"Flexibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He had no flexibility, no command over mirthful inspiration, such as we hear in Mozart, Rossini, or even Donizetti. But his monotone is in sublile rapport with the graver aspects of nature and life. Chorley sums up this characteristic of Bellini ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... uses unrestricted multiplication [14] as the means whereby hundreds compete for the place and nourishment adequate for one; it employs frost and drought to cut off the weak and unfortunate; to survive, there is need not only of strength, but of flexibility and of ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... at first represented by the boldest symbols, might afterwards be set forth with solemn and studied expression, and that the power might know no weariness in clothing which had known no restraint in creating. But dilation and contraction are for molluscs, not for men; we are not ringed into flexibility like worms, nor gifted with opposite sight and mutable color like chameleons. The mind which molds and summons cannot at will transmute itself into that which clings and contemplates; nor is it given to us at once to have the potter's power over the lump, the fire's upon the clay, and the gilder's ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... trade unionists are those men and women who recognize the limitations of industrial organization, but who value it for its flexibility, for the ease with which it can be transformed into a training-school, a workers' university, while all the while it is providing a fortified stronghold from behind whose shelter the industrial struggle can be successfully carried on, and ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... of my own translation, the flexibility of the metre has permitted me to attempt an almost literal rendering; without, I hope, sacrificing elegance. The simplicity of the Finnish language and metre would, in my opinion, render a prose version bald and unsatisfactory. My chief difficulty has been to fit the Finnish names into even ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... stand erect themselves. The bark of a fine tree found in abundance here, and called "motuia", is used by the Barotse for making fish-lines and nets, and the "molompi", so well adapted for paddles by its lightness and flexibility, was abundant. There were other trees quite new to my companions; many of them ran up to a height of fifty feet of one thickness, and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... electro-galvanic process. Copper has also been deposited, by the same process, upon aluminum plates to facilitate their being rolled very thin; for unless the metal be pure, it requires to be annealed at each passage through the rolls, and it is found that its flexibility is greatly increased by rolling. To avoid the bluish white appearance, like zinc, Dr. Stevenson McAdam recommends immersing the article made from aluminum in a heated solution of potash, which will give a beautiful white frosted appearance, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... will traits. In her pamphlet The Will Profile she presents an analysis of twelve volitional traits: revision, perseverance, co-ordination of impulses, care for detail, motor inhibition, resistance, assurance, motor impulsion, speed of decision, flexibility, freedom from inertia, and speed of movement. From a study of several hundred cases she defined certain will patterns which apparently characterize types of individuals. In her experience she has found the rating of the subject by the will test to have a distinct value ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... world. But one always seems to find that neither a wide range of cultivation, nor familiar access to the best Whig circles, had quite removed the stiffness and self-conscious precision of the Clapham Sect. We would give much for a little more flexibility, and would welcome ever so slight a consciousness of infirmity. As has been said, the only people whom men cannot pardon are the perfect. Macaulay is like the military king who never suffered himself to ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... on whom the governor and council have wrought a necromantic miracle. I should not wonder if he were to crumble away, some morning, after you are gone, and nothing be seen of him more, except a heap of dust. Miss Hepzibah, at any rate, will lose what little flexibility she has. They both ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... We went to breakfast at Mr. Cobden's. Mr. C. is a man of slender frame, rather under than over the middle size, with great ease of manner, and flexibility of movement, and the most frank, fascinating smile. His appearance is a sufficient account of his popularity, for he seems to be one of those men who carry about them an atmosphere of vivacity and social exhilaration. We had a very ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... operations of life, whether private or publick, admit no such laws. The caprices of voluntary agents laugh at calculation. It is not always that there is a strong reason for a great event. Obstinacy and flexibility, malignity and kindness, give place, alternately, to each other; and the reason of these vicissitudes, however important may be the consequences, often escapes the mind in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... The extensibility, flexibility, and extraordinary command which the giraffe possesses over the movements of its tongue had long attracted notice, but it was reserved for Professor Owen to point out their true character. Sir Everard Home, who had examined the giraffe which died at Windsor, described the wonderful ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... eye and powerful tone, the actor capable of reaching the heights of dramatic passion. He was scarcely above the middle size, with features whose magic consisted in neither their strength nor beauty, but in their flexibility. I had never seen a countenance so capable of change, and in which the change was so instantaneous and so total. From the most sportive openness, a word threw it into the most indignant storm, or the most incurable despair. From wild joy, it was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... Flexibility in the structure of a sentence is often gained by what is known as "overlapping"[62] of phrases, i.e., where the closing measure of a sentence, the 8th or 12th for example, is identical with the first measure of the following ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... 'making character'; perhaps it is, indeed, the only way. We can put in the quaint figure that spoke a hundred words with us yesterday by the wayside; but do we know him? Our friend, with his infinite variety and flexibility, we know—but can we put him in? Upon the first, we must engraft secondary and imaginary qualities, possibly all wrong; from the second, knife in hand, we must cut away and deduct the needless arborescence of his nature, but the trunk and the few branches that remain ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Italian word "nigellus" (black); the art is that of inlaying an engraved surface with a black paste, which is thoroughly durable and hard as the metal itself in most cases, the only difference being in flexibility; if the metal plate is bent, the niello ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... gaze at her had been one of mild interest rather than of rapture. But she looked so lovely in the green world about her, her pink cheeks, her simple light dress, and the delicate flexibility of her movement acquired such rarity from their wild-wood setting, that his eyes kindled as he ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... and so powerfully did each prevent the other from exceeding its proper boundaries. He knew how to reconcile the most enterprising spirit with the coolest moderation; the most obstinate perseverance with the easiest flexibility; the most severe justice with the gentlest lenity; the greatest vigour in commanding with the most perfect affability of deportment [c]; the highest capacity and inclination for science, with the most shining talents for action. His civil and his military virtues are ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... pleasant to reflect upon such happy incidents in the history of a profession that probably offers more difficulties to the beginner than any other. Yet the very obstacles to success in it are apt to develop an intellectual agility and a flexibility of morals which, in the long run, may well lead not only to fortune, but to fame—of one sort or another. I recall an incident in my own career, upon my ingenuity in which, for a time, I looked back with considerable professional pride, until I found it a common practice among my elders and contemporaries ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... feelings and the interest of the situation, without interrupting the action. I have therefore refrained from interrupting the actor in the fervor of his dialogue by introducing the accustomed tedious ritournelle; nor have I broken his phrase at an opportune vowel that the flexibility of his voice might be exhibited in a lengthy flourish; nor have I written phrases for the orchestra to afford the singer opportunity to take a long breath preparatory to the accepted flourish; nor have I dared to hurry over the second part of an aria, when such contained the passion ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... steelyard, or spring-balance, dependent upon mere tension or flexibility, the attraction will have no influence. If I suspend a weight equivalent to the weight of a kilogramme, the index will register the proper weight on the surface of Gallia. Thus I shall arrive at the difference I want: the difference between the earth's attraction and the comet's. ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... lower part of the legs. They give the idea, however, of great strength combined with fleetness; and the animal is observed to canter with great velocity. The form of the hoof, too, is longer, neater, and stronger than in the ox, and the whole foot appears to have greater flexibility. ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... about half the size of my companion, and thickly covered with hair, with bushy tails, which they kept carefully erect so as not to touch the ground; creatures much resembling monkeys in movement, size, and length, and flexibility of limb, but in other respects more like gigantic squirrels. They held the stalks of the fruit they plucked in their mouths, filling with them large bags left at intervals, and from the manner in which they worked I suspected that they had no opposable thumbs—that the whole ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... years, that this kind of "visiting" presents many perplexities to persons of a certain temperament, but I never entered any house where I felt the least sensation of being out of place. I don't think this flexibility is a gift of especially high order, nor that it would be equally valuable in all walks of life, but it is of great service in this sort of work. Whether I sat in a stuffed chair or on a nailkeg or an inverted washtub it was always equally agreeable to me. The "getting into relation," perfectly, ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... feeling, it is no doubt possible to attain, by means of cultivation, to great nicety of discrimination within the narrow circle to which it limits and circumscribes them. But no man can be a true critic or connoisseur without universality of mind, without that flexibility which enables him, by renouncing all personal predilections and blind habits, to adapt himself to the peculiarities of other ages and nations—to feel them, as it were, from their proper central point, and, what ennobles human nature, to recognise and duly ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... England some of those made by Joseph Gillott, at Birmingham. Before this goose-quill pens had been exclusively used, and there was in each House of Congress and in each Department a penmaker, who knew what degree of flexibility and breadth of point each writer desired. Every gentleman had to carry a penknife, and to have in his desk a hone to sharpen it on, giving the finishing touches on one of his boots. Another new invention of that epoch was the lucifer match-box, which superseded the large tin tinder-box ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... a bundle of thin golden plates, in which all the wisdom of the book had grown illegible. He hurriedly put on his clothes, and was enraptured to see himself in a magnificent suit of gold cloth, which retained its flexibility and softness, although it burdened him a little with its weight. He drew out his handkerchief, which little Marygold had hemmed for him. That was likewise gold, with the dear child's neat and pretty stitches running all along ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... the spontaneous flexibility of a community. A community that thinks freely and fully throughout its population is capable of a thousand things that are impossible in an unthinking mass of people. The latter, collectively considered, is a large rigid thing, a lifeless thing, that will break rather than bend, that ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... the law? My dear lady, one might as well be sure of a woman—pardon me; you know that I regard this quality of infinite flexibility as one of the supreme charms of your sex. I can't say that I feel it to be the supreme charm of the law. Mrs. Temperley claims to have her authority through the mother, because she has the written consent of the aunt to ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... top-floor room. Suddenly I struck one of these standing very wide open, and trod upon a rope's end curled like a snake on the leads. I stooped down, and at a touch I knew that I had hold of Raffles's favourite Manila, which united a silken flexibility with the strength of any hawser. It was tied to the window-post, and it dangled into a room in which there was a dull red glow of fire: an inhabited room if ever I put my nose in one! My body must follow, ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... wrinkles will disappear more swiftly than they gathered. The Doctor (so styled by courtesy) shows the upper half of his person behind the counter, and appears to be a slender and rather tall man; his features are difficult to describe, possessing nothing peculiar, except a flexibility to assume all characters it, turn, while his eye, shrewd, quick, and saucy, remains the same throughout. Whenever a customer enters the shop, if he desire a box of pills, he receives with them an equal number of hard, round, dry jokes,—or if a dose of salts, it is mingled ...
— Dr. Bullivant - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... caused, as it is certainly compensated, by the facility and quickness in turning the head, possessed by them in virtue of their more erect stature, and the freedom of the atlanto-axial articulation? (in birds the same end is gained by the length and flexibility of the neck.) The importance, in case of danger, of bringing the eyes to help the ears would call for a quick turn of the head whenever a new sound was heard, and so would tend to make superfluous any special means ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... and flexibility of mind, there went a not less remarkable ingenuity and resourcefulness. His mind was fertile in expedients, and still more fertile in reasonings by which to recommend the expedients. This gift was often dangerous, for he was apt ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... dissipation, for a ten weeks' penance at Churchhill. I believe I owe it to my character to complete the match between my daughter and Sir James after having so long intended it. Let me know your opinion on this point. Flexibility of mind, a disposition easily biassed by others, is an attribute which you know I am not very desirous of obtaining; nor has Frederica any claim to the indulgence of her notions at the expense of her mother's inclinations. Her idle love for Reginald, too! ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... three Gaboon tongues, as the Rev. Mr. Mackey observes, is "the surprizing flexibility of the verb, the almost endless variety of parts regularly derived from a single root. There are, perhaps, no other languages in the world that approach them in the variety and extent of the inflections of the verb, possessing ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... The flexibility of the vertebra creates a wonderful strength of structure, combined with an ease of movement peculiar to the vertebrates, and which renders them the natural forms of life capable of rapid development and evolution. By means of this strength, and ease, these forms are enabled to move rapidly in ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... morals, and to him the opinion of Europe was final. Hence the Monitor and Churchill were well suited to each other. Moreover, Churchill enjoyed the society of the great—that is, of those who seemed to him to be the great—and he had an admirable flexibility of temperament; while easily able and willing to be very nasty to those whom he thought of an inferior grade, he was equally able and willing to be extremely deferential to those whose grade he considered superior. He was also intolerant ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... used in the cement feeder, except that it is larger, and instead of being provided on the discharge side with a concave plate, is surmounted by a roller, held by springs. This serves to cut off the excessive flow of material, but provides sufficient flexibility to allow the rough coarse material to be fed through the machine without its catching. The feeder for crushed stone is a similar construction on larger lines, to handle material up to 3-in. size. These several feeders can be set to ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... that bear the impress of an older time, and that vaguely recall scenes in the Bible. Nature has traced out a line over our mountain ranges; the whole appearance of the country is different on either side of it. You will find strength of character up above, flexibility and quickness below; they have larger ways of regarding things among the hills, while the bent of the lowlands is always towards the material interests of existence. I have never seen a difference so strongly marked, unless it has been in the Val d'Ajou, where the ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... historical period, and deduced from their special position, or collected from their particular history. Even looking to the manner of progress, the order of succession of social states, there is need of great flexibility in our generalizations. The limits of variation in the possible development of social, as of animal life, are a subject of which little is yet understood, and are one of the great problems in social science. It is, at all events, a fact, that different portions of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... to us by many paintings and medallions, which, however, fail to impart what must have been that effect of his personal presence which so drew all hearts to him in his day. The knight saw a man of middle age, of elastic, well-knit figure, and a flexibility and grace of motion which seemed to make every nerve, even to his finger-ends, vital with the expression of his soul. The close-shaven crown and the plain white Dominican robe gave a severe and statuesque simplicity to the lines of his figure. His head and face, like those of most of the men of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... history it exposes in the blackest colors. It begins with the early life of Loyola, depicts his debaucheries, his ambition, the religious mechanism invented by his enthusiastic and fanatical genius, the flexibility of his morality, and goes on to give an account of the intrigues and crimes of his successors in various countries and times, with an analysis of their books, their missions and their miracles. Another ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... curiously significant that whereas it was the soldier-admirals who first introduced formal tactics, it was a seaman's school that forced them to pedantry in the face of the last of the soldier-school, who tried to preserve their flexibility, and keep the end clear in view above ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... efforts and expedient alternatives that are available, some within hours, to aid in restoration of transportation capacity. In addition, transportation systems generally have an inherently significant degree of redundancy and flexibility. Consequently, an unquantified but significant movement capability in all transport modes is expected to survive. Finally, these loss estimates do not take into account the question of availability of essential ...
— An Assessment of the Consequences and Preparations for a Catastrophic California Earthquake: Findings and Actions Taken • Various
... train of reasoning, Julian had arrived at the same conclusion; in which, therefore, he heartily acquiesced. During the seaman's prosing, he was reflecting within himself, how much of the singular flexibility of her limbs and movements the unfortunate girl must have derived from the discipline and instructions of Adrian Brackel; and also how far the germs of her wilful and capricious passions might have been sown during her wandering and adventurous childhood. ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... seemed to me then, and still seems, the farthest reach of the author's great talent. It is couched, like so much of his work, in the autobiographic form, which next to the dramatic form is the most natural, and which lends itself with such flexibility to the purpose of the author. In 'Barry Lyndon' there is imagined to the life a scoundrel of such rare quality that he never supposes for a moment but he is the finest sort of a gentleman; and so, in fact, he was, as most gentlemen ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Helen with her soul in a tumult. Grant Herman had described more than her face when he applied to her the epithet nun-like. It was a source of perpetual wonderment to many of her friends that such a girl could be so strongly attracted by Arthur Fenton; but those who knew his marvelous flexibility, the unconscious hypocrisy with which he adapted himself to any nature with which he came in contact, and on the other hand his fascinating manner, at once brilliant and sympathetic, felt Edith's love to be the perfectly ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... conceived, not for emergencies and dangers, but for tranquillity and harmony. And so where masses of people must cooperate in an uncertain and eruptive environment, it is usually necessary to secure unity and flexibility without real consent. The symbol does that. It obscures personal intention, neutralizes discrimination, and obfuscates individual purpose. It immobilizes personality, yet at the same time it enormously sharpens the intention of the group and welds that group, as nothing ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... by Destiny. Gallatin—the urbane, cosmopolitan Gallatin—must have derived much quiet amusement from his association with this robust New Englander who took himself so seriously. Two natures could not have been more unlike, yet the superior flexibility of Gallatin's temperament made their association not only possible but exceedingly profitable. We may not call their intimacy a friendship—Adams had few, if any friendships; but it contained the essential ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... bolts and the bars and the chains of all other nations will remain undisturbed. It is, indeed, possible, that our industry and commerce would accommodate themselves to this unequal and unjust state of things; for, such is the flexibility of our nature, that it bends itself to all circumstances. The wretched prisoner incarcerated in a jail, after a long time, becomes reconciled to his solitude, and regularly notches down the passing days ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... attitude, she began, "La Ligue des Rats: fable de La Fontaine." She then declaimed the little piece with an attention to punctuation and emphasis, a flexibility of voice and an appropriateness of gesture, very unusual indeed at her age, and which proved she had been ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... paraphrase of the old rhythmic story of "Jack's House" is a good illustration of the scope and flexibility of our language, and suggests the fact that tautological errors of writing ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... steel pens the best Dennemora—Swedish iron—or hoop iron is selected. It is worked into sheets or slips about three feet long, and four or five inches broad, the thickness varying with the desired stiffness and flexibility of the pen for which it is intended. By a stamping press pieces of the required size are cut out. The point intended for the nib is introduced into a gauged hole, and by a machine pressed into a semi-cylindrical shape. In ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... in the history of the world.... The wrecks and fragments of these subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection of the whole. Their very language ... in variety, in simplicity, in flexibility, and in copiousness, excels every other language of the western world.' Then, after some words on their sculpture, he adds: 'their poetry seems to maintain a very high, though not so disproportionate a rank, in the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... moral dyspepsia known as the Puritanical conscience was his by right of inheritance. In his nature there was no flexibility, no instinct for harmonious adaptability to any surroundings excepting those among which he had been born and in which he intended to end his days. Temperamentally he was of a fast colour. The leopard cannot change the spots and neither could he change his; nor did he will so to do. In short ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... one of Mistress Mary's promises! They were as fixed and as unchangeable as the laws of the Medes and Persians, and there was a record of their fulfilment indelibly written in the memories of two hundred small personages—personages in whom adult caprice and flexibility of conduct had bred a tendency ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... has not been afforded by nature, and that deficiency I find generally existing with the French females; they will often attain an extreme height with apparent facility, and even will manage notes at the same time so low that no fault can be found with the compass of their voices, nor any lack of flexibility; their execution being perfectly clean and correct. I have frequently heard them run the chromatic scale with extreme distinctness and apparent ease, and acquit themselves admirably in the performance of the most intricate and ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... solely upon the pleasure derived from them, that finger-plays depend for their raison d'etre. By their judicious and early use, the development of strength and flexibility in the tiny lax fingers may be assisted, and dormant thought may receive its first awakening call through the motions which interpret as well as illustrate the phase of life or activity presented ...
— Finger plays for nursery and kindergarten • Emilie Poulsson
... in gait; broad-chested; a high intellectual forehead; manly beauty in every feature; a voice of remarkable sweetness and flexibility; a mild but deeply penetrating eye; a most retentive memory; endowed with varied knowledge by extensive reading; unrivaled in power of oratory; frank in thought, speech, and manner; patient and forbearing in temper; ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... time the visitor was Mr. Solomon Lightowler, who stood in the doorway with what he meant to be a reassuring smile on his face—though, owing to a certain want of flexibility in his uncle's ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... nobler era been marked in the history of literature. For here was a tongue born which was destined to mate even with that of Greece in richness and flexibility, to make the language of Cicero and Virgil seem stiff and stilted in comparison, and, if not to vie with the French in airy grace, or with the Italian in liquid music, to excel them far in teeming resources and robust energy. Memorable ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... required to present their credentials in October, and they were not to be passed upon until the next session of the Court in the following April. This two-fold change in the religious and political life of the colony gave greater flexibility and greater security, for "with church and state practically intertwined, the theory of the one had been too narrow and of the other too broad." [53] After the change in the franchise, records of the towns show that ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... perceived, that the longer this conversation continued, the more he should be embarrassed; he put an end to it, by appearing to acquiesce in what HAMET had proposed. HAMET withdrew, charmed with the candour and flexibility which he imagined he had discovered in his brother; and not without some exultation in his own rhetoric, which, he supposed had gained no inconsiderable victory. ALMORAN, in the mean time, applauded himself for having thus far practised the arts of dissimulation with success; fortified himself in ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... a queer one," the landlord replied, as he illustrated sadly the discovery reserved for a riper age—that human fingers have attained their present flexibility, form, and skill by habit of assuaging, for some millions of ages, the woes ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... and perplexities for the sake of the people. He met the vast complication of forces which mix in politics and war—the selfishness, hatred, meanness, triviality, along with the higher elements—with the rarest union of shrewdness, flexibility, and steadfastness. His humor saved him from being crushed. The atmosphere he lived in permitted no illusions. "Politics," said he, "is the art of combining individual meannesses ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... hardly to constrain his movement, so skillfully does he wear it. If we confront him with the spirited version in quatrains of Dr. Parsons, in the passages cited from the "Inferno," or with those from the "Paradiso," in Mr. Longfellow's less free unrhymed version, the resources and flexibility of Mr. Dayman in handling the difficult measure will be again manifest. To enable our readers to compare the translations with the original and with one another, we will give the Italian, and then the three versions, of the latter ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... and the delicacy of lace, and the flash of jewels, I slipped on my spectacles, and saw a peacock's feather, flounced and furbelowed and fluttering; or an iron rod, thin, sharp, and hard; nor could I possibly mistake the movement of the drapery for any flexibility of the thing draped,—or, mysteriously chilled, I saw a statue of perfect form, or flowing movement, it might be alabaster, or bronze, or marble,—but sadly often it was ice; and I knew that after it had shone a little, and frozen a few eyes with its despairing perfection, ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... classified from grade 10 to 160, 10 being the poorest. The higher standards from 60 and upwards are neutral hide glues, clear, clean, free from odor, foam, and grease. The lower standards are chiefly bone glues, used for sizing straw hats, etc. They are rigid as compared with the flexibility of hide glues. For wood joints the grade should be 70 or over. For leather, nothing less than 100 should be used, and ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... and different degrees of motion were perhaps expressed by verses rapid or slow, without much attention of the writer, when the image had full possession of his fancy: but our language having little flexibility, our verses can differ very little in their cadence. The fancied resemblances, I fear, arise sometimes merely from the ambiguity of words; there is supposed to be some relation between a SOFT line and SOFT couch, or between HEARD syllables and HARD fortune. ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... convince my readers that it is no fanciful theory, but may be demonstrated as clearly as the problems of the geometer. The naturalist has his mathematics, as well as the geometer and the astronomer; and if the mathematics of the Animal Kingdom have a greater flexibility than those of the positive sciences, and are therefore not so easily resolved into their invariable elements, it is because they have the freedom and pliability of life, and evade our efforts to bring all their external variety within the limits of the same structural law which nevertheless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... expect. He has always been so steady and sober-minded. It is n't as if he had had a greater variety of interests and more social inclination and—wilder, you know. He was entirely devoted to his mother; and he has n't the resources and flexibility to make so complete a change easily, ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... of the balance beam with the centre beam, by means of the recesses in the centre beam, spring plates, having tubes thereon on which the springs rest, and attached to the beam by bolts, by which a compact and secure connection is formed, while all the necessary flexibility is preserved. ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... compound car-spring, which appears to possess all the requisites of a first-class spring, combining in its construction extreme simplicity with great strength, and a feature whereby the power of the spring increases with increase of the load, and vice versa, so that its flexibility remains nearly constant for ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... a good view of our heroine as she advances to her place in the ladies' line. She belonged to the taller division of middle height. Flexibility was her first characteristic, by which she appeared to enjoy the most easeful rest when she was in gliding motion. Her dark eyes—arched by brows of so keen, slender, and soft a curve, that they resembled nothing so much as two slurs in music—showed primarily a bright sparkle each. This was softened ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... and those were now at Raf's fingertips. The blast bombs, sealed into their pexilod cases, guaranteed to stop all the attackers that Terran explorers had so far met on and off worlds, a coil of rope hardly thicker than a strand of knitting yarn but of inconceivable toughness and flexibility, an aid kit with endurance drugs and pep pills which could keep a man on his feet and going long after food and water failed. He had put them all ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... action was so regulated, as to make it capable of being applied to the finest and most delicate manufactures, and its power so increased, as to set weight and solidity at defiance. By his admirable contrivance, it has become a thing stupendous alike for its force and its flexibility, for the prodigious power which it can exert, and the ease, and precision, and ductility, with which it can be varied, distributed, and applied. The trunk of an elephant, that can pick up a pin or rend an oak, is as nothing to it. It can engrave a seal, and crush masses of obdurate ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... session of the Congress, I believe we are near the breakthrough point on efforts which I have suggested, proposals to let people themselves make their own decisions for their own communities and, in particular, on those to provide broad new flexibility in Federal aid for community development, for economic development, for education. And I look forward to working with the Congress, with members of both parties in resolving whatever remaining differences we have in this legislation so that we can make available nearly $5 1/2 billion ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Richard Nixon • Richard Nixon
... gifted with a capacity to change their integument. By virtue of that faculty for development that belongs to the guiding principle of their life, viz.: the principle of the subjective spirit,—by virtue of this, these latter are possessed of a flexibility which enables them to live through the most widely varied metamorphoses. These peoples have passed through many and extreme transformations, and, instead of meeting their death and dissolution in the process, they have by force of it ever emerged ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... one long variation of this theme—the immaturity of Landsmaal. All of this is true. A finished literary language, even when its roots go deep into a spoken language, cannot be created in a day. It must be enriched and elaborated, and it must gain flexibility from constant and varied use. It is precisely this apprentice stage that Landsmaal is now in. The finished "Kultursprache" will come in good time. No one who has read Garborg will deny that it can convey the subtlest emotions; and Madhus' translations of Shakespeare are further ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... sublime and graceful verse, and it has been said that but for him "we could never have formed an adequate idea of the strength of the Latin language. We might have dwelt with pleasure upon the softness, flexibility, richness, and musical tone of that vehicle of thought which could represent with full effect the melancholy tenderness of Tibullus, [Footnote: Albius Tibullus was a poet of singular gentleness and amiability, who wrote verses of exquisite finish, gracefully telling ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... unable to stoop, without flexibility, could not express dejection. He was very tired suddenly; he dragged his feet going off the poop. Before he left it with nearly an hour of his watch below sacrificed, he addressed himself once more to our young man who stood abreast of the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... finely concentrated, and vigorous. Dyck was broad of shoulder, well set up, muscular, and with a steadier eye than that of his foe. Also, as the combat developed, it was clear that he had a hand as steady as his eye. What was more, his wrist had superb strength and flexibility; it was as enduring and vital as the forefoot and ankle of a tiger. As a pair they were certainly notable, and would give a good account ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... permanently stiffen. Even where, by the use of splints, permanent stiffness seems to have been brought on, the warm-water treatment recommended above will bring about a loosening and softening of the joint, which will permit first of a slight bending, and then, with gentle encouragement, a complete flexibility. The complete restoration of the limb should be the object kept in view. No case of a stiffened joint, although it may be free from pain and disease, can be regarded as satisfactory, and hence treatment should be persevered in until all stiffness ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... rhythms; but nominally the feet are mixed and any one may follow any other. And hence Sprung Rhythm differs from Running Rhythm in having or being only one nominal rhythm, a mixed or 'logaoedic' one, instead of three, but on the other hand in having twice the flexibility of foot, so that any two stresses may either follow one another running or be divided by one, two, or three slack syllables. But strict Sprung Rhythm cannot be counterpointed. In Sprung Rhythm, as in logaoedic rhythm generally, ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... returns, the "afterpiece" and "curtain raiser" have practically vanished from our stage. They have so completely vanished, in fact, that theatre goers have lost not only the habit of expecting them, but the imaginative flexibility to enjoy them. If you should play "Romeo and Juliet" to-day and then follow it with a one-act farce, your audience would be uncomfortably bewildered. They would be unable to make the necessary adjustment ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... more general court popularity than any Queen of the age; led a pleasant life, enjoying the sweets without the responsibilities of royalty; and by judicious liberality of purse, and equally dexterous flexibility of opinion, contrived to carry some degree of public respect with her, while she lived, and be followed by some degree of public regret to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... degree of flexibility combined with direct action, which was essential for ensuring power and avoiding needless friction and jars from irregularities in the road, Stephenson made use of the "ball and socket" joint for effecting a union between the ends of the cross heads where they united with the ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... she did not possess that agility of purpose which, at a moment's notice, could enable her to twist her intentions—a mental somersault that needs the double-jointedness of cunning and all the consummate flexibility of tact. He might know that she had followed them, but she must never admit it. It seemed a feasible argument to her, in the whirling panic of her thoughts, that her admission would be fatal—just as the prisoner in the dock pleads "not guilty" against all the damning evidence of every witness ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... Hudson, is extremely like the cypress, straight, slender, with erect, compressed ramification, and feathered to the ground, but its foliage is neither so dark nor so dense, the tree does not attain the majestic height of the cypress, nor has it the lithe flexibility of that tree. In mere shape, the Lombardy poplar nearly resembles this latter, but it is almost a profanation to compare the two, especially when they are agitated by the wind; for under such circumstances, the one is the most majestic, the other the most ungraceful, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... fibers like bristles bound together into a cord by being wound with two strands of thread passing in opposite directions. This produces an elastic fiber intermediate in stiffness between twine and whalebone. It cannot break, but it possesses all the stiffness and flexibility necessary to hold the corset in shape and prevent ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... piling the wood high on the fire-dogs, grasping the heavy tongs in both hands and leaning her head slightly back to avoid the sparks. Her hands were small and very supple, with that tendril-like flexibility, so to speak, of a Daphne at the very first ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... as you would do, my dear," said I. "There are plenty of young women in our Boston high-schools who are going through higher fields of mathematics than are required by the architect, and the schools for design show the flexibility and fertility of the female pencil. The thing appears to me altogether more feasible than many other openings which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... on the feelings of both: and that friendship he still felt. Something which may be called an inward silent sob had gone on in Dorothea before she said with a pure voice, just trembling in the last words as if only from its liquid flexibility— ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... if any admirer had, in this hour of triumph, been staring at him as at a stone sphinx of inflexible fate, that admirer would have been very much puzzled by the next passage of his life. Kitchener was something much more than a machine; for in the mind, as much as in the body, flexibility is ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... the senses fail him, and the mind alone leads on. Much profitable amusement is to be gained by such exercises as follow. They are in the nature of a running up and down the scales in order to give strength and flexibility to a new set of mental fingers. Learning to think in terms of spaces contributes to our emancipation from the tyranny ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... prompt every individual to have a distinct sort of writing, as she has given a peculiar countenance—a voice—and a manner. The flexibility of the muscles differs with every individual, and the hand will follow the direction of the thoughts and the emotions and the habits of the writers. The phlegmatic will portray his words, while the playful haste of the volatile will scarcely ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... born story-tellers. His imagination, not quite continuous enough, occasionally fails to fuse and shape disparate materials. It is likely to fall short when he essays fancy or mystery, as in A Life for a Life; or when he has a whimsy for amusing melodrama, as in His Great Adventure. The flexibility which reveals itself in humor or in the lighter irony is not one of his principal endowments. Restrained and direct as he always is so far as language goes, he cannot always keep his action absolutely in hand: this ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... and—well, the sea has many surprises for those who follow it, and who could know what might happen? But it was no part of my policy to betray to this man the extreme satisfaction which his words had given me, and thus, perhaps, subtly suggest to him the idea that he had displayed more flexibility than was actually necessary to secure my co-operation. I ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... them or contracting them with the syllables following upon them, but passing over them lightly, so that, without being inaudible, they may at the same time not interfere with the rhythm or beat of the verse. This usage, by adding to the variety, incontestably adds to the flexibility ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... general had in view a particular enemy, superior in numbers but weak in gunnery, slow in maneuver, and likely to avoid decisive action. It aimed primarily at rapidity of movement, but combined also the merits of concentration, simplicity, flexibility, and surprise. ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... many reasons, some of which will be explained in the following paragraphs, I think that it is of the greatest importance that some stimulatable audience be reached. As yet, the beginners have no rigid scientific biases and thus may have sufficient curiosity and flexibility about the world in which they live to approach experimentation with a mind devoid of "the hierarchy of memory registers which have programmed ...
— On Handling the Data • M. I. Mayfield
... though unsatisfactory speculations are given on the means by which the effects are produced. This power is, perhaps, given by nature, but is doubtless improvable, if not acquirable, by art. It may, possibly, consist in an unusual flexibility or exertion of the bottom of the tongue and the uvula. That speech is producible by these alone must be granted, since anatomists mention two instances of persons speaking without a tongue. In one case, the organ was originally wanting, but its place was supplied by a small ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... And indeed he proposed to make use of the property which the filaments of wool possess when subjected to a powerful pressure of mixing together, and of manufacturing by this simple process the material called felt. This felt could then be obtained by a simple operation which, if it diminished the flexibility of the stuff, increased its power of retaining heat in proportion. Now the wool furnished by the musmons was composed of very short hairs, and was in a ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... saying that at certain intervals, by the pressure of their feet or their teeth, they produce a slight projection of the wax on the other side of the comb, or that they can determine the thickness of the block of wax by its flexibility, its elasticity, or some other physical property which it may possess; or, again, that their antennae are able to serve as compasses in enabling them to examine what is going on in the darkness of the other side; or, last of all, he suggests ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... products of art in which the elements or parts employed in construction are largely filamental and are combined by methods conditioned chiefly by their flexibility. The processes employed are known by such terms as interlacing, plaiting, netting, ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... checks on the propagation and the multiplication of species. Natural conditions do not permit of the existence of too many species or sub-species. But it is clear that there are types, call them genera, species, or what you will, that have, by virtue of some inherent fitness and flexibility of adaptation, survived and mastered ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... think for a moment, in considering the movements we advocate, that we do not believe in strength and power. We do believe in applied power, applied indirectly; not by local grip and contraction, but indirectly through vitalized energy, expansion, and flexibility, through the true position and action of the singer. There is no strength properly applied in singing except through movement; through correct movement all the forces which nature has given the singer are indirectly brought into action; in this ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... they die it is hung over their graves. The largest cross-bows have a span of fully five feet, and require a pull of thirty-five pounds to string them. The bow is made of a species of wild mulberry, of great toughness and flexibility. The stock, some four feet long in the war-bows, is usually of wild plum wood, the string is of plaited hemp, and the trigger of bone. The arrow, of sixteen to eighteen inches, is of split bamboo, about four times the thickness ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... inevitable that she and the bishop should meet and talk occasionally in the cathedral precincts, and it was inevitable that he should contrast the flexibility of her rapid and very responsive mind with a certain defensiveness, a stoniness, in the intellectual bearing of ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... a part in the Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro, by writing for a particular singer. The part of Figaro was, in fact, composed for Benucci. The sparkling brilliancy of Rossini would perhaps never have been so fully developed, had not the skill and flexibility of voice possessed by the singer David, for whom he wrote, enabled him to indulge it to the uttermost. The characters thus imparted to the music of the day are necessarily perishable and evanescent, to be again superseded by later ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... is more difficult and requires more caution than philosophical deduction, nor is there anything more adverse to its accuracy than fixity of opinion.' Not that he was wafted about by every wind of doctrine; but that he united flexibility with his strength. In striking contrast with this intellectual expansiveness was his fixity in religion, but this is a subject which cannot ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... life with a sullied reputation, and with numerous enemies created by his unbearable insolence, but with a flexibility of character which enabled him to adapt himself to whatever habits circumstances required. He inspired no confidence, and his extravagant mode of life was sure to end in ruin, unless he reimbursed himself out of the public funds; and yet he fascinated ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... from being petrified or crystallized by the teaching of St. Thomas, as to remain open to the living world, to its vegetative forces? Three magicians, Albert the Great, Roger Bacon, Arnaud of Villeneuve,[39] by strong efforts make their way to Nature's secrets; but those lusty intellects lack flexibility and popular power. Satan falls back on his own Eve. The woman is still the most natural thing in the world; still keeps her hold on those traits of roguish innocence one sees in a kitten or a child of ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... brunette with a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her head, and a tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her movements, by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and by a certain coyness and reserve of manner, she reminded one of a pretty, half-grown kitten which promises to become a beautiful little cat. She evidently considered it proper to show an ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Their table-ware surpassed in beauty all that I had ever previously seen. I saw tea cups as frail looking as soap bubbles, possessing the delicate iridescence of opals. Many other exquisite designs were the product of its flexibility and transparency. The first article that attracted my attention was the dress of an actress on the stage. It was lace, made of gossamer threads of amber in the design of lilies and leaves, and was ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... into his sombre life—the voyage, the bit of travel, the new countries, the old cities, the expansion, broadening of mind he had felt for a time as its result. More than all, the delight of the people whom he had met, the unused experience of being understood at once, of light touch and easy flexibility, possible, as he had not known before, with good and serious qualities. One man, above all, he had never forgotten. It had been a pleasant memory always to have known him, to have been friends with him even, for he had felt to his own surprise and joy that something in him attracted this man of ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews |
