"Impressible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... large a proportion of its restless elements had been drawn towards the seat of the 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 ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... day spent in one manner as in another. The test of a 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 ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... encircling arm, went to a book-stand near and took from it a richly bound Bible. With this she came and stood before Gus, who was half trembling with fear and perplexity, and said in a tone so grave and solemn that his weak impressible ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... 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 ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... apparently as a necessary equipment for a few hours' journey, would not there and thereafter forever ignore the use of these articles, or recoil from that particular quality. Or, as an unbiased observer, he wondered if, on the other hand, impressible passengers, after passing three or four stations, had ever leaped from the train and refused to proceed further until they were supplied with one or more of those articles. Had he ever known any one who confided to him in a moment of expansiveness that he had dated his use of Somebody's ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... my father, 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 ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... little 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, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... effect of a sinister omen. This, to be sure, was only another reason for 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, rather shook his own belief ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... down despair was visible on many countenances, and immediate starvation seemed to be waiting at the door to clutch them as they went out; for the impressible creatures believed every word and saw no ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... proceeding, Silvanus was living at Agrippina,[42] and having learnt by continual information sent to him by his friends what Apodemius was doing with the hope of effecting his ruin; and knowing also how impressible the mind of the feeble emperor was; began to fear lest in his absence, and without being convicted of any crime, he might still be treated as a criminal. And so, being placed in a situation of the greatest difficulty, he began to think ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... struggle for that social regeneration which is so clearly possible for all the world, as I have shown in "The New Education." The study of the anatomy of the brain and the innumerable experiments I have made on the brain, showing how completely the brain of the impressible can be revolutionized in its action in a few minutes, make it very apparent that society as a whole is responsible for the continued existence of criminals, paupers, and lunatics; for there should not be one, and would not be, if mankind could be aroused from their criminal ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... by graciously lifting off his hat, and, with an engaging air, prevented Frederick the free from running against the company, or being jostled against the wall. The Collegians as a body were not easily impressible, but even they, according to their various ways of wondering, appeared to find in the two brothers a ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... far and wide through Europe thought-dust, imperceptible, but potent to enrich the nations. The French alone, says Michelet, understood Italy. How terrible would have been a conquest by Turks with their barbarism, of Spaniards with their Inquisition, of Germans with their brutality! But France, impressible, sympathetic, ardent for pleasure, generous, amiable and vain, was capable of comprehending the Italian spirit. From the Italians the French communicated to the rest of Europe what we call the movement of the Renaissance. There is some truth in this panegyric of Michelet's. The passage of the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... sensible &c. adj.; have a tender heart, have a 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, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... village of Oberon, in the province of Bearn, about the middle of the seventeenth century. Three great influences conspired to make him unhappy—first, education, which at that time was held to be a reputable part of the discipline of the scions of noble families; next, a delicate and impressible mind, and lastly, he was born under the shadow of the Pyrenees, and within sight of the Atlantic. He had also served in the wars of Louis XIV. as colonel of the Carrignan, Cavignon, or Corignon regiment; therefore, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... the credit of Madame de Maintenon that she was interested in whatever tended to improve the morals of the people or to develop the intellect. She was one of those strong-minded women who are impressible by grand sentiments. She would have admired Madame de Stael or Madame Roland,—not their opinions, but their characters. Politics was perhaps the most interesting subject to her, as it has ever been to very cultivated women in France; and it ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... by his patient's bed, Jermyn would also tell him about his travels, and relate passages of adventure in various parts of the world; and he came oftener, and staid longer, and talked more and more freely, until at length in Cosmo's vision, the more impressible perhaps from his weakness, the doctor seemed a hero, an admirable Crichton; ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... 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
... 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 ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "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 ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... one fact 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 and hap-hazard ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... crying for? It was impressive, 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 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 to superiors, ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... 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 ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of extreme salubrity, of 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... that he feared Lothair was going to overdo it; and considering what he had to go through on Monday, if it were only for considerations of health, an early celebration was inexpedient. He tried the duchess—about whom he was beginning to hover a good deal—as he fancied she was of an impressible disposition, and gave some promise of results; but here the ground had been too forcibly preoccupied: then he flew to Lady St. Aldegonde, but he had the mortification of learning, from her lips, that she herself contemplated being a communicant at the ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... calling to me—daring adventure, the need for courage, the patriotism that fires the young man's heart, and, at the final analysis, my loyalty to the defenceless, my secret notions of the value of the American home, my horror of Indian captivity, a horror I had known when my mind was most impressible—all these were motives driving me on. I wondered that my companion could be so calm, sitting there in the dim twilight explaining carefully what lay before me; and yet I felt the power of that calmness building up a surer strength in me. I did not dream of home that night. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... 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 ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... 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 ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... 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 has a powerful influence—in which the action ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... anti-spasmodics. Quantities of preparations of valerian, asafoetida, compound spirit of 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 or ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... embryo 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 a true man ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... 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, and that Culverley was a very fine old house, ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... is the 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 ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... depths, its waving foliage, its dripping springs, and the low murmur of the little stream that pursued its way far down at the bottom, was one of those things which stimulated her impressible imagination, and filled her with a solemn and vague delight. The ancient Italian tradition made it the home of fauns and dryads, wild woodland creatures, intermediate links between vegetable life and that of sentient and reasoning humanity. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... straightness in the limbs, compactness in the body, smallness in hands and feet, and exceeding symmetry and comeliness throughout. Possibly between the two sides of the occipital profile there may have been an Incaean tendency to inequality; but if by any good fortune her impressible little cranium should escape the cradle-straps, the shapeliness that nature loves would soon appear. And this very fortune befell her. Her father's detestation of an infant that had not consulted his wishes as to sex prompted a ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... literature of every succeeding age, with the 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 ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... fine, and his face was susceptible of very subtle and sensitive changes of expression. Here was a man of abundant physical strength and vigor, no doubt, but carrying within him a nature more than commonly alert and impressible. His organization, though thoroughly healthy, was both complex and high- wrought; his character was simple and straightforward to a fault, but he was abnormally conscientious, and keenly alive to others' opinion concerning him. It might be thought that he was overburdened with self- esteem, ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... clearness, may be produced by directly stimulating the proper organs with the fingers, which should be placed upon the organ of Somnolence on each side of the head, in the temples, about an inch horizontally behind the brow. In persons who are impressible this produces a quiet dreamy feeling, and a disposition to close the eyes. If carried further, the eyes become closed so that it is difficult to open them, and the unconscious state soon follows. The same effect may be produced by placing the hand on the body just below the breastbone ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... giants, witches, hobgoblins, and the like fabulous beings, and, as soon as we are able to read, by the tales of genii, sorcerers, demons, ghouls, enchanted caves and castles, and monsters and monstrosities of every name. The exceedingly impressible and poetical nature of children (for all children are poets and talk poetry as soon as they can lisp) appropriates and absorbs with intense relish these fanciful myths, and for years they believe more firmly in their truth than in the realities ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... 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
... have been well applied the words first 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, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... in our party, sent by Sekeletu to carry his tusks. Their greater degradation was probably caused by the treatment of their chiefs—the barbarians of the islands. I found them more difficult to manage than any of the rest of my companions, being much less reasonable and impressible than the others. My party consisted of the head men aforementioned, Sekwebu, and Kanyata. We were joined at the falls by another head man of the Makololo, named Monahin, in command of the Batoka. We had also some ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the ferocity of his old Roman blood had been roused in Vetranio, as he threatened Ulpius, the father's look of cold, silent, frightful despair froze it in his young veins in an instant. His heart was still the impressible heart of youth; and, struck for the first time in his life with emotions of horror and remorse, he advanced a step to offer such explanation and atonement as he best might, when the voice of Ulpius suspended his intentions, and made him ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... dissolve the partnership when it becomes unpleasant? I will confess that I have been often puzzled by this question. For some time I could not make up my mind whether their unholy alliance was the result of the influence of the dog on the boy, or vice versa, and which was the weakest and most impressible nature. I am satisfied now that, at first, the dog is undoubtedly influenced by the boy, and, as it were, is led, while yet a puppy, from the paths of canine rectitude by artful and designing boys. As he grows older and more experienced in the ways ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... companion is no common mortal I clearly see. However, this impressible young man is most ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... 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 French and ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... 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 |
