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More "Pliable" Quotes from Famous Books



... question I have carefully put to myself; and upon the whole the probabilities are in favour of her accepting him in time. I flatter myself that I have some influence over her. She is pliable, and I can be strong in my ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... ears on gusts of wind, and died away as the wind ebbed. She dropped the dish-cloth three times in five minutes, and washed her cup and saucer twice. She struggled bravely in the Slough of Despond for awhile, and then turned back with Pliable. ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White

... The more one's under a good influence the better. The only thing is to see our steps as we take them—to understand them as we go. That, no doubt, I shall always do. I needn't be afraid of becoming too pliable; isn't it my fault that I'm not pliable enough?" It is said that imitation is the sincerest flattery; and if Isabel was sometimes moved to gape at her friend aspiringly and despairingly it was not so much because she desired herself to shine as because she wished to hold up the lamp for ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... I got Raggerton alone in the smoking-room, and had a little talk with him. He had just dropped a hundred pounds on a double event that hadn't come off, and I expected to find him pliable. Nor was I disappointed, for, when we had negotiated a little loan, he was entirely at my service, and willing to tell me everything, on my promising not to give him away ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... than a coincidence that Doctor Montgomery, who, in 1843, received the gold medal of the Society of Arts for bringing gutta percha and its useful properties under the notice of that body, describes it in almost the same words that Tradescant uses when speaking of the pliable Mazer wood: the Doctor says, "it could be moulded into any form by merely dipping it into boiling water." It is worthy of remark that Tradescant, who was the first botanist of his day, seems to have been uncertain of the true nature of the "Mazer wood," for he does not class it ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various

... great monarchs of the eighteenth century had passed, or were passing, away, Francis II stood somewhat low among the mediocrities on whom fell the 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. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... were fused and harmonized with the supremest gifts of Shelley: namely, that his marvellous metrical invention of the anapaestic heptameter was almost exactly reproducible in a language to which all variations and combinations of anapaestic, iambic, or trochaic metre are as natural and pliable as all dactylic and spondaic forms of verse are unnatural and abhorrent. As it happens, this highest central interlude of a most adorable masterpiece is as easy to detach from its dramatic setting, and ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... an Italian commonwealth was the Greek of the time of Juvenal and the Greek of the time of Pericles, joined in one. Like the former, he was timid and pliable, artful and mean. But, like the latter, he had a country. Its independence and prosperity were dear to him. If his character were degraded by some base crimes, it was, on the other hand, ennobled by public spirit and by ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... and stature. She, with her softer as well as finer nature, more pliable and more malleable, rejoiced in her very weakness and, his subjection once secured, instantly bowed to his ascendancy; now she had brought him under her slavery, she acknowledged him for the master, the hero, the god, burned to obey, to admire, to offer her homage. In the shade of the shrubbery ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... Indian a large portion of his winter supply of food, while his skin is manufactured into clothing, the leather from it being especially soft and pliable. From the settlers in the western provinces he receives little mercy, as, without hesitation, he leaps their fences, banqueting on their growing corn or vegetables; and, after doing all the mischief in his power, by his activity generally again makes his escape. No ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... or soft-felt hats should never be brushed with a whisk broom. A hatter will sell you for a small sum a soft brush with a pliable plush back, which will do for smoothing your silk hat, the bristles to be applied in removing the dust. A silk handkerchief will also smooth a silk hat. Frequent ironing destroys the nap. Straw hats can be cleaned by first rubbing them over with the half ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain

... to comprehend, and yet"—this a little shamefacedly—"and yet I've brought him to my evening prayers. I would like guidance on the laddie. With him it's a spoon made or a horn spoiled. Sometimes I feel I have in him fine stuff and pliable, and I'll be trying to fathom how best to work it, but my experience has always been with more common metal, and I am feared, I'm feared, we ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... between the Prince and Aboan, they attended the King, as the Custom was, to the Otan; where, while the whole Company was taken up in beholding the Dancing, and Antick Postures the Women-Royal made to divert the King, Onahal singled out Aboan, whom she found most pliable to her Wish. When she had him where she believed she could not be heard, she sigh'd to him, and softly cry'd, 'Ah, Aboan! when will you be sensible of my Passion? I confess it with my Mouth, because I would not give my Eyes the Lye; and you have but too much already perceived ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... with their hands, and gathering about them their work, prepared to listen. The men were busy fashioning spears and carving on ivory, while the women scraped the fat from the hides of the hair seal and made them pliable or sewed muclucs with threads of sinew. Nam-Bok's eyes roved over the scene, but there was not the charm about it that his recollection had warranted him to expect. During the years of his wandering he had looked forward to just this scene, and now that it had come he was disappointed. It was ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... him in her mind with the husband she knew, and was invigorated by the thought that a placable impenetrable giant may often be more pliable in a woman's hands than an irascible dwarf—until, perchance, the latter has been soundly cuffed, and then he is docile to trot like a squire, as near your heels as he can get. She rejoiced to be working for the woman she had fallen in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... had passed since Fanny went to live with Aunt Teresa. Those three years had a great influence upon her youthful and pliable disposition. At first Teresa was severe and stony-hearted towards the child; her obstinacy, like a thorny hedge, had to be broken down. The smallest fault was chastised, every moment of her time had its allotted task, of which she had to give an account, not ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... day's work to learn their names and titles. She wears a veil—to hide her satisfaction—a wreath of orange flowers, artificial, too, made of paper and paste and wire, symbols of innocence, of course, pliable and easily patched together. She looks down, lest the priest should see that her eyes are laughing. Her father is whispering words of comfort and encouragement into her ear. 'Mind your expression,' he ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... philosophy in the courts of princes." "Yes, there is," said I, "but not for this speculative philosophy, that makes everything to be alike fitting at all times; but there is another philosophy that is more pliable, that knows its proper scene, accommodates itself to it, and teaches a man with propriety and decency to act that part which has fallen to his share. If when one of Plautus' comedies is upon the stage, and a company of servants are acting their parts, you ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... taking of great Fowl, being Rods that are long, small, strait, and pliable, the upper part apt to play to and fro; being besmeared with Bird-lime warm. Thus to be used, Observe the Haunts of the Fowl, have a Stale, (a living Fowl of the same kind you would take) and cross ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett

... an object of no small consideration. The natives dress them with their wool on, to such great perfection, as to render them more pliable than our buff. They dye them different colours, and cloath themselves therewith. To the French they supply the place of the best blankets, being at the same time very warm and ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... trembling, and kisses the rod, and says, 'It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth him good' (1 Sam 3:18). He is sensible he hath sinned and gone astray like a lost sheep, and, therefore, will justify God in his severest proceedings against him. This broken heart is also a pliable and flexible heart, and prepared to receive whatsoever impressions God shall make upon it, and is ready to be moulded into any frame that shall best please the Lord. He says, with Samuel, 'Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth' (1 Sam 3:10). And with David, 'When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... church, saw to the feeding of my horses, and then went into the kitchen. I ordered a supply of young fowl, bread, wine, milk in bottles, and other things; and bargained with the innkeeper for a pair of pliable baskets and a strap by which they might be slung across my horse like panniers. While I waited for the chickens to roast, I used the time in reviving my own energies with wine, eggs, and cold ham, which were to ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens

... it for the housing of his proportionately small brain, but concentrates on giving him a big stomach fitted with "all modern conveniences." On the other hand, the head of the Cerebral is large because his brain is large. The skull which is pliable and unfinished at birth grows to conform to the size and shape of the brain as the glove takes on the shape of the hand ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... nineteenth century, the settlers in the valley of Leatherwood Creek had opened the primeval forest to their fields of corn and tobacco on the fertile slopes and rich bottom-lands. The stream had its name from the bush growing on its banks, which with its tough and pliable bark served many uses of leather among the pioneers; they made parts of their harness with it, and the thongs which lifted their door-latches, or tied their shoes, or held their working clothes together. The name ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells

... put his hands to his ears, and ran on with a cry of Life! Life! The friends of his wife, too, came out to see him run, and as he went, some were heard to mock him, some to use threats, and there were two who set off to fetch him back by force, the names of whom were Obstinate and Pliable. Now, by this time, the man had gone a good way off, but at last ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin

... efforts, which had continued unceasingly through ten years of self-imposed privation. India-rubber was now seen to be capable of being adapted to at least five hundred uses. It could be made "as pliable as kid, tougher than ox-hide, as elastic as whalebone, or as rigid as flint." But, as too often happens, his great discovery enriched neither Goodyear nor his family. It soon gave employment to sixty thousand artisans, and annually produced articles ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... with wonder and delight. No maiden of the city had ever charmed him more, and withal she seemed so innocent and young, so altogether pliable in his hands. His pulses beat high, his heart was inflamed, and passion came and sat ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... Agnes, with a smile that crept over her young lips like a viper. "The old General is more pliable than the son. Oh, yes, when he began questioning me of the whereabouts of our kind friends who think so much of us, you know, I put forth all the accomplishments you have taught me, and wiled him from the subject in ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... various forms, and in nearly every instance disaster to the weapon had followed, owing to the difficulty of taming the combustion to a safe degree. But about 1866 Colonel Schultze produced, as the result of experiments, a nitrated wood fibre which gave great promise of being more pliable and more easily regulated in its burning than gun-cotton, and this was at once introduced into England, and the Schultze Gunpowder Company Limited was formed to commence its manufacture, which it did in the year 1868. During ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... wrote the adventures of a Co-operator, he would have to tell of his meeting with Mr. Obstinate, who will not listen to him, and wants to pull him back. We all get the company of Mr. Pliable, who is persuaded without being convinced, who at the first splash into difficulty crawls out and turns back with a cowardly adroitness. We have all encountered the stupidity of Mr. Ignorance, which nothing can enlighten. We know ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... made to glow enticingly by the sun's red disk about to dip behind the little hills.... All this Ruth saw and loved. It was an unaccustomed sight, for she was tied to the city. It altered her mood, softened her, made her more pliable. Bonbright could have planned no better than to have ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... top and bottom, a silent pocketful of much heating, all the pliable succession of ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein

... moved toward the window from which the woman had leaned. It was the same casement whence the cat had started on its perilous journey. Joe felt sure of himself. The slippers were just what he needed, with soft, pliable soles, worn thin. They were the best substitute he could have ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum

... sat up quickly again in order to recover her self-possession more easily. It seemed to her that the furious beating of her heart must make him understand how he had wounded her. It was the first discussion approaching a quarrel they had had since their marriage, for she, who was so pliable in all other matters, had discovered that she could become as hard as iron where the ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... the battle at the Midas on the previous night he had replaced his leather boots with "mukluks," which are waterproof, light, and pliable footgear made from the skin of seal and walrus. He was thus able to move as noiselessly as though in moccasins. Finding neither pencil nor paper in his pocket, he tried the outer door of the office, to find it unlocked. He stepped inside and listened, then moved towards a table on which were ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... not what she was, Cornelia; for I wrote to thee about her while she seemed but human. In my hours of sadness, not only her beautiful form, but her very voice bent over me. How girlish in the gracefulness of her lofty form! how pliable in her majesty! what composure at my petulance and reproaches! what pity in her reproofs! Like the air that angels breathe in the metropolitan temple of the Christian world, her soul at every season ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... subordination, or this net loss in self-possession. A doubt may be permitted as to whether the common man in the countries of the Imperial coalition, e.g., will, as the net outcome of this war experience, be in a perceptibly more pliable frame of mind as touches his obligations toward his betters and subservience to the irresponsible authority exercised by the various governmental agencies, than he was at the outbreak of the war. At that time, there is reason to believe, there was an ominous, though ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... no witticisms and indulged in no oratorical claptrap. His address was pure argument. Douglas's manner was one of excitement, and accompanied and emphasized by almost continuous bodily movement. His hands and his feet, and especially that pliable face of his, were all busy talking. He said sharp things, evidently for their immediate effect on his audience, and showed that he was not only master of all the arts of the practical stump orator, but was ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... office, it is to be judged that sarakat straw is as fine as sabutan. In fact, the material is so thin that even though the mats are woven of double straws they are no thicker, and are a good deal more pliable than all other commercial pandan mats, sabutan excepted, produced in the Philippines. The upper surface of pandan straw is glossy, and the under surface is rough. In making the double straw, the two rough surfaces are placed together so as to expose both glossy ones. Hence, unlike ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller

... Burgundy threaten us with war for harbouring them, but their presence is like to interfere with my projects in my own family. My simple cousin of Orleans hath barely seen this damsel, and I venture to prophesy that the sight of her is like to make him less pliable in the matter of his ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... you squeeze them a bit. Arrangements are extraordinary pliable things if you handle them firmly, and we'd like to have you. A speech from you about the General would be most interesting. It would stimulate the whole population. ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham

... laid in his hands a gift. It was a soft, pliable belt, woven of the white, peeled roots of the cedar, dyed brilliantly, and ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson

... courtoisie to spare for a Spaniard, they replied that it came to pass from the contrariety of their humeurs; that the French ware franck (whence they would derive the name of their nation), galliard, pleasant, and pliable to all company; the Spaniard quite contrary retired, austere, rigid, proud. And indeed their are something of truth in it; for who knows not the pride of the Castilian: if a Castilian then a Demigod. He thinks himselfe ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... court plaster. It is pliable, and never breaks, which is far from being the case with many of the spurious articles which are sold under that name. Indeed, this commodity is very frequently adulterated. A kind of plaster, with a very thick ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... the latter, he shared the fate of his principal, and Judaea was overrun by Babylon, Jerusalem captured, and the poor creature on the throne bound in chains to be carried to Babylon, but, as would appear, discovered by Nebuchadnezzar to be pliable enough to make it safe to leave him behind, as his vassal. His capture took place but a few months after the incident with which I am dealing now. It would appear probable that the confusion and alarm of the Babylonian assault on Egypt had led ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... stricter purists in the one field are, in the other, generally inclined, even if themselves unmusical, to uphold plain-song and the Elizabethans and only such modern work as is inspired by something like a similar spirit, aloof and strong, so those whose religious mentality is of a more pliable type are, if musically indifferent, generally inclined to uphold the practical accommodation afforded by the inclusion of at any rate a certain quantity of music that is consciously adapted to the more immediately obvious emotions of ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... spokes with the length of insulated wire which he always carried. It was a crude and makeshift contrivance at best, but at last he succeeded, by dint of much bending and winding and tying of the pliable copper wire among the spokes of the wheel, in fastening the emery cloth over the fairly sharp rim so that it stayed in place when he started his power and in about two revolutions it cut a piece of wire with which he tested the power of his ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... will simultaneously exclaim, "A piece of leather." This being answered, he will proceed to the qualities, and will have either from his class, or by his own help, the following answers: "It is dry, it is smooth, it is hard, it is tough, it is pliable, it is opaque," &c. He will then question them as to its uses, and will ask, "What is made from leather?" A. Boots and shoes. Q. What use is it of else? A. Books are bound with it; and so on through all its uses. ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... seemed conclusive. It looked so fair and unanswerable that I could not disguise from him that my fears had fled. I was immensely relieved. My fight oozed; I became as pliable as any of the brittle clay which he daily kneaded for each shaping with his applications ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... bring to each person a sang, or small low table. Instead of a cloth, on each table was a sheet of fine glazed paper which had the appearance of oiled silk. This paper was made from the bark of the mulberry-tree. It was soft and pliable, and of such a texture that it could be washed easier than anything else, either paper or cloth. On this were placed dishes of porcelain and earthen ware. There were no knives or forks, but in their place were chop-sticks such as the Chinese used. Spoons also were on the table. ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike

... close to the reversing point, and opened her throttle wide. This acted like a bottle-fly on the flank of a spirited mare. She shook herself, quivering through all her light, pliable construction, lifted her prow another inch or two, and flung the rapids ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... field for his energies, he went to Paris and strove hard to extend his studies as a scholar and his connections as an adventurer. He made the acquaintance of some courtiers, who felt or affected an interest in learning and in learned men. His manners were insinuating; his character was pliable. When presented at court he succeeded in gaining the esteem and confidence of Henry II., the husband of Catherine de Medicis. Francis II., the son of Henry II., and the first husband of Mary Stuart, continued to Nicot the favor of which ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... them do we see any sign of the human creature as we see him in the fields and in the street; he is always regarded as a simple robot, a well known mechanism. Among writers he was a moment ago a dispenser of commonplaces, among politicians he is now a pliable voter; touch him in the proper place and he responds in the desired manner. Facts are never apparent; only abstractions, long arrays of sentences on nature, Reason, and the people, on tyrants and liberty, like inflated balloons, uselessly conflicting with each other in space. Were we not ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... hands. For, when we came to plank the bottom, we had very vexatious difficulties to encounter, as our only plank consisted in pieces from the deck of our wreck, which was so dry and stubborn that fire and water had hardly any effect in making it pliable, as it rent, split, and flew in pieces like glass; so that I now began to fear that all our labour was in vain, and we must quietly wait to be taken off by some Spanish ship, and be led quietly to prison after ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... less quaint, less powerful, and less attractive the strangely winsome face. It was only the mouth which he did not feel satisfied with it added character to the face, but he somehow felt that it betokened a nature not easily led, not so gentle and pliable as he could have wished. It shut so very firmly and the under lip was a little thinner and straighter than the other and receded a little from it, giving the impression that Erica had borne much suffering, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... would come rather heavy upon the Government. All round the court-yard blacksmiths were forging and hammering, while in the middle of it a number of men were employed beating leather, so as to render it sufficiently pliable to undergo the process of being trodden soft, a curious operation, and fatiguing to the muscles of any other legs than those of the Nepaulese, who keep continually doubling up the leather and treading it out again, and putting their feet to all sorts ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant

... him and the blue eyes were dancing. Miss Alicia Adair knew no joy to compare with that of teasing, and it was not often that the fates gave her such a pliable subject. ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... lay still. I felt her body relax and grow suddenly pliable and soft, her head fell back across my arm, and, as she lay, I saw the tears of her helplessness ooze out beneath her drooping lashes; but ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... of Dr. Smith was rich in general principles, and in well-considered applications of them to the missionary work; though, in this latter respect, he was restricted more than his brethren among the Armenians, by the less pliable nature of the materials on which he was called to operate. After having explored countries which others were to occupy; after contributing largely to the accuracy, variety, and value of Dr. Robinson's "Biblical Researches"; and after securing ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson

... "mast-fed lawyer" and it is true that his opportunities for reading continued to be most restricted. Davis said in regard to Lincoln's work as a lawyer: "He had a magnificent equipoise of head, conscience, and heart. In non-essentials he was pliable; but on the underlying principles of truth and justice, his will was as firm as steel." We find from the record of Lincoln's work in the Assembly and later in Congress that he would never do as a Representative what he was unwilling to do as an individual. His capacity for seeing ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam

... Ruskin, there is to be seen across the Channel the extraordinary fact of an actual organization of good writers, the French Academy, whose influence all nations feel. Under their authority we see introduced into literary work an habitual grace and perfection, a clearness and directness, a light and pliable strength, and a fine shading of expression, such as no other tongue can even define. We see the same high standard in their criticism, in their works of research, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and in short throughout literature. What is there in any other ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... southern trees, most simple and aspiring; and certainly most perfect among evergreens, with their straight, faintly carmined shoots, their pliable strong leaves so subtly rippled at the edge, and their clean, dry fragrance; delicate, austere, alert, serene; such ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... companion on whom to exercise his valor, he amused himself for a short time in hewing down imaginary foes, and then cut the reeds in slips, and plaited them to form a whip for Lightfoot. The leaves seemed so pliable and strong that I examined them to see to what further use they might be put. Their tissue was composed of long silky fibers. A sudden thought struck me—this must be New Zealand flax. [Footnote: New Zealand flax is not real flax: it is a plant of the lily family, the fiber ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... always been pliable in Talpers's hands. Talpers had profited most by the bootlegging operations carried on by the pair, though Jim had done most of the dangerous work. Whenever Jim needed supplies, the trader furnished ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman

... if a stick instead of shoulders stretched out his coat; his hair tied behind with a black ribbon, but not pigtailed, it flows from the ribbon, like old Steele's, with a curl at the end, mixed brown and gray; his face wrinkled like a peach-stone, but all pliable, muscles moving with every sensation of a feeling soul and lively imagination; quick dark eyes, with an indefinable expression of acquired habitual sedateness, in despite of nature; his tone of voice mild and repressed, yet in this voice he speaks thoughts that ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... bazaars, making purchases of curios as presents for the folks at home and adding to their personal stock of mementos. Jim secured among other things a cane made of a rare Indian wood, which while light was exceedingly strong and so pliable that it could be bent almost ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick

... sentence between it out! Usually are for my purposes the bridges of the city long enough; when I but Potzl's writings study will I ride out and use the glorious endless imperial bridge. But this is a calumny; Potzl writes the prettiest German. Perhaps not so pliable as the mine, but in many details much better. Excuse you these flatteries. These are ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... a bold faith who lived before the coming of Christ; and who, upon obscure prophecies and mystical types, could raise a belief and expect apparent impossibilities. And since I was of understanding enough to know that we know nothing, my reason hath been more pliable to the will of faith. I am now content to understand a mystery in an easy and Platonic way, and without a demonstration and a rigid definition; and thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte

... reason there is a large supply of lumber, which is cut and sawed, dragged to the rivers, and brought down, by the natives. This lumber is very useful for houses and buildings, and for the construction of small and large vessels. Many very straight thick trees, light and pliable, are found, which are used as masts for ships and galleons. Consequently, vessels of any size may be fitted with masts from these trees, made of one piece of timber, without its being necessary to splice them or make them of different pieces. For the hulls of the ships, the ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... our pieces, and moulding them into boats of the same weight, we find the following differences: Wood, being stiff and liable to split, can only be moulded into comparative form. Paper, since it can be rendered perfectly pliable, can be pressed into any shape desirable; hence, any wished-for fineness of lines can be given to the model, and the paper will assume the identical shape, after which it can be water-proofed, hardened, and polished. Paper neither swells, nor shrinks, nor cracks, hence it does not ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... was pliable, insinuating and complimentary. She was smitten, too, by a sudden mad desire. Always she was alive with coquetry to her finger tips, and to-night she was aflame with it. But this quiet, grave young ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... overhead, and the roof was bounded by chasms, impenetrable and black. "It doesn't matter," said Rickie, suddenly convinced of the futility of all that he did. "Oh, let us look properly," said Leighton, a kindly, pliable man, who had tried to shirk coming, but who was genuinely sympathetic now that he had come. They were rewarded: the manuscript lay in a ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... preferable, though last may be justifiable. Being on the subject of words, I am reminded of obnoxious, which is applied in the strangest ways by different authors. It is true that the Roman writers used obnoxius in various senses; but it does not seem so pliable or smooth in English. Generally it is held to indicate disagreeable or inimical, though our dictionaries do not admit it to have either ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various

... known men, who, treated with dry, in matters of trade, were as obstinate as mules, become reasonable and pliable, sir, over a bottle," he said, after explaining where the liquor was to be found; "and I think, if we offer the Arabs this, after they have been in possession a short time, we shall find them better disposed towards us. If it should not prove so, I confess, for one, I should feel ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... had not softened. I was bitterly disappointed in her. She had been the formless, pliable clay, on which I purposed to prove my pet theories for development and culture. I had taken her as a perfectly fresh and untainted being, naively unconscious even, of the elements, either good or bad, of which her own nature was composed, waiting only for the hand of a wise and ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... the heroines of Mrs. Haywood's maturest fiction. Betsy Thoughtless is not even the innocent, lovely, and pliable girl typified in Fielding's Sophia Western. She is eminently hard-headed, inquisitive, and practical, and is justly described by Sir Walter Raleigh as "own cousin ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... neither the silliness of a girl who has just left the convent, nor the knowledge of a Parisienne whom the theatre and the newspapers have instructed in all things. Michel, then, could give to this virgin and pliable mind whatever bent he chose; and Marsa, pure as the snow and brave as her own favorite heroes, became his without resistance, being incapable of divining a treachery or fearing a lie. Michel Menko, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... believe), hath troubled the enemy, who doth what he may to suppress the bruit thereof, and yet comforteth himself with the hope that between the factions and partialities nourished by his industry, and musters among the towns, especially in Holland and Zeeland (where he is persuaded to find some pliable to a reconcilement) and the disorders and misgovernment of our people, there will be yet occasion offered him to make his profit and advantage. I find that the gentleman hath here many friends indifferently ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... mantles and conical caps of hide, and gold ornaments in their ears. The men also wore a sort of skin cloak, which hung down to their knees, over a close tunic: the legs and feet were bare in both. Their sheep-skin mantles, sewed together with threads of sinew, and rendered soft and pliable by friction, sufficed for a garment by day and a blanket by night. These Bosjesmans exhibited a variety of the customs of their native country. Their whoops were sometimes so loud as to be startling, and they occasionally ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... the main ones, the flexibility of the gate also admitted of making a perfect wing, aiding in the entrance or exit of a herd. In fastening the gate in the centre short ropes were used, and the wire web drawn taut to the tension of a pliable fence. "You boys will find this short wing, when penning a herd, equal to an extra ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams

... depth of about nine feet a leather bag, which was eleven inches long and seven inches wide. It was lying upon a mass of native copper which the ancient miners had unsuccessfully attempted to remove from its parent vein. The bag was in a remarkable state of preservation, the leather being quite pliable and as tough as sheepskin. It was made up with the hair inside, was sewed across the bottom and up one side with a leather string, and near the top holes were cut and a leather string inserted to close the mouth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... but shouts bloodshed and battle. Those who like to feel the texture of old tapestries would find this soft and pliable, and in wondrous state of preservation. Its colours are warm and fresh, adhering to red-browns and brown-reds and a general mellow tone differing from the sharp stained-glass contrasts noticed in ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... thinking about it, if he did not say so. However, we lunched upon a shoe, and for my own part, whenever I go upon another voyage, I shall take the precaution of providing myself with pliable French boots—your Kilmarnock leather is so very intolerably tough! Towards evening, to our infinite joy, we descried a boat entering the Sound. We shouted, as you may be sure, like demons. The Celtic Samaritans came up, and, thanks to the kindness of Rory M'Gregor ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... grasped a great cloak of dark green velvet, soft and pliable as a skin of fur, threw it over her white bridal robes, ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... of that mountainous country is sheep raising and weaving baskets from a very pliable kind of shrub that grows on the slopes of the mountains. I hired as a shepherd to a sheep rancher, and also began to learn to weave baskets to while away the time as I watched the sheep. Before long I learned the language, which is a very simple one, and found that I was in Aeda Land, but ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn

... is tender and full of sweet, gentle imagery. He knew the value of symbols, and his words often cast a purple shadow. His style is pliable, flexible, fluid, and he shows rare skill in suggesting a thing that it would be absurd ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... gait or attitude, still perhaps with some relic (such as a single eye-glass) of the officer and gentleman, they sprawl in palm-leaf verandahs and entertain an island audience with memoirs of the music-hall. And there are still others, less pliable, less capable, less fortunate, perhaps less base, who continue, even in these isles of ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... with her mouth and claws, she will seize one of the eight scales that hang from her abdomen, and at once proceed to clip it and plane it, extend it, knead it with her saliva, bend it and flatten it, roll it and straighten it, with the skill of a carpenter handling a pliable panel. When at last the substance, thus treated, appears to her to possess the required dimensions and consistency, she will attach it to the highest point of the dome, thus laying the first, or rather the keystone of the ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... fear, he had a superabundance of doubt. He had not all the pliable, receptive, imaginative nature of his friend, Lord Evelyn. He had more than the ordinary Englishman's distrust of secrecy. He was not to be won over by the visions of a St. Simon, the eloquence of a Fourier, the epigrams of a Proudhon: ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... question, was not little and dark, with a talent for keeping every one right and sacrificing herself on all hands; neither was she tall and fair and handsome, with manners petulant and somewhat haughty; but she had one quality which is rather coming into fashion among heroines—namely, pliable affections. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... who are the saved? No man can tell. Many are moved by sympathy for their friends. Others are charmed by the congregational singing and the music of the organ. Many see that the revival is bound to go, and, like Pliable, they are swept along for a time with it. But there appears in this mixed company a man with the stamp of divine authority upon his brow, the gold braid of full salvation on his helmet, the dialect of Canaan on his tongue ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees

... these comprising for him a complete suit. The blanket he used as an outer garment, when needed, and for his cover at night. Many of the more important "big injins" owned also a buffalo robe. This was the whole hide of the buffalo, with the hair on it, the inner side tanned to a soft, pliable leather, and the irregularities of its natural shape neatly cut away. It furnished the owner an excellent storm robe, sufficient protection, head to foot, ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell

... good plan is to have a bottle for fresh, untouched shellac, a wide-mouthed jar for that which has been diluted and used, and an enameled cup for use. There should also be a special brush, Fig. 244. At the time of using, first see that the brush is soft and pliable. If it is stiff, it can be soaked quickly and softened in a little alcohol in the cup. This alcohol may then be poured into the jar and mixed in by shaking. Then pour out a little from the jar into the cup, and if it is too thin, thicken with some fresh shellac. After using, pour ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes

... visorless casque, slightly conical, from the edge of which, beginning about the temples, a cape of fine steel rings, buckled under the chin, enveloped the neck and throat, and fell loosely over the neck and shoulders, and part way down the back. A shirt of linked mail, pliable as wool, defended the body and the arms to the elbows; overalls of like material, save that the parts next the saddle were leather, clothed the thighs and legs. As the casque and every other link of the mail were plated with gold, the general effect at a distance was as ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... position of the firer must be comfortable. You may, at first, feel constrained or cramped in the different positions but by continued practice the muscles and joints will become so supple and pliable that you can easily assume the correct position. Each man who is trying for a high score should utilize all available time to this end. The following photographs illustrate the ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey

... the Hazlitt soul would be a sidestepping. There were among his friends, men of dubious integrity with elastic scruples and pliable consciences. But skepticism thrust in vain at the Hazlitt armor. In him had been authentically born the mania for conformity. He was a prosecutor by birth. Against that which did not conform, against all that ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... speak with the greatest veneration, asked them to lend him fifty francs for a month, they would say to him as they do to every one else: 'We are rather cramped just now; but see that rascal B——.' And that rascal B——, who is the most pliable tool in existence, will, providing father N—— offers unquestionable security, lend the old gentleman his son's money at from twelve to fifteen per cent. interest, plus a ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... over his conduct. There was no longer that lofty love of truth and of virtue which had distinguished the commencement of his official life. Adversity, instead of stiffening his back, had made him pliable. He who had formerly refused to receive money he had not earned, was now willing to take pay in return for no other services than the presentation of courtier-like advice on occasions when Duke Ling desired to have his opinion in support of his own; and in defiance ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... made of heavy white woolen cloth, a pair of thick woolen slippers made of heavy blanket cloth, and a pair of knee-high black sealskin boots with moccasin feet. The latter were hard as boards, but by rubbing the skin upon the rounded end of a stick Toby soon had them soft and pliable. ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace

... Body.—When a horse is in a good condition and well cared for, the coat is short, fine, glossy and smooth and the skin pliable and elastic. Healthy cattle have a smooth, glossy coat and the skin feels mellow and elastic. The fleece of sheep should appear smooth and have plenty of yolk, the skin pliable and light pink in color. ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... of the virtue of obedience, as to render it unfit for its higher ends." The uniform of the Jesuit is not an external garb, but such freedom is insignificant in the light of the "veritable strait-jacket," which is placed upon the inward man. The unformed and pliable novice, usually between the ages of sixteen and twenty, is subjected to "a skillful, energetic and unremitting assault upon personal independence." Every device that a shrewd and powerful intellect could conceive of is employed to break up the personal will. "The Jesuit ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... of some gentlemen, "the Principles of Latin Grammar," and "the Principles of English Grammar,"—are equally pliable, or changeable; and, what is very remarkable, a comparison of different editions will show, that the fundamental doctrines of a whole "Series of Grammars, English, Latin, and Greek," may so change in a single lustrum, as to rest upon authorities altogether different. Dr. Bullions's grammars, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... for forage as hay. In fact, this straw, in such excellent shape for cutting, feeding, storing, or transportation, possessed more than twice the selling value of the best of ordinary straw. The oat straw, being softer and more pliable, was still more valuable as forage. The barley straw, less desirable for stock food, was sent to the paper mill for the use of the box factory. By this method of harvesting and curing grain, the increase ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... composed of a series of cartilaginous or gristly rings connected together by softer tissues. These rings are not entire, but are completed behind by soft tissues including muscle. It follows that this tube is pliable and extensible—a very important provision, especially when large movements of the neck are made, during vigorous exercise, and ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... and the slow-moving flat-bed press are being supplanted by the light and pliable aluminum plates and the fast-moving rotary presses. The aluminum plate has all the requisites for the highest grades of lithographic or surface printing, and the rotary press is beyond doubt a vast improvement over the flat-bed press, not only as to speed, but also as to the quality and ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... soft pliable mass, well supplied with blood vessels, especially in children. Some are firmer and these are the kind seen in adults. The color varies from pale pink to dark red. The structure is similar ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... for years at machines. When one's body is young, it is very pliable, and hard work will mould it like putty according to the nature of the work. I can tell at a glance the trades of many workingmen I meet on the street. Look at me. Why am I rolling all about the shop? Because ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... we have not got ten sore or galled animals. The reason is, because we do not use a single padded saddle or collar. Also, that the part of the harness that the heaviest strain comes on is kept as smooth and pliable as it is possible for it to be. Look well to your drawing-chains, too, and see that they are kept of an even length. If your collar gets gummy or dirty, don't scrape it with a knife; wash it, and preserve the smooth surface. ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley

... single file, and the climate is very moist and rainy. The inhabitants are armed with long lances, having stone heads about an ell long, which have two edges as sharp as razors, and they are defended by pliable shields which cover their whole bodies. They are extremely nimble, and give signals to each other by loud whistlings, which echo among the rocks with inconceivable shrillness. Their province is named Tiltepeque[2]; which, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... of rain. All growing things seemed to have ceased living; the air was heavy and laden with a resinous, dreamy vapour—magnetic, intoxicating. Such a night plays havoc with some women. Under these stifled conditions she is no longer normal; she becomes weak, pliable—she no longer reasons; she craves excitement, deceit, misadventure, confession—quarrels—jealousy—love—stringing their nerves to a tension and breeding a certain melancholy; it tortures by its suppression; a flash of lightning ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... the still glowing piece of iron down on the broken place in the tire, hammered and welded it fast with two heavy blows, and then drove the nails into their places, which was easily done, as the iron was still soft and pliable. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... be content to exercise it capably? Would I cease to be putty in the hands of other people? I doubt it. Even a strong, obdurate mind is liable to connect with conditions that render it weak and pliable for the simple reason that it is sometimes easier to put up with a thing than to try to put it down. An exacting, arbitrary mind perhaps might evolve a set of resolutions that even the most intolerant would hesitate to violate, but for an easygoing, trouble-dodging brain like ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... suddenly parted and bent in opposite directions, and from the middle there softly stepped out a full grown tiger. For a few seconds he stood perfectly still. His four, velvet paws were planted firmly on the ground; his pliable tail was waving slowly to and fro, and his bright yellow eyes glanced quickly and sharply in all directions. He was a splendid fellow and quite young. His light, tawny-yellow body was exquisitely marked with dark, velvety stripes—some double, ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin

... was elected in 1832 and which sat from December, 1833, to March, 1835, was not so pliable as that which arranged the peace with South Carolina. Still, the Senate sustained the Bank by a decided majority, and in March it formally censured Jackson for his removal of the deposits. In this Clay was conspicuous, and Webster and ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... enough to stop you on the road and to hold your attention. Scene after scene follows, in which are pictured many of our own spiritual experiences. There is the Slough of Despond, into which we all have fallen, out of which Pliable scrambles on the hither side and goes back grumbling, but through which Christian struggles mightily till Helpful stretches him a hand and drags him out on solid ground and bids him go on his way. Then come Interpreter's house, the Palace Beautiful, the Lions in the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... but I don't want sensitiveness, I want men who are not sensitive, and who yet can suffer at not getting nearer and more quickly than they can to the purpose ahead of them, whatever that may be. It is a stiff sort of thing that I want. I can help to make a stiff nature pliable; I'm not very good at making a pliable ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... incites to treachery; and in conclusion, that of all men he was acquainted with, one at least never failed to right his humour; and that one was yonder flabby, pallid fellow with the velvet collar to his coat, and the rings on his fingers, and the gold hair, named Pliable, who sat beside Mr. Stubborn on the settle ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... separate the baser metals; and when ground and spread over the fields, they form a fertilizing manure. Combs, knife-handles and many useful articles are made from the horns, which, when softened in boiling water, become pliable, so as to be formed into lanterns—an invention usually ascribed to King Alfred. We are furnished with candles from the tallow, and the feet afford an oil adapted to a variety of purposes. Glue is made from the cartilages, gristles and ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... obtained from the front and lateral aspects of the thigh or upper arm, the skin in those regions being pliable and ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... horse. The Arabian is the most pliable in its blood of any other known to man. From it, any other type can be created. Once a type has been created, it must be sustained in itself by close breeding, which can be continued for quite a number of years without degeneracy. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... easily imagine belonging to one man for my entire life, but he would have to be a whole man, a man who would dominate me, who would subjugate me by his inate strength, do you understand? And every man—I know this very well—as soon as he falls in love becomes weak, pliable, ridiculous. He puts himself into the woman's hands, kneels down before her. The only man whom I could love permanently would be he before whom I should have to kneel. I've gotten to like you so much, however, that I'll ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

... to conduct. In June the Councils made a further successful attack on the Executive and succeeded, in quick succession, in forcing out three of the Directors, Treilhard, Larevelliere, and Merlin. For them were substituted Gohier, who was colourless; Moulin, who was stupid, and Ducos, who was pliable. Of the Thermidorians Barras alone remained, and Barras, after five years of uninterrupted power and luxury, was used up as a man of action; he was quite ready to come to reasonable terms with Sieyes, or, if matters should turn that ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... is very well accomplished by bees wax, melted with about an eighth part of turpentine. This lute is very easily managed, sticks very closely to glass, and is very difficultly penetrable; it may be rendered more consistent, and less or more hard or pliable, by adding different kinds of resinous matters. Though this species of lute answers extremely well for retaining gasses and vapours, there are many chemical experiments which produce considerable heat, by which this lute becomes liquified, and consequently the expansive ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier

... seem the very essence of fragility, as they break from the parent tree at a touch; and yet one of the willows furnishes the tough, pliable and enduring withes from which are woven the baskets of the world. The willows, usually thin in branch, sparse of somewhat pale foliage, of so-called mournful mien, are yet bursting with vigor and life; indeed, the spread and ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... bringing this great Contest to a happy Conclusion the next year.—Altho' the Enemy have gaind the Possession of Charleston, they have not succeeded to their Wishes in that Quarter. They do not find the People so pliable as they flatterd themselves they should. Notwithstanding Cornwallis' boasting Letter to Lord George, of "a compleat Victory obtaind the 16th Instant by His Majesties Troops under my Command, over the rebel southern Army," that brave Army checkd the Progress of the Troops under his Command on the ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... The best made cost 340 dollars, or about sixty guineas, and fifty pounds is not at all an uncommon price to pay, though the inferior kind may be had for two pounds. Those ordinarily worn by the gentlemen here cost from twenty to thirty pounds each, but they are so light, pliable, and elastic that they will wear for ever, wash like a pocket-handkerchief, do not get burnt by the sun, and can be rolled up and sat upon—in fact, ill-treated in any way you like—without fear of their breaking, tearing, or getting out of shape. For the yacht, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... countenances. Still Holmes apparently likes best the unrestrained freedom of prose. His genius delights in periods finished after its own heart,—pyramidal, trapezoidian, isoscelesian, rhomboidical. But Lowell's genius is infinitely pliable, accommodating itself without hesitation to the arbitrary requirements of the Sieur Spondee, and laughing in the face of the halting Dactyl. His Birdofredom could, we doubt not, sail majestically ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... do for one. He'd be a capital member. Long and thin as a literary c'racter ought to be, and pliable too. We could make a'most anything of him, except a fire-screen or a tablecloth. Then there's Big Jack—he's ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne

... this kind is the abundance of outward knowledge. In the pursuit of wealth, the ocean, the desert, the isles of the sea have been ransacked for commodities to gratify the desires of man, and, in order that nature may be pliable for the same purpose in the hands of the artisan, its laws have been studied with the greatest success; the bowels of the earth, the depths of the air, the prison of the arctic seas, have all been subject to the same strict scrutiny ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the way rapidly, and the crowd, always easily guided and pliable, followed its improvised leader with loud acclamations. Only one idea, only one wish, animated all these men: they wanted peace with France, lest Bonaparte might come to Vienna and lay their beautiful ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... feeling for Gerrit Ammidon had been more than a mere hurt pride. In addition to that he saw beyond any doubt the proof of its existence still. This complicated his problem: inspired only by a resentment that he might fan into hatred she would be far more pliable than in the grip of a genuine affection for Gerrit Ammidon. He understood the processes of the former, a flexible and useful steel; but no one could predict the vagaries, the absurd self-sacrifices, of love. Well, he'd have ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... young and pliable," the lady remarked, "I regard it as of great importance to practice children in the art of reading aloud, with an agreeable variety of tone and correctness of emphasis. Trained in this way, they ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... passed through it they laid waste the land. Railroads were torn up and thoroughly destroyed. The sleepers were made into piles and set alight, the rails were laid on the top of the bonfires, and when hot enough to be pliable were twisted beyond all possibility of being used again. Telegraph wires and poles were torn down, factories were burned, only private homes being ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... of 20 yards, 48 oz. Advantages—Is softer and more pliable than 2. Is more elastic than 2 and 3. When wet, is far more pleasant to handle than 2 and 3. Disadvantages—Has a tendency to wear and fray ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... for taking of Great Fowle, being Rods that are long, small, straight, and pliable, the upper part (apt to play to and fro) being besmeared with Bird-lime warm. Thus to be used, Observe the Haunts of the Fowle, have a Stale, (a living Fowle of the same kind you would take) and cross pricking your Rods, one into, and another against the Wind sloping, ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett

... that Pliable began to be offended, and angerly said to his fellow, Is this the happiness you have told me all this while of? If we have such ill luck at our first setting out, what may we expect 'twixt this and our Journey's end? May I get ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... on the beach the mother, matter worthy of note, And wattled a basket well, and chose a fish from the boat; And Tamatea the pliable shouldered the basket and went, And travelled, and sang as he travelled, a lad that was well content. Still the way of his going was round by the roaring coast, Where the ring of the reef is broke and the trades run riot the most. On his left, with smoke as of battle, the billows battered the land; ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson

... his ear too pliable for any great solace from his foot, but he was not disappointed; he had expected little, and his thoughts were elsewhere. Rising, he permitted his nose to follow his troubled eyes, with the result that it touched the rim of the last wafer ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... of sincerity; and, in one sense, deserved it. No fears, no doubts, no scruples shook him. Of the license which advocacy draws from sympathy with the feelings of those it represents, he made full use, with unhesitating power; for his reason, of 'large discourse,' was as pliable as the affections of the most sensitive nature. Nor was he diverted from his aim by any figure or fancy: if he neither exalted his subject by imagination, nor illustrated it by wit, nor softened ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... before weaving it. Several minutes before you are ready to begin work, take four or five strands of the cane, and, after having doubled them up singly into convenient lengths and tied each one into a single knot, put them into the water to soak. The cane is much more pliable and is less liable to crack in bending when worked while wet. As fast as the soaked cane is used, more of it should ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... dies they take another. In the book of Tobit we have an account of Sara, the daughter of Raguel, who had been favored with seven husbands, whom "Asmodeus the evil spirit had killed." Love must be exceedingly pliable, it must be love to man, and not to a man, that would suffer a woman to transfer her affections seven times. It would be a ludicrous occurrence, if, upon any particular occasion, a man's three or four wives, or a woman's three or four husbands, should "burst their cerements," and visit their former ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... of the hottest, and Tee had been dead above four months. The only remarkable alteration that had happened, was a shrinking of the muscular parts and eyes; but the hair and nails were in their original state, and still adhered firmly; and the several joints were quite pliable, or in that kind of relaxed state which happens to persons who faint suddenly. Such were Mr Anderson's remarks to me, who also told me, that on his enquiring into the method of effecting this preservation of their dead bodies, he had been informed, that, soon after their death, they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... describe a harpoon, for the benefit of those who have never seen one. It is the whaler's especial weapon—the important instrument of his success. It consists of a "socket," "shank," and "mouth." The shank, which is made of the most pliable iron, is about two feet long; the socket is about six inches long, and swells from the shank to nearly two inches in diameter; and the mouth is of a barbed shape, each barb or wither being eight inches long and six broad, with a smaller barb reversed ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... occupied, was something. Her fingers selected the largest, thickest branch from her bed of fir-boughs. It was perhaps a couple of inches in diameter and heavy, because it was green. Silently, cautious of a twig snapped, she began with her fingers to strip the branch, tough and pliable. Then the limb must be cut into a length which would make it a club to be used in a cramped space. She found a bit of stone, hard granite, which had scaled from the walls and which had a rough edge. With this, working many a quiet ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory

... veranda rail; the air smelled of rain. All growing things seemed to have ceased living; the air was heavy and laden with a resinous, dreamy vapour—magnetic, intoxicating. Such a night plays havoc with some women. Under these stifled conditions she is no longer normal; she becomes weak, pliable—she no longer reasons; she craves excitement, deceit, misadventure, confession—quarrels—jealousy—love—stringing their nerves to a tension and breeding a certain melancholy; it tortures by its suppression; a flash of lightning ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... and cold avoided as much as possible. In health, the care of the skin is a simple matter, massage being a great factor, assisted always by the use of pure creams. A good cleansing cream is a great necessity, as it enters the pores and frees them from dirt, leaving the skin soft and pliable, in which condition it is ready to absorb the skin food when the finger massage is given, making it possible for the gentle electric current to force the ointment into the deeper layers of the skin, ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... so attractive to men in a young girl, were doubtless incompatible with "the solid comfort of a wife," and I must have been inexpressibly tiring to the Rev. Frank Besant. And, in truth, I ought never to have married, for under the soft, loving, pliable girl there lay hidden, as much unknown to herself as to her surroundings, a woman of strong dominant will, strength that panted for expression and rebelled against restraint, fiery and passionate emotions that were seething under ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... mountainous country is sheep raising and weaving baskets from a very pliable kind of shrub that grows on the slopes of the mountains. I hired as a shepherd to a sheep rancher, and also began to learn to weave baskets to while away the time as I watched the sheep. Before long I learned the language, which is a very simple ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn

... between the extinction of the genuine Roman Empire and the year 1300, ecclesiastical poetry took the lead in creating and popularising new established types of verse, and in rendering the spoken Latin pliable for various ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... doubt will present itself as to the magnitude of this net gain in subordination, or this net loss in self-possession. A doubt may be permitted as to whether the common man in the countries of the Imperial coalition, e.g., will, as the net outcome of this war experience, be in a perceptibly more pliable frame of mind as touches his obligations toward his betters and subservience to the irresponsible authority exercised by the various governmental agencies, than he was at the outbreak of the war. At that time, there is reason to believe, there was an ominous, though scarcely threatening, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... his only parent and for which he must fit himself by study and the acquirement of such accomplishments as render a young man a positive power in society, whether that society be of the Old World or the New. He showed his shrewdness in thus dealing with this pliable and deeply affectionate nature. From this time forth Thomas felt himself leading a life of ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... Daniel Webster termed it, that could be wound round the finger or tied into a knot, and which preserved its elasticity almost like steel. Trifling variations in the ingredients, in the proportions, and in the heating, made it either as pliable as kid, tougher than ox-hide, as elastic as whalebone, or as ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... necessity, and the demand at the little station had long exceeded the supply, but the operator was able to furnish the length of bale rope Tisdale asked of him. From the office door, where he had curiously followed to see the line put to use, he watched the traveler secure two pliable branches of hemlock, of the same size, which he brought to the station platform, and, having stripped them of needles, bent into ovals. Then, laying aside one, he commenced to weave half of the rope net-wise, filling the space in the frame he held. A sudden ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... the broom before starting to sweep; it makes it more pliable and less hard on the carpet's pile and ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler

... which set at naught the authority of the Pope: more than 50,000 priests likewise refused, and were ejected from their livings: the recusants were termed orthodox or non-juring priests, and by the law of August, 1792, they were exiled from France, while their more pliable or time-serving brethren who accepted the new decree were known as constitutionals. About 12,000 of the constitutionals married, while some of them applauded the extreme Jacobinical measures of the Terror. One of them shocked the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... placed upon some part of the Superficies that was sensibly elevated above the height of the middle part. Now that this may be the true cause, you may try with a blown Bladder, and an exactly round Ball upon a very smooth side of some pliable body, as Horn or Quicksilver. For if the Ball be placed under a part of the Bladder which is upon one side of the middle of its pressure, and you press strongly against the Bladder, you shall find the Ball moved from the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... widening and deepening, his artistic sense refining itself more and more. He confessed his errors, and was not ashamed to retrace his steps in search of that better knowledge which the omniscience of superficial study had disparaged. Surely an intellect that is still pliable at seventy is a phenomenon as interesting as it is rare. But at whatever period of his life we look at Dryden, and whatever, for the moment, may have been his poetic creed, there was something in the nature of the man that would not be wholly subdued to what it ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... out; despite its comparative bulk, it was feather-light. It had the appearance of metal, but was as porous and pliable as a good grade of bond paper. He could not feel its texture through his heavy gloves. ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking

... feather from her wing and dipped it in the dewey elixir, which was then applied to the shriveled scalp, and lo! it became pliable and fresh as if just removed. Now it would fit, but there must be a healing power to cause the flesh to unite, and again ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson

... through a lot of meat, Tom, when they have nothing else to go with it; and we may be weeks before we can put our heads out of our hut. Besides, the skins will be useful. We shall want deer-skin shirts, trousers, and socks and caps; and the skin of these deer is softer and more pliable than that of the wapiti. I don't want to kill more than I can help, lad, for I hate taking life without there is a necessity for it, but we can do with a lot more skins before we ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... the white men, but their dark hands remained closed on the spokes. The sharp hull driving on its way seemed to rise a few inches in succession through its whole length, as though it had become pliable, and settled down again rigidly to its work of cleaving the smooth surface of the sea. Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise of thunder ceased all at once, as though the ship had steamed across a narrow belt of vibrating ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... nose, and he stood painfully pinched, an object of ridicule with his spreading branch of leaves. One cruel master invented an instrument of torture which he called a flapper. It was a heavy piece of leather six inches in diameter with a hole in the middle, and was fastened at the edge to a pliable handle. The blistering pain inflicted by this brutal instrument can well be imagined. At another school, whipping of unlucky wights was done "upon a peaked block with a tattling stick;" and this expression of colonial severity seems to take ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... father, of whom they always speak with the greatest veneration, asked them to lend him fifty francs for a month, they would say to him as they do to every one else: 'We are rather cramped just now; but see that rascal B——.' And that rascal B——, who is the most pliable tool in existence, will, providing father N—— offers unquestionable security, lend the old gentleman his son's money at from twelve to fifteen per cent. interest, plus ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... all of them had gone back again to remove their effects, with the exception of Tungku Long himself, who stood looking at the flames. He was armed with a rattan-work shield, and an ancient and very pliable native sword. As he stood gazing upwards, quite unaware that any trouble, other than that involved by the conflagration, was toward, To' Kaya rushed upon him and stabbed him with his spear in the ribs. ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... seducing inuention of Sathan, who from the Arcenals, and Magisins store-houses of his ancient and mischieuous furniture, hath not spared to affoord all helpe, and the best Engines for the subuerting of soules, pliable to his allurements: and to this end, beside a plaine narration of fact in this case committed and confessed, (least the Treatise should be too bare and naked) I haue added thereunto a few Propositions, agreeing to such a subiect matter, manifesting ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts

... Interim the anger of the Emperor was directed against him especially, and that he had already called upon Maurice to banish this "arch-heretic." It certainly served the purpose of Maurice well that he had to deal with Melanchthon, whose fear and vacillation made him as pliable as putty, and not with Luther, on whose unbending firmness all of his schemes would have foundered. However, it cannot have been mere temporary fear which induced Melanchthon to barter away eternal truth for temporal peace. For ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... whole-wheat flour mix a large cup of must be very stiff, and rendered soft and pliable by thorough kneading and afterward pounding with a mallet for at least half an hour in the following manner: Pound the dough oat flat, and until of the same thickness throughout; dredge lightly with flour; ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... padding, wadding; foam. mollification; softening &c.v. V. render -soft &c. adj.; soften, mollify, mellow, relax, temper; mash, knead, squash. bend, yield, relent, relax, give. plasticize'. Adj. soft, tender, supple; pliant, pliable; flexible, flexile; lithe, lithesome; lissom, limber, plastic; ductile; tractile[obs3], tractable; malleable, extensile, sequacious[obs3], inelastic; aluminous[obs3]; remollient[obs3]. yielding &c. v.; flabby, limp, flimsy. doughy, spongy, penetrable, foamy, cushiony[obs3]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... reaching to the knees was all that covered their nakedness. For all ages and for both sexes there were furs in plenty for winter use. Beaver skins were cheap, in some years about as cheap as cloth. When properly treated they were soft and pliable, and easily made into ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... the united efforts of all our heads and hands. For, when we came to plank the bottom, we had very vexatious difficulties to encounter, as our only plank consisted in pieces from the deck of our wreck, which was so dry and stubborn that fire and water had hardly any effect in making it pliable, as it rent, split, and flew in pieces like glass; so that I now began to fear that all our labour was in vain, and we must quietly wait to be taken off by some Spanish ship, and be led quietly to prison after ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... disappointed, considerable candor and allowance. Especially they will be candid, and I believe that there are many such, who have occasionally tried their own strength in this bow of Ulysses. They have not found it supple and pliable, and with me are perhaps ready to acknowledge that they could not always even approach with it the mark of their ambition. But I would willingly, were it possible, obviate uncandid criticism, because to answer it is lost labor, and to receive it in silence has the appearance of stately reserve, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... his deer-skin vest he had drawn the coat of mail—that steel tissue, as pliable as cloth, as hard as diamonds; next, clothing his arms and legs in their proper armor, and his feet in iron-bound buskins, and concealing all this defensive equipment under loose trousers and an ample pelisse carefully buttoned, he took in his hand a long bar of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... My brethren: dried as I am with age, The tendrils of my heart are pliable; Nor have the tangles of this thicket-world So twisted all my grain as not to bend Before another's misery. Wherefore, I do beseech you, call ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith

... always assume when in a state of suffering and distress, and I never could succeed in making them take any other when in a situation of constraint. The skin of the cameleon is of a very soft and delicate texture, and appears to the observer similar to a shagreen skin, elastic and pliable; and it may be owing to this extraordinary construction that it changes its colours and size with that facility which astonishes us; but what may be considered as a more wonderful faculty is, its expanding and contracting ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... certain areas of the skin and in certain of the special senses; second, Lethargy, in which consciousness seems to disappear entirely; the subject not being sensitive to any stimulations by eye, ear, skin, etc., and the body being flabby and pliable as in natural sleep; third, Somnambulism, so called from its analogies to the ordinary sleep-walking condition to which many persons are subject. This last covers the phenomena of ordinary mesmeric exhibitions at which travelling mesmerists "control" persons before audiences ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... from the drier, vegetables should be rather brittle and fruits rather leathery and pliable. One method of determining whether fruit is dry enough is to squeeze a handful; if the fruit separates when the hand is opened, it is dry enough. Another way is to press a single piece; if no moisture comes to the surface the piece is sufficiently dry. Berries are ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer

... middle of the plain. The neighbors also came out to see him run. And as he ran some mocked, others threatened, and some cried after him to return. Among those that did so were two that were resolved to fetch him back by force. The name of the one was Obstinate, and the name of the other was Pliable. Now by this time the man was got a good distance from them, but they had made up their minds to follow him, which they did, and in ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... likewise pliable, and yet very strong; this is the Reason that they made Yokes for their Oxen of them in ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius

... the plain. The neighbors also came out to see him run, and, as he ran, some mocked, others threatened, and some cried after him to return; and, among those that did so, there were two that resolved to fetch him back by force. The name of one was Obstinate, and the other Pliable. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... the precise points—"and close with a clasp, here. Let the string also be encased in gold. I don't know how you will do it—that is a matter for your skill; but I wish the string to remain where it is, intact, within a gold covering. This casing should be pliable, so that the cross could hang, if necessary, round the neck of a person—as it used to hang. Do ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett

... Sir Thomas More[393] before their eyes, the Anglo-Norman nobles and gentlemen, assembled in Parliament by the royal command, were easily persuaded to do the royal bidding. But the ecclesiastics were by no means so pliable. Every diocese had the privilege of sending two proctors to Parliament; and these proctors proved so serious an obstacle, that Lords Grey and Brabazon wrote to Cromwell, that they had prorogued the Parliament in consequence of the "forwardness and obstinacy of the ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... shuddered with him in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He has groaned with him in the dungeons of Doubting Castle. He has encountered on his journey the same fellow-travellers. Who does not know Mr. Pliable, Mr. Obstinate, Mr. Facing-both-ways, Mr. Feeble Mind, and all the rest? They are representative realities, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. 'If we prick them they bleed, if we tickle them they laugh,' or they make ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... to countenance those ministers who were discharged merely because they acted on his teachings. In his exegesis, Harnack has been the most uncompromising of critics. In his religious politics, he has been the most tame of courtiers, the most pliable of diplomats. He has taken infinite liberties with the Sacred Texts. He has never taken any liberties with the sacred ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... meantime, Jeremiah was forced back to his labors by the conditions at Jerusalem. Necho knew what he wanted when he substituted Jehoiakim for Jehoahaz on the throne of Judah. Jehoiakim was weak, pliable, incapable of big things. Jeremiah knew that, too. Therefore, he had to go ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman

... yet could he not once stir the string. Then called he to the attendants to bring fat and unctuous matter, which melting at the fire, he dipped the bow therein, thinking to supple it and make it more pliable; but not with all the helps of art could he succeed in making it to move. After him Liodes, and Amphinomus, and Polybus, and Eurynomus, and Polyctorides essayed their strength, but not any one of them, or of the rest ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... she loved him with a love which would never end, a very ingenuous love, having neither the silliness of a girl who has just left the convent, nor the knowledge of a Parisienne whom the theatre and the newspapers have instructed in all things. Michel, then, could give to this virgin and pliable mind whatever bent he chose; and Marsa, pure as the snow and brave as her own favorite heroes, became his without resistance, being incapable of divining a treachery or fearing a lie. Michel Menko, moreover, loved her madly; and he thought only of winning and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... pumped into it, he laid the hose carefully in a slide- covered groove in the edge of the door. The hose did not seem to be quite large enough to fill the groove, and the fellow took something soft and pliable from a pocket ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson

... feel it growing, and the first scrubbiness of it filled me with rage. But as time slipped by it became softer and more pliable, and ceased to irritate me. Freed, too, from the agony of shaving, I soon found myself eating my breakfast in a more equable frame of mind than I had enjoyed for years. I began also to notice in my walks all sorts of things that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various

... very polite and pliable all day, and his skill as a pilot won my commendation. When he expressed a desire to remain on shore, at the wharf, I did not object. As soon as the anchor was let go, all hands were piped to supper; but I was in ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic

... are very truly dead, but that God, by a particular permission, or command, permits or commands them to come back to earth, and resume for a time their own body; for when they are exhumed, their bodies are found entire, their blood vermilion and fluid, and their limbs supple and pliable. ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... to construct a theory of the universe they commenced by postulating an arche—a first principle or element out of which, by a vital process, all else should be produced. "Accordingly, whatever seemed the most subtle or pliable, as well as universal element in the mass of the visible world, was marked as the seminal principle whose successive developments and transformations produced all the rest."[402] With this seminal principle the living, animating principle seems to have been associated—in some instances ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... were these, that at times glowed through him? Was it the power of the Evil One, that caused these wild thoughts to rage constantly within him? He punished his body, but without effect. What portion of his mind was that, which wound itself around him, pliable as a serpent, and which crept about his conscience under a loving cloak and consoled him! The saints pray for us, the holy Virgin prays for us, Jesus himself gave his ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... Burnham Beeches adorn. The original house was once the home of Warren Hastings. Four delightful years of school life followed. It was a pleasure to me to find that there was no extra charge for birches. The implement that was used to conserve discipline was not made out of the pliable birch tree, but of a very solid piece of leather with some stiffening to it—I fancy of steel—called a "ferrula." This was applied to the palm of the hand, and not to where my old friend the birch found its billet. As the same ferrula not only lasted a long time without detriment to ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... kisses the rod, and says, 'It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth him good' (1 Sam 3:18). He is sensible he hath sinned and gone astray like a lost sheep, and, therefore, will justify God in his severest proceedings against him. This broken heart is also a pliable and flexible heart, and prepared to receive whatsoever impressions God shall make upon it, and is ready to be moulded into any frame that shall best please the Lord. He says, with Samuel, 'Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth' (1 Sam 3:10). And with David, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... chary, will cast one amorous eye at courting Jove; that Diana herself will change her shape, but she will honor Love in a shadow; that maidens' eyes be they as hard as diamonds, yet Cupid hath drugs to make them more pliable than wax. See, Alinda, how Fortune and Love have interleagued themselves to be thy foes, and to make thee their subject, or else an abject, have inveigled thy sight with a most beautiful object. A-late thou didst hold Venus for a giglot, not a goddess, and now thou shalt be forced to sue ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... not be more unsteady than the waves, Quin; and as to wobbling, that would be an advantage, for a rigid raft in a rough sea would be more liable to be damaged than one that was pliable." ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... interposed. When his wife's temper was aroused she was liable to be rash and unreasonable. He thought if they could but get rid of Wallace they could perhaps coax Violet into a more pliable ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... she continued, "that Chris herself will need a firm hand—a very firm hand. Though so young, she is not, I fear, very pliable. I have known her do the most unheard-of things, chiefly, I must admit, from excess of spirits. They all suffer from that upon occasion. It is a most difficult thing ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... instrument is made for the purpose of searching for such objects, but one can be easily devised with which the tuner can feel all over the sound board, and remove such articles as well as dust and dirt. Secure a piece of rattan or good pliable hickory, and draw it down to the width of half an inch, thin enough to bend easily, and long enough to reach anywhere under the stringing or metal plate. By putting a cloth over this stick you can remove anything that comes in its way. Some ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer

... among the bazaars, making purchases of curios as presents for the folks at home and adding to their personal stock of mementos. Jim secured among other things a cane made of a rare Indian wood, which while light was exceedingly strong and so pliable that it could be bent almost double ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick

... for taking of great Fowl, being Rods that are long, small, strait, and pliable, the upper part apt to play to and fro; being besmeared with Bird-lime warm. Thus to be used, Observe the Haunts of the Fowl, have a Stale, (a living Fowl of the same kind you would take) and cross pricking your Rods, one into, and another against the Wind sloping, a ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett

... their earliest revival to the vagaries of a capricious taste, and the desire to give zest to the architecture of the day by their novelty. It was not for the sake of the new life there was in them, and of that pliable spirit of refinement so suited to the wise re-birth of ancient Love in Art. It is not surprising that some of the more modern masters of the old Renaissance, with whom that system had become venerable, from its universal use as the vehicle by which the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... comforteth himself with the hope that between the factions and partialities nourished by his industry, and musters among the towns, especially in Holland and Zeeland (where he is persuaded to find some pliable to a reconcilement) and the disorders and misgovernment of our people, there will be yet occasion offered him to make his profit and advantage. I find that the gentleman hath here many friends indifferently persuaded of his innocency, notwithstanding the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... a soft pliable mass, well supplied with blood vessels, especially in children. Some are firmer and these are the kind seen in adults. The color varies from pale pink to dark red. The structure ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... difficult access among rocky mountains, where the troops can only pass in single file, and the climate is very moist and rainy. The inhabitants are armed with long lances, having stone heads about an ell long, which have two edges as sharp as razors, and they are defended by pliable shields which cover their whole bodies. They are extremely nimble, and give signals to each other by loud whistlings, which echo among the rocks with inconceivable shrillness. Their province is named Tiltepeque[2]; which, after ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... should be chosen young, plump, and full breasted, a white skin, a yellow smooth bill, the feet yellow and pliable. If the feet and bill are red and hard, and the skin hairy and coarse, the bird is old. Geese should be hung for a few days. Ducks, like geese, should have yellow, supple feet; the breasts full and hard, and the skin clear. Wild ducks should be fat, ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil

... to each person a sang, or small low table. Instead of a cloth, on each table was a sheet of fine glazed paper which had the appearance of oiled silk. This paper was made from the bark of the mulberry-tree. It was soft and pliable, and of such a texture that it could be washed easier than anything else, either paper or cloth. On this were placed dishes of porcelain and earthen ware. There were no knives or forks, but in their place were chop-sticks such as the Chinese used. Spoons also were ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike

... social value. The human being, born into a world where there are many things to be learned both of natural law and human relations, is, as it were, fortunately born ignorant. He has instincts which are pliable enough to be modified into habits, and in consequence socially useful habits can be deliberately inculcated in the immature members of a society by their elders. The whole process of education is a utilization of man's prolonged period of infancy, for the deliberate acquisition ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... begun earlier,—in youth, when the temper is pliable, and strong impressions can work great changes. But we will not despair. I will tarry with you a while, just to see if you are serious in your wish for a reformation, and to help you bring ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... and the crush of great congregations, who are the saved? No man can tell. Many are moved by sympathy for their friends. Others are charmed by the congregational singing and the music of the organ. Many see that the revival is bound to go, and, like Pliable, they are swept along for a time with it. But there appears in this mixed company a man with the stamp of divine authority upon his brow, the gold braid of full salvation on his helmet, the dialect of Canaan on his ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees

... sportsman wants in his dog are developed in pointers and setters, we know what we may expect of a descendant of one of the Academic Races. Other things being equal, he will take more naturally, more easily, to his books. His features will be more pliable, his voice will be more flexible, his whole nature more plastic than those of the youth with less favoring antecedents. The gift of genius is never to be reckoned upon beforehand, any more than a choice new variety of pear or peach in a seedling; ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... this office, it is to be judged that sarakat straw is as fine as sabutan. In fact, the material is so thin that even though the mats are woven of double straws they are no thicker, and are a good deal more pliable than all other commercial pandan mats, sabutan excepted, produced in the Philippines. The upper surface of pandan straw is glossy, and the under surface is rough. In making the double straw, the two rough surfaces ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller

... genuine court plaster. It is pliable, and never breaks, which is far from being the case with many of the spurious articles which are sold under that name. Indeed, this commodity is very frequently adulterated. A kind of plaster, with a very thick and brittle ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... antiquity, and based, we have no doubt, on utility. We must be candid enough to say, that we give up the argument as to the intrinsic beauty of this species of cap—truly we think it the very type of all that is slovenly; but for use, there is not a more comfortable, portable, pliable, buyable, and washable a commodity, than your—nightcap are we to say? no—than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... though his hair was quite grey his voice was not unpleasing—and sang a few phrases full of expression and with artistic delivery; and then, when the dogs barked too vehemently, he would spring up, and with his lute in his left-hand and a long pliable rattan in his right, he would rush into the court-yard, shout the names of the dogs, and raise his cane as if he would kill them; but he always took care not to hit them, only to beat on the pavement ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Genevese caricaturist. The least of M. Toepffer's merit, however, was his ability to handle the pencil. As a humoristic, satiric, pathetic, and aesthetic writer, he is unique in the French language. His wonderful genius was so pliable, that, while he excelled in the power of catching the warmest glow of Nature in those exquisite descriptions with which his writings are filled, and while, with picture-words, he could reproduce all the tender beauty of a sunset in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... of Christ; and who, upon obscure prophecies and mystical types, could raise a belief and expect apparent impossibilities. And since I was of understanding enough to know that we know nothing, my reason hath been more pliable to the will of faith. I am now content to understand a mystery in an easy and Platonic way, and without a demonstration and a rigid definition; and thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to stoop unto the lure of faith.' ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte

... invented an improvement in the process of their production, he is said to have made a very good business of it for some time. A rich manufacturer of Chemnitz once gave him a large order to be delivered at the end of the year: the children, whose pliable fingers had already proved serviceable in this respect, had to work hard day and night, and in return the father promised them an exceptionally happy Christmas, as he expected to get a large sum of money. When the longed-for time arrived, however, he received the announcement of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... great ramallie-wig into pipes, yet the time was too short to produce any great effects from it: it had lain many years squeezed up in the corner of his old campaign trunk; and as bad forms are not so easy to be got the better of, and the use of candle-ends not so well understood, it was not so pliable a business as one would have wished. The corporal with cheary eye and both arms extended, had fallen back perpendicular from it a score times, to inspire it, if possible, with a better air—had Spleen given a look at ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... associate; and often as she contemplated his pasty face, his close, deep-set eyes and listened to his nasal voice she congratulated herself upon her choice, for he was what she needed most of all, a pliable partner. ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... considerably encouraged towards the toil of living twenty-four hours longer by the comparative ease with which he found himself going through the usually painful process of bestirring his rusty joints (stiffened by the very rest and sleep that should have made them pliable) and putting them in a condition to bear his weight upon the floor. Nor was he absolutely disheartened by the idea of those tonsorial, ablutionary, and personally decorative labors which are apt to become so intolerably irksome to an old gentleman, ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... an expert in all that concerns society through its labyrinthine phases. Not a look or tone but he has thoroughly studied, and ere he is many moments in an individual's society can accommodate his pliable nature to every demand. His physique is striking, his face handsome, his manner engaging, and he is reputed to be wealthy. His family connections are desirable, and he has education, accomplishment, and the benefit of a lengthened tour ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... which he considered were of much more artistic taste and style and more becoming than the, tightly fitting store suits of a "Broadway dude" he had once "gazed upon." This suit that he was so proud of consisted of a hunting shirt of soft, pliable deer skin, ornamented with long fringes of buckskin dyed a bright vermillion or copperas. The trousers were made of the same material and ornamented with the same kind of fringes and porcupine quills of various colors. His cap was made of fur which could entirely cover his head, ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... to steel; the steel softened and his nerves became pliable as leather; gripping his hands he gratefully found them supple, and taking out knife and pliers he went to ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... frown and blush as I did?" she said, screwing her pliable brows up to him winningly, and he bent his cheek against hers, and murmured ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... feels her breast. The pressed ivory becomes soft, and losing its hardness, yields to the fingers, and gives way, just as Hymettian wax[41] grows soft in the sun, and being worked with the fingers is turned into many shapes, and becomes pliable by the very handling. While he is amazed, and is rejoicing, {though} with apprehension, and is fearing that he is deceived; the lover again and again touches the object of his desires with his hand. It is a {real} body; the veins throb, when touched ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... Parkes (the Parks of our day) to the number of four hundred, "in a very decent arraye, and it was delightsome to behold the forwardnesse of so many proper yonge gentlemen so intent, docile, and pliable to their business." Town and gown took opposite sides: the citizens were, most of them, ready to support the Parliament, or the King and Parliament, but not the King against the Parliament. Long before ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson

... that the expenses of a siege would come rather heavy upon the Government. All round the court-yard blacksmiths were forging and hammering, while in the middle of it a number of men were employed beating leather, so as to render it sufficiently pliable to undergo the process of being trodden soft, a curious operation, and fatiguing to the muscles of any other legs than those of the Nepaulese, who keep continually doubling up the leather and treading ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant

... Thou knowest not what she was, Cornelia; for I wrote to thee about her while she seemed but human. In my hours of sadness, not only her beautiful form, but her very voice bent over me. How girlish in the gracefulness of her lofty form! how pliable in her majesty! what composure at my petulance and reproaches! what pity in her reproofs! Like the air that angels breathe in the metropolitan temple of the Christian world, her soul at every season preserved one temperature. But it was when she could and did love me! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... strong and close demonstrations; he doth not make himself ready for the contest (as he is wont) like a wrestler, that he may take the firmer hold of his adversary and be sure of giving him the trip; but draws men on by more soft and pliable attacks, by ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... they are inferior even to them. At Botany Bay, where they were best, they were just high enough for a man to sit upright in; but not large enough for him to extend himself in his whole length in any direction: They are built with pliable rods about as thick as a man's finger, in the form of an oven, by sticking the two ends into the ground, and then covering them with palm-leaves, and broad pieces of bark: The door is nothing but a large hole at one end, opposite to which the fire is made, as we perceived by the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... angel, as were demons thought to be of old, of intelligent studious spirits, and light changeable bodies (like those called astral), somewhat of the nature of a condensed cloud, and best seen in twilight. These bodies be so pliable through the subtlety of the spirits that agitate them, that they can make them appear or disappear at pleasure. Some have bodies or vehicles so spongeous, thin, and defecat [pure] that they are fed by only sucking into some fine spirituous liquors, that pierce ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... language; JOHNSON. 'It must have come by inspiration. A thousand, nay, a million of children could not invent a language. While the organs are pliable, there is not understanding enough to form a language; by the time that there is understanding enough, the organs are become stiff. We know that after a certain age we cannot learn to pronounce a new language. No foreigner, who comes to England when advanced in life, ever pronounces ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... Bonneval. I stopped at the inn across from the church, saw to the feeding of my horses, and then went into the kitchen. I ordered a supply of young fowl, bread, wine, milk in bottles, and other things; and bargained with the innkeeper for a pair of pliable baskets and a strap by which they might be slung across my horse like panniers. While I waited for the chickens to roast, I used the time in reviving my own energies with wine, eggs, and cold ham, which were to ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens

... yard, and made a bunt nearly as square as the mizzen royal yard. Beside this difficulty, the yard over which we lay was cased with ice, the gaskets and rope of the foot and leech of the sail as stiff and hard as a piece of leather hose, and the sail itself about as pliable as though it had been made of sheets of sheathing copper. It blew a perfect hurricane, with alternate blasts of snow, hail, and rain. We had to fist the sail with bare hands. No one could trust himself to mittens, for if he slipped he was a gone man. All the boats were hoisted in on deck, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... above reason there is a large supply of lumber, which is cut and sawed, dragged to the rivers, and brought down, by the natives. This lumber is very useful for houses and buildings, and for the construction of small and large vessels. Many very straight thick trees, light and pliable, are found, which are used as masts for ships and galleons. Consequently, vessels of any size may be fitted with masts from these trees, made of one piece of timber, without its being necessary to splice ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... and feet are red when old, yellow when young. Fresh killed, the feet are pliable, but they get stiff when the birds are kept too long. Geese are called green when they are only two or ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... is like, though contrary to feeling, so that we cannot distinguish between these contraries. One person says that my feeling is fancy, another that his fancy is feeling. We should have a rule. Reason offers itself; but it is pliable in every sense; and thus there ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... people's lives and minds. There is a lasting bond among schoolfellows because no one can become a boy again and have a new set of playmates. There is a persistent comradeship with one's countrymen, especially abroad, because seldom is a man pliable and polyglot enough to be at home among foreigners, or really to understand them. There is an inevitable comradeship with men of the same breeding or profession, however bad these may be, because habits soon monopolise ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... with them? If she had ever whined or moped they might have had some reason; but she would be hanged—she conversed with herself in strong language—if she had been, from beginning to end, anything but pliable and mild. It all came back, in consequence, to some required process of their own, a process operating, quite positively, as a precaution and a policy. They had got her into the bath and, for consistency with themselves—which was with each ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James









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