"Hardness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... direct it better and with less friction. Indeed, I am acquainted with no middle-class woman at all who could direct any of these poor men's households as their own wives so noisily and so cleverly do. Mrs Widger does not attempt to gain her own way by sheer force and hardness, not even with the children; she bends to every current; but she never breaks, and finally prevails. Like most West-country people, she has more staying power than visible energy. By going not straight over the hills, like a Roman road, but round by the valleys and level ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... A new hardness in Dean's voice sent a faint chill of doubt over Gordon. Was it possible that he wouldn't ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the presence of the king. I cannot tell what had passed between those two, nor do I suppose that any man will ever know; but Offa was more himself, save that on his face was a deep sadness, and no trace of hardness or ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... forms, even as the life springeth up, and yet hath not its dark beginning in the Center as the PHUR hath, but after the flash of fire, when the sour dark form is terrified, where the hardness is turned into pliant sharpness, and where the second will (viz. the will of nature, which is called the Anguish) ariseth, there Mercurius hath its original. For MER is the shivering wheel, very horrible, sharp, venomous, and hostile; which assimulateth ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... presented herself, with a dogged resignation singularly unlike her customary manner. Her eyes had a set look of hardness; her lips were fast closed; her usually colorless complexion had faded to a strange grayish pallor. If her dead husband could have risen from the grave, and warned Mr. Keller, he would have said, "Once or twice in my life, I have seen ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... took on a look of hardness as if it were chiseled in stone. He had squared around as if at a blow. For a moment he ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... adventures and the great rewards. Behold me, then, at the office of the Daily Gazette, on the staff of which I was a most insignificant unit, with the settled determination that very night, if possible, to find the quest which should be worthy of my Gladys! Was it hardness, was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own glorification? Such thoughts may come to middle age; but never to ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... loving, is the one thing which survives, the fears which may remain will be concerned with all the thoughts which cloud love, the anger and suspicion that divide us; so that perhaps the only fears which will survive at all will be the fears of our own selfishness and coldness, that inner hardness which has kept us from the love of God and isolated us from our neighbour. The pride which kept us from admitting that we were wrong, the jealousy that made us hate those who won the love we could not win, the ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... traction is done away with that they are submitted to when cast iron pipes are used. When once the cables are in place the longitudinal opening is stopped up with cement mortar, and in this way a very tight conduit is obtained whose hardness increases with time. The value of the system therefore depends, as in all cement work, on the care with which the manufacturing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... is it composed. The result the pure result is juice and size and baking and exhibition and nonchalance and sacrifice and volume and a section in division and the surrounding recognition and horticulture and no murmur. This is a result. There is no superposition and circumstance, there is hardness and a reason and the rest and remainder. There is no ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... distressed, "that is putting it too high. Won't you understand what I mean? We have learned so much lately about self-denial, and crossing one's own inclinations, and enduring hardness. And here I live with two dear kind people, who only try to keep every little annoyance from my path. I can't wish for a thing without getting it—I am waited on all day long, and I feel like one of the women that are at ease—one of the ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... ludicrous, the way in which the poor fellow poured forth his joy like a very child,—which he was in everything except years; and Harold could not help remembering, and recalling to Disco's memory, Yoosoof's observations touching the hardness of negroes' hearts, and their want of natural affection, on the morning when his dhow was captured by the ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... But the face was a very striking one, the forehead finely developed, the features clearly cut, and the bright, dark eyes looking out on the world with an almost defiant honesty, a clearness bordering on hardness. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... heaven who has passed unscathed from his assaults; except, perhaps, Diana only, who may have escaped him by fleeing to the woods; though some there be who tell that she did not flee, but rather concealed the wound. If haply, however, thou, in the hardness of thy unbelief, rejectest the testimony of heaven, and searchest rather for examples of those in this nether world who have felt his power, I affirm them to be so multitudinous that where to begin I know not. Yet this much may I tell thee truly: all who have confessed ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of God hardens a man and softens him at the same time. He comes out of it hardened to that hardness of which it is written, "Do thou endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ;" and again, "I have fought a good fight, I have kept the faith, I have finished my course;"—yet softened to that softness of which it is written, "Be ye tender-hearted, ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... that is of far greater value to him. We do not mean to imply that Mr. James lacks what is called knowledge of the world. On the contrary, he has a great deal of it, but it has not in him degenerated into worldliness, and a mellowing haze of imagination ransoms the edges of things from the hardness of over-near familiarity. He shows on analysis that rare combination of qualities which results in a man of the world, whose contact with it kindles instead of dampening the ardor of his fancy. He is thus excellently fitted for the line he has chosen as a story-teller ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... each still hewn from a single block, extend along the sides of the temple. These are covered with statues and bass-reliefs, many of the former being in a state of dilapidation which, considering the extreme hardness of the stone, indicates great age, while ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... him, Why then did Moses command us to give a bill of divorcement, and put her away? [19:8]He said to them, Moses, on account of your hardness of heart, allowed you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so. [19:9]And I tell you, that whoever puts away his wife, except for adultery, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her that is put away, ...
— The New Testament • Various
... among the hardware in stock. Instead of glass for the windows, which hard freezing of the sod house and settling of the walls might have a tendency to shatter, double sheets of mica, such as is used in the flexible tops of automobiles, were set in and plastered with clay which was burnt to the hardness and consistency of brick by a plumber's flash lamp sending out the hot flame of burning gasoline in the hands ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... convent all night, and that as soon as midnight made it possible he should say the first mass for the repose of the girl's soul. We sat on the terrace talking over the strange events of the last crowded hours, and I noted with satisfaction that the Cavaliere no longer spoke of the Church with that hardness, which had hurt me so often. It is true that the Padre was with us nearly all the time; but not only was Valguanera courteous, he was almost sympathetic; and I wondered if it might not prove that more than one soul benefited by the untoward events ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... shook her head. Horn's big hand trembled as he held it out, and for once there was no trace of hardness about his face. ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... held aloof, her blue eyes cool and watchful. For the moment, her face, in its young hardness, bore a curious resemblance ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... now smiled into the eyes of the Chinaman, but it was a smile that did not soften that gray and rock-like hardness that had settled in his face. "Kao, you are a devil. I suppose that is a compliment to your dirty ears. You're rotten to the core of the thing that beats in you like a heart; you're a yellow snake from the skin in. I came to see you because I thought there might be a way out of ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... sisters there was one trait of the mother—and only one; the thin and pallid elder daughter had her parent's Cairngorm eye: the blooming and luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and chin—perhaps a little softened, but still imparting an indescribable hardness to the countenance otherwise ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... wrapped in smoke.[1104] Instructed by what he said, I also, O son, shall again expound to thee that certain knowledge (which dispels ignorance). The properties possessed by earth are immobility, weight, hardness, productiveness, scent, density, capacity to absorb scents of all kinds, cohesion, habitableness (in respect of vegetables and animals), and that attribute of the mind which is called patience of the capacity to bear. The properties of water are ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... inside. Simply by digging until the inside should be laid open, thought I. This of itself would be no slight labour. The roof and sides, as my companion informed me, were three feet in thickness; and the tough mud was frozen to the hardness and consistency of a fire-brick. But after getting through this shell, where should we find the inmates? Why, most likely, we should not find them at all after all this labour. So said my companion, telling me at the same ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... his anger was less poignant than his sense of helpless defeat. Brigit's attitude was absolutely incomprehensible to him, and hurt him in an almost unbearable degree. That she should defy him, grow as angry as he himself, he had already learned was not impossible; but the cruel hardness of her face as she had sent him away had shocked him more than ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... board the Medina was an old man of war's man, whose visage, something of the colour and hardness of dried salmon, sufficiently indicated that the possessor had weathered many a trying gale, and was familiar with all the vicissitudes of the mighty deep. With the habitual roughness of 182his manners was combined a singular degree of intelligence, and he evinced a disposition ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... a level voice, with a ring of hardness in it, for which I was to learn the true reason later. At the time it seemed to me due to resentment at having to speak of the man she had loved to me, whom she disliked, ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... were flint; others, clay in the hand of the potter. "The common people heard him gladly; but the scribes and Pharisees resisted the counsel of God against themselves." If we read the entire chapter carefully it will give us a more impressive view of and a clearer insight into the stubborn hardness of the Jewish heart than any other single chapter that I can now think of. The Jews were so wedded to their worldly sanctuary, so in love with the representative forms of worship, that they could receive no just ideas of ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... feel the hardness of my heart and the littleness of my love, yet I am in a great degree able to deny myself to take up my cross to follow Christ through good and evil report. 7th.—I feel that I am growing in grace and that I have more power over temptation, and over myself than I had some time since, but I want ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... place. As I before said (and I repeat it with shame), I felt the loss of my gun more than I cared for the lecture, or the grief my conduct caused my father. I can scarcely now account for the obstinacy and hardness of heart which made me shut my ears to all remonstrances. I have since then grown wiser, and I hope better; and I feel that I ought at once to have asked my father's forgiveness, and to have cheerfully set to work on some occupation of which ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... trained, and such an education, to say nothing of such a performer, justified a hope of greater returns. A young American, the fruit of scant "modelling," who could give her nothing but pocket-money, was a very moderate prize, and if she had been prepared to marry for ambition—there was no such hardness in her face or tone, but then there never is—her mark would be inevitably a "personage" quelconque. I was received at my friend's lodging with the announcement that she had left Homburg with her daughter half an hour before. The good woman who had entertained the pair professed to know nothing ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... well that strata of hardness in his nature, the adamantine will that wrought torture to its possessor because it could not bend. Even the concessions he had thus far made, had, she recognized, cost him a vital struggle. On the day of her aunt's seizure had she not witnessed the warfare between ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... good; that is to say, when man feels himself directly in the presence of God. Then, and then only, does the will acquiesce. Nay more, it only completely acquiesces when it adores. The soul only submits to the hardness of fate by virtue of its discovery of a sublime compensation—the loving kindness of the Almighty. That is to say, it cannot resign itself to lack or famine, it shrinks from the void around it, and the happiness ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had not proceeded more than five or six miles, when ominous symptoms of coming disaster began to manifest themselves. The extreme cold in the air suddenly ceased, and a warm south wind began to blow. The surface of the ice lost its hardness. Streamlets of water trickled here and there, forming great pools which ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... which is a summary of all the rest: exalting instinct above reason, and the intuitions of the heart above practical knowledge; attacking all education based on statistic figures and facts; heaping sorrow and ridicule on the practical mercantile people; fighting against the pride, hardness, and selfishness of the merchant and noble; cursing the manufacturing towns for imprisoning bodies in smoke and mud, and souls in falsehood and factitiousness;—while it contrasts, with that satire of social oppression, lofty eulogy of the oppressed; and searches out poor workmen, jugglers, foundlings, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... of the law in its written form is ascribed to Moses in the New Testament every one knows. "The law was given by Moses;" "Did not Moses give you the law?" "Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me;" "For the hardness of your heart he," Moses, "wrote you this precept;" "Master, Moses wrote unto us;" "What is written in the law? how readest thou?" etc. Since now the whole collection of books was familiarly known to the people as the law, or the law of Moses, it ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... one of the commonest and most necessary machines—thus careless were the Romans of the amount of labor wasted in preparing an article of daily and universal consumption. This, probably, arose in chief from the employment of slaves, the hardness of whose task was little cared for; while the profit and encouragement to enterprise on the part of the professional baker was proportionately diminished, since every family of wealth probably prepared its bread at home. But the same inattention to ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... spring, the line progressed slowly. This was quite comprehensible, and when I traveled over it afterward as a passenger I wondered how we had ever built it at all. Portions were hewn out of the solid rock, of a hardness that was often too much for our most carefully tempered drills; others were underpinned with timber against the mountain side, or carried across deep ravines on open trestles; while much of it had to be roofed in by massive sheds, so that the snow-slides ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... and his children—for had Allan Fitz-Henry but suspected the possibility of such a thing, he had torn the false pride, like a venomous weed, from his heart, and had been a wiser and a happier man. In his case it was the blindness of the heart that caused its partial hardness; but events were at hand, that should flood it with the clearest light, and melt it ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... woman, or both, but she could never be a mean woman. Whichever of the ten commandments she might choose to break, it would not be that which forbids us to bear false witness against our neighbour. Anybody might read it in her eyes. But in her sister's, he might discern her father's shifty hardness watered by woman's weaker will into something like cunning. For the rest Elizabeth had a very fair figure, but lacked her sister's rounded loveliness, though the two were so curiously alike that at a distance you might well mistake the one for the other. One might almost fancy that ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... those who could not "see the truth;" and he who reviled the puritan mode of worship, was "worse than the infidel." The only argument she ever used with such, was the argumentum ad hominem, which saves the trouble of conviction by "giving over to hardness of heart." New England was, to her, the land of Goshen—whither God's people had been led by God's hand—"the land of the patriarchs, where it rains righteousness"[81]—and all the adjacent country was a ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... SIR:—I permit myself the privilege of addressing your Excellency, my name being known to you as man of business of late your admired brother, Senor Don Ricardo Montfort. I find myself, senor, in a position of great hardness between the two admirable ladies, Senora Montfort, widow of Don Ricardo, and his beautiful daughter, the Senorita Margarita. These ladies, admirable, as I have said, in beauty, character, and abilities, find it, nevertheless, impossible to ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... than any tears, as would have made a kind heart ache even to look at them; while her figure, alert and proud no longer, bent on the window ledge in such lonely and weary fashion that a strong arm would have involuntarily stretched out to shield it from any hardness or blow that might threaten, though the owner thereof ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... in impugning and impeaching advisedly and maliciously her majesty's supreme power, maintaining and extolling a foreign jurisdiction. And as for the oath, it was altered by her majesty into a more grateful form; the hardness of the name and appellation of supreme head was removed; and the penalty of the refusal thereof turned only into disablement to take any promotion, or to exercise any charge, and yet with liberty of being reinvested therein if any man should accept thereof during his life. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... habit of comparison. She was distinguished from the daughters of wealth by her avowed acquaintance with the real business of living, a familiarity as different as possible from their theoretical proficiency; yet it seemed to Darrow that her experience had made her free without hardness and ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... position toward each other, and that it would require only a single word to bridge the chasm between them. A hard look came into his eyes as they gazed through the holes in the mask, then he gazed at Alice—sweet piquant Alice—and the hardness melted like snow before ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... lady; of a tallness and much commanding, with snow hair and bright eyes - at times of a hardness like steel - of them we have much fear. For Miss Powers we have admiration greatly but our love we cannot show out to her; only can we show that to Miss Sterling who is of great dearness, with heart of so great bigness that for her we take the ...
— Seven Maids of Far Cathay • Bing Ding, Ed.
... incapable of it. But to take the only other course open to her, to betray her husband and rob him of that, the loss of which might ruin him, this needed not courage only, not devotion only, but a hardness proof against reproaches as well as against punishment. And the Countess was no fanatic. No haze of bigotry glorified the thing she contemplated, or dressed it in colours other than its own. Even while ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... at Manchester show that all the visible filth is removed from the Medlock's inky waters, besides which the hardness of the water is reduced to about 6 deg. from a normal condition of about 30 deg.. The effluent is fit for all the varied uses of a dye works, and is stated to be perfectly capable of sustaining fish life. With results such as these the system should have a promising future ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... walls of the jail looked grim and merciless through the gray of the day. To Scanlon they seemed of appalling thickness and hardness; the turrets, which occurred at regular intervals, he knew held men, armed and sleepless, who watched tirelessly. Hundreds and hundreds of dingy souls drooped inside; guilt hung over the whole place like a ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... sharp as a scythe—a rude barbarian giant wind knocking at the walls of the house with a vast club, so that we crept sideways even to the windows to look out upon the world. There was everything to repel—the cold, the frost, the hardness, the snow, dark sky and ground, leaflessness; the very furze chilled and all benumbed. Yet the forest was still beautiful. There was no day that we did not, all of us, glance out at it and admire it, and say something about it. Harder and harder grew ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Hormuz for sale. This corresponds with a modern account in Milburne, which says that the tutia imported to India from the Gulf is made from an argillaceous ore of zinc, which is moulded into tubular cakes, and baked to a moderate hardness. The accurate Garcia da Horta is wrong for once in saying that the tutia of Kerman is no mineral, but the ash of a certain tree ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... was weeping. Scalding tears! He wept over himself, his hardness of heart, his wickedness, his ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... it in another way," said the nurse. Its unnatural hardness and sternness of tone passed away from her voice, and its native gentleness and sadness returned, as she made that reply. "You read the newspapers like the rest of the world," she went on; "have you ever read of your unhappy fellow-creatures ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... of an evening wind in summer, and different again from the coolness of the rain that soaks into the hearts of growing things and gives them life and body. The velvet of the rose is not that of a ripe peach or of a baby's dimpled cheek. The hardness of the rock is to the hardness of wood what a man's deep bass is to a woman's voice when it is low. What I call beauty I find in certain combinations of all these qualities, and is largely derived from the flow of curved and straight lines ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... no answer. Illness here—till of late—has been so unknown, that it is commonly supposed it must be wilful, and therefore meets little notice, till accompanied by danger, or incapacity of duty. This is by no means from hardness of heart-far otherwise ; there is no hardness of heart in any one of them ; but it is prejudice and want of personal ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... the Government all wrong. Say, it makes my eyes water sometimes to see the fellah slogging away. He's a Jim-dandy—works all day and half the night, and if the tax-gatherer isn't at the door, wakes up laughing. I saw one"—his light blue eyes took on a sudden hardness—"laughing on the other side of his mouth one morning. They were 'kourbashing' his feet; I landed on them as the soles came away. I hit out." His face became grave, he turned the cigar round in his mouth. "It made me feel better, but I had a close ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dwelt apart from others tend to destroy first generosity and then tenderness in man and woman? Why does one so often find a certain hardness and inhumanity encrusting those who have withdrawn themselves behind the shutters of their own convenience, or is it, after ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... took poor little Mary, in her first desolation, out of the melancholy house. Mrs. Vicar did this without any hesitation, knowing very well that, in all probability, Lady Mary had made no will, and consequently that the poor girl was destitute. A great deal is said about the hardness of the world, and the small consideration that is shown for a destitute dependent in such circumstances. But this is not true; and, as a matter of fact, there is never, or very rarely, such profound need in the world, without a great deal of kindness and much pity. The three gentlemen ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... but with some show of surprise, that he had not, adding that that wood was rendered so valuable to the turner by its hardness that few people would be extravagant enough to use it for fuel. I assented, and felt the more certain that the Jesuit's remark contained a hidden meaning. The only other clue I had consisted in the apparent mistake the father had made as to the king's residence, and this might have been ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... hope of a possible analogy, between the resurrection of nature, and something else, as yet unrealised, reserved for human souls; and the beautiful, weeping creature, vexed by the wind, suffering, torn to pieces, and rejuvenescent again at last, like a tender shoot of living green out of the hardness and stony darkness [50] of the earth, becomes an emblem or ideal of chastening and purification, and of final victory through suffering. It is the finer, mystical sentiment of the few, detached from the coarser and more ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... sin, and deep crime, but never before have I seen in persons of your early years, such instances—such awful, terrible instances—of that impenitence in which the heart, setting aside God and his sacred ordinances, is given over to the hardness of final reprobation. I can do no more, as the ambassador of Christ, but I must not stand by and see a fellow-creature—oh! thank God," he exclaimed, "a thought recurs to my mind which had for a time passed out of it. My good friend," he said, addressing old M'Loughlin, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... with her, and taught them that it was nobler and better to serve Christ by helping others and giving up their own wills than to strive for riches or honours. Their father, too, bade them learn to endure hardness and to bear without complaints whatever might befall them. And the boys listened to his counsel with serious faces, though they could ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... boats for scouring the sea-coast, and for giving intelligence of the approach of any armed vessels. He went from one military station to another, superintending and actually assisting every operation; and endured hardness as a good soldier, by lying in tents, though all the officers and soldiers had houses and huts where they could have fires when they desired; and indeed they often had need, for the weather was severe. In all which services, ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... are used for finishing the crayon, especially the No. 0, its hardness adapting it ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt
... Jerry's part, but on Borckman's part. Borckman felt the abysmal urgings of the beast, as a beast, to prove himself master of this four-legged beast. Jerry felt his jowl and jaw clutched still more harshly and hardly, and, with increase of harshness and hardness, he was flung farther down the deck, which, on account of its growing slant due to heavier gusts of wind, had become ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... thoughts to which all else were strangers, and had nothing in common with. They were in Palmyra, and with her slaughtered multitudes. Yet though she wept not, others did; and one could, see all along, wherever she moved, the Roman hardness yielding to pity, and melting down before the all-subduing presence of this wonderful woman. The most touching phrases of compassion fell constantly upon my ear. And ever and anon as in the road there would happen some rough ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... a cause of deep amazement to Savinien. What! Cayrol! The shrewd close—fisted Auvergnat! A girl without a fortune! Cayrol Silex as he was called in the commercial world on account of his hardness. This living money-bag had a heart then! It was necessary to believe it since both money-bag and heart had been placed at Mademoiselle de Cernay's feet. This strange girl was certainly destined to millions. She had just missed being Madame Desvarennes's heiress, and now Cayrol had ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... are easily made, when you are in haste, with an F. or HB. pencil: it requires some hardness of the point to insure your drawing delicately enough when the forms of the shadows are very subtle; they are sure to be so somewhere, and are generally so everywhere. The pencil is indeed a very precious instrument after you are master of the ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... so, but with your head right off, completely detached from your body, and rolling round and round like an exceedingly heavy big ball, that for some inexplicable reason has been pitched into a vast mill on purpose to be ground, but, probably from its thickness and hardness, does not submit to that process, but is always going on and on between the upper stone and nether stone, suffering horrible pain, but never turning into powder, nor even into bits, but going grinding on always for a time that seems as if it ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... said, but I knew from the careful repression of his tone that his hardness was a brittle veneer. He was young to carry so bold a front when his heart must be hammering, and I would willingly have talked any doggerel to have afforded ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... never tired of Eric's society, and of his stories about all that befell him on board the Stormy Petrel. They perceived a marvellous change in him. Every trace of recklessness and arrogance had passed away; every stain of passion had been removed; every particle of hardness had been calcined in the flame of trial. All was gentleness, love, and dependence, in the once bright, impetuous, self-willed boy; it seemed as though the lightning of God's anger had shattered ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... various leathers, the sub-committee came to the conclusion that of the old leathers (15th and 16th century), white pigskin, probably alum 'tanned,' is the most durable, but its excessive hardness and want of flexibility renders this leather unsuitable for most modern work. Old brown calf has lasted fairly well, but loses its flexibility, and becomes stiff and brittle when exposed to light and air. Some of the white tawed skins of the 15th and 16th century, ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... gait, roughness of the hair, and particularly of that of the back; an insatiable thirst, accompanied by the refusal of all food; loss of flesh, which occasionally proceeds with astonishing rapidity; a tucked-up flank, with hardness and tenderness of the anterior ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... signifies hard wood, and they make their bows of it because it is very stiff. They look upon it as an incorruptible wood, which induced the French settlers to build their houses of it. The posts fixed in the earth must be entirely {223} stripped of their bark, for notwithstanding their hardness, if the least bark be left upon ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... before 1549, will be struck at once by the redness of many of the pages. This redness indicates rubrics, and helps us to realise what is meant in the Prayer Book Preface (Concerning the Service of the Church, Section 2) by the number and hardness of the rules called the Pie, and the manifold ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... a significance. Fine whitish hair, like that of a child, goes with a simple, child-like disposition; black hair denotes a certain hardness of character; red hair has long been supposed to be associated with a sensual constitution, but it rather indicates a physical weakness,—a tendency to scrofula. This is, however, a tendency merely. Thin hair is often the result of protracted mental labor, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... Law despises not man merely, but God, who has also given to us His Holy Spirit to know what is unchangeable, the everlastingly right, from what is everlastingly wrong. So much for that side of our Lord's character; so much for sinners who, after their hardness and impenitent hearts, treasure up for themselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to St ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... ones of this couple which we possess. [Footnote: Strange to say, subsequently and even in our own days, a portrait of Martin Luther's wife in her old age has been mistaken for one of his mother.] In these portraits, the features of both the parents have a certain hardness; they indicate severe toil during a long life. At the same time, the mouth and eyes of the father wear an intelligent, lively, energetic, and clever expression. He has also, as his son Martin observed, retained ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... my dear De Marsay! She has black eyes which have never wept, but which burn; black eyebrows which meet and give her an air of hardness contradicted by the compact curve of her lips, on which the kisses do not stay, lips burning and fresh; a Moorish color that warms a man like the sun. But—upon my word of honor, she is ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... richly bestowed on the highest works of creation, and the eminent sign and seal of perfection in them; being associated with life in the human body, with light in the sky, with purity and hardness in the earth,—death, night, and pollution of all kinds being colorless. And although if form and color be brought into complete opposition,[24] so that it should be put to us as a matter of stern ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Lifting of Liquids; Suction Process; Preparing Blown Oils; Preparing Siccative Drying Oils — Compressed Air; Whitewash — Liquid Air; Retrocession — Purification of Water; Water Hardness — Fleshings and Bones — Ozonised Air in the Bleaching and Deodorising of Fats, Glues, etc.; Bleaching Textile Fibres — Appendix: Air and Gases; Pressure of Air at Various Temperatures; Fuel; Table of Combustibles; Saving of Fuel by Heating Feed Water; Table of Solubilities of Scale ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... which will be subsequently considered) occurring in minerals are generally characterised by their sparing solubility in acids. The diamond is distinguished from other crystals by its hardness, lustre, and specific gravity. It may be subjected to a red heat without being apparently affected, but at a higher temperature it slowly burns away. Graphite, also, burns slowly, but at a lower temperature. ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... to hold the arc in the center. Modern carbons for ordinary arc-lamps are generally made of a mixture of retort-carbon, soot, and coal-tar. This paste is forced through dies and the carbons are baked at a fairly high temperature. A variation in the hardness of the carbons may be obtained as the requirements demand by varying the proportions of soot and retort-carbon. Cored carbons are made by inserting a small rod in the center of the die and the carbons are formed with a hollow core. This may be ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... about him is right as yet; he is immature and faulty at all points, and everybody feels at perfect liberty to criticize him to right and left, above, below, and around, till he takes refuge either in callous hardness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... thoughts from the younger ones on whom, without a parent's authority and reverence, she has to exercise a parent's restraint. Well for her if she come out of the trial without having gathered some needless severity, some seeming hardness, some tendency to peevishness! These weak evils are so apt to gather around a sense at once of the need and ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... ane 'at cud ca' a bonny cratur like that a brute!' returned David, nowise pleased to discover such hardness in one whom he would gladly treat like a child of his own. It was a great disappointment to him to see the lad getting farther away from the possibility of being helped by him. 'What 'ud yer father say to see ye illuse ony helpless ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... you will; but the wiser, the more civilized the State, the worse chances for the rogue to get on! There may be some art, some hypocrisy, some avarice,—nay, some hardness of heart,—in paternal example and professional tuition. But what are such sober infirmities to the vices that arise from defiance and despair? Your savage has his virtues, but they are mostly physical,—fortitude, abstinence, patience: mental and moral virtues must be ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... deposits of liquid fluids from cold and hot springs, which we daily see producing the travertine strata near Rome, and near Hobart Town in Van Diemen's Land, afford but a faint idea of the flotz formation. In our seas, small banks of limestone, almost equal in hardness at some parts to Carrara marble,* are in the course of formation, by gradual precipitation, accumulation, and cementation — processes whose mode of action has not been sufficiently ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the foster daughter of Gaspard Roussillon, trader in pelts and furs. Even her most romantic visions had never taken the form of personal desire, or ambition in its most nebulous stage; they had simply pleased her fresh and natural fancy and served to gild the hardness and crudeness ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... most perfectly can be called excellent. This truth, I say, being recognized by Masaccio, brought it about that by means of continuous study he learnt so much that he can be numbered among the first who cleared away, in a great measure, the hardness, the imperfections, and the difficulties of the art, and that he gave a beginning to beautiful attitudes, movements, liveliness, and vivacity, and to a certain relief truly characteristic and natural; which no painter up to his time had ever done. And since he had ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... the diseased part we determine its heat or coldness, hardness or softness, roughness or smoothness, fullness, distention or evacuation, all of which signs ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... cabin, removing his fur cap as he does so. He is a man of about forty, around five-ten in height, but looking much shorter on account of the enormous proportions of his shoulders and chest. His face is massive and deeply lined, with gray-blue eyes of a bleak hardness, and a tightly clenched, thin-lipped mouth. His thick hair is long and gray. He is dressed in a heavy blue jacket and blue ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... the history of the extension of the suffrage in all of the American states that made it before the national enfranchisement of women and it will be repeated in the nation at large, and in Great Britain and on the Continent. Women are not taken in by quackery as readily as men are; the hardness of their shell of logic makes it difficult to penetrate to their emotions. For one woman who testifies publicly that she has been cured of cancer by some swindling patent medicine, there are at least ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... the knowledge gained by dissection of the living. This cruel and nefarious practice was followed "so that the investigators could study the particular organs during life in regard to position, colour, form, size, disposition, hardness, softness, smoothness, and superficial extent, their projection ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... would have you speak," she cried. "I am glad. Oh, I am glad!" and her voice rang with the fulness of her pleasure. She had been greatly distressed by the unhappiness of her friend, and in that distress compunction had played its part. There was no hardness in Violet Oliver's character. To give pain flattered no vanity in her. She understood that Shere Ali would suffer because of her, and she longed that he should find his compensation in the opportunities ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... divert you from your way; but this is to no man, but to him that will read him, and read him with attentive, studious painfulness; which constant desire whosoever hath in him, hath already passed half the hardness of the way, and therefore is beholden to the philosopher but for the other half. Nay, truly, learned men have learnedly thought, that where once reason hath so much over-mastered passion, as that the mind hath a free desire to do well, the inward light each mind hath in itself is as good ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... with charcoal. Cousin's sister with a magnificent show of strength gathered the unconscious girl in her arms and walked toward the woods. Ward would have stopped her, but she hissed like a snake in his face, and there was a hardness in the blue eyes he ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... its outlines came within the white cross; there was still hope for the cameo. All that winter Father Xavier toiled upon it, exhausting his utmost skill, but never exhausting his patience. His chief trial was in the extreme hardness of the stone, which rapidly wore out his graving tools. At last it was finished, and Father Xavier confessed to himself, in all humility, that he had not only never executed so delicate a piece of workmanship, but he had never seen its equal. Every curve of the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... minutes, he said, sir," Kemp's optimism seemed to ricochet against his master's hardness and come back unhurt. "He will send a closed car and will have your rooms ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... the fall had receded this distance? The mind shrinks from the contemplation of a subject that carries it back to a period of time so very remote; for if the rock,—syenite, always possessed its present solidity and hardness, the action of the water alone might require millions of years to produce ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... any religious movement, many laymen, among whom Burke holds a high place, strove to soften the hardness and cruelty of the age. There was need of their efforts. The criminal law was fearfully severe. Early in the reign as many as 160 crimes were capital felonies, and the number was constantly augmented. A theft of more than the value of twelve pence by picking a pocket was punishable ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... for the development of humanity according to the Divine purpose than the observance of that moral law in all its fulness. It would never have occurred to us beforehand to permit in Divine legislation any concession to the hardness of men's hearts; yet we know that it was done. Science now tells us that Order takes a rank in God's work far above where we should have placed it. It is not the highest; it is far from the highest: but it appears to be in some strange way the most indispensable. God is teaching us that Order ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... were several men not less unprincipled than Sunderland. In truth the Council chamber at Edinburgh had been, during a quarter of a century, a seminary of all public and private vices; and some of the politicians whose character had been formed there had a peculiar hardness of heart and forehead to which Westminster, even in that bad age, could hardly show anything quite equal. The Chancellor, James Drummond, Earl of Perth, and his brother, the Secretary of State, John Lord Melfort, were bent on supplanting Queensberry. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Each event was of great importance to the King of the Peak. He had concluded that Thomas, the man-servant, was not the Earl of Leicester in disguise, and when the Earl of Derby again came forward with his marriage project, Sir George fell back into his old hardness toward Dorothy, and she prepared her armament, offensive and defensive, for instant use if need should arise. I again began my machinations, since I can call my double dealing by no other name. I induced Dorothy to agree to meet the ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... ought to have received from John Chapman a copy of Emerson's Poems, so called, which he was directed to send you. Poor man, you need not open them. I know all you can say. I printed them, not because I was deceived into a belief that they were poems, but because of the softness or hardness of heart of many friends here who have made it a point to have them circulated.* Once having set out to print, I obeyed the solicitations of John Chapman, of an ill-omened street in London, to send ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... a metal of extraordinary hardness. Swords made of it will cut through a man's head to the chin. No arrows or spears will penetrate armor made of it. It can be beaten into all shapes, when hot. The weapons of which I spoke to you are constructed of ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... black earth only in which grew trees of eucalyptus. I found on following it some way up that it led to a low tract of country which I regretted much I could not then examine further. I found shells embedded in limestone varying considerably in its hardness being sometimes very friable and the surface in some places presenting innumerable fragments of corallines, with pectens, spatangi, echini, ostrea ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... very much more difficult to reclaim a criminal than any other man given to vice? I believe not;—criminals, I think, will be found even more accessible to religious influences, sympathisingly applied, than those whose errors have had a less equivocal stamp. Their apparent hardness of heart is not always the native hardness of the rock, but more often the frozen hardness of the ice, which the sun of human sympathies may melt again. The world, accustomed to judge them harshly, to see only their crime, and to see it without its palliations—to ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... with the organs of sense. The primary qualities of matter, that is, those which are involved in extension in space, are the only objects of real knowledge; the secondary qualities of matter, as softness, hardness, sweetness, bitterness, and the like, are but modifications of the human sensibilities. "The sweet exists only in form—the bitter in form, hot in form, color in form; but in causal reality only atoms and space ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... up, and set them in the sun to dry. After they are thoroughly dry, put them in a glass matrass into a stream of running water and leave them there twenty days; by that time they will contract the natural hardness and solidity of pearls. Then take them out of th matrass and hang them in mercurial water, where they will moisten, swell, and assume their Oriental beauty; after which shift them into a matrass hermitically closed to prevent any water coming ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... he glanced with searching kindness at the girl who was such a mere child, after all. But he seemed to feel a touch of hardness or of obstinacy in the way she set her lips. He couldn't bear the idea of ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... village with village; even within the village itself feuds parted household from household, and passions of hatred and vengeance were handed on from father to son. Their mood was above all a mood of fighting men, venturesome, self-reliant, proud, with a dash of hardness and cruelty in it, but ennobled by the virtues which spring from war, by personal courage and loyalty to plighted word, by a high and stern sense of manhood and the worth of man. A grim joy in hard fighting was already a characteristic of the race. War was the Englishman's "shield-play" ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... of Water that was not so before, then of the Liquid substance of an Egg, which will easily mix with Water, to produce by the bare warmth of a hatching Hen, Membrans, Feathers, Tendons, and other parts, that are not dissoluble in Water as that Liquid Substance was: Nor is the Hardness and Brittleness of Salt more difficult for Nature to introduce into such a yielding body as Water, then it is for her to make the Bones of a Chick out of the tender Substance of the Liquors of an Egg. But ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... cast athwart the path, that she had come on another couple of steps, that she had stopped again, that her gaze was now no doubt concerned with his profile. He did not seek to make it the less harsh, to soften the expression of bitterness and uncouth hardness which his bit of a mirror had shown him in the dugout. He found that without turning to see he could remember just what her eyes looked like. And he had seen them only once and that when his chief concern was a bullet ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... another, the pupils shook their heads. And the foreman of the apprentices said, "I have heard much about that wonderful armor, and its extreme hardness, and I doubt if any skill can make a sword with edge so sharp and true as to cut into it. The best that can be done is to try to make another war coat whose temper shall equal that of ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... revolution. Whenever I want to purchase any thing, the vender usually answers my question by another, and with a rueful kind of tone inquires, "En papier, madame?"—and the bargain concludes with a melancholy reflection on the hardness of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... what he had done, never came to him as he dashed on across the many leagues that still lay between him and his goal. His one impulse had been to spare the other from the knowledge that he lived; his one longing was to have the hardness and the bitterness of his own life buried in the oblivion ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... only a small portion was found; and in the present year (1903) a new engineering attempt has been made. A Spanish writer, in 1858, asserted that evidence was found in the caves and mines that in ancient times the Colombians produced an alloy of gold, copper, and iron having the temper and hardness of steel. On a tributary of the River Magdalena there are many curious stone images, sometimes with grotesquely ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... "Violetta, A{ce}, a Violet" (fifteenth century Pictorial Vocabulary); and "Viola Cleafre, Ban-vyrt" (Durham Glossary). It is also mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon translation of the Herbarium of Apuleius in the tenth century as "the Herb Viola purpurea; (1) for new wounds and eke for old; (2) for hardness of the maw" (Cockayne's translation). In this last example it is most probable that our sweet-scented Violet is the plant meant, but in some of the other cases it is quite certain that some other plant is meant, and perhaps in all. For Violet was a name given very loosely to many ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... beginnings and ends of things. The third volume, then, tells us little about the person to whom they relate. The two volumes of autobiography tell all that we can seek to know, and the reader who judges them in an equitable spirit will be ready to allow that, when all is said that can be said of her hardness, arbitrariness, and insularity, Harriet Martineau is still a singular and worthy figure among the conspicuous personages of a generation that has now almost vanished. Some will wonder how it was that her literary ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... aloof for that long year, feeling that he was in the wrong. He had not acted as a Thorne should, and he could never be the same to her as in old days. But she had wanted her boy, nevertheless, right or wrong, and since Percival had pardoned him, and since it was partly Godfrey's hardness that had driven him into deceit, and since he was so ill, and since—and since—she loved him, she drew his head down to her and kissed him. Horace was weak, and he had to turn his face away and wipe his eyes. But, relinquishing Percival's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... pale face, in which the features derived from his father had acquired some of the maternal refinement, one could already detect signs of sly and crafty ambition and insatiable desire, with the hardness of heart and envious hatred of a peasant's son whom his mother's means and nervous temperament had turned into a member ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... truly grieved as she said this, that he struggled for a moment with his real disappointment, and then answered more cheerfully, but still with a little hardness in his tone: ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Mr. Slocum, halting in one of his nervous walks up and down the room, "you are the oddest composition of hardness ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Providence for letting her witness so much beauty. This was the nature, with its antecedents and surroundings, to come shortly into communion with Shelley, at the time of his despondency at his wife's hardness and supposed desertion; Shelley then, so far from self-sufficiency, yearning after sympathy and an ideal in life, with all his former idols shattered. Godwin's house became for him the home of intellectual ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... for a reply. But none came. The Marquis considered him, strangely silent, a half smile of disdain at the corners of his lips, an ominous hardness ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... The relative hardness of the diamond, in different directions, is a singular fact. An experienced workman, on whose judgement I can rely, informed me that he has seen a diamond ground with diamond powder on a cast-iron mill for three hours without its being at all worn, but that, on changing its direction with respect ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... found only as small brilliant crystals of a yellowish-brown colour, somewhat resembling chalybite in general appearance. They are usually pyramidal in habit, often having the form of double six-sided pyramids with the triangular faces deeply striated parallel to their shorter edges. Hardness 4.5-5; specific gravity 3.18-3.24. The mineral, named after the zoologist and mineralogist J.G. Children (1777-1852), secretary of the Royal Society, was detected in 1823 on specimens obtained some ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Priest Caiphas and his retinue did not lose their presence of mind, and by the outward tranquillity which their diabolical hardness of heart enabled them to preserve, they calmed the confusion in a great degree, and then did their utmost to prevent the people from looking upon these stupendous events as testimonies of the innocence of ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... it keeps itself within the limits of the law and only proclaims duty, must have hidden, in its very hardness, a sweet kernel of promise. For what God commands ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... his. He looked at her, thinking how beautiful she was, and thinking—not for the first time either—that he was not sure whether that very beauty did not repel rather than charm him. For it seemed to have at once the glitter of ice and the hardness of stone; her large, dark, bright eyes seemed to pierce him, but they never touched his heart; a smile sometimes broke the perfect lines of her lips, but never reached those eyes; the natural play of her features seemed ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... little over three fourths of the comparisons made by children of 6, 7, and 8 years are in terms of hardness. The other ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... ghastly engine—a globe of black, lifeless, excoriated metal? It would be that,—probably it was once that; but assuredly it would be, were it not that all the substance of which it is made sucks and breathes the brilliancy of the atmosphere; and as it breathes, softening from its merciless hardness, it falls into fruitful and beneficent dust; gathering itself again into the earths from which we feed, and the stones with which we build;— into the rocks that frame the mountains, and the ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... jolt—which it did every few seconds—I clung wildly to the straps to keep myself from descending suddenly and violently to the floor; and in less than an hour every bone in my body was crying out against the inhuman hardness of my couch. In spite of everything, I fell asleep, and awoke feeling colder than I ever remember feeling before. I started up, banging my head on the roof as I did so, to find that the carriage door was swinging wide open. ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... let her go and she was in the saddle, a place where she felt more at home than in a man's arms with her face crushed against his shirt, turning to avoid its rough texture and uncomfortably conscious of the hardness of his lean breast. She decided not to speak to him again, for she was afraid he might break forth into those protestations of love ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... generations before our own matter was a sheer and positive density. Its hardness, solidity, and actuality could not be gainsaid. Earth was earth; iron was iron; wood was wood. Blood was blood; flesh was flesh; bone was bone. A man was a material being attached to a material planet, ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... crucifixion of feeling through which those workers have passed, and by their self-denying endurance of hardness, they too, in no small sense, have been making expiation for the wrongs done the slaves. Their missionary instinct also forms the necessary spiritual complement of the aggressive genius of the Puritan civilization which is now taking possession where its sword had cleared the way. Their advance ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 10. October 1888 • Various
... right when he says that hatred "steels the mind and sets the resolution." If he had stopped there, I should not have questioned his theory. Again and again one has seen indolent, flabby, and irresolute natures stimulated to activity and "steeled" into hardness by the deep, though perhaps unuttered, desire to repay an insult or avenge an injury. It is in his superlative that Sir Arthur goes astray. When he affirms that hatred "steels the mind and sets the resolution as no other emotion can do," his psychology is curiously ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... how the apparent clash has come about. It appears that Albertus Magnus in the thirteenth century, accepting the ancient and orthodox view of his time, remarked that the pear is rightly considered masculine because of the hardness of its wood, the coarseness of its leaves, and the close texture of its fruit. Evidently our pear has been developed away from the mediaeval pear, while the apple has remained comparatively stable. The careful cultivation of the apple ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... the feelings of others; it is hard to sympathize with others and not yield a little of our inward truth. The same antagonism is found in the religions of the world. The religions in which truth, justice, freedom, are developed tend to isolation, coldness, and hardness. On the other hand, the religions of brotherhood and human sympathy tend to weakness, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... no direct stipend to their clergymen in England has led to a reluctance to contribute good salaries for their support out here, where they must rely solely upon such support; and the lowness of salaries, if not the hardness of the work, has made the Anglican clergy in Australia as a class inferior to their English brethren. Of course the clergy still contains a large proportion of gentlemen within its ranks, but on the score of ability I fancy the ex-Dissenters ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... so. Some subtle element of his character had forsaken him. He felt it. He knew it. Some certain stiffness that had given him all his rigidity, that had lent force to his authority, weight to his dominance, temper to his fine, inflexible hardness, was diminishing day by day. In the decisions which he, as President of the League, was called upon to make so often, he now hesitated. He could no longer be arrogant, masterful, acting upon his own judgment, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... hand. At that sign of hardness, FALDER becomes rigid. Then, turning, he goes out quietly in the detective's grip. JAMES follows, stiff and erect. SWEEDLE, rushing to the door with open mouth, pursues them through the outer office ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... what he must have been when placed in the seat of pride and power. What must have been the insolence of that man towards the natives of India, who, when called here to answer for enormous crimes, presumes to behave, not with the firmness of innocence, but with the audacity and hardness ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... they took to expounding her speeches. Whatever she uttered in a mystic sense they feigned to accept in its material hardness. To free herself from such snares she displayed, what they had least expected, very ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... At Christmas, the hardness of winter doth rage, A griper of all things, and specially age; Then sadly poor people, the young and the old, Be sorest ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... yet no one touched a needle, and Mrs. King sat, hurriedly stabbing pins into the fat cushion on her breast, as if testing the hardness ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... has a conscience. He's a bit of an idealist—more or less our kind. His success among the miners and the peasants is simply phenomenal! Sometimes, I must say, he isn't an easy man to bear, he's got a mixture of hardness and sentimentality. But, as I said before, I know how to value conscientiousness; no doubt about that. But before I forget ... I do attach some importance to it ... a man ought to know what he has to ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... made to repay her for the hardness of her life now seemed utterly fruitless. "I would like to repay him," he thought, shaken with a sudden spasm of hatred as he looked at the man before him. The cheerless little kitchen, the cold, half-baked potatoes and sausages on the table, and the drunken man asleep, seemed to him a kind ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... I merely will not let him love another, that is all—But what is this you say?" Her velvet eyes had lost a little of their hardness; they were as round as buttons and fixed ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... ridden while the land was still plastic from the rain. Farther, wind and sun had dried the ridge-turf to its normal firmness and baked the dobe flats till in places they were of their old flinty hardness. Yet Piegan crossed at a lope places where neither MacRae nor I could glimpse a sign—and when we would come again to soft ground the trail of the three would rise up to confront us, and bid us marvel at the keenness of his vision. He had a ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... because they are purely human; but the age has nothing that pleases her. "It is cynical or pedantic," she writes to Voltaire; "there is no grace, no facility, no imagination. Everything is a la glace, hardness without force, license without gaiety; ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... my wicked leaving my father's house, and abandoning my duty. All the good counsels of my parents, my father's tears and my mother's entreaties, came now fresh into my mind; and my conscience, which was not yet come to the pitch of hardness to which it has since, reproached me with the contempt of advice, and the breach of my duty to God and ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... of an entirely new article, for the provision of which no steps had been taken before the war. There happened to be special technical difficulties in the way of producing the article, e.g. the hardness of the steel necessary for this type of shell, and devising a safe and effective fuse. There is, moreover, one matter in connection with this question of high-explosive for our 18-pounders which should be mentioned, but to which no reference finds ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... structure and the mechanical properties of wood. A student should inform himself concerning the standard methods of testing the properties of structural timber, by bending, compression, shearing, torsion, impact, and the hardness and tension tests, with their relation to heat and moisture, and the methods of seasoning, the use of preservatives, and the effect of the rate of application ...
— The Training of a Forester • Gifford Pinchot
... leave before then. If you are anxious to impart news to Miss Whalley, you may tell her also that Mrs. Denys is going to be my wife, and that the marriage will take place—" he looked at Avery again and all the hardness went out of his face—"just as soon ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... took the hue Of that washed bulletin-board in view, And seemed to bear the public grief As private, and uncertain of relief; Yea, many an earnest heart was won, As broodingly he plodded on, To find in himself some bitter thing, Some hardness in his lot as ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... think I am aware of. There are times when, for one's own sake, as well as for that of others, to be—or, if that is not possible, to seem—absorbed in outward things of the most indifferent description is highly desirable; and I am even conscious sometimes of a sort of hardness, which seems to come involuntarily to my aid, in seasons when I know myself or fear that others are about to be carried away by their feelings, or to break ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... boatman's efforts. He swung his craft in below upon a bar and roped it fast to a tree. The Indians crowded above him on the bank. The boatman raised his powerful form erect, lifted a bronzed face which seemed set in craggy hardness, and cast from narrow eyes a keen, cool glance on those above. The silvery gleam in his ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... in London, under circumstances which made that silence a reflection on my character. The major was most kind; his confidence in me remained unshaken; but could his confidence protect me against his wife's prejudice and his daughter's ill-will? Oh, the hardness of women to each other! Oh, the humiliation if men only knew some of us as we really are! What could I do? I couldn't defend myself against mere imputations; and I couldn't remain in my situation ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins |
