"Pliant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... calamus to grow in the spongy little tract of swamp-land that he could stand in the middle of and "wobble" and shake the whole farm. Or, if you can't recall the many salient features of the minor disadvantages under which the old man used to labor, your pliant limbs may soon overtake him, and he will smilingly tell you of trials and privations of the early days, until your anxiety about the young man just naturally stagnates, and dries up, and evaporates, ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... and South, in which sections it attained its highest development. It was soon found that a commission after the Massachusetts model, when composed of men less competent or less disposed to do their duty, was liable to dwindle into a statistical board or even become a pliant tool in the hands of the railroads. Furthermore, the conditions in Massachusetts, where railroad owners and railroad patrons lived side by side and were in many instances even identical, differed materially from those found in the West and South, where railroad patrons were made to pay excessive ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... ceased; the orchestra broke forth afresh with a light Parisian waltz, and down between the lines of tables came a negro and a negress—properties of the place, as were the glasses and the table linen—waltzing with the pliant suppleness, the conscious sensuality of their race, and close behind them followed a second couple—a Spaniard, restless and lithe, small of stature and pallid of face, and a young Spanish girl ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... self-imposed spiritual exercises, but he did not positively favor them. He taught his young men that the traditional practices of devout souls as embraced in the routine of the novitiate, were good mainly to break the resistance of corrupt nature and render their souls pliant subjects of the Divine guidance in the interior life, as well as submissive to the order of God in the ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... long into 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 ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... at the appointed time, and Lapham handed him the letter. He must have taken it all in at a glance, and seen the impossibility of negotiating any further now, even with victims so pliant and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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 was eminently gentle and prepossessing; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Besides this, he can always influence the individual members by holding out prospects of advancement and decorations, and if this device fails, he can make refractory members retire, and fill up their places with men of more pliant disposition. A Council constituted in this way cannot, of course, display much independence of thought or action, especially in a country like Russia, where no one ventures to oppose ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... image of God, to be able to distinguish between a mangold and a swede? Think of the glory of literature, the power of the writer to send forth his burning words to millions and sway public opinion as the west wind sways the pliant willow." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... neither the ease of doing it, 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 rhymer, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... of Love gave him wings. He was over the fence, she was in his arms, and he was straining the warm, pliant body close to his bursting breast. His lips were on hers. He felt her stiffen and then relax in swift surrender. Her heart, stilled at first, began to beat tumultuously against his breast; her free arm stole about his neck and tightened as ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... intrigue, 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 ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nation ponder Horace Greeley's arraignment of the reverend gentlemen who were the chief actors in this farce, and remember that in all ages of the world the priesthood have found their pliant tools and most degraded victims in the women of their respective sects. In all of these meetings there were intelligent, sincere women, so blinded by the sophistry and hypocrisy of Marsh, Chambers, Hewitt, et al., that they gave them their countenance and support throughout this ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... pliant Soul of erring Youth Is, like soft Wax, or moisten'd Clay, Apt to receive all heav'nly Truth, Or yield to Tyrant Ill the Sway. Shun Evil in your early Years, And Manhood may to Virtue rise; But he who, in his Youth, appears A Fool, in Age ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... 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 ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... a passionate woman turns, Filled with remorseful terror to the man she scorned, and her love For myself in my own eyes' laughter burns, Runs ecstatic over the pliant folds rippling down to my ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... efforts to keep order among the embryo protectors of his country. Poe, the leader of the quartette that made life interesting in Number 28, was destined never to evolve into patriotic completion. He soon reached the limit of the endurance of the officials, that being, in the absence of a pliant guardian, the only method by which a cadet could be freed from ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... the opium traffic was shared between 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 ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... consciences tell us; but it is for want of something that can conquer the evil tendencies within, and lift off the burden of a sinful past which weighs on us. As in the carboniferous strata what was pliant vegetation has become heavy mineral, our evil deeds lie heavy on our souls. What we need is not to be told what we ought to be, but to be enabled to be it. Electricity can light the road, and it can drive the car along it; and that is what we want, a dynamic as well as an ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... nothing of the oak in the sturdiness of my stature, I imagined that my mortality would remain pliant as long as I pleased. But I have taken so little care of myself this winter, and kept such bad hours, that I have brought a slow fever upon my nights, and am worn to a skeleton: Bethel has plump cheeks to mine. However, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... ruffian whom he made his tool, had been associated with him before, in some transactions that would not bear the light of day, and when he unfolded the present scheme to him he found him ready to be his pliant instrument—willing to enter into any scheme, no matter how villainous its nature, if he could be sure of making something by ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... 'scape the plagues of Pox and Pills, The Sin is liable to fifty Ills, Of equal Danger, tho' a diff'rent Cure, As he that dreading Claps wou'd Sin secure; For soon the pliant Wretch he has beguil'd Hath to his Charge and wonder prove with Child: At which, 'tmay properly be said a Man, Leaps from the Fire to the Frying-pan, This for his Reputation sake must be reveal'd When Claps are only as a Jest reveal'd She's now ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... a nobleman of redoubtable and fearless disposition, or a courtier whose pliant will was easily moulded by accomplished and attractive women, else he would not have been involved in the feminine intrigues ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... of some lovely flower-bud. As life unfolds, the tender smile and blush of childhood mingle with the grace of maidenly repose; the upturned, radiant eye gathers new depths of thought and emotion; the delicate features, the wavy, pliant form, begin to reveal their wealth ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... man, undersized and slightly deformed, with close-cut hair, and a large face, droll, pliant and ugly as a gutta-percha mask. Before he opened ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and bearing the sporangia, which are similar to those of curly grass, and fixed to a veinlet by the inner side next the base, one or rarely two covered by each indusium. (From the Greek meaning like a willow twig [pliant], alluding to ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... little darker than that of Portuguese Algarves. The beauty of the islanders results from a mixture of Irish blood. During the Catholic persecution before 1823 many fled the Emerald Isle to Tenerife, and especially to Orotava. The women's figures in youth are charming, tall, straight, and pliant as their own pine-trees. All remark their ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... as the tea-carriers, bear the weight of their burden on their shoulders, carrying it as we do a knapsack, not in the ordinary Chinese way, with a pliant carrying pole. They are all provided with a short staff, which has a transverse handle curved like a boomerang, and with this they ease the weight off the back, ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... statutes of beauty, are of a singularly pleasing class, their faces beaming with animation and good humour. They are a small race, averaging 4 feet 5 inches, but there is perfect proportion in all parts of their form, and their supple, pliant, lithe figures are often models of symmetry. There is about the young Oraon a jaunty air and mirthful expression that distinguishes him from the Munda or Ho, who has more of the dignified gravity that is said to characterise the North American Indian. The Oraon ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... generally believed, but they range the list of virtues in a different order from that commonly adopted by the more educated classes. Generosity ranks far before justice, sympathy before truth, love before chastity, a pliant and obliging disposition before a rigidly honest one. In brief, the less admixture of intellect required for the practice of any virtue, the higher it stands in popular estimation." ("From their Point of View." By M. Loane. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... the pictures in a gloom so discreet that not Ruskin himself could have decided whether these were by Whistler or Peter Paul Rubens. On either side of the marble mantelpiece were two easy-chairs of an immense, incredible capacity, chairs of crimson plush for Titans, chairs softer than moss, more pliant than a loving heart, more enveloping than a caress. In one of these chairs, that to the left of the fireplace, Mr. Curtenty was accustomed to snore every Saturday and Sunday afternoon, and almost every evening. ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... 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 from its tomb, and went roaming ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... wrong of what was now in his mind, he would have been incredulous. He had in reality become another man. Circumstances had evolved him, during the course of twenty years, into something different, as persistent winds evolve a pliant tree into another than its typical shape. Gordon had ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... certain pair 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
... "If ony thing about Peter Puncheon's place could be airted their way, John [Gibbie] Girder wad mak it better to the Master of Ravenswood than a pair of new gloves; and that he wad be blythe to speak wi' Maister Balderstone on that head, and he wad find him as pliant as a hoop-willow in a' that he ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... me the sailor flies, The quickest ship I can surprise, And turn it as I have a mind, And move it against tide and wind. Nay, bring me here the tallest man, I'll squeeze him to a little span; Or bring a tender child, and pliant, You'll see me stretch him to a giant: Nor shall they in the least complain, Because my ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... With this pliant ductility and this permanence of race, there is another striking characteristic;—the negro's attachment to place. It is probably a natural trait, but from easily perceived causes it is perhaps intensified in the case of the American negro. He loves his ...
— The Future of the Colored Race in America • William Aikman
... up and down under the shade of the tall forest trees. She looked about her to right and left, and presently was fortunate enough to secure a pliant bough of a tree which was lying on the ground. Having discovered this treasure, she sat down contentedly and began to pull off the leaves and to strip the bark. When she had got the long, supple bough quite bare, she whipped some string ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... pliant body is to him an untold poem; every touch of her hands is a new delight; every tone of her voice is as a song rising from out of the gloom ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... help us! Christ, as he is the door to God, and to all gospel-privileges, is now strangely handled, and so hath been of a long time among the sons of men; some of them making him the very in-let to all the vile and abominable crew in the world, counting all that are pliant to their ungodly humours, the saints of the Most High, and Christ the door and gate through whom they have right to enter; and to whom belong the delicates of the precious things of God, even those which he hath most choicely laid up and reserveth for none but those that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... you were carried by the giant From vines that showed themselves compassionate; They could not utter words, yet with their pliant Branches they pointed where you passed ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... Foster-Lane, with the lectureship of St. Lawrence Jewry, and St. Martin's in the Fields. The Dr's principles were not of that cast, by which promotion could be expected. He was attached to the High-Church interest, and as his temper was not sufficiently pliant to yield to the prevalence of party, perhaps for that very reason, his rising in the church was retarded. A gentleman of learning and genius, when paying a visit to the Dr. took occasion to lament, as there had been ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... to cleave, With pliant arm, thy glassy wave? The captive linnet which enthrall? What idle progeny succeed, To chase the rolling circle's speed, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the chief physical characteristics of flax are its snowy whiteness, silky luster and great tenacity. The individual fibers may be from ten to twelve inches in length; they are much greater in diameter than cotton. It is less pliant and elastic than cotton and bleaches and dyes less readily. Linen cloth is a better conductor of heat than cotton and clothing made from it is cooler. When pure, it is, like cotton, nearly ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... time, she came back with a coarse cloth, a thick plate, a wooden-handled knife, together with a fork made of some pliant material; these ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... ripening. It is apparently indigenous, and grows more luxuriantly than on the White Nile. It is a variety of the rhamnus, and is set down by botanists as the Spina Christi, of which the Saviour's mock crown of thorns was made. I see no reason to doubt this, as the twigs are long and pliant, and armed with small, though most cruel, thorns. I had to pay for gathering some of the fruit, with a torn dress and bleeding fingers. The little apples which it bears are slightly acid and excellent for alleviating thirst. I also noticed on the plain a variety of the nightshade with large berries ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... in what terms Louise of Savoy, in her daily collection of private memoranda, used to speak to herself of her son, "My king, my lord, my Caesar, and my son!" She was proud, ambitious, audacious, or pliant at need, able and steadfast in mind, violent and dissolute in her habits, greedy of pleasure and of money as well as of power, so that she gave her son neither moral principles nor a moral example: ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... would so enchain the attention of Desdemona, that if she were called off at any time by household affairs, she would dispatch with all haste that business, and return, and with a greedy ear devour Othello's discourse. And once he took advantage of a pliant hour, and drew from her a prayer, that he would tell her the whole story of his life at large, of which she had heard so much, but only by parts: to which he consented, and beguiled her of many a tear, when he spoke of some distressful stroke ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... his teeth, placed one arm round the child's slender form, gripped hard a handful of the pliant boughs, and dropped over the parapet, Mary closing her eyes in her mortal fright. With a huge swing the branches bent, and in an instant the two were swaying a good fifteen feet below, George almost jerked from his hold. The boughs creaked ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... then be drawn over the hands, or better still, India Rubber gloves, such as are now in very common use, may be worn; these gloves are impenetrable to the sting of a bee, and yet are so soft and pliant as scarcely in the least to interfere with ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... the grassy mound Scarce bends its pliant form When overhead the autumnal wood Is thundering like ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... Evelyn's ignorance of life would prevent her from making the proper allowances. In her affectionate and trusting nature, which suspected little evil anywhere, there was no doubt that her father and mother had her entire confidence and love. But the likelihood was that she would not be pliant. Under Miss McDonald's influence she had somewhat abstract notions of what is right and wrong, and she saw no reason why these should not be applied in all cases. What her mother would have called policy and reasonable concessions she would have ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was his evil star. She had the fire and daring of her father, but none of his care and affection for the people. The daughter of the most beloved of kings had the instincts of a tyrant, and was ever urging her too pliant husband to unpopular measures. She wanted to set that little jewelled shoe of hers on the neck of rebellion, when she should have held out her soft white hand to make friends of her foes. Her beauty and her grace might have done much, had she inherited with the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... children; his nerves are on edge, his natural propensities starved, his thoughts wandering and embittered; he finds no good anywhere, nor any hope of it. He will seize upon any means of abating or dulling his cravings. The negro is pliant, unmoral, free from the restraints of white civilization. In the South especially, his subordination to the white is almost a second nature; but he involuntarily avenges himself (as all lower races do upon the stronger) ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... the fronds of a giant fern; a cautious step beyond his hands touched a slippery, pliant vine. And his whisper ended as he felt the thing turn and twist beneath his hand. It was alive!—writhing!—cold as the body of a monster snake, and just as vicious and savage in the way that it whipped down and about him in the gloom of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... requiring discretion and so capable of dealing with them—between him and the farmer's boy he had been there was no more resemblance than between a living word and the dead root out of which it has been coined. In Emery Bland's case the word was not only living, but pliant, eloquent, and arresting to ear and eye. He was one of those men who overlook nothing that can be counted as self-expression, from their dress to the sound of their syllables. Superficially genial, but essentially astute, he had made everything grist that came to his mill, ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... service, whether in or out of doors, they make great use of automaton figures, which are so ingenious, and so pliant to the operations of vril, that they actually seem gifted with reason. It was scarcely possible to distinguish the figures I beheld, apparently guiding or superintending the rapid movements of vast engines, from human forms endowed ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... aside 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
... moment, Bushie—now mounted on Burl's shoulder, now walking hand in hand with Kumshakah—kept up a lively prattle which never ceased, and to which the others listened with pleased ears. Sometimes, while riding aloft, he would amuse himself by catching at the slender, pliant branches of the trees brought within his reach, which he would draw after him as far as he could bend them, then letting them fly back, leave them swinging to and fro. At length, as if this amusement had suggested it to his mind, the boy struck up a cadence ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... best of women and of grandmothers, the the good Lady Girnachgowl; and had been worn in regular rotation by every female of the family till now that Mrs. Douglas positively refused to subject Mary's pliant form to its thraldom. Even the Laird, albeit no connoisseur in any shapes save those of his kine, was of opinion that since the thing was in the house it was a pity it should be lost. Not Venus's ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... corporation removes all individuality, and places the crown upon that combination that has the longest purse and the strongest grip. The syndicates, Trusts and rings carry the point still further. Whole branches of industry are monopolized; the individual capitalist becomes but a pliant link in a chain, held by a capitalist committee. A handful of monopolists set themselves up as lords of the world and dictate to it the price of goods, to the workingmen their ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... power. His friend, John Clarke, was elected Governor, upon the demise of Governor Rabun; but his day had passed, and other and younger men thrust him aside. Parties were growing more and more corrupt, and to subserve the uses of corruption, more tractable and pliant tools were required than could be ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... taxes levied for the support of a church which 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 ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... henpecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects be considered ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... 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 Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... "Poor pliant Prince Max," sighed Jacqueline, "he is still being influenced to stay in Mexico! Come, Berthe, we must make all speed to San Luis ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... hands large. The same vanity would have urged her to it if she had even known of the beauty of a well proportioned, vigorous, active body. She had read and heard of small soft hands as a feminine attraction, but never of a smooth, strong neck, a well set head, a firm, pliant, muscular trunk, and limbs that cannot be ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... and its upward reach, the 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
... soldier's face. Wallenstein, to whom such an assault was unexpected, fell back, hurt and blinded. The vintner, active as a cat, saw Carmichael coming on a run. He darted toward him, and before Carmichael could prevent him, dragged the sword-cane away. The blade, thin and pliant, flashed. And none too soon. The colonel had already ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... he Works in the pliant bosom of the fair, And moulds her heart anew, and blots her former care. The dead is to the living love resign'd, And all AEneas ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... 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. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Jean sat in the shadow of a palm idly thrumming a guitar, the soft pliant strains corresponding well with the expression of ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... 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, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... painting a scene, which they had never before noticed, now showed forth. It was as if the picture had taken shape and substance again beneath the influence of the summer heat. You could sea a nymph with arms thrown back and pliant figure on a bed of flowers which had been strewn for her by young cupids, who, sickle in hand, ever added fresh blossoms to her rosy couch. And nearer, you could also see a cloven-hoofed faun who had surprised her thus. But Albine repeated, 'No, she is ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... still survive in South America. That so unpromising a subject as this large archaic tinamou should be able to maintain its existence in this country, even for a very few years, encourages one to believe that with better-chosen species, more highly organized, and with more pliant habits, such as the hazel hen of Europe for a game bird, success ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... took out the spruce roots, soft and pliant, and selecting a lot that were about an eighth of an inch in diameter, scraped off the bark and roughness, until he had a bundle of perhaps ten feet of soft, ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... supple and pliant, with a suggestion of swiftness galvanising the delicacy of the lines. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... the 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 sheaths in velvet her obnoxious claws, And thrills the hand that smooths her glossy fur With the light tremor of her ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... decent modesty perform'd her part, 250 Rose a tribunal: from no other court It borrow'd ornament, or sought support: No juries here were pack'd to kill or clear, No bribes were taken, nor oaths broken here; No gownsmen, partial to a client's cause, To their own purpose turn'd the pliant laws; Each judge was true and steady to his trust, As Mansfield wise, and as old Foster[21] just. In the first seat, in robe of various dyes, A noble wildness flashing from his eyes, 260 Sat Shakspeare: in one hand a wand he bore, For mighty ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... What a future she must once have had before her, if she had but known what men were made of! It is only when too late that such women discover what they have missed. This mad Carew was tinder to a flash of these bright eyes; and the fool Yorke, except in his wild creeds, as pliant as a hazel twig. I used to think yonder woman was an idiot, because she believed in a place of torment; but she was right there. Yes, Joanna," she continued, apostrophizing the picture, "I'm compelled to confess that you are right; for, being ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... and then went his way. The Church has always depended on foreign aid, and when left to itself has either died away or kept itself alive by maintaining a sort of Christian caste. The Eastern people are, to a certain extent, pliant and easily led. The somewhat masterful foreign missionary had bent the people to his will and his ways. The house has been built square and solid, and finished in appearance. But it is a building, not a plant. It has not within it the power of life and growth. There ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... son now wore the crown of France. In Henry III. she had as pliant an instrument for her will as in the two brothers preceding him; and, like them, his reign was spent in alternating conflict with the Protestants and the Duke of Guise. At last, wearied and exasperated, this half-Italian ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... good heart and a capacious intellect, and his defects belong not to the man, but to the man's education and circumstances. Although placable in his resentments, he is without the usual baser counterpart of such pliant characters, and has never shown himself deficient in moral courage. Most travellers trace in his countenance a resemblance to the busts and portraits of Fox. His moral character bears a miniature resemblance to that which history has ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... 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, ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... nature forgave the one, so the excellency of his manners reformed the other. The desire of imitating so great a pattern first awakened the dull and heavy spirits of the English from their natural reservedness; loosened them from their stiff forms of conversation, and made them easy and pliant to each other in discourse. Thus, insensibly, our way of living became more free; and the fire of the English wit, which was before stifled under a constrained, melancholy way of breeding, began first to display its force, by mixing the solidity of our nation with the air and gaiety ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... ago discarded the clumsy implement. First it dropped its iron ring and became a clog; afterwards it was fined down into the pliant galoshe—lighter to wear and more effectual to protect—a no less manifest instance of gradual improvement than Cowper indicates when he traces through eighty lines of poetry his 'accomplished sofa' back to the original ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... 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 ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... shut-in look of the illiterate, a look impossible to define, but just as impossible to mistake when once it has been recognized. With the mothers are a group of girls of ten or twelve, who are learning sewing at an earlier age, when fingers are more pliant and less like to thumbs. Then there are the babies, too—most of them health-centre babies, who come for milk, for medicine, for weighing, over a familiar and oft-traveled road. Fond mothers exhibit them with ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... however, that it exerted an educational influence. Besides, it possesses the merit of having resuscitated one of the most valuable of Jewish national possessions, the Hebrew language in its purity, which in Russia alone has become a pliant instrument of literary expression. A still greater field was reserved for the Jewish-Russian literature that arose in the "sixties." It was called into being in order to present a vivid and true picture of the social and spiritual interests of the Jews. Proceeding from discussions of current political ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... bring destruction upon her husband's murderers, and those murderers are her own flesh and blood. Through her appeals to Atli's greed, and through Knefrud's lies in the Niblung court, the visit of her proud brothers to her pliant husband is brought about. The saga makes Atli the arch-plotter, and the motive his desire to possess the gold. This sentence exculpates Gudrun from any wrong intention towards her brothers: "Now the queen wots of their conspiring, and ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... 1891, seventy 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 ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... 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 ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... prepared for him, and once more mingled in the cares and sports of the family. But he never for a moment forgot the grave of his friend. He carefully visited it throughout the spring, and weeded out the grass, and kept the ground in a soft and pliant state; and sometimes, when the brave Wunzh thought of his friend that was gone from his sight, he dropped a tear upon the ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... in the office amid the driest law-papers, and at night I fly in my dream as a lark in the gardens of Fredericksburg; one might really write a very pretty comedy upon it." He now fluttered down into the grass, turned his head gracefully on every side, and with his bill pecked the pliant blades of grass, which, in comparison to his present size, seemed as majestic as the palm-branches of ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... 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 ready tool ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... specimen of American manhood of that Anglo-Semitic type so often seen in persons of mixed English and Jewish extraction. The figure was well over five feet two inches in height and broad in proportion. The graceful sloping shoulders harmonized with the slender and well-poised waist, and with a hand pliant and yet prehensile. The pallor of the features was relieved by ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... more of these biers. It was a very solemn place. I expected that the spiced odors of Araby were going to steal over my senses now, but they did not. A copper-colored skeleton, with a rag around him, brought me a glass decanter of water, with a lighted tobacco pipe in the top of it, and a pliant stem a yard long, with a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... took his hand, as he assisted me from the carriage I started, for it was as chill as ice, and the fingers, usually so pliant and gentle in their fold, were inflexible as marble. I thought I should have fallen to the pavement; but exerting all the resolution of which I was mistress, I entered the house, and passed under the dim glitter of the silvery ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... eagerness of her affectionate anxiety for Maggie, Lucy could not persuade herself to defer a conversation about her with Tom, who, she thought, with such a cup of joy before him as this rapid fulfilment of his wish about the Mill, must become pliant and flexible. Her nature supplied her with no key to Tom's; and she was puzzled as well as pained to notice the unpleasant change on his countenance when she gave him the history of the way in which Philip ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... heron. The most he can hope is that, by meditating on the advantages which a heron would enjoy, and by pressing the same consideration on his offspring, the time may come in the dim procession of years when the beaks of his descendants will grow long and sharp, their necks pliant, their legs attenuated. ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "innumerable" on the fingers, and "a diamond pin" on his "shirt frill," a "curb chain" with large gold seals hanging from his waistcoat—(a "curb chain" proper was then a little thin chain finely wrought, of very close links.) Then there was the "pliant ebony cane, with a heavy gold top." Ebony, however, is not pliant, but the reverse—black was the word intended. Then those "smalls" and stockings to match. Mr. Pickwick, a privileged man, appeared on this occasion, indeed always, in his ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... began with bluff but could n't stay there, the military tension was too much for them. In 1898 our people had read the word "war" in letters three inches high for three months in every newspaper. The pliant politician McKinley was swept away by their eagerness, and our squalid war with Spain ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... disturb the horse. Let him hold the reins, if the horse be inclined to hold down his head, rather high, but if he be more disposed to carry it erect, let him keep them lower, for thus he will best set off the horse's figure. After a little, if he trot at his natural pace, he will find his limbs become pliant without inconvenience, and will come with the greatest readiness to obey the whip. Since too it is the most approved practise to set off toward the left side, the horse will most readily start on that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... forms, even as the life springeth up, and yet hath not its dark beginning in the Center as the PHUR hath, but after the flash of fire, when the sour dark form is terrified, where the hardness is turned into pliant sharpness, and where the second will (viz. the will of nature, which is called the Anguish) ariseth, there Mercurius hath its original. For MER is the shivering wheel, very horrible, sharp, venomous, and hostile; which assimulateth it thus in the sourness in the flash of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... healthiest condition; that clear and explicit information be ready on all details. Prepared by the assiduous, intelligent labor of a vigilant and faithful staff, an army becomes a compact, homogeneous mass—without individuality, but pervaded by one animating will—cohesive by discipline, but pliant in all its parts—impetuous with enthusiasm, but controlled easily in the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... again on the alert when the Rents Bill came on, and objected to a clause giving the LORD CHANCELLOR power to order proceedings under the measure to be held in private. This time the LORD CHANCELLOR was less pliant, and plainly suggested that the newspapers were actuated in this matter by regard for their circulations. Does he really suppose that the disputes of landlords and tenants will supply such popular "copy" as to crowd out the confessions ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... them, not among the men of great family whom he mistrusted, but among the slaves of whom he felt sure. The secretaries, the men of trust, the ministers of the emperor were his freedmen, the majority of them foreigners from Greece or the Orient, pliant people, adepts in flattery, inventiveness, and loquacity. Often the emperor, wearied with serious matters, gave the government into their hands, and, as occurs in absolute monarchies, instead of aiding ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... be done? "Armistice for four years," Sigismund was still kind enough to consent to that: "Truce for four years: try everywhere, my poor Nephew; after that, your mind will perhaps become pliant." Albert tried the Reich again: "Four years, O Princes, and then I must do it, or be eaten!" Reich, busy with Lutheran-Papal, Turk-Christian quarrels, merely shrugged its shoulders upon Albert. Teutschmeister did the like; everybody the ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... the ice-king reigns, and howlling storms drive with remorseless fury o'er the plains, or wreck their vengeance on the sturdy woods,—roaring amongst the pliant branches, and entwining around the knarled trunks, uprooting some as though in sport to show its giant strength. And the cascade which formerly leaped forth from sylvan nooks where the wild flowers half hid its source, and bathed themselves in the ascending mist,—now ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... philosophers say of unformed and colourless matter when subjected to external change, that it is now fire, now water, now air, now solid earth, so the soul suitable for many friendships must be impressionable, and versatile, and pliant, and changeable. But friendship requires a steady constant and unchangeable character, a person that is uniform in his intimacy. And so a constant friend is a thing rare and hard ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... once set to work to choose a more pliant successor to her rebellious tool. But her cup of crime was nearly full. Though the people remained silent, there was deep discontent among the officials of the realm, while the nobles were fiercely indignant at this virtual seizure of the throne by an ambitious woman. The storm grew day ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... opening, running feet. And then Jimmie Dale had snatched the revolver from the floor where Markel had dropped it in the scuffle, and was pressing it against Markel's forehead—and Markel, terror-stricken, had collapsed in a flabby, pliant heap. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... enslaved; his oath binds him to an implicit blind reception of tenets which he is not permitted to investigate, and which make him the pliant tool of a higher department of this detestable machinery. He receives his cue from the bishops, and they are wholly governed by the Propaganda at Rome, whither each of them is bound periodically to appear for personal examination and fresh instructions. ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... bait—generally the side of a small perch—with amazing vigor and marvellous dexterity, oftentimes taking fifteen or twenty pickerel in less than an hour. To see him strike, manipulate and land a fish weighing three or four pounds, his pliant rod bending nearly to a semicircle, was a ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... the supercilious ignorance of incurable stupidity, these volumes, in which the habits, the interests, the inalienable rights, the sacred duties of one half of the species, (and of that half to which, at the most pliant and critical period of life, the health, the disposition, the qualities, moral and intellectual, of the other half must of necessity be confided,) are discussed with exemplary fairness, and placed in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... for 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 the wood ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... the mutilation or even the suppression of his work. The result is that a writer in such a situation, is practically beaten before he can offer a defence. The professional book-baiters have laws to their liking, and courts pliant to their exactions; they fill the newspapers with inflammatory charges before the accused gets his day in court; they have the aid of prosecuting officers who fear the political damage of their enmity, and of the enmity of their wealthy and influential backers; above all, they have the command ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... Buddhism never had a similarly paramount and unchallenged position. It never attempted to extirpate its rivals. It coexisted with a mass of popular superstition which it only gently reprobated and with a powerful hereditary priesthood, both intellectual and pliant, tenacious of their own ideas and yet ready to countenance almost any other ideas as the price of ruling. Neither Islam nor Christianity had such an adversary, and both of them and even Judaism resemble Buddhism in having won greater success outside their ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... aspect; in which every act of tyranny has a precedent, and every crime an example; in which there is nothing so old that its antiquity can save it from destruction, and nothing so unparalleled that its novelty can prevent it from being done? What resistance can be offered by manners of so pliant a make that they have already often yielded? What strength can even public opinion have retained, when no twenty persons are connected by a common tie; when not a man, nor a family, nor chartered ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... comte Jean had scarcely returned an hour, when we received a letter from M. Morand, stating, that he had gone, in consequence of the instructions of comte Jean, to the comtesse de Bearn; that he had found the lady pliant enough on the first point, and disposed to content herself with the half of the sum originally demanded; that on point the second, I mean the appointments of herself and son, she would come to no compromise, and stuck ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... distributed so equally throughout the body. In certain parts of the skin they are especially numerous, as on the nose, head, ears, and back of the shoulders. The unctuous matter which is secreted by these oil glands is intended to keep the skin moist and pliant, to prevent the too rapid evaporation of moisture from the surface, and to act as a lubricant where the folds of the skin are in contact with each other. At times in these oil tubes the contents ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... an expression of owlish wisdom to his otherwise heavy features. As on that of the Memnon, not a vestige of a hair was to be seen on the head of Split-log. His lips were, moreover, of the same unsightly thickness, while the elephantine ear had been slit in such a manner, that the pliant cartilage, yielding to the weight of several ounces of lead which had for years adorned it, now lay stretched, and coquetting with the brawny shoulder on which it reposed. Such was the Huron, or Wyandot ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... Pliant lasso circling wider In the frenzied flight— Loping horse and cursing rider, Plunging ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... trivial; and if its high priests go through their mummeries with a certain unction, and pretend to be wafted by them into a higher world, the phenomenon is neither new nor remarkable. Language is a wonderful and pliant medium, and why should it not lend itself to imposture? A systematic abuse of words, as of other things, is never without some inner harmony or propriety that makes it prosper; only the man who looks beyond and sees the practical results ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... before I guessed, and I came close upon taking a bath at unawares. Now this stream, so handy within reach, was just what I wanted, and among the bushes by the verge grew a plant—much like our English osier, but dwarfer—extremely pliant and tougher than the tendrils of the clematis; so, that, having stripped it of half a dozen twigs, I went back to work more ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... went noiselessly, and returned, bearing a black dress and a three-cornered hat. Meanwhile Monte Cristo had rapidly taken off his great-coat, waistcoat, and shirt, and one might distinguish by the glimmering through the open panel that he wore a pliant tunic of steel mail, of which the last in France, where daggers are no longer dreaded, was worn by King Louis XVI., who feared the dagger at his breast, and whose head was cleft with a hatchet. The tunic soon disappeared under a long cassock, as did his hair under a priest's ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... said, "is as naught before the ambitions of these two. You sent my clear instructions to Escovedo, who was placed with Don John that he might render him pliant to my wishes. Instead, he stiffens him in rebellion. There must be an end ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... 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 black as a raven: so my soul, nourished ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... and false embraces, hung; Then sought the queen: she took him to her arms With greedy pleasure, and devour'd his charms. Unhappy Dido little thought what guest, How dire a god, she drew so near her breast; But he, not mindless of his mother's pray'r, Works in the pliant bosom of the fair, And molds her heart anew, and blots her former care. The dead is to the living love resign'd; And all Aeneas enters ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... easy to leave Hugues to the dog's death he merits and to take this woman for my own? For I know that she loves me a little. And thinking of this, he kissed her, quietly, as one might comfort a sobbing child; afterward he held her in his arms for a moment, wondering vaguely at the pliant thickness of her hair and the sweet scent of it. Then he put her from him gently, and swore in his soul that Hugues must die, so that this ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor; let no man attaint my memory, by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence; or that I could have become the pliant minion of power, in the oppression and misery of my country. The proclamation of the Provisional Government speaks for our views; no inference can be tortured from it to countenance barbarity or debasement at home, or subjection, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... sophisticated tongue Of lawyers can turn right to wrong; And language, by your skill made pliant, Can save an undeserving client. Is it the fee directs the sense To injure injured innocence? Or can you, with a double face Like Janus's, mistate a case? Is scepticism your profession, And justice absent from your session? And ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... had been accustomed to receive it. But a different sensation took possession of her mind, when she heard sounds which had too often soothed the ear of infancy, ever to be forgotten. Struggling ceased, and her pliant form assumed the attitude of intense and entranced attention. Her head was bent aside, as if the ear were eager to drink in a repetition of the tones, while her bewildered and delighted eye still sought the countenance of ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... there, tight against the rail, as though she had brought up abruptly against it, making impetuously for the void. He could see her slight pliant form, silhouetted against the jeweled horizon; upon her shoulders, her scarf floated like a vague phosphorescence, and her face was whitely turned toward the stars. He heard her take a long deep breath of the night, and then her ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... likes Dash. The boy has fought a battle, in 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 occupation, to which we ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... Hiawatha Was the gentle Chibiabos, He 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 ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... a ballroom, in polite society at least. Skippy's feet could skip, hop and jump with the best, but they were not, in any sense of the word, gliders. The change from the inanimate embrace of the dressmaker's form to Tootsie's pliant figure, however, worked such miracles that at the end of twenty minutes' industrious application, Tootsie expressed ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... motion by his own big work-callused hands. Those hands puzzled him now. He often looked at them curiously and in a detached sort of way, as if they belonged to someone else. So white they were, and smooth and soft, with long, pliant nails that never broke off from rough work as they used to. Of late there were little splotches of brown on the backs of his ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... say I think Bobby was a little forward, and I would have my young readers a little more pliant with small men like Timmins. There are always men enough in the world who are ready and willing to quarrel on any provocation; and it is always best not to provoke them, even if they are overbearing and insolent, as Mr. ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... intoxication of flattery and fame, guess what a lot of contest and strife is in store for him. The very breath which a literary man respires is hot with hatred, and the youthful proselyte enters that career which seems to him so glittering, even as Dame Pliant's brother in the 'Alchemist' entered town,—not to be fed with luxury, and diet on pleasure, but 'to learn to quarrel and ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 of youth and ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... learned to have language at command; you never thought, after so many years' schooling of the world, that your pliant tongue would play you truant. Yet now ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... habit grows no one e'er knows, And yet he is a giant That has a will and subtle skill That never yet was pliant. ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... to be the index of such a stride toward the ultimate pacification of mankind as was never made before. But it was the work done in the years 1783-89 that created a federal nation capable of enduring the storm and stress of the years 1861-65. It was in the earlier crisis that the pliant twig was bent; and as it was bent, so has it grown; until it has become indeed a goodly and ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... 'Birds of New Zealand,' 1872, p. 66.) that the male uses his strong beak in chiselling the larvae of insects out of decayed wood, whilst the female probes the softer parts with her far longer, much curved and pliant beak: and thus they mutually aid each other. In most cases, differences of structure between the sexes are more or less directly connected with the propagation of the species: thus a female, which has to nourish a multitude ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... view, no dead product, but the finer breath and effluence of the national life, as subtle, as many sided in its aspects, as the national spirit itself,—into the knowledge of which one must grow by slow degrees, bending his pliant mind till it gradually yields to the new channels ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... appointment and removal placed the courts under the control of the King and made it possible for him to use them as a means of oppressing the people. A striking example of the way in which this power could be abused was seen in the career of the notorious Jeffreys, the pliant judicial tool of the cruel and tyrannical James II. To guard against a repetition of this experience it was urged that the judges be made independent ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... most powerful factors for its extension, because the priests of all religions have been, throughout all the phases of history, the most potent allies of the ruling classes in keeping the masses pliant and submissive under the yoke by means of the enchantment of religion, just as the tamer keeps wild beasts submissive by the terrors of the cracks of ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... with all her 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 ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... climb the tree, provided I would give him a knife. I was puzzled to know how he proposed to act, the trunk being upwards of four feet in diameter at the base, and the nearest branch being about sixty feet from the ground. He procured a tough and pliant shoot of a kind of vine (Cissus) of sufficient length to pass nearly round the tree, and holding one end of this in each hand and pressing his legs and feet against the tree, he ascended by a series of jerks, resting occasionally, holding on for half a ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... help him with the net," suggested Mrs. Coomber. The little girl had always been so pliant, so amenable to control, that Mrs. Coomber was surprised to hear ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... in themselves were pliant and obedient to reason, it were true there should be no great use of persuasions and injunctions to the will, more than of naked propositions and proofs; but in regard of the continual mutinies and ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... witness by whose evidence this legend was principally supported, was Jennet Device, a child about nine years old, and grand-daughter of old Demdike. A more dangerous tool in the hands of an unscrupulous evidence-compeller, being at once intelligent, cunning and pliant, than the child proved herself, it would not have been easy to have discovered. A foundation being now laid capable of embracing any body of confederates, the indefatigable justice proceeded in his inquiries, and in the end, Elizabeth Device the daughter of old Demdike, James Device her ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... looking-glass, the water, back again, it would not know its own face. And yet I love to haunt round about it: so does May. Her particular attraction is a certain broken bank full of rabbit burrows, into which she insinuates her long pliant head and neck, and tears her pretty feet by vain scratchings: mine is a warm sunny hedgerow, in the same remote field, famous for early flowers. Never was a spot more variously flowery: primroses yellow, lilac white, violets of either hue, cowslips, oxslips, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... partner in Brush was shocked at Prince's lack of interest in a matter of ten thousand dollars. He wondered if perhaps King Devil had not bounced him up more than people realized. But Prince was pliant, far more so than usual, accepted his partner's suggestions without dissent, and grew really enthusiastic when ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... 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 ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... sawdust at every blow. One arm and both legs were torn off and weltered in the scattered stuffing beneath; the crop of black curls was tangled in the topmost limb of the sapling. The blue silk gown would never fit the pliant waist again. Rozillah was beyond the possibility ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... little boy, relentlessly depriving him of this or that beloved idol, yet not unkindly leaving with him the pliant vitality that could fashion others to be still more ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... wonders. To her astonishment the hitherto pliant Peter, who only existed in order to do her will, became transformed into a brusque masculine creature which she did not recognize. With a movement that was almost rough he released himself and fled, calling back a "good night" to her out of the darkness. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... with pinions skim the air; Not so the mackerel, and still less the bear.... Ah! who has seen the mailed lobster rise, Clap her broad wings, and soaring claim the skies? When did the owl, descending from her bower, Crop, midst the fleecy flocks the tender flower; Or the young heifer plunge, with pliant limb, In the salt wave, and fish-like strive to swim? The same with plants—potatoes 'tatoes breed— Uncostly cabbage springs from cabbage seed, Lettuce from lettuce, leeks to leeks succeed, Nor e'er did cooling cucumbers presume To flower like myrtle, or like violets bloom; ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Fifth, whose personal history belongs less to Aragon than to Naples, 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 ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott |
