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More "Least resistance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and now, as other nations progressed and they stood still, the power of the sword was failing them. Russia expanded toward the Black Sea, as before she had expanded toward the Baltic, feeling out from her boundaries everywhere, moving along the line of least resistance, already looking toward Poland as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... he will use a short sentence when comparing two objects, for instance, but as he naturally moves along the line of least resistance it is hardly to be expected that he will take the trouble to form complete sentences unless gently stimulated to do so. The stimulus must be gentle, however, and given at the right time, for any feeling that his words are criticised will lead ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in every member of the class,—take infinite variety from individual sensitiveness to environment: the line of least resistance for one being that of greatest resistance for another;—no two courses of true nomadism can ever be wholly the same. Diversified of necessity both impulse and direction, even as human nature is diversified. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... commonplace prepared for them by dull writers and commercial publishers, and continued on in those so-called domestic stories (as if domestic meant idiotic) until their minds were diluted to that degree that they could not act upon anything that offered the least resistance. Beginning with the pepsinized books, they must continue with them, and the dull appetite by-and-by must be stimulated with a spice of vulgarity or a little pepper of impropriety. And fortunately for their nourishment in this kind, the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to depend upon, it would have been still worse. Now he must settle down to county business if he could, and clear his mind of all foolish regrets. Love and marriage—he was ten years too late! He had dawdled on, taking the line of least resistance, and he was now revealed to himself in a true and unsparing light. He paced swiftly on, and presently entered the wood. His feet fell soft on the grassy road among ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Manhattan State Hospital, she wrote Manhatt Hhospshosh, and for Ward's Island, Ww. Iland. Again, instead of writing 90th Street, she wrote 90theath Street. These are plainly reactions of the path of least resistance or, in these instances, of perseveration. Of the same nature are some of her other replies in writing or speaking. After she had been asked to write her name, she was requested to add her address, or the name of the hospital; she merely repeated the name. Similarly, ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... path, however formed or however unscientific, has some right to exist. On the whole it has tended to preserve life, and it is the way of least resistance for the human race. On the other hand it is not the best, and the way has ever been made easier by those who have violated precepts and defied some of the concepts of the time. Both ways are right and both ways are wrong. The conflict between the ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... the doctrine is indefensible—it follows the line of least resistance, and sacrifices the spirit to the flesh. Materially, it is fraught with grave danger to the home and to our national existence. It is proposed to disseminate a knowledge of contraceptive methods throughout the overcrowded homes of the ill-fed, ill-clad poor. Now it ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... but it rested with Him to decide whether He would be that instrument or no, and the course He chose was not that of {170} mechanical necessity, nor was the decision to which He came a following in the line of least resistance. In accepting the pain and shame of the Cross, Jesus worked His Father's will; but that will was not imposed upon Him from without, but freely responded to from within. As the author of the Theologia ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... burdened with long words and stilted phrases, while in conversation one's thoughts seek expression through lines of least resistance—familiar words and short sentences. But in writing, these same thoughts go stumbling over long words ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... self-denial. Those who go in the line of least resistance are on the road to destruction. It is often necessary to overcome habits which produce temporary gratification ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... quarrels. If a drunken husband was pounding his wife, the children would run for me. Hastening to the scene of action, I would take Patrick by the collar, and, much to his surprise and shame, make him sit down and promise to behave himself. I never had one of them offer the least resistance, and in time they all came to regard me as one having authority. I strengthened my influence by cultivating good feeling. I lent the men papers to read, and invited their children into our grounds; giving them fruit, of which we had abundance, and my children's old clothes, books, and toys. I was ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... was, however, and with less demur than might have been expected of so inveterate a fighter as Dan Levy. But his one remaining course was obviously the line of least resistance; no other would square with his ingenious repudiation of the charge of treachery to Raffles, much less with his repeated protestations that he had always intended to perform his part of their agreement. It was to his immediate ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... are beset by all manner of temptations to turn aside from a high and noble way of living. The line of least resistance for us is the common highway of money-getters and place-winners; and the moment a man gives evidence of ability, the whole world urges him to put it to immediate use. Our public opinion identifies the good with the useful, all else is visionary and unreal. The average man controls us not only ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... the human being educable, that it is what has made progressive civilization possible, has always been known by philosophical educators. The energy of the child must pass from potentiality to actuality, and it does so by the path of imitation because this path offers the least resistance or the greatest attraction, or perhaps because there is no other road. Whatever new and striking things he sees in the movements or condition of objects about him, provided he already has the experience necessary to apperceive this particular thing, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... the ungraded ground, tended in the direction of least resistance, generally toward the southwest. It was bounded by absence of landmarks, boulder or tree or cliff. Along either side of it was a fringe of spindling sunflower stalks, with their blooms of gold marking two gleaming threads across the plains ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... ecstasy ennobled even the prosaic fact of the railroad. And just as on that other evening, when he had rushed in anger away from the house of his uncle, so now he was exalted by the consciousness that he was following the lead of the more spiritual part of his nature—for the line of least resistance was so overgrown with exquisite impressions that he no longer recognized it. The sacrifice of art for love appeared to him to-day as splendidly romantic as the sacrifice of comfort for art had seemed to him a few months ago. His desire controlled him so ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... more fruitful character? We are reminded of the mass-movement type of work, in which "nations are born in a day"; and often, too, of the nominal Christians who sorely need more enlightenment. Why not work along the line of least resistance, where conversion to God does not of necessity mean fire and sword, and where in a week we could win more souls than in ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... immunize a plant bearing a good size, fine quality chestnut much easier and in a shorter time than one can be developed through hybridization from an inferior nut. I am usually, like most folks, looking for the path of least resistance. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... whole drama. He is master and umpire of his circumstances, so that when two or more lines of action, or a line of action and a line of inaction, appear equally efficacious, he can select the one which appears to be of least resistance. But subsequent to that point of time, he is no longer the arbiter of his own situation, but rather the puppet of circumstances. There are no more divergent roads; if he desires to leave the one he has chosen, he must break blindly through a hedge of moral antagonisms. His alternatives have become ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... seem to prefer notoriety to fame, because it runs along the line of least resistance. A man has to climb for fame, but he can get notoriety by an easy tumble. And others forget the one essential necessary to success, of personal effort, and, assuming there is a royal road to learning, are content with the distinction of a degree from ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... desire to experiment with them in life, to prove them by practice. In the attempt to live these new ideals the individual became involved in a conflict with the old conscience that no philosophy had yet been able to argue away, and the road out of this dilemma lay along the line of least resistance, which consisted in drifting with the changing tides. The result was the gradual evolution of a type of hero which modified the drama of the country. While the hero of old encountered and conquered obstacles mainly of external circumstance and complication, the hero of the present is the victim of ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... who had grown rich in the Spanish trade were building solid houses with carved lintels and windows of stained glass. The Hewishes invested money in these new ventures. In Galway a Hewish of Roscarna was somebody: there the family was taken for granted and, following the way of least resistance, the Hewishes settled down into the ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... Border" (with Roy Stewart). Perhaps there is no valid objection to such similarity, which can be called imitation only when the themes are more or less alike, but it actually seems to have been the policy of many companies to follow the line of least resistance when selecting titles for their pictures, using a title, provided it is good in itself, and appropriate to the picture under consideration, regardless of whether or not it is already familiar to the public as the title of another photoplay, ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... frightened of us as we are of her, and, mind you this, mankind has declared war against Nature and we will win. She does not understand yet that her geologic periods won't do any longer, and that while she is pattering along the line of least resistance we are going to travel fast and far until we find her, and then, being a female, she is bound to give in when ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... resistance, and stripped within a few yards of me: their cries were dreadful; and even now, the feelings of that moment are fresh in my memory. My hopes of life were too faint to deserve the name. I was almost instantly surrounded, and incapable of making the least resistance, as I was unarmed, was as speedily stript; and whilst attempting first to save my shirt and then my trowsers, I was thrown on the ground. My pursuers made several thrusts at me with their spears, that badly wounded my hands in ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... lies or the simulation of illness, at which she has become an adept. Altogether, Inez must be thought of as one who is trying to satisfy certain wishes and ambitions which are too much for her resources. Towards the goal to which her nature urges her she follows the path of least resistance. Being the personality that she is, the social world offers her stimulation which does not come ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... an arrant coward, and he would never have offered the least resistance unless convinced that he was in imminent peril ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... glance what manner of woman he had found here in this lodging house. It was the face of a woman who never intentionally does any evil and yet rarely gets a chance to do any good—a weak, indecisive, commonplace face; and every line in it was a line of least resistance. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... to peer into the lessening darkness. A log, traveling down the river from some point near its headwaters in New Mexico, was drifting toward the island. His attention was arrested by the way it traveled. A log in a stream follows the line of least resistance. It floats in such a way as to offer the smallest surface to the force of the current. But this log was going down at a right angle to the bank instead of parallel to it. Was it being propelled by the current alone, or by some living ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... deliver her and make her his wife as Ataulfus had done Placidia her mother. Though, it seems, the Hun disdained her, he made this appeal his excuse. Within a year of the death of Theodosius and Placidia he decided that the way of least resistance lay westward. If he were successful he could make his own terms, and, among his spoil, if he cared, should be the sister ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... idea of Fighting Holiness implies that the sanctified Soldier of Christ is an aggressor in the struggle for his Lord's supremacy. He cannot be content with following the line of the least resistance; he is rather in the spirit of the words already quoted, 'The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... other side-lights Carlotta has thrown on her upbringing, I can realise the poor, pretty weak-willed baby of a thing that was her mother, taking the line of least resistance, the husband dead and the babe in her womb, and entering the shelter offered by the amorous Turk. And I can picture her during the fourteen years of her imprisoned life, the disillusion, the heart-break, ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... with our own. So long as this shall continue to be the case the number and activity of our troops will rather increase than diminish the evil, as the Indians will naturally turn toward that country where they encounter the least resistance. Yet these troops are necessary to subdue them and to compel them to make and observe treaties. Until this shall have been done neither country will enjoy any ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... is called Sideling hill, where a Mr. McClennan was robbed on the 3d instant by the notorious villain and robber, D. Lewis, lately pardoned by Gov. Finley for forgery. McClennan had no arms, nor did he make the least resistance, yet one of Lewis' accomplices insisted on murdering him. He was robbed about 9 o'clock in the morning, and in sight of the house he breakfasted at. He was conducted to their camp, a little way ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason
... with you, Eustace. I give him into your charge. If he struggles, or offers the least resistance, stab ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... to make traction on an irregularly shaped foreign body, and yet to allow the object to turn into the line of least resistance while traction is being made. This can be accomplished by the use of the rotation forceps (Fig. 20), which have for blades two pointed hooks that meet at their points and do not overlap. Rotation forceps made ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... canals"; and instead of ending in the Irwell, he carried the duke's canal by an aqueduct across that river to Manchester itself. What Brindley had discovered was in fact the water-road, a means of carrying heavy goods with the least resistance, and therefore the least cost, from the point of production to the point of sale; and England at once seized on his discovery to free itself from the bondage in which it had been held. From the year 1767, when Brindley ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... of a sort calculated to be of use in later business training, should have been given in the schools most favoured by those for whom business was a life's calling. In this, as in so many other matters, I suppose we were guided and directed entirely by habit and tradition; the line of least resistance. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... individualist whose sympathies were limited to the narrow circle of his dependants; he was a trader and a financier whose humanitarian instincts were subordinated to a code of purely commercial morality, and who valued equity chiefly because it presented the line of least resistance and facilitated the conduct of his industrial operations. Like all individualists, he was something of an anarchist, filled with the idea, which appeared on every page of the record of his ancestors ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... useless. Hill was completely carried away with the letter, for it steered him along the line of least resistance right into the haven of his happiest desires. He believed in that letter because he wanted to believe in it, and for ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... pride, while there are plenty with percentages between 70 and 80. Now this is all to the credit of the fiction writers. I refuse to believe that their readers are any more fundamentally interested in the subjects of which they treat than in others. They simply follow the line of least resistance. They want something interesting to read and they know from experience where to go for it. Of course this brings on abuses. Writers use illegitimate methods to arouse interest—appeals perhaps, to unworthy instincts. We need not discuss ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... suggests how great was the resistance to be overcome. A long round-about road it does seem that God took. Yet it was the shortest. The circle route is always the shortest. It is nature's way. Nature always follows the line of least resistance. The eagle, descending, comes in circles, the line of least resistance. Water running out of a bowl through the hole in the bottom follows ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... should be free, that was a condition to which none could fairly object, and which did not seem to lessen the soundness of Monk's Republicanism. If his sphinx-like attitude proceeded more from inability to discern the line of least resistance, than from conscious dissimulation, or any deliberate concealment of a far-seeing policy, it nevertheless was pursued with much adroitness, and no other course of action could have enabled Monk to accomplish all ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... great and original genius. He lacked that hirsute, independent quality of Michelangelo, and surely he lacked the Attic invention. He was receptive as a woman, and he builded on what had been done. He moved in the line of least resistance—made friends of Protestant and Catholic alike; won the warm recognition of the Pope, who averred, "Thorwaldsen is a good Catholic, only he does not know it." He kept clear of all factions, and with a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... chatter, crisply emphasized by oaths, which assured him of the Fircone's popularity with its intimates. Master Robin's intelligence was limited; his wit was simple; the processes of his mind moved easily along the lines of least resistance. The Burgundians might be hammering with mailed fists at the walls of Paris; the fire-new crown of Louis the Eleventh might be falling from the royal forehead: it mattered not a jot to dishonest Robin so long as the Fircone ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... operation, slitting up the tumour, and tying the vessel above and below the wound. When the aneurism is spontaneous, there is no guide to tell us where the aneurism may have first originated; it may be that it is high up in the pelvis, and that the visible tumour is only its expansion in the direction of least resistance, or the coats of the vessel may be extensively diseased. The only chance is ligature of ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... The impulses of Claudius were right and just, a truthful statement I here make in pleasant compliment to a brother author. The man was absent-minded, had much faith in others, and moved in the line of least resistance. Like most students and authors, he was decidedly littery. He secured a divorce from one wife because she cleaned up his room in his absence so that he could never find anything; and the other wife got a divorce from him because he refused ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... in my veins, and I would have rushed in then and there, have ended the long strife, and have dug revenge for this outrage from his heart, but that I saw Alixe did not move, nor make the least resistance. This struck me with horror, till, all at once, he let her go, and I saw her face. It was very white and still, smooth and cold as marble. She seemed five years older ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a perpetual accommodation of self to one's surroundings, with the minimum of effort, all progress being spontaneous and in the line of least resistance. ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... agree with the English Society on "faather", "feel" and "scuul", and am going to do all I can for niit, and for spredding the oo in floor and door into snore, more, hole, poke, etc. "Awl", "cow" and "go" are spelt wel, and their spelling shoud be spred. These seem to be the lines of least resistance. I find that they work first-rate ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... her, had made him wish to live, and now, that he saw her no more, she made him wish to die. How little she had cared for him, since she told him she did not care, when he had not meant to ask her. He was weary, and at last he longed to find the line of least resistance and follow it; he had done hard things for a long time, but now he wanted to do something easy. Under the new genius—who was already urging that the paper should be made a daily—the "Herald" could get along without him; and the "White-Caps" would bother Carlow no longer; and he thought ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... legislatures is no indication of hostility to the principle of representative government; for representative government in the true sense means government that is responsible to the people. The popular movement has in modifying our state and municipal governments merely taken the line of least resistance, and that has involved the transfer of legislative powers to the ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... looked calmly on, offering not the least resistance when their cattle and provisions were being taken from them. On the contrary, they invited the soldiers to come and live with them, saying: "If you, dear friends, find it is difficult to earn a living in your own land, come and live with ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... In the generic order of being we exercise upon it a force of attraction in accordance with the innate pattern of our particular individuality; and as we begin to realize the Law of this relation, we, in our turn, are attracted towards the Divine along the lines of least resistance, that is on those lines which are most natural to our special bent of mind. In this way we throw out certain aspirations with the result that we intensify our attraction of the Divine forces in a certain specific manner, and ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... all times and places, though without any troublesome optimism or personal energy, and had almost come to believe that she was to him what the end of the rainbow is to the idealist. In marrying Alice he had followed the path of least resistance. She was young, pretty and charming, and had been very much in love with him. Also it pleased his mother, and she had been worth pleasing. He gave his wife all that she could possibly need, except very much of himself. She was a perfectly ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... off," he continued. "When we come across a man like a bar of steel tempered in the English fashion, there is always one resource left—we can kill him if he takes it into his head to make the least resistance. We are reckoning on several methods of killing Collin to-morrow morning. It saves a trial, and society is rid of him without all the expense of guarding and feeding him. What with getting up the ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... stronger pressure against that side of it which respects the middle of the superficies, then against that which respects the approximate side, must necessarily move towards that part, from whence it finds least resistance, and so be accelerated, as the resistance decrease. Hence the more the water is raised under that part of its way it is passing above the middle, the faster it is moved: And therefore you will ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... only obstacle which the adult will encounter at the moment of exit. To lessen the difficulty of opening it, the grub takes the precaution of gnawing at the inner side of the skin, all round the circumference, so as to make a line of least resistance. The perfect insect will only have to heave with its shoulder and strike a few blows with its head in order to raise the circular door and knock it off like the lid of a box. The passage of exit shows through the diaphanous skin of ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... King Tebureimoa is afraid of the Old Men. Terror of the first nerved him for deeds of desperation; fear of the second disables him for the least act of government. He played his part of bravo in the past, following the line of least resistance, butchering others in his own defence: to-day, grown elderly and heavy, a convert, a reader of the Bible, perhaps a penitent, conscious at least of accumulated hatreds, and his memory charged with images of violence and blood, he capitulates to the Old Men, fuddles himself with opium, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seemed to them symbolic of their lives. Both of them yearned so wistfully to live always in accordance to the nature of things. And this, they felt, ought surely to be the line of least resistance. In the immense difficulties it presented, and in their constant failures to surmount these difficulties, they often wondered whether the nature of things might not be, after all, something other than what they thought it. Again and again it seemed to ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... amusement of the 'four gentlemen,' whose exploits are so complacently chronicled by the editor of the Franklin Republican. The three men and one woman were all fired upon, it seems, though only one of them was shot down. The half famished runaways made not the least resistance, they merely rushed in panic among the canes, at the sight of their pursuers, and the bullets whistled after them and brought to the ground one poor fellow, who was carried back by his captors as a trophy of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... to threaten Dick, or even to argue with him vehemently, much less give him orders. But each man has a line of least resistance. ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... it will do for your friends as well as for us. Then fire if there is the least resistance, close with them, and let's get them under hatches. But I beg pardon, sir; you are ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... scientist or the philosopher, but] "the parson, and the sister, and the Bible woman." [Lastly, the strong commonsense, which enabled him to see what was] "within the range of practical politics," [and to choose for the cause which he had at heart the line of least resistance, and to check, sometimes to rebuke, intolerant obstinacy even on the side which he was himself inclined to favour. These qualities over and above his high intellectual ability made him, for the comparatively ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... his attitude of mind. Through these her husband had found the way into it. His temperament and natural passion for the woods had prepared the soul in him, and the moment he saw the way to go he took it—the line of least resistance. Life was, of course, open to all, and her husband had the right to choose it where he would. He had chosen it—away from her, away from other men, but not necessarily away from God. This was an enormous concession that she skirted, never really faced; it was too revolutionary to face. But its ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... sailors got down the side of the ship, seized the cable, and drew it; it came without the least resistance. ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... attack. Barton no sooner stopped the coach and presented his pistol at one window, than his companion, after firing a brace of balls over the coachman's head, did the like at the other, which so surprised the fine gentlemen within, that without the least resistance they surrendered all they had about them, which amounted to about one hundred pounds, which Barton put up. Come, gentlemen, says he, let us make bold with your fire-arms too, for you see we make more use of them than you. So, seizing a brace of ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... lines of least resistance," continued the detective, unresentful of the other's aggravating manner. "They led me against a wall of silence. Now I'm going to discharge my heavy ordnance against ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... was not wise for him to return to the river. He knew that it would have been better for him both in mind and body had he gone in the opposite direction. But he no longer had in him the desire to fight, even for himself. He followed the lines of least resistance, and these led him back to the scene of the tragedy. His grief, when he returned, was no longer the heartbreaking agony of that first night. It was a deep-seated, consuming fire that had already burned him out, heart and soul. Even caution was dead in him. He feared ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... desire to avoid scandal which marks the perfect club servant, fell away. As for Dr. Blake, this seemed the line of least resistance. Life and death, misery and happiness—all ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... difficult to say which was greatest, my fright, or Mr. Brown's consternation; who ventured not to make the least resistance, though his uneasiness made him tremble almost as much as myself. I would instantly have withdrawn my arm: but it was held so tight I could not move it; and poor Mr. Brown was circumstanced in the same manner on the other side; for I heard him say, "Lord, Ma'am, there's ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... the waves presents the line of least resistance to the water and so is shaped somewhat like a fish, the natural denizen of that element. It is different with the aeroplane. In the intangible domain it essays to overcome, there must be a sufficient surface to compress a certain volume of ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... his point of least resistance—on his right wing. He ought to strengthen that wing, but he could not. All the reserves were engaged—and the enemy knew it as well as he did. And it is a fixed principle of war not to withdraw active troops from one part of the line ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... cheaper engine of this sort might be produced by a gas-light apparatus and by firing the inflammable air generated with a due portion of common air under a piston.' This is an exact forecast of the engine used to-day in all flying machines. He has some good remarks on the shape that offers least resistance to the air in passing through it, that is, on the doctrine of the streamline. He knew that the shape of the hinder part of a solid body which travels through the air is of as much importance as the shape of the fore-part in diminishing resistance. He does not ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... were out of the ship, Christian said, "Come, Captain Bligh, your officers and men are now in the boat, and you must go with them; if you make the least resistance you will be ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... anyhow,—who are attracted by repulsion and warmed by coldness, who like resistance for the pleasure of overcoming it. There must be a spice of the tyrant in such men. I wouldn't want to marry one of them. Fortunately, they're not common. I've noticed that love, like lightning, generally takes the path of least resistance with men as well as women. Just suppose now, in your case, that Mr. Burton had followed us home, and had overheard this conversation from behind ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... She was still acutely conscious of his force, but what she now felt was its lack of direction—save for the portion that drove the Chippering Mills. The rest of it, like the river, flowed away on the line of least resistance to the sea. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... school, newspaper, and theater, have reached an extraordinary degree of power. People apperceive, think, and feel as these three teach them, and finally it becomes second nature to follow this line of least resistance, and to seek intellectual conformity. We know well enough what consequences this has in law, and each one of us can tell how witnesses present us stories which we believe to rest on their own insight but which show themselves finally ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... whom Miss Amy Fay has written in her book "Music Study in Germany." Deppe was a remarkable pedagogue and had excellent ideas upon the foundation of a rational system of touch. He sought the most natural position of the hand and always aimed to work along the line of least resistance. My mother instilled Deppe's ideas into me together with a very comprehensive training in the standard etudes and classics within my youthful technical grasp. For those years I could not have had a better teacher. Lucky is the child, who like Gounod, Reisenauer and others, has had the invaluable ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... by their shouts, and drive them into the middle of the enclosure. The finest are taken alive, by being deprived of food for a short time. This renders them so obedient, that they quietly allow a noose to be thrown over them, and then follow the tame elephant without the least resistance. The others are then either killed or set at liberty, according as they ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... evening of the 17th of October. He gave notice to the inhabitants that he would give them two hours 'to remove the human species,' at the end of which time a red pendant would be hoisted at the maintop-gallant mast-head; and that on the least resistance, he should be freed from all humanity dictated by his orders or his inclination. Upon being inquired of by three gentlemen who went on board his ship for that purpose respecting the reason of this extraordinary summons, he replied that he had orders ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... to bodily health, Mrs. Eddy gives joy, hope, worldly success; and even superior minds, seeing these practical results of Christian Science, move in the line of least resistance and are quite willing to accept the book, not troubled at all about its medieval reasoning. In Ungania is a very great merchant who, not content with having the biggest store in the Kingdom, aspires to the biggest University. The fact that the higher criticism is to him only a trivial matter, and ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... appeal to the centrifugal forces of the political mind, he turned a deaf ear to von Schoen's suasive efforts and kept the ship of state on its course, without swerving. In this way what seemed to the Berlin politicians the line of least resistance was adequately reinforced and a formidable, ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... literature, what produces all these treatises and poems and scriptures of one sort or another is the struggle of Life to become divinely conscious of itself instead of blindly stumbling hither and thither in the line of least resistance. Hence there is a driving towards truth in all books on matters where the writer, though exceptionally gifted is normally constituted, and has no private axe to grind. Copernicus had no motive for misleading his fellowmen as to the place of the sun in the solar system: he looked for it as honestly ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... twenty miles through a wonderful broken country, all spruce and pine forests, crag and valley, threaded by a white hard trail which wound its way amidst Nature's chaos in a manner similar to that in which a mountain stream cuts its course, percolating along the path of the least resistance. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... Dick, you make me so ashamed. Here Larry and Ted and I have had everything done for us all our lives and we've slipped along with the current, following the line of least resistance. And you have had everything to contend with and you are way ahead of the rest of us already. But why didn't you tell me before about the story? I think you might have, Dicky. You know ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... imaginative effort of Mr. Curtenty's. They took him seriously as a gooseherd. These fourteen intelligences, each with an object in life, each bent on self-aggrandisement and the satisfaction of desires, began to follow the line of least resistance in regard to the superior intelligence unseen but felt behind them, feigning, as geese will, that it suited them so to submit, and that in reality they were still quite independent. But in the peculiar eye of the Barnacle gander, who was ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... birthday. If Saturday's child must work for her living, why not make the best of it? Why not make the most advantageous terms possible with Fate? why not work with, and not against, that inexorable Forelady, in cooperation with her plans and along the lines of her least resistance? ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... that they were in a trap, and that if they made the least resistance they would be ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... Again, if for any reason a deep portion of a track becomes infected and suppurates, there is no tendency for the spread of infection along the line of wounded tissue, but rather for the development of a local abscess, pointing in the ordinary direction of least resistance, irrespective of the course originally taken by ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... thinks it appropriate to commence his treatise on man with an examination of the facts which show that "the world was peopled by migration from one centre by pleistocene man ... who moved about like other migrating faunas, unconsciously, everywhere following the lines of least resistance, advancing or receding, and acting generally on blind impulse rather than of set purpose;"[296] and it still remains with Dr. Latham to have formulated some fixed principles of the migratory movement in his admirable though, of course, wholly inadequate summary of man and his migrations. ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... offer the least resistance to the wind, the Italian's swarthy face relaxed at this; his fine white teeth showed ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... often ludicrously contrasting with the insignificance of the object in pursuit. More than one instance has occurred where the same thing which I have assiduously labored in vain to effect has been afterwards accomplished by others, without the least resistance; more than once, where the pleasure of disappointing me has seemed to be the prominent principle of decision. Of the preparatory business, matured in committees, I have had a share, gradually increasing through the four sessions, but always as a subordinate ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... by falls. When the weight of the body is suddenly caught by a member in such manner as to forcefully drive the epiphyseal portions of bone into and against the diaphysis, multiple longitudinal fractures occur at the point of least resistance. Parts so affected undergo a fibrillary separation, increasing the transverse diameter of the bone; or if the impact has been sufficiently violent, the portion becomes an ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... because he has made up his mind not to repent. It is a curious story, and I shall try to tell it truly in the two chapters that follow. In all ages the tyrant is hard because he is soft. If his car crashes over bleeding and accusing crowds, it is because he has chosen the path of least resistance. It is because it is much easier to ride down a human race than ride up a moderately steep hill. The fight of the oppressor is always a pillow-fight; commonly a war with cushions—always a war for cushions. Saladin, the great Sultan, if I remember rightly, accounted it the greatest feat of ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... be satisfied intelligently and soundly by a consideration of everything appealing to consideration, and not at all by heated and wilful, or superior and supercilious, exclusions. Catholicity of appreciation is the secret of critical felicity. To follow the line of least resistance, not to take into account those elements of a problem, those characteristics of a subject, to which, superficially and at first thought, one is insensitive, is to dispense one's self from a great deal of particularly disagreeable industry, but the result is only ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... going shares, she prefers to seek elsewhere a dwelling where she can work in solitude. Her gracious surrender of a most excellent lodging in favour of a stranger who would be incapable of offering the least resistance if a dispute arose proves the great immunity enjoyed by the Osmia in the home of the worker whom she exploits. The common and peaceful swarming of the Mason-bee of the Sheds and the two cell-borrowing Osmiae proves it in a still more positive fashion. There is never a fight for the acquisition ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... brain is naturally lazy and tends to take the line of least resistance. The mental world of the ordinary man consists of beliefs which he has accepted without questioning and to which he is firmly attached; he is instinctively hostile ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... essential honesty of purpose, bring him to the goal in spite of the unnecessary obstacles that have been heaped on his path by his own [Greek: hubris] and contempt of others. He chooses what is physically the shortest line in preference to the line of least resistance. He makes up for his want of light by his superiority in weight. Social adaptability is not his foible. He accepts the conventionality of his class and wears it as an impenetrable armour. Out of his own class he may sometimes appear less conventional than ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... cannot understand why we make this voyage. They shudder, and moan, and raise their hands. No amount of explanation can make them comprehend that we are moving along the line of least resistance; that it is easier for us to go down to the sea in a small ship than to remain on dry land, just as it is easier for them to remain on dry land than to go down to the sea in the small ship. This state ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... Chelsea could ever have found any one like himself to train under. But to Carlyle people in conversation requires constant practice with a master—consuetudine quotidiana cum aliquo congredi—and he had for so long a time knocked everybody down without meeting the least resistance, that victory had palled upon him, and he had, so to speak, "vinegared" on himself. With somebody to "sass him back," Carlyle would have been cured of the dyspepsia, and ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... so much the better prepared for his work. His study will show him how astonishing is the light that has shone upon those men whom he has thought of as wholly in darkness. It will thus show him the true way of approach, and enable him to follow the lines of least resistance. It will also reveal to him what is the essential character of the divine message which he himself bears. He will separate that peculiar and spiritual truth which is the Word of Life, and will ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... because of dissensions among the students, and the very small class graduated in two places because neither faction would go to the other place. In all these agitations Mr. Edwards took no part. He simply devoted himself to his studies and followed the line of least resistance so far as taking sides in a senseless controversy was concerned. After graduation he remained at Yale two years for post-graduate work, mostly in theology, and then accepted an invitation to preach for the leading Presbyterian church in New York City; but after ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... our circumstances. The tree planted in the shrubbery will grow all lopsided; the bushes on the edge of the cliff will be shorn away on the windward side by the teeth of the south-western gale, and will lean over northwards, on the side of least resistance. And so we all are apt to content ourselves with doing the good things that are easiest for us, or that fit into our temperament and character. Jesus Christ would have us to be all-round men, and would that we should ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... settlement in the land of Goshen,—which is the Egyptian province lying at the end of the ancient caravan road, which Abraham travelled, leading from Palestine to the banks of the Nile, and which had been the trade route, or path of least resistance, between Asia and Africa, probably for ages before the earliest of human traditions,—they prospered exceedingly. But at length they fell into a species of bondage which lasted several centuries, during which they multiplied so rapidly that they finally raised in the ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... The line of least resistance has changed in some measure, and the energy which formerly found a vent in predatory activity, now in part takes the direction of some ostensibly useful end. Ostensibly purposeless leisure has come to be deprecated, especially among that large portion of ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... soundless whisper, the unseen lover who came to Psyche in the darkness. And sometimes that person became more distinct, less mystic and more companionable. Perhaps because imaginations have a way of following the line of least resistance, it took upon itself something of the form, something of the voice and bearing of Mr. Brumley. She recoiled from her own thoughts when she discovered herself wondering what manner of lover Mr. Brumley might make—if suddenly she lowered her defences, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... did not appear to have any very marked effect, she proposed to try a more drastic treatment. For this, Vecha declared, the patient must be entrusted to her exclusive care, securely bound so that she could not offer the least resistance. Billing, anxious to save his child, was ready to assent to anything; and having thus gained full power over Rinda, Odin compelled her to wed him, releasing her from bonds and spell only when she had faithfully promised to be ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... of their chief. "See," said one, "he needed only the time necessary for the journey. That man must be a god."—"He is a devil rather," said the Austrians, whose stupefaction was indescribable. They had reached a point when many allowed the arms to be taken out of their hands without making the least resistance, or without even attempting to fly, so deep was their conviction that the Emperor and his guard were not men, and that sooner or later they must fall into the power of ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... gone, the cook went to the cellar stairs, and called her. The cat came up directly. The cook stroked her, and showed her a basket just big enough to hold her, and said, "Get in, get in, pussy, and take a pretty ride!" The cat got in, and, without the least resistance, allowed herself to be shut into the basket by a cloth tied over it. As soon as she saw the different members of the family in the new house, she manifested ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... a Moslem mind. As for Michael, he had never imagined that he could feel himself so much at home and so closely in sympathy with purely native life. He began it at the point in his convalescence when nothing mattered; the path of least resistance was the only one which he could take. He continued in it when he no ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... time the leader veered to the west. Not until an opening appeared did he resume his southward course. It dawned on McKay that the savages, having no bush knives, were accustomed to follow the line of least resistance. This obviously ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... fooled, cheated, hounded as if we were a crowd of undesirable aliens, and I'm heartily sick of the injustice. I prefer to work along lines of least resistance. I feel tempted to let Uncle Sam have my coal claims, since he has lied to me and gone back on his promise, and devote myself to other enterprises which offer a certainty of greater profits. But"—Gordon smiled deprecatingly—"I dare say I ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... ships; but when I left the country I chose from among the whole war-levy those I thought to be the best, and with them I manned 60 ships; and these I still have. Now it appears to me that the part of your war-force which has now run away is the most worthless, and of least resistance; but now I see here all your chiefs and leaders, and I know well that the people who belong to the court-troops (1) are by far the best suited to carry arms. We have here chosen men and superb ships, and we can very well lie all winter in our ships, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... steps Richard took unwillingly under the other's soft compulsion; then, having given the matter thought—he was always one to take the line of least resistance—he assured himself that his sentryship was entirely superfluous; the matter of Blake's affair was an entire secret, shared only by those who had a hand in it. Blake was quite safe from all surprises; Trenchard was insistent and it was difficult to deny ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... seeking to expand itself. What force? The Universal Life-Principle, for "the Spirit is Life." In the language of modern science this "seeking" on the part of "the Father" is the expansive pressure of the Universal Life-Principle seeking the line of least resistance, along which to flow into the fullest manifestation of individualised Life. It is a tendency which will take manifested form according to the degree in which ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... described; the manufacturing industry had made gigantic strides, but they were all in the direction which the most competent observers had predicted; in foreign policy the old principles of guiding the natural expansive forces along the lines of least resistance, seeking to reach warm-water ports, and pegging out territorial claims for the future were persistently followed. No doubt there were pretty clear indications of more radical changes to come, but these changes must belong to the future, and it is merely with ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... of trends that she will later need to use. The child is normally and naturally in love with himself.[11] But he must not linger too long in this stage. None of the channels which his life-force is cutting must be dug too deep, else in later life they will offer lines of least resistance which may, on occasion, invite illness ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... was a capital oversight of the professional men in the seventeenth century; because in every light he was a fine subject for murder, except, indeed, that he was lean and skinny; for I can prove that he had money, and (what is very funny,) he had no right to make the least resistance; for, according to himself, irresistible power creates the very highest species of right, so that it is rebellion of the blackest die to refuse to be murdered, when a competent force appears to murder ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... remained concealed, when one evening, as they were all lying on the ground, a large party of negroes, consisting of forty or fifty made their appearance, armed with daggers, and bows and arrows, who surrounded and took them all prisoners, without the least resistance being attempted, and carried them into the town; tying the hands of some, and driving the whole party before them. During the night above one hundred negroes kept watch over them. The next day they were taken before the governor or chief person, named Muhamoud, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... a change for the better, as far as existing humanity is concerned. Meanwhile, however, with every year that elapses the forces at present in equilibrium are changing in magnitude—the pressure of populations which have to be fed is rising, and an explosion along the line of least resistance is, sooner or ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... once most effective and most economical. The bank is topped with a plashed hedge of white thorn in which sallow, ash, hazel and beech are planted for "firing." The fencing practice of the American farmer has followed the line of least resistance and is founded on the lowest first cost: the original "snake" fences of split rails, upon the making of which a former generation of pioneer American boys qualified themselves for Presidential campaigns, being followed by woven wire "made by a trust" ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... be covered, some way should be provided for convenient observation. It is the obscure departure that is the most troublesome, and it is the obvious thing that offers the least resistance ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... that he was doing so. But the fervor which Plonny had imparted to it, and the respect which he had for Plonny's knowledge of practical conditions, stood by him, unconsciously guiding his thoughts along the line of least resistance.... Though nobody dared admit it publicly, the party was facing a great crisis; and it was in his hand to save or to wreck it. All eyes were anxiously on the Post, which wielded the decisive power. The people had ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... which weaves a sort of eel-trap, whose ample mesh allows it to gather grains of sand outside and encrust them one by one in the silky network, and completes the performance with a cap fitting the entrance to the trap. This provides a circular line of least resistance, along which the casket breaks open afterwards. If the Scolia really works in the same manner, everything is explained: the eel-trap, while still open, enables it to soak with varnish both the inside and the outside of the inner shell, which has to acquire the consistency ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... narrowness of her mother's class. Price had feared that her lively mind might reveal disconcerting shallows, but these little voids were but the divine hiatuses of youth. He sometimes wondered just how strong her character was. There were times when she showed a pronounced inclination for the line of least resistance ... but her youth ... her too sheltered bringing up ... those drab cramped years ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... doubted that the enemy would be upon them as soon as daylight should discover the fortress abandoned. This happened at an early hour of the morning. The British instantly marched into the deserted works, without meeting with the least resistance. Ticonderoga's hundred cannon were silent under the menace of two. Burgoyne was now free to march his victorious battalions to the east, the west, or the south, whenever he ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... apparently very much disconcerted, and he was particularly requested to take away with him the cask of gun-powder, which he did immediately. The next morning the Serjeant at Arms and his attendants broke open a window-shutter in the front area, entered without the least resistance, and conveyed their prisoner to the Tower. While these things were going on in London, I had been busily engaged in the country, defending myself in the Courts of Law at the assizes for the county of Wilts, which were held at Salisbury. As the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... firmly founded on tough, recalcitrant Bulgars or warlike Turks. The Triple Alliance having closed the door to Russia on the West, there was the greater temptation to take the other alternative course—that line of least resistance which led towards Afghanistan and Manchuria. The value of an understanding with France was now clear to all. As we have seen, it guarded Russia's exposed frontier in Poland, and poured into the exchequer treasures ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... fall than that of my beloved poppies. Where the grain holds the dew and takes the bite from the sun the soil is moist, and in such soil it is easier to pull the poppies out by the roots than to break the stalk. Now the city folk, like other folk, are inclined to move along the line of least resistance, and for each flower they gathered, there were also gathered many crisp-rolled buds and with them all the possibilities and future beauties of the plant for all time ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... the course of a great river may make their country unfit for habitation, or they may be expelled by a stronger race. In either case they must migrate, and we know from history that they often covered long distances in their attempt to follow the line of least resistance. Thus there is nothing a priori improbable in the idea that the megalithic monuments were built ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... their wildness, however, to crown the convict with a certain halo of romance, which his behavior in jail did nothing to dispel. That, of course, was exemplary, since Stingaree had never been a fool; but it was something more and rarer. Not content simply to follow the line of least resistance, he exhibited from the first a spirit and a philosophy unique indeed beneath the broad arrow. And so far from decreasing with the years of his captivity, these attractive qualities won him friend after friend among the officials, and privilege ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... repetition and has not learned to write in an orderly way. I am inclined to believe that he sometimes wrote, as he would no doubt preach, in a prophetic, rapturous, spontaneous fashion, hardly steering his train of thought by his intellect, but letting it go along lines of least resistance and in a rhythmic flood of words; his central ideas of course all the time holding the predominant place in his utterance. He is essentially a mystic both in experience and in the ground and basis of his conception of God and man. This mystical feature is especially prominent in his second book on ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... Unwana, which was a back-water and unfit for a base for inland work. Tentative efforts had been made from time to time to secure a footing elsewhere, but had come to nothing, and the policy of the Mission had been to continue up-river as being the line of least resistance. Her conviction was that extension, for the present at least, should take place not up the river, where the stations were cut off from the base during the dry season, but laterally across the country between the Cross River and the Niger. There were, she saw, three ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... his principles, was still averse to colonial enterprises; he said that all the affairs of the East were not worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier. But Germany, retaining Bismarck's former impulse, went straight on and rushed forward along the lines of least resistance to east and west: on the one side lay the route to the Orient, on the other the empire of the sea. But in so doing she virtually declared war on the nations which Bismarck had managed to keep allied or friendly. Her ambition looked forward to the ...
— The Meaning of the War - Life & Matter in Conflict • Henri Bergson
... wounded trooper. In his lifetime his duties brought him in touch with employers of labour in the Pretoria Labour District and with Natives from all over South Africa. A non-believer in the South African policy of least resistance, he was without doubt the ablest native administrator in the Transvaal Civil Service, and as such the vacancy caused by his death will be very hard to fill. He was an expert on Native matters, and no commission ever sat without ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... of our own citizens or for the benefit of citizen and alien alike." Mr. Whitney is entirely logical. Only progress rarely takes place for logical reasons, or on lines dictated by logic, but it does in almost all cases follow the line of least resistance, and the wise progressive accepts gratefully whatever he can get, without being too anxious as to whether it seems to be logically the next ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... thin air that he did six months ago," prophesied the other. "You mark me, Brendon, this is not one man's work. There's a lot hid under this job that hasn't seen light—just as there was under the last. It's very easy to say, because we can't find a motive, the man's mad. That's the line of least resistance; but it don't follow by a long sight that it's the right line. Here's a chap has lured his brother to death, and very cunning he's been about it. He's pitched a yarn and then, after a promise to turn up, he changes his mind and makes a new plan altogether by which old Ben ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... lent itself to his pleasure—in other words, that it was necessary to his state of mind—he strove, and with insidious inveiglements, to win it, to cajole it, to make it part and parcel of himself. But its people were reserved. Instinctively Mike attacked the line and the point of least resistance, and the point of least resistance lay about three miles distant. A young squire—a young man of large property and an unimpeachable position in the county—lived there in a handsome house with his three sisters. His life consisted ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... wrong, Gladwin, and the going leans against the lines of least resistance, it's easier to keep on going than to stop and switch off into the hard and narrow path. He is always hoping that something will take hold of him and set him right, and that hope usually involves ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... opposition of our children. The faults which grow out of the luxuriance of freedom appear much more shocking to us than the base vices which are generated from the rankness of servitude. Accordingly, the least resistance to power appears more inexcusable in our eyes than the greatest abuses of authority. All dread of a standing military force is looked upon as a superstitious panic. All shame of calling in foreigners ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Any open quarrel with her husband, especially before the children—for she still thought of the man and woman to her left and right as "the children"—was more painful to her than, any submission could have been. It would be so much easier to change the subject, to follow the line of least resistance, and forget the incident as quickly as possible. That had been her constant policy after the first few years of their married life. At first there had been troubles and difficulties, but she had ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... Boat, which Mr. Hicks insisted should be order'd out, that he might return on board in the same manner as he came, without a Guard; and upon his refusing to return other way, all the Crew were by Arm'd force taken out of the Boat (though they gave no provocation nor made the least resistance) and hurried to Prison, where they remained until the next day. Mr. Hicks was then put into one of their Boats, and brought on board under the Custody of a Guard. Immediately upon my hearing of this I wrote to the Vice Roy demanding my Boat and Crew and his Excellency's ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... savers is elimination. Every man should try to operate along lines of the least resistance, eliminate the deterrent influences and all ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... roadway was not so good, but the ancient car labored on in full vigor. Fences had disappeared; the roadway no longer held to section lines but took the course of least resistance, generally following the stream bed which it crossed and re-crossed many times. The direction was generally west and up. Twice on the trip, Welborn took a bucket out of the car, dipped water from the stream, and cooled the heated engine. On one of these occasions, he washed his face in the ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... opposite one, so as gradually to shift its channel; by clipper-shaped islands, sharp at the bows looking up stream, sharp too at the stern, looking down,—their shape solving the navigator's problem of least resistance, as a certain young artist had pointed out; by slumbering villages; by outlying farm-houses; between cornfields where the young plants were springing up in little thready fountains; in the midst of stumps where the forest had just been felled; through patches, where the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... farther from the camp. A dozen paces Bill followed him, crowding threateningly to enforce the right direction. And then Bill halted, not wishing to risk causing Jan to dodge and double backward toward the camp. And because his persecutor stopped when he did, Jan followed the line of least resistance, lumbering on down the slope into the deep wood for twenty paces more before lowering himself again with a grunt for the repose which, to his glutted sloth, seemed more desirable now than all the meat in the world, aye, and of more pressing import than all his ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
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