"Elasticity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fertility of the virgin soil had been well-nigh exhausted. But with you, gentlemen, it is far otherwise. Canada springs at once from the cradle into the full possession of the privileges of manhood. Canada, with the bloom of youth yet upon her cheek, and with youth's elasticity in her tread, has the advantage of all the experience of age. She may avail herself, not only of the capital accumulated in older countries, but also of those treasures of knowledge which have been gathered up by the labour and research of earnest and thoughtful men throughout ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... at a distance, inert objects, that it can biologize, that it can communicate suppleness or rigidity, the highest development of the senses or absolute insensibility, we should not be greatly surprised to discover that it communicates also, in certain cases, elasticity and that degree of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... hinder me. And in fact while I write the word "hinder," a girl has come in and announced that a patient has arrived; I must go.... I have grown to detest writing, and I don't know what to do. I would gladly take up medicine and would accept any sort of post, but I no longer have the physical elasticity for it. When I write now or think I ought to write I feel as much disgust as though I were eating soup from which I had just removed a beetle—forgive the comparison. What I hate is not the writing itself, but the literary entourage from which one cannot escape, and which one takes everywhere ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... inconceivable rapidity, the character of a gigantic mantle of rare flame, extending from horizon to horizon. Yet a day, and men breathed with freedom. It was clear that we were already within the influence of the comet; yet we lived. We even felt an unusual elasticity of frame and vivacity of mind. The exceeding tenuity of the object of our dread was apparent; for all heavenly bodies were plainly visible through it. Meantime our vegetation had perceptibly altered; and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... husband of a lovely woman nearly eight months. That you are happier now than the day you married her I well know, for without you could not be living. But I have your word for it too, and the returning elasticity of spirits which is manifested in your letters. But I want to ask a close question. 'Are you now in feeling as well as judgment glad that you are married as you are?' From anybody but me this would be an impudent question not to be tolerated, but I know you will ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... not fought like troops who own their opponents as the better men. Rather had they displayed an elasticity of spirit unsuspected by their enemies; and the Confederate soldiers, who knew with what fierce courage the attack had been sustained, looked on the battle of Sharpsburg as the most splendid of their achievements. No small share of the glory ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... as it rots. Finally nothing remains but the fibers, either gelatinous or made of horn, that constitute your household sponge, which takes on a russet hue and is used for various tasks depending on its degree of elasticity, permeability, or resistance ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the cutter again, upon such a course as would take us up through the thickest cluster of islands; and, such is the elasticity of the human mind, before night closed down upon us we appeared to have almost forgotten everything connected with the treasure-island, and thought and spoke of nothing but the chances in favour of and against the finding of ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... she could not but remember what she was, in spite of the many kind friends who surrounded her, and the new and busy life she led. Then would come a fit of despondency, almost of despair, but the natural elasticity of her temper soon dispersed these clouds, and she was her old ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... stood by the mantelpiece, glass in hand; and in spite of his evident fatigue it was easy to see he was quietly jubilant over the events of the night. "The Latin races have a peculiar elasticity, you know. An Englishwoman who had passed through this sort of violent brain-storm would be absolutely exhausted, worn out for days after it; but an Italian doesn't seem to feel things in the same way. They are so naturally excitable, I suppose, that ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... just beneath the satellite and by a reversed direction of gravitational pull as the satellite passes onwards. These stresses rapidly replace one another as the satellite travels along. They are resisted by the inertia of the crust, and are taken up by its elasticity. The nature of this succession of alternate compressions and rarefactions in the crust possess some resemblance to those ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... both in strength and elasticity. The process that makes it a finished product is known as vulcanization. The crude rubber, having been exported to the manufacturer in the United States or Europe, is shredded, washed, and cleansed, and partly fused with varying proportions of sulphur. For a very soft ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... round section of the quill, the flat barbs, their short, hooked barbules which, in the flight-feathers, hook into one another with just sufficient firmness to resist the pressure of the air at each wing-beat, the lightness and firmness of the whole apparatus, the elasticity of the vane, and so on. And yet all this belongs to an organ which is only passively functional, and therefore can have nothing to do with the LAMARCKIAN PRINCIPLE. Nor can the feather have arisen through some magical effect of temperature, moisture, electricity, or specific nutrition, and thus ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... be carried out during the incoming administration is a change of our monetary and banking laws, so as to secure greater elasticity in the forms of currency available for trade and to prevent the limitations of law from operating to increase the embarrassment of a financial panic. The monetary commission, lately appointed, is ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... was gone. She felt like a person delivered from helpless bondage. There was some lameness, there were some bruises yet from the fight gone by; but Diana was every day recovering from these, and elasticity and warmth were coming back to the members that had been but lately rigid and cold. The sun shone again for her, and the sky was blue, and the arch of it grew every day loftier and brighter to her sense. At first coming to Clifton, ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... of Action Story where the mood of the figures is that of bronze, with the aesthetic resources of that metal: its elasticity; its emphasis on the tendon, ligament, and bone, rather than on the muscle; and an attribute that we will call the panther-like quality. Hermon A. MacNeil has a memorable piece of work in the yard of the architect Shaw, at Lake Forest, ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... elasticity than strength. Some people seem to be born with the ability to play rapidly. It is always a matter of the fingers, but is more a matter of the brain. Some people have the ability to think very rapidly, and when these people have good supple hands they seem to be ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... which too much work and too much responsibility were bringing Helen Darley, when the new master came and lifted so much of the burden that was crushing her as must be removed before she could have a chance to recover her natural elasticity and buoyancy. Many of the noblest women, suffering like her, but less fortunate in being relieved at the right moment, die worried out of life by the perpetual teasing of this inflamed, neuralgic conscience. ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... at the Cape. As salient points in its quaint and cherished memory, I recall the frequent clamming excursions, when we rattled own to the beach, at low-tide, in a cart whose groaning members lacked every element of elasticity. Often there were as many as sixteen persons in one cart, and the same number of hoes and baskets—the baskets being filled with small children as a means of keeping both them and the ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... father had done his best to impress on her young mind that the beloved one was not lost forever, but would one day be found sitting at the feet of Jesus in a bright and beautiful world, the poor child could not recover her former elasticity of spirits. Doubtless her isolated position, and the want of suitable companions, had something to do with the prolonged ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... physically apt for war, by his easy endurance of the fatigues of the march; every step of which (as was the case with few other officers) was performed either on horseback or on foot. Nature, indeed, has endowed him with a rare elasticity both of mind and body; he springs up from pressure like a well-tempered sword. After the severest toil, a single night's rest does as much for him, in the way of refreshment, as a week could ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ours, but are very slow to confess or to see that it circumscribes it. Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread these to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... old system consisted of a vast number of independent banking units, with scattered bank reserves which never could be mobilized in times of greatest need. In spite of vast banking resources, there was no coordination of reserves or any credit elasticity. As a consequence, a strain was felt even during crop-moving periods and when it was necessary to meet other seasonal ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... had thousands of followers among the people ready to rally to any venture for Ireland at his call. "His square, broad frame," wrote Meagher, "his frank, gay, fearless look; the warm forcible headlong earnestness of his manner; the quickness and elasticity of his movements; the rapid glances of his clear full eye; the proud bearing of his head; everything about him struck us with a brilliant and exciting effect, as he threw himself from his saddle and, tossing the bridle on his arm, hastened ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... Mauritia flexuosa cannot be expressed[B]. In proportion as man rises in civilization, the importance of timber becomes greater, being a material for which no adequate substitute can be found. It combines lightness with strength, elasticity with firmness, and possesses in many instances a durability rivalling, or even surpassing, that of the rocks yielded to us by the solid substance of the globe. The adaptation of timber to the numerous wants of civil life is too familiar to require exposition; but in addition to all the ends it ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... The elasticity of the long poles gives an easy motion to the conveyance, and makes this method of locomotion much more comfortable ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... employ her lands, her capital, and her labor. And why does not the fertility of one department paralyze the agriculture of a neighboring and less favored one? Because the phenomena of political economy have a suppleness, an elasticity, and, so to speak, a self-levelling power, which seems to escape the attention of the school of protectionists. They accuse us of being theoretic, but it is themselves who are so to a supreme degree, if the being theoretic consists in building ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... turning, the belt would keep out from between the gear for a certainty. One motion should fasten a foot stock, and as secure as it is possible to secure it, and a single motion free it so it could be moved from end to end of the bed. The reason any lathe takes more than a single motion is because of elasticity in the parts, imperfection in the planing, and from another cause, infinitely greater than the others, the swinging ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... bodies, and must exist in some place and at some time. Furthermore, it must do sufficiently nearly what all other "human flesh" belonging to "perfect man" must do, or cease to be human flesh. Our ideas are like our organisms; they have some little elasticity and circumstance-suiting power, some little margin on which, as I have elsewhere said, side-notes may be written, and glosses on the original text; but this power is very limited. As offspring will only, as a general rule, vary very little from its immediate ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... always a vague feeling of being chosen. Even as a child it made him look with courage in the face of a hard world, and filled his bare limbs with elasticity. Poor and naked he came into the world, apparently without a gift of any kind; and yet he came as a bright promise to the elderly, work-bowed Father Lasse. Light radiated from him, insignificant ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... expansion of mediocrity that was well enough in itself, but which was so overwhelming as nearly to overshadow everything that once stood prominent as more excellent. This was perhaps no more than a natural consequence of the elasticity and growth of a young, vigorous community, which, in its agregate character, as in that of its individuals, must pass through youth to arrive at manhood. Still it was painful and doubly so to one coming from Europe. I saw the towns increased, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and 10). Here his animals and little vignetted tailpieces of observations in the country announced an original subject for illustration and a fresh treatment of wood engraving, although some designs were still copied from earlier models. The white line begins to function with greater elasticity; tones and details beyond anything known previously in the medium appear with the force of innovation. The paper was still somewhat coarse and the cuts were often gray and muddy. But the audacity of the artist in venturing ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen
... speechless, my gaze travelling from his worn grief-beaten features to the painted face above. It was not furrowed like his; but a veil of years seemed to have descended on it. The bright hair had lost its elasticity, the cheek its clearness, the brow its light: ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... understand by limit of elasticity as applied to a beam under strain or pressure? What is meant by the neutral axis of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... this he thought due to want of close contact between the foil and the glass. To test this he suggested that mercury coatings be tried. Mr. Kapp considered the loss of power in condensers due to two causes: first, that due to the charge soaking in; and second, to imperfect elasticity of the dielectric. Speaking of the extraordinary rise of pressure on the Deptford mains, he said he had observed similar effects with other cables. In his experiments the sparking distance of a 14,000 volt ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... watch my son or my daughters glide through the intricacies of these modern dances, which the natural elasticity and suppleness of youth render charming in spite of their grotesqueness. But why should I seek to copy them? In spite of the fact that I am still rather athletic I cannot do so. With my utmost endeavor I fail to imitate their grace. I am getting old. My muscles are stiff and out of training. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... her for companionship and love; she had come to be so much a part and parcel of his existence; they had had so many cares and thoughts in common, which no one else had shared; that losing her was beginning life anew, and being required to summon up the hope and elasticity of youth, amid the doubts, distrusts, and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... does not merely inspect her Spider: she also brings her a little closer to her work-yard, but never fails to lay her on the top of a tuft of verdure. These are the manoeuvres of which I can avail myself to gauge the elasticity of the Wasp's memory. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... the whole may be made holy, the feet also are anointed and blessed. They are to feel, even in the event of possible recovery, a repugnance to touching this earthly, hard, impenetrable soil. A wonderful elasticity is to be imparted to them, by which they spurn from under them the clod of earth which hitherto attracted them. And so, through a brilliant cycle of equally holy acts, the beauty of which we have only briefly hinted at, the cradle and the grave, however far asunder they may chance to be, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the 83,000 horse-power employed to give motion to mills in England, 21,000, even in the coal districts, are not moved by fire, but by water. The force of gravity in falling water can spin and weave as well as the elasticity of steam; and in this power we are not deficient. It is necessary to study its circumstances in detail, and I shall therefore next proceed to discuss the condition of Ireland ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... esophagus at different ages are shown diagrammatically in Fig. 46. The diameter of the esophageal lumen varies greatly with the elasticity of the esophageal walls; its diameter at the four points of anatomical constriction is ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... extremes in the physical condition of pupils in the upper grammar grades make it desirable to introduce great elasticity into the work ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... Antigua since 1834. 2. The compensation that had been demanded by the Jamaica planters themselves, and adjudged by the magistrates, in case of apprentices buying their own time. Hundreds of planters had declared upon oath what the time of the apprentice was worth to them. Possibly as sellers, in the elasticity of their consciences, they may have set a higher price than they would be willing to give as buyers. In strict honesty, however, it is difficult to see why labor should not be worth to them as much ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of Richard, for by this name Henry made him known to us, was in the highest degree athletic and vigorous. There was no superfluity, and indeed there seldom is among the active white men of this country, but every limb was compact and hard; every sinew had its full tone and elasticity, and the whole man wore an air of ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... meal, consumed to the ultimate drop and crumb while the Dunkerque train meandered serenely through a sunny, smiling Flemish countryside, somewhat revived their jaded spirits. After all, they were young, enviably dowered with youth's exuberant elasticity of mood; the world was bright in the dawning, the night had fled leaving naught but an evil memory; best of all things, they were together: tacitly they were agreed that somehow the future would take care of itself and all be ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... locks, and the lines of thought were deepened in his face, but I found him in other respects unchanged. He had the same deep, metallic voice, so musical that to hear him say the slightest things was a pleasure, the same graceful courtesy and happy elasticity of temperament; and was full as ever of noble purposes, and the Roman self-conviction of power to live them out. One of those nights that "are not made for slumber" found us lingering beneath the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... nursing which had been lavished on Marie, had restored her sufficiently to health as to permit returning elasticity of mind. All morbid agony had passed, all too passionate emotions were gradually relaxing their fire-bands round her heart; and strength, the martyr strength, for which she unceasingly prayed, to give up all if called upon for her God, seemed dawning ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... with many drugs; but the effect of cheerfulness is an actual life-giving influence through a normal channel the results of which reach every part of the system. It brightens the eye, makes ruddy the countenance, brings elasticity to the step, and promotes all the inner forces by which life is sustained. The blood circulates more freely, the oxygen comes to its home in the tissues, health is promoted, ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... were possible to know the right moment for a book to be really tasted—not thrust aside because crammed down—no, it would not be desirable, as I was going to say, we should only do double mischief. We are not sent into the world to mould people, but to let them mould themselves; and the internal elasticity will soon unmake all the shapes that just now seem to form under my ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would ever come for him, when neither woman nor man would delight him, when no roses would have fragrance for him, and no song any spell to rouse him. Genius gives immortality in another way than in the vulgar one of being praised by others after death; it gives elasticity, unwearied sympathy, and that sense of some essence stronger than death, of some spirit higher than the tomb, which nothing can destroy. It is in this sense that genius ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... in the middle of Pleyel's room whilst his admirers were around the piano. His speciality was extreme delicacy, and his pianissimo extraordinary. Every little note was like a bell, so clear. His fingers seemed to be without any bones; but he would bring out certain effects by great elasticity. He got very angry at being accused of not keeping time; calling his left hand his maitre de chapelle and allowing his right to wander ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... you will find a grayish, tough, elastic lump before you, while in the pan below, when the water is carefully poured off, will be pure wheat-starch, the water itself containing all the sugar, dextrine or gum, and mineral matter. This toughness and elasticity of gluten is an important quality; for in bread-making, were it not for the gluten, the carbonic-acid gas formed by the action of yeast on dough would all escape. But, though it works its way out vigorously enough to swell up each cell, the gluten binds it fast, ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... essentially from the air of the atmosphere, but agreeing with it in the properties of weight, elasticity, and transparency, might be generated from solid substances, was discovered by Mr. Boyle, though two remarkable kinds of factitious air, at least the effects of them, had been known long before to all miners. One of these is heavier than common air. It lies at the bottom of pits, extinguishes ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... effusions of men of letters? So choice a morceau was the very thing that every body wanted; and, in the course of his journey, subscriptions poured in to the extent of one thousand; and Mr. C. on his return, after what might be called a triumph, discovered the elasticity of his spirit; smiling at past depressions, and now, on solid ground, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... such a way as to inclose two of the opposing series instead of one, each succeeding pair of warp threads taking up alternate pairs of the woof threads, as shown in the section, Fig. 91. This is a very interesting variety, and apparently one that would possess coherence and elasticity of a very ...
— Prehistoric Textile Fabrics Of The United States, Derived From Impressions On Pottery • William Henry Holmes
... loveliness; like Eden, too, in the fatal spell that removes it beyond the scope of man's actual possessions. But Donatello felt nothing of this dream-like melancholy that haunts the spot. As he passed among the sunny shadows, his spirit seemed to acquire new elasticity. The flicker of the sunshine, the sparkle of the fountain's gush, the dance of the leaf upon the bough, the woodland fragrance, the green freshness, the old sylvan peace and freedom, were all intermingled in those long breaths ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... see that it is and always must be so. Mill no doubt tells us he has no difficulty in supposing that in the region of the fixed stars two and two might make five, but nobody believes him. At all events few of us can pretend to such feats of intellectual elasticity. No amount of contradictory testimony from travellers to the fixed stars, no matter whether they were Bishops of the highest character or trained as Professors of physical Science, would induce us to give a moment's credence to such a story. We simply see that two and two must make ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... spongy bodies which have no activity of their own beyond a little elasticity. They are controlled by the ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... determining: though I think probabilities are for the negative. Facts and observation have given me reason to believe that the too easy gratification of our desires is pernicious to mind; and that it acquires vigour and elasticity from opposition. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... back his physical elasticity. He began to pace up and down, declaiming at his friend, "I was happy, ideally happy. I never had a thought, not one, for anything else. I gave her everything. I did everything she wanted. There never was a word between us. It ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... of seismal intensity; as shown on the chart of a part of North America affected by the great Charleston earthquake. (Fig. 37.) Mr. Hopkins has shown that the earthquake-wave, when it passes through rocks differing in density and elasticity, changes in some degree not only its velocity, but its direction; being both refracted and reflected in a manner analogous to that of light when it passes from one medium to another of different density.[3] ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... them a mental and physical tonic, and bracing their weak bodies they started in the direction allotted to each. Robert forgot, for a little while, the terrible hunger that seemed to be preying upon his very fiber, and, as he started away, showed an elasticity and buoyancy of which he could not have dreamed himself capable five ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... occupied the next cabin to hers, "that it won't be long after we arrive in New Zealand before my friend Emily replaces poor dear Charles. I should have given those two girls credit for having more feeling; but ah, my dear Mrs Jones, there's wonderful elasticity in the spirits of youth. I am sure such was my case, when I was a girl—down one moment, up the next; weeping and sighing, laughing and dancing, within a few minutes. I was still in my youth when I was deprived of my dear Mr Clagget, and, ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... order of causes and effects, of principles and consequences, which, under an appearance of chance, governs the universe, and maintains the equilibrium of the world. Thus, he gave to fire, motion and activity; to air, elasticity; weight and density to matter; he made air lighter than water, metal heavier than earth, wood less cohesive than steel; he decreed flame to ascend, stones to fall, plants to vegetate; to man, who was to be exposed to the action of so many ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... from her chair there was nothing of the elasticity that had marked her before luncheon. Before moving away she spoke a thought that was ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... his apprehensions were increased by the fact that his patient had in her constitution a taint of scrofula. There was no apparent congestion of the veins nor discoloration of the skin around the hard protuberance, no pulsation, elasticity, fluctuation or soreness, only a solid lump which the doctor's sensitive touch recognized as the small section or lobule of a deeply-seated tumor already beginning to press upon and obstruct the blood vessels in its immediate ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... my friend, to speak so to me now. You are done with me forever. I am but a disembodied spirit, and escaped hades by the grace of the Omnipotent, rather than by virtue of any good I did on earth. So far as any elasticity is left in my opportunities, I am dead as yon moon. You have still the gift that but one can give. Within your animal body you hold an immortal soul. It is pliable as wax; you can mould it by your will. As you shape that soul, so will your future be. It is the ark that ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... the cracker point of view, possessed likewise a mighty will, and a stubborn, tenacious endurance, nowise weakened by the discipline of two years of camp and battle; and not only marched with courage and elasticity, but actually set himself, out of the abundance of his resources, to spur the flagging spirits of his comrades, as they huddled in disconsolate confusion about ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... in Europe, and his intimate acquaintance with the music and musical people of every section of our country, their wants and predilections, have imparted to him advantages hardly vouchsafed to any other man. To these qualifications he brings the vigor and elasticity of early manhood, and, after years of untiring and energetic devotion to this one subject, he has produced a volume of Sacred Music, rich in melody, chaste and harmonious in composition, simple in arrangement, and thoroughly adapted to the wants of ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... with Descartes' application of algebra to geometry, and Newton's and Leibnitz's invention of the differential and integral calculus, improved our methods of calculation to such a point that summary methods of vastly greater comprehensiveness and elasticity can be applied to any problem of which the elements can be measured. The mere improvement in the method of describing the same things (cf. e.g. a geometrical problem as written down by Archimedes with any modern treatise) ...
— Progress and History • Various
... have great actions, make our own so. All action is of an infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with the celestial air until it eclipses the sun and moon. Let us seek one peace by fidelity. Let me heed my duties. Why need I go gadding into the scenes and philosophy of Greek and Italian history before I have justified myself to my benefactors? ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... however, regretted our disappointment, as it rained incessantly, with thunder and lightning, throughout the whole of this time. The weather having cleared, our coach being repaired, and our spirits being renovated by the increased elasticity of the air, the preceding heat having been almost intolerable, we resumed our progress, and at length reached Nantes on or about the evening of the 1st ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... wheels of any diameter, having no limit to it capacity in that respect. It was, at the same time, possessed in respect of the principle on which it was arranged, of the power of taking a much deeper cut, there being an entire absence of any source of springing or elasticity in its structure. This not only enabled the machine to perform its work with more rapidity, but also with more precision. Besides, it occupied much less space in the workshop, and did not cost above one-third of the machines formerly in use. It gave the highest satisfaction to those ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... reached Tottori prefecture we found ourselves in a country which grows more cotton than any other. Japanese cotton (grown on about 400 cho) is unsuitable for manufacture into thread, but because of its elasticity is considered to be valuable for the padding of winter clothing and for futon and zabuton. Their softness is maintained by ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... for the meeting of the General Congress at Philadelphia, Washington was joined at Mount Vernon by Patrick Henry and Edmund Pendleton, and they performed the journey together on horseback. It was a noble companionship. Henry was then in the youthful vigor and elasticity of his bounding genius; ardent, acute, fanciful, eloquent. Pendleton, schooled in public life, a veteran in council, with native force of intellect, and habits of deep reflection. Washington, in the meridian of his days, mature in wisdom, comprehensive ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... neutrals of many nations shared, was due, as Mr. Clay said, to the suddenness with which commerce revived after momentary suspension. "The bow had been unstrung that it might acquire fresh vigor and new elasticity"; and the stored-up products of the country, so long barred within, imparted a peculiar nervous haste to the renewal of intercourse. The absolute numbers quoted do not give as vivid impression of conditions at differing times as do some comparisons, easily ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... fiefs were all seeking their own advantage, and that some of them, especially the Duke of Burgundy, had cruel wrongs to avenge: it will be more easily understood that France had reached a period of depression and apparent despair which no principle of national elasticity or new spring of national impulse was present to amend. The extraordinary aspect of whole districts in so strong and populous a country, which disowned the native monarch, and of towns and castles innumerable ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... influence of the megrims, to set off for London on foot, when, accidentally searching for a cardialgic, to my great delight, I discovered three fugitive sixpences, headed by a vagrant shilling, immerged in the heap in my waistcoat pocket. This discovery gave an immediate elasticity to my mind; and I have therefore devised a scheme, worthier the improved state of my spirits, namely, to swindle your servants out of a horse, under the pretence of a ride upon the heath, and to jog on contentedly homewards. So, under the protection of Providence, and the mercy ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... streams, how they haunt him! he will play truant to dull care, and flee to them; their waters impart somewhat of their own perpetual youth to him. My grandfather when he was eighty years old would take down his pole as eagerly as any boy, and step off with wonderful elasticity toward the beloved streams; it used to try my young legs a good deal to follow him, specially on the return trip. And no poet was ever more innocent of worldly success or ambition. For, to ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... most part, inherited that precious heirloom of contentment and elasticity, and were as happy in nooks and corners in bedroom, nursery, staircase or kitchen, as they could have been ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... housewife this side of the Tappan Zee could beat her at making bread, brewing beer, or keeping her house in good order. The frosts of nearly forty winters had whitened over her brows, yet she had the manner and elasticity of a girl of eighteen, and a face so full of sweetness and gentleness that it seemed as if God had ordained it for man's love. Angeline's dress was usually of plain blue homespun, woven by her own hands, and with her cap and apron ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... ignorance of business was as fathomless as his own, this was not his sole motive. Finally it occurred to him to put the case hypothetically to Mr. Spragg. As far as Ralph knew, his father-in-law's business record was unblemished; yet one felt in him an elasticity of adjustment not allowed for in ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... which, however, but a small minority of the Russian youth care to take part—there are skating, ice-yatching, snow-shoeing, and ice-hilling. The skating ought, naturally, to be very good in Russia. As a matter of fact the ice is generally dead and lacking in that elasticity and spring which is characteristic of our English ice. It is too thick for elasticity, though the surface is beautifully kept and scientifically treated with a view to skating wherever a space is ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... insect by the reaction was jerked upwards to the height of one or two inches. The projecting points of the thorax, and the sheath of the spine, served to steady the whole body during the spring. In the descriptions which I have read, sufficient stress does not appear to have been laid on the elasticity of the spine: so sudden a spring could not be the result of simple muscular contraction, without the aid ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of such hope to his grandson. Grief for the only parent he had ever known, and the sensation of being completely alone in the world, were joined to a vague impression of horror at the suddenness of the stroke, and it was long before the influence of Hollywell, or the elasticity of his own youthfulness, could rouse him from ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... could realise that what ordinary laymen like myself want is a greater elasticity instead of an irrational certainty! if only instead of feebly trying to save the outworks, which are already in the hands of the enemy, they would man the walls of the central fortress! If only they would say plainly that a man could remain a ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... our race are very hard and unimaginative;—their voices have nothing caressing; their movements are as of machinery without elasticity or oil. I wish it were fair to print a letter a young girl, about the age of our Iris, wrote a short time since. "I am *** *** ***," she says, and tells her whole name outright. Ah!—said I, when I read ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... rarest order. He would have been on terms of recognized kinship with Sydney Smith and Charles Lamb. He once said of a vinegar-visaged member that the only regret he had on earth was that there were no more commandments to keep; what few there were he kept so easily. As illustrating his readiness and elasticity, whatever the emergency, two instances, out of the many that crowd upon memory, will be given. During an all-night session of the House, amid great confusion, the roll-call was ordered. The first name, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... always uncovered, they pay as much attention as to their hands. The hands of the natives, and even of the halfbreed, are always cold to the touch; which I cannot account for otherwise than by a supposition that, from the less degree of elasticity in the solids occasioned by the heat of the climate, the internal action of the body by which the fluids are put in motion is less vigorous, the circulation is proportionably languid, and of course the diminished effect is most perceptible in the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... simplest fare; bread, cheese, and a raw onion make an average meal. In some districts the weavers have to work in underground huts, for the air at the surface is so dry that the threads would lose all their elasticity out of doors. In these underground places the weavers produce enough moisture by keeping at ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... restless, nervous, frequently erratic and aimless activity, bear witness to the fact that the mind of man has had revealed to it its own limitations, and is well on the way towards despair of ever arriving at truth. The Greek mind no longer exhibits that elasticity and spontaneity and enthusiasm in the search for truth, or that confidence in its results, which characterized the representatives of the best period of the thought of the race. The political fortunes of ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... in the same house without any scandal. On her part there seems to have been from first to last nothing more than warm friendship, but his feelings towards her were of a stronger kind and her death deeply affected him. He never recovered his elasticity of spirits, though he continued to occupy himself with his favourite pursuits, and to frequent the society of his brother philosophers. After the death of Voltaire (1778), whose friend and correspondent he had been ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... incessant supervision, the jotting down of notes, the ceaseless interviews, the arguments, the correspondence, the work that is never finished when night comes, tell even upon that physical vigour and mental elasticity. Hodge sleeps sound and sees the days go by with calm complacency. The man who holds that solid earth, as it were, in the japanned boxes finds a nervous feeling growing upon him despite his strength of will. Presently nature will have her way; and, weary and hungry for fresh air, he rushes ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... ineffable tenderness, he paused and kissed the threshold. When he stood within his room (the same that he had occupied in his early youth), he felt as if the load of years were lifted from his bosom. The joyous, divine elasticity of spirit, that in the morning of life springs towards the Future as a bird soars into heaven, pervaded his whole sense of being. A Greek poet implies that the height of bliss is the sudden relief of pain: there is a nobler ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be to declare that he was a ruined man, and could only serve in the ranks. These were the thoughts he revolved while he dressed for dinner, and dressed, let it be owned, with peculiar care; but when the task had been accomplished, and he descended to the drawing-room, such was the elasticity of his young temperament, every thought of coming evil was merged in the sense of present enjoyment, and the merry laughter which he overheard as he opened the door, obliterated all notion that life had anything before him except what was agreeable ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... vault, jump; resilience, elasticity, springiness; fount, fountain, source; cause, origin, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... not the less penetrating for that. During the first months Ethan alternately burned with the desire to see Mattie defy her and trembled with fear of the result. Then the situation grew less strained. The pure air, and the long summer hours in the open, gave back life and elasticity to Mattie, and Zeena, with more leisure to devote to her complex ailments, grew less watchful of the girl's omissions; so that Ethan, struggling on under the burden of his barren farm and ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... hand, if the word "wrong" is judicially interpreted, it would seem to be given an elasticity which would invite inevitable ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... there was an elasticity and purpose about the young composer, the secret of which no one knew, not even himself. Like one caught in the whorls of some happy dream, who will not pause to ask, "Whither?" he poured out before this child the half-revealed hopes striving within ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... heard! But the engine had no power to stop the heavy train. With the presence of mind of a poet, and the courage of a hero, I flung my own weight on the fatal timber. I would hold it down, or perish. The engine came. The elasticity of the pine timber whirled me in the air! But I held on. The tender crossed. Again I was flung in wild gyrations. But I held on. "It is no bed of roses," I said; "but what act of Parliament was there that I should be happy?" Three passenger cars and ten freight cars, as was then the vicious custom ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... had cared nothing. Now, on this second occasion, she was burdened with the child infinitely precious to her heart, and for the sake of which even a stumble must be avoided. The first time she had been fresh, in the full vigor of her strength. Now she was worn out with a long tramp, and all the elasticity gone out of her, all the strength ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... education; principally, doubtless, from the development which it produced in the upper half of the body, not merely to the arms, but to the chest, by raising and expanding the ribs, and to all the muscles of the torso, whether perpendicular or oblique. The elasticity and grace which it was believed to give were so much prized, that a room for ball-play, and a teacher of the art, were integral parts of every gymnasium; and the Athenians went so far as to bestow on one famous ballplayer, Aristonicus ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... body, nor could it adapt its sole to the various kinds of surfaces on which we have to tread or stand. Nature, with her usual ingenuity, has succeeded in combining those opposing qualities—rigidity, suppleness, and elasticity or springiness—by resorting to her favorite device, the use of muscular engines. The arch is necessarily constructed of a number of bones which can move on each other to a certain extent, so that the foot may adapt itself to ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... finance is directed to report to the Senate, at as early a day as practicable, such measures as will restore commercial confidence and give stability and elasticity to the circulating medium through ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... are not favourable to all who are prejudiced by previously conceived opinions. These defenders of the Paracelsian doctrine believe that the air is in itself unalterable; and, with Hales, that it really unites with substances thereby losing its elasticity; but that it regains its original nature as soon as it is driven out of these by fire or fermentation. But since they see that the air so produced is endowed with properties quite different from common ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... combinations it is impossible to say from which of her works they have been borrowed, their universal property being that of ever-varying curvature in the most subtle and subdued transitions, with peculiar expressions of motion, elasticity, or dependence, which I have already insisted upon at some length in the chapters on typical beauty in "Modern Painters." But, that the reader may here be able to compare them for himself as deduced from different sources, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... itself upon me, and a singular face it was. His eyes were faded, and his hair, which he wore long, was flecked with gray. His hair and eyes, if I may say so, were sixty years old, the rest of him not thirty. The youthfulness of his figure, the elasticity of his gait, and the venerable appearance of his head were incongruities that drew more than one pair of curious eyes towards him, He excited in me the painful suspicion that he had got either somebody else's head or somebody else's body. He was evidently an American, at ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... frontier town who would have graced any society, and with the elasticity of true culture adapted themselves to all circumstances. At my residence, which adjoined the Democrat office, I held fortnightly receptions, at which dancing was the amusement, and coffee and sandwiches the refreshments. At ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... would write to their friend Mr. Goulding, and say where they were; by "that time," she said, she hoped to be humble, as a Christian should be. After this assurance was given, it was astonishing to see how Mabel revived. Her steps recovered their elasticity, her eyes their brightness. Sarah Bond had always great superiority in needlework, and this procured her employment; while Mabel obtained at once, by her grace and correct speaking, two or three day pupils. Her wild and wayward temper had been subdued by change of circumstances; but if she had ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... walked through the rapidly thinning streets. It was now dark, and most of the shops had closed. The elasticity had departed from Miss Tyrell's step, and she walked aimlessly, noting with a sinking at the heart the slowly passing time. Once or twice she halted from sheer weariness, Fraser halting too, and watching her with a sympathy of which Flower ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... impenetrable to gases and fluids, and these qualities give it great commercial importance; the use of pure rubber has been greatly superseded by that of "vulcanised" rubber; mixed with from 1/40 to 1/2 of its weight of sulphur and combined by heat, the rubber acquires greater elasticity, is not hardened by cold or rendered viscid by heat, and is insoluble in many of the solvents of pure rubber; its usefulness is thus largely increased and greatly extended of late; the demand for rubber is in excess of the supply, but no substitute has been found effective; in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of feature and violence of gesture, and his profusion of beard, in Egypt and Syria, in exploring the catacombs of the one country, and bowing at the shrines of the other. On the other hand, the brilliancy of his eye, the melody of his voice, and the elasticity of his muscles and limbs, were sufficient arguments in favor of his having scarcely passed the limit ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and self-tormenting reflections she passed the evening, and much of the night; but youthful hope, that cheers the heart with flattering and deceitful promises, never sufficiently well defined to resemble certainty, but always brilliant; hope, whose elasticity raises the sinking heart, soothed and composed her spirits, and she sank into sound and refreshing slumbers, to wake to a brighter and more flattering day; but at the same time, to sink deeper and more irrevocably into that bewitching, bewildering passion, whose existence ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... small valve may be placed at the inlet, as shown in the drawing. This valve is made of sufficient weight to resist the force of a strong current, and is only lifted from its seat by the pressure of the hand on the mouthpiece. It will be apparent from the small size and elasticity of the detecter that the test can easily be made with one hand, and when the ball is allowed to expand a vacuum is formed within it, and a sample of the atmosphere drawn from the breaks, cavities, or highest parts ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... I mean by faith, and what I mean by intellect. It was not that Luther was without intellect. He was less subtle, less learned, than Erasmus; but in mother wit, in elasticity, in force, and imaginative power, he was as able a man as ever lived. Luther created the German language as an instrument of literature. His translation of the Bible is as rich and grand as our own, and his table talk as full of matter as ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... certain stimulating quality of elasticity and crispness in the French atmosphere which our own does not possess. France, moreover, with its seven climates—for the description of these, see Reclus' Geography—does undoubtedly offer longer, less broken, spells of hot summer ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... an eternity. Our primitive ancestors deliberated on every thing twice—in drunkenness, and in sobriety; and then they acted. But we, with the most honest and slowest spirit of order—which might, without danger, be spared many reglemens—we lost all elasticity, and sank dismembered into a stupid spirit of slavery, which originated in our passion for imitation, our faintheartedness, and our uncommonly low opinion of ourselves, which often looks like true dog humility. This humility the French have in view, when if naughtily ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... must always be increasing in civilised countries to the stage at which the lowest class would be at starvation level, it was certainly erroneous. There are cases in which statesmen are alarmed by the failure of population to show its old elasticity, and beginning to revert to the view that an increased rate is desirable. It cannot be said to be even necessarily true that in all cases an increased population implies, of necessity, increased difficulty of support. There are countries which are inadequately peopled, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen |
