"Pliant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... umpire between the contendants. In his 'History of Music,' Dr. Burney, to whom the prevalence of this false impression is mainly due, observes—"At length the decision was left to Lord Chief Justice Jeffries, afterwards King James the Second's pliant Chancellor, who was of that society (the Inner Temple), and he terminated the controversy in favor of Father Smith; so that Harris's organ was taken away without loss of reputation, having so long pleased and ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... of riding boots, by which I set especial store. They were such as many of our field-officers now in Canada are in the habit of wearing—coming high up on the thigh, perfectly water-proof, but very light, and pliant as a glove. I saw nothing of American manufacture to compare with them. Some of my duck-shooting acquaintance at Baltimore were never weary of admiring their fair proportions; nor did my sage counselor, before alluded to, refuse ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... hither and thither on the pond, with its blond leaves and petals of blue, and its pliant stem in danger at every tide, did the fond mothers watch it from the bank? That they did, thinking of the time when they were lilies of the pond themselves, with no fears of danger near. But at last it ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... writer," says M. Faguet, "and disconcerted criticism by the impossibility of explaining his methods of procedure; he was luminous, supple, naturally pliant and yielding; beneath his apparently effeminate grace an extraordinary strength of character would suddenly make itself felt; he had, more than any nineteenth-century writer, the quality of charm; he exercised a caressing innuence ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... and wood, so that the characters were engraved instead of being written in the usual manner. The instrument used in writing on wood, was made of metal, and called a style. For stone, brass, &c., a chisel was employed. When the bark and leaves of trees, skins, and other materials of a more pliant nature, superseded the above-named tables, the chisel and the style, or stylus, gave way to the reed and cane, and afterwards to the quill, the hair pencil (as now used by the Chinese,) and the convenient ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... from without, drave backward to the wall, And midmost of a rout of roisterers, Femininely fair and dissolutely pale, Her suitor in old years before Geraint, Enter'd, the wild lord of the place, Limours. He moving up with pliant courtliness, Greeted Geraint full face, but stealthily, In the mid-warmth of welcome and graspt hand, Found Enid with the corner of his eye, And knew her sitting sad and solitary. Then cried Geraint for wine and goodly cheer To feed the sudden guest, and sumptuously According to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... to vanquish him that confesseth to be her seruaunt, and whose wil dependeth at her commaundement. And when the whole matter shalbe rightlye iudged, shee that reuealeth imperfection of a Suter, sheweth her opinion and minde to be more pliant to yelde, then indewed with reason to abandone pleasure and to reiect the insolencie of the same, sith Reason's force doth easely vanquish light affections of sensuall partes, whose fancies imprinted wyth ficklenes, do make them so inconstant, as they ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... disapproving, but not from the standards of the ethical text-books. The casuistry of feeling is of everlasting interest to him, and he is never tired of inventing imaginary cases, or pondering real ones, in which pliant feeling is invoked against the narrowness of duty. These are mostly in a kind of matter which modern taste hardly allows us to reproduce; nor, after all, is there much to be gained by turning the sanctities of human relationship, with all their immeasurable bliss, their immeasurable woe, into the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... toward the doorway and her pliant figure bent for an instant in the prescribed form of Japanese courtesy and salutation. Then she clasped both hands together with a little cry of dismay. "Oh, so sorree," she murmured in contrition, ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... applause of the evening greeted him, not very hearty or sustained, but prompt at least. He looked like a very great man indeed, as he stood acknowledging it, his most effective self, a strong man, though so lightly built, erect and pliant of carriage, a man with infinite reserves of power and dignity. He was smiling, and his smile was the same that the boy by the court-house fence had seen, a tantalizing smile of assurance and charm and power, as if he were master of ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... overnight. The fields were all sheeted up; they were tucked in among the snow, and their shape was modelled through the pliant counterpane, like children tucked in by a fond mother. The wind had made ripples and folds upon the surface, like what the sea, in quiet weather, leaves upon the sand. There was a frosty stifle in ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... its limit that) continues yet To operate, that now it moves, and feels, As sea sponge clinging to the rock: and there Assumes th' organic powers its seed convey'd. 'This is the period, son! at which the virtue, That from the generating heart proceeds, Is pliant and expansive; for each limb Is in the heart by forgeful nature plann'd. How babe of animal becomes, remains For thy consid'ring. At this point, more wise, Than thou hast err'd, making the soul disjoin'd From passive ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... if it were a mere knack, and the poet could only express what other men conceived. But in comparison with his task, the poet is the least talented of any; the writer of prose has more skill. See what talent the smith has. His material is pliant in his hands. When the poet is most inspired, is stimulated by an aura which never even colors the afternoons of common men, then his talent is all gone, and he is no longer a poet. The gods do not grant him any skill more than another. They never put their gifts into ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... hewen stones wrought smoother and more fine Than jet or marble fair from Iceland brought. Over the door directly doth incline A fair percullis of compacture strong, To shut out all that may annoy the state Or health of Microcosm; and within Is spread a long board like a pliant tongue, At which I hourly sit, and trial take Of meats and drinks needful and delectable: Twice every day do I provision make For the sumptuous kitchen of the commonwealth; Which, once well-boil'd, is soon distributed To all the members, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... century new voices are heard, with accents of genuine and natural feeling; the poets begin to treat the old themes with more freshness, and to deal with religion, politics, and morals, as well as with love. The language still possesses, indeed, the quality of youth; it is still pliant, its forms have not become stiffened by age, it is fit for larger use than has yet been made of it, and lies ready and waiting, like a noble instrument, for the hand of the master which shall draw from it its full harmonies and reveal its latent ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... 'tis, we now will prove: Folks laugh; your wife a pliant glove shall move; But, if you've twenty favourites around, A single syllable will ne'er resound. Whene'er you speak, each word has double force; At table, you've precedency of course, And oft will get the very nicest parts; Well pleased who serves you!—all the household ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... the line which they occupied at the moment could be defended with four divisions, whereas the new one could not be held by less than seven or eight. The Council was therefore about to commit another fateful mistake, the consequences of which it was certain to shift to the shoulders of the pliant people. It was then that Rumania's ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... of her native village—one could seem to see Luella Miller as she had really looked. According to this woman, Lydia Anderson by name, Luella Miller had been a beauty of a type rather unusual in New England. She had been a slight, pliant sort of creature, as ready with a strong yielding to fate and as unbreakable as a willow. She had glimmering lengths of straight, fair hair, which she wore softly looped round a long, lovely face. She had blue eyes full of soft pleading, ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... reflexion, there are two kinds of truth; first, the absolute truth, which always in the end prevails, and secondly, if not the false, at least the superficial truth, which consists of customs, manners, social conventions; the uncompromising truth which revolts, and the pliant truth which yields to human weakness; in short, the truth of Alceste ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various
... the young tender instinct, with which the Genius of Humanity has endowed us, forever from its destined course to life-long torture. For we are all, man and woman alike, born with a twofold nature, and the pliant young shoot can so easily be contorted and its rightful growth ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... been well known to politicians as an industrious and useful official man, and as an upright and consistent member of Parliament. He has been one of the most moderate, and, at the same time, one of the least pliant members of the Conservative party. His conduct has, indeed, on some questions been so Whiggish, that both those who applauded and those who condemned it have questioned his claim to be considered as a Tory. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... preponderance in the electorate. By using the Black Hundreds to work among the electors—bribing, cajoling, threatening, and coercing, as the occasion might require—it might be possible to bring about the election of a Duma which would be a pliant and ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... from the doubtful one of evasion. He may let his fancy run riot and put his heroine into clothes that would give even a dumb woman hysterics, or he may follow the example of Mr. Chatfield-Taylor, who says of one of his heroines that "her pliant body was enshrouded in white muslin with a blue ribbon ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... which I comprehend very well, one makes fine books and bad business. You forget in all your plans of reform the difference of our two positions. You work only on paper, which permits everything; it is quite smooth and pliant, and opposes no obstacles to your imagination nor to your pen; while I, poor empress, I work upon the human cuticle, which is quite sensitive ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... retaining a kind of animal life after the soul had departed. If any relation existed between it and the vanished ghost, it was only sufficient to make it restless in its grave. Possessed of vitality enough to keep it uncorrupted and pliant, its only instinct was a blind hunger for the sole food which could keep its awful life persistent—living human blood. Hence it, or, if not it, a sort of semi-material exhalation or essence of it, retaining its form and material relations, crept ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... in number.(1) Of these the Sanskrit is the oldest, and may truly be called the mother tongue of the country. It is one of the most ancient languages in the world, with a history of more than 3,000 years. It is strong, pliant, expressive—a worthy vehicle of noble thought and religious aspiration. Though not spoken today by any tribe or people, it is not a dead language, for it is the religious tongue of India. The best thought, the deepest philosophy, the highest religious aspiration, the laws, customs and legends of ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... the palm of her hand hard against his cheek, then yielded, with a pliant and surprising motion of the whole body. Her eyes were full of a strange, bright wickedness. Like torches they seemed to cast a crimson light on the already ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... near and far the garden growths. The sweet, the frail, the rude, Draw close, as if with one consent, And find each other good, Held by the bind-weed's pliant loops, In a ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... glorious to offend, And Godlike an attempt the world to mend, The world, where lucky throws to blockheads fall, Knaves know the game, and honest men pay all. How hard for real worth to gain its price! A man shall make his fortune in a trice, If blest with pliant, though but slender, sense, Feign'd modesty, and real impudence: A supple knee, smooth tongue, an easy grace. A curse within, a smile upon his face; A beauteous sister, or convenient wife, Are prizes in the lottery of life; Genius and Virtue they will soon defeat, And lodge you in the ...
— English Satires • Various
... monsieur," said he, "is one of the most difficult forms of poetry. It has fallen almost entirely into disuse. No Frenchman can hope to rival Petrarch; for the language in which the Italian wrote, being so infinitely more pliant than French, lends itself to play of thought which our positivism (pardon the use of the expression) rejects. So it seemed to me that a volume of sonnets would be something quite new. Victor Hugo has appropriated the old, Canalis writes lighter verse, Beranger ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... it grumbles, then it swears, and then, Like David, flings smooth pebbles 'gainst a Giant; At last it takes to weapons such as men Snatch when Despair makes human hearts less pliant. Then comes "the tug of war;"—'t will come again, I rather doubt; and I would fain say "fie on 't," If I had not perceived that Revolution Alone can save ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... a few minutes as puzzled as he was. Then the bright thought came, and I took the lighter of the two canes, cut off the most pliant part, and then tearing my silk neckerchief in thin strips, I split the end of the cane, thrust in the haft of the knife, so that it was held as by a fork, and bound the cane tightly down the length of the knife-handle, and also below, so that ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... Indian princes put the matter when speaking to me a few years ago, "In those days none of us could write. Our pen was the sword. If any writing had to be done the Brahmin was called in." And no doubt he did excellent service, being diligent, astute, and withal pliant and diplomatic. If to these qualities he added ambition, he might, and often did, become a Cardinal Wolsey in the state. In Poona, for example, the Brahmin Prime Minister gradually overshadowed the Mahratta king, and the descendant of Shivajee was put on a back shelf as Rajah of ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... The pliant soul of erring youth, Is like soft wax, or moisten'd clay; Apt to receive all heavenly truth Or yield to tyrant ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... given it a thought, and he insisted, what there is every reason to believe, that no present had induced him to give an unjust decision. It was the power of custom over a character naturally and by habit too pliant to circumstances. Custom made him insensible to the evil of receiving recommendations from Buckingham in favour of suitors. Custom made him insensible to the evil of what it seems every one took for granted—receiving gifts from suitors. In the Court of James I. the atmosphere ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... longing glance at the dark shadows beneath the trees. For on board the heat was terrible, the pitch was oozing out of the seams, and blistering the paint; every piece of tarry cordage was soft and pliant, and very beads stood out upon the strands; while beneath the awnings there was a stuffy suffocating heat ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... she, the young condottiera of Algeria, showed with so tender a charity to the soldier of Bonaparte. To him, moreover, her fiery imperious voice was gentle as the dove, her wayward dominant will was pliant as the reed, her contemptuous sceptic spirit was reverent as a child's before an altar. In her sight the survivor of the Army of Italy was sacred; sacred the eyes which, when full of light, had seen the sun ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... upon the same principle—is the most simple method of curing skins. The principle of each is the soaking of the gelatine fibers of the skin with oil, the union of the latter and the gelatine appearing in the form of oxide, and resulting in the insoluble, undecomposable, pliant, and tough material known to the commercial world as leather. The first step in the oil dressing, after the skins have been duly soaked to render them porous and absorptive, is to cover them with fish oil and place them in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... you shall be convinced," returned the pliant Christopher, "I do not wonder at your unbelief; but as a good testimony is the soul of justice, I cannot resist its influence. You know, that two vessels, corresponding in appearance to the two rebel cruisers that annoyed us so much in the Carolinas, have been seen on the coast for several days, ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... upon which the Hebrew Pentateuch and service-books used in the Jewish synagogues were formerly written. Silk-paper was prepared for the most part in Spain and its colonies, but was never brought to much perfection. Asbestos, a fibrous mineral, was made into paper, tolerably light and pliant, which, being incombustible, was denominated "eternal paper." Herodotus tells us that cloth was made of asbestos by the Egyptians; and Pliny mentions napkins made of it in A.D. 74. We know by tradition that the intestines of a serpent served for Homer's Iliad ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... it be said that the people, or rather the many different nations, abandoned their religions out of complaisance to their sovereign, I answer, Why do we not see the same thing repeated when Julian wished to reverse the experiment? They were not so pliant then; then was it seen very dearly that the people were, as in every other case, unwilling, as regards their religion, to be mere puppets in the hands of their governors. He was animated by at ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Nelson most was the curious armor they wore. Beneath breast plates of polished bronze, these strange warriors wore what seemed to be a kind of chain mail—yet it was not that, for the texture had more the appearance of some heavy but pliant leather, finished with ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... intelligent eyes, who had sat by the side of Leonard in his garret. She was about the middle height, still slight but beautifully formed; that exquisite roundness of proportion, which conveys so well the idea of woman, in its undulating pliant grace—formed to embellish life, and soften away its rude angles—formed to embellish, not to protect. Her face might not have satisfied the critical eye of an artist—it was not without defects in regularity; but its expression ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... province of Bonbon, is another lake of the same name [Bonbon], not so extensive as the former, but with a great abundance of fish. The natives' method of catching them is by making corrals [94] of bejucos, which are certain slender canes or rushes, solid and very pliant and strong; these are employed for making cables for the natives' boats, as well as other kinds of ropes. They catch the fish inside these corrals, having made the enclosures fast by means of stakes. They also catch the fish in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... immediate election of a territorial legislature. The conspirators had already spent some months in organizing their "Blue Lodges," and now desired at once to control the political power of the Territory. But the Governor had too much manliness to become the mere pliant tool they wished to make him. He resented their dictation; he made a tour of inspection through the new settlements; and, acting on his own judgment, on his return issued a proclamation for a simple election of ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... which kingdom he acquired by his own prowess, and where he established his residence, attracted, no doubt, by the superior amenity of the climate and the higher intellectual culture, as well as the pliant temper of the people, far more grateful to the monarch than the sturdy independence of ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... deprecating the interference of the executive with the supreme court. They asserted their conviction that the removal of Judge Montagu was occasioned by his decision on the Dog Act, and the desire to replace him by a more pliant judge. These various remonstrances had no effect on the ministers, and the entire course of the governor was approved, except the attempted coercion of the chief justice. The position of the government ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... defence of his beauty, with another boy, bigger than himself, and beat his opponent most handsomely— and, therefore, he likes Dash; and the maids like him, or pretend to like him, because we do—as is the fashion of that pliant and imitative class. And now Dash and May follow us every where, and are going with us now to the Shaw, or rather to the cottage by the Shaw, to bespeak milk and butter of our little dairy-woman, Hannah Bint—a housewifely ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... words, of which our text is but a feeble echo, 'Abide in Me, and I in you.' Fairest of all is that lovely emblem of the vine, setting forth the sweet mystery of our union with Him. Far as it is from the outmost pliant tendril to the root, one life passes to the very extremities, and every cluster swells and reddens and mellows because of its mysterious flow. 'So also is Christ.' We remember how often the invitation flowed from His lips, Come unto Me; how He was wont to beckon men away from self and the world ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the nightly sky at eventide. Such was the son of Zeus, the bloom of the first down still on his cheeks, still with the look of gladness in his eyes. But his might and fury waxed like a wild beast's; and he poised his hands to see if they were pliant as before and were not altogether numbed by toil and rowing. But Amycus on his side made no trial; but standing apart in silence he kept his eyes upon his foe, and his spirit surged within him all eager to dash the life-blood ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... color to-day of all days; to which she only replied that she was sorry for that, but that she liked blue better than red. The answer was so abrupt and short that it startled Demetrius, who had hitherto seen Dada gentle and pliant; and it struck him at once how deep an aversion the girl felt ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... consists in the perpetual motion of thoughtless and playful agility, in which I was never qualified to excel. My name, it is most true, could never be enrolled among the sprightly race, the idle progeny of Eton or Westminster, who delight to cleave the water with pliant arm, to urge the flying ball, and to chase the speed of the rolling circle. But I would ask the warmest and most active hero of the play-field whether he can seriously compare his childish with his manly enjoyments. . . . A state of ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... principal object of these fraternities appears to be deception; and particularly if a magistrate or a sheriff should be a conscientious, humane man, their study, their occupation is to deceive him, in which they are very likely to succeed; for a clever gaoler, surrounded by such pliant helpmates, will deceive the very devil, if he be not aware of their tricks; and how easily then may they cheat an honest, unsuspecting country justice! I have been led into this excusable digression from the recollection of Aris's exposure in the House of Commons; and what a tale shall I ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... when her child, grown large and strong, becomes the trial and sorrow of her life by his ungovernable disobedience and insubordination, takes the blame to herself in reflecting that he was placed in her hands when all the powers and faculties of his soul were in embryo, tender, pliant, and unresisting, to be formed and fashioned ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... personage, suddenly springing from nowhere into the theatrical world, she began to arouse a good deal of interest, and the flaneurs in those circles obtained kudos by pretending to precise information about her. The rumour of riches spread. Tradespeople became sweet and pliant—the plucking of a goose with golden feathers ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... communicative, and so, after a week or so, people tired of asking questions about them and lapsed into merely exchanging greetings, and looking on with some interest at any changes they observed in the pretty, transparent, though always bright face, and the pliant, ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... days one chain shall bind, One pliant fetter shall unite mankind; When war, when slav'ry's iron days are o'er, When discords cease and av'rice is no more, And with one voice remotest lands conspire, To hail our pure religion's seraph fire; Then fame attendant on the march of time, Fed by the incense ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... temporal power has been to secure for the Pope independence and freedom in the government of the Church. The Holy Father must be either a sovereign or a subject. There is no medium. If a subject, he might become either the pliant creature, if God would so permit, of his royal master, like the schismatic Patriarch of Constantinople, who, as Gibbon observed, was "a domestic slave under the eye of his master, at whose nod he passed from the convent to the throne, and from the throne to the convent." And, ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... features, and large, mysterious-looking eyes, as Lois saw, when once she lifted them up, and took in, as it were, the aspect of the sea-captain and her cousin with one swift searching look. About the stiff, tall, angular mother, and the scarce less pliant figure of the daughter, a girl of twelve years old, or thereabouts, played all manner of impish antics, unheeded by them, as if it were her accustomed habit to peep about, now under their arms, now at this side, now at that, making grimaces ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Tom shouted, and he unwound the great brown pliant vine from the sycamore and leaped aboard. Just then there was a mad howl behind the house and a gray streak of light flashed over the bank and Jack, with a wisp of rope around his neck, sprang through the air from a rock ten feet high and landed lightly ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... coming now to the principal subject of this letter, which is less pleasant. I do not understand how your daughter has gotten her disposition. She does not either resemble you, with your fresh and open manner, or Cornelia, with her merry, pliant disposition, which won every one's heart. The child has a dull and sullen nature, a roughness of manner and an unheard-of stubbornness. I can do nothing for her, at least not by anything I say. But I have ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... pliant the human animal is to work! Certainly it is no Gospel of Work that the world needs. It has ever been the great concern of the lawgivers of mankind, not to ordain work, but, as we see so interestingly in the Mosaic Codes, to ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... door was thrown wide open. Upon the threshold stood a young man about six feet in height, of figure rather graceful and harmonious than massive. A black velveteen jacket fitted closely to his shape; he had on a Tyrolese hat; his boots, of thin, pliant leather, reached above the knee. He carried a stout cane, with a handle of chamois-horn; to a couple of straps, crossing each shoulder, were attached a travelling-scrip ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... have happened to change this charming, if too pliant, personality into the critical, watchful, almost—so at moments it seemed to Malling—aggressive curate who was now, always in a gentlemanly way, making things rather difficult ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... lady dismounts, but especially if she do so without assistance, she should—to prevent any unpleasant shock on reaching the ground—bend her knees, suffer her body to be perfectly pliant, and alight on her toes, or the middle of her feet. She is neither to relinquish her hold, nor is the gentleman, or groom, if she make use of his ministry, to withdraw his hand, until she is perfectly safe on ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... them quite out of countenance; for he said that there was but an antistrophe, or little more difference than of a literal inversion, between a woman folle a la messe and molle a la fesse, that is, foolish at the mass and of a pliant buttock. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... and little, the Salts disengaging from the Sulphurs, manifest themselves, the Acid appears, which is the fruitful Source of Chronick Diseases. The Ligaments, the Tendons, and the Cartilages have scarce any of the Unctuosity left, which render'd them so supple and so pliant in Youth. The Skin grows wrinkled as well within as without; in a word, all the solid Parts grow ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... hardening of the tender stem and slender cylindrical trunk into the massive oak or pine, the growth of its tough, strong garment of bark, its winter times of rest and spring times of renewal, until from the tender green twig so frail and pliant it has become too large to clasp with the arms, and high enough to swing its dry leaves into ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the poorly paid railway officials in these parts are the obsequious servants of those who liberally bribe. The station-master, though a very grand personage, indeed, in his uniform and metal-bound cap, became pliant as an East Indian waiter and accepted without question the explanation of the lady. It was she who was spokesman throughout. She said that she and her companion were play-actors and that their baggage was detained by a cruel ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... But as with pliant shoots the vine Round nearest tree-trunk winds her way, He shall be ever twined in thine Embraces:—yet, lo! wanes the day: 105 Prithee, come ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... by taps on a moving plate, the rate of its growth. The application of a chemical instantly arrested this growth, but an antidote timely applied, not only removed the torpor but enhanced the growth at an enormous rate. The life of the plant became pliant at the will of the experimenter, and nothing appeared more marvellous than the realisation that man has the power to pierce the veil that shrouds the mystery that had hitherto ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... the vine.—More than most plants it needs a husbandman. It cannot stand upright like other fruit-trees, but requires a skillful hand to guide its pliant branches along the espaliers, or to entwine them in the trellis-work. It suggests a true thought of the appearance presented to the world ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... As the pliant saw coaxed beams, and slabs, and flooring boards out of the forest trees I grew to like beginning at the beginning of things, and realised there was an underlying truth in Dan's whimsical reiteration, that "the missus was in luck when she struck this place"; for beams and slabs and flooring ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... careless and confident, reckless of giving offence, ruder in their behaviour, more grasping in their exactions, more domineering, more oppressive. Prudence should perhaps have counselled the Phoenician cities to submit, to be yielding and pliant, to cultivate the arts of the parasite and the flatterer; but the people had still a rough honesty about them. It was against the grain to flatter or submit themselves; constant voyages over wild seas in fragile vessels kept up their manhood; constant encounters with pirates, cannibals, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... fierce, rebellious feelings in her gentle heart, no angry warring with the mighty Hand that sends crosses and blessings alike. The flower bent by the wind was not more pliant. Where her sorrow and love had cast her she lay, silently enduring her suffering, while Lionel traveled without intermission, wishing only to find himself far away from the young girl he declared he had ceased to love yet could ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... due control, but which ecclesiastical discipline had not crushed. He was a saint, but had very little of the priest and nothing of the Sulpician about him. He did violence to the prime rule of the Company, which is to renounce anything approaching talent and originality, and to be pliant to the discipline which ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... procure the money necessary for his pleasures, or even for the regular support of government. When the prospect, therefore, of such dangerous opposition presented itself, the same love of ease inclined him to retract what it seemed so difficult to maintain; and his turn of mind, naturally pliant and careless, made him find little objection to a measure which a more haughty prince would have embraced with the utmost reluctance. That he might yield with the better grace, he asked the opinion of the house of peers, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... who shall be nameless snoring like ten pigs." "That snorer is not me, I flatter myself, so make no more remarks, but listen, you see I have brought you to a very pretty little spot on the cliffs, and here are six or seven nice little trees, that look so pliant and slender we can bend them into any shape, but you are ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... is so often treacherous to our pliant natures! We women are obliged to lie. So long as we have not found our "love," we look in vain for a little confidence. No one believes us, no one receives the best part of our soul. One would think that, for those who listen to us, our sincerest words are ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... came sauntering down the street, an upright and pliant form, laden with green boughs. It was Luigi, with whom it had been a holiday, and who, roaming in the woods, had come across a wild stock on whose rude flavor the kindly freak of some wayfarer had grafted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... by Hiawatha Was the gentle Chibiabos, We the best of all musicians, He the sweetest of all singers. Beautiful and childlike was he, Brave as man is, soft as woman, Pliant as a wand of willow, Stately as a deer ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... favoured candidate was Auguste Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg, the grandson of Napoleon's first consort. Louis Philippe naturally objected to the establishment on his frontier of a prince so closely connected with the house of Bonaparte. The pliant Belgians accordingly transferred their preference to the Duke of Nemours, the second son of Louis Philippe. It was in vain that Sebastiani declared that France could not allow such a selection, as it would be interpreted by the powers as evidence of a French ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... as he knew, was already launched that might, at the last moment, sweep him from his goal. Most of the men concerned in it he either held for honest fanatics or despised as flatterers of the mob—ignobly pliant. He could and would fight them all with good courage and fair hope ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mattered, but because she chose not to yield. Perhaps she was too proud to give way, and pride, they told her, was always a sin, but that did not matter either. There was an unexpected satisfaction in finding one thin strand of steel among the pliant threads of her untried ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... banishment to the dark places of the attic, and that it could be trusted in the work she would call upon it to do. She gathered the winter out-door things which she had not used for two years, the white sweater that clung close to her slim, pliant body; the white tasseled hat, mitts, leggins, white bloomers. And then, when a blue and white, laughing day came, and the air was clear and warm, the branches of the trees sagging under their diamond pricked festoons of snow, she left the house, now in ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... and utterly new comprehension swept over Courtland. For the first time in his knowledge of her he suddenly grasped what was, perhaps, the true conception of her character. Looking at her clearly now, he understood the meaning of those pliant graces, so unaffected and yet always controlled by the reasoning of an unbiased intellect; her frank speech and plausible intonations! Before him stood the true-born daughter of a long race of politicians! All that ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and gravel as through a sieve, and fills the broad space that has been arranged for it so gently and imperceptibly that one does not suspect its copiousness until he has seen the overflow. It turns no wheel, yet it lends a pliant hand to many of the affairs of that household. It is a refrigerator in summer and a frost-proof envelope in winter, and a fountain of delights the year round. Trout come up from the Weebutook River and dwell there and become domesticated, and take lumps of butter from your ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... fire, bomb-shells, and cannon-balls respectively. The Frog then gave the prince a sword, eight yards long and no heavier than a feather, and a garment fashioned out of a single diamond. This he slipped on like a coat, and though it was hard as rock it was so pliant that his movements were ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... —The pliant, persuasive body, the dancer, whose symbol and epitome is the self-enjoying soul. Of such bodies and souls the self-enjoyment ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of the language is, however, far less than the whole set of difficulties with your own mind. Unless you can make it pliant enough to follow the African idea step by step, however much care you may take, you will not bag your game. I heard an account the other day of a representative of Her Majesty in Africa who went out for a day's antelope shooting. There were plenty of antelope ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... suppressed; as he ate and drank, the heavy barrier which had come between him and the garden of his imagination seemed to glide apart. He saw away into the future of the life-story which he was writing. New images sprang up and the old ones became once more pliant and supple. Difficulties fell away—a singular clearness of perception seemed to come to him in those few minutes. The joy of life was in his heart, the zest of it between his teeth. He felt the unaccustomed colour in his cheeks, and an acquaintance ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... six feet above the waters in which they bathed their roots. They waved mournfully under the blast of the sharp wind of the north, shivering in its icy grasp, as it tumbled, rolled, and gambolled on the pliant surface. Multitudes of birds of strange appearance, with their elongated shapes so lean that they looked like metamorphosed ghosts, clothed in plumage, screamed in the air, as if they were scared of one another. There was something ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... father Thames! for thou hast seen Full many a sprightly race, Disporting on thy margent green, The paths of pleasure trace, Who foremost now delight to cleave With pliant arm thy glassy wave? The captive linnet which enthral? What idle progeny succeed To chase the rolling circle's speed, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... thrust out straight and sure, in the Italian fashion, and once the mortal wound was in the face, and once in the throat, and many times men felt it in their breasts through mail and gambison and bone. But Gilbert's great strokes flashed like lightnings from his pliant wrist, and behind the wrist was the Norman arm, and behind the arm the relentless pale face and the even lips, that just tightened upon each other as the deathblows went out, one by one, each to its place in a life. The Italian destroyed men skilfully and quickly, yet as if it were distasteful ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... suggested a hope that, by the instrumentality of Lady Whitelaw, a curacy might easily be obtained as soon as Godwin was old enough. But several years must pass before that Levitical stage could be reached; and then, after all, perhaps the younger boy, Oliver, placid of temper and notably pliant in mind, was better suited for the dignity of Orders. It was lamentable that Godwin should have become so intimate with that earth-burrowing Mr. Gunnery, who certainly never attended either church or chapel, and who seemed ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... them well into the mesquite before he put back the hair in the water the dog had left and went on with his plaiting: As he handled the pliant horsehairs he talked ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... agent," continued the knight. "We shall find him pliant; for, hound as he is, he knows those who feed from those who browbeat him; and he holds a late royal master of mine in deep hate for some injurious treatment and base terms which he received at his hand. I must also farther concert with thee the particulars of thy practice, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... contained in the skin. Throw away this solution and use some fresh water without potash and rather tepid; change it several times until it remains quite limpid. Then gently stretch the skin to dry in an airy shaded place. When thoroughly dried, rub it well between the hands. It thus becomes very pliant and velvet-like. ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... little mutilation of the hide as possible; one of the legs serves as a faucet, and the tying or untying of a piece of string opens or closes the "tap." It is the handiest imaginable contrivance for carrying liquids on horseback, the tough, pliant goat-skin resisting any amount of hard usage and accommodating itself readily to the contour of the pack-saddle, or itself forming a soft enough ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... large-brained Woman, and large-hearted Man." She blended in closest union and swift interplay feminine receptiveness with masculine energy. She was at once impressible and creative, impulsive and deliberate, pliant in sympathy yet firmly self-centred, confidingly responsive while commanding in originality. By the vivid intensity of her conceptions, she brought out in those around their own consciousness, and, by the glowing vigor of her intellect, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Anglo-Saxon, "bogsom," old English, "boughsome," that can be easily bent or bowed; German, "biegsam," pliant, obedient. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... two parties became visible to each other when opposite that precise point. Both stopped, and a conversation ensued, that may be said to have passed directly over the heads of those who were concealed. Indeed, nothing sheltered the travellers but the branches and leaves of plants, so pliant that they yielded to every current of air, and which a puff of wind a little stronger than common would have blown away. Fortunately the line of sight carried the eyes of the two parties of savages, whether they stood in the water or on the land, above the bushes, and the ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... and pliant to all the motions of right reason; it met the dictates of a clarified understanding half way. And the active informations of the intellect, filling the passive reception of the will, like form closing with matter, grew actuate into a third and distinct perfection ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... nor the graces of it: which is manifest in his "Juvenilia" or verses written in his youth, where his rhyme is always constrained and forced, and comes hardly from him, at an age when the soul is most pliant, and the passion of love makes almost every man a ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... Paula apparently much interested in the manoeuvring of a raft which was passing by. 'Dear Miss Power,' he resumed, 'before I go and join your uncle above, let me just ask, Do I stand any chance at all yet? Is it possible you can never be more pliant than ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the forenoon. Gouraud, Girodon and Hunter-Weston lunched and we spent the afternoon at the scheme for our next fight. Each of us agreed that Fortune had not been over kind. By one month's hard, close hammering we had at last made the tough moral of the Turks more pliant, when lo and behold, in broad daylight, thousands of their common soldiery see with their own eyes two great battleships sink beneath the waves and all the others make an exit more dramatic than dignified. Most of the Armada of store ships had already cleared out and now the last of the battleships ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... about your spirits. I do not care about your soul. I love the pliant rippling motion of your pensive youth. I love your imperial beauty, for it throws open the last sealed chambers of ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... the small fingers fluttering in his, making a great flourish. He was quite ready to marry, and his pliant little cousin suited him better than any one he knew. "Day-star of my eyes!" he exclaimed, "consolation of my soul! Memories of injustice, discomfort, and sadness fall into the waters of oblivion rolling at thy feet. I see neither past nor future. The rose-hued curtain ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... polite of him not to press me on the spot. His arguments, and the weight with which he advanced them, had already convinced my pliant youth; and I now first saw the difficulties and doubtfulness of a matter which I had privately pictured to myself as so feasible. Frau Hofrath Boehme invited me shortly afterwards. I found her alone. She was no longer young, and ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... itself into the upper air. Growing nowhere else, and unknown in earlier centuries, By no means great in size, it stretches not far its Spreading branches, nor lifts a lofty top to heaven; But lowly, after the manner of myrtle or pliant broom, It rises from the ground. Many a nut bends its rich branches. Small, like a bean, dark and dull in color, Marked by a slight groove in the centre ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... most pliant and efficient tool in the hands of Gorges, "from start to finish" of this undertaking, is certainly apparent. Whether he was, from the outset, made fully aware of the sinister designs of the chief conspirator, and a party ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... you have the river toil in production of cloths for your raiment? Only pay the due modicum of knowledge, labor, and skill, and you shall bind its hand to your water-wheels, and turn all its prone strength into pliant service. Or perhaps you wish the comforts of a household. By payment of the due bearing of its burdens, you may hope to obtain it,—surely not otherwise. Do you ask that this house may be a true home, a treasury for wealth of the heart, a little heaven? Once more the word ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... were of so trivial a character, that the Parliament well knew they were not the ground of his arrest, but only a pretext for it—only a pretext, by which the king said to his pliant and trembling Parliament: "This man is innocent; but I will that you condemn him, and therefore you will account the ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... from pliant paste would fabrics raise, Expecting thence to gain immortal praise, Your knuckles try, and let your sinews know Their power to knead, and give the form to dough; From thence of course the figure will arise, And elegance adorn the surface ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... of the nation care had been timely taken, by some not of the lowest rank, to choose out some particular persons—men of sharp wit, close countenances, pliant tempers, and deep dissimulation—and send them forth among the sectaries, so called, with instructions to thrust themselves into all societies, conform to all or any sort of religious profession, Proteus-like change their ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... the ox-king's, that body shining bright as yellow gold; that square breast and Brahma voice; that you! possessing all these excellent qualities, should have entered on the sorrow-giving forest; what fortune now remains for the world, losing thus the holy king of earth? That those delicate and pliant feet, pure as the lily and of the same color, should now be torn by stones and thorns; O how can such feet tread on such ground! Born and nourished in the guarded palace, clad with garments of the ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... hosts of others. Through the air, on wings of skin or feathers or tissue membrane; crawling or leaping by night; burrowing underground; gnawing up through the great supporting posts; swarming up the bamboos and along the pliant curving stems to drop quietly on the shingled roof;—thus had the jungle-life come past Hope's unseeing eyes and ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... courtiers became silent, and arranged themselves into a circle, pliant as osiers before the father of Pantagruel who unfolded to them the following tale, in words the illustrious eloquence of which it is impossible to equal. But since this tale has only been verbally handed down to us, the author will be pardoned ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... point. It is a critical time for a soul when it is learning that in one realm reason does not go before, but faith. Any harshness or lack of sympathy on the part of another or evident disappointment in the life is very serious at this point. The will asserts itself under such measures and from the pliant attitude, "I cannot believe what I cannot explain," it takes the defiant attitude, "I will not believe ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... one futile effort to force their way, but the trunks, though pliant, were unyielding. To attempt to find their way through the labyrinth ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... the favorite, in a hard voice. "You, however, have been even longer—what you have, indeed, been too long—Prefect of Egypt!" With an angry fling he threw the corner of his toga over his shoulder, and, though his hand shook with rage, the pliant drapery fell in graceful folds over his athletic limbs. He turned his back on the prefect, and, with the air of a general who has just been crowned with laurels, he stalked through the anteroom and past Philip ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... war. It was to one of these graceless drinking-shops and into the hands of a rascally "dago" known as Anatole that Mrs. Doyle commended her trio of allies, and being rid of them she turned back to her prisoner, their erstwhile companion. Absinthe wrought its work on his meek and pliant spirit, and the shaking hand was nerved to do the woman's work. At her dictation, with such corrections as his better education suggested, two letters were draughted, and with these in her hand she went aloft. In fifteen minutes she returned, placed one of these letters in an envelope ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... not unlike the square dances of England except that it was far more graceful, and the men rivalled the women in their supple glidings and bendings, doublings and swayings. Concha danced with Ignacio Sal, Rafaella with William Sturgis; their pliant grace, as facile as grain rippling before the wind, would have put the best ballet in Europe to the blush. Concha's skirts swept Rezanov's feet, her little slippers twinkled before his admiring eyes, and he lost no sinuous turn or undulation of her beautiful figure; but she never ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... they never entered. And so, before the Revolution opened, the Western imagination had conjured up the specter of a corrupt and effete "East": land of money-changers and self-styled aristocrats and a pliant clergy, the haunt of lawyers and hangers-on, proper dwelling-place of "servants" and the beaten slave: a land of cities, scorning the provincial West, and bent on exploiting its laborious and upright people. And who could doubt that men who bought ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... at all,' said Cuchulainn, 'for I swear the oath that my people swear, that every joint and every limb of him will be as pliant as a pliant rush in the midst of a stream under the point of my sword, if he shows himself once ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... hasty fool, of stubborn will, But prudent, cautious, pliant, still; Who, since his work was good, Would do it, as ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... common love, That led my pliant heart astray, I grant, there's not a power above Could wipe the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... of very costly material bordered heavily with gold. On the ends of their fingers they wear long "nails" of gold, tapering sharply like the claws of a bird. The apartment is illuminated by means of candelabras, hung so high that the light falls in a soft hazy mist on the tender faces and pliant forms below. ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... him and a Chinese, and, needless to say, brought him great gains. He was purveyor to the prisoners at Bilibid, and furnished zacate to many Manila houses. On good terms with all authority, shrewd, pliant, daring in speculation, he was the sole rival of a certain Perez in the awards of divers contracts which the Philippine Government always places in privileged hands. From all of which it resulted that Captain Tiago was as happy as can be a man whose small head announces his native origin. He ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the city of Dwaravati. Do thou therefore, O most valorous of men, assent to my departure. When king Yudhishthira was smitten heavily with affliction, I with Bhishma, have recited to him many appropriate legends suited to the occasion with a view of assuaging his grief, and the pliant and high-minded Yudhishthira, though our sovereign and versed in all lore paid due heed to our words. That son of Dharma honours truth, and is grateful and righteous, therefore will his virtue and good ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... not to authorise, by an example which he called fatal, the insolence of a subject who was for wresting favours from his sovereign, sword in hand. The Queen was moved at this, and the poor Cardinal owned he had been too easy and pliant. ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... scene where genial friendship plays The pleasing game of interchanging praise. Self-love, grimalkin of the human heart, Is ever pliant to the master's art; Soothed with a word, she peacefully withdraws And sheathes in velvet her obnoxious claws, And thrills the hand that smooths her glossy fur With the light tremor of ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of the forest bends and sways in the fury of the blast, and, when it is passed, rises and shakes the weight of rain-drops from its pliant boughs, and stands stronger, higher, more beautiful than before, so Annie Evalyn, when the passion-storm had spent its fury, rose a purer, loftier being, with a heart firm and free, and a soul elevated and sublime in its aspirations. ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... of peace and a treaty of commerce with Great Britain. Conditions were not then favourable for peace, however; the French government, moreover, did not approve of the choice, inasmuch as Adams was not sufficiently pliant and tractable and was from the first suspicious of Vergennes; and subsequently Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay and Henry Laurens were appointed to co-operate with Adams. Jefferson, however, did not cross the Atlantic, and Laurens took little part in the negotiations. This left ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... gentle twitch, the barbed hook: Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank, And to the shelving shore slow-dragging some, With various hand proportion'd to their force. If yet too young, and easily deceived, A worthless prey scarce bends your pliant rod, Him, piteous of his youth and the short space He has enjoy'd the vital light of heaven, Soft disengage, and back into the stream The speckled captive throw. But should you lure From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots Of pendant trees, the monarch of the brook, Behoves you then to ply ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... superiority to them you must easily rule the embryo rioters of the Valdedera. If, to your efforts it should be owing that the population remain quiet, and that this Adone Alba and others in a similar position come to me in an orderly manner and a pliant spirit, I will engage that this service to us on your part shall not ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... Graham, stretch out your right hand. Papa, put out yours. Now, let them touch. Papa, don't be stiff; close your fingers; be pliant—there! But that is not a clasp— it is a grasp? Papa, you grasp like a vice. You crush Graham's hand to the bone; you ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, amiable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwarting, and mutinous; and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... delicate, creamy shade, her eyes were large and light blue, the lashes and eyebrows being only a shade or two darker than her long, straight rather dull-looking, yellow hair. She always wore her hair straight down her back; she was very willowy and pliant in figure, and had something of the grace ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... serve to determine the different types, may be a guide to discover whence man and civilization came to America, if the American races can be proved not to be autochthonous. Notwithstanding a few guttural sounds, the Maya is soft, pliant, rich in diction and expression; even every shade ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... first, 530 By female counsels! we for Helen's sake Have num'rous died, and Clytemnestra framed, While thou wast far remote, this snare for thee! So I, to whom Atrides thus replied. Thou, therefore, be not pliant overmuch To woman; trust her not with all thy mind, But half disclose to her, and half conceal. Yet, from thy consort's hand no bloody death, My friend, hast thou to fear; for passing wise Icarius' daughter is, far other thoughts, 540 Intelligent, and other plans, to frame. Her, going to the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... observations of Messrs. Dease and Simpson in the polar regions, that such islands, when they run aground, push before them large mounds of shingle and sand. It is therefore probable that they often cause great alterations in the arrangement of pliant and incoherent strata forming the upper part of shoals or submerged banks, the inferior portions of the same remaining unmoved. Or many of the complicated curvatures of these layers of loose sand and gravel may have been due to another cause, the melting on the spot of ice-bergs and ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... pliant attitude that struck Stillman as he came upon her almost unawares on that early December afternoon, a yielding, pliant attitude which gave a curious sense of tenacity under the surface. And he thought, as he dropped into the chair she indicated, ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... while I was digging graves for my better instincts, until my sexton's mood, confining me within churchyard walls, gave me over almost entirely to the company of mental bats and owls. The danger of it all was that though I was yet youthful, and should have been still pliant as a sapling, I was fostering the growth of those habits which, like rings in the grain, are the signature of unyielding years. Naturalists say that a bullfinch fed only on hempseed gradually loses his fair plumage and becomes ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... York. There is no child of want who may not freely receive an education which will fit him for any office in his country. The common school is one of the glories of America, and every citizen may be justly proud of it. It brings together while in a pliant condition the children of people of different origins; and besides diffusing knowledge among them, it softens the prejudices of race and party, and carries on a ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... The feet, legs, head, and neck are light, and so arranged that they may be drawn up close to the body while the bird is flying. As the neck is long and very flexible, the body does not need to be pliant, as with most creatures having backbones; but it is important that the wings should have a firm support, so the bones of the back are united. The body of a bird must also be well protected from the cold; for, as it ascends and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... out the part she must play, according to events at which she guessed. She vaguely outlined this role, like one of Scribe's or of George Sand's. It should be endued with devotion, self-abnegation, greatness of soul, tenderness; and fine words. Her pliant nature almost rejoiced in this new attitude. She pondered almost till evening what she should do, wondering how she should manage to wrest the truth from ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... and oppressed by too great a quantity of nourishment; which necessarily discharges itself into thickness and breadth, do, by their natural lightness, rise; and the body, giving and yielding because it is pliant, grows in height. The same thing seems, also, to conduce to beauty of shape; a dry and lean habit is a better subject for nature's configuration, which the gross and over-fed are too heavy to submit to properly. Just as we find that women ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... that, utterly exhausted by watching and nursing, first in the hospital, and then by the bedside of her former lover, the power of her constitution was worn out; or, it might be, her gentle, pliant sweetness, but she displayed no outrage or discord even in her delirium. There she lay in the attic-room in which her baby had been born, her watch over him kept, her confession to him made; and now she was stretched on ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... orbit, there would be needed four number ten steel wires to every square inch upon the earth, and these would be strained nearly to the breaking point. Yet this stress is not only endured continually by this pliant, impalpable, transparent medium, but other bodies can move through the same space apparently as freely as if it were entirely free. In addition to this, the stress from the sun and the more variable stresses from the planets are all endured by the same ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... retreat of the Tartars, Ivan IV. convened a council of war, punished with death those officers who had fled before the enemy as he himself had done; and, rendered pliant by accumulated misfortune, he presented such overtures to the King of Poland as to obtain the promise of a truce for three years. Soon after this, Sigismond, King of Poland, died. The crown was elective, and the nobles, who met to ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... work. She hoped that the Pharoah would refuse, and personally offend the Regent, and so make him more inclined to tread the dangerous road which she was endeavoring to smooth for him. The dwarf Nemu was her pliant tool. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... no buoyancy and elasticity in her tread. When people looked at her, as they often did, for her pliant, slim figure rather attracted notice, she thought they were only commenting on her old black hat and jacket. Only one article of her dress satisfied her; her boots were neat and strong. Marcus had found her one wet day warming her feet at the fire and had gone off to examine her ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of leaving her had been dreadful before, now the pressure of his arm upon her pliant waist, the delicious sensation of her weight, made it maddening, and thrilled him with all sorts of reckless impulses. Still clasping her, he whispered hoarsely, "I love you, I love you," as if that mighty word left nothing further ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... with little scraps of the foreign elements, Chinese, Mexican, Russian, Italian, yes, even German,—though Eveley considered it asking entirely too much, even of Heaven, to elevate shreds of German infamy to American standards. At any rate, people were doing this thing, taking the pliant, trusting mind of the foreigner, petting it, training it, coaxing it,—until presently the flotsam and jetsam of the Orient, of war-torn Europe, of the islands of the sea, of all the world, should be Americanized into union, and strength, ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... pliant harebell swinging in the breeze, On some grey rock: The single sheep, and the one blasted tree, And the bleak music from that old stone wall:— In the meadows and the lower ground, Was all the ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... pliant sinews inordinately tensed; with her deep eyes wide and terrified, yet voiceless of any outburst or exclamation, and near her, ill at ease, but seeking to treat the affair as an inescapable matter of business, and consequently a commonplace, the sheriff shifted his weight from foot to foot, ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... kinsfolk, one of them, I have reason to know, made a strong private protest. Mr. Morley's attitude in reply could only have been that which is well expressed by a sentence of Darmesteter's about Renan: "So pliant in appearance, so courteous in manner, he became a bar of iron as soon as one sought to wrest from him an act or word contrary to the intimate sense ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his upturned face. The wistfulness sat heavy upon it. The youthfulness of this dashing trapper of the posts and settlements came out plain in the starlight. She saw again the pliant strength beneath the slender grace, caught the suggestion of contradicting forces that she had felt one day in Marie's doorway when young Dupre swung up the main way of Fort de Seviere, and beneath it all she saw that which had caused her to say on that first morning of the long trail when ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... ours, Whereto we shepherds oft are wont to drive The younglings of the flock: so too I knew Whelps to resemble dogs, and kids their dams, Comparing small with great; but this as far Above all other cities rears her head As cypress above pliant ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching Reformation: others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful laborers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies? We reckon more than five months yet to harvest; there need not be five ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... the enemy and the defender, who resisteth Thy reconciliation by defending his own sins. I know not, Lord, I know not any other such pure words, which so persuade me to confess, and make my neck pliant to Thy yoke, and invite me to serve Thee for nought. Let me understand them, good Father: grant this to me, who am placed under them: because for those placed under them, hast ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... he drove a spike into the end of the log, tied one end of a rope to the spike, and the other to a pliant ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... Grenville to propose to Vergennes that England should acknowledge American independence directly, and not through France. This Fox held gave him the whole conduct of the negotiations. As, however, Franklin was anxious not to lose so pliant a negotiator as Oswald, the cabinet agreed that Oswald should continue to confer with him. On June 4, Grenville complained to Fox that the separate negotiation between Oswald and Franklin rendered it impossible for him to make any progress, and further told him that he had learned ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt |
