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Adaptable   /ədˈæptəbəl/   Listen
Adaptable

adjective
1.
Capable of adapting (of becoming or being made suitable) to a particular situation or use.  "The frame was adaptable to cloth bolts of different widths"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Adaptable" Quotes from Famous Books



... able to purchase books at prices within your reach; as low as 10 cents for paper covered books, to $5.00 for books bound in cloth or leather, adaptable for gift and presentation purposes, to suit the tastes of ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... can, therefore, deal in little but generalities. The Romans must have imitated and developed their Greek and Etruscan models.[91] When Livius Andronicus first fathered palliatae, he must have chosen the New Comedy not only as the type of drama most available to him, but as wholly adaptable to his audiences. When Plautus wrote, he had the machinery already built for him, and he doubtless seized upon the palliata form as the natural medium for the exploitation of his talents. By Cicero's time considerable technical equipment was required; the actor must be an adept ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... assumes the characters as remaining the same. The mere act of dying does not alter character. I am the same I. I have entered into a new environment more favourable for the exercise of my faculties, more adaptable to the acquisition of knowledge, more helpful, I trust, to growth in good. But I am the same "I." As I leave off here I begin there. I take into that world just myself as I have made it. If I have made the best of myself what more should I desire ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth

... did not think so. In his case she regarded it merely as a fancy. He had said that he could not sleep on any other side. She had had to turn out of her own room to accommodate him, but if one kept an apartment-house one had to be adaptable; and Mr. Ghoosh was certainly very liberal in ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah

... affably, "has sent us some magnificent men. In truth, it's amazing to take count of the Western men among us in all the professions. They are notable, perhaps I should say, less for deliberate niceties of style than for a certain rough directness, but so adaptable is the American character that one frequently does not suspect ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... the well-known organisation of Lloyds, which in form is something between a stock exchange and a co-operative partnership, is nowhere more elastic and adaptable than in London. It must be said, to the credit of Lloyds, that anyone asking to be insured there was never hindered by bureaucratic restrictions, and always found his wishes met to the furthest possible extent. The agencies of Lloyds abroad are also so arranged that both the insured and the ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers

... faith in the future of oil!" he cries, in the midst of a sober statistical letter, "Why! that is as unthinkable as to lose faith in your hands. Oil, coal, electricity, what are these but multiplied and more adaptable, super-serviceable hands? They may temporarily be unemployed, but the world can't go round without them." A man who feels poetry in petroleum suffers from no wistful "desire of the moth for the star." To his full sense of life the moth and ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... is well known. At the end of a pleasant evening when there had been music—in which James himself was the first connoisseur in Scotland, inventing, some say, the national lilt, the rapidly rising and falling strain which is so full of pathos yet so adaptable to mirth—"and other honest solaces of grete pleasance and disport," the sound of trampling feet and angry voices broke upon the conventual stillness outside and the cheerful talk of the friendly group within. The King was taken at a disadvantage, apparently without even a gentleman ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... was firmly of the opinion that once lessons were over, she had simply no time to stay inside the house and be proper. Still, the gentle influence told, imperceptibly softening and toning her character, and giving her a standard by which to adapt herself; and Norah was nothing if not adaptable. Then, six months previously, the old man they all loved had quietly faded out of life; and after he had gone his widow could no longer remain in the place where he had died. She pined slowly, until Dick Stephenson, ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... is broad! He is what I should call adaptable. He said by all means to extricate Harold from this wretched predicament, not only on account of the property interests involved, but on account of his moral and spiritual welfare; that, while in spirit he holds deathlessly to the indissolubility of the marriage ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... hired from a ghetto tailor: who was he to criticise the flowers and frills of Catie? If she had had the chances which had come to him, if she could have gone to Smith, for instance, or Bryn Mawr, she would have come out of the mill a finished little product, clever, adaptable, and not a gawky, under-nourished, over-strenuous bumpkin like himself. In the depths of his self-abasement, Scott Brenton did not hesitate to ply himself with ugly adjectives. Indeed, they seemed to him to be doing something towards the removal of his ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... the high-school period are in most cases adaptable to adult class work. There are other volumes, however, intended only for the adult group, which also includes the young people beyond the high-school age. They are ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... indeed. As for the company itself there could be no question that it was a good one. No one expected acting in grand opera, no one expected that the performers would be physically adaptable to their parts. The voice! The voice was all. Even Agnes admitted that it was a splendid thing to be a patron of the fine arts; but Bobby, in his profound new wisdom and his thorough conversion to strictly commercial ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... materials more precious and beautiful than those employed in the structure, which becomes, as it were, the canvas of the picture, and not the picture itself. For these purposes there are no materials more apt, more adaptable, more enduring, richer in potentialities of beauty than the products of ceramic art. They are easily and inexpensively produced of any desired shape, color, texture; their hard, dense surface resists the action of the elements, is not easily soiled, and is readily cleaned; being fashioned ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... This is the chance of my lifetime in that direction. See here!" He took a neat little leather case out of a drawer, and opening it he exhibited a number of shining instruments. "This is a first-class, up-to-date burgling kit, with nickel-plated jemmy, diamond-tipped glass-cutter, adaptable keys, and every modern improvement which the march of civilization demands. Here, too, is my dark lantern. Everything is in order. Have you ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... fast disappearing; visitors have discovered how adaptable it is to home decoration, and the dealers in Cairo eagerly buy up all that can be obtained to be converted into those many articles of Arab furniture with which we are now so ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... readily adaptable to the wild life about her, no less did Philip. At night he smoked comfortably by his camp fire, unwound the hullabaloo upon request or lent it to Sho-caw. He rode hard and fearlessly with the warriors, hunted bear ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... saying that a nurse for foreign climates, whether tropical, as in the majority of colonial posts, or subject to extremes of heat and cold, such as in Canada, must be physically strong; she should also be of an even temper and philosophical disposition, easily adaptable to climate, conditions, circumstances, ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... woman, and less adaptable to the strange chances of War. She was silent for a few minutes, seated in the small crater made in the cloud by her fall. She was not exactly ugly. She had the sort of face about which one could not help feeling that one could have done it better oneself, or at least that one could have ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... port whence he had sailed so many years before in chase of fortune he came to London, where he had bustled and thundered as a stage-player. Here he found a new drama playing in a theatre that took a capital city for its cockpit. He observed, sinister and diverted, for a while, and, being an adaptable man, shifted his southern-colored garments, over-blue, over-red, over-yellow in their seafaring way, for the sombre gray surcharged with solemn black. A translated man, if not a changed man, he journeyed to the university town of his stormy ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... demarcation between troposphere and stratosphere was approximated from nasal hemorrhage, impeded respiration and vertigo, when proposing this problem for solution, he had conjectured as a working hypothesis which could not be proved impossible that a more adaptable and differently anatomically constructed race of beings might subsist otherwise under Martian, Mercurial, Veneral, Jovian, Saturnian, Neptunian or Uranian sufficient and equivalent conditions, though an apogean humanity of beings created in varying forms with finite differences resulting ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... to destroy or repel house flies fill a certain need in connection with the house-fly problem. No very satisfactory repellent substances for this insect have been found which are at the same time adaptable to general use about the home, or places where foods are handled. Extracts of pyrethrum flowers are now generally available commercially, and these give fairly good results in the destruction of house flies in buildings. Most of the sprays ...
— The House Fly and How to Suppress It - U. S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 1408 • L. O. Howard and F. C. Bishopp

... knowledge, unattainable by birds which cannot employ their feet as hands. The elephant is the most sagacious of quadrupeds—its tactual range and skill, and the consequent multiplication of experiences, which it owes to its wonderfully adaptable trunk, being the basis of its sagacity. Feline animals, for a similar cause, are more sagacious than hoofed animals,—atonement being to some extent made in the case of the horse, by the possession of sensitive prehensile lips. In the Primates the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... DAYS. By Mary Frere. Joseph McDonough, Albany, New York. A splendid collection of Hindu folk tales, adaptable for all ages. ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant

... to every schoolboy. "Ahn" became the palladium of English philological education. If it no longer retains its ubiquity, it is because something even less adaptable to the object in view ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... question of their variations and relative merits we may consider the advantages of the pyroxylin plastics in general. Here we have a new substance, the product of the creative genius of man, and therefore adaptable to his needs. It is hard but light, tough but elastic, easily made and tolerably cheap. Heated to the boiling point of water it becomes soft and flexible. It can be turned, carved, ground, polished, bent, pressed, stamped, molded or blown. To make a block of any desired size ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... has been transformed into one huge camp of wounded. All adaptable buildings—halls, cafes, school-rooms—have been rapidly commandeered for hospitals. Sometimes there are beds, more often rudely made straw mattresses, for little Servia, worn out by two hard wars, is ill-equipped to resist the onslaught of a great power. For ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... in her booth at the gates of the works with her brass discs about her had in a few months' time changed a revolution into an established custom. She and the discs seemed old friends. Women are adaptable. ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch

... terms to be committed to memory and the many parts of the flower to be distinguished, botany is apt to prove dry and tiresome to the little child, but to study nature by copying the flowers in this marvellously adaptable material is only a beautiful game which every child, and indeed many grown people, will delight in. The form of the flower, its name and color, may, by this means, be indelibly stamped upon the memory, and a good foundation ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard

... kind should be suited to the wants of graded and ungraded schools, there evidently being nothing in the one not readily adaptable to the other. ...
— New National First Reader • Charles J. Barnes, et al.

... League undertake to interchange full and frank information as to the scale of their armaments, their military, naval and air programmes and the condition of such of their industries as are adaptable to ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... private plantations thereabout, and it was spread by the migration of the sons and grandsons of Virginia throughout the middle and western South as far as Missouri and Texas. The task system, on the other hand, was almost wholly confined to the rice coast. The gang method was adaptable to operations on any scale. If a proprietor were of the great majority who had but one or two families of slaves, he and his sons commonly labored alongside the blacks, giving not less than step for step at the plow and stroke for stroke with the hoe. If there were a dozen or ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... a week you have ten miles alone if you cannot get a godly friend. And then two or three times a year, if you can afford it, you climb an Alp or a Grampian every day for a week or a month; and, so gracious and so adaptable is human nature, that, what others get daily, you get weekly, or monthly, or quarterly, or yearly. And, though a soul is not to be too much presumed upon, Clito came to tell his friends that his soul could on occasion take in prayer and praise enough for a week in a single morning or afternoon, ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... are desired. Grapes are excellent; in the South the muscadine and scuppernong grapes are adaptable to this purpose (Plate XV). Actinidia and wistaria are also used. Akebia, dutchman's pipe, trumpet creeper, clematis, honeysuckles, may be suggested. Roses are much ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... Community Training Schools and International and State Schools of Sunday School Methods. Margaret Slattery says: "Practical and adaptable to schools of various sizes in either city or country. Will meet a long-felt need. I endorse both plan and ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... she had selected was one in which she herself had acted the part of Puck, and she knew it by heart. She felt reasonably sure that she could help some of the more adaptable scholars to interpret their parts, and, at least, it would be good for them just as a study in literature. As for the audience, they would not be critics. Perhaps they would not even be able to comprehend the meaning of the play, but they ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... in Japan is a fine straw-colored beverage, delicate and subtle in flavor, and as invigorating as a glass of champagne. It is real Japan tea, and seldom leaves its native heath for the reason that, while it is peculiarly adaptable to the Japanese constitution, it is too stimulating for the finely-tuned and over-sensitive Americans, who, by the way, are said to be the largest customers for Japan teas of other grades ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray

... of the most important stages in the development of the steam engine. It was at last the portable machine it remains to-day, and was placed wherever convenient, complete in itself and with the rotative motion adaptable for all manner of work. The ingenious substitutes Watt had to invent to avoid the obviously perfect crank motion have of course all been discarded, and nothing of these remains except as proofs, where none are needed, that genius ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... like to be in touch with a daily train service, as he feels it necessary to keep in touch with the world by means of the daily newspaper. A number are engaged who want to be married. Here's Mr. Brown, too fat. No move in him. Here's McKay—good man, earnest, but not adaptable, like Finlayson; won't do. Here's Garton—fine fellow, would do well, but hardly strong enough. So what are you to do? I have gone over the whole list of available men and I cannot find ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... brought the colour to his lips. They were now hot and red, and his eyes had a singular feverish brilliancy, in keeping with the hectic flush on his cheek. He had dismissed the subject of his illness almost immediately, and Christine's adaptable nature had instantly ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... a man's heart is an adaptable commodity! He 'gives it,' as you say, many times over in the course of his life. He is far more likely to love a wife whose money brings him ease and comfort, than one for whose pretty face ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... very adaptable, where men were concerned. She rarely found any great difficulty in securing the attention of a man, old or young, when she desired so to do. It was her way to find out where a man's special vanity lay. If he were so singular as to have no particular vanity, ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin

... in the last Congress in the passage of the Cummins-Esch bill, which is the most enlightened and adaptable legislation of the last ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... heart and light pair of breeches, to which we may add light pockets. His heart soon became somewhat heavier when he discovered that his captain was a tyrant, whose chief joy appeared to consist in making other people miserable. Bill Bowls's nature, however was adaptable, so that although his spirits were a little subdued, they were not crushed. He was wont to console himself, and his comrades, with the remark that this state of things couldn't last for ever, that the voyage would come to an end some ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne

... process is costly both in the plate-making and in the printing. While it gives a rich and uniform impression on the letter paper, and is highly valuable for reproducing pictures and ornate designs, it is adaptable only for special purposes and is not generally regarded as suitable for commercial work. A photogravure plate costs from seventy-five cents to one dollar and twenty-five cents a square inch, or about $12.00 ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... relapsing on a stiff if stately blank verse, is not merely intrinsic, but both retrospective and prospective. It is not the ordinary "stopped" eighteenth-century couplet at all; nor the earlier one of Drayton and Daniel. It is the "enjambed," very mobile, and in the right hands admirably fluent and adaptable couplet, which William Browne and Chamberlayne practised in the early and middle seventeenth century, which Leigh Hunt revived and taught to Keats, and of which, later than Mr Arnold himself, Mr William Morris was such an admirable practitioner. ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... to be the feature of 1918. With it will come an entirely novel strategic use of aircraft in war, and with it too, which is perhaps the more permanently important, will come the development of aircraft of the sort that will be readily adaptable to the purposes of peace when the ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... methods of handling young life, the atmosphere, the activities, and the ends in view, should be so changed or modified, or supplemented as to be appropriate to the new and changing personalities to be affected by them. The details would differ with different communities but the principle is adaptable ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... a Living Being, perfectly proportioned, with inherent powers of development and growth; ever-existent in the Divine Mind before Time was; recipient and guardian of the deepest secrets, the most sacred mysteries of existence; endlessly adaptable to changing conditions yet immutably the same. Hence it is that Catholicism presents no questionable historic pedigree and speaks with no uncertain voice. Claiming not only to know the road the soul must tread would it reach the far horizon, but to be the appointed ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... are extraordinarily quick," he was saying, "the most adaptable people since the ancient Greeks, whom they resemble in some ways. But they are more superficial. The intellect races on ahead, but the heart lingers in ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... seen or heard in dreams, may remain in consciousness. If, later, some similar matter is really met with, the sensation may appear as a past event.[1] This is all the easier since dreams are never completely rigid, but easily modeled and adaptable, so that if there is the slightest approximation to similarity, memory of a dream lightly attaches itself to ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... drained soil for best development of nuts, and an abundance of moisture, provided the land is well drained. Many of the hickories, however, are so adaptable to various soils that they often thrive in lands that are sandy, and dry, and almost barren. In the latter case, they have to maintain an enormous root system for feeding purposes, and this is detrimental to good ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association

... a runabout can be made to hold four, on a pinch, and there is still standing-room for several other adaptable persons. The rest of the party walked, and the little house around the corner was soon the scene of ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... work I have done and am still doing, that we are developing several varieties of hazilberts as hardy and adaptable to different soils as the pasture hazel is, yet having the thin shell and the size of a European filbert. As to the quality of the kernel of such a nut, that of the wild hazel is as delicious as anyone ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke

... North America, but it is instructive to note that, despite their many resemblances, the two series can be connected only in their far distant beginnings. The pecoran stock became vastly more expanded and diversified than did the camel line and was evidently more plastic and adaptable, spreading eventually over all the continents except Australia, and forming to-day one of the dominant types of mammals, while the camels are on the decline and not far from extinction. The Pecora successively ramified into the deer, antelopes, sheep, goats and oxen, and did not reach North America ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... of the other camel's saddle. This, though it was absolutely necessary, rather added to the dangers of the climb. The incessant rains had made the paths slippery in the extreme, and the camel at the best of times is not the most adaptable of creatures; his conformation, moreover, is all against him in so far as scaling a cliff ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... the other islands, I brought the rest with me, and you are welcome to it, if in exchange you will ballast the Juno with samples of your agricultural products; while the treaty is pending, I can experiment in our colonies and make sure which are the most adaptable to ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... creeds and doctrines and faiths was coming over the minds of men. Social conventions were loosening, new customs and habits were becoming folk-ways. In short, society and life were growing more fluid and adaptable. The growth of property holdings created new desires and new temptations. The accumulation of large fortunes brought envy and hatred and ambition. The rise of industries built the large cities, with palaces on one hand and hovels on the other. The vast inequality ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... is built. At the height of that movement line drawing went out of fashion, and charcoal, and an awful thing called a stump, took the place of the point in the schools. Charcoal is a beautiful medium in a dexterous hand, but is more adaptable to mass than to line drawing. The less said about the stump the better, although I believe it still ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... rules. The punishment, he urges, must outweigh the profit of the offence; it must be such as to make a man prefer a less offence to a greater—simple theft, for example, to violent robbery; it must be such that the punishment must be adaptable to the varying sensibility of the offender; it must be greater in 'value' as it falls short of certainty; and, when the offence indicates a habit, it must outweigh not only the profit of the particular offence, but of the undetected offences. In chapter ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... at and elegantly dressed, with an open mind upon whatever topic is discussed, adaptable, available, rich and good-humoured, the American woman as I know her is the last word in worldiness and fashion. In my own country she is not only a popular, but a privileged person, and having started by being what is called "natural," ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith

... is well known in plain needlework, is very useful also in embroidery, besides being an important stitch in needlepoint lace. Owing to its construction it is well suited for the covering of raw edges, but it is also adaptable to a variety of other purposes, such as are open or close fillings of leaves and flowers, cut work, and ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie

... to the success of the measure: (1) A new financial plan; (2) the completion of land purchase, and (3) such concessions as would win the consent of Ulster. But our reward for thus endeavouring to make the Bill adaptable to Irish requirements and acceptable to the whole of Ireland was to be dubbed "factionists" and "traitors" by the official Irish Party, who never once during three years' debates in Parliament made the slightest attempt to amend or improve the Bill, but who remained silent and ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... mysteriously supported, for after the first shock and disturbance of our arrival we found them cheerful people; indeed, Miss Hope was quite a merry soul. But then she had never known any other life, and human nature is very adaptable. Further, if I may say so, she had grown up a lady in the true sense of the word. After all, why should she not, seeing that her mother, the Bible and Nature had been her only associates and sources of ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... redirection of rural education means that the school is to abandon its city ideals and standards, except as these are adaptable to rural as well as to city schools, and to develop its instruction with reference to its environment and the local interests and needs. The main efforts of its instruction should be to put its pupils into ...
— The Stewardship of the Soil - Baccalaureate Address • John Henry Worst

... people everywhere became an evident social danger, and the government was obliged to resort to such devices as simple decorative work in wood and stone, the manufacture of hand-woven textiles, fruit-growing, flower-growing, and landscape gardening on a grand scale to keep the less adaptable out of mischief, and of paying wages to the younger adults for attendance at schools that would equip them to use the new atomic machinery.... So quite insensibly the council drifted into a complete reorganisation of ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... convinced him that dainty laces and shining silver were to be used for his daily fare and not merely as "company fixings," and being adaptable, the good-natured man obediently fell ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells

... mind can easily go one step further and imagine that, since the tar contains a number of volatile hydrocarbons, it might be made more adaptable for impregnation by paper by distilling it, as by this process the fluid would lose its tendency to evaporate and the percentage of resinous substances increase. Singular to say, there was a prejudice against the employment ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various

... Eveley, always adaptable, moved serenely into her cote at the head of the stairs, and felt that life was still kind and God was good, for this was home, and it was hers, and she had ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston

... only on I'd take the risk," she thought; but the lights were not on and it was necessary to pass into the dark interior and into a darker bath-room—a room which is notoriously adaptable for murder—before she ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... be arranged. Their rights shall not be ignored, nor their interests neglected! Percy's little finger is worth all Nigel. Still, Nigel has his good points; he might help us in this. There are so many things he can do, he's so fin—and adaptable, and diplomatic. That young brother of his, Charlie, is in love with you, Madeline. Now, he's a boy who could marry, and who wants to. If you gave him only a look of encouragement he would propose at once. And he has ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson

... beautiful and wonderful product of human skill, but also a formidable self-contained engine of warfare, I mentally confessed that not only was seamanship a most fascinating science, but also that sailors were the most ingenious and adaptable specimens of the entire ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... been attained as much by training as by breeding, though the breeding is given the credit. Our men are highly specialized, and once outside the walls of Berlin they will find things so different that this very specialization will prove a handicap. The mongrel peoples are more adaptable. Our workmen and soldiers are large in physique, but dwarfed of intellect. The enemy will beat us in open war, and, even if we should be victorious in war, we could not rule them. Either we solve this food business or we all turn soldiers and go out into ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... swift, but the bank-martlet—"they bring up their young in cells made out of clay, long in the entrance." The swift being precisely the one of the Hirundines which does not make its nest of clay, but of miscellaneous straws, threads, and shreds of any adaptable rubbish, which it can snatch from the ground as it stoops on the wing,[26] or pilfer from any half-ruined nests ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... way of speaking irritated Malipieri. The Baroness had been better educated than her husband from the first; she was more adaptable and she had really learned the ways of the society she loved, but the Baron was never far from the verge of vulgarity, ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... and child. Despite these objections we have worked with many of these nurses who were to be preferred to trained nurses. It is the individual after all that counts, and if a maternity nurse, though technically untrained, is adaptable, tactful, and will consent to be [71] instructed to the extent of obeying without argument, she can become invaluable, and her skill and experience will carry her creditably over many trying incidents. The objection of the medical ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.

... of selection and crossing which had proved so successful for the Spanish cultivators in the West Indies, the initial efforts were rewarding. The new plant (Nicotiana tabacum) proved easily naturalized and adaptable ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch

... flourishing colony," cried the naturalist. It was only so recently as January 26, 1788, that Captain Arthur Phillip had entered the commodious and beautiful harbour which is not eclipsed by any on the planet. Yet the French found there plentiful evidences of prosperity and comfort, and of that adaptable energy which lies at the root of all British success in colonisation. Master Thorne, in the sixteenth century, expressed the resolute spirit of that energy in a phrase: "There is no land uninhabitable, nor sea innavigable"; and in every part of the globe this British ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... burning discussion with Mrs. Plowman had resulted in a decision not to offer his lordship lunch. That would be attempting too much. Cakes and ale, however, flanked by a dish of sandwiches and a tantalus, made a collation at once independent of service and adaptable to every appetite. Furniture was moved, rugs were transferred, the first floor was spoiled to turn the spare bedroom into Mr. Plowman's conception of a Judge's lavatory. It had been mutually agreed that Mrs. Plowman's ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... fine reasoning powers to bear on Allis, but failed signally in his object. He was unaccustomed to being balked, but the girl's firm determination was more than a match for his adaptable sophistry. He had made no headway, was quite beaten, when Dixon's opportune return prevented absolute discomfiture. Crane left shortly, saying to Allis as he bade them good night: "I'm sorry you look upon the matter in this light. My ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... of this Confederacy can be estimated or felt by foreign nations, and the only standing military force which can never be dangerous to our own liberties at home. A permanent naval peace establishment, therefore, adapted to our present condition, and adaptable to that gigantic growth with which the nation is advancing in its career, is among the subjects which have already occupied the foresight of the last Congress, and which will deserve your serious deliberations. Our Navy, ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson

... to add that the same principle is adaptable to the case of homosexual women. "In all such cases," writes an American woman physician, "I would recommend that the moral sense be trained and fostered, and the persons allowed to keep their individuality, being taught to remember always that they are different from others, rather ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... But after the turmoil of the fourth century had subsided, when governments began again to approach more nearly to peace and consequently to justice, and public life once more to be attractive to decent men, both philosophies showed themselves adaptable to the needs of prosperity as well as adversity. Many kings and great Roman governors professed Stoicism. It held before them the ideal of universal Brotherhood, and of duty to the 'Great Society of Gods ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... and play with your hoop," suggested her brother. "I can't see that as an insuperable difficulty, Father. Tariffs could be made adaptable, relative to the common interest as well as to the individual one. We could do ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... and had often seen wives of American statesmen and ministers, fresh from the far West, beginning their career in Washington, quite bewildered by the novelty of everything and utterly ignorant of all questions of etiquette—only he said the American women were far more adaptable than either French or English—or than any others in the world, in fact. He also said that day, and I have heard him repeat it once or twice since, that he had never met a ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... not!" Quimby responded sympathetically and understandingly, as Nattie hesitated for a word that would express her meaning. "They never are very adaptable—old maids, ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer

... preserves its native dress, customs and religious habits. After spending some time at Singapore he moved from place to place, but finally decided upon making Ternate his head-quarters, as he discovered a comfortable bungalow, not too large, and adaptable in every way as a place in which to collect and prepare his specimens between the many excursions to other parts of the Archipelago. The name is now indelibly associated with that particular visit which ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... usefulness of the dog, the writer would pause to take strong exception to the description of the husky dog as the "scourge" of Labrador, and would insist that any such wholesale condemnation is a boomerang that returns upon the head of the Labradorian who uses it. For, as the dog is one of the most adaptable of all domestic animals, and is, to an amazing extent, what his master makes him, to bring a railing accusation against the whole race of dogs is in reality to accuse those who breed and ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... matter an occasional thought. Yet somehow Stella's definiteness left no room for the imaginative element to become active. It was difficult for him to visualize her as an established factor in his life, either as the restful center of a home or the adaptable companion of his nomadic wanderings. The precise nature of her lack he had not ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... expands; is there anything its elastic can't express? Comus would be eloquent even were he dumb. And he is mellifluous. His voice, while he develops an idea or conjures up a scene, takes on a peculiar richness and unction. If he be describing an actual scene, voice and face are adaptable to those of the actual persons therein. But it is not in such mimicry that he excels. As a reporter he has rivals. For the most part, he moves on a higher plane that of mere fact: he imagines, he ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... Standish was floating dreamily through the purple haze, thinking about Tina of course, and wondering how her piquant archness and Southern beauty would strike his sober people at home. Tina was very quick and adaptable, and he had no doubt she could act to perfection any part he assigned to her, so he was in doubt whether to introduce her as a remote connexion of the reigning family of Italy, or merely as a countess in her own right. It would ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... a class, Uncle Laurence, and fortunately I am not in bondage to luxurious ease," Bessie said. "But I will not be perverse. Changes come without seeking, and I am of an adaptable disposition. The other day I was supposed to be a great heiress—to-day I have no more than a ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... to wait over an hour before we got anything to eat. One always must in Finland, and, although a trial to the temper at first, it is a good lesson in restraint, and by degrees we grew accustomed to it. One can get accustomed to anything—man is as adaptable as the trees. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... money to work on, M. Vandeloup thought that with his talents and experience of human nature he would soon be able to make a fortune, particularly as he was quite unfettered by any scruples, and as long as he made money he did not care how he gained it. With such an adaptable nature he could hardly help doing well, but in order to give him the start he required a little capital, so stayed on at the Pactolus and saved every penny he earned in the hope of soon accumulating enough to leave. Another thing that kept him there was his love for Kitty—not ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... Thrace in 1239. While besieging the Greeks with indifferent success, he learned of the death of his wife and his eldest son from plague, and incontinently returned to Tirnovo, giving up the war and restoring his daughter to her lonely husband. This adaptable monarch died a natural death in 1241, and the three rulers of his family who succeeded him, whose reigns filled the period 1241-58, managed to undo all the constructive work of their immediate predecessors. Province after province was lost and internal anarchy increased. ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... "One grows adaptable very quickly. I confess I am very happy here. Certainly there are times when one feels rather as if one had dropped off the world into space, but it doesn't take long to struggle through it. But then, of course, it is well to remember that Billy and I are rather an exceptional couple; ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... a different story when the manufacturer's product is to be used in the typical American home. Household equipment of every type must be made so that it will prove adaptable to different service conditions, with regard to both homes and actual users. An even more important consideration is intermittent use that must be met successfully by all home devices. It is the unusual home in which washing is done more than once or twice ...
— The Consumer Viewpoint • Mildred Maddocks

... attacked, therefore there is no waste of material while the cell is not in use. This important feature, and the fact that the internal resistance is low, make this cell well adapted for all forms of heavy open-circuit work. The fact that there is no polarizing action within the cell makes it further adaptable to heavy closed-circuit service. ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller

... he still suffered. However, hope had slipped into his heart. She was now separated from her lover, and, thinking to win her back, he directed all his efforts to that end. He put forth all his skill, showed himself sincere, adaptable, affectionate, devoted, even discreet; his heart taught him the delicacies of feeling. He said charming and touching things to the faithless one, and, to soften her, he told her all that ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... during supper and afterwards my guest allowed me more than my share of the conversation. He made an admirable listener, quick, courteous, adaptable, yet with something in reserve (you may call it a facile tolerance, if you will) which ended by irritating me. Young men should be eager, fervid, sublimis cupidusque, as I was before my beard grew stiff. But this young man had the air of ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... adaptable one or we wouldn't have survived so long, Jim, or gone so far in our particular direction. It's lack of fertility, not lack of enterprise, that's responsible for our decline. And I think your species must be an adaptable one, too; you just haven't ...
— The Venus Trap • Evelyn E. Smith

... family. I was never in the county till my husband brought me here." Mrs. Charmond did not care to pursue this line of investigation. Whatever mysterious merit might attach to family antiquity, it was one which, though she herself could claim it, her adaptable, wandering weltburgerliche nature had grown tired of caring about—a peculiarity that made her a contrast to her neighbors. "It is of rather more importance to know what the man is himself than what his family is," she said, "if ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... Dutch subjects under penalty against exporting "arms, ammunition, or other war materials to the parties at war [to include] everything that is adaptable for immediate ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell

... taking up wheatgrowing, stand a better chance than many of the long-settled farmers who have got into a groove—even a profitable one—and who do not care to bother greatly with progressive ideas. The new comer has no preconceived notions, and comes with an open mind adaptable to ...
— Wheat Growing in Australia • Australia Department of External Affairs

... it must be recognized that such work is a big job in itself and cannot be successfully conducted as an appendix of the day school. It is worth doing well, or it is not worth doing. It needs an organization sufficiently elastic and adaptable to quickly make adjustments to unusual and unexpected conditions. It needs the supervision of a competent director who can devote to it all his time and energy, and a corps of teachers who not only know how and what to teach, but who possess ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz

... sensuous. Nose straight and blunt; eyes grey, with an upward look, not exactly frank, because defiant; two parallel furrows down each cheek, one from the inner corner of the eye, one from the nostril; age perhaps thirty-five. About the face, attitude, movements, something immensely vital, adaptable, daring, and unprincipled. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... I said, "having won, you have the greatest of human experiments before you. Your business is to show that the Saxon stock is adaptable ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... (compassionately called by Miss Twinkleton, in this stage of her existence, 'Foolish Mr. Porters') revealed a homage of the heart, whereof Miss Twinkleton, in her scholastic state of existence, is as ignorant as a granite pillar. Miss Twinkleton's companion in both states of existence, and equally adaptable to either, is one Mrs. Tisher: a deferential widow with a weak back, a chronic sigh, and a suppressed voice, who looks after the young ladies' wardrobes, and leads them to infer that she has seen better days. Perhaps this is the reason why it is an article of faith with the servants, ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... him, to extricate oneself from the labyrinth of his anatomy, a general knowledge of organic nature is imperative. The artist should also acquaint himself theoretically with inorganic bodies and with the general operations of Nature, particularly if, as in the case of sound and color, they are adaptable to the purposes of art; but what a circuitous path he would be obliged to take if he wanted to seek laboriously in the schools of the anatomist, the naturalist, and the physicist, for that which serves his purposes! It is, indeed, a question ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... to the rectory; an adaptable, friendly soul, accustomed to fit himself comfortably into whatever surroundings offered themselves, but underneath his casual exterior extremely observant and critical of such things as seemed to him important. Philip, having dined in some elegance at ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... world, and I could not belong to his. That was the second time I heard Tom swear. He wanted to know what kind of a snob I thought he was. He'd be as much at home with dad on the ranch as he was in London. "The fault is with you," he said. "You 're not adaptable, and you don't try ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown

... maintain her balance into maturity, because of her enforced solitude. As the wife-mother grows older she is kept in touch with youth, and with the world, while the opportunities for close companionship with the young lessen as a single woman passes forty, unless she makes herself especially adaptable, agreeable, and sympathetic. ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Paris was the least fitted of any place for the holding of a Peace Conference, and in the two French leaders, the President of the Republic, Poincare, and the President of the Council of Ministers, Clemenceau, even if the latter was more adaptable in mind and more open to consideration of arguments on the other side, were two temperaments driving inevitably to extremes. Victory had come in a way that surpassed all expectation; a people that, living through every day the War had ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti

... comprise one of the distinctive and most admired types of its Colonial architecture. Those with pebble-dashed walls which seek to simulate no other building material or form of construction possess the added charm of frank sincerity. Fire-proof in character, pleasing in appearance, and readily adaptable to varied home requirements, they point the way wherever rubble stone incapable of forming an attractive wall is cheaply available. Many modern dwellings in the Colonial spirit are being built in ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins

... to external influences, more easily adaptable to the conditions of life and to change with them—Jewish women throughout Europe assume the physical and moral customs, often exaggerating them, of the country in which they live,—without losing the shadow and ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... curious to remember how cheerful we were, how warm and comfortable, there at the House of the Mill of Saint ——, with war only a step away now. Curious, until we think that, of all the created world, man is the most adaptable. Men and horses! Which is as it should be now, with both men and horses finding themselves in strange places, indeed, and somehow making ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... indifferent matters, but Piers' interest remained keen. It seemed that all his vitality had reawakened at the coming of this slow-speaking man who had looked so long upon the wide spaces of the earth that his vision seemed scarcely adaptable to lesser things. There was that in his personality that caught Piers' fancy irresistibly. Perhaps it was his utter calmness, his unvarying, rock-like strength. Perhaps it was just the good fellowship that looked out of the steady eyes and sounded in every tone of the leisurely voice. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... and in putting herself in his place. Her imagination is more likely to be over-active than too sluggish. One of the most popular classes of the "Society for the Encouragement of Study at Home" is that devoted to imaginary travels in Europe. She is wonderfully adaptable, and makes herself at ease in an entirely strange milieu almost before the transition is complete. Both M. Blouet and M. Bourget notice this, and claim that it is a quality she shares with the Frenchwoman. The wife of a recent President is a stock illustration of it—a girl who was transferred ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... have no special plant for the product you mention; we make it in this building with a great many other products, for it is our principle not to have plant which makes one product only, but is readily adaptable for making a variety." In many of the processes the materials do not appear to the naked eye after their introduction into the first plant unit, being fed by gravity or pressure from one enclosed apparatus to another. It would be absolutely essential for any inspection to conduct chemical tests ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden

... He would walk always half a step behind me, regarding me out of the corner of his eye quite approvingly at times. He was a widower—a good little man, devoted to his three charming children. They took an immense fancy to me, and I really think I could have got on with him. I am very adaptable, as you know. But it was not to be. He got out of his depth one morning, and unfortunately there was no one within distance but myself who could swim. I knew what the result would be. You remember Labiche's comedy, Les Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon? Of course, every man hates having had his ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... addressing, winning over the person in question by striking his particular note and showing that side of his character with which he could best please him. Endowed with the capacity of mystifying and dazzling those around him, exceedingly keen-sighted, adaptable but in reality empty, he knew how to set people thinking and to fascinate others by his lively, unprejudiced and often paradoxical, but entertaining conversation. He was now colder, now more confidential; ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... Field had numerous and flattering offers to leave journalism for the stage, and more than once he was sorely tempted to make the experiment. In the natural qualifications for the theatrical profession he was most richly endowed. In the arts of mimicry he had no superior. He had the adaptable face of a comedian, was a matchless raconteur, and a fine vocalist. At a banquet or in a parlor he was an entertainer of truly fascinating parts. During his life in St. Louis and Kansas City his inclination had led him to seek the society of the green-room, and in Denver his position ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... which so many people light-heartedly enter into marriage, the man confident in his ability to "mould" his wife, the woman never doubting her power to "manage" him. It all seems quite simple during the adaptable period of engagement, when romance spreads a veil of glamour over the two people concerned, effectually concealing for the time being the wide gulf of temperament that lies between them. It is only after the knot has been tied that the unlooked-for ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... colonel, who was adaptable, and who saw at once that Jarvis was a man of high character. "It's cool on the river and that coffee will warm one ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler

... some one should wish to treat him fairly, he is met at every turn with some legal prohibition which says, "Thou shalt not," or "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." But the Negro race is viable; it adapts itself readily to circumstances; and being thus adaptable, there is always ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... advantageous &c. (beneficial) 648; profitable, gainful, remunerative, worth one's salt; valuable; prolific &c. (productive) 168. adequate; efficient, efficacious; effective, effectual; expedient &c. 646. applicable, available, ready, handy, at hand, tangible; commodious, adaptable; of all work. Adv. usefully &c. adj.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... this adaptable Minister, had recently departed for San Remo. The newspapers announced the fact and spoke vaguely of a breakdown which prevented the lady from fulfilling ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace

... of advancing truth. Its very inflexibility makes it proof against an over-emphasis upon new truth. It has generally turned out in time that the obstinate man of religion was more nearly right than the adaptable intellectual man of fashion. But philosophy, as a critique of science for the sake of faith, should provide the individual religious believer with intellectual enlightenment and gentleness. The quality, orderliness, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... adventurer to Australia has the luck of Pisistratus. Indeed, though the poor laborer, and especially the poor operative from London and the great trading towns (who has generally more of the quick knack of learning,—the adaptable faculty,—required in a new colony, than the simple agricultural laborer), are pretty sure to succeed, the class to which I belong is one in which failures are numerous and success the exception,—I mean young ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... How wonderfully adaptable a creature is man. I had not been a fortnight in my new position when I felt myself quite at home, as though Dublin and the West of Ireland had been my natural habitat. Belfast and the County Down receded ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... letter, followed by numbers representing divisions by countries, and these in turn by letters indicating sub-divisions by subjects, etc. It is claimed that this method is not a rigid unchangeable system, but adaptable in a high degree, and capable of modification to suit the special wants of any library. In it the whole range of literature and science is divided into several grand classes, which, with their sub-classes, are indicated by the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... to set him before others somewhat as he has appeared to us, and to let each decide for himself the question of histrionic rank. But have we not unconsciously defined our view of the excellence of Booth's genius, and hinted at its limitations? The latter are by no means narrow, for his elastic, adaptable nature insures him versatility; and, despite the world's scepticism as to the gift of an artist to do more than one thing well, he is acknowledged to surpass our other actors in a score of elegant parts. Amongst these are Pescara, Petruchio, and Sir Edward Mortimer; while in a few pieces ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... herself as completely adaptable was uncomfortable at being chosen as comrade by a pipe-reeking odd-job man. Probably he was one of her husband's patients. But she must keep ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... was by nature adaptable to her surroundings, she followed Marian's example and arranged her work-basket tidily and then put it away in its place, though down at the Hurly-Burly it would never have occurred to her to do so, and nobody would have set her such ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells

... a very convenient word with a meaning easily adaptable to all sorts of explanations; but if there were no bounds and no end to this explaining by suggestion, we might as well rub out from our suggested slate of life, with a suggested sponge, the whole beautiful world of clear and eternal realities. No, the Christ of Lucia ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... cakes I could bear stoically enough if they would leave my tea alone, or rather if they would allow me a reasonable amount of sugar for it. However, we are an adaptable people and there are ways in which even the sugar paper-dish menace can be met. My own plan, here offered freely to all my fellow-sufferers, provides an admirable epitome of War and Peace. The sugar allowance being about half ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various

... novel of religious or social propaganda. And it seemed to me that the novel was capable of holding and shaping real experience of any kind, as it affects the lives of men and women. It is the most elastic, the most adaptable of forms. No one has a right to set limits to its range. There is only one final test. Does it interest?—does it appeal? Personally, I should add another. Does it make in the long run for beauty? Beauty taken in the largest and most generous sense, and especially ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... back with his sure steps, his shoulders swinging with the lithe, adaptable movement of his body; and every step was drawing him nearer to a meeting which would be like no other between them. Soon he would be crunching the glass of the house under that confident tread; in the ecstasy ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... in common with other great capitals, felt itself rather final though priding itself on being much more fluid and adaptable than it had been fifty years previously. In speaking of itself it at least dealt with fixed customs, and conditions and established facts connected with them—which gave ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... in the fold of his garment; but the use of it is not permitted—on the contrary, the powers that be seek to get possession of all such; whereupon the common man replaces the lost weapon by another. As missiles they have earthen mugs, with handles which make them likewise adaptable for delivering blows. At their gathering places every man, when strife arises, seeks to possess himself of as many of these as possible, and hurls them then uncommonly far. Most of the Baiovarii carry ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... moon and yet be guided by others into the mundane paths of practical common sense. There was at the moment an abnormal dislocation between public opinion and actual possibilities. The harsh amalgam of democratic politics and war seemed to demand an adaptable Premier; he was ex-officio and par excellence the pivotal man, and circumstances required a liberal amount of lubrication and elasticity to ease the ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... the ready talent, the adaptable talent, and the facility of this accomplished journalist, and as their acquaintance improved he was let into many of the secrets of success in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... obligations as she was of her picture-gallery; she was in fact fond of implying that the one possession implied the other, and that only a woman of her wealth could afford to live up to a standard as high as that which she had set herself. An all-round sense of duty, roughly adaptable to various ends, was, in her opinion, all that Providence exacted of the more humbly stationed; but the power which had predestined Mrs. Plinth to keep footmen clearly intended her to maintain an equally specialized staff of responsibilities. It was the more to be regretted ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... is preferable to kerosene, electricity is with equal certainty preferable to gas. It is more adaptable, is in many places quite as reasonable in cost, and is cleaner and safer. In numerous country communities where gas is not to be had electricity is available, as frequently a large region embracing several towns is supplied from a single ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... difference between the two forms of selection is that, in the first case, the will of man makes the selection according to a plan, whereas in natural selection the struggle for life and the survival of the fittest acts without a plan other than that the most adaptable organism shall survive which is most fit to contend with the circumstances under which it is placed. Natural selection acts, therefore, much more slowly than artificial selection, although it brings about the same end. Adaptation in the struggle for ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott

... is telling me all about it," muttered this sly, adaptable fellow. He had sidled up to the mare and their heads were certainly very close together. "Not touch her? See here!" Sweetwater had his arm round the filly's neck and was looking straight into her fiery and intelligent eye. "Shall I pass her story on?" ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... admirable effect of discretion, all ardour, all intimacy, kept in check by self-respect and well-bred dignity. Madame de Vallorbes was enchanted with the reserve of her own demeanour. Let it be well understood that she was the least importunate, the least exacting, the most adaptable, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... is undoubtedly the most plastic part of the living world, the most adaptable, the most educable. Of all animals, it is man in whom heredity counts for least, and conscious building forces for most. Consider that his infancy is longest, his instincts least fixed, his brain most unfinished at birth, his powers of habit-making ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... against the twins If they could be induced not to say most of the things they did say when in her presence, he felt that his house, of all houses in America, should be offered them as a refuge whenever they were in need of one. But his mother was not, he feared, very adaptable. In her house—it was legally his, but it never felt as if it were—people adapted themselves to her. He doubted whether the twins could or would. Their leading characteristic, he had observed, was candour. They had no savoir ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... quaint idea! I believe she was right, too. That will make you adaptable. Miss Glynn, let me tell you something, just enough to begin on, about myself—as a case. I'm tired to death of everything that has gone before; I do not fit in anywhere. I believe I'm quite a different person from what every one else believes; I've never had a chance ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... impossible are alike unknown to him, so they can be extended or contracted around him at your will. Without a murmur he is restrained, urged on, held back, by the hands of necessity alone; he is made adaptable and teachable by the mere force of things, without any chance for vice to spring up in him; for passions do not arise so long ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... Her gown was simple and inexpensive but it was stylish and becoming. And her manner—well, her manner was distinctly more at ease than his at that moment. Mary had been but eight weeks among the Misses Cabot's young ladies, but she had used her eyes and her brain during that time; she was adaptable and had learned other things than those in the curriculum. Also, she was prepared for this meeting and had made up her mind to show ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln

... but we are comforted by the thought that the Boy Scout isn't one of them. If, in the next generation, Britain continues to exist as a nation and not as a depot for the training of waiters in the Berlin restaurants, then indeed we shall have something to rely on in these adaptable young fellows. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various

... held aloof hitherto. Gorgeousness of mounting has ceased to help managers; even the maidens in their teens have grown sophisticated, and jeer at the bread-and-butter love-stories; and successful modern French drama offers a much smaller proportion of adaptable plays than used to be the case. There must be a bottom to the deepest purse, and things can hardly go on in the legitimate playhouses as they have during the last few years; so it seems to be almost time for the managers to ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... been. The difference was in himself. The sympathetic response to that wild beauty was purely subjective. He could look at the far snows, the bluish gleam of the glaciers, the restful green of the valley floor, with a new quality of appreciation. He could even—so resilient and adaptable a thing is the human mind—see himself engaged upon material enterprises, years passing, his boy growing up, life assuming a fullness, a proportion, an orderly progression that two hours earlier would have seemed to him ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... her capacity for hatred had increased and also her dangerous qualities, and she would have found all this because God had so ordered life that it is adaptable, making the defensive and offensive qualities of the being capable of increase or decrease in answer to ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... the honeymoon of marriage, or of a free union, has passed. Then only is it possible to see if what remains is true love, indifference, hatred or a mixture of these three sentiments, capable or not of becoming more or less adaptable and tolerable. This is why sudden amours are always dangerous, and why only long and profound mutual acquaintance before marriage can lead to a ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... has no value. It is as useless as a reed cut out of an organ or a finger that is severed from a hand. It is not even ornamental or adaptable to any other pur-pose. It is not at all like a piano or a talking-machine, which has a separate existence. It is useful only in proportion to the number of other telephones it reaches. AND EVERY TELEPHONE ANYWHERE ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... what it is by a process very different from that of most writers careful of form. Read Chateaubriand, Gautier, even Baudelaire, and you will find that the aim of these writers has been to construct a style which shall be adaptable to every occasion, but without structural change; the cadence is always the same. The most exquisite word-painting of Gautier can be translated rhythm for rhythm into English, without difficulty; once you have mastered the tune, you have merely to go on; every verse will be the same. But ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... of watermarked paper for these stamps occurred in 1874, the paper being that familiar to collectors of British Colonial stamps as watermarked "Crown C.C." The paper was not readily adaptable for the small sheets of the Gambia stamps, and the method of cutting it to suitable sizes for these sheets has produced some varieties ...
— Gambia • Frederick John Melville

... it met and survived all these difficulties, but it is continuing the selfsame processes to-day. So far as we are able to judge, it is as young and as adaptable as it ever was, and just as ready to "with a frolic welcome greet the thunder and the sunshine" as it ever was in the ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... intensity. The ancient type of Greek does not appear in modern fiction. If he did, it would be as a subtle reasoner, perfect critic, polished man of the world, full of the intellectual and social graces, ever adaptable to circumstance, choosing his idea and never letting the idea govern him. And, in the matter of loves and hates, it was rather his maxim that one should neither hate nor love over-much, since he might ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker



Words linked to "Adaptable" :   adjustable, elastic, convertible, adaptability, variable, universal, flexible, pliant, filmable, adapt, all-mains, pliable, unadaptable



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