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More "Pliant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... give to Monsieur his secretary, whom, nevertheless, he valued very highly, that last touch of pliancy which he needed for his perfection. Count Kostia was of an age when even the strongest mind feels the necessity of occasional relaxation, and he would have been glad to have near him a pliant, agreeable companion, and enchanted could that ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... ends. A vegetable feeder, but an inhabitant of sterile and sandy deserts, its long slender neck and sloping body, enable it to reach with ease its favorite food: leaf by leaf is daintily plucked from the lofty branch by the pliant tongue, and a mouthful of tender and juicy food is speedily accumulated. The oblique and narrow apertures of the nostrils, defended even to their margins by a chevaux de frise of strong hairs, and surrounded by muscular fibres by which they can be hermetically ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... "is one of the most difficult forms of poetry. It has fallen almost entirely into disuse. No Frenchman can hope to rival Petrarch; for the language in which the Italian wrote, being so infinitely more pliant than French, lends itself to play of thought which our positivism (pardon the use of the expression) rejects. So it seemed to me that a volume of sonnets would be something quite new. Victor Hugo has appropriated the old, Canalis writes lighter verse, Beranger has monopolized ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... again on the Ottawa; as we advance, the river narrows and becomes studded with little islands covered with wild shrubs and forest trees, from whose stiff unyielding boughs the more pliant shoots droop playfully into the foaming stream below, like the children of Gravity coquetting with the family of Passion. Of course these islands form rapids in every direction: we soon, approach the one selected as the channel in which to try our strength. On we dash boldly—down rushes ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... know it is," replied Lily, gazing out at the silver light which flooded everything, but she still hesitated. A light in the house behind gave her a background of light. She was a beautiful girl, prettier than Maria, taller, and with a timid, pliant grace. Her brown hair tossed softly over her big, brown eyes, which were surmounted by strongly curved eyebrows, her nose was small, and her mouth, and she had a fascinating little way of holding her lips slightly parted, as if ready for ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... tempting bait—generally the side of a small perch—with amazing vigor and marvellous dexterity, oftentimes taking fifteen or twenty pickerel in less than an hour. To see him strike, manipulate and land a fish weighing three or four pounds, his pliant rod bending nearly to a semicircle, was a spectacle ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... satisfaction of seeing a considerable improvement in Elsie before she left Derbyshire, and used to have her company in his morning drives to visit his patients, when her pleasant conversation and winning manner made him ere long prefer her to her graver and less pliant sister. He missed both the girls when they went to London, and even Dr. Vivian paid Jane the compliment of regretting her society a little ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... children, suspect and dread the attention of an heir presumptive; and what has made this sting, as you call it, keener to you is—pardon me—is in some silly words of your mother, who, in showing you the letters, has hinted to you that that heir you might be, if you were sufficiently pliant and ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... than a parcel of marionettes. Or it is an expression of some sort of emotion. The Greeks understood that in their Orchiesis, each feeling had its corresponding movement. For me it means a number of things. When a woman is slender and pliant and smooth of step, and if she pleases me otherwise, then it is not waste of time!—Tonight I shall probably get drunk again," and he flicked the ash off his cigarette with his little finger; and even though Tamara was again annoyed with him, she could not help noticing that his ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... appeared more deliberately conscious of their depth and gleam; her lips, less responsive to the flying thought, grew to an habitual expression—not of discontent, but something akin unto it; not of self-will, but something that spoke a spirit neither tranquil nor pliant. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... tail—firmly anchored to a stone, while with the head it seized the first thing that touched it as it swam by. Then would begin a struggle, the trapped one darting off, and dragging to get away; while the worm, tough, thin, and pliant as a fishing-line, let it play about till tired out, when the thin, black-looking monster would quietly swallow his prey, boa-constrictor fashion, till nothing was visible of it but a large knob in the worm's thin body. Then there were ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... a tunnel before the eye. Such a device offers ready aid to the decorator whose figures must often receive a close encasement, fitted as they are into limited spaces, when many an ungracious line in the subject is made to disappear through the accommodation of pliant drapery or ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... language. You reprobated those accommodating rules by which I endeavoured to obtain happiness; and urged arguments that made a deep impression upon me. Now that self-interest gives you an impulse, are your principles become as pliant as mine; which you so ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... leader of the quartette that made life interesting in Number 28, was destined never to evolve into patriotic completion. He soon reached the limit of the endurance of the officials, that being, in the absence of a pliant guardian, the only method by which a cadet could be freed from the walls ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... INGER. I understand you. I have not been pliant enough. It has not proved so easy as some of you hoped to lure me over into your camp.— Yet methinks you have nought to complain of. My daughter Merete's husband is your countryman—further I cannot go. My position is no easy ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... the smiles of her own maid. Still her surprise was less than that which the reader will probably experience at this announcement; for, as has just been said, she had seen too much of the active and pliant enterprise of the lover, to feel much wonder at any of his moral tours de force. Even Eve, however, was not perfectly acquainted with the views and policy that had led Aristabulus to seek this consummation to his matrimonial schemes, which ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... vine.—More than most plants it needs a husbandman. It cannot stand upright like other fruit-trees, but requires a skillful hand to guide its pliant branches along the espaliers, or to entwine them in the trellis-work. It suggests a true thought of the appearance presented to the world by Christ and ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... civil commotion. Had the conditions been more favorable to the plot; had the conspirators of that day been as well prepared as those of 1861; had they been equally successful in sowing dissatisfaction and hatred in the minds of the Southern people; had they found in Gen. Jackson the weak and pliant instrument of treason which James Buchanan afterward became in the hands of Davis and his coadjutors, the present rebellion might have been anticipated, and the germ of secession wholly extirpated and destroyed, in the contest which would then have ensued. ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... men, if it be definite enough, is likely to pervade the whole room and conquer the reason or the opposition of the majority. One man "standing out" for the definite thought that is in him is apt to become either the triumphant leader of a pliant mass or the brutally battered target of a flaming, concentrated intellectual fire. Men despise dull opposition that is without reason. In a jury-room, of all places, a man is expected to give a reason for the faith that is ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... ascended—probably to ascertain if the hashish had acted successfully. That was the yellow dream-face which West saw bending over him. Then followed the Doctor, and to his giant will the drugged brain of West was a pliant instrument which he bent to his own ends. The court would be deserted at that hour of the night, and, in any event, directly after the ascent the ladder probably was pulled up, only to be lowered again when West had revealed the secret of his own safe and Fu-Manchu had secured the plans. The reclosing ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... the ploughman batters keen His blunted share's hard tooth, scoops from a tree His troughs, or on the cattle stamps a brand, Or numbers on the corn-heaps; some make sharp The stakes and two-pronged forks, and willow-bands Amerian for the bending vine prepare. Now let the pliant basket plaited be Of bramble-twigs; now set your corn to parch Before the fire; now bruise it with the stone. Nay even on holy days some tasks to ply Is right and lawful: this no ban forbids, To turn the runnel's course, fence corn-fields in, Make springes for the birds, burn up ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... limit that) continues yet To operate, that now it moves, and feels, As sea sponge clinging to the rock: and there Assumes th' organic powers its seed convey'd. 'This is the period, son! at which the virtue, That from the generating heart proceeds, Is pliant and expansive; for each limb Is in the heart by forgeful nature plann'd. How babe of animal becomes, remains For thy consid'ring. At this point, more wise, Than thou hast err'd, making the soul disjoin'd From passive intellect, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... he had promised his father and D'Artagnan to observe, Raoul could not resist uttering a few words of dark menace. "And yet," he continued, "if my name were De Wardes, and if I had the pliant character and strength of will of M. d'Artagnan, I should laugh, with my lips at least; I should convince other women that this perfidious girl, honored by the affection I have wasted on her, leaves me only one regret, that of having been abused and deceived by ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... stamped with the symbol of an elephant,—not more of an illusion, indeed, than the gifts of Kings to the Buddha! Gold upon her bosom also, less fine than the gold of her skin. Naked between the silken sash and the narrow breast-corslet, her young waist curved glossy and pliant as a bow. Richer the silver in her voice than in the hollow pagals that made a moonlight about her ankles! But her smile!—the little teeth like flower-stamens in the perfumed ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... men's voices shouting in excitement; doors opening, running feet. And then Jimmie Dale had snatched the revolver from the floor where Markel had dropped it in the scuffle, and was pressing it against Markel's forehead—and Markel, terror-stricken, had collapsed in a flabby, pliant heap. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the sore with his own hands and bound it up with some clean linen that he took from his knapsack. He displayed the gentleness of a woman and the deftness of a surgeon, whose big fingers can be so pliant ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... laws. The legislators are responsible for the laws; the judges for the spirit in which they interpret and enforce the laws. We stand aloof from the reckless agitators who would make the judges mere pliant tools of popular prejudice and passion; and we stand aloof from those equally unwise partisans of reaction and privilege who deny the proposition that, inasmuch as judges are chosen to serve the interests of the whole people, they should strive ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Naples, which kingdom he acquired by his own prowess, and where he established his residence, attracted, no doubt, by the superior amenity of the climate and the higher intellectual culture, as well as the pliant temper of the people, far more grateful to the monarch than the sturdy ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... the river that is called Vellus, that springeth out of the foot of Mount Carmel, at which shipmen arrived. For upon the gravel of that river shipmen made fire of clods medlied with bright gravel, and thereof ran streams of new liquor, that was the beginning of glass. It is so pliant that it taketh anon divers and contrary shapes by blast of the glazier, and is sometimes beaten, and sometimes graven as silver. And no matter is more apt to make mirrors than is glass, or to receive painting; ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... the pliant, patient woman altered suddenly. She turned out a regular scold; a perfect vixen, who was ever at his heels, distorting his most harmless acts, and starting a new jealousy every day. Once she went for him with finger-nails and scissors; but he had ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... thought it worth while to bring out from home, was a certain pair of riding boots, by which I set especial store. They were such as many of our field-officers now in Canada are in the habit of wearing—coming high up on the thigh, perfectly water-proof, but very light, and pliant as a glove. I saw nothing of American manufacture to compare with them. Some of my duck-shooting acquaintance at Baltimore were never weary of admiring their fair proportions; nor did my sage counselor, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... between him and a Chinese, and, needless to say, brought him great gains. He was purveyor to the prisoners at Bilibid, and furnished zacate to many Manila houses. On good terms with all authority, shrewd, pliant, daring in speculation, he was the sole rival of a certain Perez in the awards of divers contracts which the Philippine Government always places in privileged hands. From all of which it resulted that Captain Tiago was as happy as can be a man whose small head announces his ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... that a blind custom of obedience should be a surer obligation than duty taught and understood, it is to affirm that a blind man may tread surer by a guide than a seeing man can by a light. And it is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, generous, manageable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwart, and mutinous: and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... crime. I know all; I saw you! Not a word of excuse. I would not listen to it. Candaules himself concealed you behind the door. Is it not so the thing happened? And you fancy, doubtless, that it is all over? Unhappily I am not a Greek woman, pliant to the whims of artists and voluptuaries. Nyssia will not serve for any one's toy. There are now two men, one of whom is a man too much upon the earth. He must disappear from it! Unless he dies, I cannot live. It will be either you or Candaules. I leave you master of the choice. ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... damsels have long ago discarded the clumsy implement. First it dropped its iron ring and became a clog; afterwards it was fined down into the pliant galoshe—lighter to wear and more effectual to protect—a no less manifest instance of gradual improvement than Cowper indicates when he traces through eighty lines of poetry his 'accomplished sofa' back to ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... Dangler's prosy platitudes, which some deemed wit—Horner, par exemple—sank into nothingness, and Baby Blake, one of the "gushing" order of girlhood, appeared as a stick, or, rather, a too pliant sapling—her inane "yes's" and lisping "no's" having an opportunity of being "weighed in the balance," and consequently, in my opinion, "found wanting." All were mediocre beside her. Perhaps I was prejudiced; but, now, the remarks of the other girls ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... perfect knowledge of the art of driving, and the character of a "first-rate whip," were objects worthy his ambition; and that, to hold four-in-hand—turn a corner in style—handle the reins in form—take a fly off the tip of his leader's ear—square the elbows, and keep the wrists pliant, were matters as essential to the formation of a man of fashion as dice or milling: it was a principle he had long laid down and strictly adhered to, that whatever tended to the completion of that character, should be acquired ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... thunderclap that it shook the ground beneath her, and for some minutes she was unable to hear even the droning roar of the rain-laden tornado that came tearing down from the mountains, snapping off the branches of the gum-trees, bending low the pliant boles of the moaning she-oaks, and lifting the waters of the creek up ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... her native village—one could seem to see Luella Miller as she had really looked. According to this woman, Lydia Anderson by name, Luella Miller had been a beauty of a type rather unusual in New England. She had been a slight, pliant sort of creature, as ready with a strong yielding to fate and as unbreakable as a willow. She had glimmering lengths of straight, fair hair, which she wore softly looped round a long, lovely face. ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... easily go too far. It can well repress the genial current of the soul. It can force pliant natures into distortions and monstrosities. It can beget bigotry, breed hypocrisy or hebetate affections. Be a virtue never so noble, it has its counterpart and counterfeit. We must recognize in each virtue its own positive excellence and follow its positive ideal, and the ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... charming than the group formed by the girls. One held with her left hand the flowing reins, and with her right encircled the waist of her sleeping sister, whose head reposed on her shoulder. Each step of the horse gave a graceful swaying to these pliant forms, and swung their little feet, which rested on a wooden ledge in lieu of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... spectators was decidedly in favor of the accused. His youth—the noble bearing—the ease, the unobtrusive confidence—the gentle expression, pliant and, though sad, yet entirely free from anything like desponding weakness—all told in his favor. He was a fine specimen of the southern gentleman—the true nobleman of that region, whose pride of character ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... quick And graceful turned the head on the broad chest Encased in pliant steel, his constant vest, Whence split the sun off in a spray of fire Across the room; and, loosened of its tire Of steel, that head let breathe the comely brown Large massive locks discoloured as if a crown Encircled them, so frayed the basnet ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... loved and adored him with passionate idolatry. It has just been shown in what terms Louise of Savoy, in her daily collection of private memoranda, used to speak to herself of her son, "My king, my lord, my Caesar, and my son!" She was proud, ambitious, audacious, or pliant at need, able and steadfast in mind, violent and dissolute in her habits, greedy of pleasure and of money as well as of power, so that she gave her son neither moral principles nor a moral example: for him the supreme kingship, for herself ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... it [the mob] takes to weapons such as men Snatch when despair makes human hearts less pliant. Then comes 'the tug of war;'—'t will come again, I rather doubt; and I would fain say 'fie on't,' If I had not perceived that revolution Alone can save ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... slow you are," said she; "will you not go faster? Take care that I don't prick your neck with my sting." The Mule made answer: "I am not moved by your words, but I fear him who, sitting on the next seat, guides my yoke[21] with his pliant whip, and governs my mouth with the foam-covered reins. Therefore, cease your frivolous impertinence, for I well know when to go at a gentle pace, and ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... expressed in such fashion, did not fail in its appeal to the romantic girl; and when, a little later, Gabrielle visited the Royalist army then besieging Chartres, it was a much more pliant Gabrielle who listened to the King's wooing and whose eyes brightened at his stories of bravery and danger. Henri might be old and ugly, but he had at least a charm of manner, a frank, simple manliness, which made him the idol ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... poorly paid railway officials in these parts are the obsequious servants of those who liberally bribe. The station-master, though a very grand personage, indeed, in his uniform and metal-bound cap, became pliant as an East Indian waiter and accepted without question the explanation of the lady. It was she who was spokesman throughout. She said that she and her companion were play-actors and that their baggage was detained by a cruel manager of a Munich musical beer-hall; ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... such a cluster of "niggers" to exhibit unhappiness, at a moment when there were so many grounds of excitement. The people of this race know nothing of the word, perhaps; but they delight in the thing, quite as much as if they did nothing but electioneer all their lives. Most pliant instruments would their untutored feelings make in the hands of your demagogue; and, possibly, it may have some little influence on the white American to understand, how strong is his resemblance to the "nigger," when he gives himself up ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... godlike an attempt the world to mend; The world, where lucky throws to blockheads fall, Knaves know the game, and honest men pay all. How hard for real worth to gain its price! A man shall make his fortune in a trice, If blest with pliant, tho' but slender, sense, Feign'd modesty, and real impudence: A supple knee, smooth tongue, an easy grace, A curse within, a smile upon his face; A beauteous sister, or convenient wife, Are prizes in the lottery of life; Genius and virtue ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... at the ceiling. "You see, I'm naturally tough. Always went in for rough sports—football, rowing, boxing. Poor old Stefani's idea; and not so bad, either. Of course he was always worrying about my hands; but I always took great care to keep them soft and pliant. Which sounds rummy, considering the pounding I used to give and take. My word, I used to go to bed with my hands done up in ointments like a professional beauty! Of course I'm dizzy yet, and the bally spot is sore; but solid food and some exercise will have me off ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... Khudstick, An alpenstock made of tough wood, usually of Cotoneaster baccillaris (lun); should be well tested before purchase, as life may depend on its strength. Killanmarg, A wide sloping marg above Gulmarg, just above the pine forest on the slopes of Apharwat. Kilta, Creel made of the pliant withes of the Wych Hazel, Parrotia Jacquemontiana (Chob-i-poh). Kishenganga, A large affluent of the Jhelum which drains the Tilail Valley, passes Gurais, and joins the Jhelum below Muzafferabad. Kitardaji, Forest house in the Machipura. Kitmaghar, Bearer. ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... to make a bend to the left, and enter La Mancha and the kingdom of Murcia. The youth thanked them cordially, and gave them on the spot a hundred gold crowns to divide amongst them, whereupon they became as pliant as washed leather. Preciosa, however, was not pleased with the continuance among them of Don Sancho, for that was the youth's name, but the gipsies changed it to Clement. Andrew too was rather annoyed at this arrangement; ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... stubborn will, But prudent, wary, pliant still, Who, since his work was good, Would do it as ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... relieved here and there by patches of wiry shrubs, used as fuel at the desert stations, or lines of hillocks succeeding each other like waves on the surface of the shoreless deep. The wind, even more than the natural barrenness of the soil, prevents the growth of any vegetation except low, pliant herbage. Withered plants are uprooted and scattered by the gale like patches of foam on the stormy sea. These terrible winds, which of course were against us, with the frequently heavy cart-tracks, would make it quite impossible to ride. The monotony of many weary hours of plodding was ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... green crowns of the tallest palms, wrapping them in the fatal embrace which eventually levels the strongest monarch of the tropical forest to the earth. The thick mantle of glossy foliage often hides the multitude of hooks, loops, and nooses which the pliant cane flings round branch and stem, gripped by long ropes of flexible fibre, hardening into thick coils, rigid and unyielding as iron. The immense export of rattan for chairs, couches, and innumerable domestic purposes, indirectly results in the ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... were soft lights and low divans and the strumming of a painted ukulele that sang its little twisted soul out under the caress of Penelope's white fingers. I can still see the big black opal in its quaint setting that had replaced her wedding ring and the yellow serpent of pliant gold coiled on her thumb with two bright rubies for its eyes. Penelope Wells! How little we realized what sinister forces were playing about her that pleasant evening as we smoked and jested and sipped our glasses, gazing from time to time up the broad vista of Fifth Avenue with ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... prettier than I supposed," he thought. Her lips, her nose, her eyes of deep gray with their wonderfully long lashes—each had a particular charm of its own. He admired the grace of her figure. He felt an odd surprise at her apparent soft and pliant strength, as at a discovery. His mind thrilled with delight at ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... not thin, and her figure struck me as being one that might revive love when it believed itself exhausted. She perfectly represented the idea conveyed by the word mignonne, for she was one of those pliant little women who allow themselves to be taken up, petted, set down, and taken up again like a kitten. Her small feet, as I heard them on the gravel, made a light sound essentially their own, that harmonized with ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... quarters. She stood some minutes talking with Mr. Ghyrkins, not noticing us in the shadow of the tent some thirty yards away; Isaacs and I watched her intently—with very different feelings, possibly, but yet intensely admiring the fair creature, so strong and pliant, and yet so erect and straight. She turned half round towards us, and I saw there were flowers in the front of her dress. I wondered where they had come from; they were roses—of all flowers in the world to be blooming ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... resented them bitterly; and among the kinsfolk, one of them, I have reason to know, made a strong private protest. Mr. Morley's attitude in reply could only have been that which is well expressed by a sentence of Darmesteter's about Renan: "So pliant in appearance, so courteous in manner, he became a bar of iron as soon as one sought to wrest from him an act or word contrary to the ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and featureless. The light was behind it, and it stood out in silhouette like a forced effect, and Truda, remarking it, frowned, for of late she found herself impatient of forced effects. She was a pale, slender, brown-haired woman, with a small clear, pliant face, and some manner of languor in all her attitudes that lent them a slow grace of their own and did not at all impair the startling energy she could command for her work. While she looked out at the city ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... his astonished eyes a backbone that was evidently made of iron. She was immovable, he admitted, and because she was immovable he was conscious of a sharp unreasonable impulse to reduce her to the pliant curves of her girlhood. After eight years of an absolute supremacy, which had been far from good for him, his will had been tripped up at last by so small a thing as a mere ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... an understanding, which, whenever unbiassed by her affections, was sure to direct her unerringly; but the extreme softness of her temper frequently misled her judgment, by making it, at the pleasure either of misfortune or of artifice, always yield to compassion, and pliant to entreaty. Where her counsel and opinion were demanded, they were certain to reflect honour on her capacity and discernment; but where her assistance or her pity were supplicated, her purse and her tears were immediately bestowed, and in her ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the pain in his eyes, he managed to get his eyelids open. He tried to struggle to his feet, only to discover that he was firmly bound with what appeared to be tough creepers, pliant as ropes. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... to each other when opposite that precise point. Both stopped, and a conversation ensued, that may be said to have passed directly over the heads of those who were concealed. Indeed, nothing sheltered the travellers but the branches and leaves of plants, so pliant that they yielded to every current of air, and which a puff of wind a little stronger than common would have blown away. Fortunately the line of sight carried the eyes of the two parties of savages, whether they stood in the water or on the land, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... were going to steal over my senses now, but they did not. A copper-colored skeleton, with a rag around him, brought me a glass decanter of water, with a lighted tobacco pipe in the top of it, and a pliant stem a yard long, with a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mount their colts of speed, Their sculptur'd cars full little here they need; From the right side they take the arrow keen, Ne'er to its quiver to return, I ween; The bow, the left side's fitting ornament; The bow, the tough and pliant bow is bent; It yields a sound, like thunder from afar, While flies the arrow, like ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... viewed her mother with a shrewdly sparkling eye. Madame caught his rallying looks without resenting them—she had too much good sense for that. Supple as the young doctor seemed, one could not despise him—this pliant part was evidently not adopted in the design to curry favour with his employer: while he liked his office at the pensionnat, and lingered strangely about the Rue Fossette, he was independent, almost careless in his carriage there; and yet, too, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... bloodshot eyes. Fascinated, his glance dwelt upon her; nothing of her fresh beauty was lost on him; the smooth curve of her soft white throat, the alluring charm of her warm sensuous lips, the tiny dimple that came and went when she smiled, the graceful pliant lines of her figure, the rare poise of her small head—his glance observed all. For better or for worse he loved her with whatever of the man there was in him; he might hate her in some sudden burst of fierce anger because of her ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... lawyers can with ease Twist words and meanings as you please; That language, by your skill made pliant, Will bend to favour every client; That 'tis the fee directs the sense, To make out either side's pretence. When you peruse the clearest case, You see it with a double face: For scepticism's your profession; You hold there's ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... tinge of color had crept into Betty's cheeks. "Will you let me renew our acquaintance at Belle Plain? I shall be in West Tennessee before the summer is over; probably I shall leave here within a week," he said, bending toward her. His glance dwelt on her face and the pliant lines of her figure, and his sense swam. Since their first meeting the girl's beauty had haunted and allured him; with his passionate sense of life he was disposed to these violent fancies, and he had a masterful way with women just as he had a masterful way with men. Now, however, ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... morning it was still one night nearer home! Eight days had passed. They beheld that distant bank of mist that forever haunts the vast shallows of Newfoundland. Boldly they made it; and plunging in, its pliant wreaths wrapped them about. They shall never emerge. The last sunlight has flashed from that deck. The last voyage is done to ship and passengers. At noon there came noiselessly stealing from the north that fated instrument of destruction. In that mysterious shroud, that vast atmosphere of mist, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... unhonored stand-still at thirty! I am a successful tradesman, and in this character I shall probably die. Could I begin to be a painter now, say you? Alas! my knowledge of the art is too great for patience with the slow hand! I could not draw a line without despair. The pliant fingers and the plastic mind must keep pace to make progress in art. My taste is fixed, and my imagination uncreative, because chained down by certainties; and the shortsighted ardor and daring experiments which ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... "dago" known as Anatole that Mrs. Doyle commended her trio of allies, and being rid of them she turned back to her prisoner, their erstwhile companion. Absinthe wrought its work on his meek and pliant spirit, and the shaking hand was nerved to do the woman's work. At her dictation, with such corrections as his better education suggested, two letters were draughted, and with these in her hand she went aloft. In fifteen minutes she returned, placed one of these letters in ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... Shadows of Power! Rise to your duty— 160 This is the hour! Walk lovely and pliant[cz] From the depth of this fountain, As the cloud-shapen giant Bestrides the Hartz Mountain.[209] Come as ye were, That our eyes may behold The model in air Of the form I will mould, Bright as the Iris 170 When ether is spanned;— Such his desire is, [Pointing to ARNOLD. Such my command![da] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... has always waited on human action. The power is only in the Holy Spirit. The most astute and strong leadership amounts to nothing without Him flooding it with His presence. But the power needs a channel. The Spirit needs men strongly pliant to His will. The great world-plan waits, and always has waited, for willing men. And so our great Friend asks us to follow because He really needs us ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... strength, its downward grasp and its upward reach, the hardening of the tender stem and slender cylindrical trunk into the massive oak or pine, the growth of its tough, strong garment of bark, its winter times of rest and spring times of renewal, until from the tender green twig so frail and pliant it has become too large to clasp with the arms, and high enough to swing its dry leaves into the ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... respect to its navigation and commerce. It is the generally received opinion, that the Britons, at the time of the invasion of their island by Caesar, had no ships except those which he and other ancient authors, particularly Solinus and Lucan, describe. These were made of light and pliant wood, their ribs seem to have been formed of hurdles, and they were lined as well as covered (so far as they were at all decked) with leather. They had, indeed, masts and sails; the latter and the ropes were also made of leather; the sails could ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... The pliant harebell swinging in the breeze, On some grey rock: The single sheep, and the one blasted tree, And the bleak music from that old stone wall:— In the meadows and the lower ground, Was all the sweetness of a common dawn:— And that green corn all day ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... him that confesseth to be her seruaunt, and whose wil dependeth at her commaundement. And when the whole matter shalbe rightlye iudged, shee that reuealeth imperfection of a Suter, sheweth her opinion and minde to be more pliant to yelde, then indewed with reason to abandone pleasure and to reiect the insolencie of the same, sith Reason's force doth easely vanquish light affections of sensuall partes, whose fancies imprinted wyth ficklenes, do make them so ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... Genius and Destiny are your handmaidens." Malone leaned across the table, resting his weight on his planted knuckles. Under his shaggy brows his eyes burned deeply and satirically. Across from him Hamilton Burton stood, younger, slenderer and more pliant of pose; his eyes meeting those of his protagonist, level and unwavering. "Grant that all your self-adulation is warrantable. Now that you have attained this place in the councils of the few, do you mean to become only a wrecker ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... he wished it to be. As soon as they clearly understood what his desires were, they went off into the bush and, armed with a small tomahawk lent them by Leslie, proceeded to cut down some forty or fifty young and pliant saplings, the butt-ends of which they sharpened to a point, and then thrust vertically, into the ground in a circle some twelve feet in diameter. They then brought the tops of the saplings all together and bound them; thus producing a skeleton structure exactly ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... taxes levied for the support of a church which they never entered. And so, before the Revolution opened, the Western imagination had conjured up the specter of a corrupt and effete "East": land of money-changers and self-styled aristocrats and a pliant clergy, the haunt of lawyers and hangers-on, proper dwelling-place of "servants" and the beaten slave: a land of cities, scorning the provincial West, and bent on exploiting its laborious and upright people. And who could ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... which characterized their ancestors, but which are too small to assail horned cattle, mark the vanishing stages of this great stock, which will soon be known only in memory. The history of this peculiar herd-dog shows us how marvellously pliant the body and mind of this species has become under the conditions of civilization. The rude process of unconscious selection, acting without steadfastness of purpose or rationally developed skill, serves to sway the qualities of the animal this way or that to meet the ever-changing requirements ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... the name of imperator, [26] with which the soldiers had been wont to salute a victorious general. Though he abolished none of the old republican forms, the Senate became simply his advisory council, the assemblies, his submissive agents the consuls, praetors and tribunes, his pliant tools. The laurel wreath, the triumphal dress, the conqueror's ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... pliant body. His thought is father to his deed, and there is the usual resemblance between son and parent. What matters it that he has lived in his employer's house, and has found him no Egyptian taskmaster, but a benefactor, lavish of favours? What matters it that he has in charge ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... Boer war both governments began with bluff but could n't stay there, the military tension was too much for them. In 1898 our people had read the word "war" in letters three inches high for three months in every newspaper. The pliant politician McKinley was swept away by their eagerness, and our squalid war with Spain became ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... the mechanical motor which shall be found to be most universally adaptable, that is to say, most pliant in accommodating itself to the various lines and to the varying work of the traffic, will be the form of motor which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... contours of a ship's sail bellying in the wind are not more inevitable, nor more graceful, than the curves of an adze-head or of a plough-share. Cast in iron or steel, the gracefulness of a plough-share is more indestructible than the metal, yet pliant (in the limits of its type) as a line of English blank verse. It changes for different soils: it is widened out or narrowed; it is deep-grooved or shallow; not because of caprice at the foundry or to satisfy ...
— Progress and History • Various
... that throws light on this rapid change. On speculative points any man may be suddenly converted; for these may depend on facts or arguments which might never have occurred to him before. But when we watch the weathercock chopping with the wind, so pliant to move, and so stiff when fixed—when we observe this "preciousest grueller" clothed in purple, and equally hardy in the most opposite measures—become a favourite with James II., and a furious advocate for arbitrary power; when we see him railing ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the Southern style is made up of half-tints, with a feeling of reserve and intentional restraint, which gives it, with equal power, at times a more appealing charm. The lines are pliant, immersed in shading, color is suggested in a subtle fashion and, in contrast to the almost brutal emphasis of the North, it finds expression in chiaroscuro and ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... appeared here in a federal paper, besides the mutilated hue which these translations and re-translations of it produced generally, gave a mistranslation of a single word, which entirely perverted its meaning, and made it a pliant and fertile text of misrepresentation of my political principles. The original, speaking of an Anglican, monarchical, and aristocratical party, which had sprung up since he had left us, states their object to be 'to draw over us the substance, as they had already done the forms of the British ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... said he, "three kinds of friendships which are profitable, and three which are detrimental. To make friends with the upright, with the trustworthy, with the experienced, is to gain benefit; to make friends with the subtly perverse, with the artfully pliant, with the subtle in ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... of the owner. The sharp points, after the cutting, are guarded by plaited twigs. The door is made of quite a number of stout sticks driven into the ground at equal distances apart, through which, in and out, are woven pliant sticks. When this is accomplished, the maker cuts off the irregular ends to make it fit the door, and removes it to its place. Screens are often used inside to keep out the wind: they are made so as to be placed in whatever position the wind is blowing. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... as if he had been polished with a shoe-brush) entered the kitchen of the hotel, and asked for the largest knife they had. The head-cook gave him a sort of carving-knife, some eighteen inches long, sharp as a razor, and pliant as a foil. The negro looked at it, shook his head as if in doubt whether it would do, but nevertheless took it up stairs with him. Presently he brought it down again, and asked for a larger one. The cook opened all his drawers, and at last found a sort of cutlass, which he hardly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... grew careless and confident, reckless of giving offence, ruder in their behaviour, more grasping in their exactions, more domineering, more oppressive. Prudence should perhaps have counselled the Phoenician cities to submit, to be yielding and pliant, to cultivate the arts of the parasite and the flatterer; but the people had still a rough honesty about them. It was against the grain to flatter or submit themselves; constant voyages over wild seas in fragile vessels kept up their manhood; constant encounters with pirates, cannibals, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... where they 'scape the plagues of Pox and Pills, The Sin is liable to fifty Ills, Of equal Danger, tho' a diff'rent Cure, As he that dreading Claps wou'd Sin secure; For soon the pliant Wretch he has beguil'd Hath to his Charge and wonder prove with Child: At which, 'tmay properly be said a Man, Leaps from the Fire to the Frying-pan, This for his Reputation sake must be reveal'd When Claps are only as a Jest reveal'd She's now Remov'd—Deliver'd—and ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... mercy! Harley had contrived to lead a little bubbling brook through a green walk in the middle of the ground, upon which he had erected a mill in miniature for the diversion of Edwards's infant grandson, and made shift in its construction to introduce a pliant bit of wood that answered with its fairy clack to the murmuring of the rill that turned it. I have seen him stand, listening to these mingled sounds, with his eye fixed on the boy, and the smile of conscious satisfaction on his cheek, ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... afternoon. At that distance the wagon-road narrowed to a bridle-path, and the figure moving slowly along it and entering the forest at the base of the mountain was shrunk to a toy. For a moment Clayton stood with his face to the west, drinking in the air; then tightening his belt, he caught the pliant body of a sapling and swung loose from the rock. As the tree flew back, his dog sprang after him. The descent was sharp. At times he was forced to cling to the birch-tops till they lay flat on ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... imaginary species of screech-owl, which they superstitiously think attends the windows of dying persons. The plumage of the remiges of the wings of every species of owl that I have yet examined is remarkably soft and pliant. Perhaps it may be necessary that the wings of these birds should not make much resistance or rushing, that they may be enabled to steal through the air unheard upon ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... so I seek the shades, I presently do see The god of love forsake his bow and sit me by; If that I think to write, his Muses pliant be; If so I plain my grief, the wanton boy will cry. If I lament his pride, he doth increase my pain If tears my cheeks attaint, his cheeks are moist with moan If I disclose the wounds the which my heart hath slain, He takes his fascia off, and wipes them dry anon. If ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... impurities the chief physical characteristics of flax are its snowy whiteness, silky luster and great tenacity. The individual fibers may be from ten to twelve inches in length; they are much greater in diameter than cotton. It is less pliant and elastic than cotton and bleaches and dyes less readily. Linen cloth is a better conductor of heat than cotton and clothing made from it is cooler. When pure, it is, like ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... in the usual manner. The instrument used in writing on wood, was made of metal, and called a style. For stone, brass, &c., a chisel was employed. When the bark and leaves of trees, skins, and other materials of a more pliant nature, superseded the above-named tables, the chisel and the style, or stylus, gave way to the reed and cane, and afterwards to the quill, the hair pencil (as now used by the Chinese,) and ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... distain'd with crimes, Rousing elate in these degenerate times; View unsuspecting Innocence a prey, As guileful Fraud points out the erring way; While subtle Litigation's pliant tongue The life-blood equal sucks of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... before you observed the prodigious size of the ears, which also adorned this extraordinary countenance. The costume of this being was not less remarkable than his natural appearance. He wore a complete under dress of pliant leather, which fitted close up to his throat and down to his wrists and ankles, where it was clasped with large fastenings, either of gold or some gilt material. This, with the addition of a species ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... connexion. It frequently occurs in common conversation, as a verb and noun, but not as frequently in the books as formerly. The farmer says to his hired man, "Go and get a withe and come and withe up the fence;" that is, get some pliant twigs of tough wood, twist them together, and withe or bind them round these posts, so that one may stand firm with, or withed to, the other. A book with a cover, is one that has a cover joined, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... sarcasms on women have never been equalled in severity, and we cannot but hope that they were unjust. From an historical point of view, as a delineation of the manners of his age, his satires are priceless, even like the epigrams of Martial. This uncompromising poet, not pliant and easy like Horace, animadverted like an incorruptible censor on the vices which were undermining the moral health and preparing the way for violence; on the hypocrisy of philosophers and the cruelty of tyrants; on the frivolity of women and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... shared its dark recesses with hosts of others. Through the air, on wings of skin or feathers or tissue membrane; crawling or leaping by night; burrowing underground; gnawing up through the great supporting posts; swarming up the bamboos and along the pliant curving stems to drop quietly on the shingled roof;—thus had the jungle-life come past Hope's unseeing eyes and found the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... well known to politicians as an industrious and useful official man, and as an upright and consistent member of Parliament. He has been one of the most moderate, and, at the same time, one of the least pliant members of the Conservative party. His conduct has, indeed, on some questions been so Whiggish, that both those who applauded and those who condemned it have questioned his claim to be considered as a Tory. But his Toryism, such as it is, he has held fast through all changes of fortune and fashion; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... upon the pavement of a mosque whose roof is heaven. In the level light the scythes of the mowers flash as we move past. From their bronzed foreheads the men toss masses of dark curls. Their muscular flanks and shoulders sway sideways from firm yet pliant reins. On one hill, fronting the sunset, there stands a herd of some thirty huge grey oxen, feeding and raising their heads to look at us, with just a flush of crimson on their horns and dewlaps. This is the scale of Mason's ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... of dignity, he displayed wonderful contradictions in his character and bearing. He had, says Madame de Maintenon, 'beaucoup d'esprit, et peu de savoir;' an expressive phrase. 'He was,' she adds, 'pliant in nature, intriguing, and cautious;' nevertheless she never, she declares, possessed a more steady friend, nor one more confiding and better adapted to advise. Brave as he was, he held personal valour, or affected to do so, in light estimation. His ambition was to rule others. Lively in conversation, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... how it was. He had never been treated so before. He was not proof against entreaty and submission; but I had neither supplicated nor submitted. The stuff that I was made of was at once damnably tough and devilishly pliant. When he thought of my impudence, in staying in his house after he had bade me leave it, he was tempted to resume his passion. When he reflected on my courage, in making light of his anger, notwithstanding his known impetuosity ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... sparingly of the meal that had been prepared for him. But he never for a moment forgot the grave of his friend. He carefully visited it throughout the spring, and weeded out the grass, and kept the ground in a soft and pliant state. Very soon he saw the tops of the green plumes coming through the ground; and the more careful he was to obey his instructions in keeping the ground in order, the faster they grew. He was, however, careful to conceal the exploit from his father. Days and weeks had ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... When, issuing naked, to the wondering herd, He charm'd their eyes; and, for they loved, they fear'd: Not arm'd with horns of arbitrary might, Or claws to seize their furry spoils in fight, Or with increase of feet to o'ertake them in their flight: Of easy shape, and pliant every way; Confessing still the softness of his clay, 270 And kind as kings upon their coronation day: With open hands, and with extended space Of arms, to satisfy a large embrace. Thus kneaded up with milk, the new-made man His kingdom o'er his kindred ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... and far the garden growths. The sweet, the frail, the rude, Draw close, as if with one consent, And find each other good, Held by the bind-weed's pliant ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... "Poor pliant Prince Max," sighed Jacqueline, "he is still being influenced to stay in Mexico! Come, Berthe, we must make all speed to San ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... where genial friendship plays The pleasing game of interchanging praise. Self-love, grimalkin of the human heart, Is ever pliant to the master's art; Soothed with a word, she peacefully withdraws And sheathes in velvet her obnoxious claws, And thrills the hand that smooths her glossy fur With the light tremor ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... child of want who may not freely receive an education which will fit him for any office in his country. The common school is one of the glories of America, and every citizen may be justly proud of it. It brings together while in a pliant condition the children of people of different origins; and besides diffusing knowledge among them, it softens the prejudices of race and party, and carries on a continual ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... membrane. In this are deposited the harder mineral substances, which are composed principally of carbonate and phosphate of lime. In very early life, the bones consist chiefly of the animal part, and are then soft and pliant. As the child advances in age, the bones grow harder, by the gradual deposition of the phosphate of lime, which is supplied by the food, and carried to the bones by the blood. In old age, the hardest ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... priesthoods, armed with exclusive cognizance of things human and divine and familiar with the whole routine of political procedure, influential in the public assembly through the large number of pliant adherents attached to the several families, and, lastly, entitled to examine and to reject every decree of the community,—the patricians might have long preserved their practical power, just because they had at the right time abandoned ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... he might let her fall. The arms that held her felt pliant and strong as steel, and their clasp about her filled her with a strange, new ecstasy that thrilled her from head ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... sifted, as if through stained glass. With the slender stems of the trees rising on each side in the semi-twilight, the grove was like the transept of a cathedral. It seemed a profanation to speak in such a place. Lynde could have wandered on forever in contented silence, with that tall, pliant figure in its severely cut drapery moving before him. As he watched the pure outline defining itself against the subdued light, he was reminded of a colored bas- relief he had seen on a certain Egyptian vase in the Museum at Naples. Presently ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... to Wainamoinen, There with him to offer battle; He will charm thee with his singing Will bewitch thee in his anger, He will drive thee back dishonored, Sink thee in the fatal snow-drift, Turn to ice thy pliant fingers, Turn to ice thy feet and ankles." These the words of Youkahainen: Good the judgement of a father, Better still, a mother's counsel, Best of all one's own decision. I will go and face the minstrel, Challenge ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... foremost, now delight to cleave, With pliant arm, thy glassy wave? The captive linnet which enthrall? What idle progeny succeed, To chase the rolling circle's speed, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... enchain the attention of Desdemona, that if she were called off at any time by household affairs, she would despatch with all haste that business, and return, and with a greedy ear devour Othello's discourse. And once he took advantage of a pliant hour, and drew from her a prayer, that he would tell her the whole story of his life at large, of which she had heard so much, but only by parts: to which he consented, and beguiled her of many a tear, when he spoke of some distressful stroke which ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... He stood in a huge chamber circling to a dome far overhead. Before him, on a dais a full thousand feet in diameter, stood—sat—rested, whatever it might be called—another monster, far larger than any he had yet seen, like a mountain of pliant thinking, living metal. And Phobar knew he stood in the ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... lawyer, who was the eldest of the four, long, brown, toughly and dryly pliant as an old blade of marsh-grass, he showed in speech, look, nor manner no sign of enthusiasm, but he ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... vision he brings. There are no facts, like bricks, to build stories with. What, pray, in the realm of human life is a fact? By no means a stubborn thing, as the proverb pretends. On the contrary, a most pliant, shifting, chameleon-coloured thing, as flexible as figures in the hands of the statistician. What is commonly called a fact is merely a one-sided piece of information, a dead thing, not the series of complex, mutually inter-working relations that constitutes a ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... fingers, and "a diamond pin" on his "shirt frill," a "curb chain" with large gold seals hanging from his waistcoat—(a "curb chain" proper was then a little thin chain finely wrought, of very close links.) Then there was the "pliant ebony cane, with a heavy gold top." Ebony, however, is not pliant, but the reverse—black was the word intended. Then those "smalls" and stockings to match. Mr. Pickwick, a privileged man, appeared on this occasion, indeed always, in his favourite ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... exteriors and forms of life. His present ambition was not to make a figure at his father's table, but to eclipse his rivals at school, and to acquire an influence and authority among these confederates. Nevertheless, Fathom might possibly have fallen under his displeasure or contempt, had not that pliant genius found means to retain his friendship by seasonable compliances and submission; for the sole study, or at least the chief aim of Ferdinand, was to make himself necessary and agreeable to those on whom his dependence ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... came up quietly again, but repeated the disagreeable business, still more dangerously. Having broken off several more, and again pulled back the others, the skittish animal consented to pass. But in passing he bent down a very pliant bough, which, when released, flew back and hit my peaceful steed sharply on the legs. For a few seconds his efforts to get free were—to put it mildly— unpleasantly severe, especially as he became with each effort more entangled in the tree. When the reins were at length unknotted, ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... shining bright as yellow gold; that square breast and Brahma voice; that you! possessing all these excellent qualities, should have entered on the sorrow-giving forest; what fortune now remains for the world, losing thus the holy king of earth? That those delicate and pliant feet, pure as the lily and of the same color, should now be torn by stones and thorns; O how can such feet tread on such ground! Born and nourished in the guarded palace, clad with garments of the finest texture, washed in ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... Douglas was found an able and pliant instrument. Like Clay, Webster and Calhoun before him, Judge Douglas had the presidential bee in his bonnet. He thought the South would, as it could, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... much interested in the manoeuvring of a raft which was passing by. 'Dear Miss Power,' he resumed, 'before I go and join your uncle above, let me just ask, Do I stand any chance at all yet? Is it possible you can never be more pliant than you ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... wells up through the white sand and gravel as through a sieve, and fills the broad space that has been arranged for it so gently and imperceptibly that one does not suspect its copiousness until he has seen the overflow. It turns no wheel, yet it lends a pliant hand to many of the affairs of that household. It is a refrigerator in summer and a frost-proof envelope in winter, and a fountain of delights the year round. Trout come up from the Weebutook River and dwell there and become ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... effort to produce that "map of busy life," which is diurnally, almost hourly, spread out before us, and for a consideration, too, which in many instances is not equivalent to the cost of the material upon which it is sketched: with the lightning harmlessly conducting along the pliant wire, stretched from one end of the continent to the other, thoughts which have annihilated time: with another element, which has nearly obliterated space, they are spread over its face; and by another application of the same magic power are wafted hundreds and hundreds of ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... who is an excellent Anatomist, has promised me by the first Opportunity to dissect a Woman's Tongue, and to examine whether there may not be in it certain Juices which render it so wonderfully voluble [or [3]] flippant, or whether the Fibres of it may not be made up of a finer or more pliant Thread, or whether there are not in it some particular Muscles which dart it up and down by such sudden Glances and Vibrations; or whether in the last Place, there may not be certain undiscovered Channels running from the Head and the Heart, to this little Instrument ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... barbaric music ceased; the orchestra broke forth afresh with a light Parisian waltz, and down between the lines of tables came a negro and a negress—properties of the place, as were the glasses and the table linen—waltzing with the pliant suppleness, the conscious sensuality of their race, and close behind them followed a second couple—a Spaniard, restless and lithe, small of stature and pallid of face, and a young ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... thrush that robs the raspberry canes is busy; yesterday he had little but dust for his guerdon, but now fresh, juicy fruit repays him as he swings to and fro on the pliant branches. The blackbirds and starlings find the worms an easy prey—poor brother worm ever ready for sacrifice. I can hear the soft expectant chatter of the family of martins under the roof; there will be good hunting, and ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... however, very polite of him not to press me on the spot. His arguments, and the weight with which he advanced them, had already convinced my pliant youth; and I now first saw the difficulties and doubtfulness of a matter which I had privately pictured to myself as so feasible. Frau Hofrath Boehme invited me shortly afterwards. I found her alone. She was no longer young, and had very delicate health; ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... The comte Jean had scarcely returned an hour, when we received a letter from M. Morand, stating, that he had gone, in consequence of the instructions of comte Jean, to the comtesse de Bearn; that he had found the lady pliant enough on the first point, and disposed to content herself with the half of the sum originally demanded; that on point the second, I mean the appointments of herself and son, she would come to no compromise, and stuck hard and fast to the written promise of ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... into the upper air. Growing nowhere else, and unknown in earlier centuries, By no means great in size, it stretches not far its Spreading branches, nor lifts a lofty top to heaven; But lowly, after the manner of myrtle or pliant broom, It rises from the ground. Many a nut bends its rich branches. Small, like a bean, dark and dull in color, Marked by a slight groove in the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... hands that tightest grasp Each other—the two cords that soonest knit A fast and stubborn tie: your true love-knot Is nothing to it. Faugh! the supple touch Of pliant interest, or the dust of time, Or the pin-point of temper, loose, or not, Or snap love's silken band. Fear and old hate, They are sure weavers—they work for the storm, The whirlwind, and the rocking surge; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... toward the doorway and her pliant figure bent for an instant in the prescribed form of Japanese courtesy and salutation. Then she clasped both hands together with a little cry of dismay. "Oh, so sorree," she murmured in contrition, "forgot ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... core. I read his letter again, and when he bade me think of him, even at the altar, even when pledging my faith to Edward, I murmured to myself, "Ever between him and me, in thought if not in deed; ever with thy smooth tongue, thy determination strong as iron, and thy character pliant as steel; ever claiming thy share in my heart, and thy place in my thoughts; ever toiling for thine own ends, and hinting at revenge, even while boasting of thy love, and of the ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... says M. Faguet, "and disconcerted criticism by the impossibility of explaining his methods of procedure; he was luminous, supple, naturally pliant and yielding; beneath his apparently effeminate grace an extraordinary strength of character would suddenly make itself felt; he had, more than any nineteenth-century writer, the quality of charm; he exercised a caressing innuence which ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... of all coquetting with both the extreme radical and military parties which is going on daily in Peking and the provinces the secret object of Japanese diplomacy is either the restoration of the Manchu dynasty, or the enthronement of some pliant usurper, a puppet-Emperor being what is needed to repeat in China the history of Korea. Japan would be willing to go to any lengths to secure the attainment of this reactionary object. Faithful to her "divine mission," ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... not oil mingle with moist things? A. Because, being pliant, soft and thick in itself, it cannot be divided into parts, and so cannot be mingled; neither if it be put on the earth ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... is no place so sweet as the greenwoods In summer, heaven and earth awake with sounds Melodial; the ripple of the breeze Amongst the sun-green leaves, and pliant boughs, Just like the rustle of young summer's dress; The songs of birds, and the low mystic hum Of bees amongst their floral treasuries; Sweetest of all, the cool and liquid tones Of brooks—nature's true-hearted bards, who draw Bright inspirations from a pebbled ridge, And frame them ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... were all brownfaced, sturdy little country children, with no very marked traits save a love of mischief controlled by the fear of their father. These, with Martha the serving-maid, formed our whole household during those boyish years when the pliant soul of the child is hardening into the settled character of the man. How these influences affected me I shall leave for a future sitting, and if I weary you by recording them, you must remember that I am telling these things rather for your profit than for your amusement; ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... realize the Northern ideal of a Southern overseer. He was an obstinate man, and his cruelty was low, vulgar, and brutal like his mind. He would have been hypocritical, but that his character was too coarse-grained to be pliant enough for successful dissimulation. The members of the Board of Directors (with one or two exceptions) were men of much the same stamp as the Warden—with rather more cultivation perhaps, and less force. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... can always influence the individual members by holding out prospects of advancement and decorations, and if this device fails, he can make refractory members retire, and fill up their places with men of more pliant disposition. A Council constituted in this way cannot, of course, display much independence of thought or action, especially in a country like Russia, where no one ventures to ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... As the pliant saw coaxed beams, and slabs, and flooring boards out of the forest trees I grew to like beginning at the beginning of things, and realised there was an underlying truth in Dan's whimsical reiteration, that ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... up with mucous matter, causing it unduly to expand at the bridge, and giving it rather a stumpy, fat appearance. The nostrils are not very sharply and powerfully cut in most cases, and are rounded up and undecided, a sign of pliant character. ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... little child." The orator saw his opportunity and swooped upon it, with a flash of dazzling teeth from under his pliant lips. "This sweet little girl asks if I am preaching. I thank her for the word. Preaching, indeed! Preaching a blessed gospel, for this world of pain and suffering; a gospel of hope and happiness ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... observes you with no less regard, than if he were bound to you for some huge benefit, and will quake to give you the least cause of offence, lest he lose his money. I assure you, in these times, no man has his servant more obsequious and pliant, than gentlemen their creditors: to whom, if at any time you pay but a moiety, or a fourth part, it comes more acceptably than if you gave ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... Grenville to propose to Vergennes that England should acknowledge American independence directly, and not through France. This Fox held gave him the whole conduct of the negotiations. As, however, Franklin was anxious not to lose so pliant a negotiator as Oswald, the cabinet agreed that Oswald should continue to confer with him. On June 4, Grenville complained to Fox that the separate negotiation between Oswald and Franklin rendered it impossible for him to make ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... hand be pressed against thy side Beneath thy waistcoat, and the other hand Upon thy snowy linen rest, and hide Next to thy heart; let the breast rise sublime, The shoulders broaden both, and bend toward her Thy pliant neck; then at the corners close Thy lips a little, pointed in the middle Somewhat; and from thy month thus set exhale A murmur inaudible. Meanwhile her right Let her have given, and now softly drop On the warm ivory a double kiss. Seat thyself then, and with one hand draw closer Thy chair ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... tells graceless men of the mercy of God, 455 Of the Father's help; he hastens forth, Lessening the perils of this passing life, Its darksome deeds, and does God's will With bravery in his breast. His bidding he seeks In prayer, with pure heart and pliant knee 460 Bent to the earth; all evil is banished, All grim offences by his fear of God; Happy in heart he hopes full well To do good deeds: the Redeemer is his shield In his varied walks, the Wielder of victory, 465 Joy-giver to people. Those plants ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... broke into, torn, and almost ruined those soft, tender parts of mine, that had not yet done smarting with the effects of its rage; but behold it now! crest fallen, reclining its half-caped vermilion head over one of his thighs, quiet, pliant, and to all appearances incapable of the mischiefs and cruelty it had committed. Then the beautiful growth of the hair, in short and soft curls round its roots, its whiteness, branched veins, the supple softness of the shaft, as it lay foreshortened, rolled and shrunk up into ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... which had before overwhelmed him, and he felt that in all the world he had no such intimate knowledge of any woman as he had of Ziska. He knew her! Ah!—how did he NOT know her? Every curve of that pliant form was to him the living memory of something once possessed and loved, and he pressed his hand heavily across his eyes for a moment to shut out the sight of all the exquisite voluptuous grace which shook his self-control and tempted him almost ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... found a girl more winning in a tender sort than Giovanna Scarpa of Verona at one and twenty, fair-haired and flushed, delicately shaped, tall and pliant, as she then was. She had to suffer her hours of ill report, but passes for near a saint now, in consequence of certain miracles and theophanies done on her account, which it is my business to declare; before those she was considered (if ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... mean and little, he became, from the very splendor of these gifts, perhaps one of the most unhappy men of his time. Less highly gifted, he would have been less hated and less envied; of humbler spirit, he would have been more pliant, and might ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... records. You, I think really look upon it with alarm. It is, no doubt, very desirable to you, that the blame of losing the Indian Country, which, if not already a fact accomplished, is a fact inevitable, should be made to fall upon me. You, as the pliant and useful implement of Gen. Hindman, are the cause of this loss; and you know I can prove it. You and he have left nothing undone, that could be done, to lose it. And you may rest assured, that whether I live or die, you shall not escape one jot or tittle ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... know you lawyers can, with ease, Twist your words and meanings as you please; That language, by your skill made pliant, Will bend to favor every client; That 'tis the fee directs the sense, To make out either ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... these graceless drinking-shops and into the hands of a rascally "dago" known as Anatole that Mrs. Doyle commended her trio of allies, and being rid of them she turned back to her prisoner, their erstwhile companion. Absinthe wrought its work on his meek and pliant spirit, and the shaking hand was nerved to do the woman's work. At her dictation, with such corrections as his better education suggested, two letters were draughted, and with these in her hand she went aloft. In fifteen minutes she returned, placed one of these ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... vital force that had been concentrated in his eyes, now spread to his feet . . . and he started to run without knowing whither, feeling the same necessity to hide himself as had those men enchained by discipline who were trying to flatten themselves into the earth in imitation of the reptile's pliant invisibility. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that made glass vessels of that pliant harness, that they were no more to be broken than gold and silver ones: It so happened, that having made a drinking-pot, with a wide mouth of that kind, but the finest glass, fit for no man, as he thought, less than Caesar himself; he went with his present to Caesar, ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... The instrument used in writing on wood, was made of metal, and called a style. For stone, brass, &c., a chisel was employed. When the bark and leaves of trees, skins, and other materials of a more pliant nature, superseded the above-named tables, the chisel and the style, or stylus, gave way to the reed and cane, and afterwards to the quill, the hair pencil (as now used by the Chinese,) and the ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... most intense heat we were cool under their shade. A lovely river of blue and limpid water ran through our orchard; I had some Indian baths erected there. We went out in a pretty, light, open carriage, drawn by four good horses, through beautiful avenues, lined on each side with the pliant bamboo, and sown with all the various flowers of the tropics. I leave you to judge, by this short account, that nothing that can be wished for in the country was wanting in Tierra-Alta. For an invalid it was a Paradise; ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... on the alert when the Rents Bill came on, and objected to a clause giving the LORD CHANCELLOR power to order proceedings under the measure to be held in private. This time the LORD CHANCELLOR was less pliant, and plainly suggested that the newspapers were actuated in this matter by regard for their circulations. Does he really suppose that the disputes of landlords and tenants will supply such popular "copy" as to crowd out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... corresponded with Voltaire, and attracted to her house most of the best writers of the age. But to the last she remained eminently and characteristically Swiss, and she never acquired the light touch, or the easy, pliant grace, of the true Parisian. She was a little cold, a little prim, a little pedantic, a little self-conscious. Neither her reserved manners nor her strong domestic tastes, nor the vein of Puritanism that ran through her opinions, ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... into Wall street, possessed by a sense of elation, like a man about to reach out for a long-coveted prize. Through the knowledge gleaned that morning in the Tombs, he would render Lester Ward pliant to his will; would extract from his unsuspecting lips the truth concerning ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... Henrietta Maria was his evil star. She had the fire and daring of her father, but none of his care and affection for the people. The daughter of the most beloved of kings had the instincts of a tyrant, and was ever urging her too pliant husband to unpopular measures. She wanted to set that little jewelled shoe of hers on the neck of rebellion, when she should have held out her soft white hand to make friends of her foes. Her beauty and her grace might ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... grumbles, then it swears, and then, Like David, flings smooth pebbles 'gainst a giant; At last it takes to weapons such as men Snatch when despair makes human hearts less pliant. Then comes 'the tug of war;'—'t will come again, I rather doubt; and I would fain say 'fie on 't,' If I had not perceived that revolution Alone can save the earth from ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... at once set to work to choose a more pliant successor to her rebellious tool. But her cup of crime was nearly full. Though the people remained silent, there was deep discontent among the officials of the realm, while the nobles were fiercely indignant at this virtual seizure ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... object of these fraternities appears to be deception; and particularly if a magistrate or a sheriff should be a conscientious, humane man, their study, their occupation is to deceive him, in which they are very likely to succeed; for a clever gaoler, surrounded by such pliant helpmates, will deceive the very devil, if he be not aware of their tricks; and how easily then may they cheat an honest, unsuspecting country justice! I have been led into this excusable digression from the recollection of Aris's exposure in the House of Commons; and what ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... knowledge of the art of driving, and the character of a "first-rate whip," were objects worthy his ambition; and that, to hold four-in-hand—turn a corner in style—handle the reins in form—take a fly off the tip of his leader's ear—square the elbows, and keep the wrists pliant, were matters as essential to the formation of a man of fashion as dice or milling: it was a principle he had long laid down and strictly adhered to, that whatever tended to the completion of that character, should be acquired to the very acme of perfection, without regard to ulterior consequences, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... self-imposed spiritual exercises, but he did not positively favor them. He taught his young men that the traditional practices of devout souls as embraced in the routine of the novitiate, were good mainly to break the resistance of corrupt nature and render their souls pliant subjects of the Divine guidance in the interior life, as well as submissive to the order of God in the events ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... defeats on the field of battle would have roused a spirit of rebellion and mutiny very similar to that against which he had to contend in the ensanguined streets of the capital at the beginning of his reign. As it was, men expected that his successor would prove more pliant. The prevailing feeling of dissatisfaction did not, therefore, at first assume a ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... upon her; nothing of her fresh beauty was lost on him; the smooth curve of her soft white throat, the alluring charm of her warm sensuous lips, the tiny dimple that came and went when she smiled, the graceful pliant lines of her figure, the rare poise of her small head—his glance observed all. For better or for worse he loved her with whatever of the man there was in him; he might hate her in some sudden burst of fierce ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... stripped the gauntlet without purpose from one of her little brown hands. A solitaire sparkled on the third finger. Again she murmured, "I'll ask mother"; then turned and flashed up the steps, her slender limbs carrying with fluent grace the pliant young body. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... confided wistfully. "Oh, I'm an awfully lonely little thing!" With really shocking abruptness the old malicious smile came twittering back to her mouth. "But I'll get even with the Parpa yet!" she threatened joyously, reaching out with pliant fingers to count the buttons on the White Linen Nurse's dress. "Oh, I'll get even with the Parpa yet!" In the midst of the passionate assertion her rigid little mouth relaxed in a ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... himself that here were traces of the nymph after all—-at least, here was a girl who might conceivably look like one by artificial light and in the right gown. And beyond that, he was vaguely conscious of something in her that was pliant yet unbreakable—or almost unbreakable—and which defied him and all ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... not accidental, but inherent and essential. The contours of a ship's sail bellying in the wind are not more inevitable, nor more graceful, than the curves of an adze-head or of a plough-share. Cast in iron or steel, the gracefulness of a plough-share is more indestructible than the metal, yet pliant (in the limits of its type) as a line of English blank verse. It changes for different soils: it is widened out or narrowed; it is deep-grooved or shallow; not because of caprice at the foundry or to satisfy an artistic fad, but to meet the technical ...
— Progress and History • Various
... banquet was spread, and that at its conclusion the candles were extinguished, and a scene of the most indiscriminate lewdness ensued.[635] One of the judges of the tribunal of the Chatelet was found sufficiently pliant to declare, in contradiction to the unanimous testimony of the accused, that preparations for the repetition of similar crimes had been discovered in the rooms of the house in the rue St. Jacques, where the Protestants ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Its flesh is very dark and rank, something like that of a horse. However, chopped up into a fine sausage-meat, with half its weight of fat bacon, kangaroo flesh is just eatable. The tail makes a very rich soup. The skin of the kangaroo provides a soft and pliant leather which is excellent for shoes. Kangaroo furs are also of value for rugs ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... agility, in which I was never qualified to excel. My name, it is most true, could never be enrolled among the sprightly race, the idle progeny of Eton or Westminster, who delight to cleave the water with pliant arm, to urge the flying ball, and to chase the speed of the rolling circle. But I would ask the warmest and most active hero of the play-field whether he can seriously compare his childish with his manly enjoyments. . . . A state of happiness arising only ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... away, a royal 'proclamation for suppressing the printing and publishing unlicensed news books and pamphlets of news' was put forth in 1680. Vigorous action against recalcitrants followed, and with such pliant tools as those perjured wretches, Scroggs and Jeffreys, for judge and prosecutor, convictions and the 'extremest punishment of the law' became a foregone conclusion. Doubtless there were many vile scribblers who deserved ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... contrived to lead a little bubbling brook through a green walk in the middle of the ground, upon which he had erected a mill in miniature for the diversion of Edwards's infant grandson, and made shift in its construction to introduce a pliant bit of wood that answered with its fairy clack to the murmuring of the rill that turned it. I have seen him stand, listening to these mingled sounds, with his eye fixed on the boy, and the smile of conscious satisfaction on his cheek, while the ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... scarcely to be the songs of our tangible earth, but snatches from fairy-land. Often rude in form, often defective in rhyme, and not unfrequently with even graver faults than these, their ruggedness cannot hide the gleam of the sacred fire. "The Spirit of the Age," moulding her pliant poets, was wiser than to meddle with this sterner stuff. From what hidden cave in Rare Ben Jonson's realm did the boy bring such an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... therefore, O most valorous of men, assent to my departure. When king Yudhishthira was smitten heavily with affliction, I with Bhishma, have recited to him many appropriate legends suited to the occasion with a view of assuaging his grief, and the pliant and high-minded Yudhishthira, though our sovereign and versed in all lore paid due heed to our words. That son of Dharma honours truth, and is grateful and righteous, therefore will his virtue and good sense and the stability of his power always ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... only of pathetic, but of dry and anti-human, repulsive quixotry. In Alvina high-mindedness was already stretched beyond the breaking point. Being a woman of some flexibility of temper, wrought through generations to a fine, pliant hardness, she flew back. She went right back on high-mindedness. Did ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching Reformation: others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful laborers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies? We reckon more than five months yet to harvest; there need not be five weeks; had we ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... husband, who is roused at last to be somewhat more manly, but could never be better than "a boiled rabbit without oyster sauce." (See PLIANT.) ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... consummation. One of Licia's chief responsibilities, in addition to summing up all feminine perfections, is to enforce this rule. Philos, though severely tempted to violate it, soon yields to Licia's virtuous admonitions, for he is, let it be known, a pliant youth, almost as devoted to Licia's will as the knight in Chaucer's Wife of Bath's tale to the Loathly Lady's. The poem ends happily, with the gods attending the lovers' nuptials. The result of this too easily ordered union of souls and bodies, ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... said he, "is one of the most difficult forms of poetry. It has fallen almost entirely into disuse. No Frenchman can hope to rival Petrarch; for the language in which the Italian wrote, being so infinitely more pliant than French, lends itself to play of thought which our positivism (pardon the use of the expression) rejects. So it seemed to me that a volume of sonnets would be something quite new. Victor Hugo has appropriated the old, Canalis writes lighter verse, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... Spanish strongholds, including the capital. The aged Bourbon king, Charles IV., was induced to renounce his throne and the crown prince Ferdinand his claim to the succession, and, June 6, Joseph Bonaparte, since 1806 king of Naples, was designated sovereign. An assembly of ninety-one pliant Spanish notables, convened at Bayonne in the guise of a junta, was influenced both to "petition" the Emperor for Joseph's appointment and to ratify the projet of ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... chariot, and rebuking the Mule: "How slow you are," said she; "will you not go faster? Take care that I don't prick your neck with my sting." The Mule made answer: "I am not moved by your words, but I fear him who, sitting on the next seat, guides my yoke[21] with his pliant whip, and governs my mouth with the foam-covered reins. Therefore, cease your frivolous impertinence, for I well know when to go at a gentle pace, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... riding boots, by which I set especial store. They were such as many of our field-officers now in Canada are in the habit of wearing—coming high up on the thigh, perfectly water-proof, but very light, and pliant as a glove. I saw nothing of American manufacture to compare with them. Some of my duck-shooting acquaintance at Baltimore were never weary of admiring their fair proportions; nor did my sage counselor, before alluded to, refuse his warm approbation; but he urged very strongly ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... as he knew, was already launched that might, at the last moment, sweep him from his goal. Most of the men concerned in it he either held for honest fanatics or despised as flatterers of the mob—ignobly pliant. He could and would fight them all with good courage and ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it matter just this once? They were there now and they might as well get all the fun they could out of it. The music started up, he held out his hand to Madeline and they wheeled into the maze of dancers, the girl's pliant body yielding to his arms, her eyes brilliant with excitement. They danced on and on and it was amazingly and imprudently late when they finally left the Swan and went home to Cousin ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... he holds in his arms! So pliant, so yielding, so pure and undefiled! And the silken sheen and intoxicating perfume of her hair, and the trembling lashes shading the eager, longing, soul-hungry eyes; and the way the little pink ears nestle; and the fair, white, ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... has ethical standards of its own, which differ widely from those of the educated classes. Among the poor, 'generosity ranks far before justice, sympathy before truth, love before chastity, a pliant and obliging disposition before a rigidly honest one. In brief, the less admixture of intellect required for the practice of any virtue, the higher it stands in popular estimation.[3] In this country, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... to Douglas to say that he was opposed to the Lecompton Constitution scheme of admission. He was doubtless disappointed in not having the South rally to his support and nominate him for President in 1856. A more pliant tool of the pro-slavery party from the North was given the preference in the ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... whether in or out of doors, they make great use of automaton figures, which are so ingenious, and so pliant to the operations of vril, that they actually seem gifted with reason. It was scarcely possible to distinguish the figures I beheld, apparently guiding or superintending the rapid movements of vast engines, from human forms ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... vain from me the sailor flies, The quickest ship I can surprise, And turn it as I have a mind, And move it against tide and wind. Nay, bring me here the tallest man, I'll squeeze him to a little span; Or bring a tender child, and pliant, You'll see me stretch him to a giant: Nor shall they in the least complain, Because ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... of Malta, has divers passages in a far higher and richer style of versification than any part of Tamburlaine. The author's diction has grown more pliant and facile to his thought; consequently it is highly varied in pause and movement; showing that in his hand the noble instrument of dramatic blank-verse was fast growing into tune for a far mightier hand to discourse its harmonies upon. I must ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... in the water. Few things are more invigorating and refreshing after a long walk, or getting wet in the feet, than a tepid foot-bath, clean stockings and a pair of easy shoes. After the bath is the time for paring the toe-nails, as they are so much softer and more pliant after having ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... yet To operate, that now it moves, and feels, As sea sponge clinging to the rock: and there Assumes th' organic powers its seed convey'd. 'This is the period, son! at which the virtue, That from the generating heart proceeds, Is pliant and expansive; for each limb Is in the heart by forgeful nature plann'd. How babe of animal becomes, remains For thy consid'ring. At this point, more wise, Than thou hast err'd, making the soul disjoin'd From passive intellect, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... regrets for the parting moment, Bushie—now mounted on Burl's shoulder, now walking hand in hand with Kumshakah—kept up a lively prattle which never ceased, and to which the others listened with pleased ears. Sometimes, while riding aloft, he would amuse himself by catching at the slender, pliant branches of the trees brought within his reach, which he would draw after him as far as he could bend them, then letting them fly back, leave them swinging to and fro. At length, as if this amusement had suggested it to his ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... distinguish his work in every detail, while his feeling is remarkable for elevation and sobriety. All that he lacks, is the boldness of imagination, the depth of passion, and the power of thought, that are indispensable to genius of the highest order. Gifted with a sympathetic and a pliant, rather than a creative and self-sustained nature, he was sensitive to every influence. Therefore we find him learning much in his youth from Lionardo, deriving a fresh impulse from Raphael, and endeavouring in his later life, after a visit to Rome in 1514, to "heighten his style," as the phrase ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... her intellectual development has, on the contrary, been grossly neglected and kept under. As a consequence, she suffers of hypertrophy of feeling and spirituality, hence is prone to superstition and miracles,—a more than grateful soil for religious and other charlataneries, a pliant tool for all reaction. Blockish men often complain when she is thus affected, but they bring no relief, because often they are themselves steeped up to the ears ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... instrumentality of Lady Whitelaw, a curacy might easily be obtained as soon as Godwin was old enough. But several years must pass before that Levitical stage could be reached; and then, after all, perhaps the younger boy, Oliver, placid of temper and notably pliant in mind, was better suited for the dignity of Orders. It was lamentable that Godwin should have become so intimate with that earth-burrowing Mr. Gunnery, who certainly never attended either church or chapel, and who seemed to have ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... our children mount their colts of speed, Their sculptur'd cars full little here they need; From the right side they take the arrow keen, Ne'er to its quiver to return, I ween; The bow, the left side's fitting ornament; The bow, the tough and pliant bow is bent; It yields a sound, like thunder from afar, While flies the arrow, ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... at last from tutor freed, Loves playing-field and tennis, dog and steed: Pliant as wax to those who lead him wrong, But all impatience with a faithful tongue; Imprudent, lavish, hankering for the moon, He takes things up and lays them down ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... would prevent her from making the proper allowances. In her affectionate and trusting nature, which suspected little evil anywhere, there was no doubt that her father and mother had her entire confidence and love. But the likelihood was that she would not be pliant. Under Miss McDonald's influence she had somewhat abstract notions of what is right and wrong, and she saw no reason why these should not be applied in all cases. What her mother would have called policy and reasonable concessions she would have given different names. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... what men were made of! It is only when too late that such women discover what they have missed. This mad Carew was tinder to a flash of these bright eyes; and the fool Yorke, except in his wild creeds, as pliant as a hazel twig. I used to think yonder woman was an idiot, because she believed in a place of torment; but she was right there. Yes, Joanna," she continued, apostrophizing the picture, "I'm compelled to confess that you are right; for, being in hell, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... Miss Prissy, if you think so," said Mrs. Scudder, who was as pliant to the opinions of this wise woman of the parish as New England matrons generally are to a reigning dress-maker ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... they 'scape the plagues of Pox and Pills, The Sin is liable to fifty Ills, Of equal Danger, tho' a diff'rent Cure, As he that dreading Claps wou'd Sin secure; For soon the pliant Wretch he has beguil'd Hath to his Charge and wonder prove with Child: At which, 'tmay properly be said a Man, Leaps from the Fire to the Frying-pan, This for his Reputation sake must be reveal'd When Claps are only ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... benches, and Mr. William Grenville, his bosom friend, Arden, the attorney-general, and Lord Mulgrave, ventured openly to differ from him; stating, that they could not, as honest men, think Hastings deserving of impeachment on this charge, or concur in the vote. Other members, however, were more pliant than these, and were prepared "to follow the great bell-wether," lead he where he might, through flowery meads, or thickets and brakes. Even the amiable Wilberforce, who had hitherto thought that the conduct of Hastings was in part justifiable, and in part excusable; and Dundas, who had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... wonders. To her astonishment the hitherto pliant Peter, who only existed in order to do her will, became transformed into a brusque masculine creature which she did not recognize. With a movement that was almost rough he released himself and fled, calling back a "good night" to her out of the darkness. He did ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... enclosed the Iliad in a nutshell. Examining the matter more closely, he thought it possible. One day this learned man trifled half an hour in demonstrating it. A piece of vellum, about ten inches in length and eight in width, pliant and firm, can be folded up, and enclosed in the shell of a large walnut. It can hold in its breadth one line, which can contain 30 verses, and in its length 250 lines. With a crow-quill the writing can ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... obtained by his rude distillation of sea-water. Between this scattered salt and the points where he judged the animals would be likely to approach, he set his traps, made after the following manner. He took several pliant branches of young trees, and having stripped them of leaves and twigs, dug with his knife and the end of the rude paddle he had made for the voyage across the inlet, a succession of holes, about a foot deep. At the thicker end of these saplings he fastened, by a piece of fishing line, a small cross-bar, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... next saw several Dhahs advance, each carrying upon his head a huge bundle of some twining plant belonging to a species which we had not observed hitherto during our wanderings in Ceylon. From its appearance we likened it to a giant convolvulus, for, while the pliant stem was as thick as a man's arm, there hung from it huge leaves and petals resembling that flower in shape. We moved cautiously into the undergrowth behind, thus getting a little farther away from the Dhahs, and, lying with our bodies stretched upon the ground at full length, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... a few minutes as puzzled as he was. Then the bright thought came, and I took the lighter of the two canes, cut off the most pliant part, and then tearing my silk neckerchief in thin strips, I split the end of the cane, thrust in the haft of the knife, so that it was held as by a fork, and bound the cane tightly down the length of the knife-handle, and also below, so that the wood should ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... who may not freely receive an education which will fit him for any office in his country. The common school is one of the glories of America, and every citizen may be justly proud of it. It brings together while in a pliant condition the children of people of different origins; and besides diffusing knowledge among them, it softens the prejudices of race and party, and carries on a continual process ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... thunder on Tuesday week—no, it must have been Monday week; a scandal in the Senate, a duel in the Pra, how the Avvocato Minghini was picked up dead in Pedrocchi's—a meat-fly in his chocolate! Sparkling eyes, a delicate flush, quick breath, a shape at once pliant and audacious, flashing hands with which half her spells were woven—all these, and that wailing, dragging, comico-tragic voice, that fatal appeal of the child, trained by the wisdom of the wife, completed the rout of our youth. Before supper was over he ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... the memory of Sigurd from her mind. She lives to bring destruction upon her husband's murderers, and those murderers are her own flesh and blood. Through her appeals to Atli's greed, and through Knefrud's lies in the Niblung court, the visit of her proud brothers to her pliant husband is brought about. The saga makes Atli the arch-plotter, and the motive his desire to possess the gold. This sentence exculpates Gudrun from any wrong intention towards her brothers: "Now the queen wots of their conspiring, and misdoubts her that this would mean some beguiling ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... not dance! It is the most unbecoming exercise which they can adopt. In women you have the sweep and wave of drapery, gentle undulations, summer-cloud floatings, soft, sinuous movements, fluency of pliant forms, the willowy bend and rebound of lithe and lovely suppleness. It is grace generic,—the sublime, the evanescent mysticisin of motion, without use, without aim, except its own overflowing and all-sufficing ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... divergence began to act about the period of adult life, when the characters had become somewhat fixed; but here the causes conducive to assimilation began to act from the earliest moment of the existence of the twins, when the disposition was most pliant, and they were continuous until the period of adult life. There is no escape from the conclusion that nature prevails enormously over nurture when the differences of nurture do not exceed what is commonly to be found among persons of the same ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... scene where genial friendship plays The pleasing game of interchanging praise. Self-love, grimalkin of the human heart, Is ever pliant to the master's art; Soothed with a word, she peacefully withdraws And sheathes in velvet her obnoxious claws, And thrills the hand that smooths her glossy fur With the light ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... convenience. Five or six men can draw it and manage it. Its small dimensions require but small area, either for work or storage. One hundred feet or more of its light, pliant hose can be carried on a man's arm up any number of stairs inside a building, or, if fire forbids, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... ought above all things to gaine the people to him, which he may easily effect, when he takes upon him their protection: And because men when they find good, where they look for evill, are thereby more endered to their benefactour, therefore growes the people so pliant in their subjection to him, as if by their favours he had attaind his dignity. And the Prince is able to gaine them to his side by many wayes, which because they vary according to the subject, no certaine rule can be given thereupon; wherefore we shall let them passe ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... tentative essay in that direction. She had walked out with three or four sprigs of the Ailesworth bourgeoisie in her time, and the shadow of middle-age had crept upon her before she realised that however pliant her disposition, her lack of physical charm put her at the mercy of the first bright-eyed rival. At thirty-five Ellen had decided, with admirable philosophy, that marriage was not for her, and had assumed, with apparent ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... syl.), in love with Cynthia, daughter of Sir Paul Pliant. His aunt, Lady Touchwood, had a criminal fondness for him, and, because he repelled her advances, she vowed his ruin. After passing several hair-breadth escapes from the "double dealing" of his aunt and his "friend," Maskwell, he succeeded ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the man for me, Who sells a man for gain, Who bends the pliant servile knee, To Slavery's god of shame! But he whose God-like form erect Proclaims that all alike are free To think, and speak, and vote, and act, O, that's ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... infirm, preserved an understanding, which, whenever unbiassed by her affections, was sure to direct her unerringly; but the extreme softness of her temper frequently misled her judgment, by making it, at the pleasure either of misfortune or of artifice, always yield to compassion, and pliant to entreaty. Where her counsel and opinion were demanded, they were certain to reflect honour on her capacity and discernment; but where her assistance or her pity were supplicated, her purse and her ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... careless and confident, reckless of giving offence, ruder in their behaviour, more grasping in their exactions, more domineering, more oppressive. Prudence should perhaps have counselled the Phoenician cities to submit, to be yielding and pliant, to cultivate the arts of the parasite and the flatterer; but the people had still a rough honesty about them. It was against the grain to flatter or submit themselves; constant voyages over wild seas in fragile vessels kept up their manhood; constant ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... surrounding her since infancy, how humble had she now become!—how much more womanly in appearance, and more child-like at heart! She was as wax in Lady Elburne's hands. A hint of that veiled episode, the Beckley campaign, made Rose pliant, as if she had woven for herself a rod of scorpions. The high ground she had taken; the perfect trust in one; the scorn of any judgement, save her own; these had vanished from her. Rose, the tameless ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sanctified to him by personal deserving—Charles the Base. When we entered the presence he sat throned, with his tinseled snobs and dandies around him. He looked like a forked carrot, so tightly did his clothing fit him from his waist down; he wore shoes with a rope-like pliant toe a foot long that had to be hitched up to the knee to keep it out of the way; he had on a crimson velvet cape that came no lower than his elbows; on his head he had a tall felt thing like a thimble, with a feather it its jeweled band that stuck up like a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... week or so, people tired of asking questions about them and lapsed into merely exchanging greetings, and looking on with some interest at any changes they observed in the pretty, transparent, though always bright face, and the pliant, soft young figure. ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... people are, according to the census of 1891, seventy in number.(1) Of these the Sanskrit is the oldest, and may truly be called the mother tongue of the country. It is one of the most ancient languages in the world, with a history of more than 3,000 years. It is strong, pliant, expressive—a worthy vehicle of noble thought and religious aspiration. Though not spoken today by any tribe or people, it is not a dead language, for it is the religious tongue of India. The best thought, the deepest philosophy, the highest religious aspiration, the laws, ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... It is indisputable, however, that it exerted an educational influence. Besides, it possesses the merit of having resuscitated one of the most valuable of Jewish national possessions, the Hebrew language in its purity, which in Russia alone has become a pliant instrument of literary expression. A still greater field was reserved for the Jewish-Russian literature that arose in the "sixties." It was called into being in order to present a vivid and true picture of the social and spiritual interests of the Jews. Proceeding from discussions ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... us no such explanation can be offered. Horace Walpole had many votaries, many friends, several favourites, but no known mistress. The marks of the old bachelor fastened early on him, more especially after he began to be governed by his valet de chambre. The notable personage who ruled over the pliant Horace was a Swiss, named Colomb. This domestic tyrant was despotic; if Horace wanted a tree to be felled, Colomb opposed it, and the master yielded. Servants, in those days, were intrinsically the same as in ours, but they differed in manner. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... Marguerite, who both of them loved and adored him with passionate idolatry. It has just been shown in what terms Louise of Savoy, in her daily collection of private memoranda, used to speak to herself of her son, "My king, my lord, my Caesar, and my son!" She was proud, ambitious, audacious, or pliant at need, able and steadfast in mind, violent and dissolute in her habits, greedy of pleasure and of money as well as of power, so that she gave her son neither moral principles nor a moral example: for him the supreme kingship, for ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... knave, 'tis glorious to offend, And Godlike an attempt the world to mend, The world, where lucky throws to blockheads fall, Knaves know the game, and honest men pay all. How hard for real worth to gain its price! A man shall make his fortune in a trice, If blest with pliant, though but slender, sense, Feign'd modesty, and real impudence: A supple knee, smooth tongue, an easy grace. A curse within, a smile upon his face; A beauteous sister, or convenient wife, Are prizes in the lottery of life; Genius and Virtue they will ...
— English Satires • Various
... described, I watched her swing the horse aside from the culvert, and send him at the drain: and, with that danger-begotten fascination by trifles which, in situations like mine, you must often have experienced, I noticed her pliant waist spring in easy undulation to the horse's flying leap. And so, with that thick cable of platted hair flapping and surging down her back, she vanished from the scene. She was a phantom of delight, when first she gleamed upon my sight; but the revulsion of feeling was one of the quickest ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... he, "three kinds of friendships which are profitable, and three which are detrimental. To make friends with the upright, with the trustworthy, with the experienced, is to gain benefit; to make friends with the subtly perverse, with the artfully pliant, with the ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... arose the common people's imaginary species of screech-owl, which they superstitiously think attends the windows of dying persons. The plumage of the remiges of the wings of every species of owl that I have yet examined is remarkably soft and pliant. Perhaps it may be necessary that the wings of these birds should not make much resistance or rushing, that they may be enabled to steal through the air unheard upon a nimble ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... forms, even as the life springeth up, and yet hath not its dark beginning in the Center as the PHUR hath, but after the flash of fire, when the sour dark form is terrified, where the hardness is turned into pliant sharpness, and where the second will (viz. the will of nature, which is called the Anguish) ariseth, there Mercurius hath its original. For MER is the shivering wheel, very horrible, sharp, venomous, and hostile; ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... would only for once cast aside the foolish considerations which prevented him also from being a genuine man, clasp her, whom he knew was his own, in his arms, and hold her as long as he desired, he should learn what a strong, free, fearless woman, whose pliant limbs were as unfettered as her heart, could bestow upon him to whom she gave all the love that she possessed! And he must want something of her which was to be concealed from the wife. She could not be mistaken. She had never been deceived in a presentiment ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the liquor trade will take away the great political ally of the trade in girlhood; and without the demoralizing influence of alcohol fewer men will yield to their passions and fewer girls be pliant thereto. ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... figure of the etcher's art or of the process of the mint that we can fully represent Bergson's resources of style. These suggest staccato effects, hard outlines, and that does not at all represent the prose of this writer. It is a fine, delicately interwoven, tissue-like fabric, pliant and supple. If one were in the secret of M. Bergson's private thoughts, it might be discovered that he does not admire his style so much as others do, for his whole manner of thought must, one suspects, have led him often to attempt to express the inexpressible. The ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... title was not one of the mere fanciful sobriquets of the locality. In his erect figure and the disciplined composure of limb and attitude there were still traces of the refined academic rigors of West Point. The pliant adaptability of Western civilization, which enabled him, three years before, to leave the army and transfer his executive ability to the more profitable profession of the law, had loosed sash and shoulder-strap, but had not entirely removed the restraint of the one, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... once more mingled in the cares and sports of the family. But he never for a moment forgot the grave of his friend. He carefully visited it throughout the spring, and weeded out the grass, and kept the ground in a soft and pliant state; and sometimes, when the brave Wunzh thought of his friend that was gone from his sight, he dropped a tear upon the ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... Shoshone horse is a halter and saddle. the 1st consists either of a round plated or twisted cord of six or seven strands of buffaloe's hair, or a throng of raw hide made pliant by pounding and rubing. these cords of bufaloe's hair are about the size of a man's finger and remarkably strong. this is the kind of halter which is prefered by them. the halter of whatever it may be composed is always of great length and is never taken from the neck of ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... demeanor which characterized their ancestors, but which are too small to assail horned cattle, mark the vanishing stages of this great stock, which will soon be known only in memory. The history of this peculiar herd-dog shows us how marvellously pliant the body and mind of this species has become under the conditions of civilization. The rude process of unconscious selection, acting without steadfastness of purpose or rationally developed skill, serves to sway ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... finding out a stag, a buck, or a hare, only by the scent. There is in every animal an impetuous spring, which, on a sudden, gathers all the spirits; distends all the nerves; renders all the joints more supple and pliant; and increases in an incredible manner, upon sudden dangers, his strength, agility, speed, and cunning, in order to make him avoid the object that threatens his destruction. The question in this place is not to know whether beasts are endowed ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... the sudden onslaught of the girl whom he had supposed to be but a pliant, hoodwinked child, Ferris sat long pondering gloomily in his rooms at the Fifth Avenue, his head buried ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... was less pliant than he had looked to find him, shunned occasion of collision with him, or the Paduan being in better spirits was less prone to fall foul of his companions, certain it is that life for a time after the outbreak at supper ran more quietly in the house in the Corraterie. Claude's gloomy face—he ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... I guessed, and I came close upon taking a bath at unawares. Now this stream, so handy within reach, was just what I wanted, and among the bushes by the verge grew a plant—much like our English osier, but dwarfer—extremely pliant and tougher than the tendrils of the clematis; so, that, having stripped it of half a dozen twigs, I went back to work more blithely ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... very axes which their own sturdy hands had hammered at a former period; with the wood thus procured they prepared the charcoal which their labour demanded. Everything is in readiness; the bellows puff until the coal is excited to a furious glow; the metal, hot, pliant, and ductile, is laid on the anvil, round which stands the Cyclop group, their hammers upraised; down they descend successively, one, two, three, the sparks are scattered on every side. ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... of this nation ponder Horace Greeley's arraignment of the reverend gentlemen who were the chief actors in this farce, and remember that in all ages of the world the priesthood have found their pliant tools and most degraded victims in the women of their respective sects. In all of these meetings there were intelligent, sincere women, so blinded by the sophistry and hypocrisy of Marsh, Chambers, Hewitt, et al., that they gave them their countenance and support throughout this disgraceful ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... money system that penalized them for being debtors, or taxes levied for the support of a church which they never entered. And so, before the Revolution opened, the Western imagination had conjured up the specter of a corrupt and effete "East": land of money-changers and self-styled aristocrats and a pliant clergy, the haunt of lawyers and hangers-on, proper dwelling-place of "servants" and the beaten slave: a land of cities, scorning the provincial West, and bent on exploiting its laborious and upright people. ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... seated with the defile at her back, her hands clasped over her knee. In this position, as in every position which she naturally took, she had a pliant and personal grace. The welter of light of the low sun was ablaze in her face. Her profile had a luminous wistfulness. Her lashes were half closed, at once retaining the vision of the panorama at her feet as a thing of atmospheric enjoyment and shutting it out from the intimacy ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... flaming, buoyant personality. He walked with his chin up and his back straight, and trod directly on and over the ends of his toes so that he seemed fairly to spring with vigour. His body was very erect and tall and pliant, bending easily to every change of balance. If I were never to have seen his face at all I should have placed him as one of the laughing spirits of the world. His head was rather small, round, well poised, with soft close-set ringlets all over it like ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... touch of pliancy which he needed for his perfection. Count Kostia was of an age when even the strongest mind feels the necessity of occasional relaxation, and he would have been glad to have near him a pliant, agreeable companion, and enchanted could that companion have ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... town of ours, Whereto we shepherds oft are wont to drive The younglings of the flock: so too I knew Whelps to resemble dogs, and kids their dams, Comparing small with great; but this as far Above all other cities rears her head As cypress above pliant osier towers. ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... orchestra broke forth afresh with a light Parisian waltz, and down between the lines of tables came a negro and a negress—properties of the place, as were the glasses and the table linen—waltzing with the pliant suppleness, the conscious sensuality of their race, and close behind them followed a second couple—a Spaniard, restless and lithe, small of stature and pallid of face, and a young Spanish ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... with Roman aid repelled the attempt of Pharnaces king of Pontus to seize the guardianship of Eumenes' son who was a minor, and reigned in the room of his nephew, like Antigonus Doson, as guardian for life. Adroit, able, pliant, a genuine Attalid, he had the art to convince the suspicious senate that the apprehensions which it had formerly cherished were baseless. The anti-Roman party accused him of having to do with keeping the land for the Romans, and of acquiescing in every insult and exaction at their ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... he unwound the great brown pliant vine from the sycamore and leaped aboard. Just then there was a mad howl behind the house and a gray streak of light flashed over the bank and Jack, with a wisp of rope around his neck, sprang through the air from a rock ten feet high ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... ripening. It is apparently indigenous, and grows more luxuriantly than on the White Nile. It is a variety of the rhamnus, and is set down by botanists as the Spina Christi, of which the Saviour's mock crown of thorns was made. I see no reason to doubt this, as the twigs are long and pliant, and armed with small, though most cruel, thorns. I had to pay for gathering some of the fruit, with a torn dress and bleeding fingers. The little apples which it bears are slightly acid and excellent ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... false embraces, hung; Then sought the queen: she took him to her arms With greedy pleasure, and devour'd his charms. Unhappy Dido little thought what guest, How dire a god, she drew so near her breast; But he, not mindless of his mother's pray'r, Works in the pliant bosom of the fair, And molds her heart anew, and blots her former care. The dead is to the living love resign'd; And all Aeneas ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... who has seen the mailed lobster rise, Clap her broad wings, and, soaring, claim the skies When did the owl, descending from her bower, Crop, 'mid the fleecy flocks, the tender flower? Or the young heifer plunge, with pliant limb, In the salt wave and, fish-like, strive ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... it up to view. It was eighteen inches long, three inches broad, heavy, and pliant. The sight of it made Tommy Traddles and many other little boys and girls good all at once; but Joseph and Hugh went back to their seats grinning at one another. Mr. Foy had often talked that way, but ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... the faiths. But Buddhism never had a similarly paramount and unchallenged position. It never attempted to extirpate its rivals. It coexisted with a mass of popular superstition which it only gently reprobated and with a powerful hereditary priesthood, both intellectual and pliant, tenacious of their own ideas and yet ready to countenance almost any other ideas as the price of ruling. Neither Islam nor Christianity had such an adversary, and both of them and even Judaism resemble Buddhism in having won greater ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Presently he picked up a straw and began trying to balance it on his nose, with his head tilted far back; and as he moved from side to side, in his efforts, he edged nearer and nearer toward the pansy; finally his bare foot rested upon it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he hopped away with the treasure and disappeared round the corner. But only for a minute—only while he could button the flower inside his jacket, next his heart—or next his stomach, possibly, for he was not much posted in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the hills and rivers, The lands and fields, and the attached states [5]. The (present) descendant of the duke of Ku, The son of duke Kwang, With dragon-emblazoned banner, attends the sacrifices, (Grasping) his six reins soft and pliant. In spring ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... shore, the two parties became visible to each other when opposite that precise point. Both stopped, and a conversation ensued, that may be said to have passed directly over the heads of those who were concealed. Indeed, nothing sheltered the travellers but the branches and leaves of plants, so pliant that they yielded to every current of air, and which a puff of wind a little stronger than common would have blown away. Fortunately the line of sight carried the eyes of the two parties of savages, whether they stood in the water or on the land, above the bushes, and the leaves appeared blended ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... parcel of marionettes. Or it is an expression of some sort of emotion. The Greeks understood that in their Orchiesis, each feeling had its corresponding movement. For me it means a number of things. When a woman is slender and pliant and smooth of step, and if she pleases me otherwise, then it is not waste of time!—Tonight I shall probably get drunk again," and he flicked the ash off his cigarette with his little finger; and even though Tamara was again annoyed with him, ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... smother his wrath during the brief moments he was giving his orders; but no sooner had the seemingly pliant tools of his will left, than he again foamed over, and pacing back and forth, continued his cursing, as though he would spend ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... quicken. Islands swam up out of silver space, took form and colour, and there between the islands he saw the girl. She had gotten another oar from Giuseppe and stood delighting in the free motion; her sleeves were rolled up, her hat was off, her hair blew out; alive and pliant she bent to the long sweep of it, and her eyes were on the morning wonder. But when she caught sight of Peter she looked only at him and he knew that her seeing him appearing thus on the shining water was its chief and exquisite ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... Peter Puncheon's place could be airted their way, John [Gibbie] Girder wad mak it better to the Master of Ravenswood than a pair of new gloves; and that he wad be blythe to speak wi' Maister Balderstone on that head, and he wad find him as pliant as a hoop-willow in a' that ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... it grumbles, then it swears, and then, Like David, flings smooth pebbles 'gainst a Giant; At last it takes to weapons such as men Snatch when Despair makes human hearts less pliant. Then comes "the tug of war;"—'t will come again, I rather doubt; and I would fain say "fie on 't," If I had not perceived that Revolution Alone can save the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... accepting money, she would shut him up mighty quick! "I'll write him to-morrow, if I've time," she had said. At the moment, the sense of achievement had exhilarated her; yet now, as she sat there on the heap of scrap, bending a pliant boring between her fingers, her pillar of fire roaring overhead from the chimneys of the furnaces, the achievement seemed flat enough. Why should she, to build a hospital for another woman's son, have ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... with the soft smile and intelligent eyes, who had sat by the side of Leonard in his garret. She was about the middle height, still slight, but beautifully formed; that exquisite roundness of proportion which conveys so well the idea of woman, in its undulating, pliant grace,—formed to embellish life, and soften away its rude angles; formed to embellish, not to protect. Her face might not have satisfied the critical eye of an artist,—it was not without defects in regularity; but its expression was eminently ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... arch, as it rose to the eye against the horizon. This hill was studded with clumps of beeches, and sometimes enclosed as a meadow. In the month of July, when the grass on it was long, many an hour have I spent in solitary enjoyment, watching the wavy motion produced upon its pliant surface by the sunny winds, or the flight of the cloud-shadows, like gigantic phantoms, as they swept rapidly over it, whilst the murmur of the rocking-trees, and the glancing of their bright leaves in the sun produced a heartfelt pleasure, the very memory ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... and bade raise the hapless body dead, And therewithal a thousand men, his war-hosts' flower, he sped 60 To wait upon him on the way with that last help of all, And be between his father's tears: forsooth a solace small Of mighty grief; a debt no less to that sad father due. But others speed a pliant bier weaving a wattle through, Of limber twigs of berry-bush and boughs of oaken-tree, And shadow o'er the piled-up bed with leafy canopy. So there upon the wild-wood couch adown the youth is laid; E'en as a blossom dropped to earth from fingers of a maid— The gilliflower's ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... Peegwish like a lion. The savage was both bold and strong, but he was elderly, and Ian was young and bolder; besides, he had the unusual strength of a half-madman at that moment. Down went the ex-brewer. He struggled hard. Ian crushed him in his arms, raised him, crammed him into a chair, seized a pliant rope and bound him therewith, winding him and the chair round and round in his haste—for there was no time to tie knots—until he resembled a gigantic spool of ravelled thread. Not a moment too soon! There was a snap outside; the rope was gone! A grind, a slide, and ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... long into his upturned face. The wistfulness sat heavy upon it. The youthfulness of this dashing trapper of the posts and settlements came out plain in the starlight. She saw again the pliant strength beneath the slender grace, caught the suggestion of contradicting forces that she had felt one day in Marie's doorway when young Dupre swung up the main way of Fort de Seviere, and beneath it all ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... does that young poet, in his first intoxication of flattery and fame, guess what a lot of contest and strife is in store for him. The very breath which a literary man respires is hot with hatred, and the youthful proselyte enters that career which seems to him so glittering, even as Dame Pliant's brother in the 'Alchemist' entered town,—not to be fed with luxury, and diet on pleasure, but 'to learn to quarrel and live by ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sacrifice and the worship of phallic emblems and effigies of their gods and dead kings were common. The king expected everybody to fall prostrate before him when he appeared and pretend to go to sleep,—to be of as little account as possible. And the people were pliant and willing under their restraints. They allowed that the king was absolute master. Yet they were contented usually and not ill looking; lithe and graceful, too, and gay, fond of sports and swimming, lovers of ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... she must play, according to events at which she guessed. She vaguely outlined this role, like one of Scribe's or of George Sand's. It should be endued with devotion, self-abnegation, greatness of soul, tenderness; and fine words. Her pliant nature almost rejoiced in this new attitude. She pondered almost till evening what she should do, wondering how she should manage to wrest the truth ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... battle, in defence of his beauty, with another boy, bigger than himself, and beat his opponent most handsomely— and, therefore, he likes Dash; and the maids like him, or pretend to like him, because we do—as is the fashion of that pliant and imitative class. And now Dash and May follow us every where, and are going with us now to the Shaw, or rather to the cottage by the Shaw, to bespeak milk and butter of our little dairy-woman, Hannah Bint—a housewifely occupation, to which we owe some ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... took out the spruce roots, soft and pliant, and selecting a lot that were about an eighth of an inch in diameter, scraped off the bark and roughness, until he had a bundle of perhaps ten feet of soft, ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Mick stood near the tree waiting to brand and cut, and with him were Fiddle-head and Jack Johnson for the front and back leg ropes, and Eagle to keep the brands hot and hand them when required. Poona and Uncle were each armed with a long pliant bull-hide lasso, and the two white boys and Calcoo rode round the cattle, keeping ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... long been well known to politicians as an industrious and useful official man, and as an upright and consistent member of Parliament. He has been one of the most moderate, and, at the same time, one of the least pliant members of the Conservative party. His conduct has, indeed, on some questions been so Whiggish, that both those who applauded and those who condemned it have questioned his claim to be considered as a Tory. But his Toryism, such as it is, he has held fast ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Manila, in the province of Bonbon, is another lake of the same name [Bonbon], not so extensive as the former, but with a great abundance of fish. The natives' method of catching them is by making corrals [265] of bejucos, which are certain slender canes or rushes, solid and very pliant and strong; these are employed for making cables for the natives' boats, as well as other kinds of ropes. They catch the fish inside these corrals, having made the enclosures fast by means of stakes. They also catch the fish in wicker baskets ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... everywhere,—in houses, in churches, in stores, in town, in country, on land, at sea, in public, in private,—extensive sub-orders of mammalian Invertebrata. They crouch and crawl through the world with pliant length. They wriggle through the knot-holes of fear and policy, when their stouter-boned brethren oppose them. They creep into corners and cracks when the giant, Progress, strides before them, and quake at the thunder of his tread. They cling, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... on the Ottawa; as we advance, the river narrows and becomes studded with little islands covered with wild shrubs and forest trees, from whose stiff unyielding boughs the more pliant shoots droop playfully into the foaming stream below, like the children of Gravity coquetting with the family of Passion. Of course these islands form rapids in every direction: we soon, approach the one selected as the channel in which to try our strength. On we dash boldly—down ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Anglo-Saxon, "bogsom," old English, "boughsome," that can be easily bent or bowed; German, "biegsam," pliant, obedient. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... unearthed a well preserved human skeleton which was found to be wrapped in a large piece of cane matting. This, which measures about 6 by 4 feet, with the exception of a tear at one corner is perfectly sound and pliant and has a large submarginal stripe running around it. Inclosed with the skeleton was a piece of cloth made of flax, about 14 by 20 inches, almost uninjured but apparently unfinished. The stitch in which it is woven is precisely ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas
... not love her, confirmed by every word of his proposal, forbade any freedom of speech. To hear him speak and to feel herself unable to reply, or constrained in her replies, was so painful that she longed for the time when she should be alone. A more pliant woman would have taken this chance of an explanation, whatever risks attached to it; but to one of Mary's firm and resolute temperament there was degradation in the idea of self-abandonment; let the waves of emotion rise ever so high, she could not shut ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Fifth, learning of these matters, revolved in his breast the thought that he who fears dead serpents must, even more, fear living bullies, put Dam upon his list as a safe and pliant client, and thereby (strange instrument of grace!) gave him the chance to rehabilitate himself, clear the cloud of infamy from about his head, and live a bearable life for the rest of ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... own? For I know that she loves me a little. And thinking of this, he kissed her, quietly, as one might comfort a sobbing child; afterward he held her in his arms for a moment, wondering vaguely at the pliant thickness of her hair and the sweet scent of it. Then he put her from him gently, and swore in his soul that Hugues must die, so that this ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... independence secured by an assurance of perfect immunity in exercising this sacred privilege of freemen under the dictates of their own unbiased judgments. Never with my consent shall an officer of the people, compensated for his services out of their pockets, become the pliant instrument of Executive will. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... Through the air, on wings of skin or feathers or tissue membrane; crawling or leaping by night; burrowing underground; gnawing up through the great supporting posts; swarming up the bamboos and along the pliant curving stems to drop quietly on the shingled roof;—thus had the jungle-life come past Hope's unseeing eyes and found the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... he made both men and women sometimes mad, and in the church put them quite out of countenance; for he said that there was but an antistrophe, or little more difference than of a literal inversion, between a woman folle a la messe and molle a la fesse, that is, foolish at the mass and of a pliant buttock. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... leapt from his chariot to earth and stood beside him and drew the swift shaft right through, out of his shoulder; and the blood darted up through the pliant tunic. Then Diomedes of the loud war-cry prayed thereat: "Hear me, daughter of aegis-bearing Zeus, unwearied maiden! If ever in kindly mood thou stoodest by my father in the heat of battle, even so now be thou likewise kind to me, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... they would implicate him. With Paul's and Pierre's Bombay confidences, corroborated by Dodge's expected confession, conviction of the Laniers would follow. William Dodge would explain that in bringing the London suit he was only a pliant tool of the Laniers, and they would blame all on him. Then he would retaliate by telling about the Thames murders. These recriminations, the vague Bombay confessions, supplemented by other facts already known, ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... Such a device offers ready aid to the decorator whose figures must often receive a close encasement, fitted as they are into limited spaces, when many an ungracious line in the subject is made to disappear through the accommodation of pliant drapery or of varied ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... the very heart's core. I read his letter again, and when he bade me think of him, even at the altar, even when pledging my faith to Edward, I murmured to myself, "Ever between him and me, in thought if not in deed; ever with thy smooth tongue, thy determination strong as iron, and thy character pliant as steel; ever claiming thy share in my heart, and thy place in my thoughts; ever toiling for thine own ends, and hinting at revenge, even while boasting of thy love, and of the ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... entireness of his limbs was held to be among the Athenians,) superadds the vast power, both actual and virtual, which would flow from the inviolability of the Royal office, and forecloses, so far, the chance which the more pliant Tory doctrine would leave open, of counteracting the effects of the King's indirect personal influence, by curtailing or weakening the grasp of some of his direct regal powers. Ovid represents the Deity of Light (and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
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