"Plasticity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quite regularly, on the non-dental Saturdays, repaired to this seat of joy with the easy Albert—he at home there and master of the scene to a degree at which, somehow, neither of us could at the best arrive; he quite moulded, truly, in those years of plasticity, as to the aesthetic bent and the determination of curiosity, I seem to make out, by the general Barnum association and revelation. It was not, I hasten to add, that I too didn't, to the extent of my minor chance, drink at the spring; ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... all sense of style; All plasticity of limb Lacks that race. Full surely they Would debauch the ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... channel that it can find, just as the water in a cistern would in a moment find the one open pipe among a dozen closed ones, and proceed to empty itself through that. If the wish be merely an indefinite one for his general good, the elemental essence in its wonderful plasticity will respond exactly to that less distinct idea also, and the creature formed will expend its force in the direction of whatever action for the man's advantage comes most readily to hand. Of course in all cases the amount of such force it has to expend, and the length of time that it will live to ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... gold, but possessing weapons and implements of stone,[1] and worshipping as their chief god the open heaven. We must not regard them as an idyllic and peaceable people: on the contrary, they were the fiercest and most conquering tribe ever known. In mental power and in plasticity of manners, however, they probably rose far superior to any race then living, except only the Semitic nations of ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... of a conscious life similar in nature to the conscious life of human beings, and there came, moreover, on the part of parents, the beginning of feelings and actions not purely self-regarding. But still more, the period of infancy was a period of plasticity. The career of each individual being no longer wholly predetermined by the careers of its ancestors, it began to become teachable. Individuality of character also became possible at the same time, and for the same reason. All ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... like a stream "along definite and useful lines of irrigation." Darwin's conclusion was that, if we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of all time preordained, then that plasticity of organization which leads to many injurious deviations of structure, as well as the redundant power of reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and, as a consequence, to a natural selection or survival of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... furrowed surface must be produced "if the density is greater in one hemispheroid than in the other, so that the position of the centre of gravity is eccentric." (Ibid. page 431.) Such a modelling of the earth's surface can only be referred to a primitive period of plasticity. If the furrows account for the great ocean basins, the disposition of the continents seems equally to follow. Sir George Darwin has pointed out that they necessarily "arise from a supposed primitive viscosity or ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... profession which I also shared with Ernesto Rossi. The former was and is still admired. His rare dramatic merits have nothing of the conventional, but owe their power to that spontaneity which is the most convincing revelation of art. The wealth of plasticity which Salvini possesses, is in him, a natural gift. Salvini is the true exponent of the Italian ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... endogamous and exogamous types of society. Whatever may have been the origin of exogamy, the survival of the exogamous type in progressive societies may easily be explained on the ground of superior adaptability, variability and plasticity, which enables such societies to survive a change of environment while the more rigid structure of the endogamous clan ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... impersonal. Over both these things, over the personal soul and over the primordial "clay" or "energy" or "movement" or "matter" out of which the personal soul creates its "universe," time and space are dominant. But since we can predicate nothing of this original "plasticity" except that it is "plastic" and that time and space rule over it, it is in a strict sense illegitimate to say that this primordial "clay" or "world stuff" is in itself divided into a duality. We know nothing, and can never ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... out of it altogether; and between these two courses, Jewdwine, with all his genius for hesitation, could not waver. After much deliberation he had consented (not without some show of condescension) to give his name and leadership to Metropolis; and he reaped the reward of his plasticity in a substantial addition ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... first sight unaccountable—a chasm yawns between them, deep and broad, over which the younger artist seems to have leapt at a bound,—the stream that sank into the earth at Pisa emerges a river at Florence. The solution of the mystery lies in the peculiar plasticity of Andrea's genius, and the ascendency acquired over it by Giotto, although a younger man, from the first moment they came into contact. Giotto had learnt from the works of Niccola the grand principle of Christian art, imperfectly apprehended ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... display these exceptional or contingent instincts are those which are fitted for the use and comfort of man and may be domesticated, it is doubtless true that many other species are in some degree provided with them, and that they thus have a plasticity in their nature which enables them to exercise, under particular circumstances, unlooked-for attention, foresight, and caution. And besides, it is only in analogy with the laws of the physical world that instinct should admit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... given, and we have only to continue the process. Where the vehicle for the transmission of things past is poetry, then we have them presented in that succession, and with that modification of force, a resilient plasticity, now advancing, now recoiling, insinuating and grappling, that ere this material and mental warfare is over, we find the facts thus transmitted are incorporated with our psychical existence. And in tradition is it otherwise?—Every ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Tennyson to warn him whose faith does not trust itself to form, that his sister is "quicker unto good" from the hallowed symbol through which she receives a divine truth. Many who flatter themselves that they have outgrown the need of a human embodiment of the Father's love have only induced a plasticity of mind which prevents the life from taking shape in any positive affirmation. "It is a strong help to me," writes a Congregational minister, "to find a man, standing on the extreme verge of liberal theology, holding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... upon Betty's education as a duty; in a very short time it had become a pleasure...the deepest and most abiding interest of my life. As I had premised, Betty was good material, and responded to my training with gratifying plasticity. Day by day, week by week, month by month, her character and temperament unfolded naturally under my watchful eye. It was like beholding the gradual development of some rare flower in one's garden. A little checking and pruning here, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for it is the very putting off a man's identity that establishes his weakness. All real force of character excludes dualism. Every eminent, every able man has a certain integrity in his nature that rejects this plasticity. ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... great patience and remarkable ingenuity, allow us to think that there really exist certain intermediary forms between crystals and liquids in which bodies still retain a peculiar structure, and consequently act on light, but nevertheless possess considerable plasticity. ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... a proneness to inconstancy in her nature—a nature, to those who contemplate it from a standpoint beyond the influence of that inconstancy, the most exquisite of all in its plasticity and ready sympathies. Partly, too, Stephen's failure to make his hold on her heart a permanent one was his too timid habit of dispraising himself beside her—a peculiarity which, exercised towards sensible men, stirs a kindly chord of ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... possible in the world. It is to youth, therefore, that this book is finally addressed, to the adolescents, to the students, to those who are yet in the schools and who will presently come to read it, to those who being still plastic can understand the infinite plasticity of the world. It is those who are yet unmade who must become the makers. After thirty there are few conversions and fewer fine beginnings; men and women go on in the path they have marked out for themselves. Their imaginations have become ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... a mere herd of brutes consisted in the fact that the gradual but very great prolongation of infancy had produced two effects: the lengthening of the care of children tended to differentiate the horde into family-groups, and the lengthening of the period of youthful mental plasticity made it more possible for a new generation to improve upon the ideas and customs of its predecessors.[65] In these two concomitant processes—the development of the family and the increase of mental plasticity, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... the differences in the skeletons which I have observed. It is impossible not to be struck with the high degree of variability or plasticity of many of the bones. We see how erroneous the often-repeated statement is, that only the crests of the bones which give attachment to muscles vary in shape, and that only parts of slight importance become ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... He was too much a man of iron for that. His soul had lost the plasticity of imagination. But he could not forget Breault's lips as they had seemed to grin up at him. There was a reason for it. On his last trip down, Breault had said to him, with that same half-grin ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... peculiarly Italian morbidezza, or plasticity we find Machiavelli. Others before had written of politics, but Machiavelli "had the better talent of writing." He wrote to tell things clearly. Imagination he had none, as an historian, and his comedy is in Limbo. He is all intellectual strength, but the moral influence ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... that we should not have had reason to despair, if four such experiments had been made, and if they had all failed? They afford us again ground for believing, that there is a peculiar softness, and plasticity, and pliability in the African character. This softness may be collected almost every where from the Travels of Mr. Mungo Park, and has been noticed by other writers, who have contrasted it with the unbending ferocity of the North ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... when they had taken their hats and sticks and were on the point of going out: "Lord, man, how can you be so impenetrably dense? Don't you see that she's really of the softest finest material that breathes, that she's a perfect flower of plasticity, that everything you may have an apprehension about will drop away from her like the dead leaves from a rose and that you may make of her any perfect and enchanting thing you yourself have the ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... anywhere in the work, though the moments are not infrequent when the utterance is more fluent than significant. The typical phrases which he chose to symbolize the persons and passions of the play are most of them deficient in plasticity, and nearly all of them lack that expressiveness which Wagner knew so well how to impress upon his melodic elements; the greater, therefore, was the surprise that Mr. Damrosch was able to weave them together in a fabric which moved steadily ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... marriage means immaturity in choice, with the possibility always of unfortunate mistakes and sad awakening. Too late marriage, on the other hand, means settled convictions which often result in that incompatibility which seeks relief in divorce. The plasticity of youth at least promises adaptability. The mature judgment of later years ought to afford a wise choice. Between extreme youth then and a too settled maturity is the ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... eminent for nobility and purity. Just as the Aminta showed how unaffected Tasso could be when writing without preconceived theories of heightened diction, so the Torrismondo displays an unstrained dignity of simple dialogue. It testifies to the plasticity of language in the hands of a master, who deliberately chose and sustained different styles in different species of poetry, and makes us regret that he should have formed his epic manner upon so artificial a type. The last chorus of Torrismondo deserves to be mentioned ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... always there. And writing of the Pallas in the Pitti he most eloquently said: "As to the hair—imagine shapes having the supreme life of line you may see in the contours of licking flames and yet possessed of all the plasticity of something which caresses the hand that models it to ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the happy mean; and to this end, if he despair of the possibility of a thorough-going communism, will legislate at least as indicated above. The uncompromising idealism of Plato's scheme, with its assumption of the indefinite plasticity of human nature, is of course peculiar to himself, not typical of Greek ideas. But it is noticeable that Aristotle, who is a far better representative of the average Greek mind, exhibits the same mistrust of ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... temperature, they melt on the application of heat and can be made sufficiently fluid to mix with the mineral aggregates that may be used in the road surface. Upon cooling, the bituminous materials return to the previous state and impart a certain amount of plasticity to the mixture, at the same time serving as a binding or cementing agent, which is sufficiently stable for many classes of ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... move gracefully and awkwardly, how to make both fantastic and realistic gestures, always unconventional gestures, because conventions stamp the imitator. She must peer into every period, glance at every nation. Every nerve centre must be prepared to express any adumbration of plasticity. Many of the new operas, Carmen, La Dolores, Salome, Elektra, to name a few, call for interpretative dancing of the first order. Madama Butterfly and Lakme demand a knowledge of national characteristics. Pelleas et Melisande ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... fresh difficulty. The Japanese face is exceedingly expressive. When a native of the Island Empire smiles or scowls, exhibits surprise or fear, he apparently does these things with his whole soul. Such facial plasticity provides far more effective concealment of real emotions than the phlegmatic indifference of the Briton, who, in the words of Emerson, requires "pitchforks or the cry ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... modifiability of ideas and habits was less than it is at present. And if we contrast classes or individuals around us, we see that the most developed in mind are the most plastic. To inquiries respecting this trait of comparative plasticity, in its relations to precocity and early completion of mental development, may fitly be added inquiries respecting its relations to the social state, which it helps to determine, and which ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the cardinals in S. Maria del Popolo already mentioned,[115] and the bas-reliefs upon the Santa Casa at Loreto. In technical workmanship Andrea proved himself an able craftsman, modelling marble with the plasticity of wax, and lavishing patterns of the most refined invention. Yet the decorative prodigality of this master corresponded to the frigid and stylistic graces of the neo-Latin poets. It was so much mannerism—adopted ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... we demand of our elders, who are burdened by numerous cares, and whose lives are for the most part hurried and difficult, that they adapt themselves to our attitude of mind? Is it not meet that we, who still retain the plasticity of youth, make advances? Without surrendering an iota of our own individuality we might cultivate that sympathetic insight that would reveal the inestimable worth of our spiritual heritage. Not merely reverence for the past, but a regard for our own future prompts ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... stuff having any substance in it was indeed thrown into a kind of mortar, ground up, mixed with something that gave the mass cohesion and plasticity, then moulded into buttons as clay is moulded by the potter, and burned, dried, and hardened. Therefore, if brass and pearl buttons are in limited demand, there are other materials from which a new useful and cheap article can be made—the "very ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... created both, but never altered by them. Nature holds inviolable the stamp that God has set upon his creatures; and if man is able to influence their organization in some slight degree, it is because the Creator has given to his relations with the animals he has intended for his companions the same plasticity which he has allowed to every other side of his life, in virtue of which he may in some sort mould and shape it to his own ends, and be held responsible also ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... tested him, seen him as he was and made out what could be done with him. She had had but to whistle for him and he had come. If she had taken for granted his good nature she was as justified as Kate declared. This awkwardness of his conscience, both in respect to his general plasticity, the fruit of his feeling plasticity, within limits, to be a mode of life like another—certainly better than some, and particularly in respect to such confusion as might reign about what he had really come for—this inward ache was not wholly dispelled by the style, charming as that was, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... if any person be competent to perform that feat; but I would suggest that refutation is retarded, not aided, by mere sarcastic misrepresentation. Every one who has studied cattle-breeding, or turned pigeon-fancier, or "pomologist," must have been struck by the extreme modifiability or plasticity of those kinds of animals and plants which have been subjected to such artificial conditions as are imposed by domestication. Breeds of dogs are more different from one another than are the dog and the wolf; and the purely artificial races of pigeons, if their origin were unknown, would most assuredly ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... may appear, instinct is not invariable. In the first place, it presents a racial evolution which of itself alone already demonstrates a certain degree of plasticity from generation to generation. It presents, further, individual variations which are more distinct as it is less deeply fixed by heredity. Thus the divergent instincts of two varieties, e.g., of insects, present more individual variability and adaptability than do those instincts common ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... however, they introduced certain modifications of their own. The crude brick of Nineveh and its neighbourhood was used while damp, and, when put in place, did not greatly differ from pise.[171] Spread out in wide horizontal courses, the slabs of soft clay adhered one to another by their plasticity, through the effect of the water with which they were impregnated and that of the pressure exercised by the courses above.[172] The building was thus, in effect, nothing but a single huge block. Take it as a whole, put aside certain parts, such as the doorways and drains, that were constructed ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... elegance. Where was the 'Sunday school teacher'? Transformed!—in five weeks—into this vision that was sitting opposite to him? Really, women were too wonderful! His male sense felt a kind of scorn for the plasticity of the sex. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the looks and manners of year-old bullocks, mostly with freckled faces and a certain general irresponsiveness of feature, soon to vanish as the mental and nervous motions became more frequent and rapid, working the stiff clay of their faces into a readier obedience to the indwelling plasticity. Some, on the other hand, showed themselves at once the aristocracy of the class, by their carriage and social qualifications or assumptions. These were not generally the best scholars; but they set the fashion in the cut of their coats, and especially in the style of their neckerchiefs. Most ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the same take of honey. Susan took down the lump, and cutting off several thin slices, heaped them in an iron ladle, with which she returned to the living-room, and placed the vessel in the hot ashes of the fireplace. As soon as the wax had softened to the plasticity of dough she kneaded the pieces together. And now her face became more intent. She began moulding the wax; and it was evident from her manner of manipulation that she was endeavouring to give it some preconceived form. The form ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... a certain plumpness, in other words, a superabundance of the vegetative function, plasticity.... Hence excessive thinness strikingly repels us.... The last consideration that influences us is a beautiful face. Here, too, the bone parts are taken into account before everything else. So that almost everything depends on a beautiful ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... it may be said. She exhibited to him a face mismodelled by sleep, and set like a clay face left on its cheek in a hot and dry studio. She was still only in part awake, however, and by the time she had extinguished the night-light and given her patient his tonic, she had recovered enough plasticity. "Well, isn't that grand! We've had another good night," she said as she departed to dress ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... unoccupied agricultural land in the temperate zone, and proceeded to subdue it to the uses of man. For three centuries the chief task of American mankind has been to go up westward against the land and to possess it. Our wars, our independence, our state building, our political democracy, our plasticity with respect to immigration, our mobility of thought, our ardor of initiative, our mildness and our prosperity, all are but incidents or products of this ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... plumpnesses behind their turned-up moustaches, of the blonde, sedentary women, very wise about the comforts of life and very kind to the children, of their earnest pleasure in landscape and Art and Great Writers, of their general frequent desire to sing, of their plasticity under the directing hands of Adam Meyer. He thought of the mellow south German landscape, rolling away broad and fair, of the little clean red-roofed townships, the old castles, the big prosperous farms, the neatly ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... from its adaptation to the psychology of human traits as they serve the ends of justice, is likely to result in a machine-made justice and a mechanical administration. As a means of furthering the plasticity of the law, of infusing it with a large human vitality—a movement of large scope in which religion and ethics, economics and sociology are worthily cooperating—the psychology of the party of the first part and the party of the second part may well be ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... evanescent. It was as if suffering had removed some substance unapt, [Footnote: Spenser's 'Hymne in Honour of Beautie.'] and rendered her body a better-fitting garment for her soul. Her face, which had before required the softening influences of sleep and dreams to give it the plasticity necessary for complete expression, was now full of a repressed expression, if I may be allowed the phrase—a latent something ever on the tremble, ever on the point of breaking forth. It was as if the nerves had grown ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of{256} all time pre-ordained, the plasticity of the organization, which leads to many injurious deviations of structure, as well as that redundant power of reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and, as a consequence, to the Natural Selection and survival of the fittest, must appear to us ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... versi sciolti of the Italians, has departed widely from Italian precedent, first by its decasyllabic structure, whereas Italian verse consists of hendecasyllables; and, secondly, by its greater force, plasticity, and freedom. The Spenserian stanza, again, is a new and original metre peculiar to our literature; though it is possible that but for the complex structures of Italian lyric verse, it might not have been fashioned for the 'Faery Queen.' Lastly, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... them. I do not mean that they cannot on that account be useful, for without doubt utility itself contributes to beauty; but only that they owe their form primarily to the aesthetic interest. The motive of fine art in its purity appears when special materials are selected on account of their plasticity and their appeal to the more highly developed senses. Fine arts that employ one medium are now separated and perfected through the cultivation of expert proficiency. {179} Thus there arise such arts as painting and music, one of which ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... and it is less controlled by the authority of school or the home. It is a period of very rapid, if not fulminating psychic expansion. It is the natal hour of new curiosities, when adult life first begins to exert its potent charm. It is an age of exploration, of great susceptibility, plasticity, eagerness, pervaded by the instinct to try and plan ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... transmissible, though from the nature of the case the influences of education, example, environment, and the like are here more potent than in regard to structural features. We cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, though the plasticity of character under nurture is a fact which gives us all hope. Explain it we cannot, but the transmission of the raw material of character is a fact, and we must still say with Sir Thomas Browne: "Bless not thyself that thou wert ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... conflict. This readjustment, on which real improvement hangs and which alone makes "experience" useful, does not correspond to the intensity or repetition of the pains endured; it corresponds rather to such a plasticity in the organism that the painful conflict ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... those which specially attract their imagination. On such a point every author must obviously be a law unto himself. From the theoretical point of view, one can only approve the practice, since it certainly makes for plasticity. It is evident that a detached scene, written while those that lead up to it are as yet but vaguely conceived, must be subject to indefinite modification.[13] In several of Ibsen's very roughest drafts, we find short passages of dialogue sketched ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... restlessness they doused him with Latin. The Wizard of Finance, having been marked out by Dr. Boomer and Dr. Boyster as a prospective benefactor, was having Latin poured over him to reduce him to the proper degree of plasticity. ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... art, therefore, appeals primarily to the senses, and the artistic aim when expressing itself in written words must also make its appeal through the senses, if its high desire is to reach the secret spring of responsive emotions. It must strenuously aspire to the plasticity of sculpture, to the colour of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of music—which is the art of arts. And it is only through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and substance; it is only through an unremitting never-discouraged care for the shape and ring of ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... The demand upon her increased steadily as the act went on, and as she met it there slipped into her acting some of her own potentialities of motive and of passion. She offered to the shaping circumstance rich material and abundant plasticity, and when the persecution of her destiny required her to throw herself irretrievably away she did it with a splendid appreciation of large and definite movement that was essentially ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... nitric and sulphuric acids, is thoroughly washed and partially dried. Camphor is then added, and the whole is ground together and thoroughly mixed. At this stage coloring matter may be put in. A little alcohol increases the plasticity of the mass, which is then treated for some time to powerful hydraulic pressure. Then comes breaking up the cakes and feeding the fragments between heated rolls, by which the amalgamation of the whole is completed. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... of my early character was plasticity and fickleness. I was mortified by this exposure of my ignorance, and disgusted with my former course of reading. I now set myself violently to the study of history. With my turn of mind, and with the preposterous habits which I had been daily acquiring, I could not fail to make as gross mistakes ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and chopped straw or reeds, worked into a stiff paste with water. The clay was the river mud from the banks of the Nile, and as this had not sufficient cohesion in itself, the chopped straw (or reeds) was added as a binding material. The addition of such substances increases the plasticity of wet clay, especially if the mixture is allowed to stand for some days before use; so that the action of the chopped straw was twofold; a fact possibly known to the Egyptians. These sun-dried bricks, or "adobes," are still made, as of old, on the banks of the Nile by the following ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... defined by certain isothermal lines (see map chap. XVII.), their reluctance to protrude beyond its limits, and the restricted range and small numerical strength of such protrusions as occur. This seems to be the conservatism of the mature race type, which has lost some of its plasticity and shuns or succumbs to the ordeal of adaptation to contrasted climatic conditions, except when civilization enables it partially ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple |
