"Impressible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for if there is anything that a pauper takes supreme delight in it is drugs. Passing along with them to a little lobby, where he could inspect them more conveniently, he left Jim behind, as that personage did not prove to be so interesting and impressible as he had hoped. Jim watched him as he moved away, with a quiet chuckle, and then turned to pursue his investigations. The next cell he encountered held the man he was looking for. Sitting in the straw, ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... romantic, and impressible; a thousand thoughts rushed through her brain; it would be so nice to have a young husband to love her and care for her like Rex, so handsome and so kind; then, too, she would have plenty of dresses, as fine ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... its crime and its ruin! The very same temper is deep in us all. Israel holds up the mirror in which we may see ourselves. If blows do not break iron, they harden it. A wasted sorrow—that is, a sorrow which does not drive us to God—leaves us less impressible than ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... mental condition. The mysterious death of his father, the suspicion of his mother's complicity in crime, which takes the form of an apparition from beyond the grave, is too much of a strain for his tender and impressible nature. His mental condition has become well known to physicians as cerebral hyperaemia, and all his strange speeches and eccentric actions are to be traced to this source; and it is for this reason that the dispute has arisen as ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... organs, which has been fully demonstrated by the Homoeopathic School of therapeutics. But impressibility does not imply disease, although it may make the system more accessible to slight morbific agencies. We find individuals occasionally, of the highest tone of health and bodily vigor, who are highly impressible. Nor does it imply mental weakness, for it is highly congenial to intellectuality, and is occasionally found among the strongest and most cultivated minds. Nervous Impressibility is that condition in which the nervaura ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... to the highest power. He will be self-centred, equipoised, and ever master of himself. His sensibility will not be deadened or blunted by violation of nature's laws. His whole character will be impressible, and will respond to the most ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... at the hotel office. There is an excuse for this, inasmuch as he holds our destinies in his hands, and decides whether, in case of accident, we shall have to jump from the third or sixth story window. Lesser grandeurs do not find us very impressible. There is, however, something about the man who deals in horses which takes down the spirit, however proud, of him who is unskilled in equestrian matters and unused to the horse-lover's vocabulary. We followed the master of the stables, meekly listening ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... clear and distinct view of right and wrong, would not allow himself to find any excuses for the crime, though anxious as his wife for the good of the criminal; nor did he fail to blame himself, as Mrs Morgan blamed herself, for allowing their child, during the most impressible years of his life, to go from ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... Willie's Prayer, and Address to the Unco Gude, are satires against bigotry and hypocrisy. But in spite of the rollicking profanity of his language, and the violence of his rebound against the austere religion of Scotland, Burns was at bottom deeply impressible by religious ideas, as may be seen from his Prayer under the Pressure of Violent Anguish, and Prayer in Prospect ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... he surprises us from time to time by intuitions which could come only from a deep experience and power of observation; and men listen to him, old and young, in spite of themselves. He is quickly impressible to the slightest clouding of the spirits in social intercourse, and has his moments of extreme seriousness: his trial-task may well be, as Rosaline ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... ground,—one was a corpse; but, as the young New-Englander drew nigh, the other Briton raised himself painfully upon his hands and knees and gave a ghastly stare into his face. The boy,—it must have been a nervous impulse, without purpose, without thought, and betokening a sensitive and impressible nature rather than a hardened one,—the boy uplifted his axe and dealt the wounded soldier a fierce and ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... very impressible, and their character—the quality, that is, of their life—is fixed by prevailing influences, which show themselves in fashions, habits, and tendencies, in the common types of thought, or taste, or behaviour, ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... assembly, or pour out tea with an exquisite exhibition of arm, or recline upon a couch, commanding homage of the world of little men. What else had this girl to count upon to make her exclusive? A devoted heart; she had a loyal heart, and perfect frankness: a mind impressible, intelligent, and fresh. She gave promise of fair companionship at all seasons. She could put a spell upon him, moreover. By that power of hers, never wilfully exercised, she came, in spite of the effect left on him by her early awkwardnesses ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on the 5th January 1793. From his father, Nehemiah Roby, who was for many years Master of the Grammar-School at Haigh, near Wigan, he inherited a good constitution and unbended principles of honour and integrity. From the family of his mother, Mary Aspall, he derived the quick, impressible temperament of genius, and the love of humour which so conspicuously marks the Lancashire character. He was the youngest child. His thirst for knowledge was early and strongly manifested. Being once told in childhood not to be so inquisitive, his appeal ever ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Sterling. Could there be any fitter resting-place for that most, weary, and gentle spirit? There I seemed to know he had the rest that he could not have anywhere on these brilliant historic shores. Yet so impressible was his sensitive nature, that I doubt not, if he had given himself up to the enchantment of these coasts in his lifetime, it would have led him by a spell ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... him from his father, Walter—was four, the family moved to Brooklyn. The boy had scanty schooling, and by the time he was twenty had tried typesetting, teaching, and editing a country newspaper on Long Island. He was a big, dark-haired fellow, sensitive, emotional, extraordinarily impressible. ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... over-severity towards weaker brethren, and to be so dazzled by his own light as to hold himself wiser than his teachers. But whatever blemishes others might discern in William, to his friend's mind he was faultless; for Marner had one of those impressible self-doubting natures which, at an inexperienced age, admire imperativeness and lean on contradiction. The expression of trusting simplicity in Marner's face, heightened by that absence of special observation, that defenceless, deer-like gaze which ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... by occasionally teaching in the palace, which was for some time thrown open to the ladies of her faithful sisterhood. Here, as elsewhere, the blended force and gentleness of her character wrought marvels in the impressible and grateful minds to which she ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... that the results proceed entirely from imagination acting with a peculiar condition of the brain, and that this peculiarly passive and impressible condition of the brain is induced by the fixed gaze upon the disk. These are the only agencies which we believe to be necessary, in order to give us an explanation of the phenomena in question. In saying so, however, we are aware that such data will seem to some inquirers ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... what was feasible, wise, and right for him, as a New Englander whose surroundings and prospects were widely different from those of the society about him. He must have been strongly imbued by nature with the instincts of his birthplace to have formed, after a seven years' absence at his impressible age, so correct a judgment of the necessities and possibilities of his own career in relationship to the people and ideas of ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... "Well, they're more impressible, for one thing. You can work them up into any kind of passion you want to. Then they're more submissive to discipline; they're used to being ordered about and kicked and cuffed, and they don't mind it. Besides, they're accustomed from their low social position to be subordinate ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... isolating his wife. Madison Wayne, the elder, was tall, well-knit and spare, reticent in speech and slow in deduction; his brother, Arthur, was of rounder outline, but smaller and of a more delicate and perhaps a more impressible nature. It was believed by some that it was within the range of possibility that Arthur would yet be seen "taking his cocktail like a white man," or "dropping his scads" at draw poker. At present, however, they seemed content to spend their evenings in their ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... personal attachment as this gentle, timid, silent, little creature. The eager and passionate Cebi seem to take the lead of all the South American monkeys in intelligence and docility, and the Coaita has perhaps the most gentle and impressible disposition; but the Parauacu, although a dull, cheerless animal, excels all in this quality of capability of attachment to individuals of our own species. It is not wanting, however, in intelligence as well as moral goodness, proof of which was furnished one day ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... the intervention of sounds, and so also are the outlines of signs. This will be more apparent if the motions expressing the most prominent feature, attribute, or function of an object are made, or supposed to be made, so as to leave a luminous track impressible upon the eye separate from the members producing it. The actual result is an immateriate graphic representation of visible objects and qualities which, invested with substance, has become familiar to ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... spectacle of a nation so distinguished, which had carried tyranny to a perfection and invested it with a splendor never before seen, becoming the coryphaeus of freedom, might easily have fascinated a mind less impressible by nature, and less disposed by education for favorable impressions, than that of Jefferson. He shared the feeling of the hour. His advice was asked, and respectfully listened to. This experience, while, as he says, it strengthened his preconceived convictions, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... body; she visited the sea, and seemed a little revived, but anxieties were gathering around her horizon, to which it became evidently impossible her ardent and active mind could remain passive or indifferent, and which recalled every feeling, every energy of her impressible nature into action. Her elder brother, who had long chosen music as his profession, was sent to Germany to pursue his studies; the younger determined upon entering the sea service. The excitement of these changes, and the parting with both, ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... implies the impartation of a new life by the Divine energy of the Holy Ghost. And this new life is comparable to the "heart of flesh," not, of course, a carnal heart, but a heart tender and teachable, and impressible to heavenly influences, such a heart as we always find in the new-born babe ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... unsought fashion. But Romola's love would never come in that way: would it ever come at all?—and yet it was that topmost apple on which he had set his mind. He was in his fresh youth—not passionate, but impressible: it was as inevitable that he should feel lovingly towards Romola as that the white irises should be reflected in the clear sunlit stream; but he had no coxcombry, and he had an intimate sense that Romola was something very much above him. Many men have felt the same before a large-eyed, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... indeed. Do you know, there seems to be nothing else to do. Tom is in actual danger. I know he goes very often to Mrs. Wishart's; and you know Tom is impressible; and before we know it he might do something he would be sorry for. The only thing is to get ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... cried the impressible and lively Shmul, holding his head with both hands. "I would not believe what the people said of you, and called them liars; but now I see myself that you are a bad Israelite, and the covenant and customs of your forefathers are ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... The impressible visitor declares that he felt disposed to fall upon his knees before this grand and simple human being, but refrained. They went to the middle of a bridge thrown across an arm of the lake, and Chateaubriand drew from his pocket a piece of bread ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... of once noble souls who sink themselves in sensuality, and so go down to death, and of all the sad cases one hears and reads of day after day and year after year, are made so through unceasing aggravation at the most impressible time of life. Do any of you who may be my readers know of half a dozen happy families in your circle of friends and acquaintance? Do you know of half a dozen where boys prefer home and their sisters to the streets, or where girls do not court the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... wrinkled with cares of love and war, the bristling moustache, the grizzled beard, the bold, vigorous, and withal somewhat odd features of the mountaineer of Warn. To few has human liberty owed so deep a gratitude or so deep a grudge. He cared little for creeds or dogmas. Impressible, quick in sympathy, his grim lip lighted often with a smile, and his war-worn cheek was no stranger to a tear. He forgave his enemies and forgot his friends. Many loved him; none but fools trusted him. Mingled of mortal ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... certainly, to listen to these young voices, many of them blending for the last time,—for the scholars were soon to be scattered all over the country, and some of them beyond its boundaries,—but why the Mistress was so carried away, I did not know. She must be more impressible than most of us; yet I thought Number Five also looked as if she were having a struggle with herself to keep down ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of blood, like the thirty pieces of silver for which Judas sold his Master, will ever come back again. After Jesus had cast a legion of demons out of the demoniac that dwelt among the tombs, this man was far more impressible with regard to motives addressed to his better nature than while he was possessed by these demons; so we may charitably hope that now, after ten thousand evil demons have been cast out of the hearts of the mayor and common council ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... that he was not impressible, or at least that the outward trappings of wealth and rank did not impress him. But he was distinctly pleased to find that Sir John's carriage and pair, which met them at the station, was irreproachable, ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... images, all they knew, felt, or fancied, of the natural world about them. The sky in its unity and its variety,—the sea in its unity and its variety,—mirrored themselves respectively in these simple, but profoundly impressible spirits, as Zeus, as Glaucus or Poseidon. And a large part of their experience—all, that is, that related to the earth in its changes, the growth and decay of all things born of it—was covered by the story ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... companion is no common mortal I clearly see. However, this impressible young man is most concerned with ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... York earlier than usual, worked steadily at my profession and with increasing success, and began to accept opportunities (which I had previously declined) of making myself personally known to the great, impressible, fickle, tyrannical public. One or two of my speeches in the hall of the Cooper Institute, on various occasions—as you may perhaps remember—gave me a good headway with the party, and were the chief cause of my nomination for the State office which I still ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... in no mood to dwell upon the monotonous past. We get an estimate of the bondage from which he has fled by the tone of pleasant surprise and buoyant gratitude with which he welcomes the commonest gifts of mother nature. He is as impressible as a schoolboy let loose for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... do we find among these people, where the children with their impressible minds are receiving their ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... of jealous parties, yet memorable in the history of painting as the head-quarters of the pietistic Umbrian school. The contradiction is, however, in both cases more apparent than real. The people both of Siena and Perugia were highly impressible and emotional, quick to obey the promptings of their passion, whether it took the form of hatred or of love, of spiritual fervour or of carnal violence. Yielding at one moment to the preachings of S. Bernardino, at another ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... waiters at table, chamberlains, "awakers," "adorners," all distinct from one another, crowded each noble mansion, helping forward the general demoralization. It was probably at this comparatively late period that certain foreign customs of a sadly lowering character were adopted by this plastic and impressible people, who learnt the vice of paederasty from the Greeks, and adopted from the Assyrians the worship of Beltis, with its accompaniment ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... the digestive organs are highly impressible or diseased, it is very important to adopt a nutritious, unstimulating, vegetable diet, as soon as ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... may term a composite character. His frame was a mixture of gutta-percha, leather, and brass. His brain was a compound of vivid fancy and slow perception. His heart was a union of highly inflammable oil and deeply impressible butter, with something remarkably tough in the centre of it. Had he been a Red Indian he would have been a chief. If born a nigger he would have been a king. In the tenth century he might have been a Sea-king or something similar. Born as he was in the ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... I now think over, adding, "He had his faults, yet scarce ever was a finer nature; liberal, suave, impressible." My reflections closed in an ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... at a little supper last night, where the Comedy and the Grand Opera were charmingly represented. Monseigneur was out at a little supper most nights, with fascinating company. So polite and so impressible was Monseigneur, that the Comedy and the Grand Opera had far more influence with him in the tiresome articles of state affairs and state secrets than the needs of all France. A happy circumstance for France, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... no longer loved her, he would send her back to her native place, away from the hollow world of Rome—to assume toward him, by a strong effort of will, a like indifference—to watch until she could find some season when his better nature appeared more impressible, and then to throw herself before him, as she had once before done, and plead for a return of his love—these and like expedients fruitlessly passed in review before her. All in turn failed in promise of relief; and at times it seemed as though the only course left to her was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Scheherzarade, who, by that talent of telling endless feats of fairies and magicians, and kings and queens, was more dear and wonderful to a circle of children than any orator of England or America is now? The more indolent and imaginative complexion of the Eastern nations makes them much more impressible by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... having long sunk below its top, hirsute with all kinds of trees, from the highest pinnacle down to the torrent's brink. Cut on the top surface of the wall, which was of slate, and therefore easily impressible by the knife, were several names, doubtless those of tourists, who had gazed from the look-out on the prospect, amongst which I observed in remarkably bold letters that of T ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... 'What do you mean?' he said. I mean that children hear stories before they learn gymnastics, and that the stories are either untrue, or have at most one or two grains of truth in a bushel of falsehood. Now early life is very impressible, and children ought not to learn what they will have to unlearn when they grow up; we must therefore have a censorship of nursery tales, banishing some and keeping others. Some of them are very improper, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... and understand it—in a word, as soon as we are seven or eight years old, what does the State do? It puts a bandage over our eyes, takes us gently from the midst of the social circle which surrounds us, to plunge us, with our susceptible faculties, our impressible hearts, into the midst of Roman society. It keeps us there for ten years at least, long enough to make an ineffaceable impression on the brain. Now observe, that Roman society is directly opposed to what our society ought to be. There they lived upon war; here we ought ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... it melts all the petty personalities, of which it is made up, into one broad mass of existence,—one great life,—one collected body of mankind, with a vast, homogeneous spirit animating it. But, on the other hand, if an impressible person, standing alone over the brink of one of these processions, should behold it, not in its atoms, but in its aggregate,—as a mighty river of life, massive in its tide, and black with mystery, and, out of its depths, calling to the kindred ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which awakened his ambition. Now it was the idyllic beauty that took possession of him, transformed as it was by the presence of a woman, that supreme interpreter of nature to a youth. And yet scarcely a woman—rather a vision of a girl, impressible still to all the influences of such a scene and to the most delicate suggestions of unfolding life. Probably he did not analyze this feeling, but it was Evelyn he was thinking of when he admired the landscape, breathed with ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... very gentle, yielding in character, impressible, unelastic. But the positive blondes, with the golden tint running through them, are often full of character. They come from those deep-bosomed German women that Tacitus portrayed in such strong colors. The negative blondes, or those women whose tints ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... gazed at him with tearful eyes. Ah, he was still the foundling, who needed her care! Pelle himself had tears in his eyes; he suddenly felt weak and impressible. Here was a human child whose heart was beating for him—and how beautiful she was, in ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... inquiry, while Phoebe was happy in doing her duty by profiting by all opportunities of observation, in taking care of Maria and listening to Mervyn, and Miss Charlecote enjoyed scenery, poetry, art, and natural objects with relish keener than even that of her young friends, who were less impressible to beauty ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... contiguity to a charming little tumbled country in which the troops may indulge in ingenious imitations of difficult man[oe]uvres; to which it behooves me to add the advantage of enchanting drives and walks for the entertainment of the impressible visitor. In winter, possibly, the great circle of the camp is rather a prey to the elements, but nothing can be more agreeable than I found it toward the end of May, with the light fresh breezes hanging about, and the sun-rifts from a magnificently cloudy sky lighting up all around the big ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... moss-grown marae in the dark wood, with its hideous idols, its piles of human bones, and its hoary priest—fit minister of such a religion. I remembered the aged woman at Mowno's house, and the frightful doom in reserve for her. I felt that perhaps to such impressible spirits, even a passing word, unskilfully and feebly spoken, might by God's blessing do good; and yielding to the impulse of the moment, instead of declaiming the verses from Comus, I began to speak ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... Kosekin, women have as much liberty in making love as men, and there is no law or custom about it. If a woman chooses she can pay the most desperate attentions, and play the part of a distracted lover to her heart's content. In most cases the women actually take the initiative, as they are more impressible and impulsive than men; and so it was that Layelah made me the object of her persistent assault—acting all the time, too, in accordance with the custom of the country, and thus having no thought whatever of indelicacy, since, according to the Kosekin, she was acting simply in ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... of our human existence that has a stronger influence upon us than the house we dwell in,—especially that in which our earlier and more impressible years are spent. The building and arrangement of a house influence the health, the comfort, the morals, the religion. There have been houses built so devoid of all consideration for the occupants, so rambling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... committed in high places from thwarted love and ambition. We have many of that character in this prison, but they are young. This is intended as a place to educate and restrain men who would return to earth and incite impressible ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... second. The grammar is but the mode adapted in speech for notifying and communicating thoughts. That the Jew did not think, consequently did not speak, like a European is self-evident. Where are we to find people, children in thought, keenly alive to the outer world, impressible, emotional, but devoid of the power of abstract thought, to whom long involved processes of thought and long involved sentences of speech are unknown? Consequently, the contrivances for stringing together dependent clauses ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... probability that, so long as the language in which it is written endures, it will not cease to be read by a great number of the youth of all future generations at that period of life when their minds, their imaginations, and their hearts are most impressible with moral excellence, splendid picture, and religious sentiment. It would be difficult to name another work of any kind in our native tongue, of which so many editions have been printed, of which so many readers ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... that Savage had a strong influence upon Johnson's mind at a very impressible part of his career. The young man, still ignorant of life and full of reverent enthusiasm for the literary magnates of his time, was impressed by the varied experience of his companion, and, it may be, flattered by his intimacy. Savage, he says admiringly, had enjoyed great opportunities ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... impressible nature of his kindly race, ever yearning toward the simple and childlike, watched the little creature with daily increasing interest. To him she seemed something almost divine; and whenever her golden head and deep blue eyes peered out upon him from ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... visit was occupied in the examination of the varieties of animal life distributed throughout the surface of the globe. The greater part of his time on this occasion will be devoted to the study of the wonders that lie under the surface of the earth; of the revelations of extinct animal life made by impressible rocks; and of the metallic wealth which human ingenuity has adapted to the wants and luxuries of mankind. In the fossil remains he will be able to recognise traces of an animal life, of which we have no living specimens; of trees, the like of which never rise from the bosom of ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... to struggle, and in the darkness of the place it seemed to those of his comrades who observed him as if he were writhing like a snake. But little did his fellow-pirates heed. Their hearts had long ago ceased to be impressible by horrid fancies. They could not help but see what went on before their eyes—it did not require an ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... a lady from whom society expected so much as from Mrs. Marsden could not give her time to her children. In the impressible period of infancy and early childhood, Lottie and her brother, and an invalid sister older than herself, had been left chiefly to the charge of servants. But Mrs. Marsden's conscience was at rest, for she paid the highest prices for her ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... hundred years; but Richardson and Fielding are still read. We must expect corresponding changes in this country during the next century; but we may confidently predict that in the year 1962 young and impressible hearts will be saddened at the fate of Uncas and Cora, and exult when Captain Munson's frigate escapes from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... themselves in high favor with ours. They are always Oxonians, as the sons of green grocers and fishmongers are sure to be when they come over here (so Mr. Toddleworth has it, and he is good authority), and we being an exceedingly impressible people, they kindly condescend to instruct us in all the high arts, now and then correcting our very bad English. They are clever fellows generally, being sure to get on the kind side of credulous mothers with ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... neither at his side Sitting affectionate, nor utt'ring word? Another wife lives not who could endure Such distance from her husband new-return'd To his own country in the twentieth year, After much hardship; but thy heart is still As ever, less impressible than stone, To whom Penelope, discrete, replied. 120 I am all wonder, O my son; my soul Is stunn'd within me; pow'r to speak to him Or to interrogate him have I none, Or ev'n to look on him; but if indeed He be Ulysses, and have reach'd his home, I shall believe it soon, by proof convinced ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... as he walked down to the station with his friend; but he looked splendidly in his new outfit, and we are willing to excuse certain impressible young ladies, who cast an admiring glance at him as he passed down the street. It was not Tom's fault that he was a handsome young man; and he was not responsible for the conduct of those who chose to look ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... the possession of the faculty; and it was not always that his soberest and most conscientious relations (in type) were received without a shade of suspicion on that account. It may have been that the loneliness of the night before had not quite worn away, and that it left him sadder and more impressible than usual; and it may have been that the one element before wanting in his nature, that of earnest and undivided human love, had changed him when it was supplied. At all events, there was a something in that wondrous scene, that came to him that morning as he had never before known it—something ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... disgrace herself nor the coronet which she already feels pressing lightly upon her head. As she trips out of sight, it may give any man a heart-pang to think that there is at least one lovely woman who is impenetrable to love; but then, if she were like those dear, soft, fond, impressible, confiding beauties of a former age, she would not be ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... only ingredient of romance in the affair, for the young lady was decidedly plain, though good-humoured looking, with that style of features which is termed potato; and in figure she was a little too plump, and rather short. But she was impressible; and the handsome young English Lieutenant was too much for her monastic tendencies, and ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... stretch of my imagination. But, alas! for the uncertainty even of the presentiments of one of Nature's most impressible children. The "lake" was a pond, perhaps twenty feet in diameter; an antiquated boot, two or three abandoned milk cans, and a dead cat, reposed upon its placid beach; and from a sheltered nook upon its southerly side, an early-aroused frog appeared, inquiringly, and uttered a ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... susceptible, sensitive, emotional, impressible, mobile; irritable, choleric, passionate, irascible, fiery, waspish. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... none could better do, the judge at last fell into a style so methodic, you would have thought he spoke less to mere auditors than to an invisible amanuensis; seemed talking for the press; very impressive way with him indeed. And I, having an equally impressible memory, think that, upon a pinch, I can render you the judge upon the colonel almost word ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... led to this curious prophetic vision. The parties were entirely unknown to one another, so that it was not caused by any close sympathy between them. If it was an attempt made by some helper to avert the threatened doom, it seems strange that no one who was sufficiently impressible could be found nearer than Cornwall. Perhaps Mr. Williams, when on the astral plane during sleep, somehow came across this reflection of the future, and being naturally horrified thereby, passed it on to his lower mind in the hope ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... strongly in childhood, when half, if not all, my interest sprang from the fascination which horrors have upon the impressible mind, what were my emotions and longings when the real meaning of the Christian life was revealed to me, and I saw in this steadfastness of the spirit unto death the triumph of the immortal soul over the weaknesses of the flesh and the terrors of a ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... would indicate that she had made something of an impression on Harleston—who was neither by nature nor by experience impressible and, in the diplomatic game, had about as much sentiment as a granite crag. In fact, with Harleston every woman who appeared in the diplomatic game lay under instant and ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... embraces the care and nursing of the body in the critical periods of infancy and sickness, the training of the human mind in the most impressible period of childhood, the instruction and control of servants, and most of the government and economies of the family state. These duties of woman are as sacred and important as any ordained to man; and yet no such advantages ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... boys. It is impossible to predict how Plorn will settle down, or come out of the effort to do so. But he has unquestionably an affectionate nature, and a certain romantic touch in him. Both of these qualities are, I hope, more impressible for good than for evil, and I trust in God ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... have proved an inspiration to Mr. Burroughs cannot be doubted. Possibly we should never have had him as a nature writer at all, had he spent his impressible youthful years in a less favored locality. It is, however, a curious fact that the town which produced this lover of nature also produced one other man of national fame, who was as different from him as could well be imagined. I refer to Jay Gould. He was born in the ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... of the apartment to which she flew nothing could have been seen during the next half-hour; but from a corner a quick breathing was audible from this impressible creature, who combined modern nerves with primitive emotions, and was doomed by such coexistence to be numbered among the distressed, and to take her scourgings ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... it my first visit, it was in company with my father, when I was still a boy, in the year 1808. I was about twelve years old, and my imagination impressible, as it always is at that age. I looked about me with great awe. I was here in the very centre and scene of those occurrences which I had heard recounted at the fireside at home, with ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... evening light entered through the domed roof. Hebrew texts which the curate could not decipher were painted on the dark walls. He took off his hat reverently and sat down. There was no one there. He felt very much surprised at finding himself alone. To his impressible nervous nature it seemed that he had suddenly entered a place far removed in time and space from the every-day life with which he was so familiar. He sat a long time; it was cold, and the evening light grew dim, and yet no one came. Issachar entered now and then, and ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... never very popular with my schoolfellows, who, however, tolerated my odd ways better than might have been expected. I was easily brought to appreciate good literature, but I never had much power of expression or of strenuous thought. I was extremely susceptible and impressible, moved by beauty of any kind, but never at all ambitious or in any way creative. I was easily stimulated to work, and then loved to work; but, unless the stimulus were maintained the natural indolence of my disposition asserted itself, and I wasted my powers in dreams and trifles. My memory was ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... respect for gentleman and lady. His aptitude for domestic service; his love for and his power of amusing children and winning their fickle heart, their attachment to him being one of the most delightful traits of Southern life; his impressible, religious and devout nature, mark him as a wonderful element of variety in the domestic texture of our life such as it shall be when he is free, educated in accordance with his nature, and happy. He is not ambitious, he likes to serve those who treat him kindly, and seeks no social equality, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... serpents of my hair, in this countenance furrowed with grief, and the scars of thy thunderbolt." But the Lord of Evil replies with cunning softness: "Oh, but you are only the more beautiful, the more impressible, for this fiery rage of yours! Ay, call out and curse on, beneath one and the same goad! 'Tis but one storm calling another. Swift and smooth is the passage from ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... and feasting her Prince in London, talking 'strict neutrality' in Parliament, and building pirates on the Clyde. She's doing worse than that. That is not half her wrong-doing. She is taking thousands of plastic, impressible, innocent babes, into her big hands, monthly, and kneading them and hardening them into regular John Bulls! That's a ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... ether, etc., which would yield a prompt effect upon many individuals seem to have little or no effect upon him, nor do moderate quantities of wines or spirits stimulate him. That is to say, he has not a very impressible nervous organization, is not imaginative, nor very liable to accept results on insufficient ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... being crowded out by ghosts, or at least that they must encounter strange obstacles to living there. Are not their windows darkened by the light of other days? An old mansion of brick or stone has more character of its own, and is less easily overshadowed by its own antiquity; but these impressible wooden abiding-places, that have managed to cling to the soil through so many generations, seem rife with the inspirations of mortality. They have a depressing influence, and must often mould the occupants and leave a ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... If you are so impressible to John the Baptist, remember that you may be equally so to evil suggestion: take heed, therefore, to guard against anything in your life that may open the gates of your sensitive nature to a temptation, which you may not be able to withstand. If you are weak in physical ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... lesson. Swallows do not borrow money, nor do ants, although nature has given them no hands, or reason, or profession. But men have intellect in excess, and so ingenious are they that they keep near them horses, and dogs, and partridges, and jackdaws. Why then do you despair, who are as impressible as a jackdaw, have as much voice as a partridge, and are as noble as a dog, of getting some person to befriend you, by looking after him, winning his affections, guarding him, fighting his battles? Do you not see how ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... rest of the dreary winter the memory of that enchanted walk through mire and darkness and driving snow, kept two hearts—Rose's and Allan's—fully awake. A pity, too; for sleep covers a multitude of sufferings, and when the most impressible part of our being is wrapped in unconsciousness, we can make shift to go through the world with only an endurable number of the usual aches and ailments. If these young hearts had ever really slumbered since their owners met for the first time, less than a year before, it had been rather an ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... The wily but impressible Erastus Snaffle, cheered by the widow's wine, warmed by her smile, and smitten by her amiable conversation, had bestowed upon her, merely as a tribute which mammon might pay to the ever-womanly, three thousand shares of Princeton Platinum stock. He had done this at a time when ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... of marriage in her day, but she had no talent for matrimony, and had turned such a very cold shoulder on her admirers that the swains became dispirited, and betook themselves to the courtship of more impressible damsels. There was no hidden romance or tale of unreturned affection in Miss Sophonisba's experience. The simple fact was, she had never wished to be married. Miss Faithful was five years her sister's junior. She had never found room in her heart for a second love ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... little prologue and epilogue: the former satirizing the pretension to understand the Soul, which we cannot see, while we are baffled by the workings of the bodily organs, which we can see; the latter directed against the popular idea that the more impressible and more quickly responsive natures are the soil of which "song" is born. The true poet, it declares, is as the pine tree which has grown ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... demonstrativeness of her son's at this point, to say from afar:—"I hope we are going to have some 'Ifigenia in Aulide.' Because I should have enjoyed that." Which carried an implication that the musical world had been palming off an inferior article on a public deeply impressible by the higher aspects ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... supports by a voluntary contribution on his own part, because he knows that it is at all times in his power to see the thing as it really is. I have often observed that little children are actually deceived by stage-scenery, never by pictures; though even these produce an effect on their impressible minds, which they do not on the minds of adults. The child, if strongly impressed, does not indeed positively think the picture to be the reality; but yet he does not think the contrary. As Sir George Beaumont ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... perceive, on these occasions, that the gravity of his hearer was only prevented from being disturbed by an effort of politeness, and he accordingly never again tried this romantic mystification upon me. From what I have known, however, of his experiments upon more impressible listeners, I have little doubt that, to produce effect at the moment, there is hardly any crime so dark or desperate of which, in the excitement of thus acting upon the imaginations of others, he would not have hinted that he had been guilty; and it has sometimes ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... small fuss made by himself about the Readings, and in the newspaper references to "Mr. Dickens's extraordinary composure" on the platform, he gives an illustration. "Last night here in Philadelphia (my first night), a very impressible and responsive audience were so astounded by my simply walking in and opening my book that I wondered what was the matter. They evidently thought that there ought to have been a flourish, and Dolby sent in to prepare for me. With them it is the simplicity of the operation that raises ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... some deftness required also in fastening down the tinfoil on the cylinder where it was held by a pin running in a longitudinal slot. Paraffined paper appears also to have been experimented with as an impressible material. It is said that Carman, the foreman of the machine shop, had gone the length of wagering Edison a box of cigars that the device would not work. All the world knows that ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... said cuts across your prejudice, coming from the South. I have sought to speak sincerely to you, because you are young, impressible, and anxious for knowledge; and it is better to know an unwelcome truth, than to find out by-and-by you have all your life been believing an untruth. Nothing is more sickening to the candid and sincere heart, than to learn its cherished ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... him when the sport was rather keener? Did you ever kiss him as you sat upon the stairs? Did you ever tell him of your former love affairs? Think of it uneasily and wonder if his wife Soon will know the amatory secrets of your life! Dighton was impressible, you were quite accessible— The bachelor who marries late is apt to lose his head. Dighton wouldn't hurt you; does it disconcert you? Dighton is a gentleman—but Dighton ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... noted for beauty than for decorum, was afterward married to Bachaumont, a well-known bel esprit, who appreciated the gifts of the young girl, and brought her within a circle of wits who did far more towards forming her impressible mind than her light and frivolous mother had done. She was still very young when she became the wife of the Marquis de Lambert, an officer of distinction, to whose interests she devoted her talents and her ample fortune. The exquisitely decorated Hotel Lambert, on the Ile Saint Louis, still retains ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... a night when sorrow may come to the brightest without causing any great sense of incongruity: when, with impressible persons, love becomes solicitousness, hope sinks to misgiving, and faith to hope: when the exercise of memory does not stir feelings of regret at opportunities for ambition that have been passed by, and anticipation does not prompt ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... in front of the snapper on the end, and that pause was the most important thing in the whole story. If I got it the right length precisely, I could spring the finishing ejaculation with effect enough to make some impressible girl deliver a startled little yelp and jump out of her seat—and that was what I was after. This story was called "The Golden Arm," and was told in this fashion. You can practice with it yourself—and mind you look out for the pause and get ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... deemed either mythical or miraculous. He seemed to reproduce the wonders of Gospel history. But all this was only an exhibition of the force of suggestion, or the action of the law of faith, over a patient in the impressible condition." ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... for continual activity, and its flitting, active life within the bars bears some resemblance except in the great matter of flight, to its life in a state of nature. Again, its lively, curious, and extremely impressible character, is in many ways an advantage in captivity; every new sound and sight, and every motion, however slight, in any object or body near it, affording it, so to speak, something to think about. It has the further advantage of a varied and highly musical language; the frequent ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... disseminators of this tale are the accusers whom I dread; for their hearers are apt to fancy that such enquirers do not believe in the existence of the gods. And they are many, and their charges against me are of ancient date, and they were made by them in the days when you were more impressible than you are now—in childhood, or it may have been in youth—and the cause when heard went by default, for there was none to answer. And hardest of all, I do not know and cannot tell the names of my accusers; unless in the ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... man or woman, in the nursery, the traits, the habits, the customs of the best etiquette, and you have stamped upon them, at an age when the character is impressible as wax, not only the outer semblance, but, in a great degree, the inner reality, of ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... dollars a year, I believe, Lynde at first thought to go abroad. It was always his dream to go abroad. But I persuaded him out of that, seeing how perilous it would be for a young fellow of his inexperience and impressible disposition to go rambling alone over the Continent. Paris was his idea. Paris would not make a mouthful of him. I have talked him out of that, I repeat, and have succeeded in convincing him that the wisest course for him to pursue is to go to some pleasant ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... used as describing George Sand: "Thou 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
... the saying, and it rightly represents the feeling of primitive communities when the sudden impact of new thoughts and new examples breaks down the compact despotism of the single consecrated code, and leaves pliant and impressible man—such as he then is—to follow his unpleasant will without distinct guidance by hereditary morality and hereditary religion. The old oligarchies wanted to keep their type perfect, and for that end they were right not to allow foreigners to touch it. 'Distinctions of race,' says ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... king's watchfulness saved her from this romantic folly, and gave her another husband. This unhappy match was now at an end. Louise was again free. She still felt in her heart some of the wild love of romance and adventure of the little Louise; she was the same daring, dreamy, impressible Louise, only now she was less innocent. The little coquette from instinct was changed into a ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... warm heart, have a sensitive heart. take to heart, treasure up in the heart; shrink. "die of a rose in aromatic pain" [Pope]; touch to the quick; touch on the raw, touch a raw nerve. Adj. sensible, sensitive; impressible, impressionable; susceptive, susceptible; alive to, impassionable[obs3], gushing; warm hearted, tender hearted, soft hearted; tender as a chicken; soft, sentimental, romantic; enthusiastic, highflying[obs3], spirited, mettlesome, vivacious, lively, expressive, mobile, tremblingly ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... proportion of its restless elements had been drawn towards the seat of conflict. But the air was full of a vague disturbance. To me, at least, it seemed so, emerging from such a solitude as has been hinted at, and the more impressible by rumors and indefinable presentiments, since I had not lived, like other men, in an atmosphere of continual talk about the war. A battle was momentarily expected on the Potomac; for, though our army was still on the hither side of the river, all of us were looking towards the mysterious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... relations, who hardly pardoned him for not being a captain of horse as his father had been before him. About the same time, or a little later, he performed a pilgrimage of a kind that could hardly help making a mark upon a character so deeply impressible. In company with D'Alembert he went to Ferney and saw Voltaire.[4] To the position of Voltaire in Europe in 1770 there has never been any other man's position in any age wholly comparable. It is true that there had been one or two of the great popes, and a great ecclesiastic like ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... rope-like, and every nerve stretched to its utmost;—wait till you have seen all this, and you will confess that a woman's lazy life can know no harder toil than that of the mind's sympathetic coexertion,—that is, if she be excitable or impressible. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... She left him; and he found himself strangely disturbed with thoughts of his own country, of the life that he ought to be leading there, the struggles in which he ought to be taking part; and, with these motives in his impressible mind, the motives that had hitherto kept him in England seemed unworthy to ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... escape the inevitable click of the knitting-needles. The father is already proud of the astonishing and growing intelligence of his little girl. An old-fashioned child, already living in a world of her own imagination, impressible to her finger-tips, and ready to give her views ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... word or act for criticism, but I cannot say the same of the girls during the three years I passed at the seminary in Troy. My own experience proves to me that it is a grave mistake to send boys and girls to separate institutions of learning, especially at the most impressible age. The stimulus of sex promotes alike a healthy condition of the intellectual and the moral faculties and gives to both a development they never can ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... her than the most elaborate explanation. "You don't mind them—do you?—for we are all friends together. My position, you know," she added sadly, "prevents my always following my own inclinations or preferences. Poor Markham, I fear the world does not do justice to his gentle, impressible nature. I sympathize with him deeply; we have both had our afflictions, we have both—lost. Good heavens!" she exclaimed, with a sudden exaggerated start of horror, "what have I done? Forgive my want of tact, dear friend; I had forgotten, wretched ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... exaggerated self-confidence, mismeasurement of forces, and pliability to external influences could not but be baleful in one of the leaders of an assembly composed, as was the Paris Conference, of men each with his own particular ax to grind and impressible only to high moral authority or overwhelming military force. It cannot be gainsaid that no one, not even his own familiars, could ever foresee the next move in Mr. Lloyd George's game of statecraft, and it is demonstrable ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... distaste for former simple pursuits, and want of interest in them, is a much safer one, more universally applicable, and not so easily evaded. It is equally effectual, too, as a religious safeguard; for the natural and impressible state in which the mind is kept by the absence of habitual stimulants is surely the state in which it is best qualified for the exercise of devotion,—for self-denial, for ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... years 'mid a young, impressible people like ours, ever reflecting the exalted virtues of the true woman, the earnest reformer, the religious teacher, must have left her impress for good in every relation of life. When we remember ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and Edwards "On the Will;" an age not yet engrossed in business and pleasure, when people had time to ponder on what is profound and lofty; an age not so brilliant as our own in mechanical inventions and scientific researches, but more contemplative, and more impressible by grand sentiments. I do not say that the former times were better than these, as old men have talked for two thousand years, for those times were hard, and the struggles of life were great,—without facilities of travel, without luxuries, without even comforts, as they seem to us; but there was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... part of the doubt in the world comes from the fact that there are in it so many more of the impressible as compared with the originating minds. Where the openness to impression is balanced by the power of production, the painful questions of the world are speedily met by their answers; where such is not the case, there ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... though a generous and kind-hearted man, was not as exemplary in his daily life as might have been desired. Besides, one or two of the old paupers were rather corrupt in their manners and morals, and were not fit companions for a young immortal, whose mind, like plastic clay, was impressible to ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... this child this way. No compliments about your impressible temperaments from me. (Aloud, meditatingly, slowly.) Those red lines—sometimes—they ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... years later she was a young lady, abundantly wilful and superabundantly enthusiastic,—one who, in other circumstances, might perhaps have made a romantic elopement and a msalliance. [ 1 ] But her impressible and ardent nature was absorbed in other objects. Religion and its ministers possessed her wholly, and all her enthusiasm was spent on works of charity and devotion. Her father, passionately fond of her, resisted her inclination for the cloister, and sought to wean her back to the world; ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... like the morning cloud and the early dew, it soon passed away. Yet was she not altogether forgotten, nor had her labors of love been entirely in vain. To her it was that Arthur had alluded in his conversation with Miss Wiltshire, for childhood's heart is tender and impressible, and from her instructions he had imbided many of those lofty and noble sentiments which now characterized him; and often, when the tide of worldliness rushed in to bear him away on its fierce current, that ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... rooms in the house be the children's nursery. It is good philosophy, too, to furnish it attractively, even if the sum expended lower the standard of parlor-luxuries. It is well that the children's chamber, which is to act constantly on their impressible natures for years, should command a better prospect, a sunnier aspect, than one which serves for a day's occupancy of the transient guest. It is well that journeys should be made or put off in view of the interests of the children,—that guests should be invited with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... but caught in the devil's trap and changed into beasts; and boys whose looks showed that sin had already stamped them with its foul insignia, and burned into their souls the shame which is to be one of the elements of its eternal punishment. A less impressible man than I would have felt moved at the sight of that throng of bruised and broken creatures. A hymn was read, and when Burnet, Kelsay, Neal, and others of the preachers, struck up an old tune, voice ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... by such a name. I had seen poor Lelia at Baden-Baden; and I dare say you can recall what we heard of another love of his nearer home. Well, I encountered my Hero of Ladies that very evening, wandering amid the ruined aisles of Mucross Abbey. I saw that his impressible nature had taken a thoughtful, if not a religious tone, from the scene. And he commenced the conversation by declaring, that 'He was a ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... persevering in his intention, and getting an additional security against himself. Nevertheless, at this point in the conversation, he was conscious of increased disinclination to tell his story about Hetty. He was of an impressible nature, and lived a great deal in other people's opinions and feelings concerning himself; and the mere fact that he was in the presence of an intimate friend, who had not the slightest notion that he had had any such serious internal struggle as he came to confide, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... If hostile interests are to be harmonized, and clashing measures compromised, and divergent forces brought into parallelism, all must be effected by means of a dinner. A good dinner produces a good mood,—at least, it produces an impressible mood. The will relaxes wonderfully under the influence of iced champagne, and canvas-backs are remarkable softeners of prejudice. The daughter of Herodias took Herod at a great disadvantage, when she came in and danced before him and his ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... Patrick Prunty and to nerve his determination to rise above his surroundings. He grew up a tall and strong young fellow, unusually handsome with a well-shaped head, regular profile and fine blue eyes. A vivacious impressible manner effectually masked a certain selfishness and rigour of temperament which became plain in after years. He seemed a generous, quick, impulsive lad. When he was sixteen years of age Patrick left his ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... the sitting was devoted to the discussion of the Zoellner experiments, the Medium narrating some of the phenomena that had been witnessed in the presence of Dr. Zoellner. He said, however, that Zoellner was a peculiarly impressible person, and one who had entire confidence ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission |
