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More "Tenuity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... submissive leg [made a submissive bow] and a little admired [gazed at] the number, and understanding countenances of his auditors: let the subject be what it will, he falls presently into a most lamentable complaint of his insufficiency and tenuity [slenderness] that he, poor thing! "hath no acquaintance with above a Muse and a half!" and "that he never drank above six quarts of Helicon!" and you "have put him here upon such a task" (perhaps the business is only, Which is the nobler creature, a Flea or a Louse?) ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... so with the furnace. I have always maintained that every furnace should be lined with fire-brick, in order that it shall be so intensely hot when the air enters that the air shall instantly be heated to the same degree of tenuity as the hot gases themselves, and the two will then unite like a flash—and that is heat. And here is the solution of the Wye Williams mystery of failure when cold air was introduced upon the top of a fire to aid combustion. The proof of the necessity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... had had his day as well as his way. The so-called Gothic architecture had expressed its uttermost of aspiration and tenuity; and painting had fulfilled its utmost accommodation to the ever more slender wall-spaces and forms which this architecture necessitated. And once again, in the fifteenth century, the time was ripe ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... sub-division of this Minor Plane. The Plane of Matter (C) comprises forms of the most subtle and tenuous Matter, the existence of which is not suspected by ordinary scientists. The Plane of Ethereal Substance comprises that which science speaks of as "The Ether", a substance of extreme tenuity and elasticity, pervading all Universal Space, and acting as a medium for the transmission of waves of energy, such as light, heat, electricity, etc. This Ethereal Substance forms a connecting link between Matter (so-called) and Energy, and ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... to restore from its mass many-fold the coal that now exists in the world. Water is not compressible or elastic; it may be solidified into ice or vaporised into steam: but the air is elastic and compressible. It may be condensed to any extent by pressure, or expanded to an infinite degree of tenuity by pressure being removed from it. It is not liable to undergo any changes in constitution beyond these, by any of the ordinary influences by which it ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... to be gone, viz. that they may be delivered of the unnatural pressure of their tender vehicles,[81] which I confess holds more in the apparition of good than evil spirits ... the reason of which probably is the greater subtlety and tenuity of the former, which will require far greater degrees of compression and consequently of pain to make them visible; whereas the latter are feculent and gross, and so nearer allied to palpable existences, and more easily ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... poetry of France and Italy during the Renaissance, and in England during the reign of Queen Anne. It exhibits the most exquisite polish, allied with an avoidance of every shocking or perturbing theme. It seems to combine the enduring lustre of a precious metal with the tenuity of gold-leaf. Even the most vivid emotions of grief and love, as well as the horrors of war, were banished from the Japanese Parnassus, where the Muse of Tragedy warbles, and the lyric Muse utters nothing but ditties of exquisite and melting sweetness, which soothe the ear, ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... and trembling did this poor scarecrow puff. But its efforts, it must be acknowledged, served an excellent purpose, for with each successive whiff the figure lost more and more of its dizzy and perplexing tenuity and seemed to take denser substance. Its very garments, moreover, partook of the magical change, and shone with the gloss of novelty, and glistened with the skilfully embroidered gold that had long ago been rent away, and, half revealed among the smoke, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... chariot, after the rest of the company. The young man did as he was directed; and saw a company of all ages, sexes, and ranks, on horse and on foot, some joyful and others sad, pass along; among whom he distinguished a woman in a meretricious dress, who, from the tenuity of her garments, seemed almost naked. She rode on a mule; her long hair, which flowed over her shoulders, was bound with a golden fillet; and in her hand was a golden rod, with which she directed her mule. In the close of the procession, a tall majestic figure appeared ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... these infinitely minute forms are only evolved or distended, as the embryon increases in the womb. This idea, besides its being unsupported by any analogy we are acquainted with, ascribes a greater tenuity to organized matter than we can readily admit; as these included embryons are supposed each of them to consist of the various and complicate parts of animal bodies, they must possess a much greater degree of minuteness than that which was ascribed to the devils ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... have this idea, says: "A ray of light, with its series of undulations of extreme tenuity but perfect regularity, may be considered as a micrometer of the greatest perfection, and particularly suitable for determining length." But in the present state of things, since the legal and customary definition of the unit remains a material ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... the Life and Works of Chatterton gave Scott an opportunity to discuss the characteristics of Middle-English poetry, but his general thesis, that the Rowley poems exhibit graces and refinements which are in marked contrast to the tenuity of idea and tautology of expression found in genuine works of the period, is supported by an argument which seems to be based on a characterization of the romances rather than on a close acquaintance with other Middle-English poetry. We notice a similar quality in what ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... corner of the barracks—so small that I foresaw our nights would not be comfortable. There were five truckle beds ranged against the wall; 'twas clear that each of us would have a bedfellow. The bedding consisted of a hard straw mattress and a single woollen coverlet which, judging by its tenuity, had already seen service with generations of sleepers. Luckily it was early autumn; we should not need to dread the winter cold for some time to come; and I was young and lighthearted enough to flatter myself with the fancy that we should either be released ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... profound reflection, we turned away to the right towards the hanging-bridge (where we met a detachment of young men of the Ecole de l'Etat Major, fine-looking lads, but sadly disfigured by the wearing of stays or belts, that make the waists of the French dandies of a most absurd tenuity), and speedily passed into the avenue of statues leading up to the Invalides. All these were statues of warriors from Ney to Charlemagne, modelled in clay for the nonce, and placed here to meet the corpse of the greatest warrior of all. Passing these, we had to ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... of these different types, scientific truth should be presented in different forms, and should be regarded as equally scientific whether it appears in the robust form and the vivid colouring of a physical illustration, or in the tenuity and ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... moment we needn't go back so far," he said. "I'll remind you what a girl thirteen years old did in Ireland a hundred years ago. Only thirteen was Catherine Woods—mark that, Sabina and Alice—but she was a genius who lived in Dunmore, County Down, and she spun a hank of linen yarn of such tenuity that it would have taken seven hundred such hanks to make a pound ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril, unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... may be hollow. It must be rendered deep, forcible and brilliant by these three methods: profound inspiration, explosion and expulsion. The intensity of an effect may depend upon expulsion or an elastic movement. Tenuity is elasticity. It is the rarest and yet the ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... scribble at length, though the subject may seem somewhat deficient in interest. Let the grace of the narrative, therefore, and the concern we take in each other's matters, make amends for its tenuity. We fools of fancy who suffer ourselves, like Malvolio, to be cheated with our own visions, have, nevertheless, this advantage over the wise ones of the earth, that we have our whole stock of enjoyments under our own command, and can dish ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... another form of vito-magnetic fluid, is a substance is not questioned. The so-called heat-lightning, though apparently intangible, must therefore be regarded as a substance. Yet further in the remove we find the zodiacal light. Sunlight is but the same, in form of extreme tenuity. The thunderbolt passes from earth to cloud, and instantaneously changes its substantial form to one as tenuous as light; yet, in the transformation, this fluid has not lost its identity. Though unseen, it ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... possesses, and which he looks upon as the great badge of his superiority, are in truth only different in degree and not in kind from those possessed by the lower animals. But the grounds on which this assertion is based are wonderful in their tenuity. Dogs are possessed of self-consciousness because they sometimes emit sounds in their sleep from which it is concluded that they dream. [Footnote: Descent of Man, vol. i. p. 62.] "Can we feel sure that an old dog, with an excellent memory, and some power ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... English artists. They have given to their drawings of this class a richness, a force of effect, a depth of shadow and strength of light, and a truth of representation which astonishes those who are accustomed only to the meagreness and tenuity of the old manner. I have hardly seen any landscapes which exceeded, in the perfectness of the illusion, one or two which I saw in the collection I visited, and I could hardly persuade myself that a flower-piece on which ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... of comets drawn by astronomers from the considerable amount of novel experience accumulated during the first half of this century? The first and best assured was that the matter composing them is in a state of extreme tenuity. Numerous and trustworthy observations showed that the feeblest rays of light might traverse some hundreds of thousands of miles of their substance, even where it was apparently most condensed, without being perceptibly weakened. Nay, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... illusions. Most of us do. It wrought in him, however, the saturnine changes natural upon the relinquishment of a dear and dead fantasy. This ethereal entity is a more essential component of happiness than one might imagine from the extreme tenuity of the conditions of its existence. Purdee's fantasy may have been a poor thing, but, although he could calmly enough close its eyes, and straighten its limbs, and bury it decently from out the offended view of fact, he felt that he should mourn ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... this group, however, is unquestionably that famous tribute to womanhood which goes by the name of 'Dignity of Women'. Looked at with the scientific eye it is sheer gyneolatry,—the chivalrous sentiment inflated with poetic wind, like a bubble, to the utmost possible degree of iridescent tenuity. Man is depicted as a wild creature, ever tossing on the sea of passion, or chasing phantoms in the empyrean. Reckless and vehement, he lives by the law of force, or, at the best, by the law of reason and logic. Woman, on the other hand, follows ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... doubted which became her the most. To these attractions, add a throat, a bust of the most dazzling whiteness, and the justest proportions; a foot, whose least beauty was its smallness, and a waist narrow—not the narrowness of tenuity or constraint;—but round, gradual, insensibly less in its compression:—and the person of Constance Vernon, in the bloom of her ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... — N. smallness &c adj.; littleness &c (small size) 193; tenuity; paucity; fewness &c (small number) 103; meanness, insignificance (unimportance) 643; mediocrity, moderation. small quantity, modicum, trace, hint, minimum; vanishing point; material point, atom, particle, molecule, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... manifests its presence in Encke's, and perhaps also in Biela's comet, by diminishing their eccentricity and shortening their period of revolution. Of this impending, ethereal, and cosmical matter, it may be supposed that it is in motion; that it gravitates, notwithstanding its original tenuity; that it is condensed in the vicinity of the great mass of the Sun; and, finally, that it may, for myriads of ages, have been augmented by the vapor emanating from the ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... had done before; but he did it only in his old fashion, using the affectionate familiarity of an old friend to a young maiden. He was a small, aged man, very thin and meagre in aspect—so meagre as to conceal in part, by the general tenuity of his aspect, the shortness of his stature. He was not even so tall as Nina, as Nina had discovered, much to her surprise. His hair was grizzled, rather than grey, and the beard on his thin, wiry, ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... were among their friends. Hawthorne, who visited them, describes Mrs. Browning as "a pale, small person, scarcely embodied at all, at any rate only substantial enough to put forth her slender fingers to be grasped, and to speak with a shrill yet sweet tenuity of voice. It is wonderful to see how small she is, how pale her cheek, how bright and dark her eyes. There is not such another figure in the world, and her black ringlets cluster down in her neck and make her face look whiter." She died in Florence on the 30th of June, 1861, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... faculties which man possesses, and which he looks upon as the great badge of his superiority, are in truth only different in degree and not in kind from those possessed by the lower animals. But the grounds on which this assertion is based are wonderful in their tenuity. Dogs are possessed of self-consciousness because they sometimes emit sounds in their sleep from which it is concluded that they dream. [Footnote: Descent of Man, vol. i. p. 62.] "Can we feel sure that an old dog, with an excellent memory, and some power of imagination, ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... wilfully, both bulk and mass to the head he had so keenly studied. What confirms me in the opinion that Mr. Fornum's cameo is the most veracious portrait we possess of Michelangelo in old age, is that its fragility of structure, the tenuity of life vigorous but infinitely refined, reappears in the weak drawing made by Francesco d'Olanda of Buonarroti in hat and mantle. This is a comparatively poor and dreamy sketch. Yet it has an air of veracity; ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... the temerarious excitement of his first essay was shot with fear. For he perceived, at first indistinctly, and then suddenly very clearly, that he was surrounded by FACES! that each roll and coil of the seeming cloud-stuff was a face. And such faces! Faces of thin shadow, faces of gaseous tenuity. Faces like those faces that glare with intolerable strangeness upon the sleeper in the evil hours of his dreams. Evil, greedy eyes that were full of a covetous curiosity, faces with knit brows and snarling, smiling lips; their vague hands clutched at Mr. Bessel as he passed, and the ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... had certainly not slipped it; nor had the other end of the long cord—oh, quite conveniently long!—disengaged its smaller loop from the hooked thumb that, with his fingers closed upon it, her husband kept out of sight. To have recognised, for all its tenuity, the play of this gathered lasso might inevitably be to wonder with what magic it was twisted, to what tension subjected, but could never be to doubt either of its adequacy to its office or of its perfect durability. ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... and who, when they are removed to any other place, sink at once into silence and stupidity. I have discovered, by a long series of observations, that invention and elocution suffer great impediments from dense and impure vapours, and that the tenuity of a defecated air at a proper distance from the surface of the earth, accelerates the fancy, and sets at liberty those intellectual powers which were before shackled by too strong attraction, and unable to expand themselves under the pressure of a gross atmosphere. I have found dulness ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... twilight ages is not a murderous weapon, but a divining rod; they accept the contest under every form; they train their tongues to every language; they are never angered, though they groan; the acrimony of the aggressor is not in them, but rather the softness and tenuity of light, which penetrates and warms and illumines. To their eyes Doubt is neither an impiety, nor a blasphemy, nor a crime, but a transition through which men return upon their steps in the Darkness, or advance ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... would be a more speedy commingling of the two. And so with the furnace. I have always maintained that every furnace should be lined with fire-brick, in order that it shall be so intensely hot when the air enters that the air shall instantly be heated to the same degree of tenuity as the hot gases themselves, and the two will then unite like a flash—and that is heat. And here is the solution of the Wye Williams mystery of failure when cold air was introduced upon the top of a fire to aid ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... the surface, and these presented a somewhat different structure. Where the tissue had turned red it was sterile, the constituent filaments, ordinarily colourless, and almost empty of solid matter, were filled with a highly-coloured protoplasm; they were of less tenuity, more irregularly thick, and instead of only rarely presenting partitions, and remaining continuous, as in other parts of the plant, were parcelled out into an infinity of straight or curved pieces, angular and of irregular form, especially ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... beginning at the head, working her way through breast and entrails while her chops dripped with gore, and ending with the tail, which gave some little trouble to masticate, on account of its length and tenuity. Altogether, decidedly good ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... to the brats of a Paisley manufacturer. I ought to say there was not an atom of scandal in her flirtation with the young military poet. The bard's {p.103} fate was not much better; after some service in India and elsewhere, he led a half-pay life about Edinburgh, and died there. There is a tenuity of thought in what he has written, but his verses are usually easy, and I like them because they recall my schoolboy days, when I thought him a Horace, and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... "Volcanic Islands.") One of the varieties of rock thus produced at Ascension, at first sight, singularly resembles a fine-grained gneiss; it consists of quite straight and parallel zones of excessive tenuity, of more or less coloured crystallised feldspar, of distinct crystals of quartz, diopside, and oxide of iron. These considerations, notwithstanding the experiments made by Mr. Fox, showing the influence of electrical currents ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... of, and a vision of which you were not so sure. And—yes—it was more than that; it was as if his genius had suffered incarnation, and its flame were intenser for having passed through flesh and blood. It was the incorruptible spirit that cried aloud; but there was no shrill tenuity in its cry. The thrill it gave her was unlike the shock that she remembered receiving from the poem of his youth, the shiver they had all felt, as at the passing by of the supersensual. Her husband's genius commanded all the splendours, all the tumultuous energies of sense. His verse ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... what were the conclusions regarding the nature of comets drawn by astronomers from the considerable amount of novel experience accumulated during the first half of this century? The first and best assured was that the matter composing them is in a state of extreme tenuity. Numerous and trustworthy observations showed that the feeblest rays of light might traverse some hundreds of thousands of miles of their substance, even where it was apparently most condensed, without being perceptibly weakened. Nay, instances were recorded in ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... to be founded upon the extreme tenuity of the particles of fine dust, so minutely divided as ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
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