occipital region an entire freedom of ...
— Some Observations on the Ethnography and Archaeology of the American Aborigines • Samuel George Morton
... Congress which was elected in 1832 and which sat from December, 1833, to March, 1835, was not so pliable as that which arranged the peace with South Carolina. Still, the Senate sustained the Bank by a decided majority, and in March it formally censured Jackson for his removal of the deposits. In this Clay ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... regretted that Madame Chevalier was not ordered to enter into the conspiracy against Paul (whose inconsistency and violence they foresaw would make his reign short), that she might have influenced the conspirators to fix upon a successor more pliable and less scrupulous, and who would have suffered the Cabinet of St. Cloud to dictate to the Cabinet of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... cleft-stick of green wood, while the two former are stones of various sizes. Their bellows consist of two pots about a foot deep; from the bottom of each is an earthenware pipe about two feet long, the points of which are inserted in a charcoal fire. The mouths of the pots are covered with very pliable leather, loose and well greased; in the centre of each leather covering is an upright stick about four feet long, and the bellows-blower works these rapidly with a perpendicular motion, thus producing a strong blast. ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... illustrate the beauty of abstinence not only by precept but by example. Rowland passed for a child of ordinary parts, and certainly, during his younger years, was an excellent imitation of a boy who had inherited nothing whatever that was to make life easy. He was passive, pliable, frank, extremely slow at his books, and inordinately fond of trout-fishing. His hair, a memento of his Dutch ancestry, was of the fairest shade of yellow, his complexion absurdly rosy, and his measurement ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... the saved? No man can tell. Many are moved by sympathy for their friends. Others are charmed by the congregational singing and the music of the organ. Many see that the revival is bound to go, and, like Pliable, they are swept along for a time with it. But there appears in this mixed company a man with the stamp of divine authority upon his brow, the gold braid of full salvation on his helmet, the dialect of Canaan on his tongue and the air of official appointment about his person: "Without holiness ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... four weeks should be made of plain flannel; after this period a knitted band with shoulder straps is the better article. All petticoats and skirts should be supported from the shoulders. Stockinet is a good material for diapers; it is soft, warm, and pliable. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... I felt her body relax and grow suddenly pliable and soft, her head fell back across my arm, and, as she lay, I saw the tears of her helplessness ooze out beneath her drooping lashes; but still ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... I have carefully put to myself; and upon the whole the probabilities are in favour of her accepting him in time. I flatter myself that I have some influence over her. She is pliable, and I can be strong ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... united efforts of all our heads and hands. For, when we came to plank the bottom, we had very vexatious difficulties to encounter, as our only plank consisted in pieces from the deck of our wreck, which was so dry and stubborn that fire and water had hardly any effect in making it pliable, as it rent, split, and flew in pieces like glass; so that I now began to fear that all our labour was in vain, and we must quietly wait to be taken off by some Spanish ship, and be led quietly to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... he had seen when digging up the tree at the mouth of his cave. Afterwards he discovered some tall, tough reeds growing near by. He laid in a supply of these. He found that when he wanted to use them, a good soaking in water made them as pliable and tough as when ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... gain in subordination, or this net loss in self-possession. A doubt may be permitted as to whether the common man in the countries of the Imperial coalition, e.g., will, as the net outcome of this war experience, be in a perceptibly more pliable frame of mind as touches his obligations toward his betters and subservience to the irresponsible authority exercised by the various governmental agencies, than he was at the outbreak of the war. At that time, there is reason to believe, there was an ominous, though scarcely threatening, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... she loved him with a love which would never end, a very ingenuous love, having neither the silliness of a girl who has just left the convent, nor the knowledge of a Parisienne whom the theatre and the newspapers have instructed in all things. Michel, then, could give to this virgin and pliable mind whatever bent he chose; and Marsa, pure as the snow and brave as her own favorite heroes, became his without resistance, being incapable of divining a treachery or fearing a lie. Michel Menko, moreover, loved her madly; and he thought only of winning and keeping the love of this incomparable ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... yet the esoteric pain Squeezing her pliable vitals nourishes feud Insanely grumous, grumously insane. For lo! Past common balmly on the Bordereau, Churns she the skim o' the gutter's crust With Anti-Judaic various carmagnole, Whooped praise of ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... young man a nervous but pleasant "Good-morrow," and observed with satisfaction that he wore no body armour. His original intention had been to attempt to suborn him, and render him pliable by bribery; but now that the moment for action was arrived he dared not make the offer. He lacked for words in which to present his proposal, and he was afraid lest the man should resent it, and in a fit of ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... has been accustomed to talk for many years in a certain way can be changed to talk in an opposite one. There may be modifications of the evil, but few real cures. But in the case of young folk it is different. They, being somewhat pliable in that member of the body, may, by seeing the fault portrayed in others, so dislike it as not to fall into it, and covet earnestly the ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... baskets and remove them to the manufacturing room. Each manufacturer takes a basketful, and commences to beat them between the palms of his hands with a lateral motion, in order to soften and make them more pliable for working, and thus prevent them, when rolled, from breaking. This beating process continues for about an hour, and it may either consist of one or two processes; the Chinese sometimes finish the beating process at once; at others, they allow the leaves, after being beat ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... in the mind of the castaway. Griswold had the writing craftsman's ingathering eye: he saw that the furnishings were frugally well-worn, that the sitting-room rug was country-woven, and that the spotless dining-room napery was soft and pliable with age. The contrast between the Farnham home and the ornate mansion three streets away on the lake front was strikingly apparent; as cleanly marked as that between Margery Grierson and the sweetly serene and conventional young person who was introducing him to her ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... too weak to new-model and recompose it to a tolerable condition; but what he thought he could effect by persuasion upon the pliable, and by force upon the stubborn, this he did, as ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... fatty particles adhering to the skin. The "dubber" was made of the stock of an elk's horn, with a piece of iron or steel inserted in the end, forming a sharp knife. The last process the deerskin underwent before it was soft and pliable enough for making into garments, was the "smoking." This was effected by digging a round hole in the ground, and lighting in it an armful of rotten wood or punk; then sticks were planted around the hole, and their tops brought together and tied. ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... (Fig. 78). But if you are in the woods, out of reach of barrels or other civilized lumber, you can make yourself cribs by driving a square or a circle of sticks in the ground a short distance and then twining roots or pliable branches inside and outside the stakes, basket fashion, as shown in Fig. 76. When the crib is complete it may be carefully removed from the ground and used as the barrels were used by filling them with ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... grow stiff, case-hardened, difficult to change; but in America we have the newest and most pliable, and we are bravely used to altering things. It is high time we altered our system of education. The very crown and flower of our best minds and noblest characters are called for ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... proportionately small brain, but concentrates on giving him a big stomach fitted with "all modern conveniences." On the other hand, the head of the Cerebral is large because his brain is large. The skull which is pliable and unfinished at birth grows to conform to the size and shape of the brain as the glove takes on the shape of the hand ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... fortunately, was still pliable and susceptible, still unalarmed and frank. It seemed that he had lost money again—this time to Jack Ruthven; and Selwyn's teeth remained sternly interlocked as, bit by bit, the story came out. But in the telling the boy was not quite as frank as he might have been; and Selwyn supposed he was ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... I had not softened. I was bitterly disappointed in her. She had been the formless, pliable clay, on which I purposed to prove my pet theories for development and culture. I had taken her as a perfectly fresh and untainted being, naively unconscious even, of the elements, either good or bad, of which her own nature was composed, waiting ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... hands of Sir Baynom Frogmorton and Sir Duncomb Colchester, they will be on my side. Moreover, there is yet a most great benefit to the kingdom in general by the sow iron made of the ironstone and Roman cinders in the Forest of Dean, for that metal is of a most gentle, pliable, soft nature, easily and quickly to be wrought into manufacture, over what any other iron is, and it is the best in the known world; and the greatest part of this sow iron is sent up Severne to the ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... which characterizes the species of Polysiphonia, the "siphons" of which may be regarded as one-celled branches. To the law that no subsequent transverse division takes place in segments cut off from the apical cell, there seem to be two exceptions: first, the calcareous genus Corallinia, in the pliable joints of which intercalated division occurs; and, second, the Nitophylleae, in which, moreover, median longitudinal division of axial cells is said to occur. Like the Fungi, therefore, the Red Algae consist for the most part of branched filaments, even where the thallus appears ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia |
