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More "Pliability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... better under a climate warmer than ours. With fruit-trees, it is well known that certain varieties, for instance of the peach, stand forcing in a hot-house better than others; and this shows {311} either pliability of organisation or some constitutional difference. The same individual cherry-tree, when forced, has been observed during successive years gradually to change its period of vegetation.[790] Few ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... adhesion to certain doctrines, than to achieve their triumph by quietly accomplishing his ends. In our opinion, there is no more unsafe politician than a conscientiously rigid doctrinaire, nothing more sure to end in disaster than a theoretic scheme of policy that admits of no pliability for contingencies. True, there is a popular image of an impossible He, in whose plastic hands the submissive destinies of mankind become as wax, and to whose commanding necessity the toughest facts yield with the graceful pliancy of fiction; but in real life we commonly find ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... populous races. The case of the American Indians, who gradually disappear before the white race, should not mislead us, as it is readily accounted for by the peculiar character of that race. The negro exhibits by nature a pliability, a readiness to accommodate himself to circumstances, a proneness to imitate those among whom he lives,—characteristics which are entirely foreign to the Indian, while they facilitate in every way the increase of the negro. I infer, therefore, from all these circumstances ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... to say, was not a good Oriental. He lacked the Semite's pliability. He was graceful, but not gracious. A consequence, doubtless, of having inhaled for some time past the rarefied atmosphere of the Chief, and swallowed a few pokers during the process, his manner towards me was freezingly non-committal—worthy ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... holding the uncut base of each length in one hand, runs the straw between his fingers and the sharp edged ruler-like piece of bamboo held in the other. This is done several times and results in the removal of considerable moisture, the prevention of wrinkling, and greater pliability of the straw. ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... uncouth forms; together with every other common article that the art of man has devised for his wants, not forgetting the luxuries of looking-glasses and Jews- harps. With this collection of valuables, Monsieur Le Quoi had stepped behind a counter, and, with a wonderful pliability of temperament, had dropped into his assumed character as gracefully as he had ever moved in any other. The gentleness and suavity of his manners rendered him extremely popular; besides this, the women soon discovered that he had taste. His calicoes were the ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Pacific and Central Pacific railway companies was the same as that of the Alton tramp. They had found Congress as generous as the tramp had found the Mayor of Alton, and now reproached themselves for their modesty and resolved to bring the pliability of Congress to a severer test. They again appeared before that body in 1864 and asked that their charter be so amended as to grant to them ten alternate sections instead of five on each side of the road, and also ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... kid leather alum is the astringent curative agent. Its operation is accompanied by that of others whose purpose is to secure elasticity and pliability, and mainly to preserve that beautiful texture which makes kid leather superior to all others. These assistants in the process are eggs, flour, and salt. They are combined into what is called a custard. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... the office of the Revolution an invitation to meet Mrs. Moulton in the Academy of Music, where she was to try her voice for the coming concert for the benefit of the Woman's Medical College. And what a voice for power, pathos, pliability! I never heard the like. Seated beside her mother, Mrs. W.H. Greenough, I enjoyed alike the mother's anxious pride and the daughter's triumph. I felt, as I listened, the truth of what Vieuxtemps said the first time he heard her, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... completed before noon, the gate being the only feature of interest. It was made double, fifty feet wide, and fastened in the centre to a strong post. The gate proper was made of wire, webbed together with stays, admitting of a pliability which served a double purpose. By sinking an extra post opposite each of the main ones, the flexibility of the gate also admitted of making a perfect wing, aiding in the entrance or exit of a herd. In fastening the ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... as the presence of those two qualities would permit her to be. Their dissimilarity did not stop here—it was deeper than mere appearance—the character of their minds differed almost as strikingly as did their complexion. The fair-haired beauty had a large proportion of that softness and pliability of temper which physiognomists assign as the characteristics of such complexions. She was much more the creature of impulse than of feeling, and consequently more the victim of extrinsic circumstances than was her ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... see what I can do with him. If I fail, recollect that he is not proverbial for pliability. Look here—are you nervous? Your fingers twitch, and so do your eyelids, occasionally, and your pulse is twenty ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... hundred small octavo pages; and its tone and style have just that light and airy gaiety which befits the ostensible form of it—a set of private letters to a friend. With an extraordinary width of comprehension, an extraordinary pliability of intelligence, Voltaire touches upon a hundred subjects of the most varied interest and importance—from the theory of gravitation to the satires of Lord Rochester, from the effects of inoculation to the immortality ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... this temperament a certain pliability and impressibility, as compared with the rest of the Anglo-Saxon race; it shows a finer grain and a nicer touch. If this is not yet shown in the way of literature, it is only because the time has not come. It is visible everywhere else. The aim which Bonaparte avowed as his highest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... employed fewer spies than Napoleon, and the consequence has been, that the cry of Vive le Roi has never been re-echoed with that same high-sounding, though hollow enthusiasm, with which they vociferated Vive l'Empereur. An instance of the pliability of a French mob occurred a short time before our coming to Aix: When Napoleon, on his way to Elba, passed through Moulines, his carriage having halted at one of the inns, was immediately surrounded by a mob, amongst whom a cry of Vive ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... rope when its strands are straightened by being much strained and untwisted, and from its pliability will coil ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... it ain't his fault arter all," she observed, for her judgment of him had already become a part of the general softness and pliability of her criticism of life; "he seems to be a nice sensible body with proper ideas about women. I like a man that knows a woman's place, an' I like a woman that knows it, too. Yo' ma was a decent, sober, hard-workin' person, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... Midway. Entrance to the theater is through a big tea house, where decent-looking Chinamen who do not look like rats and whose fluent English proclaims their long sojourn in "Flisco," serve the cheering cup at from 10 to 60 cents, according to the pliability of the victim. They are doing a business worthy of a better cause. The tea house is but the ante-chamber to a joss house overhead, mendaciously advertised to be "the biggest outside of China," and to the theater proper. The latter is not so big as the Chinese ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... her sofa. Her hair had turned white prematurely early, it enhanced the effect of the delicate faded colouring and the soft brown eyes. The sweet brightness of her manner was mingled with dignity, with the comprehensive sympathy and pliability of a woman of the world; an innate distinction of mind and person radiated from her looks. Those who watched the general grace and repose of her demeanour and surroundings involuntarily felt that there might be advantages in a condition of life which ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... serious in their nature, such as indecision, exaggerated scrupulousness, extreme pliability, hypochondria. All of these should be ruthlessly supprest the moment we become aware of them, for they are one and all the forerunners of that mentally diseased condition which gives rise to the phobias of which ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
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