"Impressionable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boy, don't be alarmed," said the Major, turning to smile at his son. "It is only that I am a little nervous and impressionable from my illness. But it is strange how a depth attracts, and how necessary it is for boys to be careful and master themselves when tempted to do things that are risky. Upon my word, I marvel at the daring of you fellows in running such a risk as ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... there is much exaggeration in all you have told me. Your imagination has been struck, and you have suffered it to carry you away, so that you believe all you say now; but I can assure you, you are mistaken. You are impressionable, susceptible, but too young to understand the real passion of love. At your age, young girls have very often some little love affair with the engaging young dancer they met at the last ball. You, who have been kept out of society on account of the masculine education you ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... his thought, he would have said that the earth itself did not afford a fairer picture than that which lay within the level radius of his vision, and which had imprinted itself so powerfully upon his impressionable and youthful heart. It was not the scenery of Virginia either, the landscape on the Potomac, of which he would have spoken so enthusiastically, though even that were a thing not to be disdained by such a lover of the beautiful as Seymour had shown himself to be,—the dry ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... company there, amongst men of considerable position. And you know, what that means: thick waists, bald heads, teeth that are not—as some satirist puts it. Imagine amongst them a nice boy, fresh and simple, like an apple just off the tree; a modest, good-looking, impressionable, adoring young barbarian. My word! What a change! What a relief for jaded feelings! And with that, having, in his nature that, dose; of poetry which saves even a simpleton from ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... might come and go. His wife was simply a shadow and echo of himself; one of those clinging, tender, unselfish, will-less women, who make pleasant, and affectionate, and sunny wives enough for rich, prosperous, unsentimental husbands, but who are millstones about the necks of sensitive, impressionable, unsuccessful men. If Jane Miller had been a strong, determined woman, Reuben would not have been a failure. The only thing he had needed in life had been persistent purpose and courage. The right sort of wife would have given him both. ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... piteous!" repeated Miss Kingsley, as we went downstairs. "He acted shamefully, of course, and there is no excuse for his conduct. But though it is impossible to justify him, I can pity him, can't you? His nature is so impressionable; and when he is interested in anything there is no half way with him: he wants the whole or nothing. If you will excuse my saying so, several of us have been afraid of something of this sort. I wanted to warn you; but I said to myself, 'It may be Virginia ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... one reason why I'm dead against women's colleges is because they shut girls up with women, at the most impressionable period of the girls' lives, when they should be meeting members of the opposite sex continually, learning to tolerate their little weaknesses and ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... physique of the type of Chief Justice Chase rarely live beyond sixty or sixty-five. They are not invalids, but they are subject to fever, congestion, and paralysis, violent crises. The women are slight, graceful, impressionable, and active. In the poorer ranks of life they have a nervous, anxious look; in the well-to-do and wealthier ranks, a nervous, spiritual look. They are not invalids, but they are delicate, and are kept under a constant and chafing restraint from want of strength to carry out the plans they set before ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... when Borrow, the thirteen year old son of the veteran soldier—who had already been in Ireland picking up scraps of Irish, and in Scotland adding to his knowledge of Gaelic—settled down for some of his most impressionable years in Norwich, Joseph John Gurney was a young man of twenty-eight and Elizabeth Fry was thirty-six. Dr. James Martineau was eleven years of age and his sister Harriet was fourteen. Another equally clever woman, not then married ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... time or school has outlived its usefulness; and morality, because it is hard or tiresome, must give way to the freedom and romance of no morality. Such blind and irresponsible agitation is a perpetual menace to the balance of impressionable and unsteady minds, if not indeed to the work ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... the Committee shut their eyes to the fact that Mr. IRVING'S histrionic ability, and his popularity with those who attended his exhibitions could only intensify the injurious effect which such representations must have upon young and impressionable minds. In his opinion, much as he regretted having to say so, the Lyceum was nothing less than a School of Murder. It aggravated rather than extenuated the evil to be told, as they had been told, that all these deeds of violence had been represented ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... that from the very first she had put herself upon a footing of safety by telling her story to the vicar. But the vicar would, not without her permission repeat that story to Mr. Juxon. Was she herself called upon to do so? She was a very sensitive woman, and her impressionable nature had been strongly affected by what she had suffered. An almost morbid fear of seeming to make false pretences possessed her. She was more than thirty years of age, it is true, but she saw plainly enough in her glass that she was ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... in her head," she mused. "What a piece of luck!—that she happened to be in that car that day. Of course, the fact that he saved her life has cast a glamour of romance around him—Violet is very impressionable—and it may take time to disenchant her. I hope that nurse was vigilant and did not allow her to see much of him; however, one thing is sure, she won't get a ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... whatever book my fingers lighted upon. And read I did, whether I understood one word in ten or two words on a page. The words themselves fascinated me; but I took no conscious account of what I read. My mind must, however, have been very impressionable at that period, for it retained many words and whole sentences, to the meaning of which I had not the faintest clue; and afterward, when I began to talk and write, these words and sentences would ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... which she is wearing. The opportunity will be a favourable one, for to-morrow is the weekly occasion on which you raise the shutters and deny customers at an earlier hour; and it is really more modest that one of my impressionable refinement should be away from the house altogether and not merely in the inner chamber when that which is now here ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... days of weeping upon her part caused him to avoid the subiect thereafter. Could the exile have seen the confidential correspondence in the secret archives the plan would have been plain to him, for there it is suggested that his impressionable character could best be reached through the sufferings of his family, and that only his mother and sisters should be allowed to visit him. Steps in this plot were the gradual pardoning and returning of the members of his family to ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... placed low in the animal scale—the frog especially, an animal that has rendered him greater service than even man himself could have done. Cold-blooded animals offer, moreover, the advantage of being less impressionable than others, and the experiments to which they are submitted present more accurate conclusions, since it is not necessary to take so much account of the victim's restlessness. And then it is necessary in many cases to choose subjects that possess endurance. The unfortunate frog, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... But she had seen very little of the world, and had known very few men. Her first recollections of society were indistinct, and no one individual had made any more impression upon her than another, perhaps because she was in reality not very impressionable. But Paul was preeminently a man able to impress himself upon others when he chose. He had come to Carvel Place, had loved his cousin, and she had returned his love with a readiness which had surprised herself. It was genuine in its way, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... He is not impressionable, excitable or arousable. Things do not "stir him up" as they do other people. He is more self-contained, self-controlled and self-sufficient than any other. He is not easily carried off his feet and seldom yields to impulse. ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... were always carefully adjusted to a crack between the puncheons of the floor, literally "toeing the mark "; his broad trousers, frayed out liberally at the hem, revealed his skinny and scarred little ankles, for his out-door adventures were not without a record upon the more impressionable portions of his anatomy; his waistband was drawn high up under his shoulder-blades and his ribs, and girt over the shoulders of his unbleached cotton shirt by braces, which all his learning did not prevent him from calling "galluses"; his cut, scratched, calloused hands were held stiffly down at ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... whatever has belonged to or has been used by any person seems to me to have received some special quality, which, though often invisible and still oftener indefinable, still exists in a more or less strong degree according to the amount of the impressionable power, if I may call it so, which distinguished the possessor. I am aware that this sentiment may be stigmatized as of the school-girl order; that it is, indeed, of the same kind and class with that which leads an otherwise honest person to steal a ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... nobody knows about it, and that's where they met—she fell asleep, which sounds an odd thing to do in the midst of such a gale as was raging on Christmas Eve, and so was overwhelmed. But who can say? Impressionable and unhappy women have done such deeds before now, especially if they imagine themselves to have become the object of gossip. Of course, also, the mere possibility of such a thing having happened on his account would be, and indeed has been, enough to drive ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... spite of the velvet cloak of courtesy, our Peruvian is a born tyrant, and you—forgive me—but you know you're the very child of caprice. I am most thankful, however, that you are not impressionable. Otherwise this experience might leave a bitter ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... to prefer the nobler methods, which every man in love with glory tries first of all. Lucien was struggling as yet with himself and his own desires, and not with the difficulties of life; at strife with his own power, and not with the baseness of other men, that fatal exemplar for impressionable minds. The brilliancy of his intellect had a keen attraction for David. David admired his friend, while he kept him out of the scrapes into which he was led by the ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... that novel ended. Remember that you are to say to him the moment you see him that I was right about the novel, and that he is to look and see if it did not end as I said it would. And Loretta—" here she rose and approached the speaker with a sweet, appealing look which brought tears to the impressionable girl's eyes, "don't go gossiping about me downstairs. I sha'n't be sick long. I am going to be better soon, very soon. By the time you see me here again I shall be quite like my old self. Forget how—how"—and Loretta ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... people, more elastic, and more impressionable than his countrymen. Anton remarked with amazement how perfectly Lenore seemed in her element among them. Her face, too, grew flushed; she laughed and gesticulated like the rest; and her eyes looked, he thought, boldly into the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... neglecting to pick up any little hints which she may glean in such things from older friends. But there are people to whom these questions seem of such first importance, that to be with them when you are young and impressionable, is to feel every defect in your own personal appearance to be a crime, and to believe that there is neither worth, nor love, nor happiness (no life, in fact, worth living for) connected with much less than ten thousand a year, and 'connections.' ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... gods," or bojki, was founded about 1880 by a peasant named Sava. Highly impressionable by nature, and influenced by the activities of at least a dozen different sects that flourished in his native village (Derabovka, near Volsk), Sava ended by believing himself ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... the famous beauty, was always somewhat shy. She was not a wit, but she possessed the gift of drawing out what was best in others. Her biographers have blamed her that she had not a more impressionable temper, that she was not more sympathetic. Perhaps (in spite of her courage when she took up contributions in the churches dressed as a Neo-Greek) she was always hampered by shyness. She certainly attracted all the best and most gifted of her time, and had a noble fearlessness in ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... troops touches my responsibility, as Commander-in-Chief to the mothers and fathers and kindred of the men who came to France in the impressionable period of youth. They could not have the privilege accorded European soldiers during their periods of leave of visiting their families and renewing their home ties. Fully realizing that the standard of conduct that should be established for ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... with the manifestation of the Christian standard of opinion on force and all that is based on force. If this standard already influences some, the most impressionable, and impels each in his own sphere to abandon advantages based on the use of force, then its influence will extend further and further till it transforms the whole order of men's actions and puts it into accord with ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... little short of criminal that at this critical juncture so many young people should be handed over to the ignorant ministrations of professional evangelism. The true sociological significance of the development is ignored, and it is small wonder that, having wasted this impressionable period, so many people should go through life with a quite rudimentary sense of social responsibility and duty. An American author, speaking of the connection between certain brutal manifestations in social life in the United States ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... was simple and light, with a little break in its sweetness. Sissy's touch was childlike, but her impressionable temperament, quickened by the strangeness of that dark room behind her, overflowed into the melody her fingers brought out. The accompanying bass was rhythmic, and the nervous, fevered child found mental ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... (the most confidential, the most interesting, I think) are lost forever: in them she is reflected as she reflects French society in them. Endowed—morally and physically—with a robust health, she is expansive, loyal, confiding, impressionable, loving gayety in full abundance as much as she does the smile of the refined, as eager for the prattle of the court as for solid reading, smitten with nobiliary pride, a captive of the prejudices, superstitions and tastes of her ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... world, and there he saw it in perfection, not only in its intrinsic attributes, but in the universal respect and adhesion with which it was received. He said, though he did not understand a word of English, he could have cried at the Queen's voice in reading the Speech. He is very "impressionable," and I am convinced at the time he was ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... feverishly. Dick Sherwood was the victim Maggie and Barney and Old Jimmie were so cautiously and elaborately trying to trim! It seemed an impossible coincidence. But no, not impossible, after all. Their net had been spread for just such game: a young man, impressionable, pleasure-loving, with plenty of money, and with no strings tied to his spending of it. That Barney should have made his acquaintance was easily explained; to establish acquaintance with such persons as Dick ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... man like Roka there was no difficulty in following the line which Hendry and the supercargo had taken; their footsteps showed deep in the soft, sandy soil, rendered the more impressionable by the heavy downfall of rain a few hours before. And even had they left no traces underfoot of their progress, the countless broken branches and vines which they had pushed or torn aside on their way through the ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... square, at one of the tables, he awaited his chance and a plausible excuse for questioning the old man without giving offence. Somewhere back in his impressionable brain there was growing a distinct hope that this beautiful young creature with the dreamy eyes was something more than a mere shopgirl. It had occurred to him in that one brief moment of contact that she had the air, the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... school. It was not the custom of the family; and Mrs. Allison could not be induced to break the tradition. There was accordingly a succession of tutors, whose Church-principles at least were sound. And Ancoats showed himself for a time an impressionable, mystical boy, entirely in sympathy with his mother. His confirmation was a great family emotion, and when he was seventeen Mrs. Allison had difficulty in making him take food enough in Lent to keep him in health. Maxwell ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... man. As much as Hortense loved liberty, her suspicious husband wished to hold firmly the reins of conjugal authority. He was prematurely afflicted with various infirmities, almost always morbidly nervous and impressionable, disposed to take a dark view of everything, and bore no resemblance to the type of hero which Hortense had imagined. Moreover, the unhappy husband endured a hidden anguish which he had to conceal from every one and which tortured his heart; he imagined that his rival with his wife ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... father, marry his daughter. But no; such a fiddler as he can't be married, unless unhappily." Mr. Helwyse runs his hands dreamily through his tangled mane, and shakes it back. If philosophical, he seems also to be romantic and imaginative, and impressionable by other personalities. It is, to be sure, unfair to judge a man from such unconsidered words as he may let fall during the first half-hour after waking up in the morning; were it otherwise, we should infer that, although he might take a genuine interest in whomever he meets, it would ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... for life, but as a life itself. Plainly, if we give it a meaning as wide as this, a great part of education lies outside the school, in the influences of the home surroundings and, after school, of occupation and the whole social environment. But during the school years—and they are the most impressionable of all—it is the school life that is for most the chief formative influence; and now more necessarily so than ever. When, a few generations back, life was still, in the main, life in the country, and most things were still made at home or in the village, the most important part of education ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... uncompromising speech. That is by far better than to make a hero out of a McClellan. But the misdeeds of the Administration easily confused such impressionable receptive minds ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... of "Vive Bonaparte!" which came from the lower part of the Rue du Mont Blanc, and swept like a sonorous wave toward the Rue de la Victoire, told Josephine of her husband's return. The impressionable Creole had awaited him anxiously. She sprang to meet him in such agitation that she was unable to utter ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... the rest knew—that it was (to use the Andover phraseology) not of predestination or foreordination, but of free will absolute, that an Andover girl passed through life alone. This little social fact, which is undoubtedly true of most, if not all, university towns, had mingled effects upon impressionable girls. For the proportion of masculine society was almost Western ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... boy wasn't abnormal. But I knew, on the other hand, that he was an exceptionally impressionable and sensitive child. And I couldn't be sorry for that, for if there's anything I abhor in this world it's torpor. And whatever he may have been, nothing could shake me in my firm conviction that a child's own mother is the best person to watch ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... known that these feeling pages are but transcripts of an episode of his own heart-history. That the tale is one of almost feminine sentimentality is due, in some measure, perhaps, to the fact that, during his earliest and most impressionable years, Lamartine was educated by his mother and was greatly influenced by her ardent and poetical character. Who shall say how much depends on one's environment during these tender years of childhood, and how often has it not been proved that "the child is father ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... However, he did go on, and in another two minutes was climbing the steep sides of the tumulus. There was a wan moon in the cold sky—the wind whistled most drearily through the naked boughs of the great oaks, which groaned in answer like things in pain. Harold was not a nervous or impressionable man, but the place had a spectral look about it, and he could not help thinking of the evil reputation it had borne for all those ages. There was scarcely a man in Honham, or in Boisingham either, who could have been persuaded ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... the people, as their heads are always stuffed with thoughts of their daily bread, of wood for the fire, of bad roads, of illnesses. It is a hard-working, an uninteresting life, and only silent, patient cart-horses like Mary Vassilyevna could put up with it for long; the lively, nervous, impressionable people who talked about vocation and serving the idea were soon weary of it and gave ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the library at Lady MacMillan's. It was a clever painting of the Medusa, level-eyed, with a red mouth like a wound, and dimly seen, pale glimmering features, between the lazy writhing of dark snakes. The thing had fascinated Mary in her impressionable schoolgirl days, but now she tried to huddle the idea quickly out of her head, for it seemed disloyal and even disgusting in connection ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... fine old chap, with his height and straightness, his bright blue eyes and proud silver head, is a sight for sore eyes, as they say. But just then I had glimpsed something that was even better worth seeing. I am not impressionable, but I must confess that I was impressed by ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... I am impressionable and imaginative. I had a disturbing vision of darkness, full of lean jaws and wild eyes, amongst the hundred electric lights of the place. But somehow this vision made me angry, too. The sight of that ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... melancholy; but its essence is to aspire ardently after life, light, and emotion, to be expansive, adventurous, and gay. Our word GAY, it is said, is itself Celtic. It is not from gaudium, but from the Celtic gair, to laugh; {84} and the impressionable Celt, soon up and soon down, is the more down because it is so his nature to be up to be sociable, hospitable, eloquent, admired, figuring away brilliantly. He loves bright colours, he easily becomes audacious, ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... but his mind was open to any new, agreeable impressions and, indeed, it received them at every turn. Phoebe Lyddon awoke a very vital train of thoughts, and when he left her, promising to come with his brother on the following day to see the miller, John Grimbal's impressionable heart was stamped with her pretty image, his ear still held the melody of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... husband, and we are ignorant of the manner in which he acquitted himself of his mission. She had yielded as much from inexperience as from compulsion, to a man who for five years had made her life a martyrdom. She lived at Falaise in an isolation that accorded ill with her yearning for love and her impressionable nature. The person who now came suddenly into her life corresponded so well with her idea of a hero—he was so handsome, so brave, so generous, he spoke with such gentleness and politeness that Mme. Acquet, ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... moment of their birth. So should they learn to speak English undefiled from their earliest utterance. "How," demanded Sir Oracle, "can a mother reasonably expect her child to learn correct speech, when she continually accustoms its impressionable gray matter to such absurd expressions and distortions of our noble tongue as thoughtless mothers inflict every day on the helpless creatures committed to their care? Can a child who is constantly called 'tweet itty wee singie' ever attain ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... more than could be expected of human nature. But it is true that he seemed to lose where those two artists proved they had everything to gain from a style that passed detail swiftly, treating it suggestively. They were by nature impressionable to a different aspect of life, and in self expression ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... thrown over the gunwale. Her eyes closed, and despite the extreme discomfort of her position, utter weariness claimed her, and she sank into that borderland of oblivion that is neither restful sleep, nor impressionable wakefulness. ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... impressionable condition which is called hypnotic, mesmeric, somnambulic, or somniloquent, it has long been known that the subject may be absolutely controlled by the operator, or by a simple command or suggestion, or by his own imagination. This ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... know what follows Death, or if nothing follows it, which accounts for the marvellous diffusion of the so-called Spiritualism which is only Swedenborgianism systematised and earned out into action, amongst nervous and impressionable races like the Anglo-American. In England it is the reverse; the obtuse sensitiveness of a people bred on beef and beer has made the "Religion of the Nineteenth Century" a manner of harmless magic, whose ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... person they are less strongly made; but in intellect they are superior to any of the half-casts. They possess a very great aptitude for mechanical employments, great dexterity and a remarkable degree of imitative talent, which, if well directed, might be brilliantly developed. They are exceedingly impressionable, and all their feelings are readily exalted into passions. Indifferent to all out sensual enjoyments, they indulge in the fleeting pleasure of the present moment, and are regardless of the future. There ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... for her, after all," Wingrave continued coolly. "She possesses powers which you yourself have already admitted, and you, I should say, are a fairly impressionable person, so far as her sex is concerned. Confess now, that she did not ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... other curiosity. Prosper's own reticence, they felt, was probably due to the tender age at which he had separated from his relations. But when it was known that Prosper's mother had driven to the house with a very pretty girl of eighteen, there was a flutter of excitement in that impressionable community. Prosper, with his usual shyness, had evaded an early meeting with her, and was even loitering irresolutely on his way home from work, when, as he approached the house, to his discomfiture the door suddenly opened, the young lady ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... let me put you right on one question. Dicky is not in love with this girl yet. If he were, he would not wish any meeting between you and her. He is interested and attracted, of course, as any impressionable man with an eye for beauty would be if thrown in constant companionship with her. And, forgive me, but I am sure you have taken the ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... Here is the artistic, impressionable temperament, easily disheartened, with little self-reliant courage or grit. But he seems to have felt a little ashamed of his plaint, for at midnight of the same day he wrote a second letter, half apologetic and much ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... Involuntary movements without loss of consciousness constitute the disorder commonly known as St. Vitus's Dance. It is rare in early childhood, becomes more common after the age of five, and attains its greatest frequency between the ages of ten and fifteen, girls, owing to their more impressionable nervous system, being affected by it more than twice as often ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... could not understand. She turned hither and thither in her appeal for help and understanding, and everybody turned aside as if she were an outcast. The iron of injustice began to enter her soul. She was at the impressionable age, when she felt deeply every injury done her. She thought much of Ann Barnes and Martin Christiansen, her two friends. They would have understood. They would have answered the questions, told her the truth which her mother hinted at yet failed to explain. It was a period ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... and impressionable of all the queens of France, the charming and unfortunate Mary Stuart, after having seen Rizzio murdered almost in her arms, fell in love, nevertheless, with the Earl of Bothwell; but she was a queen and queens are ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... convention formulated by Claude and the Poussins. Raeburn, on the other hand, had looked at man and nature inquiringly, and had evolved a manner of expressing the results of his observation for himself. Moreover he was past the easily impressionable age, and turned his opportunities to direct and practical uses. He used to declare that the advice of James Byres (1734-1818?) of Tonley, who, in Raeburn's own words, was "a man of great general information, a profound antiquary, and one ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... gave him a nod of dismissal, and for some time sat gazing round the somewhat severely furnished office, wondering with some uneasiness what effect such surroundings might have on a noble but impressionable temperament. He brought round a few sketches the next day to brighten the walls, and replated the gum-bottle and other useful ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... he said, with a sardonic smile. "And I fear that in the stillness of the place I have overheard a great part of your conversation. Frank, I must congratulate you on your discretion, so far. But seeing that you are young and impressionable, I am going to move temptation out of your way. Enid, I am going on ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... upright. She held out her hands like a child, to the least impressionable boatman. In an instant she was clasping ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... our present social conditions and tendencies. All of it is of the sort that ought to be familiar to whoever presumes to have opinions upon economic questions, and particularly to all who would direct or influence the impressionable public. This volume should be in the hands of all who would like to build for their opinions some foundation more solid than prejudice and emotion."—New ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... as a boy he had copied into a wonderful copy-book that is still preserved in the Library of Congress some verses that set forth pretty accurately his ideal of life—an ideal influenced, may we not believe, in those impressionable years by these very lines. These are the verses—one can not call them poetry—just as I copied them after the clear boyish hand from the ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... young girls with antimony on their eyelids and henna on their nails, listening to stories that only the late Sir Richard Burton dared to render literally into the English tongue. While these children are young and impressionable they are allowed to run wild, but from the day when they become ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... By a Knave of like Suit, an Attachment to a Man younger than the Querist. Influenced by any high heart other than those above, an Amorous or Affectionate Temper of mind or body. By a low heart, an impressionable, kindly Nature. These are Five Special Interpretings. The more general are: influenced by a Diamond, Good Fortune in something, measured by the degree of the Influencing Card. By a Club, a Talent or Gift to be made much of. By a Spade, an ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... of peaceful Eastern England more fully and deeply than did George Borrow. An East Anglian born, he was nurtured within the borders of Norfolk during many of the most impressionable years of his life, and when world-worn and weary, he sought rest from his wanderings, he came back to East Anglia to die. During his latter days, he became rather inaccessible; but an East Englishman always had a better chance of successfully approaching him than any one not so fortunate ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... Campanini, Lucca, Cary, Parepa, Albani, Hauk, Gerster, Nevada. There are others whom fond recollection will call back, some belonging indubitably to the first rank, like Maurel, some who will live on because they gladdened the hearts of the young people of a generation ago, who were more impressionable than critical. Some men of middle age (as they think) now will not want to forget Mlle. Ambre or Mlle. Marimon, and will continue to forgive the homely features of Mme. Scalchi for the sake of her perfect physical poise and ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... where this simile is employed,[31] the deduction from it is pressed to the furthest limit, and free-will is denied women altogether. Feminine susceptibility is pronounced to be incurable; wavering, impressionable emotion is a main constituent of woman's being; women are not responsible for the sins they commit nor ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... ascertained the following facts, which may guide every horse-owner in the application of electricity to an animal that is opposed to being shod: (1) To a horse that defends himself because he is irritable by temperament, and nervous and impressionable (as happens with animals of pure or nearly pure blood), the shock must be administered feebly and gradually before an endeavor is made to take hold of his leg. The horse will then make a jump, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... sophisticated, as were most of the young women at home whom I knew intimately (as were the Watling twins, for example, with one of whom, Frances, I had had, by the way, rather a lively flirtation the spring before); she seemed refreshingly original, impressionable and plastic.... ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... either early in life, when pubescence is, or is about to be, established, or late in life, when sexual desire has become either entirely extinct or very much abated. Young boys and girls are exceedingly impressionable at, or just before, puberty, and are apt to embrace religion with the utmost enthusiasm. A distinguished evangelist declares that "men and women seldom or never enter into the kingdom of God after they have arrived at maturity. Out of a thousand converts, seven ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... July, 1864, gold was selling in New York at 285. There was distress and discontent throughout the country. The horrible slaughter of the Wilderness, still fresh in everybody's mind, had put the whole Union Party into mourning. The impressionable Greeley became frantic for peace peace at any price. At the psychological moment word was conveyed to him that two persons in Canada held authority from the Confederacy to enter into negotiations for peace. Greeley wrote to Lincoln demanding negotiations because "our bleeding, ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... latter apartment, and there enjoy the distractions of literature and society. For a few days after he made his first appearance there his lovely hostess was all attention and devotion; but, finding that he was anything but an agreeable or impressionable companion, she soon wearied of his society. Mr. Archer, shortly after the accident had taken place, had been summoned from home by important business connected with some mining property which he possessed, and which necessitated his presence in the interior of Pennsylvania; so Mrs. Archer, ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... extremely Vealy when you used to fancy that you were sure to be a very great man, and to think how proud your relations would some day be of you, and how you would come back and excite a great commotion at the place where you used to be a school-boy. And it is because the world has still left some impressionable spot in your hearts, my readers, that you still have so many fond associations with "the school-boy spot we ne'er forget, though we are there forgot." They were Vealy days, though pleasant to remember, my old school-companions, in which you used to go to the dancing-school, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... detailed personal history of the Olympians. In this connexion we must not forget the power of hallucination, still fairly strong, as the history of religious revivals in America will bear witness,[26:1] but far stronger, of course, among the impressionable hordes of early men. 'The god', says M. Doutte in his profound study of Algerian magic, 'c'est le desir collectif personnifie', the collective desire projected, as it were, or personified.[27:1] Think of the gods who have appeared in great crises of battle, created sometimes ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... noticed a change in him—and that very night he spoke to me. For such an impressionable fellow, he had really extraordinary tenacity, and, spite of the course of Herbert Spencer that I had put him through, he retained his unshaken faith in many things which to me were at that time the merest legends. I remember very well the arguments we used to have on the vexed question ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... "Oh, impressionable youth! 'thou art the gilded sand from which the kiss of a wave washes every impress.' Tune thy myriad atoms to imitate the rock, and gird thyself with strength to meet the battery of onrushing breakers that grind against thee! Be careful, my Lambkin, fall not in love with the first handsome ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... years was so relieved by candid, innocent simplicity, so adorned by pretty fancies and sweet beliefs, and so contrasted and lit up by gleams of a knowledge that the young ladies we call well educated seldom exhibit,—knowledge derived from quick observation of external Nature, and impressionable susceptibility to its varying and subtle beauties. This knowledge had been perhaps first instilled, and subsequently nourished, by such poetry as she had not only learned by heart, but taken up as inseparable ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... poise of her head, all of her listening intently while he talked . . . one could see how he was dominating her. A man with such a personality as his, regularly hypnotic when he chose, and practised in handling women, he would be able to do anything he liked with an impressionable creature like Marise, who as a girl was always under the influence of something or other. It was evident that he could put any idea he liked into Marise's head just by looking at her hard enough. She had seen him do it . . . helped him do ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... that Birdie's term at the home soon ended. She was at that impressionable age which reflects the nearest object of interest, and shortly after Birdie's departure she abandoned the idea of joining her on the professional boards, and decided instead ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... the Tellurionical Records closed what Lavalle himself was pleased to call the theoretical side of his labours—labours from which the youngest and least impressionable planeur might well have shrunk. He had traced through cold and heat, across the deeps of the oceans, with instruments of his own invention, over the inhospitable heart of the polar ice and the sterile visage of the deserts, league by league, patiently, unweariedly, remorselessly, ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... that had swept many another girl off her feet were not to be thought of here. Alix was different. She was not an impressionable, hair-brained flapper, such as he had come in contact with in past experiences. Despite her sprightly, thoroughly up-to-the-moment ease of manner, and an air of complete sophistication, she was singularly old-fashioned in a great many respects. While ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... Beethoven's visit terminated in three months, it is not likely that he derived much benefit from these lessons. On his first meeting with the master he extemporized for him on a subject given him by Mozart. That this was a momentous occasion to the impressionable Beethoven is certain. The emotions called up by the meeting enabled him to play with such effect that when he had finished, the well-known remark was elicited from Mozart: "Pay attention to him. He will make a noise in the world ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... for, that he becomes Ph. D. and can not translate his title,—these are side issues. But it is forgotten that the total examination in which the public school pupil presents his hastily crammed Latin and Greek, never implies a careful training in his most impressionable period of life. Hence the criminalist repeatedly discovers that the capacity for trained thinking belongs mainly to the person who has been drilled for eight years in Greek and Latin grammar. We criminalists have much experience in ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... Carter said, in quiet satisfaction. "I've imagined sometimes that you have a good influence on him— he's impressionable." He fell into silence, and for some time there was no further speech between them. Harriet was content to enjoy this restful interval between the hurry and crowding of Linda's house and the currents and cross-currents that she must ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... sufferings at Saul's hands had not embittered it. His elevation had not lifted him too high to see the old days of lowliness, and the dear memory of the self- forgetting friend whose love had once been an honour to the shepherd lad. Jonathan's name had been written on his heart when it was impressionable, and the lettering was as if 'graven on the rock for ever.' A heart so faithful to its old love needed no prompting either from men or circumstances. Hence the inquiry after 'any that is left of the house of Saul' was occasioned by nothing external, but came welling ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... possibility of laying down a law is clearly hinted at.] It would be possible to suggest, by way of explanation of this, that in highly sensitive people, the way to the soul is so direct and the soul itself so impressionable, that any impression of taste communicates itself immediately to the soul, and thence to the other organs of sense (in this case, the eyes). This would imply an echo or reverberation, such as occurs sometimes ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... he wrote a few magazine articles. The explanation must be found in the temperament and character of the man. His "Two Years Before the Mast'' is a vivid representation of what he saw and experienced at a most impressionable age. He put his young life into it; he was not thinking of literature when he wrote it, and thus the book takes rank with those books which are bits of life rather than products of art. Afterward he was immersed in his law practice, and he was a prodigious worker. He saw with great ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... very brief, simply saying that the Army of the Potomac had 'safely recrossed the Rappahannock,' and was now at its old position on the north bank of that stream. The President's friend, Dr. Henry, an old man and somewhat impressionable, burst into tears,—not so much, probably, at the news as on account of its effect upon Lincoln. The President regarded the old man for an instant with dry eyes, and said, 'What will the country say? Oh, what will the country say?' He ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... persons, but that of thousands more! Magsie would be a rage! Magsie's young favors would be sought far and wide. Magsie's summer home, Magsie's winter apartments, Magsie's clothes and fads, these would belong to the adoring public of the most warmhearted and impressionable city in the world! Rachael saw it all coming with perhaps more certainty than did even the ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... strained his energy and endurance to the breaking-point, he invariably began the new term in a spirit of geniality and hope. It was not till years later that Gordon came to understand the depth of unselfish idealism that burned behind the quiet modesty of the Chief; but even at first sight the least impressionable boy was conscious of being under the influence of an unusual personality. There was nothing of the theatrical pedagogue about him; he surrounded himself with no trappings of a proud authority. His voice was gentle and persuasive; his smile as winning almost as a child's. The little speech with ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... actors naturally required not only uncommon cleverness but also great suppleness of body. As usual, these qualities, together with the qualities of voice, the magnificent dress, and the carefully cultivated long hair, won for the actor demoralising influence over too large a number of the more impressionable and untrammelled ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... women had known what war was and had prayed that its horrors might never return. In even the most autocratic states subjects and rulers were for once of one mind: in the future war must be prevented. To secure peace forever was the earnest desire of two statesmen so strongly contrasted as the impressionable Czar Alexander I of Russia, acclaimed as the "White Angel" and the "Universal Savior," and Prince Metternich, the real ruler of Austria, the spider who was for the next thirty years to spin the web of European secret diplomacy. While the ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish |
