"Pliancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your hands to feel the luxury of the sunbeams. Press the soft blossoms against your cheek, and finger their graces of form, their delicate mutability of shape, their pliancy and freshness. Expose your face to the aerial floods that sweep the heavens, "inhale great draughts of space," wonder, wonder at the wind's unwearied activity. Pile note on note the infinite music that flows ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... valued, and a loving woman is glad to recognize the superiority of her lover. Besides, from her earliest childhood—and she was only two years younger than Dion—she had belonged to circles where no quality was more highly prized than mental pliancy and keenness. Her dark eyes, which at first had glittered distrustfully and questioningly and afterwards glowed with a gloomy light, now gained a new expression. Her gaze sought her friend's with a tender, pleading look as, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... signals, without uttering a word, and consequently without detection. At whist, or other games on the cards, fingers are admirable conveyancers of intelligence, and by dexterous performers 194are so managed, as to defy the closest scrutiny, so as to have the natural appearance of pliancy, while, among the knowing ones, their movements are actually deciding the fate ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... a shutter and the light touched her face. Such a face it was, with a flicker of laughter over it like the wind on a June meadow, and a singular tender pliancy of mien, as though one of Tiepolo's lenient goddesses had been busked into the stiff sheath ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... composed air with which Gilbert had listened to his pleasantries, and he retired to his study, promising himself to give to Monsieur his secretary, whom, nevertheless, he valued very highly, that last touch of pliancy which he needed for his perfection. Count Kostia was of an age when even the strongest mind feels the necessity of occasional relaxation, and he would have been glad to have near him a pliant, agreeable ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... regarded it with a look of the greatest affection. He turned it round to the light, to see that no rust had rested on it, and then pressed its point on the deck, and let it spring up again, to assure himself that it had not lost its pliancy. ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... absolutely necessary to the greater part of mankind for obtaining the means of existence.—Had not exercise been absolutely necessary for our well-being, says the elegant Addison, nature would not have made the body so proper for it, by giving such an activity to the limbs, and such a pliancy to every part, as necessarily produce those compressions, extensions, contortions, dilatations, and all other kinds of motions, that are necessary for the preservation of such a system of tubes and glands.—And ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... as his word. He picked out the most suitable horsewhip for chastising the fancied impertinence of Murtough Murphy; and as he switched it up and down with a powerful arm, to try its weight and pliancy, the whistling of the instrument through the air was music to his ears, and whispered of promised joy in the flagellation of the ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... from the other by etiquette or prejudice, a sort of demi-monde where they met, chatted and enjoyed themselves at their ease, the foyer of "French ideas," the hub of affairs and intrigues—Jewish society, the richest and most elegant in Berlin. With the marvellous pliancy of their race the Jews had assimilated the new civilization and took their revenge from the political exclusion of which they were the victims by bringing together in their salons all the intellectual men in Berlin, all the attractive women, all desirous of ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... he had promised his father and D'Artagnan to observe, Raoul could not resist uttering a few words of darkest menace. "And yet," he continued, "if my name were De Wardes, and if I had the pliancy of character and strength of will of M. d'Artagnan, I should laugh, with my lips at least; I should convince other women that this perfidious girl, honored by the affection I have wasted on her, leaves me only ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... have eight times made me go to Saint-Thomas d'Aquin to see you listening to the same mass as he.'—'Ah!' she exclaimed, 'then I have made you jealous!'—Oh! I only wish I could be!' said I, admiring the pliancy of her quick intelligence, and these acrobatic feats which can only be successful in the eyes of the blind. 'But by dint of going to church I have become very incredulous. On the day of my first cold, and your first treachery, when you thought I was ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... recognising people of genius and of running away from them. This is to be accounted for by the fact that the larger and more developed the brain, and the thinner, in relation to it, the spine and nerves, the greater not only is the intelligence, but also at the same time the mobility and pliancy of all the limbs; because they are controlled more immediately and decisively by the brain; consequently everything depends more on a single thread, every movement of which precisely expresses its purpose. The ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... and animal souls are held together in one embrace, they can be kept from separating. When one gives undivided attention to the (vital) breath, and brings it to the utmost degree of pliancy, he can become as a (tender) babe. When he has cleansed away the most mysterious sights (of his imagination), he can become without ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze |
