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Hardness   Listen
noun
Hardness  n.  
1.
The quality or state of being hard, literally or figuratively. "The habit of authority also had given his manners some peremptory hardness."
2.
(Min.) The cohesion of the particles on the surface of a body, determined by its capacity to scratch another, or be itself scratched; measured among minerals on a scale of which diamond and talc form the extremes.
3.
(Chem.) The peculiar quality exhibited by water which has mineral salts dissolved in it. Such water forms an insoluble compound with soap, and is hence unfit for washing purposes. Note: This quality is caused by the presence of calcium carbonate, causing temporary hardness which can be removed by boiling, or by calcium sulphate, causing permanent hardness which can not be so removed, but may be improved by the addition of sodium carbonate.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hardness" Quotes from Famous Books



... contain a considerable amount of saline matter. Those waters which abound in salts of iron are called chalybeate or ferruginous. Those containing salt are termed saline. Those in which contain sulphur are termed sulphurous. Water derives the quality of hardness from the salts of lime—chiefly the sulphates—which it contains. Hard water, being an imperfect solvent, is unsuitable for washing purposes. There are two varieties of hardness, one of which is temporary, being due to the presence of carbonic acid ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... polished age, which seems to have preceded the invention of alphabetical writing, a great number of these obelisks had been erected, in the cities of Thebes and Heliopolis, by the ancient sovereigns of Egypt, in a just confidence that the simplicity of their form, and the hardness of their substance, would resist the injuries of time and violence. [43] Several of these extraordinary columns had been transported to Rome by Augustus and his successors, as the most durable monuments of their power and victory; [44] but there remained one obelisk, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... dreamy melancholy. He walked and walked! And he rubbed his hands enough to rub the skin off. And then, if I met him unexpectedly as he came to the angle of a path, I saw his face beaming. His eyes, instead of the hardness of a turquoise, had that velvety softness of the blue periwinkle, which had so much struck me on the occasion of my first visit, by reason of the astonishing contrast in the two different looks; the look of a happy man, and the look of an unhappy man. Two or three times at such a moment he had taken ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac

... face flushed. 'I cannot understand, John; it is absurd to say that you cannot sleep on a feather-bed. Mr. Hare told me you complained of insomnia, and there is no surer way of losing your health. It is owing to the hardness of those college mattresses, whereas in ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... I stay?" he asked Bela, smiling with a peculiar hardness. "If you don't want me, all right. But it must come ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... fortune, though it has cursed thee with the temptation of prosperity, not yet rooted from thy mind its native benevolence? I return in part thy liberal contribution; this," taking one guinea, "doubles my expectations; I will not, by making thy charity distress thee, accelerate the fatal hour of hardness and degeneracy." ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... treated of these things in the pulpit. The dispute was warmly carried on even in the fifteenth century; some proved that Aristotle taught the doctrine of an immortal soul; others complained of the hardness of men's hearts, who would not believe that there was a soul at all, till they saw it sitting down on a chair before them; Filelfo, in his funeral oration on Francesco Sforza, brings forward a long list of opinions ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... to endure hardness after you were nine. You learnt out of Mrs. Markham's "History of England," and you were not allowed to read the conversations between Richard and Mary and Mrs. Markham because they made history too amusing and too easy to remember. ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... began to analyse the strangeness of it and found it was not, after all, so strange; at least it was not a thing to be distressed about, nor bearing conviction of unnatural qualities, of hardness, of unkindness. There was a line she knew that came in ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... sex, God loves it. A damsel of sixteen, who is not weighed down by armour and weapons, even though she be bred to endure hardness, is not that a matter beyond nature? The enemy flees before her. Many ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... white leather, which had been soaked in water, and stuffed full of feathers by means of a stick till it became perfectly hard. It was afterwards covered with four coats of fine white paint to increase its hardness. ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... no longer blistered. On the other hand, there were disadvantages. The skirt of the tent used to get very wet through the snow thawing on it in the midday sun, and froze solid when packed up; the floor-cloths and sleeping-bags, also, never had a chance of drying and set to the same icy hardness. When we had mounted higher I intended to return ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... recede irregularly by weathering and by the coming in of other streams. The channel would go on deepening, and the outer walls would again recede. If the rocks were of different material and degrees of hardness, the forms would be carved in the fantastic and architectural manner we find them here. The Colorado flows through the tortuous inner chasm, and where we see it, it is 6000 feet below the surface where ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... in a spirit of lawlessness, wild courage, disregard of the gods. We must suppose it to have been for the sake of preventing association with women from softening his disposition that, while Siegmund was a child, Wotan, sacrificing to the hardness of fibre it was his object to produce, permitted the catastrophe which deprived the boy of mother and sister. Returning home from a day's wild chase,—hunters and hunted alike human,—father and son found their dwelling ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... the cleaning them is so managed as to become as great a nuisance as the foulness of the water; for the black mud that is taken from the bottom is suffered to lie upon the banks, that is, in the middle of the street, till it has acquired a sufficient degree of hardness to be made the lading of a boat, and carried away. As this mud consists chiefly of human ordure, which is regularly thrown into the canals every morning, there not being a necessary-house in the whole town, it poisons the air while it is drying, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... souls are the most exposed to injuries and wrongs; their virtues being to them a kind of "sanctified and holy traitors," and the heaven within them serving to disable them from winning the prizes of earth: whereas the very unscrupulousness of the bad, their hardness of heart and unbashfulness of front build or open for them the palaces of wealth and splendour and greatness; their want of principle seems to strengthen their hands; they rise the higher, that they care not ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... of power, and rapid gain of gold, The hardness by long habitude produced, The dangerous life in which he had grown old, The mercy he had granted oft abused, The sights he was accustom'd to behold, The wild seas, and wild men with whom he ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... her—as he had really done, she added. She wondered in her heart whether other men would have done the same in his place, or whether this power of coldly disregarding her presence when he was occupied with a serious matter were not due to a real and unconquerable hardness in his nature. ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... engaged in the hard work of pioneering are in some way feeling the strain upon their strength." I am very thankful for the roughing I had in Canada, and for whatever trials I have had in China, which have enabled me in any way to "endure hardness as a good soldier ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe

... retained her sulking-fit, In her hand the shard. Flitting faces took the hue Of that washed bulletin-board in view, And seemed to bear the public grief As private, and uncertain of relief; Yea, many an earnest heart was won, As broodingly he plodded on, To find in himself some bitter thing, Some hardness in his lot as harrowing ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville

... after this artist's fashion, is a superb collection of carefully studied oriental designs. With these may be classed the illustrations to Aytoun's "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," by Sir Noel Paton, which have the same finished qualities of composition and the same academic hardness. Several good editions of the "Pilgrim's Progress" have appeared,—notably those of C. H. Bennett, J. D. Watson, and G. H. Thomas. Other books are Millais's "Parables of our Lord," Leighton's "Romola," Walker's "Philip" and "Denis ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... back before she wus born; and that is goin' pretty fur back. You see, her father and mother had had some difficulty: and he wus took down with billious colic voyolent four weeks before Dorlesky wus born; and some think it wus the hardness between 'em, and some think it wus the gripin' of the colic at the time he made his will; anyway, he willed Dorlesky away, boy or girl, whichever it wuz, to his brother ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... too great, they brown on the outside before they are done throughout. In cooking fruit by any method, pains should be taken to cook together such as are of the same variety, size, and degree of hardness; if it is to be cut in pieces, care should be taken to have the ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... rapidly cooled cast-iron, i.e. cast in iron moulds, and thus found to acquire a hardness which renders them of nearly equal efficiency with steel shot for penetrating iron plates, yet produced at about one-quarter the price. They invariably break up on passing through the plates, and their fragments are very destructive on crowded decks; ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... mental ledger of his life's affairs, for it must not be supposed that Mr Webster's character was changed by the events which followed the rescue of his child from the sea. True, he had been surprised out of his habitual hardness for a short time, but he soon relapsed, if not quite back to the old position, at least so near to it that ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... whole moral law, and of the righteousness of the New Testament, and that in a day in which the principles of civil and religious liberty are so fully acknowledged in many of the nations of Christendom, may well excite both indignation and sorrow. And we cannot but regard it as such proof of hardness of heart, and perverted understanding, that we think it can be attributed to nothing short of the deceivableness of Satan working upon the ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... 18 But, behold, Laman and Lemuel would not hearken unto my words; and being grieved because of the hardness of their hearts I cried ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... influences of bold and independent thought which were beginning to stir at Oxford; influences which were at first represented by such men as Davison, Copleston, and, above all, Whately; influences which repelled Keble by what he saw of hardness, shallowness, and arrogance, and still more of self-sufficiency and intellectual display and conceit in the prevailing tone of speculation, but which nevertheless powerfully affected him, and of which he showed the traces to the last Sir John Coleridge is ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... ready to proclaim him a god on the occasion of every great miracle, a readiness that gave great scandal and caused many Jews to turn away from Jesus. It was not enough that he should repudiate this godhead; and the hardness of heart and narrowness of soul that he encountered among his own people afflicted Jesus as much as did the incontinency of the Gentiles, whom he sometimes met, bearing images in procession, going towards ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... Time was bringing changes; Zenie had once been humble. Her voice rang with an accusing hardness. "I thought you'd shut the door on that ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... blame for that," Matt said. "But as for his hardness, that probably comes from his having had to make such a hard fight for what he wants to be in life. That hardens people, and brutalizes them, but somehow we mostly admire them and applaud them for their success against odds. If we had a true civilization a man wouldn't have to fight for the chance ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... greatly interested in Scotland, he always called himself an Englishman. The characteristics of both countries were clearly expressed in both his mind and character. The Scotch side of him was intellectual, practical, with, perhaps, a suggestion of hardness; but to counteract this, he had inherited the gentleness and the softer elements which appertain to the Southern peoples. He was only just three and twenty; he had taken a good degree at Oxford, and then set himself ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking

... knowledge gained by dissection of the living. This cruel and nefarious practice was followed "so that the investigators could study the particular organs during life in regard to position, colour, form, size, disposition, hardness, softness, smoothness, and superficial extent, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... You feel life. It isn't coloured for you by others. You get its form, its hardness or softness, its fragrance or the reverse, but you fix your own colour. That's why you'd be such a ripping critic. Will you let me read some of ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... found that what I had imagined to be wood was in reality leather, though age had dried it into an extreme hardness. It was a large funnel, and might hold a quart when full. The brass rim encircled the wide end, but the narrow was also ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... not yet reached that level of morality which makes that condition universally practicable. That wisest of teachers, Jesus of Nazara, expressly recognised this distinction when he told the Jews of his own day that their lack of ethical enthusiasm, "their hardness of heart," as he accurately expressed it, the emptiness of their souls of everything save narrow nationalism and religious formalism—an emptiness by no means peculiar to them—was the sole reason which justified a departure from Nature's great ideal. "In ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... retention which was one of his foibles, making jesting allusions to the secret he had just heard. The brow of the Doctor darkened as this pleasantry went on, and, at last, he angrily accused Lord Byron of hardness of heart. "I never," said he, "met with a person so unfeeling." This sally, though the poet had evidently brought it upon himself, annoyed him most deeply. "Call me cold-hearted—me insensible!" he exclaimed, with manifest emotion—"as well might you say that glass ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... the letter, considering who wrote it," observed Mr Crossley, laying it down after a fourth perusal. "You see he makes no whining or discontented reference to the hardness of their luck, which young scapegraces are so fond of doing; nor does he make effusive professions of regret or repentance, which hypocrites are so prone to do. I think it bears the stamp of being genuine on the face of it. At least ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... her sister-in-law, startled by the hardness in her voice. She had meant to spare Anne's pride the worst blow, but something in her question stirred the fire that slept ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... sell them or to raise money upon them. Now that I had removed myself from the glamour of her presence, I began to suspect that the young lady, after all, although undoubtedly possessing the brilliancy of her jewels, retained also something of their hardness. There had been no expression of sympathy for the discarded friend; it was too evident, recalling what had latterly passed between us, that the young woman's sole desire, and a perfectly natural desire, was to recover her missing treasure. There was something behind all ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... than hardness and harshness in Girard. There was a deep under-current of humanity in him. When the yellow fever broke out in Philadelphia, in 1793, his better nature showed itself. The people were smitten to death by thousands. Nurses could not be found to attend the patients in the hospital. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... Clara. There was about him an indefinable air of princely prosperity. When she turned to look at him she noticed for the first time how much his person had also changed. Like Steve Hunter he was beginning to grow fat. The lean hardness of his cheeks had gone, his jaws seemed heavier, even his hands had changed their color. He wore a diamond ring on the left hand and it glistened in the sunlight. "Things have changed," he declared, still pointing ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... wavered and darkened; then she recovered a torturing acuteness of vision. Every detail of her surroundings pressed upon her: the tick of the clock, the slant of sunlight on the wall, the hardness of the chair-arms that she grasped, were a ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... up!" The command rang with a metallic hardness in the rock-walled coulee, and Bat's hands flew upward. From the rear Endicott saw that the man who barred the way was squat, bow-legged, and bearded, and that he held a gun in either hand. For one sickening instant he thought of Alice in the power of this man, and reckless of consequences, ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx

... I'll hear no more! 'Tis my affection, and not reason, speaks: Then, Musgrave, turn the hardness of thy heart, And now at least ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... and traditionary reluctance, and those few natural tears which are wiped so soon, to leave home and see the world. But the mother! In ordinary circumstances it would have been the duty of the historian to set forth the hardness of Mrs. Warrender's case, deprived at once, by her husband's death, not only of her companion and protector, but of her home and position as head of an important house. Such a case is no doubt often a hard one. It adds a hundred little humiliations to grief, and makes bereavement downfall, the ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... in view of accustoming myself to endure hardness, and of economising in order to be able more largely to assist those amongst whom I spent a good deal of time labouring in the Gospel, I soon found that I could live upon very much less than I had previously thought possible. Butter, ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor

... but before I could make bread I must grind the grains into flour. I spent many a day to find out a Stone to cut hollow and make fit for a mortar, and could find none; nor were the rocks of the island of hardness sufficient. So I gave it over and rounded a great block of hard wood and, with the help of fire and great labour, made a hollow in it. I made a great heavy pestle of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... constitution. Now Sister Petronille differed from all others, because she expelled matter such as is left by a deer, and these are the hardest substances that any gizzard produces, as you must know, if you have ever put your foot upon them in the forest glade, and from their hardness they are called bullets in the language of forestry. This peculiarity of Sister Petronille's was not unnatural, since long fasts kept her temperament at a permanent heat. According to the old sisters, her nature was so burning, that ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... philosophers be able to do so? We are informed of an epistle of his, in these words: "Anacharsis to Hanno, greeting. My clothing is the same as that with which the Scythians cover themselves; the hardness of my feet supplies the want of shoes; the ground is my bed, hunger my sauce, my food milk, cheese, and flesh. So you may come to me as to a man in want of nothing. But as to those presents you take so much pleasure in, you may dispose of them to your ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... redoubtable Bill Broome, and that so human a word as "Brother" could be applied to the old pirate had never entered his head. This rawboned woman was quite the equal of her brother, and her life had brought out that hardness and cruelty that is latent only too often in the ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt

... touching, in spite of its being ludicrous, the way in which the poor fellow poured forth his joy like a very child,—which he was in everything except years; and Harold could not help remembering, and recalling to Disco's memory, Yoosoof's observations touching the hardness of negroes' hearts, and their want of natural affection, on the morning when his dhow was captured by the boat of ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... the omen meant, then! And the grey-haired father, of whom he had thought with a sort of hardness a few hours ago, as certain to live to be a thorn in his side was perhaps even then struggling with that watery death! This was the first thought that flashed through Adam's conscience, before he had time to seize the coat and drag out the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... said these words unto his son who resembled a fire wrapped in smoke.[1104] Instructed by what he said, I also, O son, shall again expound to thee that certain knowledge (which dispels ignorance). The properties possessed by earth are immobility, weight, hardness, productiveness, scent, density, capacity to absorb scents of all kinds, cohesion, habitableness (in respect of vegetables and animals), and that attribute of the mind which is called patience of the capacity to bear. The properties of water are coolness, taste, moisture, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... unfortunate for our friend, for the companionship of the St. Louis accession was a positive injury. He resembled the pictures of Byron and was of a viciously despondent turn of mind. He hated life and life's duties. Our friend fell into the toils. Together they bemoaned the hardness of ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... vainly longed for in his poverty could be his for the asking or even without the asking now; and that was the reason he did not feel they were worth having. He had no use in his heart for little brothers and sisters of the rich, and in his experienced hardness he was sometimes unjust to kindly people. But he had liked the novels of Aline West and Basil Norman before he met the two popular Canadian authors on shipboard; and learning that they planned to write a "Scotch book," it had occurred to him that they might all three go about sight-seeing ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... the inhabitants. There are four storeys in all, covered by the general exterior walls. (Fig. 39.) The walls of the dome are very thick; at the base they measure from sixty to eighty centimetres. The clay in drying attains the hardness of brick, and the whole is very coherent. The sentinels of herds of wild cattle choose these tumuli as observatories and do not break them down. The walls of this exterior enceinte are hollowed ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... that, you think; but if you will take the trouble to analyse and trace out into its logical elements what has been done by the mind, you will be greatly surprised. In the first place you have performed the operation of induction. You found that, in two experiences, hardness and greenness in apples went together with sourness. It was so in the first case, and it was confirmed by the second. True, it is a very small basis, but still it is enough to make an induction from; you generalise the facts, and you expect to find sourness in apples where you get ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... both, looked on with leisurely indifference, with anxious expectation, or with rapturous delight, whilst below them were passing the direct sufferings of humanity, and not seldom its dying pangs, it was impossible to expect a result different from that which did in fact take place,— universal hardness of heart, obdurate depravity, and a twofold degradation of human nature, which acted simultaneously upon the two pillars of morality, (which are otherwise not often assailed together,) of natural sensibility in the first place, and, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... villains—no, not one of them! Gnaw, little Peter, gnaw hard and fast; and care not if thee wounds me with thee teeth; for, truly, I will forgive thee, even if thee bites me to the bone. Faster, Peter, faster! Does thee boggle at the skin, because of its hardness? Truly, I have seen thee a hungered, Peter, when thee would have cracked it like a marrow-bone! Fast, Peter, fast; and thee shall see ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... calls especially upon hardened and impenitent sinners to do penance. Rom. II, 4 sq.: "Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness, and patience, and long suffering? Knowest thou not that the benignity of God leadeth thee to penance? But according to thy hardness and impenitent heart, thou treasurest up to thyself wrath, against the day of wrath, and revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to every man ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... Torsion. Flexure. Tenacity. The Most Tenacious Metal. Ductility. Malleability. Hardness. Alloys. Resistance. Persistence. Conductivity. Equalization. Reciprocity. Molecular Forces. Attraction. Cohesion. Adhesion. Affinity. Porosity. Compressibility. Elasticity. Inertia. Momentum. Weight. Centripetal Force. Centrifugal Force. Capillary Attraction. The Sap of Trees. Sound. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... large measure of the natural process, the rigid instincts of mere self-preservation, the temptation to smugness and ease, the cold conclusions of the understanding when satisfied with explanations from the physical world, the hardness of the heart—these and many other enemies fight for supremacy, and the soul is often torn in the struggle. The struggle continues for a great length of time; but the history of the world testifies to an innumerable host of ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones

... neither coldness nor hardness in the way Aunt Harriet and Aunt Frances treated Elizabeth Ann. They had really given themselves up to the new responsibility, especially Aunt Frances, who was very conscientious about everything. As soon as the ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... but notice how pale and delicate she really was. Propped up on her pillows with her golden hair falling around her shoulders, one would not have guessed her to be more than fourteen years old, instead of eighteen. Seeing her thus after her day of sufferings, I pardoned all her bad humor and hardness of heart toward Paula; and I had a great desire to take her in my arms but I did not dare do such a thing—fearing she would refuse ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte

... it to me as a definite request?"—oh how she tried to divest this of all sound of the hardness of bargaining! That ought to have been easy enough, for what was she arranging to get? Before he could answer she had continued: "To be perfectly fair I should tell you I recognise at Cocker's certain strong attractions. All you people come. ...
— In the Cage • Henry James

... himself as one of those puny creatures whose so-called kind hearts lead them into follies, into crimes. Like many young men of virtuous life and ascetic habit, Uniacke was disposed to worship that which was uncompromising in human nature, the slight hardness which sometimes lurks, like a kernel, in the saint. But he was emotional. He was full of pity. He desired to bandage the wounded world, to hush its cries of pain, to rock it to rest, even though he believed that suffering was its desert. And to the individual, ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens

... made by his brusque or haughty manner to his inferiors were to a certain extent healed by the gentleness and the good heart of his daughter. And a kind of glory was reflected on him by her unreasoning devotion to him. She suffered under his hardness or his self-will, but she adored him all the time; nor was her ingenuity ever at a loss for excuses for him. He always treated her carelessly, sometimes contemptuously; but he would not have known how to get through life without ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... so differently from the cut-and-dried beginning which he had scornfully expected, that a flash of vivid amazement swept the hardness from ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson

... ash off her cigarette, a queer impulse came and went. For a moment she wanted to cry; to drop hardness and lightness and pretence, and cry like a child and say "Mother, comfort me. Don't go on hurting me. I love Barry. Be kind to me, oh be ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... heard Pachmann do, but when he went on to play Mozart I heard another only less beautiful world of sound rise softly about me. There was the "glittering peace" undimmed, and there was the nervous spring, the diamond hardness, as well as the glowing light and ardent sweetness. Yet another manner of playing, not less appropriate to its subject, brought before me the bubbling flow, the romantic moonlight, of Weber; this music ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons

... on adding an equal bulk of water, the dissolved nitrate for the most part is precipitated, at the same time that the undissolved but disintegrated and swollen product undergoes further changes in the direction of increase of hardness and density. The product being now collected on a filter, freed from acetone by washing with water and dried, is a hard and dense powder the fineness of which varies according to the attendant conditions of treatment. With the main product in certain ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross

... resembling chalybite in general appearance. They are usually pyramidal in habit, often having the form of double six-sided pyramids with the triangular faces deeply striated parallel to their shorter edges. Hardness 4.5-5; specific gravity 3.18-3.24. The mineral, named after the zoologist and mineralogist J.G. Children (1777-1852), secretary of the Royal Society, was detected in 1823 on specimens obtained some years previously during the cutting of a canal near Tavistock in Devonshire. It has also been ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... paused perceptibly, then went on with the same gentle stroke. He noticed her face harden, but it was with the hardness of resolution, for still the soft color was in her cheeks and she was ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... that, when the good old doctor got his book written, he felt considerably relieved from Bumpsterhausen's blue follicles, and a few things infinitely worse; to wit, from pride and vain-glory, and from blindness and hardness of heart; which are the true causes of Bumpsterhausen's blue follicles, and of a good many other ugly things besides. Whereon the foul flood-water in his brains ran down, and cleared to a fine coffee colour, such as fish like to rise in, till very fine ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley

... how gentle and mild she looked; there was such a beautiful softness about her and he had had hardness enough. He liked her ringlets: they were a novelty; and there hung around her, in the interior of the carriage, a perfume that was unusual to his sense and that impressed him as a reminder of her high social position. But Ambrose reasoned that if a daughter of his ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... and at the same time filled with a strange fear by the cold coquetry with which this magnificent woman draped her charms in her furs of dark sable; by the severity and hardness which lay in this cold marble-like face. Again I took my pen in hand, and ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

... him, "that I do what you see, and all this is nothing to what I would willingly suffer for you. But," added he, "you have cost Christ Jesus a much dearer price. Will neither his passion, his death, nor all his blood, suffice to soften the hardness of your heart?" After this, addressing himself to our blessed Saviour, "O Lord," said he, "be pleased to look on thy own adorable blood, and not on that of so vile a sinner as myself." The gentleman, amazed and confounded, both at once, at such an excess ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... the track. Your success in killing depends on the number of people you have to pursue and relieve one another in going first (which is the fatiguing part of snow- shoeing), and on the depth and hardness of the snow, for when the snow is hard and has a crust, the moose cannot get on, as it cuts his legs, and then he stops to make battle. But when the snow is soft, though it be above his belly, he will go on three, four or five days, for then ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... opened the huge pasty, but, where he expected to find ham, he found such hardness that he could not thrust in his knife. After trying several times, it occurred to him that he had been deceived; and, indeed, he found 'twas a wooden shoe such as is worn in Gascony. It had a burnt stick for knuckle, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... flood of gold from the seemingly exhaustless gulch caused three or four more little camps or towns to spring up; but Virginia City now took the palm for frontier reputation in hardness. Ten millions in "dust" was washed out in one year. Every one had gold, sacks and cans of it. The wild license of the place was unspeakably vitiating. Fights with weapons were incessant. Rude dance halls and saloons ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough

... Specimens of a brilliant sky-blue colour, such as those found formerly in Wheal Haniblyn, near Bridestowe in Devonshire, and in Sardinia, are specially attractive in appearance; the colour is here due to the presence of the copper mineral chrysocolla. The hardness is 3, and the specific gravity 1.9. Chemically, it is a hydrous aluminium silicate, Al2SiO5.5H2O. Allophane is always of secondary origin, resulting from the decomposition of various aluminous silicates, such as felspar. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... book, and proceeded to argue his point by means of texts selected skilfully here and there, from Genesis to Revelation. He referred to the fact that it was not till after the Deluge men were allowed, "for the hardness of their hearts," as he maintained, to eat meat. But in the beginning it was not so; only herbs were given to man, at first, for food. He quoted the Psalmist (Psalm civ. 14) to show that man's food came from the earth, and was the green herb; and contended that the reason ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... wrought, was such as I had never seen before. At the base it was of a full green, the colour of emerald without, of course, its gleam. It was not by any means dull, however, either in colour or substance, and was of infinite hardness and fineness of texture. The surface was almost that of a jewel. The colour grew lighter as it rose, with gradation so fine as to be imperceptible, changing to a fine yellow almost of the colour ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... and blasphemy may rudely but effectually bring to their senses those who have mistaken the hardness of their hearts for loyalty, and their easy default for success. But practical wisdom belongs only to those who proceed unwaveringly out of the past and into the future, correcting mistakes when they may, conserving the good already ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... Freunden, p. 281.] Small promotion, in comparison with hope, thought the poor Lieutenant; but had to rest satisfied with it; and struggle to understand that perhaps he was fit for nothing bigger, and that he must exert himself to do this small thing well. Hardness of heart in high places! Friedrich, one is glad to see, had not forgotten the poor fellow, could he have done better with him. Some ten years hence, quite incidentally, there came to Keith, one morning, a fine purse of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the trusts; they do not seem to care to be tyrannous, for each having the entire market for what it produces, its prosperity is assured and there is none of the strife and competition which, as I can imagine, might breed hardness and cruelty. Moreover, we should not let them be tyrannous. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... the court's complacent misinterpretation ere he saw its smile; the facile theory that brooding so much over her fascinating picture had unhinged his brain. From that moment a hardness came over his heart. He shut his lips grimly. What was the use of talking? Whatever he said would be discredited on this impish theory. And, even without it, how incredible his story, how irrelevant to the charge of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... level voice, with a ring of hardness in it, for which I was to learn the true reason later. At the time it seemed to me due to resentment at having to speak of the man she had loved to me, whom she disliked, and ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... if not impossible, to discuss such intimate relationships. And as Claire had pointed out, the very openness of Peyton's life would make him exceptionally far to reach; he was particularly youthful in his hardness, his confidence in his acts and friends and beliefs; yet all that couldn't help but be ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... always with hardness and unforgiveness, for he realized now, as he had not at the time he ran away from home, what the thousands of acres, the great herd of sleek cattle, meant—the fortune that ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... common in those deep eyes; and the plain look vanished before a closer observation, which also discovered, in the forehead and the lines of the mouth, traces of sorrow or other suffering. There was an expression, too, in the whole face, of fixedness of purpose, without any hardness of determination. Her countenance altogether seemed the index to an interesting mental history. Signs of mental trouble were always an attraction to him; in this case so great, that he overcame his shyness, ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald

... divert you from your way; but this is to no man, but to him that will read him, and read him with attentive, studious painfulness; which constant desire whosoever hath in him, hath already passed half the hardness of the way, and therefore is beholden to the philosopher but for the other half. Nay, truly, learned men have learnedly thought, that where once reason hath so much over-mastered passion, as that the mind hath a free desire to do well, the inward light each mind hath in itself is as good as ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... to blame, stimulating false mercy by punishment disproportioned to the offence. But many a judicious master has seen cause to suspect his own lenity as more mischievously operative even than the law's hardness, and as an effeminate surrender to luxurious sensibilities. Those have not been the severest masters whose names are attached to fatal prosecutions: on the contrary, three out of four have been persons who looked forward to general consequences—having, therefore, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... different places brought to school, note fineness and colours, examine with a lens and note resemblance to pieces of broken stone. Draw a magnet through the sand and note black particles adhering, showing presence of iron in some form. Show the hardness by rubbing against the surface of a piece of glass. Sand is used for mortar, concrete, and glass. The chief sand-forming rocks are quartz and granite. Show pupils how to recognize these. Examine a sample of sand under ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education

... far aff ane 'at cud ca' a bonny cratur like that a brute!' returned David, nowise pleased to discover such hardness in one whom he would gladly treat like a child of his own. It was a great disappointment to him to see the lad getting farther away from the possibility of being helped by him. 'What 'ud yer father say to see ye illuse ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... debauchery—but knew not fear, and had no desire of spite in their hearts. Men hard to manage, but easy to inspire; voiceless men—but men enough to scorn in their hearts the sentimental voices that bewailed the hardness of their fate. It was a fate unique and their own; the capacity to bear it appeared to them the privilege of the chosen! Their generation lived inarticulate and, indispensable, without knowing the sweetness of affections or the refuge of a home—and died free from ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... hardness about pretty Annie, whether bred of that cynicism in the air of which May had complained, whether it was an integral part of Annie, or whether, as in the case of some valuable kinds of timber, it ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... levy them. Those officers, it is pretended, though in general, perhaps, they do their duty fully as well as those of the customs; yet, as that duty obliges them to be frequently very troublesome to some of their neighbours, commonly contract a certain hardness of character, which the others frequently have not. This observation, however, may very probably be the mere suggestion of fraudulent dealers, whose smuggling is either prevented or detected by ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... will there be an end of thee here; take heed therefore how it will be with thee in another world. To-day man is, and to-morrow he will be seen no more. And being removed out of sight, quickly also he is out of mind. O the dulness and hardness of man's heart, which thinketh only of the present, and looketh not forward to the future. Thou oughtest in every deed and thought so to order thyself, as if thou wert to die this day. If thou hadst a good conscience thou wouldst not greatly fear death. It were better for thee to watch ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis

... elapsed the smaller water supply had a manifestly lesser erosive power. In the sides of the mountain Amhan, already mentioned, good specimens of these water-worn orifices still exist, and are inhabited by swarms of bees, whose hives are quite protected from robbers by the hardness of the basaltic rocks. The points on which the streams of water fell are hollowed by its action, and the space around which the water splashed is covered by calcareous tufa, deposited there by the evaporation ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... son! the words that have grieved thee came not from my heart, but were spoken in the haste of wrath. Many years hast thou angered me by thy coldness, hardness and obstinacy; to-day thou hast wounded me again in my most sacred feelings; this hurried me into an excess of wrath. But now all is right between us. Our natures are so diverse that our innermost feelings will never be one, but at least we can act in concert for the future, and show ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... is true that tender and delicate souls are found enveloped in a body of metallic hardness, at the same time there are souls of bronze enveloped in bodies so supple and capricious that their grace attracts the friendship of others, and their beauty calls for a caress. But if you flatter the exterior man with your hand, the Homo duplex, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac

... lacking in her little act of helpfulness. It had been performed with the unsmiling perfunctoriness of the nurse; an act of duty, not of tenderness. As she blew out the match, which she did with an odd air of deliberation, her face wore the same expression of hardness it had done on that memorable day when she had refused him her sympathy over the ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... Something told him that she was cold all through, a society woman without a flaw in her armour. He could not make her seem to listen patiently while he explained that only one company was now shooting on the lot, but that big things were expected to be on in another week or so. A certain skeptic hardness was in her gaze as he ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... that for this conventional scorn of a weakness rather than a sin, Scott sorrowed sincerely later in life, and that in sketching the physical cowardice of Connochar in The Fair Maid of Perth, he deliberately made an attempt to atone for this hardness towards his brother by showing how frequently the foundation of cowardice may be laid in perfectly involuntary physical temperament, and pointing out with what noble elements of disposition it may be combined. But till reflection on many forms of human character ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... may'st guess, Thou then wilt be secure of the success; Yet be not always on affairs intent, But let thy thoughts be easy, and unbent: When our minds' eyes are disengaged and free, They clearer, farther, and distinctly see; They quicken sloth, perplexities untie, Make roughness smooth, and hardness mollify; And though our hands from labour are released, Yet our minds find (even when we sleep) no rest. Search not to find how other men offend, But by that glass thy own offences mend; 220 Still seek to learn, yet care not much from whom, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... general doctrines. He was a great temperance man, but recommended a little wine to Timothy for the stomach's sake. And Moses, too, the great founder of the Jewish polity, permitted polygamy because of the hardness of men's hearts. So the fathers of the Constitution preferred a constitution with slavery to no constitution at all. Had each of those illustrious men persisted in his own views, we should have had only an autonomy of States instead ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord

... banks of the Amazon and in the northern part of Brazil this is not quite the case. Some Brazilian woods, such as the iron-tree (pao-ferro), whose name fitly indicates its character, are of extraordinary hardness. The Brazilian forest, although not specially rich in woods for building and naval purposes, is nevertheless most abundant in lactiferous, oliferous, fibrous, medicinal, resinous, and industrial plants—such ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... certain light in her eyes which reminded him of how she looked when, having repented of her momentary hardness towards him, she was ministering to his ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... is poor should be, on that ground alone, worthy of pity and sympathy. But the hardness and stupidity, and the ill-temper, all combined and clearly shown in her letters, repelled her tutor. Iris, who drew imaginary portraits of her pupils, pictured the girl as plain to look upon, with a dull eye, a leathery, pallid cheek, a forehead ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant

... him go without—a backward look. Would I find in the great land of America such another gallant gentleman to care for the fate of the small Pierre and Nannette and me? What did I know of this cruel Uncle? Nothing but his hardness of heart. I dreaded the sight of him that I should find upon the arrival of the ship at the dock, which would be an answer to the letter I had sent to him to inform him of my coming, and I spent my long night in hate ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... opened to me a large sphere of new thought. In the investigation, I had learned, more distinctly than before, that the preceptive code of the Law was an essentially imperfect and temporary system, given "for the hardness of men's hearts." I was thus prepared to enter into the Lectures on Prophecy, by another Oriel Fellow,—Mr. Davison,—in which he traces the successive improvements and developments of religious doctrine, from the patriarchal ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... listened to my discourses upon more modern and more subtle rebels, I am tempted to conclude that what womanly women really admire in a man is a certain energy of action, a certain drastic force, brilliance and hardness, which is the very opposite of the nervous sensitiveness and receptive weakness which is the characteristic of most of us men of letters. I am tempted to go so far as to maintain that a profound atavistic instinct in normal women makes them really contemptuous in their hearts of any purely aesthetic ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... Say not that this is revenge, call it rather the soft resentment of a suffering people, who, having no object in view but the good of all, have staked their own all upon a seemingly doubtful event. Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... indispensable as a pair of boots would be in England. I scarcely ever see any one on horseback: people never seem to ride, to my great regret. I am assured that it will be much too hot to do so in the summer evenings, and that the hardness of the roads prevents riding from being an agreeable mode of exercise. Every village can furnish sundry carrioles for hire, queer-looking little conveyances, like a minute section of a tilt-cart mounted on two crazy wheels and drawn by a rat of a pony. Ponies are a great institution here, and are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... Tournoire will not refuse me his guidance," she said, in a voice that seemed forced to an unwonted hardness. ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens

... accusers, all ecclesiastics, sat upon the right hand of the judges; they wore their albs and stoles. Father Lactantius was distinguishable among them by his simple Capuchin habit, his tonsure, and the extreme hardness of his features. In a side gallery sat the Bishop of Poitiers, hidden from view; other galleries were filled with veiled women. Below the bench of judges a group of men and women, the dregs of the populace, stood behind six young Ursuline nuns, who seemed full of disgust at their ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... lantern, in order that they might see how to divide the bread. It assisted them also to select places on which to stretch themselves round the room, and, in spite of the hardness of their couches, in a short time ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... and strikes the eyes of all who do not keep them shut." I cannot resist the temptation of illustrating the bishop's belief in the wonderful powers of his remedy, by a few sentences from different parts of his essay. "The hardness of stubbed vulgar constitutions renders them insensible of a thousand things that fret and gall those delicate people, who, as if their skin was peeled off, feel to the quick everything that touches them. The tender nerves and ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... it keeps itself within the limits of the law and only proclaims duty, must have hidden, in its very hardness, a sweet kernel of promise. For what God commands God enables us ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... the girl, with a curious hardness in her inflection; but her face softened suddenly. "Larry, while you only talked we didn't mind; but no one fancied you would have done this. Yes, I'm angry with you. I have been home 'most a month, ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... king and the duke, though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing in the world that was human—just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier-plumes. Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn't ever feel any hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings CAN be awful ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... a lie," he repeated hoarsely. There was something in his eyes which nearly broke down May's hardness, a look she had never seen on any man's face before, which she never got out of her ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... young man?" There was a tinge of hardness and jealousy in the man's voice and he looked unpleasantly at Mr. Middleton. "What did you stay in that empty house all ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... evening. "How now?" asked Patrick. "Thus," answered the angel: "all the creatures, visible and invisible, including the twelve apostles, entreated, and they have obtained. The Lord said that there came not, and would not come, after the apostles, a man more illustrious, were it not for the hardness of the request which is granted thee. Strike thy bell," said the angel; "thou art commanded from heaven to fall on thy knees, that it may be a blessing to the people of all Eriu, both living and dead." "A blessing on the bountiful king that gave," ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... me that in building his house he thought only of comfort and convenience, and nothing of show, he carelessly invited my attention to the drawing-room, the library, the music-room, and the little sitting-room, all of which were furnished with as much stiffness and hardness and inharmonious coloring as money ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton

... I also came upon several round, deep, and mysterious-looking lakes, one of which, with its waters far below me, I descended to examine with no slight sensation of awe. I was told of beautiful and grand coast scenes towards the east and Cape Otway; but the ways were of Nature's uninviting hardness, and I apprehended a main difficulty of the Glenmutchkin Railway kind, from want of house or human being to help dependent humanity. I turned, however, the opposite way, to rising Belfast and Port Fairy, and wandered about through the Alison and Knight, and Rutledge ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... them, Flung them into the air, and did awake them Like two sweet birds, surnam'd th' Acanthides, Which we call Thistle-warps, that near no seas Dare ever come, but still in couples fly, And feed on thistle-tops, to testify The hardness of their first life in their last; 280 The first, in thorns of love, that sorrows past: And so most beautiful their colours show, As none (so little) like them; her sad brow A sable velvet feather covers ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... had tired everyone. Indeed, the whole fortnight since the cavalry convoy had started from the Atbara had been a period of great exertion, and the Lancers, officers and men, were glad to eat a hasty meal, and forget the fatigues of the day, the hardness of the ground, and the anticipations of the morrow in deep sleep. The camp was watched by the infantry, whose labours did not end with the daylight. At two o'clock in the morning the clouds broke in rain and storm. Great blue flashes of lightning lit up the wide expanse ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... the apparent clash has come about. It appears that Albertus Magnus in the thirteenth century, accepting the ancient and orthodox view of his time, remarked that the pear is rightly considered masculine because of the hardness of its wood, the coarseness of its leaves, and the close texture of its fruit. Evidently our pear has been developed away from the mediaeval pear, while the apple has remained comparatively stable. The careful cultivation of ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... the work and the hardness of the Dalmatian granite, which the Princess insisted on having, had obliged Vedrine to take mallet and chisel himself and to work like an artisan under the tarpaulin at the cemetery. Now, at last, after much time and trouble, the canopy was up, 'and that young rascal, Astier, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... softened by the words. Her voice lost its hardness, she reached out her hand in an apology and ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... mother—and only one; the thin and pallid elder daughter had her parent's Cairngorm eye: the blooming and luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and chin—perhaps a little softened, but still imparting an indescribable hardness to the countenance otherwise ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... the abysmal urgings of the beast, as a beast, to prove himself master of this four-legged beast. Jerry felt his jowl and jaw clutched still more harshly and hardly, and, with increase of harshness and hardness, he was flung farther down the deck, which, on account of its growing slant due to heavier gusts of wind, had become a ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... Poppas. He was a vulture of the vulture race, and he had the beak of one. But I always felt that if ever he had her thus at his mercy,—if ever he came upon the softness that was hidden under so much hardness, the warm credulity under a life so dated and scheduled and "reported" and generally exposed,—he would hold his hand ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... anon we reached a place where "Victory Mills" wuz printed up high, in big letters. When Josiah see this, he sez, "Haint that neighborly and friendly in Victory to come over here and put up a mill? That shows, Samantha," sez he, "that the old hardness of the Revolution is entirely done ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley

... bill of rights. To this end they "refused the admission of the course of law among them," until their demands should be complied with. Furthermore, the old Courts were objectionable as being costly and cumbersome. They were unpopular for the hardness exercised towards poor-debtors and criminals convicted of trifling offences. In the absence of the usual means of enforcing the laws, the town Governments took in charge the administration of justice, acting either through committees or in town meetings. ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... sea-fish the Herring dies soonest out of the water, and of fresh-water fish the Trout, so, except the Eel, the Carp endures most hardness, and lives longest out of its own proper element; and, therefore, the report of the Carp's being brought out of a foreign country into this nation is the ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... hungry contemplation of the great Maynard house to a little clump of brushwood which made a darker blot against the black shadow of the hill from the crest of which the Judge's place dominated the surrounding country. Little by little Denny Bolton's lean face lost its hint of hardness; the lines that ran from his thin nose to the corners of his lips disappeared as he smiled—smiled with whimsical gentleness—at the light that glimmered from a single window through the tangled bushes, ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans

... part of the sacrificed cow; so God raiseth the dead to life, and showeth you his signs, that peradventure ye may understand. Then were your hearts hardened after this, even as stones, or exceeding them in hardness: for from some stones have rivers burst forth, others have been rent in sunder, and water hath issued from them, and others have fallen down for fear of God. But God is not regardless of that which ye do. Do ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... that certain of his colleagues, who appeared to be acting along with him with the utmost cordiality, were secretly combined against him; and were carrying on an underplot, to deprive him at once of popularity, favour, place, and power. The strength, firmness, hardness of mind, which Lord Oldborough exhibited at the moment of this discovery, perfectly amazed Mr. Falconer. His lordship gave no sign of astonishment, uttered no indignant exclamation, nor betrayed any symptoms of alarm; but he listened ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... horrible to Dorothea in the sensation which this unresponsive hardness inflicted on her. That is a strong word, but not too strong: it is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... strange hardness and yet a trembling in Janet's voice; nor did she look as if she had shed tears, though her face was pale and her eyes black-ringed, and when old nurse, now very old indeed, tottered in sobbing, she flung herself to the other end of the room. It was more from nurse than ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of mind adds much to life's hardness. Every burden is heavier because of the sad heart that beats under it. Every pain is keener because of the dispiriting which it brings with it. Every sorrow is made darker by the hopelessness with which ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... talked of by the Persons who can part with them with so little Pain, either from Hypocrisy, or from another very obvious Cause, namely, the using Words we are accustomed to hear, without so much as thinking of their Meaning. Such Hearts I think may be much more properly compared to the Hardness of Marble, than could that of the ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding

... great resistance to decay. I have found them to be still intact and possessing some strength after being covered by earth for fifteen years. This indicates that they might be used with a binder in a composition material. Their extreme hardness also ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke

... as I did, I was compelled to excuse her as best I might by attributing her hardness to an evil system now happily abolished. But the nerves in my lost arm seemed to tingle with a secret satisfaction when I thought of Clem's empty reward for his life-work and remembered that I had helped, though ever so little, to free him and ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... over with sand and clay, for several days. By this means the iron is carbonized and converted into what is commonly called blistered steel. The heat is kept up a longer or shorter time according to the hardness required. ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... physical processes in twenty years, but long time is asked for teaching the arm skill, the tongue its grace of speech, to clothe reason with sweetness and light, to cast error out of the judgment, to teach the will hardness and ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... was one of the las' young niggers on marster's plantation. Mah job was nusin the chillun. Ole Marster's father was livin in them days and he fought in the Resolution War. Yasum he did. He was rail old and my mother chawed fer him jes like she did fer her baby. I'se seen more hardness since I got old than ah ever did in mah life. Slavery wuz the easiest time of all. Mah muthas name was Charity and she wuz the family cook, yasum an ah wuz the nuss girl. I tuk care of the chilluns. Ole marster's wife lost her mind and they had to ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... to begin with, by means of our picks and crowbars, in one corner of the room, two or three feet wide; then we must make a couple of holes the size of the boring tool, a foot or so away, according to the hardness of the ground, put in charges and fire them, and in that way blow down the rock into the hole we had made; and so we should go on until we had done the whole floor. Of course, the bigger the hole we first make—that is to say, the wider the face it has—the easier we ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... this bell may put to flight the fiery darts of the enemy of men"; and others vary the form but not the substance of this petition. The great Jesuit theologian, Bellarmin, did indeed try to deny the reality of this baptism; but this can only be regarded as a piece of casuistry suited to Protestant hardness of heart, or as strategy in the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... strength. He had seen what women could endure, for love's or patriotism's sake! Make but appeal to the spirit—the proud and tameless spirit—and how the flesh answered! He knew that his power with Kitty came largely from a certain stoicism, a certain hardness, mingled, as he would prove to her, with a boundless devotion. Let him carry it through—without fears—and so enlarge her being and his own! And as to responsibilities beyond, as to their later lives—let time take care ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... face of Washington; pathetic patience and divine dignity in that of Lincoln; unyielding granite is in John Brown's face, though sympathy hath tempered hardness into softness; intellect is in Newton's; pure imagination is in Keats' and in Milton's; heroic substance is in the face of Cromwell and in that of Luther; pathetic sorrow is found in Dante's eyes; conscience and love shine in the face of Fenelon. Verily, the body is the soul's interpreter! Like ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... they were there was nothing about either rays or orbs that suggested either hardness or the metallic. They were vaporous, soft as St. Elmo's fire, the witch lights that cling at times to the spars of ships, weird gleaming visitors from the ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... to each other, are however peculiar to certain beds of the slaty coherents, which are both vast in elevation, and easy of destruction. In Wales and Scotland the same groups of rocks possess far greater hardness, while they attain less elevation; and the result is a totally different aspect of scenery. The severity of the climate, and the comparative durableness of the rock, forbid the rich vegetation; but the exposed summits, though barren, ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... and the guns, firearms, and weapons of every description with which the ship was liberally provided, were, like her hull, constructed of aethereum, the most striking properties of which metal were its extraordinary lightness, toughness, hardness, strength, and its stubborn resistance to all ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... Anderson following the night of the Trevor theatricals, and the dislike for her that she had shown with a frankness some of the ladies had thought brutal. Mrs. Brinkley also believed that her words had a tacit meaning, and she would have liked to have the hardness to say she had seen an unnamed victim of Alice doing his best to console the other she had specified. But she merely said drily, "Yes, perhaps that's the reason why ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... beauty, for whom the fairies have never had much feeling of aversion. And now, after a hundred years, it is all theirs; the ground so golden with leaves and bracken that the old track is nothing but a vague hardness beneath a horse's feet, nothing but a runnel for the rains to gather in. There is everywhere that glen scent of mouldering leaves, so sweet when the wind comes down and stirs it, and the sun frees and livens it. Not very ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... now had their own anxieties and their own loves, but not a word was there in one of them of William Owen. Therefore, it may be said that the last charge in her uncle's purpose had fallen upon her with peculiar hardness. ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... pieces, and hardening in the air it becomes brittle and is blown off by the first high wind. When a quantity of it has fallen in the same place it appears like a rock, and thence, they say, or more probably from its hardness, it is called dammar batu; by which name it is distinguished from the dammar kruyen. This is another species of turpentine, yielded by a tree growing in Lampong, called kruyen, the wood of which is white and porous. It differs from the common sort, or dammar batu, in being soft and whitish, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden



Words linked to "Hardness" :   severeness, unfeelingness, callosity, dullness, difficulty, incompressibility, rigourousness, insensitivity, stiffness, strictness, ruggedness, body, quality, difficultness, firmness, soft, insensitiveness, consistency, consistence, rigour, rigor, softness, rigorousness, callousness, insensibility, sternness, harshness, hard, severity



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