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Impressionable   /ɪmprˈɛʃənəbəl/   Listen
Impressionable

adjective
1.
Easily impressed or influenced.  Synonyms: impressible, waxy.  "An impressionable age" , "A waxy mind"






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"Impressionable" Quotes from Famous Books



... there silently for a time, but evidently the Professor was not disposed to allow too much time for reflections which he knew must be gloomy to the boys' impressionable minds. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay

... though young in years, had the character and appearance of an old man. As much as Hortense loved liberty, her suspicious husband wished to hold firmly the reins of conjugal authority. He was prematurely afflicted with various infirmities, almost always morbidly nervous and impressionable, disposed to take a dark view of everything, and bore no resemblance to the type of hero which Hortense had imagined. Moreover, the unhappy husband endured a hidden anguish which he had to conceal from every one and which tortured his heart; ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... brightly and we easily found our way into the nave; and sitting down, awaited the development of events. The shadows cast by the moonlight were very weird and ghostly in their effect; and had we been at all impressionable, we should doubtless have wished ourselves back again. After remaining some time, however, we came to the conclusion that we had come upon a foolish errand, and had just risen to go, when an exquisite strain ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... Prussians at Jena. The Tsar Alexander at once sued for peace. At Tilsit, on a raft moored in the middle of the River Niemen, Napoleon and Alexander met and arranged the terms of peace for France, Russia, and Prussia. The impressionable tsar was dazzled by the striking personality and the unexpected magnanimity of the emperor of the French. Hardly an inch of Russian soil was exacted, only a promise to cooeperate in excluding British ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... the Committee shut their eyes to the fact that Mr. IRVING'S histrionic ability, and his popularity with those who attended his exhibitions could only intensify the injurious effect which such representations must have upon young and impressionable minds. In his opinion, much as he regretted having to say so, the Lyceum was nothing less than a School of Murder. It aggravated rather than extenuated the evil to be told, as they had been told, that all these deeds of ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various

... that you are to say to him the moment you see him that I was right about the novel, and that he is to look and see if it did not end as I said it would. And Loretta—" here she rose and approached the speaker with a sweet, appealing look which brought tears to the impressionable girl's eyes, "don't go gossiping about me downstairs. I sha'n't be sick long. I am going to be better soon, very soon. By the time you see me here again I shall be quite like my old self. Forget how—how"—and ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... men, whose descriptions of a woman's dress are one of the experiences of a lifetime. He loves the word bombazine. His mother must have worn a gown of black bombazine during his impressionable age. And he never will be successful in describing a modern gown until bombazines again become the rage. This same dear man brought back to his invalid wife a description of a fashionable noon wedding, which consisted of the single item that the bride wore a blue alpaca bonnet. ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... dear Hadria, it is just the early years that are the impressionable years. Nothing can quite erase ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... To an impressionable youth like Fisher minor it was only natural that Rollitt should be an object of awe. For a day or two after his arrival, when the stories he had heard were fresh in his memory, the junior was wont to change his walk to a tip-toe as he passed the queer boy's door. If ever he met him face to face, ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... was enough to make any man gasp, even one less young and impressionable than Sime. In all of his twenty-five years he had not seen a woman so lovely. Her complexion was the delicate coral pink of the Martian colonials—descendants of the original human settlers who had struggled with, and at last bent to their will, this ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl

... offended?" she asked sorrowfully. "When I didn't mean anything except that my heart—which is rather impressionable—feels very warmly and tenderly toward the man who swam after me.... Won't you understand, please? Listen, we have been engaged only a minute, and here already is our first quarrel. You can see for yourself what would ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers

... Maggie and Barney and Old Jimmie were so cautiously and elaborately trying to trim! It seemed an impossible coincidence. But no, not impossible, after all. Their net had been spread for just such game: a young man, impressionable, pleasure-loving, with plenty of money, and with no strings tied to his spending of it. That Barney should have made his acquaintance was easily explained; to establish acquaintance with such persons as Dick was Barney's specialty. What more natural than that the high-spirited, irresponsible ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... ever chided myself for loving you, for you were always a bad example to weak and impressionable natures. Even when your overbearing, obstinate intolerance compelled me to dismiss you from the command of my army, I could not but admire your sturdy honesty. Had I been able to graft your love of truth upon some ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... lost: this total absence of right reasoning on all points of conduct, is coupled in our Gallic neighbours with the greatest natural benevolence, with a generosity only kept back by poverty, with impulsive, impressionable dispositions, that require the guidance of a sound Protestant faith to elevate ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... much exaggeration in all you have told me. Your imagination has been struck, and you have suffered it to carry you away, so that you believe all you say now; but I can assure you, you are mistaken. You are impressionable, susceptible, but too young to understand the real passion of love. At your age, young girls have very often some little love affair with the engaging young dancer they met at the last ball. You, who have been kept out of society on account of the masculine ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint

... that it was their manifest duty to save the dear little thing from the other relatives, who had no idea about how to bring up a sensitive, impressionable child, and they were sure, from the way Elizabeth Ann looked at six months, that she was going to be a sensitive, impressionable child. It is possible also that they were a little bored with their empty life in their ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... our list as standing midway in development, and here it is that a lacuna exists in the artist's career. Two or three years, possibly more, remain unaccounted for, just at a period, too, when the young artist would be most impressionable. I am inclined to think that he may have painted the "Birth of Paris" during these years, but we have only the copy of a part of the composition to go by, and the statement of the Anonimo that the picture was one ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... these Russian fugitives, who were down around the lake of Geneva, brewing their dark plans, was known. He was Goluckoffsky, and he had a son twenty-two years of age—an impressionable Russian son. Hence the ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... said Dr. Fenner. "She is the only child I ever have had in my practice who managed to reach earth as all children should. During the impressionable stage, no one expected her, so there was no time spent in worrying, fretting, and discontent. I don't mean that these things were customary with Ruth. No woman ever accepted motherhood in a more beautiful ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... music which filled the room with a wild tumult of movement. I had not heard anything like it in my life. It set every nerve of me dancing. I suppose Paragot found his interest in me because I was such an impressionable youngster. When, at the abrupt finale, he asked me what I thought of it, I could scarce ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... portion of it; and know that I often stood the test of hap-hazard examinations on the poem from half-scoffing friends, sometimes of the masculine persuasion. Each to his own; and what Shakespeare or the Latin Fathers might have done for some other impressionable girl, Mrs. Browning—forever bless her strong and gentle name!—did ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various

... years ago, when he was a dreamy and impressionable youth of fifteen; and now, as the train climbed slowly up the winding mountain gorges, his mind travelled back somewhat lovingly over the intervening period, and forgotten details rose vividly again before him out of the ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... flesh through your bones, all on edge like, to see a child fly up in the air like that. So she testified, embellishing her other physiological experience with a new horror unknown to Pathologists. Mrs. Riley, less impressionable, kept an even mind in view of the natural invulnerability of childhood and the special guardianship of Divine Omnipotence. If these two between them could not secure small boys of seven or eight from disaster, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... poisoning by hate songs of the child mind of Germany at its most impressionable age came as a shock to many of my readers. But the hate songs of the children are not as fierce as the hate hymns and prayers of the pastors. Do the public here realise that of the original Zeppelin fund hundreds of thousands of marks were subscribed in churches and chapels, and ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... fighter. Jefferson was a lover of peace, given to quiet, hating quarrels and bloodshed, and at times timid in dealing with public questions. Washington was deliberate and conservative, after the fashion of his race. Jefferson was quick, impressionable, and always fascinated by new notions, even if they were somewhat fantastic. A thoroughly liberal and open-minded man, Washington never turned a deaf ear to any new suggestion, whether it was a public ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... to a very advanced age, being of that hard mould which is not easily impressionable. The selfish and the hard-hearted survive where nobler, more generous, and, above all, more sympathising natures would have sunk ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... manner in which he acquitted himself of his mission. She had yielded as much from inexperience as from compulsion, to a man who for five years had made her life a martyrdom. She lived at Falaise in an isolation that accorded ill with her yearning for love and her impressionable nature. The person who now came suddenly into her life corresponded so well with her idea of a hero—he was so handsome, so brave, so generous, he spoke with such gentleness and politeness that Mme. Acquet, to whom these qualities were startling ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... use it. Some of the most daring and successful outrages of the past years had been carried out under his direction, and executed by these youths. He always made a point of choosing men who were highly strung and impressionable. He was known to boast that after three interviews with him he could make anyone, either man or woman, ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... thirteen, in despising nice dressing and pretty looks and manners; or in neglecting to pick up any little hints which she may glean in such things from older friends. But there are people to whom these questions seem of such first importance, that to be with them when you are young and impressionable, is to feel every defect in your own personal appearance to be a crime, and to believe that there is neither worth, nor love, nor happiness (no life, in fact, worth living for) connected with much ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... matters stood. Corrie, fair and swan-like, Bourhope reasonably impressionable, Mr. and Mrs. Spottiswoode decidedly favourable, Chrissy Hunter harmless, if not even helpful. Mrs. Spottiswoode knew that those who dally with a suggestion are in great danger of acting on it, and had very little doubt that the next ten days' work, with the crowning performance of the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... all the business of femininity swept off the earth. Profound astonishment, incredulity, and alarm possessed her mind and so her face. Truly, thought Prosper, it was like talking to a grave, trustful, and most impressionable child, the way she sat there, rather on the edge of her chair, her hands folded, letting everything he said disturb and astonish the ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... In spite of the velvet cloak of courtesy, our Peruvian is a born tyrant, and you—forgive me—but you know you're the very child of caprice. I am most thankful, however, that you are not impressionable. Otherwise this experience might leave a bitter taste ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins

... Genga, impressionable as his nature was, yet has much individual excellence to distinguish him from the rest of Signorelli's assistants. Born at Urbino in 1476, he was placed, at the age of fifteen, in the studio of Signorelli, ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell

... will be measured more by his ability to lead than by his adherence to fixed notions." Thus, in the conduct of operations not less than in the execution of orders, it is necessary that the mind remain plastic and impressionable. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... said inattentively; "I know what she thinks of me. I am surprised, Lee, that you do so well, because really you are nothing but an impressionable old fool." She touched him affectionately on the cheek, "But I can take care of you and ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... sights and scenes and historical associations had their influence on a bright and ardent boy in these impressionable years. He soon got to be keenly interested in the Navy, amassed a surprising amount of information about the types, engine strength and gun-power of the principal warships, and found delight in making models of cruisers and torpedo-boats. The Army in those days made no appeal ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... contemplative calmness habitual to the Indian and the Arab, who possess the happy privilege of uniting, by a rare combination, the meditative indolence of the dreamer with the fiery energy of the man of action—now delicate, nervous, impressionable as women—now determined, ferocious, and sanguinary ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... a steamer has since been wrecked and sunk, and its expression of gloomy fate is now awfully appropriate. Marie had visited "the great Sea Water" with her father. Nature's titanic and fanciful frescoing and cameo cutting had strongly wrought upon her impressionable mind, and the old legends and superstitions of paganism had been by no means effaced by the very slight veneer of Christianity which she ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... within the limits of his own splendid and gallant colony, and among an eager and impressionable people whose habitual hatred of all restraints turned into undying love for this dashing champion of natural liberty, that Patrick Henry was now instantly crowned with his crown of sovereignty. By his resolutions ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... not understand. She turned hither and thither in her appeal for help and understanding, and everybody turned aside as if she were an outcast. The iron of injustice began to enter her soul. She was at the impressionable age, when she felt deeply every injury done her. She thought much of Ann Barnes and Martin Christiansen, her two friends. They would have understood. They would have answered the questions, told her ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke

... readiness to follow him to the death—which is the way of the world. "You have but to hold up your hand," cries the faithful follower. But wise men know that the hand must have something in it. The prince had been young and impressionable when Poland was torn to pieces, when that which for eight centuries had been one of the important kingdoms of the world was wiped off the face of Europe, like writing off a slate. He was not a ruffian, as Deulin had described ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... never have seen her show the least interest in a man before. She never has appeared to me as an impressionable girl or one that could easily ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... some excuse for her, after all," Wingrave continued coolly. "She possesses powers which you yourself have already admitted, and you, I should say, are a fairly impressionable person, so far as her sex is concerned. Confess now, that she did not ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... library at Lady MacMillan's. It was a clever painting of the Medusa, level-eyed, with a red mouth like a wound, and dimly seen, pale glimmering features, between the lazy writhing of dark snakes. The thing had fascinated Mary in her impressionable schoolgirl days, but now she tried to huddle the idea quickly out of her head, for it seemed disloyal and even disgusting ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... commemorated by Longfellow in his poem entitled "My Lost Youth," were indelibly fixed in her memory and followed her wherever she went, to the end of her days. In her movements she was light-footed, venturesome to rashness, and at times wild with fun and frolic. Her whole being was so impressionable that things pleasant and things painful stamped themselves upon it as with the point of a diamond. Whatever she did, whatever she felt, she felt and did as for her life. Allusion has been made to the intensity of her sympathies. The sight or tale of ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... like a good many that followed. Sam was at an impressionable age, inclined to be led by any man whom he admired. Curly knew that he could gain no influence over him by preaching. He had to live the rough-and-tumble life of these men who dwelt beyond the pale of the law, to excel them at the very things of which they boasted. But in one respect he held himself ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... nothing except that promise not to run away immediately to detain me longer in the pleasant retreat of the Casa Blanca; nothing, that is, had I been a man of gutta-percha or cast-iron; being only a creature of clay—very impressionable clay as it happened—I could not persuade myself that I was quite well enough to start on that long ride over a disturbed country. Besides, my absence from Montevideo had already lasted so long that a few days more could not make much difference one way or the other; ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... preferred to operate upon beings placed low in the animal scale—the frog especially, an animal that has rendered him greater service than even man himself could have done. Cold-blooded animals offer, moreover, the advantage of being less impressionable than others, and the experiments to which they are submitted present more accurate conclusions, since it is not necessary to take so much account of the victim's restlessness. And then it is necessary in many cases to choose subjects ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... interpret suspicious circumstances—suspicious, I admit. Far be it from me to speak in defence of such a person as Mrs. Wade; I think she is a source of incalculable harm to all who are on friendly terms with her—especially young and impressionable women; but you must trust my judgment in this instance: I am convinced she is not guilty. Her agitation in the coroner's court has no special significance. No; the solution of the mystery is not so simple; it ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... take my advice," said Mrs Jefferson brusquely, "you won't try to see her, for it's my belief that she's not the woman any man can look at and forget, and you poets are mostly impressionable." ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... she heard a footstep, and presently the old servant entered the outer room, which was the kitchen of the lodge. She sat still, waiting till she saw him enter and start at her appearance, and ready to smile his impressionable old soul into quietude. ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... external acts, from every fact, passion, and emotion; and this is clear and obvious. This fundamental and persistent self-consciousness—persistent in dreams, and even in the calmest sleep, which is always accompanied by a vague sensation—is the consciousness of a living subject, active, impressionable, exercising his will, capable of emotions and passions. It is not the consciousness of an inert thing, passive, dead, or extrinsic; for animal life consists in sensation of greater or less intensity, but always of sensation. Consequently, such a consciousness signifies for the animal ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... it had been. He was glad also that his daughter had displayed commonsense, and he began to admire her again, and in proportion as she perceived that he was admiring her, so she consciously increased her charm; for the fact was, she was very young, very impressionable, very anxious ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... he returned to India and immediately began journalistic work. For seven years, first at Lahore and later at Allahabad, he was busy with the usual hackwork of a small newspaper. During these impressionable years, from seventeen to twenty-four, he gained his intimate knowledge of the strangely-colored, many-sided Indian life. His first stories and poems, often written in hot haste, to fill the urgent need of more copy, appeared as waifs and strays ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... their heroes from the stage; and the same thing may be said about the drama as about fiction. It is only the too highly colored and exaggerated melodrama that is likely to be objectionable for the impressionable youth. The moving-picture shows, which are coming to supply so many of the children with their chief opportunity to learn life, have been, on the whole, fairly wholesome; and the movement to secure more ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... of peaceful Eastern England more fully and deeply than did George Borrow. An East Anglian born, he was nurtured within the borders of Norfolk during many of the most impressionable years of his life, and when world-worn and weary, he sought rest from his wanderings, he came back to East Anglia to die. During his latter days, he became rather inaccessible; but an East Englishman always had a ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt

... swept many another girl off her feet were not to be thought of here. Alix was different. She was not an impressionable, hair-brained flapper, such as he had come in contact with in past experiences. Despite her sprightly, thoroughly up-to-the-moment ease of manner, and an air of complete sophistication, she was singularly old-fashioned ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... Although the impressionable Sylvia was so struck by these phenomena, that, even after her aunt's disappearance, she remained daunted and silent, Judith needed only the removal of the overpowering presence to restore her coolness. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... till his death, in 1516, at the ripe age of ninety, and nearly to the end was he both a busy painter and an interested and impressionable investigator of art, open to the influence of his own pupil Giorgione, and, when eighty, being the only painter in Venice to recognize the genius of Duerer, who was then on a visit to the city. Duerer, writing home, says that Bellini had implored him ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... so impressionable that I'm afraid this defeat will ruin his life," said Beth, softly. "I wish we could get him away. Couldn't we ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne

... "Vive Bonaparte!" which came from the lower part of the Rue du Mont Blanc, and swept like a sonorous wave toward the Rue de la Victoire, told Josephine of her husband's return. The impressionable Creole had awaited him anxiously. She sprang to meet him in such agitation that she was unable ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... society; they danced their feet off from seventeen to twenty-one. I never heard anything about any occupation; they had their swing and their fling, and their flirtations; they appeared to be skimming off of those impressionable, joyous years the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... She saw only the slender, unchangeable youth waiting there inscrutable, like her fate. He was beyond her, with his loose, slightly horsey appearance, that made him seem very manly and foreign. Yet his face was smooth and soft and impressionable. She shook hands with him, and her voice was like the rousing of a bird ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... to!" whispered Betty, her eyes glowing. I suppose to an impressionable girl these things really are of absorbing interest. For myself, bongos intrigue me even less than pongos, while dongos frankly bore me. "When do you ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... discoloration of decay; the base company of chairs, and the villainous little maroon velvet ottoman, worn by the backs of many boarders; and beyond the blue-green folding doors the dim little chamber looking on a mews. And the boarders, growing familiar, too, to her sensitive impressionable brain; Miss Bramble, upright in her morning gown and poor little lace cap and collar; Mrs. Downey sitting, flushed and weary, in the most remote and most uncomfortable chair; Mr. Spinks reading the paper with an air of a man ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... Prague shortly after the young man's arrival. As Beethoven's visit terminated in three months, it is not likely that he derived much benefit from these lessons. On his first meeting with the master he extemporized for him on a subject given him by Mozart. That this was a momentous occasion to the impressionable Beethoven is certain. The emotions called up by the meeting enabled him to play with such effect that when he had finished, the well-known remark was elicited from Mozart: "Pay attention to him. He will make a noise in the world ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... little of anything here at Asensio's house—" "It is cold before the dawn—" ... Poor little Rosa! He had always thought of her as so proud, so high-spirited, so playful, but another Rosa had written this letter. Her appeal stirred every chord of tenderness, every impulse of chivalry in his impressionable Irish nature. She doubted him; she feared he would not come' to her. Well, he would set her doubts at rest. "O God! Come quickly, if you love me." He leaped to his feet; he dashed ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... to those who have ears to hear. But the sunlight falling on the green platforms, the pigeons cooing on the walls, the blue sea stretching to the shining cliffs of France, the glamour of old-world romance struck impressionable Win. Dreamily he recalled that whether Caesar built the tower or not, no reasonable doubt exists that Orgueil was occupied if not built by the mighty Prince Rollo, grandfather of William the Conqueror. ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... carpenter hasn't had an opportunity to put any nonsense in her head," she mused. "What a piece of luck!—that she happened to be in that car that day. Of course, the fact that he saved her life has cast a glamour of romance around him—Violet is very impressionable—and it may take time to disenchant her. I hope that nurse was vigilant and did not allow her to see much of him; however, one thing is sure, she won't get a ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... him] He is falling asleep! He is asleep! A remarkably rapid occurrence of hypnosis. The subject has evidently already reached a state of ansthesia. He is remarkable,—an unusually impressionable subject, and might be subjected to interesting experiments!... [Sits down, rises, sits down again] Now one might run a needle into ...
— Fruits of Culture • Leo Tolstoy

... geometrical projection, such as a plan or elevation, only partially represents its appearance, he advocates the more general use of perspective drawing in designing. By this is not meant the making of pretty sketches after the design is all determined, to mislead impressionable clients, but the serious study of a design to determine its appearance from different points of view. In fact his suggestion is that the usual order of proceeding shall be reversed, and that the design shall be made in perspective and then translated ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, No. 7, - July, 1895 • Various

... power of evil—rare indeed among women, influenced as they are by their impressionable physical nature by so many different currents—could take possession of a soul, it would be in that of this slave, moulded by basenesses, revolted but patient, and complete mistress of herself, like all those whom the habit of veiling the eyes has accustomed ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... beyond, and in unnumbered cities and towns the letter-carriers came and went; but nothing they brought into Bienville or Royal Street bore tidings from that execrable editor in New York who in salaried ease sat "holding up" the manuscript once the impressionable Dora's, now the gentle Aline's. The holiday—"everything shut up"—had arrived. No carrier was abroad. Neither reason given for the joy-ride held good. Yet the project was well on foot. The smaller car was at the De l'Isles' lovely gates, with monsieur in ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... Leader of the Line graciously. But he turned a deaf ear to Isaac Borrachsohn's implorings to be allowed to join the party. Full well did Patrick know of the grandeur of Isaac's holiday attire and the impressionable nature of Eva's soul, and gravely did he fear that his own Sunday finery, albeit fashioned from the blue cloth and brass buttons of his sire, might ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... impressionable Fritz one can hardly imagine a more momentous change of environment than this which took him from a quiet rural village to the garish Residenz of a licentious and extravagant prince. Karl Eugen,[4] Duke of Wuerttemberg, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... pities that they do not possess a greater appreciation of the importance of home life. Still, after all, may it not be that our educational system is defective in that it does not implant—all through a girl's school life—a love of Cookery, and of domestic management? It is during this impressionable age that all these truths can be so well indoctrinated. Indeed, I am thoroughly convinced that one of the greatest defects in the superlatively scientific education of to-day, as far as the girls are concerned, is the neglect which these matters receive; for ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)

... other curiosity. Prosper's own reticence, they felt, was probably due to the tender age at which he had separated from his relations. But when it was known that Prosper's mother had driven to the house with a very pretty girl of eighteen, there was a flutter of excitement in that impressionable community. Prosper, with his usual shyness, had evaded an early meeting with her, and was even loitering irresolutely on his way home from work, when, as he approached the house, to his discomfiture the door suddenly opened, the young lady appeared ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... the simple sociabilities of Montgomery was attributable to an interest in Phil, who dreamed a great deal these days; and there was space enough in the ivory tower of her fancy to enshrine lovers innumerable. Charles was a personable young man, impressionable and emotional, and not without imagination of his own. Her humor, and the healthy common-sense philosophy that flowered from it, were the girl's only protection from her own emotionalism and susceptibility. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... Reed was that the only way to work out the freedom of Ireland was by force of arms. Mat at first was inclined to laugh at the idea; but an impressionable and vehement nature such as his was ill calculated to cope for a lengthened time with a nature precise, cold, and stubborn like that of Reed. Strength of will and tenacity of opinion make their way against better judgment, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... phlegmatic and more impressionable and impulsive than the Tarahumares. One woman laughed so much that she could not be photographed. They are noisy and active, and in the fields they work merrily, chatting and laughing. Even when peons of the Mexicans they are not so abject-looking as the Tarahumares, but retain their proud ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... friends, his impressionable soul, his devotion to church, his yearning for education and enlightenment, his thrift, industry, devotion to country, fidelity to the flag shown upon hundreds of battle-fields, must be admitted and command the admiration of all fair-minded men. Let him ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... and circumstance, shared fully the belief of Tayoga that their escape was a miracle. His nature contained much that was devout and spiritual and he, too, with his impressionable imagination, peopled earth and air almost unconsciously with spirits, good and bad. The good and bad often fought together, and sometimes the good prevailed as they had just done. There lay in the canoe the paddles, which they had lifted ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... of her face. She gazed after the trailer with the unabashed interest of a child, wondering who he might be. In that instant her soul, impressionable and eager, received and retained, like a sensitive plate, every line of his figure, every minute modelling of his face—even his fashion of saddle and the leather of his gun-case remained with her as food for reflection, and as she loitered down the trail ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... I noticed a change in him—and that very night he spoke to me. For such an impressionable fellow, he had really extraordinary tenacity, and, spite of the course of Herbert Spencer that I had put him through, he retained his unshaken faith in many things which to me were at that time the merest legends. I remember very well the arguments ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall

... July, 1864, gold was selling in New York at 285. There was distress and discontent throughout the country. The horrible slaughter of the Wilderness, still fresh in everybody's mind, had put the whole Union Party into mourning. The impressionable Greeley became frantic for peace peace at any price. At the psychological moment word was conveyed to him that two persons in Canada held authority from the Confederacy to enter into negotiations for peace. Greeley wrote to Lincoln demanding negotiations because "our bleeding, ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... Maude was all for staying quietly with her; but old Lady Conway came about—a regular schemer—a woman I never could abide. She had married off her own daughters, and wanted her niece to practise on, that was the fact. Victoria says she always knew that she, Maude I mean, was very impressionable and impulsive, and so she wanted to have her out of harm's way; but one could not prevent her aunt from getting hold of her and taking her out. Then people told us of her goings on with that scamp Clanmacklosky and that sister of his. Victoria ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... is normally receptive and impressionable, they come expecting to receive satisfaction and enjoyment for the money they have expended in the purchase of a ticket, or because they have some other interest in the proceedings. Presumably if they were not interested they would not be there. This element of expectation ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... echoed, in a tone that might have told his companion something, only the fingers which Langholm had feared to crush had already fallen upon the keys, with the strong, tender, unerring touch of a master, and the impressionable player was swaying with enthusiasm on ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... invariably began the new term in a spirit of geniality and hope. It was not till years later that Gordon came to understand the depth of unselfish idealism that burned behind the quiet modesty of the Chief; but even at first sight the least impressionable boy was conscious of being under the influence of an unusual personality. There was nothing of the theatrical pedagogue about him; he surrounded himself with no trappings of a proud authority. His voice was gentle and persuasive; his smile as winning almost as a child's. The little ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... flourish which almost invariably accompanied his signatures on business documents; the marked enlargement of this signature takes the place of the flourish, and shows an unconscious emphasis of the ego. It would be almost unreasonable for us to expect that so impressionable a man, who was also feeling his power and fame, could abstain from showing outward signs of his own consciousness of abnormal success. Yet, in the private letters of Dickens, the simple "C. D." is very frequent; a few examples ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes

... a great deal of Professor Blackie in the North and West, and no wonder. He was a laughing, jocular, impressionable man, who hobnobbed with landlords and amiably slapped drivers and policemen on the back, throwing a Gaelic greeting at them as he did so. His faculty for writing poetry is seen in many a guidebook; Oban, Inverness, Pitlochry, and numberless other places, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... man in the exploration party, was in the lounge listening to them. Chandler was a nice kid, clean-cut and right out of the finest tradition of Earth, but Chandler was, like all boys barely out of their teens, impressionable. He was particularly impressionable in these, his first ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger

... impressionable, more responsive to popular opinion, and at this moment (as the presidential year approached) more desirous to placate the opposition. He agreed with Adams that the moment had not come when the United States alone might safely recognize the South American states, but he believed ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... uneventful life in Stratford under conditions that might well have coarsened and spoilt him. Happily the exquisite surroundings of the little town, and his own response to them, made a somewhat sordid occupation possible; but of his daily life and steady growth in the most impressionable period of his career no reliable details ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan

... from the organist's candle illuminated but one small fragment of the chancel outside the precincts of the instrument, and that was the portion of the eastern wall whereon the ten commandments were inscribed. The gilt letters shone sternly into Lady Constantine's eyes; and she, being as impressionable as a turtle-dove, watched a certain one of those commandments on the second table, till its thunder broke ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... likeness of the quaint tale to Dan's life and needs, Mrs Jo went on pointing to the various pictures which illustrated it, and when she looked up was surprised to see how struck and interested he seemed to be. Like all people of his temperament he was very impressionable, and his life among hunters and Indians had made him superstitious; he believed in dreams, liked weird tales, and whatever appealed to the eye or mind, vividly impressed him more than the wisest words. The story of poor, tormented Sintram came back ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... history of the Olympians. In this connexion we must not forget the power of hallucination, still fairly strong, as the history of religious revivals in America will bear witness,[26:1] but far stronger, of course, among the impressionable hordes of early men. 'The god', says M. Doutte in his profound study of Algerian magic, 'c'est le desir collectif personnifie', the collective desire projected, as it were, or personified.[27:1] Think of the gods who have appeared in great crises of battle, created sometimes by the desperate ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... impressionable clerk, who had been looking at her through the display window as she ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... unknown. Like Off, Sarikamish conveyed a very favourable impression of the working of the Transcaucasian legions under the supreme leadership of the Grand Duke Nicholas, of whom officers all spoke with enthusiasm, and whose personality undoubtedly counted for much amongst the impressionable moujik soldiery. What one had seen in these forward situations inspired confidence in the future. Nor was that confidence misplaced, for the Russian forces in Armenia were to achieve great triumphs ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... that old orthodox, well-bred world which she had known before she married him; but to which she had confessed to Winton she had never felt that she belonged, since she knew the secret of her birth. She was, in truth, much too impressionable, too avid of beauty, and perhaps too naturally critical to accept the dictates of their fact-and-form-governed routine; only, of her own accord, she would never have had initiative enough to step ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... impressionable child the effect of this continual and pretty accompaniment to life was deep. The woman's quietism and piety passed on to his different nature undiminished; but whereas in her it was a native sentiment, in him it was only an implanted dogma. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... is not impressionable to atmosphere altogether. She seems a hard-working, staunch little soul, and all that relieves the sordidness of her life and lightens the dreariness of her work is the 'theayter,' as she calls it. So don't destroy her illusions, John. You'll do ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates

... fancy that you were sure to be a very great man, and to think how proud your relations would some day be of you, and how you would come back and excite a great commotion at the place where you used to be a school-boy. And it is because the world has still left some impressionable spot in your hearts, my readers, that you still have so many fond associations with "the school-boy spot we ne'er forget, though we are there forgot." They were Vealy days, though pleasant to remember, my old school-companions, in which you used to go to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... the fair was no Eastern bazaar, but how delighted that young, impressionable mind was, notwithstanding,—delighted with the swings and the roundabouts, the shows, the booths, even down to the gilt gingerbread kings and queens! All minds genuinely poetical are peculiarly susceptible to movement,—that is, to the excitement of numbers. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... are always stuffed with thoughts of their daily bread, of wood for the fire, of bad roads, of illnesses. It is a hard-working, an uninteresting life, and only silent, patient cart-horses like Mary Vassilyevna could put up with it for long; the lively, nervous, impressionable people who talked about vocation and serving the idea were soon weary of it and gave up ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... were genuinely conscientious men—and they did not grudge the money, though the tutor's terms were high. Jane was then a very young girl—so young, indeed, that parents and guardians would scarcely have taken alarm had they been aware of her being beneath the same roof with their impressionable charges; and she was childish-looking even for her tender years. Leonard Yorke, gentle and good-humored, was moved with compassion toward the orphan girl, as guileless-eyed as a saint in a picture; he pitied her poverty, and, still more, the worldly ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... constantly in sight of the great steamships of all nations moving in and out of New York Harbor — the gateway to the Western Hemisphere. Returning to Manhattan, he was sent to the Horace Mann School, but while still a lad, the family removed to Mexico where the most impressionable years of his boyhood were spent. The influence of the romantic Southern life is shown in his earliest poetry. Upon his return to America, several years later, he was prepared for college at the Hackley School at Tarrytown, N.Y., and entered Harvard in ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... of the attacks are much influenced by the general state of the child's health. Like migraine, cyclic vomiting appears to be a symptom of nervous exhaustion. It affects, for the most part, children who are intellectually alert, impressionable, and forward for their age, and who, when well, throw themselves into work or play with a great expenditure of nervous energy. Often their physical development is unsatisfactory, and we must set ourselves ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... night together in the Barn Street house they sat alone in the little back-parlour as they had done for the last six years—all their impressionable childish days. It was the only home that Paul had known, and he felt the tragedy of its dissolution. They sat on the old horsehair sofa, behind the table, very tearful, very close together in spirit, holding each other's hands. They talked as the young talk—and the old, for the matter of that. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... the shadow of a smile. She had come at this man's call from the coldly correct halls of Marypoint College, which was also the soulless home she had been condemned to for the three or four most impressionable years of her life. And she knew ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... an impressionable creature, here became so solemnised that his lengthening visage and seriously wrinkled brow rendered gravity—especially on the ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne

... trees and flowers can only grow and come to perfection in soils by nature appropriate to them, so it is manifest that all this rich and fertile growth of lyrics, of minstrelsy and music, could only spring up amongst a people most impressionable and joyous. I speak of the Lowland population, and especially of the Borderers, with whose habits, manners and customs, alone I am personally acquainted; and the lingering traces of whose old forms of life—so gay, kindly, and suggestive—I saw some thirty years ago, just ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... himself, in order to forget her entirely. Her indifference, shown in not writing to him, should be answered in that way. He took up his pocket Bible, and opened it at the Gospels. The beautiful story soon exercised its charm upon his impressionable nature, and after a couple of hours' reading he closed the book comforted, and restored to his better self. He fell on his knees and thanked God for this crowning mercy. From his heart went forth a hymn of praise for the first time in long weeks. The words of the Man of Sorrows had lifted him above ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... story that he had heard haunted him. This pitiful tragedy in real life stirred his youthful and impressionable sensibilities to their depths. ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... published but one other book, a narrative of a trip to Cuba made in 1859, and he wrote a few magazine articles. The explanation must be found in the temperament and character of the man. His "Two Years Before the Mast'' is a vivid representation of what he saw and experienced at a most impressionable age. He put his young life into it; he was not thinking of literature when he wrote it, and thus the book takes rank with those books which are bits of life rather than products of art. Afterward he was ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... Paine and his own revolutionary habits were a source of distress to his Quaker relatives at Lewes, so much so that there is a story in the family of the Citizen being refused admission to a house in the neighbourhood where he had eight impressionable nieces, and, when he would visit their father, being entertained instead at the Bear. His Bible, with sceptical marginal notes, is still preserved, with the bad pages pasted together ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... whitest of napery and the brightest of glass and china. The friendly old gentleman, as he had found him from the first, became doubly and trebly so in that position which brings out whatever warmth of heart an Englishman has, and gives it to him if he has none. The impressionable and sympathetic character of Middleton answered to the kindness of his host; and by the time the meal was concluded, the two were conversing with almost as much zest and friendship as if they were similar in age, even fellow-countrymen, and had known one ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... conservation of that civilization is the attitude of armed watchfulness between nations, which is maintained now by the great states of Europe. Even if we leave out of consideration the invaluable benefit to society, in this age of insubordination and anarchy, that so large a number of youth, at the most impressionable age, receive the lessons of obedience, order, respect for authority and law, by which military training conveys a potent antidote to lawlessness, it still would remain a mistake, plausible but utter, to see in the hoped-for subsidence of the military spirit in the nations of Europe ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... ran, or some coquettish little glade fled away in the distance; if memory will color, as it were, this sketch, as fleeting as the moment when it was taken, the persons for whom such pictures are not without charm will have an imperfect image of the magic scene which delighted the still impressionable ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... young and impressionable," said Ronald; "I can easily mold her to my own way of thinking. You look ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme

... the country exerted an excellent influence upon the impressionable soul of the young man. His close communion with nature, which quickly captivated his mind, rent asunder forever the mystic veil that had enshrouded it. Still more important was his association with the enlightened Polish curate of the village, who interested himself in the young scholar ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... indeed, appears to have been of a somewhat impressionable temperament, for a few years later his sister-in-law, Lady Granville, writing from Trentham to announce her departure for Texel, remarks, "I must take Mr Vernon away to flirt with my beauties there. ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... Ivan, nervous and impressionable, seems to have been profoundly affected by all this. He yielded to the popular demand and appointed two men to administer the government, spiritual and temporal—Adashef, belonging to the smaller nobility, and Silvester, a priest. Believing absolutely ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... write on one side as to fight on the other. He was a rolling stone, and had been a rolling stone from the time he was sixteen and had run away to sea, up to the day he had met this girl, when he was just thirty. Yet you can see how such a man would attract a young, impressionable girl, who had met only those men whose actions are bounded by the courts of law or Wall Street, or the younger set who drive coaches and who live the life of the clubs. She had gone through life as some people go through picture-galleries, with their catalogues ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis

... of his father's for her advantage, that in the autumn of 1845 (September 24-November 18), Mr. Gladstone passed nearly a couple of months in Germany. The duty was heavy and dismal, but the journey brought him into a society that could not be without effect upon his impressionable mind. At Munich he laid the foundation of one of the most interesting and cherished friendships of his life. Hope-Scott had already made the acquaintance of Dr. Doellinger, and he now begged Mr. Gladstone on no account ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... tossed down caught her sight as it glittered on the carpet strewn over the hard earth; she stooped and raised it; the action sufficed to turn the tide with her impressionable, ardent, capricious nature; she would not ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... known that these feeling pages are but transcripts of an episode of his own heart-history. That the tale is one of almost feminine sentimentality is due, in some measure, perhaps, to the fact that, during his earliest and most impressionable years, Lamartine was educated by his mother and was greatly influenced by her ardent and poetical character. Who shall say how much depends on one's environment during these tender years of childhood, and how often has it not been proved that "the child ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... gay, it was brilliant. Life flowed fast and it was astonishingly vivid. A restless society, always seeking something new flitted from house to house. Dick, young and impressionable, would have been glad to share a little in it, but his time was too short. He went once with Colonel Winchester to the theatre, and the boy who had thrice seen a hundred and fifty thousand men in deadly action hung breathless over the mimic struggles of ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... impressionable and imaginative mind opening to such sights and sounds as it emerged from infancy must have been deeply affected. Until I was twelve years old the enchantment of religion had complete possession of my understanding. With the loudest, I could ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... balance and I can't do anything without hearing your opinion. And first I want you to understand I have quite forgiven him. He's not all to blame. Certain fixed, false ideas he has got. They were driven into him at his most impressionable age; and until his reason asserts itself no doubt he'll go on hating me. But that'll all come right. I don't blame you ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... money, if only in prospect. Already, for some years in fact, he had been pursued by mercenary maidens and their mothers. He had a rooted aversion to the whole breed, and a latent fear that one day he would be taken in after all. He knew himself to be impressionable and impulsive; still, behind these dangerous qualities lay a certain hard, deliberate common sense that had saved him in more than one perilous situation. Sternly he informed himself that he had known Esther Rowe about three days. In short, he must ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... quick-tempered, yet forgiving, interested in outward events. The phlegmatic type is impassive, unemotional, slow to anger, but not of great kindness, persistent in pursuing his purposes. The sanguine type is optimistic, impressionable, enthusiastic, but unsteady. The melancholic type is pessimistic, introspective, moody, suspicious of the motives of others. Most pupils belong to more than one class. Perhaps the two most prominent types represented in school are (1) that variety of the sanguine temperament which leads ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education

... like Elmer Ford aren't fit to have charge of a child. You don't know him, but he's just an unscrupulous financier, without a thought above money. To think of a boy growing up in that tainted atmosphere—at his most impressionable age. It means death to any ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... to understand, but then only in a measure, with what a self-refusing, impressionable nature he was dealing; and, as he saw, he became more generous toward her, more gentle and delicate in his ministration. Of necessity he grew more and more interested in her, especially after he had made the discovery that the moment she laid hold of a truth—the moment, that is, when ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... those who have treated him well; while, on the other, he is equally capable of the most ferocious and implacable hatred of those who have injured him or those he loves; also, he is extraordinarily impressionable. Mama Faquita, being herself a full- blooded negress, was of course perfectly well aware of these peculiarities in the nature of her audience; and she played upon them as a skilled musician does upon a sensitively ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... The Duke went as far as Wesel to meet her. Turenne, who then commanded on the Rhine, treated her to the spectacle of an army drawn up in order of battle, and which he manoeuvred for her amusement. Was it on that occasion that the great captain, well known to have been always impressionable to female beauty, received the ardent impulse which was renewed at Stenay in 1650, and which, graciously but prudently acknowledged by Madame de Longueville, always remained a close and tender tie between them? On the 22nd of July she made her triumphal ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... bewildering fashion. Many of these unconscious influences appear to originate in our very early years. The older philosophers seem to have forgotten that even they were infants and children at their most impressionable age and never could by any possibility get ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... Marcelline, who was engaged to assist in nursing him. The untiring care, self-abnegation, angelic sweetness and serenity of this humble woman gained the attachment of the whole family, and established an ascendency over Alfred's impressionable imagination. She did not confine her office to her patient's physical welfare, but strove earnestly to minister to him spiritually. His long convalescence "was like a second birth. He did not seem more than seventeen: he had the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... times presented itself to me unexpectedly, and always with an unwholesome effect. This I have found happen generally in times of physical depression, and the same air no doubt exerted a similar influence on Sir John, which his impressionable nature rendered from the first ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... and favorite, and his letter to his nurse in New York gives a good idea of how the place affects a bright, impressionable child. ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... addicted to salacious banter. One of his favorite pranks was to burlesque some synagogue chant from the solemn service of the Days of Awe, with disgustingly coarse Yiddish in place of the Hebrew of the prayer. But he was not a bad fellow, by any means. He was good-natured, extremely impressionable, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... So he was not still alive because he was innocent, since for all the good that this very doubtful innocence of his was likely to be even to his own conscience, he might almost as well have been guilty. Nor was he alive because he feared to die. He did fear to die horribly, but to the young and impressionable, at any rate, there are situations in which death seems the lesser of two evils. That situation had been well-nigh reached by him last night when he set the hilt of his sword against the floor and shrank back at the prick of its point. To-day ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... we find in the hymns were highly impressionable and fresh. At this stage the time was not ripe enough for them to accord a consistent and well-defined existence to the multitude of gods nor to universalize them in a monotheistic creed. They hypostatized unconsciously any force of nature that overawed them or filled them with ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... and be done with it; but women are creatures of habit, and habits once formed are hard to break; and although the polls are only open every three or four years, if women once get into the way of going to them, they will hang around there all the rest of the time. It is in woman's impressionable nature ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... repulsive and horrid spectacles. The North American savage streaked with war-paint, a bunch of reeking scalps at his girdle, his snaky eyes gleaming with malignity, was a direful sight for even a hardened frontiers-man; how much more, then, to his impressionable and delicate wife and daughter. The very appearance of the savage suggested thoughts of the tomahawk, the scalping knife, the butchered relations, the desolated homestead. Nothing can better illustrate ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... interests of the young men, and I cannot say that the interests of mature and elderly men differ very much from those of the fledglings. Ladies and gentlemen who dwell in quiet refinement can hardly know the scenes amid which our middle-class lad passes the span of his most impressionable days. I have watched the men at all times and in all kinds of places; every town of importance is very well known to me, and the same abomination is steadily destroying the higher life in all. The Chancellors of the Exchequer gaily repeat the significant figures ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... Charlie. You've done a very wrong action, Margot! You really ought to have more consideration for your father: no one knows how impressionable he is. ... Please tell Mr. Flower that we do not approve of him at ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... this narrative opens, towards the end of 1665, Sainte-Croix was about twenty-eight or thirty, a fine young man of cheerful and lively appearance, a merry comrade at a banquet, and an excellent captain: he took his pleasure with other men, and was so impressionable a character that he enjoyed a virtuous project as well as any plan for a debauch; in love he was most susceptible, and jealous to the point of madness even about a courtesan, had she once taken his fancy; his prodigality was princely, although he had no income; further, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... he found himself again with the Drumtochty doctor on his heroic journeys, with the Rabbi in his long vigils. It was a singular means of grace to have known two such men in the flesh, when he was still young and impressionable. A spiritual emotion possessed Carmichael. He lifted his heart to the Eternal, and prayed that if on account of any hardship he shrank from duty he might remember MacLure, and if in any intellectual strait he was tempted to palter ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... passive and impressionable condition which is called hypnotic, mesmeric, somnambulic, or somniloquent, it has long been known that the subject may be absolutely controlled by the operator, or by a simple command or suggestion, or by his own imagination. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various

... was romantic to a fault; she idealized everything and every one with whom she came into contact. She had a poet's soul, loving most dearly all things bright and beautiful; she was very affectionate, very impressionable, able, generous with a queenly lavishness, truthful, noble. Had she been trained by a careful mother, Marion Arleigh would have been one of the noblest of women; but the best of school training cannot compensate for the wise and loving discipline of home. She grew ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme

... starting-point of the suggestion is always the illusion produced in an individual by more or less vague reminiscences, contagion following as the result of the affirmation of this initial illusion. If the first observer be very impressionable, it will often be sufficient that the corpse he believes he recognises should present— apart from all real resemblance—some peculiarity, a scar, or some detail of toilet which may evoke the idea of another person. The idea evoked may then become the nucleus of a sort ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... Turanian) mind, this longing to know what follows Death, or if nothing follows it, which accounts for the marvellous diffusion of the so-called Spiritualism which is only Swedenborgianism systematised and earned out into action, amongst nervous and impressionable races like the Anglo-American. In England it is the reverse; the obtuse sensitiveness of a people bred on beef and beer has made the "Religion of the Nineteenth Century" a manner of harmless magic, whose miracles are ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... bony hands—the hands of a scholar and a thinker—were stretched, palms downward, on the rolled arms of his chair. There was nothing in his appearance—nothing in his worn, humorous face under the thin brown hair, to suggest the valiant lover, the impressionable dreamer. Yet in the innermost truth of his own nature he was both, and his grief, of which in his strange, almost savage, reserve he had never spoken even to his wife, had softened gradually into the gentlest of his dreams as ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... it, that blessed child would have! What a fortunate escape! Why, I wouldn't have a child of mine, an impressionable little thing, live in such a room ...
— The Yellow Wallpaper • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... a word. He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense. I don't say this by way of disparagement. It is better for mankind to be impressionable than reflective. Nothing humanely great—great, I mean, as affecting a whole mass of lives—has come from reflection. On the other hand, you cannot fail to see the power of mere words; such words as Glory, for instance, ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad

... inclined to think they may have been good fellows, like Robin Hood and his men or the gentlemen of the road in a later century. This may well be, but a gang of Robin Hoods, infesting a hundred taverns in the town and quarrelling in the streets over loose women, is dangerous company for an impressionable young man who had never been taught the Shorter Catechism. Paris, even in the twentieth century, is alleged to be a city of temptation. Paris, in the fifteenth century, must have been as tumultuous with the seven deadly sins as the world before the Flood. Joan of ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... all probability, unless his prospects altered their aspect, would be engaged to her for years to come. In past time, when both were absurdly young, and ought to have been at school, the two had met,—an impressionable, good-natured, well-disposed couple of children, who fell in love with each other unreasoningly and honestly, giving no thought to the future. They were too young to be married, of course, and indeed had not troubled themselves about anything so matter ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... number of business-looking, sleek, earnest men there, eagerly engaged in canvassing the general affairs of the world, and more especially their own particular ventures, hopes, anticipations, investments therein. If you are an artist, or indeed at all impressionable in matters of taste, you will, I fear, be painfully affected by a marble figure near the centre of the hall, which many persons assert to be a statue of the Queen of these realms—a calumny which I, as a loyal subject, feel bound ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various

... world awakens to its profound significance, and when its ideals and methods are raised, even to a level with those of the public schools, the other grave problems will be near their solution. If the individual is thoroughly taught during the impressionable years of childhood and youth, the fundamental principles of ethics and religion, society and the state will have no difficulty in meeting their problems; but if not, these will perforce ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent

... impressionable of all the queens of France, the charming and unfortunate Mary Stuart, after having seen Rizzio murdered almost in her arms, fell in love, nevertheless, with the Earl of Bothwell; but she was a queen and queens ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... able to look forward to the early supply of practically all our necessities from our own factories. The welfare of the troops touches my responsibility as Commander-in-Chief to the mothers and fathers and kindred of the men who came to France in the impressionable period of youth. They could not have the privilege accorded European soldiers during their periods of leave of visiting their families and renewing their home ties. Fully realizing that the standard of conduct that should be established for them ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... of the two men worked like magic upon the impressionable mind of young Robert, who sat listening. Long after all had retired for the night he lay awake, his little mind away in the future, living in the earthly paradise which had been conjured up before him by the warm, inspiring sentences of this miners' leader, and joyful ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh



Words linked to "Impressionable" :   plastic, unimpressionable, susceptible, waxy, easy, pliant, spinnable



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