"Susceptibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tourism, areas where there has recently been foreign investment interest. Prospects for foreign trade or investment in other areas will remain poor, however, because of the small size of the economy, its technological backwardness, its remoteness, its landlocked geographic location, and its susceptibility to natural disaster. The international community's role of funding more than 60% of Nepal's development budget and more than 28% of total budgetary expenditures will likely continue as a ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Mr. Smith," said Charlie, easily. "There is an epic quality of justice in his being here, because he is indirectly responsible for my presence. At least," he explained, turning to Smith, "if you hadn't made a certain pregnant suggestion of the susceptibility of a trolley magnate to the ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... to himself. Now it is the quickening of the spirit at the sight of God's beautiful universe—a rapture of love awakened by a morning in spring, by the blue infinity of the sky, by the eternal loneliness and sublimity of the sea. Or, in some moment of susceptibility, the smiles of dear home faces, the tender trill of a voice, a surge of solemn music, may have power over the young heart to change its entire future. And again, it is some vivid experience of temptation and suffering ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... a long-established habit, the Wellands had left the previous week for St. Augustine, where, out of regard for the supposed susceptibility of Mr. Welland's bronchial tubes, they always spent the latter part of the winter. Mr. Welland was a mild and silent man, with no opinions but with many habits. With these habits none might interfere; and one of them demanded that his wife ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... extreme susceptibility to the moods of nature. He loved her first for herself, and then with a sense of those inherited primitive associations with her scenes and hid influences which still play upon us to-day; and nothing could be surer than the wilder or tamer glimpses which are seen in this book and in its landscape ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... arrogance that turned his very claims to admiration into prejudices against him. Irascible, envious—bad enough, but not the worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold, repellant cynicism, his passions vented themselves in sneers. There seemed to him no moral susceptibility; and, what was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honor. He had, to a morbid excess, that, desire to rise which is vulgarly called ambition, but no wish for the esteem or the love of his species; only the hard wish to succeed-not ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... resented, as a weakness, his susceptibility to the influence of others' moods; he did so to-day, when having gone to Mrs. Borisoff in an unusually cheerful frame of mind, he came away languid and despondent. But his scheme of life permitted no such idle brooding as used to waste his days; self-discipline sent him to his work, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... character sympathetic and fluent. The past is easily put away; we become plastic to new influences; we are delighted at the discovery of unexpected affinities, and astonished to find in ourselves so much wit, eloquence, and fine susceptibility, which we did not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... instrument, if it were only in tune, never failed to give him the liveliest pleasure. The king of Sardinia was believed to have the best performers in Europe; less than that was enough to quicken the musical susceptibility which is perhaps an invariable element in ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... my readers the speeches of two advocates in a ceremony of this kind, at which I had the curiosity to be present. In order not to wound the susceptibility of the parties, the advocates never speak but in allegorical terms, and at the ceremony which I honoured with my presence the advocate of the young ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... the other. Hester is also well worthy of worship. If there were nothing but her beauty, she would have a wider world than ours of Deerbrook at her feet. But she has much more. She is what you would call a true woman. She has a generous soul, strong affections, and a susceptibility which interferes with her serenity. She is not exempt from the trouble and snare into which the lot of women seems to drive them,—too close a contemplation of self, too nice a sensitiveness, which yet does not interfere with devotedness to others. She will be a devoted wife: but Margaret ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... the rubrics and their susceptibility of improvement will come up later on. It seemed proper to refer to it, if no more, under the head of timeliness. If nothing else in the way of change be opportune at the present moment, it is an easy task to show that the rubrics, as they stand, ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... draw flesh white, leaves white, ground white, everything white in the light, and everything black in the shade—and think themselves wise. But, the longer I live, the more ground I see to hold in high honor a certain sort of childishness or innocent susceptibility. Generally speaking, I find that when we first look at a subject, we get a glimpse of some of the greatest truths about it: as we look longer, our vanity, and false reasoning, and half-knowledge, lead us into various wrong opinions; ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... be combined with intellect to become altogether irresistible, but which, however, I must confess, it may have an insensible influence in destroying. For instance, the sweetness, of the temper is seldom increased by increased refinement of mind; on the contrary, the latter serves to quicken susceptibility and render perception more acute; and therefore, unless it is guarded by an accompanying increase of self-control, it will naturally produce an alteration for the worse in the temper. This is one point. For the next, personal beauty may be injured by want of exercise, ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... vis mortua[Lat], vis viva [Latin]; potential energy, dynamic energy; dynamic friction, dynamic suction; live circuit, live rail, live wire. capability, capacity; quid valeant humeri quid ferre recusent [obs3][Latin]; faculty, quality, attribute, endowment, virtue, gift, property, qualification, susceptibility. V. be powerful &c. adj.; gain power &c. n. belong to, pertain to; lie in one's power, be in one's power; can, be able. give power, confer power, exercise power &c. n.; empower, enable, invest; indue[obs3], endue; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... warrant loud complaint" on the part of the other half. If this be true, it is doubtless due to an instinctive feeling on the part of juries and judges that existing laws and institutions are unjust to women, or to the fact that juries composed wholly of men are led to do injustice by their susceptibility to the attractions of women. But certainly it is a grave defect in any system of government that it does not administer justice impartially, and the existence of such a defect is a strong reason for preferring an arrangement which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... preserved pure, were not worn by contact without; he remained so chaste, so scrupulous, that he was keenly offended by actions and maxims to which the world attached no consequence. Ashamed of this susceptibility, he forced himself to conceal it under a false hardihood; but he suffered in secret, all the while scoffing with others at the things ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... which we ourselves belong. The historic development does not always follow the regular course we have just described, although these are, in a strictly logical sense, the necessary stages of intellectual evolution. Historically they are often jostled and confounded together by the lively susceptibility and alacrity of the imagination of primitive man, and it is precisely this characteristic which makes these marvellous ages so fertile in fanciful creations, and ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... unconscious man striding by her side. Unconscious? I don't know. First of all, I felt certain that this was no chance meeting. Something had happened before. Was he a man for a coup-de-foudre, the lightning stroke of love? I don't think so. That sort of susceptibility is luckily rare. A world of inflammable lovers of the Romeo and Juliet type would very soon end in barbarism and misery. But it is a fact that in every man (not in every woman) there lives a lover; a lover who is called out in all his potentialities often by the most insignificant little things—as ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... a sin, neither is its presence derogatory to our nature. It implies a susceptibility to the inharmonies of life, and is complimentary than otherwise to our organization. They are not to be envied who have never known an hour of pain and languor, for they come not under the discipline and instruction of one of life's great teachers. They are apt to be harsh, and cold, ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... recent foreign investment interest. Prospects for foreign trade or investment in other sectors will remain poor, however, because of the small size of the economy, its technological backwardness, its remoteness, its landlocked geographic location, its civil strife, and its susceptibility to natural disaster. ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Minister for Foreign affairs having direct control over the Norwegian Consuls, a stipulation that was absolutely necessary both from a Swedish and a Union point of view. And Norwegian policy had generally with its sickly distrust and susceptibility an instinctive disinclination to bind Norway to anything referring to the burning question of the day. "As to one's rights, no one negotiates". This has become well nigh the axiom for Norwegian politics. ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... and ideal of all highest minds that have reflected on the true constitution of human happiness? His often enjoined Silence is the first condition of this supreme kind of liberty, for what is silence but the absence of a self-tormenting assertiveness, the freedom from excessive susceptibility under the speech of others, one's removal from the choking sandy wilderness of wasted words? Belief is the mood which emancipates us from the paralysing dubieties of distraught souls, and leaves us full possession of ourselves by furnishing an unshaken and inexpugnable base for action ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... anything else, the upshot will be your appearing somewhere in print as a damned Britisher for whom American ways are not good enough. The whole country is one vast sounding board, and it vibrates with perilous susceptibility in response to ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... I know a man who has to decide it. It is not a light matter for any man, and his is a soul as sensitive as God ever made. He was betrothed to a woman every way worthy; he loved her sincerely. His chief fault, and a serious one it is, came from his susceptibility to fresh impressions. The pleasure of the present had more power over him than any recollections of the past. The influence of the living woman at his side was greater, for the moment, than that of any absent love. In an evil hour, he committed himself to another. She was, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... put it down to the tobacco. "It ought to be a criminal offence for a woman to smoke at all," said Borrow; "fancy kissing a woman's mouth that smelt of stale tobacco—pheugh!" {315} Whether this proves Borrow's susceptibility to female charm I cannot say, but it seems to me rather to prove a sort of connoisseurship, which is not the ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... my daughter will not make you happy—from this side I am easy—but because the situation that fate has made for us will weigh on you and fetter you? I know my daughter-her delicacy; her uneasy susceptibility, that of the unfortunate; her pride, that of the irreproachable. It would be a wound for her that would make happiness give way to unhappiness, for she ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... conditioned by the great degree of attention devoted to the tic. The mental dissociation or disintegration leads to an inflating of the emotional aspect of the patient's mental life with a resulting increased nervous irritability and reaction and a heightened degree of susceptibility to emotional disequilibration and fatiguability of the mental faculties. The lack of self-assertion, of confidence in himself, and the feeling of inferiority and insufficiency are natural consequences of the general picture. The inhibition ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... said Henry, "if it does not appear too formidable to your susceptibility, we will venture to meet the young ladies. Get your hat, Rosalie," he added, as his sister moved away; "we need ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... ductless glands to situations varies with their congenital capacity, and acquired susceptibility. Capacity is a question of internal chemistry, modifiable by injury, disease, accident, shock, exhaustion. Susceptibility depends upon the play of the forces focusing upon them that may be summed up as associations. In the ability of one endocrine system to inhibit another we have the germ of the unconscious. Hence the modus operandi of the repressions and suppressions, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... Age, Occurrence, Susceptibility.—All children exposed to the disease do not contract the disease. It is less contagious than measles. A person who is exposed once, and does not take it, may take it at a future exposure. It occurs at any age and in all countries. It occurs oftener in autumn (September) ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... diffidence becomes more subtle as the progress of culture makes us more sensitive to vague impressions from our environment, and tunes the nerves to a higher pitch. A shy nature upon this plane of susceptibility suffers anguish from an uncontrollable body; and even in peaceful moments the memory of the discomfitures so inflicted may distort a man's whole view of the world around him. He is impatient of the wit which demands a versatility in response beyond his powers, and persuades himself ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... courteous to her lately;—so much so that on one occasion she had almost feared that the 'susceptible old goose' was going to be a goose again. That would be a bore; but still she might make use of the friendly condition of mind which such susceptibility would produce. When her guests began to leave her, she spoke a word aside to him. She wanted his advice. Would he stay for a few minutes after the rest of the company? He did stay, and when all the others were gone she asked her daughter to leave them. 'Hetta,' she said, 'I have something of business ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... speedily as he had departed, but in the ante-chamber he was forced to appeal to the king's authority. Villefort's dusty garb, his costume, which was not of courtly cut, excited the susceptibility of M. de Breze, who was all astonishment at finding that this young man had the audacity to enter before the king in such attire. The duke, however, overcame all difficulties with a word—his majesty's order; ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... scarcely a happy specimen of the difficult art of reasoning in verse. His verse is at best vigorous epigrammatic writing, such as would now be converted into leading articles, twisted with more or less violence into rhyme. And yet there is a poetical side to his mind, or at least a susceptibility to poetical impressions of a certain order. And as a novelist is on the border-line between poetry and prose, and novels should be as it were prose saturated with poetry, we may expect to come in this direction ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Hills country. How was this girl?—and was that one married yet?—and did the other still grieve for him? As a matter of fact, he had yet to see the girl who could quicken his pulse a single beat, and for that reason it sometimes pleased him to affect susceptibility ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... the only things which the Sceptic does not deny, and he guides his life by them. They are, however, subjective. Sextus distinctly affirms that sensations are the phenomena,[3] and that they lie in susceptibility and voluntary feeling, and that they constitute the appearances of objects.[4] We see from this that Sextus makes the only reality to consist in subjective experience, but he does not follow this to its logical conclusion, ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... "mobilite." I am not sure that mobility is English; but it is expressive of a quality which rather belongs to other climates, though it is sometimes seen to a great extent in our own. It may be defined as an excessive susceptibility of immediate impressions—at the same time without losing the past: and is, though sometimes apparently useful to the possessor, a most painful ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... nature, and I am and remain nature here below. But they shall not trouble me. They affect only the Nature with which I am, in some strange way, connected; not myself, the being which is elevated above all Nature. The sure end of all pain, and of all susceptibility of pain, is death; and of all which the natural man is accustomed to regard as evil, this is the least so to me. Indeed, I shall not die for myself, but only for others, for those that remain behind, from whose connection ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... been formed as much for pleasure as for instruction. Music and hall rent and a knowledge of the latest dances could be obtained cheaper in this way than in any other. The pupils had made rapid progress, displaying in fact a natural aptitude for rhythmic motion, and a keen susceptibility to musical sounds. As their race had never been criticised for these characteristics, they gave them full play, and soon developed, most of them, into graceful and indefatigable dancers. They were now almost at the end of their course, and this was the evening ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... from M. rubra by its smooth, shining leaves, its whitish or pinkish fruit, and its greater susceptibility to frost. ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... the mental qualities we shall find, I believe, the same connection between the special characters of woman and those of genius. Woman's mental mobility, her tendency towards nervous outbursts, with a corresponding irritability and greater susceptibility to fatigue, except under the support of excitement, as also in the resulting qualities of her power of ready adaptation to changes of habits and response to new influences, her tact, her keener insight into character, her quickness in pity, her impulsiveness, her finer discrimination, her innate ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... about two years younger than Wan Lee. It was this bright, cheery, innocent, and artless child that touched and reached a depth in the boy's nature that hitherto had been unsuspected; that awakened a moral susceptibility which had lain for years insensible alike to the teachings of society, or the ethics of ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... should bear, we may without further error follow his course of thought, it is as unkind as unprofitable to lose the use of his result in quarrel with its algebraic expression; and if the reader will understand by Lord Lindsay's general term "Spirit" the susceptibility of right moral emotion, and the entire subjection of the Will to Reason; and receive his term "Sense" as not including the perception of Beauty either in sight or sound, but expressive of animal sensation only, he may follow without embarrassment ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... mix sawdust and shavings with lawn clippings and street sweepings, because of the great difference in susceptibility to decay. The lawn clippings and street sweepings, which would contain considerable horse manure, would be readily transformed into a good fertilizer by composting. Such treatment, however, would have no appreciable effect upon sawdust or shavings for a considerable period of time, and ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... were neither deceived nor diverted by such bad art; their sympathies were chilled, and they called the thing "frigid." Meanwhile the special art of the Hebrews is, perhaps, the art of Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, music which is so often joined to profound emotional susceptibility. They had no statuary, their architecture does not remain for us to criticise it, their literature alone supplies us with material for comparison, and even in this there is not that diversity of epic, dramatic, and lyric matter, of history, oratory and ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... understand this reasoning, grounded on a complete misapprehension of St. Paul's image of the potter, Rom. ix., or rather I do fully understand the absurdity of it. The susceptibility of pain and pleasure, of good and evil, constitutes a right in every creature endowed therewith in relation to every rational and moral being,—a' fortiori', therefore, to the Supreme Reason, to the absolutely good Being. Remember ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... methods. On the other hand, the very simple natural explanation of the illness of Mr. Van Ness which was offered by the defence at the trial accounts for the unity and the diversity of the attacks, the basis of which, according to it, was over-susceptibility of the nervous system and of the stomach, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... individual at this time is usually good; susceptibility to the diseases peculiar to childhood is slight, but there is increased danger of acquiring adult diseases, and some writers claim that it is during this time, when there are great physical disturbances, that the germ of many adult ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... their most judicious representatives, their superiority to petty economies, their strength to resist the natural opposition of heavy tax-payers to expensive public works, their gentleness and amenableness to just authority in the pursuit of their pleasures, of their susceptibility to the softening influences of elegance and beauty, of their honest pride and rejoicing in their own splendor, of their superior fondness for what is innocent and elevating over what is base and degrading, when brought within equal reach, the Central Park has already afforded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... the heroine, and the valour of the hero, must be alike resistless; and the moving spring, through the whole action, is the overbearing passion of love. Their language and manners are as peculiar to themselves, as their prowess and susceptibility. The pastoral Arcadian does not differ more widely from an ordinary rustic, than these lofty persons do from the princes and kings of this world. Neither is any circumstance of national character, or manners, allowed as an apology ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... and very handsome women are observed in the villages - women with great, dreamy eyes, and faces with an expression of languor that bespeaks their owners to be gentleness personified. Igali shows evidence of more susceptibility to female charms than I should naturally have given him credit for, and shows a decided inclination to linger in these beauty-blessed villages longer than is necessary, and as one dark-eyed damsel after another gathers around us, I usually take the initiative ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... orders of Creation must be reproved, and in the midst of the successes by which patient insight will be surprised, the fact of the confirmation of species in plants and animals must remain always a miraculous one. What outstretched sign of constant Omnipotence can be more awful, than that the susceptibility to {204} external influences, with the reciprocal power of transformation, in the organs of the plant; and the infinite powers of moral training and mental conception over the nativity of animals, should be so restrained within impassable ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... soreness and vexation. He had almost acknowledged that he was conscious of the slander against which he had made up his mind to present a blank front of unconsciousness and passive resistance, and he was angry with himself for his susceptibility to this unexpected voice of kindness. He was going home, but he did not care for going home. Poor Mrs Hadwin's anxious looks of suspicion had added to the distaste with which he thought of encountering again the sullen shabby rascal to whom he had given shelter. It was Saturday ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... Willis knew a whole family subject to it. It is considered by all medical men as a peculiar form of disease. It seldom manifests itself before the age of six, and scarcely ever continues beyond the sixtieth year. It depends, physically, upon the susceptibility or delicacy of the nervous system; and on this account females are more liable to it than males; and in youth it manifests itself more frequently than in mature age. It is caused mentally by any violent and profound emotion; as well as by excessive study, and over-fatiguing ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... is the seat of great nervous susceptibility, and the excitation of these nerves gives a pleasurable sensation. This excitation may be thought a local mechanical irritation or it may be mental. In little children it may be caused by lack of cleanliness of the external organs. An irritation is produced, and an ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... or twice will the vampyre's attack have sufficient influence on your mortal frame, as to induce a susceptibility on your part to become coexistent with such as he. The attacks must be often repeated, and the termination of mortal existence must be a consequence essential, and direct from those attacks, before such a result ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... client, Kerner was so impressed by this exhibition of supernatural power that, in order to study his patient more closely, he had her removed from her lodgings to his own house. Thither also, as soon as he learned that their presence seemed to increase her susceptibility to the occult influences by which she was surrounded, he brought her sister and the maid servant ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... dwelt upon with so much commendation. There was no hurrying from case to case—no sign of impatience at the reiterated unmeaning queries of the patients—no coarse jest at their expense—not a syllable that could wound the susceptibility of the most sensitive. Did one poor fellow betray an anxiety to take up as little of the baron's time as possible, and, speaking hurriedly, almost exhaust his little stock of feeble breath, it was absolutely touching to mark the happy mode ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... the doctrine of temperaments may find something to ponder over in such a fusion under the genial ray of the southern sun. Given the key, they may unlock with it many cabinets in the idiosyncrasy of the future Hamilton; Scottish perseverance and integrity, French honor and susceptibility, tropical fervor. Be that as it may, Alexander Hamilton first saw the light in the West India island, St. Christopher, January 11, 1757. His father was a trader or captain, sailing between the islands of the archipelago, whose business brought him into relation with ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... unconscious rival, I tried to embody, not the sensuous intoxicating power of an Emma Hamilton, but those more exquisite and spiritual influences which many women have exercised over some of the strongest and most virile of men. Fenwick indeed possesses the painter's susceptibility to beauty. Beauty comes to him and beguiles him, but it is a beauty akin to that of Michel Angelo's 'Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed'—which yet, for all its purity, is not, as Fenwick's case shows, without its tragic ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his eyes as the projection of a powerful inner impression. All his sensations were abnormally acute, and his ever-active imagination confused the border-lands of the actual and the visionary. Such a nature as Shelley's, through its far greater susceptibility than is common even when with artistic temperaments, was debarred in moments of high-strung emotion from observing the ordinary distinctions of subject and object; and this peculiar quality must never be forgotten when we seek to estimate the proper proportions ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... sentiment of taste differ. To the man I would give the laws of taste; to the woman, its sensibility. The taste of the former seems more derived from reason; that of the latter from instinct: witness their impulsive maternal affection; that inherent ornament of their sex, modesty; their tender susceptibility of the benevolent virtues, pity, compassion, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... or paralysis were not very definite, and she only understood that something very terrible had happened to her foster-father, whom she loved as though he had been her real parent. Leo was hardly less affected, though, being a boy, his susceptibility was not so keen. His first feeling was one of indignation that the banker had not told him before of the misfortune which had overtaken the family. It was cruel to have kept Maggie from her father a single moment ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... order of the variable winds. How can we penetrate the law of our shifting moods and susceptibility? Yet they differ as all and nothing. Instead of the firmament of yesterday, which our eyes require, it is to-day an eggshell which coops us in; we cannot even see what or where our stars of destiny are. From day to day, the capital facts of human life are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... heart was still thrilling with emotions awakened by my conversation with my aunt; her expressions of enthusiastic tenderness were still sounding in my ears, and the words of reproof, however slight, which fell from Edward's lips, contrasted with them, grated on my feelings, and irritated my susceptibility. Unlike as they were in many respects, there was one resemblance between Mrs. Middleton and Henry Lovell, which never failed to strike me. Without affectation or exaggeration, by the peculiar qualities of their minds, by the union ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... difference between born criminals and insane criminals lies in the motive for the act, which in the case of the latter is not only entirely disproportionate to it, but nearly always absurd and depends far less on personal susceptibility. ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... were no protective mechanism of this nature, the subconscious might very well accept the statement and believe that its owner certainly was the fool he had been dubbed. The effect, therefore, of consciousness is thus to limit and reduce this sensitiveness and susceptibility of the ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... differences that exist between different animals in regard to their susceptibility to the action of drugs is even more remarkable than the differences that exist in their susceptibility to certain forms of disease. We can understand and appreciate what Koch tells us in regard to the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... their emotional susceptibility. Some go through life always clouded, always dull, like a piece of glass cut in semblance of a gem, that refracts no colors and is empty of light. Others are vivid, impressionable, reacting to every experience. Some of us are most aroused by contact ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... strains, each of considerable length. After each strain the bird makes a pause of about three or four seconds. I think the effect of this sylvan music is somewhat diminished by the length of the pauses or rests. It may be said, however, that during each pause our susceptibility is increased, and we are thus prepared to be more deeply affected by the next notes. Whether the one or the other opinion be correct, it is certain that any one who stops to listen to this bird will become spellbound, and deaf to almost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... with his back to the north, Mrs. Martin," she said; "there, in a somewhat reclining posture; that will increase his susceptibility to psychic influence. There is no doubt that the magnetism of the earth has a polar distribution. It is quite probable also that the odylic emanation of the terrestrial magnet has also a polar arrangement. Does the little fellow ever turn round in ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... of pity in your eyes are deep and full enough to take in more than the Dying Gladiator; he is dead; there are living men," said the Irishman with the susceptibility of his race. ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... nine-and-twentieth year when he died. The calm of middle life did not add the seal of the virtues which adorn maturity to those generated by the vehement spirit of youth. Through life also he was a martyr to ill-health, and constant pain wound up his nerves to a pitch of susceptibility that rendered his views of life different from those of a man in the enjoyment of healthy sensations. Perfectly gentle and forbearing in manner, he suffered a good deal of internal irritability, or rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was almost always on the stretch; ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... should first consider the large, hardy hybrids, known as hazilberts, which I have produced between a large Wisconsin wild hazel and European filberts. Hazilberts equal the best European filberts in every way, without the latter's disadvantage of susceptibility to hazel blight and its lack of hardiness. They are as hardy as the common wild hazel and are more adaptable to environment and soil conditions than any other native nut tree. They may be trained into trees or allowed ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... neglecting his part with an inconceivable levity: more than once on the ride to London, little observations of the stranger, light remarks, and words betokening the greatest ignorance of the country the Prince came to govern, had hurt the susceptibility of the two gentlemen forming his escort; nor could either help owning in his secret mind that they would have had his behavior otherwise, and that the laughter and the lightness, not to say license, which characterized his talk, scarce befitted such a great Prince, and such a solemn occasion. ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... poor wretches convicted of plotting the assassination of Queen Elizabeth were dragged to Tyburn, "hanged but for a moment, taken down while the susceptibility of agony was unimpaired and cut in pieces afterwards with due precautions for the protraction ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... curiously wrought lace, and virtuous satin,—all bearing the tenderest burdens of love and despair. Bolt was indeed fairly set upon by rival candidates for his heart, which was supposed to possess a large portion of susceptibility. Nor were his admirers merely confined to the satin and velvet of the aristocracy, for 'pretty Betty,' maid of all work to the Legation, and on that account so vain of the honor that she would not condescend to associate with servants not attached to the ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... resulted in that power of divination which he possessed. For a portrait to be living, it must have some faults as well as qualities. His delineator does not forget to mention the attitude of mystery in which the Prince took refuge whenever his feelings were hurt. She speaks also of his intense susceptibility. "His wit was very brilliant," she says; "it consisted of a kind of subtle mocking shrewdness, not really playful, but a sort of delicate, bantering gaiety." It may have been to the glory of Prince Karol ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... susceptibility induced by a guilty conscience, he seized his musket and cocked it. As quickly he set it down again, and smiled at his weakness. Next moment he heard a voice shouting. ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... considered sound, but the Abbess, taking into account the King's susceptibility, decided that it would not do for me to write myself about a matter so important as this. The Marquise de Thianges, in some way or other, had got the knack of plain speaking, so that a letter of hers would ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... very grand and wonderful to order "David" and "Moses" about. Laura felt as if her aunt were something only a little less than "Michael with the sword." Laura had a susceptibility for dignities; she appreciated, as we have seen out upon the wood-shed, "high places, and all the people ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... became quarrelsome, and to take up our relations when next we met at the point immediately preceding that at which temper had overcome him. At heart an honourable and I am sure kindly man, Heron had a temper of remarkable susceptibility to irritation. The stomachic causes which, as time went on, produced melancholy and dense, black depression in me, probably accounted for his eruptions of violent irascibility. And I fancy we were equally ignorant and brutal in our treatment ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... most of us flap our wings in the effort to soar; if we rise from the ground it is because some unusually strong or deep burst of feeling makes us for the moment better than ourselves. In Mr. Gladstone the capacity for feeling was at all times so strong, the susceptibility of the imagination so keen, that he soared without effort. His vision seemed to take in the whole landscape. The points actually in question might be small, but the principles involved were to him far-reaching. The contests of to-day ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... shout out in irrepressible laughter also, though I did not hear the joke. I was delighted to mingle my voice with other men's in one common feeling. Compulsory solitude makes us good democrats. Kate regarded me with watchful eyes; she was afraid I had become delirious! I was amazed at myself for this susceptibility,—I, who, accustomed to hotel-life, had formerly been so impassive, to be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... Gregoire, the righteous, would soon be running after a girl instead of attending to his work. I had a conscience—thoughts of the trouble that I was brewing for Gregoire would come between me and the petticoat and rob it of its charms; his abominable susceptibility to my caprices marred half my pleasures for me. Once when I sat distrait, bowed by such reflections, a woman exclaimed, "What's the matter with you? One would think you had a family!" "Well," I said, "I ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... manner of this female, his sole nurse, companion, substitute for parent, had repelled his affections without subduing his temper; and though not originally of evil disposition, Angelo Villani was already insolent, cunning, and revengeful; but not, on the other hand, without a quick susceptibility to kindness as to affront, a natural acuteness of understanding, and a great indifference to fear. Brought up in quiet affluence rather than luxury, and living much with his protector, whom he knew but by the name of Ursula, his bearing was graceful, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... containing all forces except himself. Either separately, or in groups, or as a whole, these forces never ceased to act on him, enlarging his mind as they enlarged the surface foliage of a vegetable, and the mind needed only to respond, as the forests did, to these attractions. Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius; selection between them is the highest science; their mass is the highest educator. Man always made, and still makes, grotesque blunders in selecting and measuring forces, taken at random from the heap, but he never made a mistake ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the desire to be stimulated is not of itself necessarily a bad thing. This will be particularly clear if the distribution of the responsiveness to alcoholic stimulus is recalled. Some really valuable strains, marked by this susceptibility, may be eliminated through the death of some individuals from debauchery and the penalization of others in preferential mating; this would be avoided if narcotics were ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... entirely out of his role in writing such a book.... Renan descends sensibly in the scale from having produced his Abbesse." Heine, with all his genius, "lacked the old-fashioned, laborious, eternally needful moral deliverance": he left a name blemished by "intemperate susceptibility, unscrupulousness in passion, inconceivable attacks on his enemies, still more inconceivable attacks on his friends, want of generosity, ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... has left a blemished name; with his crying faults,—his intemperate susceptibility, his unscrupulousness in passion, his inconceivable attacks on his enemies, his still more inconceivable attacks on his friends, his want of generosity, his sensuality, his incessant mocking,—how could it be otherwise? Not only was he not one ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... influence of such views, it is a great joy to think that we shall not always be so callous as we are now. Deep down in our souls there is a susceptibility to tenderness that we do not generally suspect. Sometimes, from no cause that we can see, there breaks on our hearts a ripple of peace like a breath of perfume from some far off land of flowers, or a snatch of melody from some distant ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... has impregnated me with an unreasonable amount of anti-French susceptibility, for certainly he abuses our dear allies with a zeal and a gusto that does one's heart good to listen to; and I do feel like that honest Bull, commemorated by Mathews, that "I hate prejudice—I hate ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... concentration and elixir of the most intense and profound feelings of which we are all capable, they give words to the more exquisite and intimate emotions peculiar to those of a keener and more refined susceptibility, of a more exalted and aerial range. Sainte-Beuve says somewhere, though not in his final verdict on De Musset, that his chief merit is having restored to French literature the wit which had been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... the seventh, Augustus William, was born in Hanover, September 5th, 1767. In his early childhood, he evinced a genuine susceptibility for all that was good and noble; and this early promise of a generous and virtuous disposition was carefully nurtured by the religious instruction of his mother, an amiable and highly-gifted woman. Of this parent's pious and judicious ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... of the stronger sex, you lose all that general selfishness which is the strict result of our pursuits. Your impulses are narrowed to a single point or two, and there all your hopes, fears and desires, become concentrated. You acquire an intense susceptibility on a few subjects, by the loss of those manifold influences which belong to the out-door habit of mankind. With us, we have so many resources to fly to for relief, so many attractions to invite and seduce, so many resorts of luxury and life, that the affections become ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... considerable might be made of Roderick, it was impossible not to see that her friendship was not what might be called tonic. So Rowland reflected, in the glow of his new-born sympathy. There was a later time when he would have been grateful if Hudson's susceptibility to the relaxing influence of lovely women might have been limited to such inexpensive tribute as ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... 'worshipped'—with unwearied devotion, with a high sense of honour, with a courage which never faltered, with an integrity which has never been impeached. He followed duty to the utmost verge of life, and—full himself of moral susceptibility—he reverenced the ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... grasping,—with that wonderful capability of being greedy for the benefit of another which belongs to women,—willing to accept plentiful meals and a power of saving L20 a year as sufficient remuneration for all hardships, with no more susceptibility than a milestone, and as indifferent to delicacy in language as a bargee. There are such women, and very valuable women they are in that trade. Such a one was Miss Horsball, and in these days the sweetest of her smiles were bestowed upon the ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... it is true, from the greater susceptibility of their imaginations, have more frequently fallen into the ever ready snare. But the fate of the poets in matrimony has but justified the caution of the philosophers. While the latter have given warning ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... satiny black broadcloth confirmed it, and even the little silk guard, that rested consciously upon his immaculate linen, sustained the presumption. But for those and a few other reasons, he was looked upon as a man of rigid method and severe discipline, a man outside the grasp of ordinary human susceptibility, or, in more familiar terms, a ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... in a club. But this explanation did not really satisfy her. "What, after all, except for the fun of the frisson," she reflected, "would he really care for any of their old ghosts?" And thence she was thrown back once more on the fundamental dilemma: the fact that one's greater or less susceptibility to spectral influences had no particular bearing on the case, since, when one DID see a ghost at Lyng, one did not ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... to the sun, will have certain colours and a certain fragrance, and no other;—all which, indeed, though not very new or profound, is very important. But it is not so dear that it will give us any help on the present occasion. We have an original susceptibility of music, of beauty, of religion, it is said. Granted; but as the actual development of this susceptibility exhibits all the diversities between Handel's notions of harmony and those of an American ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... conscience as our inner guide to conduct, and even to thought and emotions, has been studied briefly. On a basis of innate capacity, conscience arises from the teaching and traditions of the group (or groups). The individual who has a susceptibility or a readiness to believe and a desire to be in conformity accepts or evolves for himself principles of conduct, based on obligation, expectation of reward and fear of punishment, these entering in various proportions, according to the type ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... motion, as Plato inclines to think) covers all that is best worth being. And as for philosophy—mobility, versatility, the habit of thought that can most adequately follow the subtle movement of things, that, surely, were the secret of wisdom, of the true knowledge of them. It means susceptibility, sympathetic intelligence, capacity, in short. It was the spirit of God that moved, moves still, in every form of real power, everywhere. Yet to Plato motion becomes the token of unreality in things, of falsity in our thoughts about them. ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... unconscious might back of the consciously active and trained powers. It is this unconscious might which John Keats, in his 'Sleep and Poetry', speaks of as "might half slumbering on its own right arm", and which every reader, with the requisite susceptibility, can always detect in the ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... the new monarch; nevertheless they ceased not to curse the monarchy and the monarch at heart. The more clearly the change of the constitution became manifest, the more distinctly the great majority of the burgesses—both in the capital with its keener susceptibility of political excitement, and among the more energetic population of the country and country towns— awoke to a consciousness of their republican sentiments; so far the friends of the constitution in Rome reported with truth to their brethren ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... affected by this, and hastened to express his acknowledgments. My articles became the subject of a correspondence between us, which I still refer to with pleasure.[1] He explained to me his intentions and motives in the composition of his poem, discussed with susceptibility and even with some degree of temper concealed under his gratitude, the strictures mixed with my eulogiums, and finished by saying: "In conclusion, Sir, you know the tempests raised against my work, and from whence they proceed. There is another wound, not ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... natural inclination of such natures with punishment, or harsh correctives, is as useless as would be an attempt to stop the ebbing and flowing of the tide. You must nurture the feelings, he thought, create a susceptibility, get the heart right, by holding out the value of a better state of things, and make the head to feel that you are sincere in your work of love; and, above all, you must not forget the stomach, for if that go empty crime ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... hypnotized, provided he is not too sceptical of the operator's knowledge and power; and, on the contrary, any one can hypnotize another, provided he do not arouse too great scepticism, and is not himself wavering and clumsy. It is probable, however, that susceptibility varies greatly in degree, and that race exerts an important influence. Thus in Europe the French seem to be most susceptible, and the English and Scandinavians least so. The impression that weak-minded persons are most available ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... bodies to the test of the pyrometer, it is found that they are far from dilating in the same proportion. Different metals expand in different degrees, and other kinds of solid bodies vary still more in this respect. But this different susceptibility of dilatation is still more remarkable in fluids than in solid bodies, as I shall show you. I have here two glass tubes, terminated at one end by large bulbs. We shall fill the bulbs, the one with spirit of wine, the other with water. I have coloured both liquids, in ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... His art-susceptibility at that time was very keen and active. He remarked to a German admirer, in the autumn of 1856, that two new subjects occupied his mind during the Nibelungen-work, which he could with difficulty repress. ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... sharpened every pang of death. Misery there wrung every fibre that could feel, before she gave the Blow of Grace which sent the sufferer to eternity. It is said that poison was employed. No, there was no such mercy there. There, nothing was employed which could blunt the susceptibility to anguish, or which, by hastening death, could rob its agonies of a single pang. On board one only of these Prison ships above 11,000 of our brave countrymen are said to have perished. She was called the Jersey. ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... Middle Ages. "To estimate fully the force of these popular ebullitions in the Middle Ages, we must bear in mind the susceptibility of the people to contagious emotions and enthusiasms of which we know little in our colder day. A trifle might start a movement which the wisest could not explain nor the most powerful restrain. It was during the preaching ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... at an early approaching date, Mr. MORLEY would have quitted the establishment—dead Mr. STEAD genially anticipated—and that he would reign in Stead. In view of the public interest involved in these confessions, we have interviewed a certain Right Hon. Gentleman as to his susceptibility to presentiments. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... flower of it!—a mutual loss, too, for are they not, even more emphatically, the very flower of yours? Eighteen and twenty-five are ages at which to marry, not ages to defer. During this time the entire flow of my existence is at its crowning fulness—passion, thought, joy, tenderness, susceptibility to beauty and sweetness—all I have that can be diminished or tarnished, or made dull by advancing age and contact with the world, is thrown away—for its spring and summer. Will the autumn of life repay us for this? Will it—even if we are rich and blest with health, and as ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... mission is an important one, and I selected you for it as a proof of the confidence I feel in your ability. While carrying out this duty you shall have the temporary rank of major, as it will less ruffle the susceptibility of the Spaniards, if an officer of that rank be employed, than if a captain be sent to institute ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... madam, that you yourself, so good, so charming, so sensible, you have laughed sometimes—smiled, I should say—at the idle prattle of that good Parry, for whom your royal highness to-day entertains such a marvelous susceptibility." ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... would not the burning of 'Pickwick' and 'Bleak House' by the common hangman do more to appease Nonconformist susceptibility than even Disestablishment? 'Salem Chapel,' again, and 'Adam Bede.' Fancy 'Adam Bede 'without Mr Irwine, who yet is not held up ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... Burr, President of Princeton College. He was a graduate of Princeton, and, like Hamilton, always had the ability to focus his mind on the subject in hand, and wring from it its very core. Burr's reputation as to his susceptibility to women's charms is the world's common—very common—property. He was unhappily married; his wife died before he was thirty; he was a man of ardent nature and stalked through the world a conquering Don Juan. A historian, however, records that "his alliances ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... conspicuous symptom of threatened miscarriage, has not a uniform significance. Since it frequently occurs during the course of pregnancy in association with a number of conditions, it is not a reliable sign of danger. Moreover, the susceptibility to pain varies; thus, of two patients in the same stage of threatened miscarriage one may suffer intensely, while the ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... some curious quality in the air of this country which affects the nerves: maybe it is the elevation at which one lives—certain it is that many people complain of unwonted irritability and susceptibility to petty annoyances. And, while travelling in Kashmir is easy and comfortable enough along beaten tracks, yet the petty worries connected with all matters of transport and supply are incessant, and become much more serious if one ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... acute febrile diseases in which sordes accumulate about the teeth and gums. It also occurs in syphilitic subjects while under treatment by mercury—mercurial stomatitis. Some patients show a special susceptibility to mercury, and one of the first signs of intolerance of the drug is some degree of stomatitis, which may ensue after a comparatively small quantity has been administered. It begins in the gums, which become swollen and spongy, growing on to the teeth and ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... Harry. She was, at any rate, at that ripe age when beauty in woman seems more solid than in the budding period of girlhood, and she had come to understand her powers perfectly, and to know exactly how much of the susceptibility and archness of the girl it was profitable to retain. She saw that many women, with the best intentions, make a mistake of carrying too much girlishness into womanhood. Such a woman would have attracted Harry at any time, but only a woman with a cool brain and exquisite ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... more than that, here was the atmosphere that she had breathed into the plaintive melody of her verse. It did not necessarily follow that Mr. Hamlin's translation of her sentiment was the correct one, or that the ideas her verses had provoked in his mind were at all what had been hers: in his easy susceptibility he was simply thrown into a corresponding mood of emotion and relieved himself with song. One of the verses he had already associated in his mind with the rhythm of an old plantation melody, and it struck his fancy to take advantage ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... protection has been performed by the minister and the consul-general at Paris, and the various consuls in France under the supervision of the latter, with great kindness as well as with prudence and tact. Their course has received the commendation of the German Government, and has wounded no susceptibility ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various |
