"Toughness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... compliantly, offering but slight holds for winds, however violent. The other alpine conifers—the Needle Pine, Mountain Pine, Two-leaved Pine, and Hemlock Spruce—are never thinned out by this agent to any destructive extent, on account of their admirable toughness and the closeness of their growth. In general the same is true of the giants of the lower zones. The kingly Sugar Pine, towering aloft to a height of more than two hundred feet, offers a fine mark ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... stone is in the crushed form for road building, railway embankments, and concrete, and the prospect is for largely increased demands for such uses in the future. For the purpose of road building, it is necessary to consider a stone's resistance to abrasion, hardness, toughness, cementing value, absorption, and specific gravity. Limestone cements well, but in other qualities it is not desirable for heavy traffic. Shales are soft and clayey, and grind down to a mass which is dry and powdery, and ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... The toughness of the sheets made them preferable to the softer and more yielding blankets, and the youth decided to use them exclusively. Each, of course, had been put together by deft hands and spinning-wheel, and was of ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... thing we can really be proud of here, besides the toughness of our citizens, is our public library. When people have to stay underground most of the time to avoid being fried and/or frozen to death, they have a lot of time to kill, and reading is one of the cheaper ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... had money left in your keeping and swore and swore it wasn't; item, repeatedly exhausted by your toughness eight strong lictors equipped with pliant elm rods. (pause) Have I celebrated my colleague highly enough to ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... very little value. The pasture oak and beech show a breadth of grain—and, of course, an annual increment—twice as great as trees of the same species grown in the woods; and the American locust, Robinia pseudacacia, the wood of which is of extreme toughness and durability, is, of all trees indigenous to North-eastern America, by far the most rapid in growth. Some of the species of the Australian Eucalyptus furnish wood of remarkable strength and durability, and yet the eucalyptus is surpassed by no ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... a rose, my spirits mounted invincibly. It was the joy of the open road and the care-free heart. Like some hideous nightmare was the memory of the tunnel and the gravel pit. The bright blood in me rejoiced; my muscles tensed with pride in their toughness; I gazed insolently ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... yours, you have wiped the Free-Traders' Brotherhood out of existence, as well as saved a lot of exceptionally fine furs (so I'm told) for the Company. I don't think the bullets made much headway against that toughness. I'm awfully sorry so many men lost their lives, and, of course, we'll look out for their families, if ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... elapsing between the first and the last. Up to receiving the last wound he had declined to leave the firing-line, but by that time he had lost so much blood that he had to be sent to the rear. The man's wiry toughness was ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... here's another leg—come, my boy, we've still a leg to stand upon—Cullen has just finished one, and I could have sworn I ate the other yesterday. See, did Judy put one of her own in the hash—'ex pede Herculem'—you'd know it so any way by the toughness. Lend me your fork, Thady, or excuse my own. Well, when I get the cash from Denis's marriage, I'll get a carving-knife and fork from Garley's; not but what I ought to have one. Judy, where's the ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... cake mixtures, it was found that the use of fat in the "butter cakes" made the framework tender and easily broken, so in pastry the same means may be employed. Fat of some kind is mixed with the flour to act on the gluten and destroy its toughness. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... say, been in the service of the Empress for, perhaps, four years. He will leave in another two years. He has no inherited morals, and four years are not sufficient to drive toughness into his fibre, or to teach him how holy a thing is his Regiment. He wants to drink, he wants to enjoy himself - in India he wants to save money - and he does not in the least like getting hurt. He has received just sufficient education to make him understand half the purport ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... plant of a peculiar appearance, to the complete exclusion of the tall grasses and herbage in other parts. It grew in little tussocks like bushes, each plant composed of twenty or thirty stalks of a woody toughness and about two and a half feet high. The stems were thickly clothed with round leaves, soft as velvet to the touch and so dark a green that at a little distance they looked almost black against the bright green of the moist turf. Their ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... or the Dandy, or the moon, he forgot to specify. "The old heathen to beat us all too," he added, "just when it had got us all dodged." Dan took all the credit of the suggestion to himself. Then he looked philosophically on the toughness of the problem: "Anyway," he said, "the missus must have learnt a bit about beginning at the beginning of things. Just think what she'd have missed if any one had known ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... their thoughts had been full of cotillions and girls and the junior prom. The Isthmus had laid hold of them and hardened their muscles and bronzed their faces and given them a toughness of fiber that would ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... portion of the Merced Canon I found a lonely miner seeking his fortune in a quartz vein on a wild mountain-side planted with this singular tree. He told me that he called it the Hickory Pine, because of the whiteness and toughness of the wood. It is so little known, however, that it can hardly be said to have a common name. Most mountaineers refer to it as "that queer little pine-tree covered all over with burs." In my studies of this species I found a very interesting and significant group of facts, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... then ordered a bureau of the same material, and when it was finished invited his friends to see the new work; amongst others, the Duchess of Buckingham begged a small piece of the precious wood, and it soon became the fashion. On account of its toughness, and peculiarity of grain, it was capable of treatment impossible with oak, and the high polish it took by oil and rubbing (not French polish, a later invention), caused it to come into great request. The term "putting one's knees under a friend's mahogany," probably ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... friendly warning? Let us first get a hint from what foreigners think of us ultra-modernized Americans. Wandering journalists, of an ethnological turn of mind, who visit these shores, profess to be struck with the slenderness, the apparent lack of toughness, the dyspeptic look, of the American physique. And from such observations it has been seriously argued that the stalwart English race is suffering inevitable degeneracy in this foreign climate. I have even seen it doubted whether a race of men can ever become thoroughly naturalized ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... but that, with the wonderful idiosyncrasy of human nature on the one side, and the infinite variety in the mode of life and pleasure on the other, it is a wonder that the human race has not worn itself out long ago. Human nature appears to possess a peculiar kind of toughness and many- sidedness, since it subdues every thing which approaches it, or which it takes into itself, and, if it cannot assimilate, at least makes it indifferent. In case of any great excess, indeed, it must yield to the elements in spite of all resistance, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... most consummate skill in culinary matters, will not compensate the want of attention to this particular. Though animal food should be hung up in the open air, till its fibres have lost some degree of their toughness; yet if kept till it loses its natural sweetness, it is as detrimental to health as it is disagreeable to the taste and smell. As soon therefore as you can detect the slightest trace of putrescence, it has reached its highest degree ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... these two sayings go together, and make each other plain. You seamen and fishermen are in continual danger; your lives are in your hands every moment—the belaying of a sheet, the strength of a bit of canvas, the toughness of a deal board, may settle your fate in a moment, and make all the difference between life and death. If they are sound, you may go back to a happy home, and see wife and children coming to meet you when you run on shore at morning from your honest ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... ever fall to the lot of any of my readers to have to cook periwinkles—and there are many worse things, when you are certain of their freshness—let them remember that they should be boiled in 'salt water'. This is to give them toughness; if fresh water is used, however expert the operator may be with his pin, he will fail to extract more than a moiety of the curly delicacy. These little facts, though extraneous to our subject, are always ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... visits to the "Blue Boar," losing flesh and gaining toughness with every lesson. The more he saw of Joe Bevan the more he liked him, and appreciated his strong, simple outlook on life. Shakespeare was a great bond between them. Sheen had always been a student ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... interested me, and, I dare say, bettered my health, though I was ashamed to note the poor staying power I had as compared with Isaiah Fetch, who, whilst fully ten years my senior, was greatly my superior in toughness and endurance. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the authority of law. So we shall make again the old experiment, discredited by a thousand failures, of preventing crime by tenderness to caught criminals. And the criminal uncaught will treat us to a quality of toughness notably augmented by the ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... returned to Europe, trusting, he told me, that after five years' absence, the governor's bowels would yearn towards his youngest-born. In this he was entirely mistaken; he greatly underrated the toughness of paternal viscera. Far from killing the fatted calf on the prodigal's return, the incensed old Hollander refused him the smallest cutlet, and shutting the door in his face, consigned him, with more energy than affection, to the custody ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... nearly always he had talked in the language of the uneducated Westerner, in the jargon of yeggmen, and the vernacular of the professional tramps with whom he had hoboed over the West—a "gay cat," as he was pleased to call himself, when boasting of the "toughness" of his life. He had affected uncleanliness, uncouthness; but in spite of his efforts the glimmer of the "something good" of which he was the runt had ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... my toughness and wrastling powers show themselves. I just wrastled and wrastled, and ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... "here we are, Lignum and myself"—she often speaks of her husband by this appellation, on account, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitae having been his old regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in compliment to the extreme hardness and toughness of his physiognomy—"just looked in, we have, to make it all correct as usual about that security. Give him the new bill to sign, George, and he'll sign it ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... at her, and called her fool. It was because she had broken the Princess's umbrella. This was the new umbrella bought by him with so much trouble in Gerstein two days before, and therefore presumably of a sufficient toughness to stand any reasonable treatment for a time. There was a mist and a drizzle at Calais, and Priscilla, refusing to go under shelter, had sent Fritzing to fetch her umbrella, and when he demanded it of Annalise, she offered it him in two pieces. This alone was enough to upset ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... larger part of the horizon, to seem perhaps the only reality. I don't mean just the love of a man for a woman, but the great throbbing bond of human affection and sympathy; and of all the kinds of affection, there is none that has the strength and toughness that belong to the love of husband and wife. I wish you to marry, Winifred,—I have always wished it,—only let it be to a true man, my dear,—let it ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... had begun. For a time I pulled myself together very thoroughly. I am not ungrateful nor unfaithful to Harbury; in your turn you will go there, you will have to live your life in this British world of ours and you must learn its language and manners, acquire its reserves and develop the approved toughness and patterning of cuticle. Afterwards if you please you may quarrel with it. But don't when the time comes quarrel with the present conditions of human association and think it is only with Harbury you quarrel. What man has become and may ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... fat man's hand and though it makes a dent that dent puffs back quickly. Do the same to the Muscular and you will find a firmness and toughness of fiber that resists but stays there longer once the ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... unloading, watched the workers in the hold filling up silly little sacks and the succession of blackened, half-naked men that ran to and fro with these along a plank over a thirty-foot drop into filth and mud, I was first seized with admiration of their courage and toughness and then, "But after all, WHY—?" and the stupid ugliness of all this waste of muscle and endurance came home to me. Among other things it obviously wasted and deteriorated the coal.... And I had imagined great things ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... party of five men. Their canoes, we are told, were of birch bark and cedar splints, the ribs being shaped from spruce roots. Covered with the pitch of yellow pine, and light enough to be carried on the shoulders of four men across portages, these canoes yet had toughness equal to any river voyage. They were provisioned with smoked meat and Indian corn. Shoved clear of the beach, they shot out on the blue water to the dip of paddles. Marquette waved his adieu. His Indians, ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of its height to be found in the forest. It is often seventy or eighty feet tall, with a trunk not more than a foot around. The color of the trunk is a dark granite-gray and the bark is rough. The wood is remarkable for its toughness, and for making baskets the Indians prefer it to any other, except the trunk ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... lbs. weight, true to pattern, sound and solid, of unequaled strength, toughness and durability. An invaluable substitute for forgings or cast-iron requiring three-fold strength. Send ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... it their whole individuality. No wonder that such little political unities held together as if their component parts had been welded, and that they continued to do so till they came into collision, and, from their hardness and toughness, rubbed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... this manuscript he was reminded of a score of schoolboy discussions Benham and he and Prothero had had together. Here was the same old toughness of mind, a kind of intellectual hardihood, that had sometimes shocked his schoolfellows. Benham had been one of those boys who do not originate ideas very freely, but who go out to them with a fierce sincerity. He believed and disbelieved with emphasis. Prothero ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... the stockade in a score of places, but, thanks to the toughness of the seasoned wood, the bullets that had penetrated had lost most of their strength. Beyond a few scratches from flying splinters, none ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... material which they call cinder, it being nothing else but the refuse of the ore after the melting hath been extracted, which, being melted with the other in due quantity, gives it that excellent temper of toughness for which this iron is preferred before any other that is brought from foreign parts. But it is to be noted that in former times, when their works were few and their vents small, they made use of no other bellows but such as were moved by the strength ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... remarks, expressed with frigid formality: but this might be more my fault than hers, for I really could NOT converse. In fact, my attention was almost wholly absorbed in my dinner: not from ravenous appetite, but from distress at the toughness of the beefsteaks, and the numbness of my hands, almost palsied by their five-hours' exposure to the bitter wind. I would gladly have eaten the potatoes and let the meat alone, but having got a large ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... The surrounding ashes do not contain any carbonate of lime; hence the concretions have probably been formed, as is so often the case, by the aggregation of this substance. I have not met with any account of similar concretions; and considering their great toughness and compactness, their occurrence in a bed, which probably has been subjected only to atmospheric ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... answer," said Jurgen heroically, and with some admiration of himself, but still a little dashed by the uncalled-for toughness of the parchments. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... his shoulders with an air of hard toughness, but deep inside he felt small and cheap. He was used to wrangling and boisterous striving for what he wanted. Yet, for all of his roughness, a finer streak of his nature could, on occasion, respond to fair dealing. Squareness—being ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... author of "Le Barbier de Seville" (1775), and "Le Mariage de Figaro" (1784), his masterpiece; astonished the world by his conduct of a lawsuit he had, for which "he fought against reporters, parliaments, and principalities, with light banter, clear logic, adroitly, with an inexhaustible toughness of resource, like the skilfullest fencer." He was a zealous supporter of the Revolution, and made sacrifices on its behalf, but narrowly escaped the guillotine; died in distress and poverty. Of the two plays he wrote, Saintsbury says, "The wit is indisputable, but his chansons contain ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... were done brown, the same fryer and a little water would serve to take the toughness out of some strips of dried venison before she broiled them, and the great chief would be the best-fed man in camp until the hunters should return from the valley below with ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... experience to realise that most of the things which men call "pleasure" are but, as it were, tough dulness covered with piquant sauce—a tough mess of which, when you tire of the piquant sauce the toughness remains just so long as you go on trying ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... threw up two long branches or ribs of the whalebone, as I called it before (and indeed for several of its properties, as toughness, elasticity, and pliableness, nothing I have ever seen can so justly be compared to it), which were jointed behind to the upper bone of the spine, and which, when not extended, lie bent over the shoulders on each side of the neck ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... now—a sort of savoir vivre—which became part of the rural labourer's outlook, and instructed him through his days and years. It was hardly reduced to thoughts in his consciousness, but it always swayed him. And it was consistent with—nay, it implied—many strong virtues: toughness to endure long labour, handiness, frugality, habits of early rising. It was consistent too—that must be admitted—with considerable hardness and "coarseness" of feeling; a man might be avaricious, loose, dirty, quarrelsome, and not offend much against the ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... my utterances have had a great deal to do with the 'Politics'' unpopularity. I have got worse handled than any of you by poor and rich. There is one comfort, that length of ears is in the donkey species always compensated by toughness of hide. But it is a pleasing prospect for me (if you knew all that has been said and written about Parson Lot), when I look forward and know that my future explosions are likely to become more and more obnoxious to the old gentlemen, who stuff their ears with ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... opportunity was good, as they stopped within a few feet of his chair. One of them was elderly, as old as, if not older than, the man watching him; but he was of that famous Scotch stock whose members are tough and hale at eighty. This toughness he showed not only in his figure, which was both upright and graceful, but in the glance of his calm, cold eye, which fell upon everybody and everything unmoved, while that of his young, but equally stalwart companion ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... The toughness of glass, i.e., its ability to withstand variations of temperature, depends on its composition and the care taken in its annealing. In general, large pieces of glass should be heated very slowly in the smoky flame, and the larger the diameter of the ...
— Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing • Francis C. Frary
... tin, from its toughness when in the leaf, is perhaps the most suitable. Americans are superior to British in filling." ("Plain Advice on Care of the Teeth," Dr. A. Cameron, ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... foreign woods which I submitted to him for trial, says that the wood of Pittosporum undulatum is suitable only for bold outlines; compared with box, it is soft and tough, and requires more force to cut than box. The toughness of the wood causes the tools to drag back, so that great care is required in cutting to prevent the lines clipping. The average diameter of the wood is from 18 to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... Appalachian system of mountains. This section contains a population of nearly 3,000,000 souls. They belong for the most part to the most thrifty element of our complex population—an element whose toughness of moral and mental fiber is proverbial. The Scotch-Irish are famed the world over for their manly and moral vigor. And yet this people have sunken to the lowest depth of poverty and degradation—a depth from which, without the assistance of outside help, they can be lifted nevermore.[17] ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... the true power of money,—and no trouble with it, nor any thinking required either. He thought with difficulty and felt vividly; to his blunt brain the problems offered by any ordered scheme of life seemed in their cruel toughness to have been put in his way by the obvious malevolence of men. As a shipowner everyone had conspired to make him a nobody. How could he have been such a fool as to purchase that accursed ship. He had been abominably swindled; there was no end to this swindling; ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... steadily in the old direction, and his manner being as careless and composed as if he had merely brushed away a fly; Hugh was so puzzled, and so disposed to look upon him as a customer of almost supernatural toughness, that he merely laughed, and cried 'Well done!' then, sheering off a little, led the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Jane knew all the rules of etiquette," said Felicity, designing to crush Peter with a big word, borrowed from the Family Guide. But Peter was not to be so crushed. He had in him a certain toughness of fibre, that would have been proof against ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... attention to all the courses. Being thus solidly occupied, she had not much leisure to bestow on the conversation of the other guests. Nor was it specially original; it treated of the short-comings of the chef, the tastelessness of the soup, the toughness of the beef, and all the many failings which go to complete a mountain hotel dinner. But suddenly, so it seemed to the little girl, this time-honoured talk passed into another phase; she heard the word "music" ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... at one time placed in a product prepared from linseed oil. It was found that a material could be produced from it which would to a certain extent equal India rubber compositions in elasticity and toughness. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... servant who was the official carver, respectfully to turn the classical though insipid bird on its back, and expose the plucked breast from which he was to dispense a delicate slice to each of the honourable company, unless any one should be of so independent a mind as to decline that expensive toughness and prefer the vulgar ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... brought by the cook, emitting an aroma agreeable enough; but it did not tempt the young officer, whose one idea was to mount and ride away for the kopje. Certainly it was not only like fresh meat—very tough—but it possessed the toughness of years piled-up by an ox whose life had been passed helping to drag a tow-rope on trek. So half of it was left, and the young man sought the ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... with his historical character; his niggardliness is shown in the saying, 'The Meo will not give his daughter in marriage till he gets a mortar full of silver'; his pugnacity is expressed in, 'The Meo's son begins to avenge his feuds when he is twelve years old'; and his toughness in, 'Never be sure that a Meo is dead till you see the third-day ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... sent its streams of hot air into the already crowded and stifling room. Aoyama in person supervised the cooking. The animal was cut into small portions. Smoking hot the viands were placed under the noses of the gasping guests. With the great age of the beast it had accumulated great toughness. The younger members had the consolation of their jibes at the old fellows. They tore at, struggled with, the leathery fragments. But the latter had no teeth, and the malicious Aoyama would see to it that it stuck in their throats. "How, now, ancients? Is not the meat of this tanuki tender ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... smoke of the weed being, he declared, an antidote against the malarial poisons breathed out by the foul mud and rotting vegetation that surrounded them. The old sailor had enjoyed marvellously good health throughout the river voyage, and, forgetting his previous travels, and the natural toughness of his constitution, put his happy condition down to his daily pipes of the fragrant Indian weed. But his two companions were too languid for indulgence in smoking. Their heads were giddy, their hearts throbbing, and their stomachs at war with ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... handsome affair. In fact it was one of the most disreputable vehicles it has ever been our misfortune to travel in, and when we made acquaintance of the road it had to travel over we must give the owner credit for an abundant faith in the toughness of the kreta. It was a cross between the carromata of the Philippines and a covered dog-cart. There was no aid to mount. By a series of gymnastics we managed to get into the driver's seat—our own was ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... (euphemistically called cosmopolitanism), even where the West has given them a full share in civil and political rights. A people with oriental sunlight in their blood, yet capable of being everywhere acclimatised, they have a force and toughness which enables them to carry off the best prizes; and their wealth is likely to put half the seats ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... strokes of destiny. He was a poor replica of Leopold II. Where the father was supple and adroit, the son was perversely obstinate or weakly pliable. In place of foresight and tenacity in the pursuit of essentials, Francis was remarkable for a more than Hapsburg narrowness of view, and he lacked the toughness which had not seldom repaired the blunders of that House. Those counsellors swayed him most who appealed to his family pride, or satisfied his other dominant feelings, attachment to the old order of things and a pedantic clinging to established ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the forms give an appearance of great strength and toughness, a tense look. And this quality is very useful in suggesting such things as joints and sinews, rocks, hard ground, or gnarled tree-trunks, &c. In figure drawing it is an interesting quality to use sparingly, with the shading done on the across-the-form principle; and to suggest a difference ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... to find its later history, after the great migration, still more distinctly reflected; to discover heathen gods masked in the garb of Christian saints; and thus to see a proof of our assertion above, that a nation more easily changes the form than the essence of its faith, and clings with a toughness which endures for centuries to what it has ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... the hides of animals these strange people caught on the lower slopes somewhere. But though they strained and twisted, they could not stretch them, the leather evidently having been cured to a marvelous toughness in ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... can get anything more ridiculous than that, I should like to know where you can find it. Athletics should not be too severe, however, yet, the boy ought not to have century runs and long halves of football, especially if the heart is still weak. The tissues of the body have not yet gained the toughness that they will gain at a later time. Every commander in the field dreads to have boys of eighteen, nineteen, or twenty sent to him, because, as Napoleon said of his young recruits, "they die off like flies." The hard bed, with light covering, the ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... in every limb; and then his head and all his body began to tremble and totter to such a degree that he had to sink hurriedly into his great arm-chair. It seemed as if he were about to refute Bodoeri's good opinion as to the strength and toughness of his eighty summers. Bodoeri, in fact, could not keep back the peculiar smile that darted across his lips; innocent, un* sophisticated Annunciata observed nothing; and happily no one else was present Finally it was resolved for some reason—either ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the body. It has retained more of its rights and privileges, and consequently possesses a greater amount of both biological and pathological initiative. In many respects purely mechanical in its function, fastening the muscles to the bones, the bones to each other, giving toughness to the great skin-sheet, and swinging in hammock-like mesh the precious brain-cell or potent liver-lobule, it still possesses and exercises for the benefit of the body considerable powers of discretion and aggressive vital action. Through its activity chiefly is carried ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... mucous membrane has been so long exposed as to have lost many of its characters, and to resemble leather in its toughness, excision will be found less painful and ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... has to say on the subject is that you must not stand up to carve; you must not pursue the bird, joint or whatever the meat may be, all round the dish; nor should you comment upon the age of the fowl, the toughness of the meat or your own awkwardness in carving. If you really do not understand it, do not attempt it; say so and let the waiter cut ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... eggs, and the master of the house, in the blandest manner and with much shrugging of the shoulders, will answer you, "Me ver sorry, hab got ebery ting but that," and ditto to your next order, he has also the sang froid to tell you on your complaining of the toughness of that succulent, that his cabbage must be tender because it has been boiling ever since the "Caledonia" went home. If you don't enjoy it after that, all that I can say is ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... "and with unmingled pleasure, to every link which each ensuing week has added to the chain of our attachment. It shall go hard I hope ere anything but death impairs the toughness of a bond now so firmly riveted. That beautiful passage you were so kind and considerate as to send to me has given me the only feeling akin to pleasure, sorrowful pleasure it is, that I have yet had connected with the loss of my dear young friend and companion, for whom my love and ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... that they contain considerable protein in the form of gluten. This is the substance that produces elasticity in the dough mixture, a condition that is absolutely essential in the making of raised bread. In fact, the toughness and elasticity of bread dough are what make it possible for the dough to catch and hold air and gas and thus produce ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... misfortune—that sort of hypocrisy is the homage that strength pays to weakness. He talks foolishly and yet very finely about his own city that has never deserted him. He wears a flaming and fantastic flower, like a decadent minor poet. As for his bluffness and toughness and appeals to common sense, all that is, of course, simply the first trick of rhetoric. He fronts his audiences with the ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... showing the distribution of these materials throughout the alloy are of a most varied character. It is certain that the structure existing in the alloy is closely connected with the mechanical properties, such as hardness, toughness, rigidity, and so on, that make particular alloys valuable in the arts, and many efforts have been made to trace this connexion. These efforts have, in some cases, been very successful; for example, in the case of steel, which is an alloy ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... decree of party, ratified by a popular majority achieved by the waiters on Presidential providence, through immigrant voters whom the gurgling oratory of the whiskey-barrel is potent to convince, and whose sole notion of jurisprudence is based upon experience of the comparative toughness of Celtic skulls and blackthorn shillalahs. And such arguments were listened to, such advocates commended for patriotism, in a land from whose thirty thousand pulpits God and Christ are preached weekly to hearers who profess belief in the Divine government ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... in its perfect form of a fly (Tipula oleracea) does no harm, but the grubs, known by the familiar name of 'leather-jackets' owing to the toughness of their skins, are terribly destructive. During late summer and autumn the female fly deposits its eggs in large numbers in turf, in garden soil and amongst garden refuse. The eggs are hatched in a fortnight or so and the dark grubs ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... found to have much of the negro toughness and docility, and, as has been seen, when away from their homes they are easily amenable, and generally pleasant in manner, and intelligent. Often too they have a spirit of enterprise, which makes them willing to leave home, or some feud with a neighbour renders it convenient. Thus the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... attitude apparently relaxed. His face was still white. It could not acquire color in that close cell, but he had never felt stronger. A powerful heart pumped vigorous blood through every artery and vein. His muscles had regained their toughness and flexibility, and above all, the intense desire for freedom had keyed him ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sorrowful pride to remember have had literal fulfillment: "I look back with unmingled pleasure to every link which each ensuing week has added to the chain of our attachment. It shall go hard, I hope, ere anything but Death impairs the toughness of a bond now so firmly riveted." It remained unweakened till ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... is a well-known law, which in the case of the female criminal seems almost exaggerated, so remarkable is her longevity and the toughness with which she endures the hardships, even the prolonged hardships, of prison life.... I know some denizens of female prisons who have reached the age of 90, having lived within those walls since they were 29 without any grave injury ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... famous for its hardness and durability; the hackea for its toughness; the ducalabali surpassing mahogany; the ebony and letter-wood vying with the choicest woods of the old world; the locust-tree yielding copal; and the hayawa- and olou-trees furnishing a sweet-smelling resin, are all ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... they go faster. One man defended himself very frankly at the dinner of a county fair in this State when he said: "The Lord made horses to go, and I like to see them do it." This question of trotting or no trotting at the fair is not a new one; but with age it seems to acquire toughness,—like chickens, for instance. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... jute is commonly fermented in tanks of stagnant water, although sometimes it is allowed to soak in river water for a sufficient length of time to produce the softening. After the fermentation is thus started the jute fibre is separated from the wood, and is of a sufficient flexibility and toughness to be woven into sacking, carpets, curtains, table covers, and ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... leathery leaves, as a protection against the force of the tropical raindrops. The direct influence of the rain cannot be the cause of this power of resistance, for the leaves, while they were still thin, would simply have been torn to pieces. Their toughness must therefore be referred to selection, which would favour the trees with slightly thicker leaves, though we cannot calculate with any exactness how great the first stages of increase in thickness must have been. Our hypothesis receives further ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... wrack to which they are oftenest fastened; and as they wave up and down in the water with the dark mass around them, they must be almost indistinguishable from the wrack itself by the keenest-sighted of their enemies. This protective resemblance, coupled with the toughness and slipperiness of their leathery envelope or egg-shell, renders them almost perfectly secure from all evil-minded intruders. As a consequence, the dog-fish lay but very few eggs each season, and those few, large and well provided with nutriment for their spotted offspring. It is ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... against her breast and threatened to end her life, it took all of Damis' self-control to keep from crying out and striving to force his way into the room by sheer strength. He knew the toughness of stellanium well enough to realize the impossibility of even his enormous strength tearing apart a webbing of it. The certainty that Glavour would not push matters far enough to rob himself of his prey aided him to restrain his ardor and to pursue ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... over their heads, and when they die it is hung over their graves. The largest cross-bows have a span of fully five feet, and require a pull of thirty-five pounds to string them. The bow is made of a species of wild mulberry, of great toughness and flexibility. The stock, some four feet long in the war-bows, is usually of wild plum wood, the string is of plaited hemp, and the trigger of bone. The arrow, of sixteen to eighteen inches, is of split bamboo, about ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... several places they sat themselves complacently astride of the trench, and swept it in both directions and all the ground beyond with their machine guns. Against strong points they were invaluable, because they could thrust themselves, secure in the toughness of their hide, in close quarters where unprotected infantry could never get. In woods they trampled their way through the undergrowth and climbed over or broke down barricades, contemptuous of the machine guns and rifle fire which made the approach ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... 2: Horns and claws, which are the weapons of some animals, and toughness of hide and quantity of hair or feathers, which are the clothing of animals, are signs of an abundance of the earthly element; which does not agree with the equability and softness of the human temperament. Therefore such things do not suit ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... while she had still citizens without land to hoe cabbages in, she must look about and provide them with that prime necessity. All of which amounts to saying that she began with a habit of empire-winning,—which must have been created in the past. On her toughness the spirited Gaul broke as a wave, and fell away. On her narrow unmagnanimity the chivalrous mountain Samnite bore down, and like foam vanished. She had none of the spiritual possibilities of the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... happened. Gourlay had a curious stick of foreign wood (one of the trifles he fed his pride on) the crook of which curved back to the stem and inhered, leaving space only for the fingers. The wood was of wonderful toughness, and Gourlay had been known to bet that no man could break the handle of his stick by a single grip over the crook and under it. Yet now, as he saw his bargain whisked away from him and listened to Wilson's jibe, the thing snapped ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... the course of nature that he should be long kept out of these desirable possessions, for the present baronet was his grandfather, and had long passed the ordinary limits of old age. The old man had outlived his own immediate natural heir, Ferdinand's father, and now, in spite of an extraordinary toughness of constitution, was showing signs of frailty which increased almost day by day. And apart from his own personal advantages, and the future baronetcy and the estates thereto appertaining, the young man felt that, as the chosen candidate of the constitutional party for that division of the county ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... of alcohol, he was never positively drunk during the whole voyage. The evil spirits seemed to make no impression upon the iron fibres of his stubborn brain and heart. He judged his morality by the toughness of his constitution, and congratulated himself on being a sober man, while he complained of his second mate, and stigmatised him as a drunken, worthless fellow, because one glass of punch made him intoxicated. ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... far the brighter boy of the two, but his sharp wits seemed to thrive at the expense of his body. He was small and puny, and he was easily fatigued in comparison with big burly Nick, who rarely knew such a sensation, and prided himself upon his toughness. ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the base of its pink walls, which are separated from the ground by a substantial granite foundation. The spruce rafters and weather-boarding have acquired such hardness and toughness with age that the sharpest hatchet can make little or no impression upon them. Between the roughly hewn rafters, which are placed horizontally one above the other, a mixture of clay and turf forms a stanch roof, ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne |
