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More "Flexibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Style. The former must be thoroughly accomplished, otherwise the latter cannot be undertaken satisfactorily. A good and reliable technique is undoubtedly of primary necessity. But it is by no means all. One may have a voice which is well-posed and of good resonance, and also have sufficient flexibility to perform neatly all the rapid passages with which the pages of the classic composers abound. But this is not singing; nor is the possessor of these an artist. He has simply the necessary and ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... in his deep eye and powerful tone, the actor capable of reaching the heights of dramatic passion. He was scarcely above the middle size, with features whose magic consisted in neither their strength nor beauty, but in their flexibility. I had never seen a countenance so capable of change, and in which the change was so instantaneous and so total. From the most sportive openness, a word threw it into the most indignant storm, or the most incurable despair. From wild joy, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... insist that a love of study, of patient thought and profound research, was congenial to their natural temperament, and that an inquisitive and analytic spirit, as well as a taste for subtile and abstract speculation, were inherent in the national character. The affluence, and fullness, and flexibility, and sculpture-like finish of the language of the Attics, which leaves far behind not only the languages of antiquity, but also the most cultivated of modern times, is an enduring monument of the patient ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... furrowed between the eyebrows, and made the expression of untameability perhaps a shade too strong. The voice of this charming child, whom her father, delighting in her wit, was wont to call his "little proverb of Solomon," had acquired a precious flexibility of organ through the practice of three languages. This advantage was still further enhanced by a natural bell-like tone both sweet and fresh, which touched the heart as delightfully as it did the ear. If the mother could no longer see the signs of a noble destiny upon her daughter's brow, she ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... age to make a good company officer. A good many who tried it at the beginning had to be eliminated from the service in one way or another. In a less degree the same was found to hold true of the regimental field officers. Some men retain flexibility of mind and body longer than others, and could more easily adapt themselves to new circumstances and a new occupation. Of course such would succeed best. But it is also true that in the larger and broader commands solidity of judgment and weight of character were more essential than in the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... limbs lost their flexibility, and some of his wiring started to corrode. Mark would spend hours keeping the ...
— Beside Still Waters • Robert Sheckley
... defects. It offers marvellous facilities for defining the perceptions of the senses with the utmost accuracy, but regarding everything in the concrete, it is unfriendly to the nobler labors of the mind, to abstraction and generalization. In the numberless changes of these languages, their bewildering flexibility, their variable forms, and their rapid deterioration, they seem to betray a lack of individuality, and to resemble the vague and tumultuous history of the tribes who employ them. They exhibit an almost incredible ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... seen a face which varied so much in expression. Not only was there a marked difference at all times between one side and the other, due partly to the contrast between the two eyes and partly to a loss of flexibility in the muscles of the right side, but almost from moment to moment the general appearance of the face moved between a lively, genial animation, a cruel and wolf-like scowl, and a heavy and hopeless dejection. No face was ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... this time and a considerable number in Italian, our operatic institutions being quick, as a rule, to put it upon the stage whenever they have at command a soprano leggiero with a voice of sufficient range and flexibility to meet the demands of the extraordinary music which Mozart wrote for the Queen of Night to oblige his voluble-throated sister-in-law, Mme. Hofer, who was the original representative of that character. ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... colleges save Engineering we specifically require but 4 units—3 in English and 1 in mathematics. From the others free election among groups is allowed. The movement here and elsewhere seems to be in the direction of requiring the completion of a full four-year high school course, with increasing flexibility as to specific subjects. And that ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... and she did not possess that agility of purpose which, at a moment's notice, could enable her to twist her intentions—a mental somersault that needs the double-jointedness of cunning and all the consummate flexibility of tact. He might know that she had followed them, but she must never admit it. It seemed a feasible argument to her, in the whirling panic of her thoughts, that her admission would be fatal—just as the prisoner in the dock pleads "not guilty" against all ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... condition. These evidences of oversight would have been fatal to Islamism, had Islamism produced a high civilization.] from century to century, from the simplicity of shepherds to the utmost refinement of philosophers, carries with it a necessity, corresponding to such infinite flexibility of ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... taste must be a queer one," the landlord replied, as he illustrated sadly the discovery reserved for a riper age—that human fingers have attained their present flexibility, form, and skill by habit of assuaging, for some millions of ages, the woes ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... straight lines is afforded by the use of the curved line in decoration, which offers soft, rich and lovely effects. In general, curved lines make for grace, flexibility and softness. ...
— Prepare and Serve a Meal and Interior Decoration • Lillian B. Lansdown
... by a transgression of the law than wearied by prescription. Delight condones offence. The only question for the writer is, whether the offence is so trivial as to be submerged in the delight. And he will do well to remember that the greater flexibility belonging to the novel by no means removes the novel from the laws which rule the drama. The parts of a novel should have organic relations. Push the licence to excess, and stitch together a volume of unrelated chapters,—a patchwork of descriptions, ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... intellect too, I repeat, has its beauty, and it has those who aim at it. To open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to know, and to digest, master, rule, and use its knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, resource, address, eloquent expression, is an object as intelligible (for here we are inquiring, not what the object of a Liberal Education is worth, nor what use the Church ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... percent in 2006. To meet increased competition from both EU and Central European countries, particularly the new EU members, Austria will need to continue restructuring, emphasizing knowledge-based sectors of the economy, and encouraging greater labor flexibility and greater labor participation by ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... not missed for many a day from Braintree fair; and in the decline of life spent his days like an amateur. But Cheetre, for such was his real name, was haunted amidst his glory by a rival. Will Wimbars had a voice of as much flexibility as Dick. Dick was the most popular, for he sang every thing he could, but Will had a select list he never departed from. The former was sought as a companion; the latter pleased best in the public exercise ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... country house would please you very much, would it, darling?" says Adolphe, clasping Caroline round the waist, and noticing that she leans upon him as if to show the flexibility ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, the exquisite harmony of her form were not her only, nor indeed her principal attractions; she owed her rare and personal charm to a sort of strange grace mingled with flexibility and strength, that lent enchantment to her every motion. She had in the play of her countenance, in her step, in her gestures, the sovereign ease of a woman who does not feel a single weak point in her beauty, and who moves, grows, and blossoms ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... tail consisted of jointed segments till its termination; in others, as in Illaenus, there was a great caudal shield, that in size and form corresponded to the shield which covered the head; the segments of Calymene, from the flexibility of their joints, fitted close to the cerebral rim; while the same effect was produced in the inflexible shields, caudal and cephalic, of Illaenus, by their exact correspondence, and the flexibility of the connecting ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... faultless, nor that it has not various defects, nor that there are not sundry lacunae which want filling up; but that, if we consider the conditions under which the department works, we shall see that certain defects are inseparable from those conditions. People talk of the want of flexibility of the Department, of its being bound by strict rules. Now, will any man of common sense who has had anything to do with the administration of public funds or knows the humour of the House of Commons on these ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... modern English authors, Thackeray is my favorite. Humor, pathos, satire, ripe culture, knowledge of the world and of the human heart, instinctive good taste and a style equaled by none of his fellows in its clearness, ease, flexibility and winning charm—these are some of the traits that make the author of Vanity Fair and Esmond incomparably the first literary artist as well as the greatest writer of his age. Whether he would have been as fine a writer had he been given a happy life is a question ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... been bred a page at Whitehall, and had early acquired all the flexibility and the selfpossession of a veteran courtier. He was laborious, clearheaded, and profoundly versed in the details of finance. Every government, therefore, found him an useful servant; and there was nothing in his opinions or in his character which could ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Shakspeare himself, than some of the more successful imitations of the great dramatist's manner—as, for instance, some parts of the Wallenstein. As to the language and versification, it is in blank verse, and the style is considered by Russians as admirable for ease and flexibility. At this time Pushkin's life was about to undergo a great change; he was engaged to a young lady whom he afterwards married, and retired, in the spring of this year, to the village of Boldino, in the province of Nijegorod, in order to make preparations for his new existence as a married ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Let me tell you what Goethe, the great German, said of this man: "If you wish depth, genius, imagination, taste, reason, sensibility, philosophy, elevation, originality, nature, intellect, fancy, rectitude, facility, flexibility, precision, art, abundance, variety, fertility, warmth, magic, charm, grace, force, an eagle sweep of vision, vast understanding, instruction rich, tone excellent, urbanity, suavity, delicacy, correctness, purity, cleanness, eloquence, harmony, brilliancy, rapidity, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... flexibility of the royal elbow, and the rigidity of the royal spine! More especially as we had been impressed with a notion of their debility. But, sometimes these seemingly enervated young blades approve themselves steadier of limb, than veteran revelers ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the general introduction of hollow backs is probably somewhat as follows: Leather was doubtless first chosen for covering the backs of books because of its toughness and flexibility; because, while protecting the back, it would bend when the book was opened and allow the back to "throw up" (see fig. 1, A). When gold tooling became common, and the backs of books were elaborately decorated, it was found that the ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... all is the prose allegory of the Pilgrim's Progress. English prose had taken many centuries to form, in the moulding hands of Chaucer, Malory, and Bacon. It had come at last to Bunyan with all its flexibility and force ready to his hand. He wrote with virgin purity, utterly free from mannerisms and affectations; and, without knowing himself for a writer ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... stiffness seems to have been brought on, the warm-water treatment recommended above will bring about a loosening and softening of the joint, which will permit first of a slight bending, and then, with gentle encouragement, a complete flexibility. The complete restoration of the limb should be the object kept in view. No case of a stiffened joint, although it may be free from pain and disease, can be regarded as satisfactory, and hence treatment should be persevered in until all stiffness is gone. Common sense will direct as to hot ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... Rogers. What he claims is the combination of the balance beam with the centre beam, by means of the recesses in the centre beam, spring plates, having tubes thereon on which the springs rest, and attached to the beam by bolts, by which a compact and secure connection is formed, while all the necessary flexibility ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... foot, into the arms of Therese. At this hour, he was in dread lest he should omit to be prudent. He no longer dared go of an evening to the shop in the Arcade of the Pont Neuf lest he should commit some folly. He no longer belonged to himself. His ladylove, with her feline suppleness, her nervous flexibility, had glided, little by little, into each fibre of his body. This woman was as necessary to his life ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... of the hip muscles, while all below the knee is useless, as also are the fingers. Slowly the leg and foot are degraded to locomotion, slowly the great toe becomes more limited in its action, the thumb increases in flexibility and strength of opposition, and the fingers grow more mobile and controllable. As the body slowly assumes the vertical attitude, the form of the chest changes till its greatest diameter is transverse instead of from front to back. The shoulder-blades ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... about style. Stevenson said that he arrived at flexibility of style by frank and unashamed imitation of other writers; he played, as he said, "the sedulous ape" to great authors. This system has its merits, but it also has its dangers. A sensitive literary temperament is apt ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... flexible point writing on smoked glass is a source of error. When the disc revolves under the stylus, the flexibility of the diaphragm and of the stylus permit it to be dragged forward slightly by the friction of the moving surface. When the diaphragm is set vibrating the conditions are altered, and the stylus springs back to nearly its original position. The apparent ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... with from 1000 to 1200 words in a column, have greater flexibility than magazines in the matter of make-up, and can, therefore, use special feature stories of various lengths. The arrangement of advertisements, even in the magazine sections, does not affect the length of articles. The only way to determine exactly ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... armor was spaceworthy, Stevens picked up the coils of drag-line, built of a non-metallic fiber which could retain its flexibility and strength in the bitter cold of outer space, and led the girl ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... elucidation, or — to avoid repetitions that would have occupied space — the references to the spot where information may be found. The great advantage of such a plan to the reader, is the measure of its difficulty for the editor. It permits much more flexibility in the choice of glossarial explanations or equivalents; it saves the distracting and time- consuming reference to the end or the beginning of the book; but, at the same time, it largely enhances the liability to error. The Editor is conscious that in the 12,000 or 13,000 notes, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... to the old German of the Swabian period. Of this period— (the polished dialect of which is analogous to that of our Chaucer, and which leaves the philosophic student in doubt, whether the language has not since then lost more in sweetness and flexibility, than it has gained in condensation and copiousness)—I read with sedulous accuracy the Minnesinger (or singers of love, the Provencal poets of the Swabian court) and the metrical romances; and then ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... very pertinently, but in a very mystical vein, that the precious metals combine in a very high degree and yet in a very simple manner, the principal qualities in which man's greatness finds expression: rarity, flexibility, uniformity, mobility, durability and beauty. (Elemente, II, 266.) In another place, he says, the highest ideal good is God, the highest material good, gold! (III, 65.) The mysticism of gold was most highly developed among the alchymists of the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... always confounded manners with morals, and to him the opinion of Europe was final. Hence the Monitor and Churchill were well suited to each other. Moreover, Churchill enjoyed the society of the great—that is, of those who seemed to him to be the great—and he had an admirable flexibility of temperament; while easily able and willing to be very nasty to those whom he thought of an inferior grade, he was equally able and willing to be extremely deferential to those whose grade he considered superior. He was also intolerant in opinion, thinking that any one who differed ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... language, directness, strength, vigor, freshness, color, brilliancy, picturesqueness, replaced cold propriety, conventional elegance and trite periphrasis; in its form, melody, variety of rhythm, richness and sonority of rhyme, diversity of stanza structure and flexibility of line were sought and achieved, sometimes at the expense of the old rules. By 1830 the young poets, who were now fairly swarming, exhibited the general romantic coloring very clearly. Almost from the first VICTOR ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... simile and metaphor. The poor man's vocabulary, like the poet's, is quite inadequate to express his thoughts. Both, in their several ways, are driven to the use of unhackneyed words and simile and metaphor; both use a language of great flexibility;[11] for which reason we find that after the poet himself, the poor man speaks most poetically. Witness the beautiful description: "All to once the nor'easter springed out from the land, an' afore us could down-haul the mainsail, the sea wer feather-white an' skatting in over the bows." New words ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... would prove convenient, not only because it would facilitate taking in stores and coaling, if all the squadron were assembled at one place, but also if part were at one place and part at another. Division into several vessels, instead of concentration in a few, would give great flexibility to the system of supply. A single very capacious cargo-carrier might have to go first to one place and supply the ships there, and then go to supply the remaining ships lying at another anchorage. This would cause loss of time. The same amount of ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... story-tellers. His imagination, not quite continuous enough, occasionally fails to fuse and shape disparate materials. It is likely to fall short when he essays fancy or mystery, as in A Life for a Life; or when he has a whimsy for amusing melodrama, as in His Great Adventure. The flexibility which reveals itself in humor or in the lighter irony is not one of his principal endowments. Restrained and direct as he always is so far as language goes, he cannot always keep his action absolutely in hand: this or that person or incident now and then breaks out of the ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... her had been one of mild interest rather than of rapture. But she looked so lovely in the green world about her, her pink cheeks, her simple light dress, and the delicate flexibility of her movement acquired such rarity from their wild-wood setting, that his eyes ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Sometimes I was behind the rest of the company, and lost the grace of laughing by delay, and sometimes, when I began at the right time, was deficient in loudness or in length. But, by diligent imitation of the best models, I attained at last such flexibility of muscles, that I was always a welcome auditor of a story, and got the reputation ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... of utmost flexibility. This flexibility appears also in art instruction, and it is for this reason that in no two institutions of higher learning is the problem of art instruction attacked in the same way. There is, consequently, a great diversity in the types of art ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... of walking quite as well? But as survivals their presence is fully accounted for, since they are indispensable to many of the lower animals. Question may also be made of the utility of the large number of bones in the wrist and heel of man. Equal flexibility of the joint could certainly have been obtained with a smaller number of bones. It is only when these are traced back to their probable origin in the walking organs of the fish ancestor of the batrachians that their presence becomes ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... know how it will answer yet, but have hopes. My great difficulty has always been (and it only increases with age) a certain want of readiness and flexibility in turning from one thing to another. When I have a book in hand (and I always have one), it is most disagreeable to me to turn from it and write an article; and when the article is finished I lose always at least a day, and ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... is no play that suffers so much in being transferred to the stage. Hamlet himself seems hardly capable of being acted. Mr. Kemble unavoidably fails in this character from a want of ease and variety. The character of Hamlet is made up of undulating lines; it has the yielding flexibility of a "wave o' th' sea." Mr. Kemble plays it like a man in armour, with a determined inveteracy of purpose, in one undeviating straight line, which is as remote from the natural grace and refined susceptibility of the character, as the sharp angles and abrupt starts which ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... pusillanimity. A frequently observable type of personality—and socially one of a highly desirable sort—is the type of man who, himself standing for positive convictions, ideas, and principles of action, and not casually to be deflected from them, has sufficient flexibility and sensitivity to the feelings of others, to accept modification. Such a self not only has its initial force and momentum, but gains as it goes by the experience of others. A personality must be positive to contribute to the solution of difficulties and the management of enterprises, but it must ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... of the privileged classes of the Empire. I look up their ages in Who's Who, and I find that there is only one below fifty-three; the oldest of them is ninety-one, while the average age of the goodly company is seventy. There have been men in history who have retained their flexibility of mind, their ability to adjust themselves to new circumstances at the age of seventy, but it will always be found that these men were trained in science and practical affairs, never in dead languages and theology. One of the oldest of the English prelates, the Archbishop ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... deserve to be placed beside Reynolds, came from Ireland to seek their fortunes in London. Edmund Burke, incomparably the greatest writer upon political philosophy in English literature, the master of a style unrivalled for richness, flexibility, and vigour, was radically opposed to Johnson on party questions, though his language upon the French Revolution, after Johnson's death, would have satisfied even the strongest prejudices of his old friend. But he had qualities which commended him even to the man who called him a "bottomless ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... the revision, the object of their publication will have been accomplished. So much has been said as to the poverty of our gains on the side of "enrichment," as compared with what has been secured in the line of "flexibility," that it has seemed proper to append to the volume a Comparative Table detailing the additions of liturgical matter made to the Common Prayer at the ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... bit is one in which the axles have their points of junction broad and smooth, (8) so as to bend easily; and where the several parts fitting round the axles, being large of aperture and not too closely packed, have greater flexibility; whereas, if the several parts do not slide to and fro with ease, and play into each other, that is what we call a stiff bit. Whatever the kind of bit may be, the rider must carry out precisely the same rules in using it, as follows, if he wishes to turn out a horse ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... already converted this participle to such a multiplicity of purposes, and into so many different parts of speech, that one can well-nigh write a chapter in it, without any other words. This practice may have added something to the copiousness and flexibility of the language, but it certainly has a tendency to impair its strength and clearness. Not every use of participles is good, for which there may be found precedents in good authors. One may run to great excess in the adoption of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... economy, private individuals and business firms make most of the decisions, and the federal and state governments buy needed goods and services predominantly in the private marketplace. US business firms enjoy greater flexibility than their counterparts in Western Europe and Japan in decisions to expand capital plant, to lay off surplus workers, and to develop new products. At the same time, they face higher barriers to enter their rivals' home markets ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... are, in a state of nature almost continually in action both by night and by day. They either walk, creep, or advance rapidly by prodigious bounds; but they seldom run, owing, it is believed, to the extreme flexibility of their limbs and vertebral column, which cannot preserve the rigidity necessary to that species of movement. Their sense of sight, especially during twilight, is acute; their hearing very perfect, and their perception ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... consequence, of dislike and detraction; but the youth possessed qualities which it was impossible to depreciate. Pride, and a sense of early ambition, did for him what severity and constant instruction did for others. In truth, the youthful Roland displayed that early flexibility both of body and mind, which renders exercise, either mental or bodily, rather matter of sport than of study; and it seemed as if he acquired accidentally, and by starts, those accomplishments, which earnest and constant instruction, enforced by ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... back in ecstasy—the morning sleep among the vines, when the fatigue of the night was over—dew-drenched garments—the serf lying at his ease at last: the artists, then so numerous at the place, caught what they could, something, at least, of the richness, the flexibility of the visible aspects of life, from all this. With them the life of seeming idleness, to which Denys was conducting the youth of Auxerre so pleasantly, counted but as the cultivation, for their due service to man, of delightful natural things. And the powers of nature concurred. It seemed ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... two are fitted for each other. I am fond of them both. I think you know that, but—she's not very flexible, this child. And she hasn't much humor. I love her, but I know those things are true. I wonder if one ought to marry Ste. Marie without flexibility and ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... fine instinct, we may trust, secondly, in the profound earnestness which still marks our people. With all this flexibility, there is yet a solidity of principle beneath, that makes the subtile American mind as real and controlling as that of the robust race from which it sprang. Though the present tendency of our art is towards foreign models, this is but a temporary thing. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... and, killing them, stand erect themselves. The bark of a fine tree found in abundance here, and called "motuia", is used by the Barotse for making fish-lines and nets, and the "molompi", so well adapted for paddles by its lightness and flexibility, was abundant. There were other trees quite new to my companions; many of them ran up to a height of fifty feet of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... God, and I thought he was grinding his own life up out of my pain. Then I saw that what he had been trying with all his might to do was to CHANGE HIS COURSE, to BEND the line of lightning to which he was tied, in the direction in which he wanted to go. I felt my flexibility and helplessness, and knew that he would succeed. He bended me, turning his corner by means of my hurt, hurting me more than I had ever been hurt in my life, and at the acutest point of this, as he passed, I SAW. I understood for a moment things that I have now forgotten, things ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... intellectual Houris in their lustrous eyes, we find the luxurious indolence of the Sultana. Their manners caress without emboldening; the grace of their languid movements is intoxicating; they allure by a flexibility of form, which knows no restraint, save that of perfect modesty, and which etiquette has never succeeded in robbing of its willowy grace. They win upon us by those intonations of voice which touch the heart, ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... STYLE. Bound in FRENCH SEAL, round corners, red under gold edges, extra grained lining, specially sewed to produce absolute flexibility and great durability. Each book packed in neat and ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... raised his eyes to glance at him. He was used to death-bed scenes, but this was curious, because he knew the usual outward aspect of Lord Walderhurst, and its alteration at this moment suggested abnormal things. He had not the flexibility of mind which revealed to Dr. Warren that there were perhaps abnormal moments for the most normal and ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... fibrous barks, well softened by the action of moisture and the air, furnish the Penduline with a coarse tow, not unlike that of hemp. With these ligaments, purged of every woody particle and tested for flexibility and tenacity, he winds a number of loops round the end of the branch which he has selected as a support for ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... importance, which happened to be uncorrected by physical deficiencies. Not that she was astonishingly beautiful, but she was tall and just good-looking enough to allow her to consider herself a beauty. Her chief attraction was her form, which, if somewhat flat-chested, had a feline flexibility rarer and more seductive than she imagined. She was content to believe that nature had fashioned her to play the part in life which, she knew, was hers of right. Her name, even, was most appropriate—dignified. Ida should ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... answered, 'that it did no harm. A girl at that time was taught nothing. She came from the convent a sheet of white paper. Now her mind is a paper scribbled over with trash. The women of that time were thrown into a world far superior to ours, and with the sagacity, curiosity, and flexibility of French women, caught knowledge and tact and ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... that all this is so alarming, if taken the right way—a woman with some courage in her heart and some flexibility in her mind supports the shock and does not die under it; but the firmest of us are amazed at it, and stand open-mouthed amid all these strange novelties, like a penniless gourmand in the shop of Potel ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... in, the wit's out," saith the ancient proverb; and, although my "Spirit in the Clouds" had already hinted at the dangerous consequences likely to result from a visit to the "Oakland Cottages," yet such was the flexibility of my friend Transit's ethics, his penchant for a spree, and the volatile nature of his disposition, when the ripe Falerian set the red current mantling in his veins, that not all my philosophy, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... inability of any other institution, to undertake it. I submit that the library would be extremely unlikely to move in the matter, simply from the lack of the tendency that we are discussing. That tendency gives a flexibility, almost a fluidity, which under a pressure of this kind, yields and ensures an outlet for desirable energy along ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... columns of black letter, writing and rewriting till he could shape the massive character with firm true hand. He cut his quills with the patience of a monk in the scriptorium, shaving and altering the nib, lightening and increasing the pressure and flexibility of the points, till the pen satisfied him, and gave a stroke both broad and even. Then he made experiments in inks, searching for some medium that would rival the glossy black letter of the old manuscripts; and not till he could produce a fair page of text did he turn to the more entrancing labor ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... the development of actress or actor and the liberalizing of the public. Face to face with an English audience the American actress finds herself confronted by new tastes, new appreciations, new demands. She must meet them all or fail. What does this result in? Versatility, flexibility, and, in the end, a firmer and more comprehensive ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... dreaded, were among the number of those who dashed into the heart of the forest—Captain de Haldimar now stood alone, and full twenty paces in front of the nearest of the savages. For a moment he played with his mocassined foot to satisfy himself, of the power and flexibility of its muscles, and then committing himself to his God, dashed the blanket suddenly from his shoulders, and, with eye and heart fixed on the distant soldiery, darted down the declivity with a speed of which he had never yet believed himself capable. Scarcely, however, had his fleeing ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... possessed vast patronage, perhaps more general court popularity than any Queen of the age; led a pleasant life, enjoying the sweets without the responsibilities of royalty; and by judicious liberality of purse, and equally dexterous flexibility of opinion, contrived to carry some degree of public respect with her, while she lived, and be followed by some degree of public regret to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... called "The Legrohs" relies chiefly on its most exceptional member, who would be complete without the other two. He is most decidedly a virtuoso in vaudeville. Very gifted, certainly, if at moments a little disconcerting in the flexibility and the seemingly uncertain turns of his body. It is the old-fashioned contortionism saved by charming acrobatic variations. This "Legroh" knows how to make a superb pattern with his body, and the things he does with it are done with such ease ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... many respects from Assyrian, to which however it approached more nearly than to any other known type. Its advantages over Assyrian were in its greater originality, its superior literary character, and its comparative width and flexibility. Babylonia seems to have been the source from which Assyria drew her learning, such as it was, her architecture, the main ideas of her mimetic art, her religious notions, her legal forms, and a vast number of her customs and usages. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... as an axiom that straight lines considered as such, and curves considered as such, are related as power and weakness, obstinacy and flexibility, understanding and sensation. ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... from girlhood. She heard Emerson rise, then knew he was standing at her shoulder. Could he sing, she wondered, as he began to take up the words of the song? Then her dream-filled eyes widened as she listened to his voice breathing life into the beautiful words. He sang with the ease and flexibility of an artist, his powerful baritone blending perfectly ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... on whom the governor and council have wrought a necromantic miracle. I should not wonder if he were to crumble away, some morning, after you are gone, and nothing be seen of him more, except a heap of dust. Miss Hepzibah, at any rate, will lose what little flexibility she has. They both ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... scarcity of distinctive forms, and to the consequent flexibility of English speech, words which are usually other parts of speech are often used as nouns; and various word groups may take the place of nouns ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... Holy Spirit and will find ourselves refreshed and enlightened as the result. There is need of that sort of yielding of self to the promptings of the Spirit. I think that it not infrequently happens that our rules get in the way of His action by destroying or checking in us a certain flexibility which is necessary if we are to respond quickly to the voice of the Spirit. As in the case just mentioned where the Spirit is leading us to communion with Him we are apt to think: "I must get on with my meditation or the time will be up ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... possible to attain, by means of cultivation, to great nicety of discrimination within the narrow circle to which it limits and circumscribes them. But no man can be a true critic or connoisseur without universality of mind, without that flexibility which enables him, by renouncing all personal predilections and blind habits, to adapt himself to the peculiarities of other ages and nations—to feel them, as it were, from their proper central point, and, what ennobles human nature, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... vigorous mind, improved by the experience and study of mankind; dexterity and application in business; a judicious mixture of liberality and economy, of mildness and rigor; profound dissimulation, under the disguise of military frankness; steadiness to pursue his ends; flexibility to vary his means; and, above all, the great art of submitting his own passions, as well as those of others, to the interest of his ambition, and of coloring his ambition with the most specious pretences of justice and public ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Philpot Curran (1750-1817). "Did you know Curran?" asked Byron of Lady Blessington (Conversations, 1834, p. 176); "he was the most wonderful person I ever saw. In him was combined an imagination the most brilliant and profound, with a flexibility and wit that would have justified the observation applied to——that his heart was in his head." (See, too, Detached Thoughts, No. 24, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... By the handwriting on the envelopes, and the postmarks on the postals, he tried to make out who was writing to him:—one letter only from his wife, evidently but a single sheet, judging from its slender flexibility, three very bulky ones from Toni,—a species of diary in which he continued relating his purchases, his crops, his hope of seeing the captain,—all this mixed in with abundant news about the war, and the wretched condition of the people. There were, besides, various sheets from ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Daudet, in spite of his abounding sympathy, which is one reason of his great attractiveness, cannot fairly be said to be a great character creator, he had sufficient flexibility and force of genius to set in action interesting personages. Part of the early success of The Nabob was due to this fact, although the brilliant description of the Second Empire and the introduction ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... peat-dust, etc, and afterwards colouring. The most natural way, however, is to rub up the gold and grey lichens, and throw them on the glued tow, filling up afterwards with larger pieces to break the lines. Natural and artificial twigs mix well together; the latter, from their flexibility, allowing of ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... that governs and shapes the will, giving it that flexibility and at the same time that constancy so prevalent among the greater part of women, leading them, with unflinching stubbornness of determination to the accomplishment of the end proposed. All difficulties vanish that stand between them and the object of their heart. This disposition renders ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... new world, instead of stability, we have the idea of persistence, and power lies not so much in solid brittle foundation quality as in conductivity. Socially, men can be divided into conductors—men who connect powers—and non-conductors—men who do not; and power lies in persistence, in dogged flexibility, adaptableness, and impressionableness. The set conservative class of people, in three hundred years, are going to be the dreamers, inventors—those who demonstrate their capacity to dream true, ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... work you are reading, you must be alert to take all that it has to give, and to re-create this in terms of your own experience. Thus by making it a part of your imaginative experience, you widen your actual experience, you enrich your life, and you increase the flexibility and vital power of ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... contracting them with the syllables following upon them, but passing over them lightly, so that, without being inaudible, they may at the same time not interfere with the rhythm or beat of the verse. This usage, by adding to the variety, incontestably adds to the flexibility and ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... processing have to be continuous?" Bennington hoped his chief assistant would show a little flexibility. ...
— Take the Reason Prisoner • John Joseph McGuire
... signing documents, and went out behind the duchess, with the perfect sang-froid of a husband accustomed to such manoeuvres. What marvellously skilful workman, what incomparable maker of toys was able to endow the human countenance with its flexibility, its wonderful elasticity? Nothing could be prettier than that great nobleman's face, surprised with his adultery on his lips, the cheeks inflamed by the vision of promised delights, and suddenly assuming a serene expression of conjugal affection; nothing could be finer than the hypocritical ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... de Maistre (those two eagles of thought)—all the lighter French literature, in short, that appeared during that sudden outburst of first vigorous growth might bring delight into her solitary life, but not flexibility of mind or body. She stood strong and straight like some forest tree, lightning-blasted but still erect. Her dignity became a stilted manner, her social supremacy led her into affectation and sentimental over-refinements; she queened it with her foibles, after ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Aristides was driven into exile by the Athenians. We shall see newspapers started in the first instance by men of honor, falling sooner or later into the hands of men of abilities even lower than the average, but endowed with the resistance of flexibility of india-rubber, qualities denied to noble genius; nay, perhaps the future newspaper proprietor will be the tradesman with capital sufficient to buy venal pens. We see such things already indeed, but in ten years' time every little youngster that has left school will take himself for a great man, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... this attempt. Since the age of Chaucer, at least, that is for more than 400 years, our language has been increased by continual transfusions from the French. To these have been added, from time to time, similar accessions from other languages, both ancient and modern. Thus a copiousness and a flexibility, which in the instance of the Greek seem to have arisen out of that subtilty of intellect which gave birth to endless subdivision and distinction, have been in some measure compensated in our own by the influxes which it has received from the languages ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... who could know what might happen? But it was no part of my policy to betray to this man the extreme satisfaction which his words had given me, and thus, perhaps, subtly suggest to him the idea that he had displayed more flexibility than was actually necessary to secure ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... bruise the fruit, and the stems should be removed as the fruit is picked to prevent bruising in handling. A bruise or mar may not be as conspicuous in a tomato as in a peach, but it is quite as injurious. It is a great deal better for pickers to use light pails rather than baskets, the flexibility of the latter often resulting in bruises. It is an advantage to have enough of these so that the sorting can be from the pail, but if this is not practical the fruit should be carefully emptied on a sorting table for grading. It should first of all be separated with regard to its maturity. ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... of reasoning, Julian had arrived at the same conclusion; in which, therefore, he heartily acquiesced. During the seaman's prosing, he was reflecting within himself, how much of the singular flexibility of her limbs and movements the unfortunate girl must have derived from the discipline and instructions of Adrian Brackel; and also how far the germs of her wilful and capricious passions might have been sown during her wandering and adventurous childhood. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... gradually live themselves out of their old relation to each other, and both come out better prepared for the new. Education for young blacks should be included in the plan. After all, the power or element of 'contract' may be sufficient for this probationary period, and by its simplicity and flexibility may be ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... love, to a lower creature, so too is it an evil for it, if it submit not to God, but presumptuously revolt against Him or contemn Him. Now this evil is possible to a rational creature considered as to its nature on account of the natural flexibility of the free-will; whereas in the blessed, it becomes impossible, by reason of the perfection of glory. Therefore the avoidance of this evil that consists in non-subjection to God, and is possible to nature, but impossible in the state of bliss, will ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... fiorituri generally; and he was quite willing to believe that such diligence had met with its due reward. But when the young lady modestly hinted that she had left her music in the hall below, and would like Leo to hear whether she had not acquired a good deal more of flexibility than her voice used to possess, and when he had fetched the music and taken it to the piano for her, he was not a little surprised to see her select Ambroise Thomas's "Io son Titania." And he was still more astonished ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... greatest, as at a, Figure 63, is often very remarkable, and not always easy of explanation. We must imagine that many strata of limestone, chert, and other rocks which are now brittle, were pliant when bent into their present position. They may have owed their flexibility in part to the fluid matter which they contained in their minute pores, as before described, and in part to the permeation of sea-water ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... end with James Houghton, had really reached the point, not only of pathetic, but of dry and anti-human, repulsive quixotry. In Alvina high-mindedness was already stretched beyond the breaking point. Being a woman of some flexibility of temper, wrought through generations to a fine, pliant hardness, she flew back. She went right back on high-mindedness. Did she thereby ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... students of the speech arts. The orotund, sonorous, and forceful qualities are perhaps dwelt upon too much, and to have a full voice is frequently the greatest care of the elocutionist. There are, however, those who appreciate the musical varieties of the vocal power and who hold flexibility, range, and great variety as of more importance than absolute power. It is the experience of such that the voice may be extended in its range in both directions at once. The high pitch represents mentality, the esthetic phases of beauty, and much brilliancy. The medium pitch expresses ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... appreciable result. In all the innumerable wanderings, fights, upturnings and cataclysms of the earth's stupendous career, each creature has been summoned under penalty of death to use what little wit he may have had, and the slightest trace of mental flexibility is of such priceless value in the struggle for existence that natural selection must always have seized upon it, and sedulously hoarded and transmitted it for coming generations to strengthen and increase. ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske
... other trades it might be impossible for technical reasons, or, where possible, it might in certain circumstances be highly undesirable. The point I wish to stress is that under an industrial scheme you have an immense flexibility, you can adapt all the details to the special conditions of the particular industry, and by that means you can secure results immeasurably superior to anything that is possible under a universal State system. Moreover, if certain features of the scheme ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... religion, duty, and patriotism has something mean and repulsive in it. There is no ardor, no generosity in him. A secret barrenness, an ill-concealed egotism, makes itself felt through all the wealth and flexibility of his talent. It is true that the egotism of Goethe has at least this much that is excellent in it, that it respects the liberty of the individual, and is favorable to all originality. But it will go out ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... so strange, that it may well seem incredible. Yet we cannot think that we have misrepresented the tendency of the argument; though, of course, we have given no ideas of the acuteness and flexibility of the reasoning, the extent of the knowledge, and mastery of logic, in this work. That such a position should be taken by a religious man, in the supposed interest of Christianity, is sufficiently strange; ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... in which every link, however thin, however subtle we may deem it, is definitely shattered? Who would venture to maintain this? We are only beginning to suspect the elasticity, the flexibility, the complexity of those invisible threads which bind together objects, thoughts, lives, emotions, all that is on this earth and even that which does not yet exist to that which exists no longer. Let us take an instance in the first ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... finished, the crowd gave a roar of delight, and clapped their hands, and stamped their feet, and shouted. She had no unusual beauty. Her voice was untrained though possessed of strength and flexibility. It wasn't what she had sung, surely. You heard the song in a hundred cafes. Every street boy whistled it. It wasn't that expressive pair of shoulders, exactly. It wasn't a certain soothing ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... polished language known to refined society. I wouldn't part with my French for the world. All the first families in Charleston are familiar with it. It's the modern gentleman's curt-blanche to society here. There's no language like it for beauty and flexibility; but one must go to France and learn to acquire its grace and ease," said he, in rapid succession, rolling out his words in imitation of a London sprig of the Inner Temple, and working ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... Englishman. Men recall with pride the branches of their family that belong to England or the English counties where they were rooted; and there are enthusiasms for English literature and history which are as spontaneous as patriotism itself. Something of this may be put down to a certain promptitude and flexibility in all American kindness, which is never sufficiently stodgy to be called good nature. The Englishman does sometimes wonder whether if he had been a Russian, his hosts would not have remembered remote Russian aunts and uncles and disinterred a Muscovite great-grandmother; or whether if he ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... undertaking are needed both a good antecedent system and a good administrator; for administration under such exceptional conditions, precipitated also at the end by the rapid development of events, means not merely the steady running of a well-adjusted and well-oiled machine, but continual adaptation—flexibility and readiness as well as precision, the spirit as well as the letter. When a particular {p.087} process has had so large a share in the general conduct of a war, a broad account of its greater details is indispensable to a complete ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... summit an eighth, that of the fixed stars. The first gate says Celsus, was that of Saturn, and of lead, by the heavy nature whereof his dull slow progress was symbolized. The second, of tin, was that of Venus, symbolizing her soft splendor and easy flexibility. The third, of brass, was that of Jupiter, emblem of his solidity and dry nature. The fourth, of iron, was that of Mercury, expressing his indefatigable activity and sagacity. The fifth, of copper, was that of Mars, expressive ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... bearing of the questions which were before the country; to discern the principles involved; and to so apply the principles to the questions as to clarify and illuminate them. There is little difficulty in accounting for the lucidity, simplicity, flexibility, and compass of Mr. Lincoln's style; it is not until we turn to its temperamental and spiritual qualities, to the soul of it, that we find ourselves ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... already mentioned and undoubtedly others that have not yet even emerged to view, it adds to the near certainty that future planners are going to have a much wider range of alternative methods at their disposal, to choose from and mix as may seem best. And this, in turn, reemphasizes the wisdom of flexibility in present planning and the need to keep big irreversible decisions to ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... with a little pout. "I prefer a man with a little more flexibility. A little more commonplace flesh and ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... his movement, his gestures are the signs by which the pupils interpret his emotional attitude. If he is not already a good reader, he should bend all his energies to become one. Persevering practice, attention to mechanical features, such as distinct articulation, pausing, flexibility of voice, and, above all, a sympathetic appreciation of the author's thought and feeling, will soon convert a poor reader into a good one. He will soon find that his voice will accommodate itself insensibly in pitch, tone, and movement ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... things easy to follow, it is a style like Bergson's. A 'straightforward' style, an american reviewer lately called it; failing to see that such straightforwardness means a flexibility of verbal resource that follows the thought without a crease or wrinkle, as elastic silk underclothing follows the movements of one's body. The lucidity of Bergson's way of putting things is what all readers are first struck by. It seduces you and bribes you in advance to become ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... all distinct, clear, and neat; proceeding from a strength so suppled, as to give their joints all the requisite flexibility ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... the Irish opposition, and the flexibility of some members of the Government combining, the Irish Parliament voted the regency to the Prince without any limitation whatever. This naturally directed the attention of ministers to the hazard of a collision between the two Parliaments. The King's fortunate recovery prevented ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... the long centuries laid aside the pleasant duty of self-adornment. They dare not if they would,—too much is at stake; and they experience the just delight which comes from cooperation with a natural law. The flexibility of their dress gives them every opportunity to modify, to enhance, to reveal, and to conceal. It is in the highest degree interpretative, and through it they express their aspirations and ideals, their thirst for combat and ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... corollary qualities is a capacity to bear pain, is not less strong and noble if it is never called upon to exercise that capacity. The San Francisco earthquake was not a blessing in disguise because it happened to "test" and "prove" the strength and flexibility of ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... plumes. The "column" is the stem by which the animal is attached permanently to the bottom of the sea; and it is composed of numerous separate plates, so jointed together that whilst the amount of movement between any two pieces must be very limited, the entire column acquires more or less flexibility, allowing the organism as a whole to wave backwards and forwards on its stalk. Into the exquisite minutioe of structure by which the innumerable parts entering into the composition of a single Crinoid are adapted for their proper purposes in the economy of the animal, it is ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... charming way. She had gained much in point of manner during the past twelve months; her ten thousand pounds inspired her with the confidence necessary to a perfect demeanour. That slight hardness which was wont to be perceptible in her tone had altogether passed away; she seemed to be cultivating flexibility of voice. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... considerable variety; but that variety could be accommodated only to motion or duration, and different degrees of motion were, perhaps, expressed by verses rapid or slow, without much attention of the writer, when the image had full possession of his fancy; but our language having little flexibility, our verses can differ very little in their cadence. The fancied resemblances, I fear, arise sometimes merely from the ambiguity of words; there is supposed to be some relation between a soft line and a soft couch, or between hard ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... of dogma, less patient and minute than the works of the specialists of modern Germany on the same subject, but for spirit, clearness, and breadth it is superior to those profound but somewhat barbarous writers. The flexibility of intellect which can do justice in quick succession to such diverse subjects is very extraordinary, and assuredly implies great width of sympathy ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... patients, whilst wishing to walk in the ordinary mode, are forced to run, which has been seen by Carguet and by the illustrious Gaubius; a similar affection of the speech, when the tongue thus outruns the mind, is termed volubility. Mons. de Sauvages attributes this complaint to a want of flexibility in the muscular fibres. Hence, he supposes, that the patients make shorter steps, and strive with a more than common exertion or impetus to overcome the resistance; walking with a quick and hastened step, as if hurried along against their will. Chorea ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... volcanic dust and ashes, there is sometimes thrown from the crater of a volcano a substance resembling spun- glass or asbestos. It possesses the flexibility and lustre of silk. The volcano of Salazes, in the Island of Bourbon, is remarkable for this substance, and it has there been seen to form a cloud covering the entire surface of the mountain. But it has also been found in other ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... is true that we could obtain chlorine and later phosgene in bulk and devote them to the exploitation of the older gas appliances in cloud methods. But British chemical supply was weak, owing to the absence of a strong organic chemical industry. In other words, German flexibility of supply meant flexibility in meeting the requirements of military policy, and, given sound military policy, this flexibility meant surprise, the essence of ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... would prompt every individual to have a distinct sort of writing, as she has given a peculiar countenance, a voice, and a manner. The flexibility of the muscles differs with every individual, and the hand will follow the direction of the thoughts, and the emotions and the habits of ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... realistic. We may easily trace his artistic ancestry; what he became could never have been predicted. Technically, as one critic has written, "he was the first to understand the charm of silhouettes, the first to linger in expressing the joining of the arm and body, the flexibility of the hips, the roundness of the shoulders, the elegance of the leg, the little shadow that marks the springing of the neck, and above all the carving of the hand; but even more he understood 'le prestige ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... on this occasion, to remark the flexibility of our sentiments, and the several changes they so readily receive from the objects, with which they are conjoined. All the sentiments of approbation, which attend any particular species of objects, have a great resemblance to ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... woman was born in Chester without hands, to whom nature had supplied a remedy for that defect by the flexibility and delicacy of the joints of her feet, with which she could sew, or perform any work with thread or scissors, as well ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... perception of beauty, and of harmony and proportion—made them in politics and letters the leaders of mankind. "Do nothing in excess," was their favorite maxim. They hated every thing that was out of proportion. Their language, without a rival in flexibility and symmetry and in perfection of sound, is itself, though a spontaneous creation, a work of art. "The whole language resembles the body of an artistically trained athlete, in which every muscle, every sinew, is developed into full ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... neglected the swelling may become hard and indurated, or an abscess may form. This condition renders it difficult for the animal to get food into its mouth, on account of the lips having lost their natural flexibility. In such cases an ox will use his tongue more in the prehension of food to make up for the incapacity of the lips. In cases of snake bite the swelling is soft or puffy and its limits are not ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... and perceived that in all probability he spoke the truth. His flesh and dress had all of the texture of marble, but now the question came up as to the gift of speech and movement and the marvellous and graceful flexibility of ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... aimed at this flexibility. I think a mother, especially, ought to learn to enter into the gayer moods of her children at the very moment when her own heart is sad. And it may be as religious an act for her to romp with them at the time as to pray with them ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... universal obligation, "Seek FIRST the kingdom of God and his righteousness;" and unless it can be demonstrated that he has made one code of laws for the prince and another for the peasant, or that his precepts possess an accommodating flexibility suited to the prejudices and passions of mankind, no exception can be for a moment admitted. As there is no royal road to the heights of human science, but all who attain them must ascend by assiduous and persevering application, so there ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... Involved. Any procedure adopted to this end is properly intended to assist in the supervision of the planned action, but not to restrict the commander to particular methods. Flexibility is a prime consideration. The ultimate aim of the technique is (see also page 114) the rapid and successful exercise of mental effort in the fast-moving events of the tactical engagement. It is under such conditions, more especially, that effective supervision of the planned action becomes ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... law? My dear lady, one might as well be sure of a woman—pardon me; you know that I regard this quality of infinite flexibility as one of the supreme charms of your sex. I can't say that I feel it to be the supreme charm of the law. Mrs. Temperley claims to have her authority through the mother, because she has the written consent ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... There is no flexibility in Buddhism. It is a law, and nothing can change it. Laws are for ever and for ever, and there are no exceptions to them. The law of the Buddha is against war—war of any kind at all—and there can be no exception. And so every Burman who fought against us knew ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... future litigant should resort to the court of the contumacious praetor.[798] The vulgar mind is impressed, when it is not angered, by such scenes of violence. A repute for sternness is the best cloak for the flexibility which, if revealed, would excite suspicion. Scaurus to the popular mind was an embodiment of stiff patrician dignity, perhaps happily devoid of that touch of insolence which is often the mark of a career assured without a struggle; of a self-complacent dignity, quietly conscious ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... began to vary the position of the pauses within the line, and to do away with the pause at the end of some lines by {32} placing the breaks in thought elsewhere. Thus he gave to his verse ease, flexibility, and movement, and he put into it the warmth and vividness of his own personality. Upon such verse as this Shakespeare could hardly improve. But this by no means sums up his debt to Marlowe. His characterization of Richard III, for instance, ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... moment, in considering the movements we advocate, that we do not believe in strength and power. We do believe in applied power, applied indirectly; not by local grip and contraction, but indirectly through vitalized energy, expansion, and flexibility, through the true position and action of the singer. There is no strength properly applied in singing except through movement; through correct movement all the forces which nature has given the singer are indirectly brought into action; in this way there ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... latter cannot be undertaken satisfactorily. A good and reliable technique is undoubtedly of primary necessity. But it is by no means all. One may have a voice which is well-posed and of good resonance, and also have sufficient flexibility to perform neatly all the rapid passages with which the pages of the classic composers abound. But this is not singing; nor is the possessor of these an artist. He has simply the necessary and preliminary knowledge which should enable him to become one, by further study of the aesthetic ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... temporal power, in agreement with the high conception of the State which Luther derived from the long conflict of the Middle Ages. It is the most conservative form of religion, and less liable than any other to collision with the civil authority on which it rests. By its lack of independence and flexibility it was unfitted to succeed where governments were hostile, or to make its way by voluntary effort through the world. Moreover, Luther's vigorous personality has so much in it of the character of his nation, that they are attracted even by his defects—a thing which you can hardly ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... which the animal is attached permanently to the bottom of the sea; and it is composed of numerous separate plates, so jointed together that whilst the amount of movement between any two pieces must be very limited, the entire column acquires more or less flexibility, allowing the organism as a whole to wave backwards and forwards on its stalk. Into the exquisite minutioe of structure by which the innumerable parts entering into the composition of a single Crinoid are adapted for their proper purposes in the economy of the animal, it is ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... innumerable other Madonnas are beautiful pictures; but they are either mere mothers or mere angels. It is the same union in kind with what you may observe in his portrait, where masculine character is so blended and tempered with feminine grace and flexibility. Raphael is the clear, deep, beautiful eye, in which and through which is seen the undoubted heaven. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... harmony with the known distribution of matter in the solar system as we care to have them, except perhaps as to the comets. In effect it retains all the advantageous qualities of Kant's proposals. It seems to have the flexibility required in meeting the irregularities that we see in ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... masses of schist and of basalt are covered with vegetation of a character with which we are unacquainted, and of a physiognomy wholly p 27 unknown to us; and it is then, amid the colossal and majestic forms of an exotic flora, that we feel how wonderfully the flexibility of our nature fits us to receive new impressions, linked together by a certain secret analogy. We so readily perceive the affinity existing among all the forms of organic life, that although the sight ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... of childhood, her style lost its early simplicity and became stiff and, as she says, "periwigged." In these years the fear came many times to Miss Sullivan lest the success of the child was to cease with childhood. At times Miss Keller seemed to lack flexibility, her thoughts ran in set phrases which she seemed to have no power to revise or turn over in ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... highest sympathies; partly, and more than all, in opening his thoughts to the many conditions, possibilities and "varieties of untried being," in human character and situation, and so giving an incomparable flexibility to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... is from the will cannot be involuntary. But some violent actions proceed from the will: for instance, when a man with a heavy body goes upwards; or when a man contorts his limbs in a way contrary to their natural flexibility. Therefore violence does not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... cities of his dominions. He listened to the memorials which had been received, considered the subject of the petitions, and signified his intentions more rapidly than they could be taken in short-hand by the diligence of his secretaries. He possessed such flexibility of thought, and such firmness of attention, that he could employ his hand to write, his ear to listen, and his voice to dictate; and pursue at once three several trains of ideas without hesitation, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... 'making character'; perhaps it is, indeed, the only way. We can put in the quaint figure that spoke a hundred words with us yesterday by the wayside; but do we know him? Our friend with his infinite variety and flexibility, we know-but can we put him in? Upon the first, we must engraft secondary and imaginary qualities, possibly all wrong; from the second, knife in hand, we must cut away and deduct the needless arborescence of his nature, but the trunk and the few branches that remain ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not that all this is so alarming, if taken the right way—a woman with some courage in her heart and some flexibility in her mind supports the shock and does not die under it; but the firmest of us are amazed at it, and stand open-mouthed amid all these strange novelties, like a penniless gourmand in the shop of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... may say that they require of the pianist's fingers individualization and, consequently, a flexibility that is spiritual as well as material. The diligent daily study of Bach will form your style, your technics, better than all machines and finger exercises. But play him as if he were human, a contemporary and not a historical reminiscence. Yes, you may indulge in rubato. I would ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... of the Italian tongue, he has nevertheless succeeded in concealing the extraordinary art by which the difficult task was accomplished. Thus early the German language acquired its unsuspected power of flexibility in his hands. It is very evident to me that his peculiar characteristics as a poet sprang not so much from his Oriental studies as from a rare native faculty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... substance is white and transparent, quite flexible, and altogether a delicate and beautiful fabric, but not sufficiently strong to be put to any useful purpose: as it becomes older and tougher, it assumes a yellow colour, and loses much of its flexibility and beauty. A quantity of hibiscus bark was also collected, to be used in the manufacture of cord ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... the Holy Spirit and will find ourselves refreshed and enlightened as the result. There is need of that sort of yielding of self to the promptings of the Spirit. I think that it not infrequently happens that our rules get in the way of His action by destroying or checking in us a certain flexibility which is necessary if we are to respond quickly to the voice of the Spirit. As in the case just mentioned where the Spirit is leading us to communion with Him we are apt to think: "I must get on with my meditation or the time will be up and I shall not have made it," and we turn from the Spirit ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... time the visitor was Mr. Solomon Lightowler, who stood in the doorway with what he meant to be a reassuring smile on his face—though, owing to a certain want of flexibility in his uncle's features, ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... long centuries laid aside the pleasant duty of self-adornment. They dare not if they would,—too much is at stake; and they experience the just delight which comes from cooperation with a natural law. The flexibility of their dress gives them every opportunity to modify, to enhance, to reveal, and to conceal. It is in the highest degree interpretative, and through it they express their aspirations and ideals, their thirst for combat and their realization of defeat, their fluctuating sentiments ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... the law? My dear lady, one might as well be sure of a woman—pardon me; you know that I regard this quality of infinite flexibility as one of the supreme charms of your sex. I can't say that I feel it to be the supreme charm of the law. Mrs. Temperley claims to have her authority through the mother, because she has the written consent of the aunt to the adoption, but ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... of paper, now known as linen paper, had the merits of strength, flexibility, and durability in a high degree, but it was set aside by the copyists because the fabric was too thick and the surface was too rough. The art of calendering or polishing papers until they were of a smooth, glossy surface, which was then practised by the Persians, was unknown ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... friendship. fleksebleco flexibility. ofteco frequency. patreco fatherhood. indeco worthiness. patrineco motherhood. dankemeco thankfulness. ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... bird possesses in the power of applying force to its wings, which, in its case, form the aeroplanes. But we have already seen that there is no mechanical combination, and no way of applying force, which will give to the aeroplanes the flexibility and rapidity of movement belonging to the wings of a bird. With all the improvements that the genius of man has made in the steamship, the greatest and best ever constructed is liable now and then to meet with ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... gave each article the closest scrutiny. Nothing offered any clew, except the wallet. That, worn as it was, showed its costly texture, and the marks of careful mountings. It was unmistakably a man's wallet, and its flexibility denoted constant use. Brencherly set it on ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... hoping that his wrinkles will disappear more swiftly than they gathered. The Doctor (so styled by courtesy) shows the upper half of his person behind the counter, and appears to be a slender and rather tall man; his features are difficult to describe, possessing nothing peculiar, except a flexibility to assume all characters it, turn, while his eye, shrewd, quick, and saucy, remains the same throughout. Whenever a customer enters the shop, if he desire a box of pills, he receives with them an equal number of hard, round, dry jokes,—or if a dose of salts, it is mingled ...
— Dr. Bullivant - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... brought over from England some of those made by Joseph Gillott, at Birmingham. Before this goose-quill pens had been exclusively used, and there was in each House of Congress and in each Department a penmaker, who knew what degree of flexibility and breadth of point each writer desired. Every gentleman had to carry a penknife, and to have in his desk a hone to sharpen it on, giving the finishing touches on one of his boots. Another new invention of that epoch was the lucifer match-box, which superseded the large tin tinder-box with its ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... directly connected to the propellers. There was a clutch arrangement, so that the motor could be started, with the propellers out of gear, and they could be "thrown in," just as an automobile is started. This gave greater flexibility, and also allowed for the reversing of the propellers to ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... Twain's celebrated chapter upon snakes in Ireland. It would be enough to merely answer "No," but that the indefatigable Mr. Henderson, after running through three artificial languages of his own, has come to the conclusion that Greek is the thing. Certainly, as regards flexibility and power of word-formation, Greek would be better than Latin on its own merits. But it is too hard, and the scheme has ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... was made up for the lie and she did not possess that agility of purpose which, at a moment's notice, could enable her to twist her intentions—a mental somersault that needs the double-jointedness of cunning and all the consummate flexibility of tact. He might know that she had followed them, but she must never admit it. It seemed a feasible argument to her, in the whirling panic of her thoughts, that her admission would be fatal—just as the ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... shown the disinterestedness which culture enjoins, and its obedience not to likings or dislikings, but to the aim of perfection, let us show its flexibility,—its independence of machinery. That [lii] other and greater prophet of intelligence, and reason, and the simple natural truth of things,—Mr. Bright,—means by these, as we have seen, a certain set of measures which suit the special ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... poetry was his work in prose. In continuity and grandeur indeed, as in grace and music of phrase, the new prose of the Restoration fell far short of the prose of Hooker or Jeremy Taylor, but its clear nervous structure, its handiness and flexibility, its variety and ease, fitted it far better for the work of popularization on which literature was now to enter. It fitted it for the work of journalism, and every day journalism was playing a larger part in the political education of Englishmen. It fitted it to express the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... differently trained from heavy ones. Madame Carvalho, who began her studies in his school, did not alter the flexible but feeble organ she brought there. Mlle. Chaudesaigues and Mlle. Jacob, under Delsarte's tuition, attained to marvels of flexibility, without losing any of their ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... father, Papillon on one side, Cupid on the other, and it was in them rather than in her sister's friend that Angela was interested. The girl resembled her mother only in the grace and flexibility of her slender form, the quickness of her movements, and the vivacity of her speech. Her hair and eyes were dark, like her father's, and her colouring was that of a brunette, with something of a pale bronze under the delicate carmine of her cheeks. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... too, I repeat, has its beauty, and it has those who aim at it. To open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to know, and to digest, master, rule, and use its knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, resource, address, eloquent expression, is an object as intelligible (for here we are inquiring, not what the object of a Liberal Education is worth, nor what use the Church makes of it, but what it is in itself), I say, an object as ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... restrictions, prohibitions, and exclusions on the other. The bolts and the bars and the chains of all other nations will remain undisturbed. It is, indeed, possible, that our industry and commerce would accommodate themselves to this unequal and unjust state of things; for, such is the flexibility of our nature, that it bends itself to all circumstances. The wretched prisoner incarcerated in a jail, after a long time, becomes reconciled to his solitude, and regularly notches down the passing days of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... FRENCH SEAL, round corners, red under gold edges, extra grained lining, specially sewed to produce absolute flexibility and great durability. Each book packed in neat ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... in anaemic persons, in whom the flexibility and elasticity of the muscles are weakened, than in those of a plethoric habit. It is generally contracted during youth, between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Persons of sedentary and indolent habits are especially liable to this deformity, hence, girls ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... own life up out of my pain. Then I saw that what he had been trying with all his might to do was to CHANGE HIS COURSE, to BEND the line of lightning to which he was tied, in the direction in which he wanted to go. I felt my flexibility and helplessness, and knew that he would succeed. He bended me, turning his corner by means of my hurt, hurting me more than I had ever been hurt in my life, and at the acutest point of this, as he passed, I SAW. I understood ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... it was, there was no room for doubt. He was glad he had ordered the Challonari to withdraw from contact. To accept the existence of such beings required a flexibility under shock, an adaptability of reasoning, that the limited Challonari could never rise to. It was like a blow at the structure of the universe, but it raised a fascinating, age-old problem—what possible means of ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... In Egypt the girls as well as the boys are kept to such gymnastic exercises. My limbs were trained to flexibility by running, postures, and games ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... maxims of expediency, because a wide conception of the various interacting elements of a society naturally extends the considerations which a balance of expediencies will include. Hence, in time, there came a strong and lofty ideal of the true statesman, his breadth of vision, his flexibility of temper, his hardly measurable influence. These are the principal thoughts in the Discontents to which that tract owes its permanent interest. "Whatever original energy," says Burke, in one place, "may be supposed either in force or regulation, ...
— Burke • John Morley
... that variety could be accommodated only to motion or duration, and different degrees of motion were perhaps expressed by verses rapid or slow, without much attention of the writer, when the image had full possession of his fancy: but our language having little flexibility, our verses can differ very little in their cadence. The fancied resemblances, I fear, arise sometimes merely from the ambiguity of words; there is supposed to be some relation between a SOFT line and SOFT couch, ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... by his tail. When Sailor perceived that Jacko had removed his gymnastics from himself, and transferred them to the block, he rose from his recumbent attitude on the deck, and, squatting on his haunches, observed, for some little time, with singular attention and silence, the extraordinary flexibility of Jacko's limbs; but at the moment when Jacko suspended his little carcase by his smaller tail from the runner-block, whether it was the manner in which Sailor expressed a roar of laughter, or whether it was a shout of applause at the comical likeness of Jacko's body, swinging ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... very great merit; and with cultivation (instruction) she will rank among the very first vocalists of the age. She has a voice of great sweetness and power, with a wider range from the lowest to the highest notes than we have ever listened to: flexibility is not wanting, and her control of it is beyond example for a new and untaught vocalist. Her performance was received with marked approbation and applause from those who ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... the condition of bulk and heaviness of structure by their government chemists devising the formula of a material that is lighter than aluminum, yet which possesses all of that metal's density and which has also the flexibility of steel. Airships not among the twelve that Germany admits officially are made of this material. Its formula is a government secret and England or France would give thousands ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... man too high. Let me tell you what Goethe, the great German, said of this man: "If you wish depth, genius, imagination, taste, reason, sensibility, philosophy, elevation, originality, nature, intellect, fancy, rectitude, facility, flexibility, precision, art, abundance, variety, fertility, warmth, magic, charm, grace, force, an eagle sweep of vision, vast understanding, instruction rich, tone excellent, urbanity, suavity, delicacy, correctness, purity, cleanness, eloquence, harmony, brilliancy, rapidity, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... cat kind are, in a state of nature almost continually in action both by night and by day. They either walk, creep, or advance rapidly by prodigious bounds; but they seldom run, owing, it is believed, to the extreme flexibility of their limbs and vertebral column, which cannot preserve the rigidity necessary to that species of movement. Their sense of sight, especially during twilight, is acute; their hearing very perfect, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... and I hope to be able to convince my readers that it is no fanciful theory, but may be demonstrated as clearly as the problems of the geometer. The naturalist has his mathematics, as well as the geometer and the astronomer; and if the mathematics of the Animal Kingdom have a greater flexibility than those of the positive sciences, and are therefore not so easily resolved into their invariable elements, it is because they have the freedom and pliability of life, and evade our efforts to bring all their external variety within the limits of the same structural ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... novelty called "The Legrohs" relies chiefly on its most exceptional member, who would be complete without the other two. He is most decidedly a virtuoso in vaudeville. Very gifted, certainly, if at moments a little disconcerting in the flexibility and the seemingly uncertain turns of his body. It is the old-fashioned contortionism saved by charming acrobatic variations. This "Legroh" knows how to make a superb pattern with his body, and the things he does with it are done with ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... essayists, M. de Bonald and M. de Maistre (those two eagles of thought)—all the lighter French literature, in short, that appeared during that sudden outburst of first vigorous growth might bring delight into her solitary life, but not flexibility of mind or body. She stood strong and straight like some forest tree, lightning-blasted but still erect. Her dignity became a stilted manner, her social supremacy led her into affectation and sentimental over-refinements; she queened it with her foibles, after the usual fashion of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Horace have done damage to the Latin language, or at least to our taste; just as Pope was the ruin of English poetry so long as he was allowed to dictate the style and cadences. In Plautus, Lucretius, and Catullus the language has a flexibility and the metres a freedom which (as I think) academicians and schoolmasters have not duly appreciated, and which ought to impart to us (when we do do anything so absurd as to write foreign verses) a ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... connection with the running of this type of engine was its flexibility; the normal output of power was obtained with 1,150 revolutions per minute of the crankshaft, but, by accelerating up to 1,400 revolutions, a maximum of 147 brake horse-power could be obtained. The weight was ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... birth. "She has always to deal with easily irritated amour-propres; consequently the slightest deficiency in proportion would be promptly detected,"[2250] But she is never mistaken, and never hesitates in these subtle distinctions; with incomparable tact, dexterity, and flexibility of tone, she regulates the degrees of her welcome. She has one "for women of condition, one for women of quality, one for women of the court, one for titled women, one for women of historic names, another for women of high birth personally, but married to men beneath them; another for women ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... produce an appreciable result. In all the innumerable wanderings, fights, upturnings and cataclysms of the earth's stupendous career, each creature has been summoned under penalty of death to use what little wit he may have had, and the slightest trace of mental flexibility is of such priceless value in the struggle for existence that natural selection must always have seized upon it, and sedulously hoarded and transmitted it for coming generations to strengthen and increase. With the lapse of geologic time the ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske
... prompt every individual to have a distinct sort of writing, as she has given a peculiar countenance—a voice—and a manner. The flexibility of the muscles differs with every individual, and the hand will follow the direction of the thoughts and the emotions and the habits of the writers. The phlegmatic will portray his words, while the playful haste of the volatile will scarcely sketch them; the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the first to awake, and he saw the dawn of a new winter day, the earth reeking with cold damp and the thawing snow. He unrolled himself from his blankets and arose a little stiffly, but with a few movements of the limbs all his flexibility returned. The air was chill and the scene in the black forest of winter was desolate, but Tayoga was happy. Tododaho on his great shining star had watched over him and showered him with favors, and he had no doubt that he would remain under the protection of the mighty chief ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... pendular movement is translated by a formula. But the problem defies all the artifices of analysis if the oscillating body is a real body, endowed with volume and friction; if the suspensory thread is a real thread, endowed with weight and flexibility; if the point of support is a real point, endowed with resistance and capable of deflection. So with other problems, however simple. The exact reality ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... such as navicular disease and side-bones. Weak heels is the principal predisposing factor. Any condition that tends to prevent the hoof from taking up moisture, or causes it to lose moisture, may cause the horn to lose flexibility and contract. This is one of the reasons why horses that are worked continuously in cities, or used for driving, frequently develop contracted feet. Ill-fitting shoes, excessive rasping of the wall and bars, and allowing the shoes ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... will tell you that they longe a colt to supple him. That is ridiculous nonsense. A colt unbroken will bend himself with most extraordinary flexibility. Look at a lot of two-years before starting for a run; observe the agility of their antics: or watch a colt scratching his head with his hind foot, and you will never believe that such animals can require ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... things to suffer the summer of his consummate mental powers to shine upon us? Take the works of any of the abovenamed distinguished individuals previous to their thirty-eighth year, and shall we perceive that flexibility of the English language to the extent that Byron has left behind him? His versatility was, indeed, astonishing and triumphant. His Childe Harold, the Bride of Abydos, the Corsair, and Don Juan, (though somewhat too freely written,) are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... years or more to the higher castes, and especially to the Brahmans, the highest of all castes, a social supremacy for which there is no parallel elsewhere. At the same time, inflexibly as they have dominated Hinduism, these higher castes have themselves preserved a flexibility of mind and temper which has enabled them to adapt themselves with singular success to the vicissitudes of changing times without any substantial sacrifice of their inherited traditions and aspirations. Thus it is amongst high-caste Hindus that for the last three-quarters of a century ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... permanently stiffen. Even where, by the use of splints, permanent stiffness seems to have been brought on, the warm-water treatment recommended above will bring about a loosening and softening of the joint, which will permit first of a slight bending, and then, with gentle encouragement, a complete flexibility. The complete restoration of the limb should be the object kept in view. No case of a stiffened joint, although it may be free from pain and disease, can be regarded as satisfactory, and hence treatment should be persevered in until all stiffness ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... whenever he turned round. This was at first supposed to be a wilful offence against common decency, and some disapprobation was evinced; but the utter unconsciousness of the odd creature was soon apparent, and then urestrained mirth reigned throughout the boxes, pit, and gallery. The total want of flexibility of limb, the awkwardness of his gait, and the idiotic manner in which he stood still, all produced a most ludicrous effect; but when his guttural voice was heard, and his total misapprehension of every passage in the play, especially ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... however, in sailing before the wind, is by no means to be compared to that of a fish. It is well known that the largest fishes will, with the greatest ease, overtake a ship in full sail, play round it without effort, and shoot ahead of it at pleasure. This arises from their great flexibility, which, to compete with mocks the labours of art, and enables them to migrate thousands of miles in a season, without the slightest indications ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... gifted minds which have startled us by the versatility of their powers, whence do they derive the high character of their genius? Their durable claims are substantiated by what is inherent in themselves—what is individual—and not by that flexibility which may include so much which others can equal. We rate them by their positive originality, not by their variety of powers. When we think of YOUNG, it is only of his "Night Thoughts," not of his tragedies, nor his poems, nor even of his satires, which others have ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... allowed to remain, are likely to accumulate below the skin and produce roughness, pimples, and even eruptions of an obstinate and unpleasant character. Those soaps which ensure a moderate fairness and flexibility of the skin are the most desirable for ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... Siglo de Oro. This 11-syllable line, though of foreign origin, has held the boards as the chief erudite measure in Spanish verse for four centuries, and taken all in all it is the noblest metrical form for serious poems in modern Spanish. A striking peculiarity of the line is its flexibility. It is not divided into hemistichs as were its predecessors, the 14-syllable Alexandrine and the 12-syllable arte mayor verse; but it consists of two phrases and the position of the inner rhythmic accent is usually variable. page lxiii A well constructed line of this ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... pain he bored in. He had but one chance—to get this shadow in his gorilla-like arms. He lacked mental flexibility. An idea, getting into his head, stuck; it was not adjustable. Like an arrow sped from the bowstring, it had to fulfill its destiny. It never occurred to him to take to his heels, to get space between himself and this enemy he had so woefully underestimated. Ten ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... well as you would do, my dear," said I. "There are plenty of young women in our Boston high-schools who are going through higher fields of mathematics than are required by the architect, and the schools for design show the flexibility and fertility of the female pencil. The thing appears to me altogether more feasible than many other openings which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of a soul buffeted by Destiny. Gallatin—the urbane, cosmopolitan Gallatin—must have derived much quiet amusement from his association with this robust New Englander who took himself so seriously. Two natures could not have been more unlike, yet the superior flexibility of Gallatin's temperament made their association not only possible but exceedingly profitable. We may not call their intimacy a friendship—Adams had few, if any friendships; but it contained the essential foundation ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... family. That was inevitable. It is only reasonable that, with our growing scientific knowledge of the mysteries of sex, we should seek to apply that knowledge to those questions of life which we must ever regard as central. How can we add to the stability or to the flexibility of marriage? How can we most judiciously regulate the size ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... was a forcible language, but it lacked the wealth of expression and the flexibility necessary to respond to the most delicate touches of the master-musicians who were to come. When Shakespeare ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... himself. When treating congenial themes he errs by overestimate rather than by depreciation: among the qualities of his early work, which afterwards suffered some eclipse in the growth of other powers, is its flexibility. It was natural for Carlyle, his successor in genius in the Scotch lowlands, to give an account of Robert Burns which throws all previous criticism of the poet into the shade. Similarly he has strong affinities to Johnson, Luther, Knox, Cromwell, to all his ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... like crocodiles or lizards. The flat vertebral joints show that the short compact body was not as flexible as the longer body of crocodiles or lizards, in which the articulations are of the ball and socket type showing that in them this region was very flexible. The tail also shows a limited flexibility. It could not be curled or thrown over the back, but projected out behind the animal, swinging from side to side or up and down as much as was needed for balance. The curvature of the ribs shows that the body was narrow and deep, unlike the broad flattened body of the crocodile ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... person, on whom the governor and council have wrought a necromantic miracle. I should not wonder if he were to crumble away, some morning, after you are gone, and nothing be seen of him more, except a heap of dust. Miss Hepzibah, at any rate, will lose what little flexibility she has. ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fairly broad behind the shoulders, which should be sloped, loins very powerful. The dog should be straight in front. THE FORE-LEGS should be straight and muscular, neither in nor out at elbows, with a fair amount of bone; the forearm somewhat fleshy, the pasterns showing flexibility without weakness. THE HIND-LEGS should be muscular at the thighs, clean and sinewy below the hocks, with well bent stifles. THE FEET should be oval in shape, soles well padded, and the toes arched and close together. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... twirled his sabre with the dexterity of a single-stick. He wanted to bewilder Philippe, and strike his weapon so as to disarm him; but at the first encounter he felt that the colonel's wrist was iron, with the flexibility of a steel string. Maxence was then forced, unfortunate fellow, to think of another move, while Philippe, whose eyes were darting gleams that were sharper than the flash of their blades, parried ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... the chest-muscle tension, against which the breath is forced, and whence, under the control of the singer, after passing through the vocal cords, it beats against the resonating surfaces and vibrates in the cavities of the head. Of a highly cultivated skill and flexibility in adjusting all the vocal organs and in putting them into minutely graduated movements, without inducing changes through the pronunciation of words or the execution of musical figures that shall be injurious to the tonal beauty or the ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... beyond its capabilities(?) finds a wide field when he comes to those passages in the original which are written in rhyming prose" (p. 181). "Captain Burton of course could not neglect such an opportunity for display of linguistic flexibility on the model of 'Peter Parley picked a peck of pickled peppers"' (p. 182, where the Saj'a or prose rhyme is most ignorantly confounded with our peculiarly English alliteration). But this is wilfully to misstate the matter. Let me repeat my conviction ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... limping in gait; broad-chested; a high intellectual forehead; manly beauty in every feature; a voice of remarkable sweetness and flexibility; a mild but deeply penetrating eye; a most retentive memory; endowed with varied knowledge by extensive reading; unrivaled in power of oratory; frank in thought, speech, and manner; patient and forbearing ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... "Upon a steelyard, or spring-balance, dependent upon mere tension or flexibility, the attraction will have no influence. If I suspend a weight equivalent to the weight of a kilogramme, the index will register the proper weight on the surface of Gallia. Thus I shall arrive at the difference I want: the difference between the earth's attraction ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... connecting the balls is four or five feet, instead of a few inches in length. Bar bells weigh from one to two pounds each and are found most useful in building up the respiratory and digestive systems, their especial province being the strengthening of the erector muscles and increasing the flexibility of ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... and later to advance to Great Britain the funds she required for her purchase of supplies in Canada. The task was made easier by the effective working of a banking system which had many times proved its soundness and its flexibility. When the money market of Britain was no longer open to overseas borrowers, the Dominion first turned to the United States, where several federal and provincial loans were floated, and later to her own resources. Domestic loans were issued on an increasing scale and with ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... motion produced can be but equal to the force of the moving power; but the operations of life, whether private or publick, admit no such laws. The caprices of voluntary agents laugh at calculation. It is not always that there is a strong reason for a great event. Obstinacy and flexibility, malignity and kindness, give place, alternately, to each other; and the reason of these vicissitudes, however important may be the consequences, often escapes the mind in which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... travel, the new countries, the old cities, the expansion, broadening of mind he had felt for a time as its result. More than all, the delight of the people whom he had met, the unused experience of being understood at once, of light touch and easy flexibility, possible, as he had not known before, with good and serious qualities. One man, above all, he had never forgotten. It had been a pleasant memory always to have known him, to have been friends with him even, for he had felt to his own surprise ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... of music. At a time, when his whole study and endeavour should be to form and cultivate the voice, and by long, patient, and persevering exercise, to develop and command its powers, and to acquire flexibility and certainty of execution, his efforts are expended in learning—as it is called—songs. This process may be carried on ad infinitum; but none of the objects of the pupil's study can be ever sung, in the real acceptation of the term, on this method of instruction. The well-known ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... serves another purpose: that of a toilet-sponge and brush. At a moment of rest, after a meal, the Glow-worm passes and repasses the said brush over his head, back, sides and hinder parts, a performance made possible by the flexibility of his spine. This is done point by point, from one end of the body to the other, with a scrupulous persistency that proves the great interest which he takes in the operation. What is his object in thus sponging ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... in literature that we reap the real benefit of knowing a foreign tongue. There is no other way—not even residence in a foreign land if we are ignorant of the language—to take us out of the customary circle of our own traditions. It imparts a mental flexibility and emotional sympathy which no other discipline can yield. To ordain that all non-English-speaking peoples should learn English in addition to their mother tongue, and to render it practically unnecessary for English-speakers (except the small class of students) to learn any ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... stimulating rather than stifling creative thought, flexibility is a characteristic of any form capable of application in such dissimilar circumstances as may be presented by the varying scope of military problems. The Estimate Form is such a flexible guide. If a commander, in solving a problem, feels ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... second layer has been allowed to cool and if cell connectors have not been burned up too high. In sealing last layer with flame, care should be taken not to play flame on compound too long as this hardens and burns the compound. Burned compound has no flexibility and will crack readily in service, thus causing the battery to become a "slopper." In pouring compound be sure to have battery setting level so that compound will come up even on all edges of case. Do not move battery after pouring last ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... evade and slip behind these terms. He should endeavour to indicate his vision of the world by means of words which have acquired no thick accretion of traditional crust but are fresh and supple and organic. He should use such words, in fact, as might be said to have the flexibility of life, and like living plants to possess leaves and sap. He should avoid as far as he can such metaphors and images as already carry with them the accumulated associations of traditional usage, and he should select his expressions so that they shall give the reader the definite impact ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... common forms of literary education, they implicitly concluded qualified to teach all that was to be learned from a scholar. He thought himself sufficiently exalted by being placed at the same table with his pupil, and had no other view than to perpetuate his felicity by the utmost flexibility of submission to all my mother's opinions and caprices. He frequently took away my book, lest I should mope with too much application, charged me never to write without turning up my ruffles, and generally brushed my coat before he dismissed me into the parlour. He had no ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... development and settlement of the country and its duty to follow up its citizens there with the benefits of legal machinery, I earnestly urge upon Congress the establishment of a system of government with such flexibility as will enable it to adjust itself to the future areas ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... vague, but luminous, manner that he had been right in both instances. Indeed, the anxious listener had conveyed to him the conviction, still vague but not less irresistible, that this direct contradiction was peculiarly creditable to the Right Hon. Gentleman addressing the House, displaying a flexibility of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... of dispute, the prettiest girl in Aberleigh. It was a rare union of face, form, complexion, and expression. Of that just height, which, although certainly tall, would yet hardly be called so, her figure united to its youthful roundness, and still more youthful lightness, an airy flexibility, a bounding grace, and when in repose, a gentle dignity, which alternately reminded one of a fawn bounding through the forest, or a swan at rest upon the lake. A sculptor would have modelled her for the youngest of the Graces; whilst a painter, caught ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... trifling to remark, that he has made the letter o, in the word virgo, long and short in the same line: "Virgo, virgo parit." But the translation has great merit, and some admirable lines. In the odes there is a sweet flexibility, particularly—to his worthy friend Dr. Lawrence; on himself at the theatre, March 8, 1771; the ode in the isle of Skie; and that to Mrs. Thrale, from the ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... by representatives of government, labor, and employers have helped to bring Italy's inflation into conformity with EMU requirements. Italy's economic performance, however, has lagged behind that of its EU partners and it must work to stimulate employment, promote labor flexibility, reform its expensive pension system, ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... truth to say that the Hebraic spirit is heat, the Hellenic spirit is light. Hebraism means moral fervour; Hellenism means intellectual sensibility. Hebraism suggests strength of conviction, tenacity of resolve, prophetic vehemence; Hellenism suggests flexibility of thought, adaptability to circumstances, artistic serenity. Hebraism suggests the austere and spiritual life, Hellenism the social and sensuous life. Yet none of these brief antitheses can be wholly or exclusively true. The difference is not thus to be labelled away, any more than one can label ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... English authors, Thackeray is my favorite. Humor, pathos, satire, ripe culture, knowledge of the world and of the human heart, instinctive good taste and a style equaled by none of his fellows in its clearness, ease, flexibility and winning charm—these are some of the traits that make the author of Vanity Fair and Esmond incomparably the first literary artist as well as the greatest writer of his age. Whether he would have been as fine a writer had ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... market-oriented economy, private individuals and business firms make most of the decisions, and government purchases of goods and services are made predominantly in the marketplace. US business firms enjoy considerably greater flexibility than their counterparts in Western Europe and Japan in decisions to expand capital plant, lay off surplus workers, and develop new products. At the same time, they face higher barriers to entry in their rivals' home markets than the barriers to entry of foreign firms in US markets. In all economic ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... his volcanic pump, De la Beche gave us a long oration about the impossibility of strata of the Alps, etc., remaining flexible for such a time as they must have done, if they were to be tilted, convoluted, or overturned by gradual small shoves. He never, however, explained his theory of original flexibility, and therefore I am as unable as ever to comprehend why flexiblility is a quality so limited ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... by play of light and shade. Another advantage of the ancient method is that the completed work is very flexible; this point will appeal to those who have experienced the extreme stiffness of a large surface of ordinarily couched metal threads. Flexibility is an invaluable quality for any work destined, like copes and ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... with the poet, connotes simile and metaphor. The poor man's vocabulary, like the poet's, is quite inadequate to express his thoughts. Both, in their several ways, are driven to the use of unhackneyed words and simile and metaphor; both use a language of great flexibility;[11] for which reason we find that after the poet himself, the poor man speaks most poetically. Witness the beautiful description: "All to once the nor'easter springed out from the land, an' afore us could ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... the old German of the Swabian period. Of this period— (the polished dialect of which is analogous to that of our Chaucer, and which leaves the philosophic student in doubt, whether the language has not since then lost more in sweetness and flexibility, than it has gained in condensation and copiousness)—I read with sedulous accuracy the Minnesinger (or singers of love, the Provencal poets of the Swabian court) and the metrical romances; and then laboured through sufficient ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Yvonne rose to her feet, more like a snake than ever in her flexibility and swiftness, and held Isabel to her for a moment, her arm round her young friend's waist. "But if you pin any more buttonholes into Captain Hyde's coat," the last low murmur was only for Isabel's ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... the summertime a pair of deer’s horns are attached to the sledge as a back, which in the winter are removed to enable them when stopping to turn the sledge up, so as to prevent the dogs running away with it. The whole is secured by lashings of thong, giving it a degree of strength combined with flexibility which perhaps no other mode of ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... his potency, the spirit and heat of living, met without any renewal its inescapable winter. This might, did, occur while his being was rebellious with vain hope. Today, in spite of the slight clogging of his breath, his body's loss of flexibility, his imagination was as vigorous, as curious, as ever ... take that nonsense about the doll, which, in a recalled classical allusion, he had privately named Cytherea. Peyton Morris would never ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the scarcity of distinctive forms, and to the consequent flexibility of English speech, words which are usually other parts of speech are often used as nouns; and various word groups may take the place of nouns ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... report marshaled a long list of arguments to prove that exclusion of the Negro was not discriminatory, but "a means of promoting efficiency, dependability, and flexibility of the Navy as a whole." It concluded that no change in policy was necessary since "within the limitations of the characteristics of members of certain races, the enlisted personnel of the Naval Establishment is representative of all the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... bronze, corundum, emery, feldspar, argillite, clay. Note especially the color, luster, specific gravity and flexibility ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... history of dogma, less patient and minute than the works of the specialists of modern Germany on the same subject, but for spirit, clearness, and breadth it is superior to those profound but somewhat barbarous writers. The flexibility of intellect which can do justice in quick succession to such diverse subjects is very extraordinary, and assuredly implies great width of sympathy ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... of Greek art, then, begins, as some have fancied general history to begin, in a [193] golden age, but in an age, so to speak, of real gold, the period of those first twisters and hammerers of the precious metals—men who had already discovered the flexibility of silver and the ductility of gold, the capacity of both for infinite delicacy of handling, and who enjoyed, with complete freshness, a sense of beauty and fitness in their work—a period of which that flower of gold on a silver stalk, picked ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... and most reliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside, is by the flukes or tail; and as from its greater density that part is relatively heavier than any other (excepting the side-fins), its flexibility even in death, causes it to sink low beneath the surface; so that with the hand you cannot get at it from the boat, in order to put the chain round it. But this difficulty is ingeniously overcome: a small, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... The uses of the perspirable matter are to keep the skin soft and pliant, for the purposes of its easier flexibility during the activity of our limbs in locomotion, and for the preservation of the accuracy of the sense of touch, which is diffused under the whole surface of it to guard us against the injuries of external bodies; in the same manner as the secretion of ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... face and hands as usual and prepared her breakfast. Her eyes were brighter, her voice stronger, but the girl noticed that her face seemed a little swollen and the lines about her mouth had lost their flexibility. ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... a noble thing, that the English tongue is, as it were, the common focus and point of union to which opposite beauties converge? Is it a trifle that we temper energy with softness, strength with flexibility, capaciousness of sound with pliancy of idiom? Some, I know, insensible to these virtues, and ambitious of I know not what unattainable decomposition, prefer to utter funeral praises over the grave of departed Anglo-Saxon, or, starting with convulsive ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Several tufts of black and blonde hair. A human jaw, furnished with fine white teeth. A forearm and hand, all the fingers of the latter intact. The flesh was white and fresh, and both the arm and hand preserved a degree of flexibility in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fairly long one, as the speed of the drifters was not sufficient to enable them to gain rapidly on their quarry, but the flexibility of the steam-engine gradually gave the surface ships the advantage and they crept up level with the light. Then, with their boilers almost bursting and flames spouting from the funnels, they drew ahead until over the submarine itself. Depth charges were dropped from the stern of the drifters. ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... a remarkably prepossessing exterior. Arrayed in his blue frock and duck trousers, he was as smart a looking sailor as ever stepped upon a deck; he was singularly small and slightly made, with great flexibility of limb. His naturally dark complexion had been deepened by exposure to the tropical sun, and a mass of jetty locks clustered about his temples, and threw a darker shade into his large black eyes. He was a strange wayward being, moody, fitful, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... train of reasoning, Julian had arrived at the same conclusion; in which, therefore, he heartily acquiesced. During the seaman's prosing, he was reflecting within himself, how much of the singular flexibility of her limbs and movements the unfortunate girl must have derived from the discipline and instructions of Adrian Brackel; and also how far the germs of her wilful and capricious passions might have ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... top-floor room. Suddenly I struck one of these standing very wide open, and trod upon a rope's end curled like a snake on the leads. I stooped down, and at a touch I knew that I had hold of Raffles's favourite Manila, which united a silken flexibility with the strength of any hawser. It was tied to the window-post, and it dangled into a room in which there was a dull red glow of fire: an inhabited room if ever I put my nose in one! My body must follow, ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... rules of an age when conditions of life were simpler are no longer practicable under the more complex relationships of modern times, there is today an inevitable tendency to force these rules to greater flexibility. * ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... the Belgian frontier. The small British army under Sir John French moved north of that, and the new Eighth French Army, under General d'Urbal, was intended to fill the gap to the Channel. With remarkable flexibility the Germans initiated the movement with their right as fast as the French extended their left, and the whole strategy of both sides developed into a feverish race for the northern shore. Before General d'Urbal could reach his appointed sector, however, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... characters—these form the hereditary factor, the race. Now none of these are ever quite fixed. A certain measure of plasticity has to be counted in as part of their very nature. Even in the bee, with its highly definite instincts, there is a certain flexibility bound up with each of these; so that, for instance, the inborn faculty of building up the comb regularly is modified if the hive happens to be of an awkward shape. Yet, as compared with what remains over, the characters that we are able to distinguish as racial ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... of priority emergency recovery efforts and expedient alternatives that are available, some within hours, to aid in restoration of transportation capacity. In addition, transportation systems generally have an inherently significant degree of redundancy and flexibility. Consequently, an unquantified but significant movement capability in all transport modes is expected to survive. Finally, these loss estimates do not take into account the question of availability of essential supporting resources, particularly petroleum ...
— An Assessment of the Consequences and Preparations for a Catastrophic California Earthquake: Findings and Actions Taken • Various
... over his mind. These men were not identified with their Order. Their General, Roothan, had disliked the plan of the Review, foreseeing that the Society would be held responsible for writings which it did not approve, and would forfeit the flexibility in adapting itself to the moods of different countries, which is one of the secrets of its prosperity. The Pope arranged the matter by taking the writers under his own protection, and giving to them a sort ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... he slept soundly. At his waking Mignonne was gone. He mounted the little hill to scan the horizon, and perceived her in the far distance returning with the long bounds peculiar to these animals, who are prevented from running by the extreme flexibility of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... morning sleep among the vines, when the fatigue of the night was over—dew-drenched garments—the serf lying at his ease at last: the artists, then so [62] numerous at the place, caught what they could, something, at least, of the richness, the flexibility of the visible aspects of life, from all this. With them the life of seeming idleness, to which Denys was conducting the youth of Auxerre so pleasantly, counted but as the cultivation, for their due service to man, of delightful natural things. And the powers ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... makes it firm and inflexible: so let us plunge our poor, changeful, vacillating resolutions, our wayward, wandering hearts, our passions, so easily excited by temptation, into that great fountain, and there will filter into our flexibility what will make it firm, and into our changefulness what will give in us some faint copy of the divine immutability, and we shall stand fast in the Lord and in the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... we do with baleen? It so combines lightness, elasticity, and flexibility, that nothing yet invented adapts itself so perfectly to all the requirements of the fashionable corset. Whalebone whips are made from single pieces of baleen seven or eight feet long. A whalebone horsewhip costs from fifteen to eighteen dollars and will outlast a dozen cheaper persuaders. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... those products of art in which the elements or parts employed in construction are largely filamental and are combined by methods conditioned chiefly by their flexibility. The processes employed are known by such terms as interlacing, plaiting, netting, weaving, ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... also, a woman was born in Chester without hands, to whom nature had supplied a remedy for that defect by the flexibility and delicacy of the joints of her feet, with which she could sew, or perform any work with thread or scissors, as well ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... enough to drop at the right moment such subjects as the ultimate reduction of all the so-called elementary substances, his own total scepticism concerning Manetho's chronology, or even the relation between the magnetic condition of the earth and the outbreak of revolutionary tendencies. Such flexibility was naturally much helped by his amiable feeling towards woman, whose nervous system, he was convinced, would not bear the continuous strain of difficult topics; and also by his willingness to contribute a song whenever the same desultory charmer ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... rose graciously and extended his royal right hand. Mary Louise made a low curtsey, finding it much easier now that she was a mermaid to perform this little act of graciousness on account of the flexibility of ...
— The Iceberg Express • David Magie Cory
... the lips become thick and swollen, and if treatment is neglected the swelling may become hard and indurated, or an abscess may form. This condition renders it difficult for the animal to get food into its mouth, on account of the lips having lost their natural flexibility. In such cases an ox will use his tongue more in the prehension of food to make up for the incapacity of the lips. In cases of snake bite the swelling is soft or puffy and its limits are not ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... demonstrate the retention of awkward positions in the upward extremities. But any part or even the whole body may be involved; for example, Charles O. retained standing positions even where balance was difficult. This phenomenon is often accompanied by "waxy flexibility," where the joints move stiffly but retain whatever bend is given them, like a doll ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... Calymene, the tail consisted of jointed segments till its termination; in others, as in Illaenus, there was a great caudal shield, that in size and form corresponded to the shield which covered the head; the segments of Calymene, from the flexibility of their joints, fitted close to the cerebral rim; while the same effect was produced in the inflexible shields, caudal and cephalic, of Illaenus, by their exact correspondence, and the flexibility of the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... thing, and the only thing, that, in the long run, appeals. It is because of the absence of it that one can read so few modern writers twice! They have flexibility, originality, cleverness, insight—but they lack ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... we specifically require but 4 units—3 in English and 1 in mathematics. From the others free election among groups is allowed. The movement here and elsewhere seems to be in the direction of requiring the completion of a full four-year high school course, with increasing flexibility as to specific ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... the more entertaining of the two; for, in spite of his lady's austere views, the Marquis retained that gift of social flexibility that was already becoming the tradition of a happier day. To the Marquis, indeed, the revolution was execrable not so much because of the hardships it inflicted, as because it was the forerunner of social dissolution—the breaking-up of the regime which had made manners the highest morality, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... leaders in every kind of improvement; but like the operatives who provide our comforts and luxuries, they are themselves warped and crippled by what they do. The habit of looking at a single order of facts, coldly and always from the same point of view, takes from the mind flexibility, weakens the imagination, and puts fetters on the soul; and hence though it is important that there be specialists, the kind of education by which they are formed, while it is suited to make a geologist, a chemist, a mathematician, or a botanist, ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... dexterity and application in business; a judicious mixture of liberality and economy, of mildness and rigor; profound dissimulation, under the disguise of military frankness; steadiness to pursue his ends; flexibility to vary his means; and, above all, the great art of submitting his own passions, as well as those of others, to the interest of his ambition, and of coloring his ambition with the most specious pretences of justice and public utility. Like Augustus, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... in 2001. The Samoan Government has called for deregulation of the financial sector, encouragement of investment, and continued fiscal discipline, meantime protecting the environment. Observers point to the flexibility of the labor market as a basic strength for future economic advances. Foreign reserves are in a relatively healthy state, the external debt is stable, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... to be different from any other sermons, hardly estimated their real power, or knew at the time the influence which the sermons were having upon them. Plain, direct, unornamented, clothed in English that was only pure and lucid, free from any faults of taste, strong in their flexibility and perfect command both of language and thought, they were the expression of a piercing and large insight into character and conscience and motives, of a sympathy at once most tender and most stern with the tempted and the wavering, of an absolute and burning faith in God and His counsels, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... STRAW. This is generally done by the fumes of sulphur, in a place enclosed for that purpose: but to render the straw very white, and encrease its flexibility in platting, it should be dipped in a solution of oxygenated muriatic acid, saturated with potash. Oxygenated muriate of lime will also answer the purpose. To repair straw bonnets, they must be carefully ripped to pieces; the plat should be bleached ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... diseases. And not only have we to remember that we are dealing with disharmonies that may at the very best be only patched together, but we are dealing with matters in which the element of idiosyncrasy is essential, insisting upon an incalculable flexibility in any rule we make, unless we are to take types and indeed whole classes of personality and write them down as absolutely bad and fit only for suppression and restraint. And on the mental side we are further perplexed by the extraordinary suggestibility ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... sculptors, she did not venture to have him approach within several inches of the surface she intended to cut. Slight girl as she was, she wielded for eight or ten hours a day a leaden mallet weighing four pounds and a half. Had it not been for the strength and flexibility of muscle acquired by rowing and other athletic exercises, such arduous ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... out," saith the ancient proverb; and, although my "Spirit in the Clouds" had already hinted at the dangerous consequences likely to result from a visit to the "Oakland Cottages," yet such was the flexibility of my friend Transit's ethics, his penchant for a spree, and the volatile nature of his disposition, when the ripe Falerian set the red current mantling in his veins, that not all my philosophy, nor the sage monitions ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
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