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Responsive   /rɪspˈɑnsɪv/   Listen
Responsive

adjective
1.
Containing or using responses; alternating.  Synonym: antiphonal.  "Antiphonal laughter"
2.
Readily reacting or replying to people or events or stimuli; showing emotion.
3.
Reacting to a stimulus.  Synonym: reactive.



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"Responsive" Quotes from Famous Books



... Brighton. As they steamed along a high embankment, he found himself looking into a little suburban cemetery. The graves, the yews, the sharp church spire touching the range of the hills. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and the dread responsive rattle given back by the coffin lid. He watched the group in the distant corner, and its very remoteness and removal from his personal knowledge and concern, moved him to passionate grief ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... is not yet too late. If you do not love this man, it will be a great sin to marry him—a wrong done to yourself and to him. If there is a chord in your heart responsive to Walter's, don't stifle it. What is anything in this world in comparison with happiness and ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... The responsive face lighted and weariness gave place to the glow of enthusiasm. Hamilton was installing at the younger man's quarters a splendid music-room with such an organ as might have graced a cathedral. There the ardent composer ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... question of the summer term was, "What's Mr. Bird going to do this term?" Like other teachers inspired by Professor Dewey, we have found our children most responsive to the suggestion of playing out primitive man. But with some, not of course with the brightest, it is too great a stretch to go at one step from the present to the most primitive times, and we often spend a term over something of the nature of ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... a little. A responsive flicker which was almost a convulsion, passed over her face; but she did not awake. It was evident, however, that her spirit was gradually floating up to the surface from the depths of oblivion in which it had been submerged. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... at him, and her eye exhibited a slight responsive spark. She touched her lips to a glass of wine, and then she said, "Describe them. Give ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... head. She wondered if it were possible that her haughty sister ever possessed a true, honest heart? and was there in her marriage with Montague Arnold the least approach to sympathy? Did the proud heart ever beat with one responsive throb for ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... the imaginative mind, for the four or five hundred men who are gathered here typify, if they do not yet represent, the four or five hundred millions who make up the country. You see as it were the nation in profile, a ponderous, slow-moving mass, quickly responsive to curious subconscious influences—suddenly angry and suddenly calm again because Reason has after all always been the great goddess which is perpetually worshipped. All are scholarly and deliberate in their movements. ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... having her administrative machine much more highly developed in relation to her general national life than the free democratic countries. She has to make a bureaucracy that has not hitherto been an example for efficiency into a bureaucracy that will be constructive, responsive, liberal, scientific, and efficient; the Western countries have to do the same with that oligarchy of politicians which, as Professor Michels has recently pointed out in his striking book on "Political Parties," is the necessary ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... by no means necessary to teach any peculiar or positive doctrine in order to exert an influence on society. After all, there is a moral heart beating at the very centre of this world. Touch it, and there is a responsive movement through the whole system of the world. Undoubtedly external circumstances rule in their turn over this same central pulsation: alter, arrange, and modify, these external circumstances as best you can, but he who, by the word he speaks or writes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... fastened on the speaker, full of a heavy, pertinacious admiration. You might have told him of the noblest action of generosity or self-denial that ever constituted the stock in trade of a moral hero, and he would have listened patiently, but without one responsive emotion. Bodily prowess and daring he could appreciate. Keene's physical prestige was just the thing to captivate his limited imagination; besides which the ground was prepared for the seed-time. He had some soldier friends, and dining with these at the "Swashing Buckler," he had heard some ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... my sins, and here implore The aid of "Rare Old Ben" and other ghosts That I may sin again, but rarely more, Responsive ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... on the stump of a tree. There was a fire within her as within the kiln, only the flames could not leap forth—the fire could merely smolder within. The birds were singing, the forest rustling—but what is all that when there is no clear, responsive note in the heart? Barefoot now remembered, as in a dream, how she had once cherished thoughts of love. What right had she to let such thoughts rise within her? Had she not misery enough in herself and in her brother? And this thought of love seemed to her now like the remembrance, in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... obligation. As he concluded the ceremony by taking from the Chief Justice the Bible upon which he had been sworn, and reverently pressing his lips to it, there was a marked sensation through the vast audience, followed by a responsive cheer. Then the cannon near by thundered forth the announcement that the President of the people's choice had been inaugurated, the bands struck up the national airs, and there ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... of her he loved, lightly he danced towards her, and with show of tenderest passion gently reclined upon her knees; his arms entwined about her lovingly, and upon her lips he sealed a kiss; (4)—she the while with most sweet bashfulness was fain to wind responsive arms about her lover; till the banqueters, the while they gazed all eyes, clapped hands and cried "Encore!" But when Dionysus rose upon his feet, and rising lifted Ariadne to her full height, the action of those lovers as they kissed and fondled one ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon

... a responsive smile, but it was a hopeless business. From the moment when at the inquest he found himself entangled in the meshes of circumstance, his mind had braced itself to endure rather than hope, and his present depressed state, both mental and bodily, rendered even that endurance almost beyond ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and continued to set canzonettas. He says that in these compositions he tried continually to give the meaning of the words and so to touch responsive chords of feeling. He endeavored to compose in a pleasing style by hiding all contrapuntal effects as much as possible. He set long syllables to consonances and let passing notes go with short syllables. He applied similar considerations to the introduction of passages "although sometimes ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson

... all you Americans, John Meavy was a man of perfect faith in all that regarded 'Progress,' and especially did he believe in the infinite perfectibility of Science in the hands of an energetic people. This was the chord upon which I played, and the responsive note was easily evoked. He sought me out, came to me eagerly, and, by degrees, I divulged to him all my plans. He was ambitious to work for mankind, and I convinced him that I could give him the means to do so. My faith, Monsieur! that John Meavy had not one least morsel of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... reckons so, I believe," answered Lady Betty, with a responsive smile. "Maybe, we pick up such words, and use them, in ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... to Desiree as likely to be more responsive than this dark-eyed stranger, who listened with so disconcerting a ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... responsive wag of his tail Peter turned his bristling face up to his master. Many times Jolly Roger had seen that unfailing warning in his comrade's eyes. There was some one outside—or Peter's brain, like his own, was twisted and fooled ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... brooding over the solitary waste. A remarkable union of the beauty of land and water is produced by a foreground of brilliant fancy flowers relieved by a scrubby tree in the background, with the faint responsive touch of yellow in the clouds over a calm sea, where gentle motion is only indicated by the little boat floating ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... of determining is of a peculiar nature. What that nature is we have no means of determining accurately; but in conjunction with the fact that our previous experiments failed to locate Monsieur X, we may adopt the hypothesis that the wireless apparatus of that individual is not so delicately responsive as the average. In other words, the zone within which he may be found is in fact wider than ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White

... Shakespeare's manner of combining and contrasting them so as to produce a unity of tone above even the art of the classic unities. From the irresponsible comedy of Falstaff to the deepest tragic notes of Lear, the whole gamut of human emotions encounters responsive chords in the critic's mind—the young love of Romeo and Juliet or the voluptuous abandonment of Antony and Cleopatra, the intellect of Iago irresistibly impelled to malignant activity or Hamlet entangled ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... does not rest till she has made her neighbor of the hills a slave. Perugia and Assissi turn the Umbrian plain into a wilderness of wolves by their recurrent warfare. Scowling at one another across the Valdichiana, Perugia rears a tower against Chiusi, and Chiusi builds her Becca Questa in responsive menace. The tiniest burgh upon the Arno receives from Dante, the poet of this internecine strife and fierce town-rivalry, its stigma of immortalizing satire and insulting epithet, for no apparent reason but that its dwellers dare to drink of the same ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... talking of you yesterday morning, and comparing notes generally. She said you were—oh! quite a number of agreeable things— and I agreed with her, with just one exception. She considered that you were responsive. I said I had never found any one less so. She said you were always so ready to meet her halfway. I complained that you refused to meet me at all. I ... er ... told her how I felt about it, and she said my chance was waiting if I choose ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... another form of virtuosity; that is all. The lyric grace or dramatic intensity of many pages of Wagner's music-dramas can be fully revealed only through a voice that has been rendered supple by training, and responsive to the slightest suggestion ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam

... individual or collective, is not amenable to persuasion. All art, therefore, appeals primarily to the senses, and the artistic aim when expressing itself in written words must also make its appeal through the senses, if its highest desire is to reach the secret spring of responsive emotions. It must strenuously aspire to the plasticity of sculpture, to the colour of painting, and to the magic suggestiveness of music—which is the art of arts. And it is only through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and substance; it is ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... excellence never equalled, [47] and a spirit responsive to the faintest echo of the music of the ages. [48] The very faculties that bar his entrance into the circle of creative minds enable him to stand first among those epic poets who own a literary rather than an original inspiration. For in truth epic poetry is a ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... responded the Professor with a responsive ardour, which caused Livy to dive into ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... the grim ones. Designed, as epitaphs are, to arrest and hold in their momentary grasp the wandering attention and languid interest of the passer-by, they must hit him hard and at once, and this they can only do by striking some very responsive chord, and no chords are so immediately responsive as those which relate to death and, it may be, judgment ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... striking that hardly one of the most prominent Rhenish writers of the present (Clara Viebig, Joseph Lauff, Rudolf Herzog, Wilhelm Schaefer, Wilhelm Schmidtbonn, Herbert Eulenberg) has failed to try his hand at the drama. In Middle Germany emotions are more deep-seated and more responsive; people are more sentimental, more soft-hearted, more talkative, more visionary, have a finer sense of form, but a more conventional manner of speech. In this charming region of forests and mountains, to which the population is warmly attached ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... just been explaining some facts that he had learned while with the surveyors on Ralph's farm, and even Buck Winter had shown a responsive interest. ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler

... and made way for the chariot. But when they had brought him into the illustrious palace, they laid him upon perforated beds, and placed singers beside him, leaders of the dirges, who indeed sang a mournful ditty, while the women also uttered responsive groans. And amongst them white-armed Andromache began the lamentation, holding the head of man-slaughtering Hector ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... walk the Earth Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep: All these with ceaseless praise his works behold Both day and night. How often from the steep Of echoing hill or thicket, have we heard Celestial voices to the midnight air, Sole, or responsive each to other's note Singing their Great Creator! Oft in bands While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk, With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds In full harmonic number joined, their songs Divide the night, and lift ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... merchants knew Grandemont by sight, and the Charleses of old by association. Some of them were of Creole stock and felt a thrill of responsive sympathy with the magnificently indiscreet design of this impoverished clerk who would revive but for a moment the ancient flame of glory with the fuel of ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... pagoda-cage on his lap, and let out the mice to crawl over him as usual. They are pretty, innocent-looking little creatures, but the sight of them creeping about a man's body is for some reason not pleasant to me. It excites a strange responsive creeping in my own nerves, and suggests hideous ideas of men dying in prison with the crawling creatures of the dungeon preying ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... nothingness—obscure, elusive, yet mighty in their wayward way—soothed with never so gentle, so dulcet a swaying. This smooth-bosomed nurse was pleased to fondle to drowsiness a loving mortal responsive to the blissfulness of enchantment. Warm, comforting, stainless, she swathed me with rose-leaf softness while whispering a lullaby of sighs. Her salty caresses lingered on my lips, as I gazed dreamily intent upon determining the non-existing skyline. Yet, with no demarcation of the allied elements ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... in Curates!" shout our girls, Responsive from their pew; "You say there are too many, but We know there are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 25, 1892 • Various

... seemingly out of touch with this iron-bound mold of the Feudal past, Bismarck would have failed miserably were it not that he touched a responsive side of Prussian character—dog-like loyalty to authority, compounded of military glory and a pale shimmering ghost ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... diffusion of knowledge, but furnished the organization necessary for founding, supervising, and maintaining, in wholesome touch with the common man, both elementary and higher institutions of learning. Their disciplined and responsive conscience, their consequent intensity of moral conviction and spirit of self- sacrifice for the common weal, compelled them to realize, in concrete and permanent form, their ideals of college and common ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... of many greater writers are inscribed upon the walls of Westminster Abbey; but scarcely any one lies there whose heart was more acutely responsive during life to the deepest and tenderest of human emotions. In visiting that strange gathering of departed heroes and statesmen and philanthropists and poets, there are many whose words and deeds have a far greater influence upon our imaginations; but there are very few whom, when all ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... tenacious will. His main desire in transferring to the Modern side was to study English literature and modern languages thoroughly. He never regretted the change. As he grew older the firmer became his conviction that Classics were overdone in the public schools. Even in a school responsive to the spirit of the age like Dulwich, which has Modern, Science, and Engineering sides, the primacy still belongs to Classics, and the captaincy of the school is rigidly confined to boys on the ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... those eyes so full of eagle boldness yet so tempered with kindness, and to his own expression came a responsive flash of that winning boyishness which these men had not seen on ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... had attended the dance at the hotel under Miss Falconer's wing. Billy had danced with her twice, and between times his pride had kept him aloof—she might just have made one sign! But though her bright friendliness was ever responsive; though she was instantly, submissively, ready to accept his invitations or fulfill his requests, he felt that there was something ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... rather by reading backward in these old musty letters, which have moved me now to laughter and now to impatience, that I glean occasional glimpses of how she seemed to her contemporaries, and trace (at work in her queer world of godly and grateful parasites) a mobile and responsive nature. Fashion moulds us, and particularly women, deeper than we sometimes think; but a little while ago, and, in some circles, women stood or fell by the degree of their appreciation of old pictures; in the early years of the century ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... not love, however, that I felt, and I do not know how to describe it unless I call it thirst. For the first time I felt vibrating in my body a cord that was not attuned to my heart. The sight of that beautiful animal had aroused a responsive roar from another animal in my nature. I felt sure I could never tell that woman that I loved her, or that she pleased me, or even that she was beautiful; there was nothing on my lips but a desire to kiss her, and say to her: "Make a girdle of those listless ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... when the match was put to the shavings, and to the sound of the loud 'Hurrahs!' and cries of 'Long live the Bishops!' 'Down with the Pope!' the flame kindled, crackled, and leapt up, while a responsive fire was seen on St. Catherine's Down in the Isle of Wight, and northward, eastward, westward, on every available point, each new light greeted by fresh acclamations, as it shone out against the summer night sky, while the ships in the harbour showed their lights, ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... gifts of Atta-Kulla-Kulla had signally impressed Europeans of culture and experience.[9] Imagine, then, the effect on the raw young Highland soldier, hearing the flow of language, watching the appropriate and forceful gestures, noting the responsive sentiment in the fire-lit countenances of the circle of feather-crested Indians, yet comprehending little save that it was a masterpiece of cogent reasoning, richly eloquent, and that every word was as a fagot to the flames and ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... face was not responsive. There were times when she was sensible of a curious compunction in this rancher's presence. "A sensation of that kind is apt to become oppressive," she said. "When we have gone you will ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... years, the Rector, with an infinite pity, read the confession of a need that had become at last intolerable. For these seventeen years he had never known her make an intimate friend, and to see her now with this charming, responsive girl was to realize what the long hunger for affection must have been. Yet even now, how impossible to satisfy it, as other women could satisfy it! What ghosts and shadows ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... proposition that our domestic paper currency shall be kept safe and yet be so related to the needs of our industries and internal commerce as to be adequate and responsive to such needs is a proposition scarcely less important. The subject, in all its parts, is commended to the wise ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... felt a sentimental affinity with the poet; his unhappiness, his Weltschmerz, touched a responsive chord in her own unhappy heart. Intellectual sympathy with Heine's thought or tendencies there could have been little, for no woman has ever quite understood Heinrich Heine, who is still a riddle to most of the men ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine

... importance; and they cherished it. They felt that they were regarded by their countrymen as something more than human; and the opinion entertained of them by the world around them, did not fail to excite a responsive sentiment in their own bosoms. If their contemporaries willingly ascribed to them an exclusive sacredness, by how much stronger an impulse were they led fully to receive so flattering a suggestion! Their minds were in a perpetual state of exaltation; and they believed themselves ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... mood to be easily persuaded. The plaintive sobs, telling of woe that clutched some one's heart-strings, stirred a responsive chord within him. He, too, remembered those at home. Jack had put a clincher on his argument when he asked what their opinion of a man would be who turned aside and went his own way after hearing a woman or a child ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach

... seemed in harmony with the nature about her and the earnestness, perhaps tragedy, of her surroundings. Katie could not have been at home here; it was not because she had been brought up in luxury and laughter, for so had Elizabeth. It was because there was in the latter something responsive to the great realities of life. Did Katie lack this? He drew a quick breath at the thought. ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various

... desiccated in the tropics, seemed to open out, even as a withered flower uncloses its petals in water. In Africa all this thoughts and energies had been concentrated upon a single point. Here he expanded. New interests, new sensations, seemed to lie in wait for him. Never had he felt so alert, so responsive to spiritual impressions, so appreciative ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... the other touched several taut wire guys with a peculiar little movement of finger and thumb, and each one responded with a musical note that was the sweetest possible sound in the responsive ear of the ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy

... and happy pair! Sit on and enjoy the only brief glimpse of this earth's heaven which you will ever get. It is the last time that heart will beat responsive to heart, and soul tremble to and mingle ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... burst into tears over every unpleasant message he receives for transmission. Still, humanity is not always totally extinguished in these persons. I discovered a youth in a telegraph office of the Continental Hotel, in Philadelphia, who was as pleasant in conversation, and as graciously responsive to inoffensive questions, as if I had been his childless opulent uncle ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Ireland should undertake her own defence. Ireland was sick of the talk of civil war, and this was a proposal that Ulstermen and the rest should make common cause. It was an appeal addressed by an instinct, which was no less subtle than it was noble, to what was most responsive in the best qualities of Irishmen. None the less it was a statesman's utterance addressed to a people politically quick-minded; Ireland saw as well as Redmond himself that what stood in the way of Ireland's national aspiration was the opposition of one section of Irishmen. To that extent, and to ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... her beauty was fully aroused. Every now and then he caught faint glimpses of her face. It was like the face of a new woman to him. There was some tender and wonderful change there, which he could not understand, and yet which seemed to strike some responsive chord in his own emotions. Instinctively he felt that she was passing into a new phase of life. Surely, he, too, was walking hand and hand with her through the shadows! The touch of her interlaced fingers ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... of grief arose, My heart, responsive to the lovers' woes, With thrilling sympathy convulsed my breast. Too strong at last for life my passion grew, And, sickening at the lamentable view, I fell like one by mortal pangs ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... quantity. Then the technical language of the books will lose its terrors and the simplicity of construction of good poetry will become apparent. If the student will read so much of this poetry that his senses become responsive to its music, he will no longer need a hand-book. For this purpose let him read such poems as can be sung, chanted, or spoken to the ear; such as Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome," Scott's "Marmion," Browning's "Pied Piper" and "How They Brought the Good News," Tennyson's "Charge of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... down to us from a dot against the skyline of a ridge the tiniest of thin whistles. A few minutes later a sheep-dog raced past in the direction of a cluster of white specks. For a while we watched it, and each lithe, effortless bound, as it passed upon its quest, struck a responsive chord within us—we who floundered clumsily among the boulders ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... I understand you to your inmost depths!" says the Secretary of Special Commissions, kissing her hand near the bracelet. "Your sensitive, responsive soul is seeking to escape from the maze of —— Yes, the struggle is terrific, titanic. But do not lose heart, you ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... bound up in white bandages, here and there stained with the ghastly fluid that flowed from her wounds. It was a pitiable sight: her short, crisp yellow curls broke here and there, rebelliously, through the folds of the linen bandages; and I thought how she used to shake them, responsive to the quiverings of the cadenzas and trills that poured from her bird-like throat. 'Alas!' I said to myself, 'poor throat! you will never sing again! Poor little curls, you will never tremble again in sympathy with the dancing delight of that happy voice.' A dead voice! Oh! it is ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... transfigurations in which Beatrice appears to him, we must go back to his New Life—the book of which Charles Eliot Norton says—"so long as there are lovers in the world and so long as lovers are poets this first and tenderest love-story of modern literature will be read with appreciation and responsive sympathy." ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... thee in the later year, I sought, but found thee there no more; Only a rigid stalk and sere A withered head in silence bore, Or swung, responsive to the sigh Of the stray ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... was absorbing some of the little man's enthusiasm. "Sure I'll meet you, but you work so fast and drive right through that I can hardly keep up. Why, we hardly drive through with one thing until you have another. If I seem indifferent and not very responsive, it's because I haven't caught up yet. Think of it! Ten hours ago I was coming out of the hills with a serious problem that was hindering my work. Now, I am rid of the problem, have ninety dollars in cash; have the offer of all the funds I need, and prospects ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... absorbed did he become in watching the dance. It was a wonderful performance, sensuous and weirdly unusual. He had never seen a dance exactly like it before. The violin notes sounded like actual words, and the dancer answered them with responsive movements of her limbs, so that without speech the onlooker saw a love-drama enacted before his eyes. Chaldea—so he interpreted the dance—swayed gracefully from the hips, without moving her feet, in the style ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... rough customs of war, and she was very pale, worried in look, and harassed in speech; evidently quite doubtful as to what latent possibilities of harm such a visit might portend—whether ultimately she might not find herself houseless. I made myself known, but she was not responsive; courteous, for with her breeding she could not be otherwise, but too preoccupied with the harsh present to respond to the gentler feelings of the past. It was touchingly apparent that she was trying hard to keep a stiff upper lip, and her attempted frame of mind finally betrayed itself in ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... feverish excitement, when one hardly remembered meals, sleep or rest, when our spirits raced in front of us pulling our responsive flesh! ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... so utter a confusion of the senses? The Canyon is its own answer. It fills the soul of all responsive persons with awe. Explain it as one will, deny it if one will, sensitive souls are filled with awe at its superb majesty, its splendor, its incomprehensible sublimity. And in these factors we find the great source of its attractiveness, for, in spite of the awe and terror ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... table at his elbow, saying some words of ridicule about each. It gave her a still deeper sense of his intellectual command when he finally discriminated, and began to read out a poem with studied elocutionary effects. He read in a low tone, but at last some responsive noises came from the room overhead; he closed the book, and threw himself into an attitude of deprecation, with his eyes ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... work were to be complete it should include some investigation of the rituals of the cults. They are gradually creating hymns of their own; their public orders of service include responsive readings with meditations on the immanence of God, the supremacy of the spiritual and related themes. In general they dispense with the sacraments; they have no ecclesiastical orders and hardly anything corresponding to the Catholic priesthood or the Protestant ministry, though ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... Yet the girls, with all the obtuseness and insensibility of adolescence, never thought of giving her the one reward which she desired. She sought tremulously to win their intimacy, but she sought too late. Rose and Milly simply ignored her diffident advances, and even Ethel was not responsive. Leonora had trained up her children as she herself had been trained. She saw her error only when it could not be retrieved. The dear but transient vision of four women who had no secrets from each other, who understood ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... tomahawk laws. They are all urged through by the terror of those instruments of death, under the most affecting and pathetic appeals, from the constituents of the sufferers, to all the tender and benevolent sympathies of our nature. It is impossible for me to withhold from those appeals a responsive and yielding voice." He had voted, he said, for millions after millions, and would again and again vote for drafts from the public chest for the same purpose, should they be necessary, until the treasury itself ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... concealing her dwelling place from the "other people in the shop," moving whenever they seemed too curious about it, and priding herself that no neighbor had ever "stepped inside her door," and yet when discovered through an asthma which forced her to crave friendly offices, she was most responsive and even gay in a social atmosphere. Another woman made a long effort to conceal the poverty resulting from her husband's inveterate gambling and to secure for her children the educational advantages to which her family had always been accustomed. Her five children, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... beauty—political honour and public devotion, which blossomed best, it seemed, over there—above the material ease and margin of the new country, and even above the grand chance it offered for a man to make his mark. Mr Murchison was susceptible to this in anyone, and responsive to ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... the first. He is pale and nervous, and he avoids the eyes of all save the ones whom he addresses. Doctor Heath keeps two steady, searching orbs fixed upon his face, but can draw to himself no responsive glance. Frank ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... when Oppressors are to try conclusions with Oppressed; and the word is, swift Death, or Deliverance forever. Let such hour be well-come! Us, meseems, one cry only befits: To Arms! Let universal Paris, universal France, as with the throat of the whirlwind, sound only: To arms!—"To arms!" yell responsive the innumerable voices: like one great voice, as of a Demon yelling from the air: for all faces wax fire-eyed, all hearts burn up into madness. In such, or fitter words, (Ibid.) does Camille evoke the Elemental Powers, in this ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... or rather the first day into which had crept those hints that the power of the long, cruel war-winter must some day be broken. The sun was almost visible, and a tenderness now and then touched the air, and no one who is at all responsive to weather conditions could fail to be a little elated and believe once more not only in a future of sorts but also in a lurking benignancy somewhere. Stimulated myself in this way, even although I was approaching ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas

... the fact that almost all the verdure which delights his eyes is the gift of water at the hand of man, and any disappointment he may have at first experienced will be changed to admiration. Moreover, with the least encouragement this country bursts forth into verdure, crowns its responsive soil with fertility, and smiles with bloom. Even the slightest tract of herbage, however brown it may be in the dry season, will in the springtime clothe itself with green, and decorate its emerald robe with spangled flowers. In fact, the wonderful profusion of ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... blue frock, and with a hoe over his shoulder, returning from the field. She immediately set out to meet him, running and skipping, with spirits as light as the breeze of the May morning, but with limbs too little exercised to be quite responsive; she clapped her hands, too, with great exuberance of gesture, as is the custom of young girls when their electricity overcharges them. But, all at once, midway to Hollingsworth, she paused, looked ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the girl said with a responsive smile. "But they needed a 'jinning' up. I sent the message in ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... such an age, produced a worldwide sensation. That man's moral and spiritual forces reached and touched the earth's ends. Not in Bristol, or in Britain alone, but across the mighty waters toward the sunrise and sunset was felt the responsive pulse-beat of a deep sympathy. Hearts bled all over the globe when it was announced, by telegraph wire and ocean cable, that George Muller was dead. It was said of a great Englishman that his influence could be measured only by "parallels of latitude"; of George ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... voice was a little high, but it was well controlled and responsive. "Sure, Lieutenant. I'll help if I can, but I just don't dig what you're giving me. It ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Responsive to God's call, our Prayer Art Thou, dear Lord, whene'er we pray; So always now, and everywhere, ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney

... mind. It is difficult to study in a foreign language even when the subject of study is familiar; the Indian student is expected to master subjects absolutely unknown to him in his own life. Yet I have heard teachers experienced in public school work declare that these children of nature are as responsive as white children; in writing and drawing they excel; and discipline is easier, at least among the wilder tribes. The result in thirty or forty years has opened the eyes of many who heretofore held the theory that the Indian will always ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman

... of Athenian drama. The theater originated in the Dionysiac mysteries of the Greeks, in which dramatic action and responsive choruses were employed. Sex symbols were used without reserve. Intoxication and ecstasy belonged to due performance. In later mysteries dramatic action was employed to present myths and legends, or religious doctrines, in order to get the powerful effects in suggestion which dramatic action exerts. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... examined himself for a responsive generosity. The most he could say was, "You're doing this because of ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... buttocks I completely gorged her vagina. I rode, however, easily in the harbor, and the dear girl experienced all the joys of a perfect conjunction without any pain. At first my motions were slow, but as our delirium increased they grew faster. She met my thrust by responsive heaves of her bottom until we could both hold out no longer, ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival

... novelty in literature—witness John Gait, the Chronicles of Carlingford and George MacDonald. Yet Mr Barrie, in spite of a dialect not easy to the Southron, contrived to touch a more intimate and more responsive chord. With the simplest materials he achieved an almost unendurable pathos, which yet is never forced; and the pathos is salted with humour, while about the moving homeliness of his humanity play the gleams of a whimsical wit. Stevenson, in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... for the final impressiveness of his artistic message, the composer may well have felt that the effect would be indefinite without the specific meaning which words alone can give. For the style is very subjective throughout; that is, if the hearer is in a responsive condition, an effect is produced on his imagination—otherwise, not. To close the work, therefore, in the most moving and dignified manner, Liszt, with unerring instinct and following the precedent of Beethoven in ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... she had undergone had tired her, and she passively waited for the thing, she knew not what, to happen. From every hand her senses snatched up and conveyed to her innumerable impressions, each of which became a dull excitation to her jaded imagination. Somewhere within her, responsive notes were answering to the things without, forgotten and undreamed-of correspondences were being renewed; and she was aware of it in an incurious way, and her soul was troubled, but she was not equal to the mental exultation ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... from the row he had laid out for display, and holding it out for Katherine's inspection. "One of the pets of the collection. A French duelling sword of the middle of the eighteenth century." He gave a fencer's flourish. "Responsive to the hilts, eh? Ah! It must have been good to live in those days, when you could whip this from your side at a wrong done and have the life of the man that wronged you. The sweet morning air, the patch of green turf, shoes off—in shirt and breeches—with the eyes of the man you hate ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke

... but yet human nature, that her husband's fits of passionate tenderness only seemed to make her own feelings grow calm. Whether it was the shyness of her girlhood, or the variableness of a love not spontaneous but slowly responsive, or whether—a feeling wrong, yet alas! wondrously natural—it was the mere wilfulness of a woman who knows herself to be infinitely beloved, certain it was that Agatha appeared not quite the same as a few hours before. ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... appeal smote a responsive chord in his heart. It would be good to have a man of his own race beside him, even though it were but such a ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... the instant after, checked the responsive outburst of tenderness in Amelius, by that utter want of tact which (in spite of the popular delusion to the contrary) is so much more common in women than in men, "My uncle is so particular about packing his linen," she said; "nobody can ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins

... Calpurnianus, take The salutation these swift verses make. Wherewith I send, responsive to thy call, A powder rare to cleanse thy teeth withal. This delicate dust of Arab spices fine With ivory sheen shall make thy mouth to shine, Shall smooth the swollen gums and sweep away The relics of the feast of yesterday. So shall no foulness, no dark smirch be seen, If ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... and killed by poison—they all exhibit essentially the same phenomena of fatigue and depression, together with possibilities of recovery and of exaltation, yet also that of permanent irresponsiveness which is associated with death—they all are responsive or irresponsive under the same conditions and in the same manner. The investigations showed that, in the entire range of response phenomena (inclusive as that is of metals, plants and animals) there is no breach of continuity; that "the living response in all its ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... odd how kindly and considerate he always showed himself towards Miles Herrick. Perhaps somewhere within him a responsive chord was touched by the evidence of the ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... the dance was over, Patty's good-nights to Roger and Philip were quite as gentle and cordial as those she said to any one else. She smiled her best smiles at them, and though not as responsive as usual, they made polite adieux and departed with no further reference ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells

... the most idealising exponent of what was of permanent and universal significance in the time, Horace is the most complete exponent of its actual life and movement. He is at once the lyrical poet, with heart and imagination responsive to the deeper meaning and lighter amusements of life, and the satirist, the moralist, and the literary ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... to-day with the Apostolic college says the doctrines now taught must be true; the man who perceives the identity of the Church's doctrines with his own highest aspirations also proves them true. The man who has become responsive to the primitive action of his reason says that the Church, which is its only authoritative exponent, must be a divinely appointed teacher. The infallible authority of the Church in her past, present, and future teaching is established by the necessity ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... responsive throb, not even a vague echo. Mr. Knox knew that he possessed not the merest shred of the leadership necessary to ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... him and would let him lift them out of the water, and the little wood-mice came and nibbled at the cheese he held in his hand. It was Thoreau's love for the little wild creatures which drew them to him, for animals are as responsive to love as ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... target was a southwestern New Mexico town, and he swung back from the Gulf area and coaxed the responsive craft until the planet gleamed brightly in the crosshairs of the navigational sight. That put him four degrees off the horizontal, he noted, but Jupiter was setting; he adjusted his velocity to maintain the planet's relative ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll

... and on the shore were the tents of the men who had preceded them, and of whose safety they were now assured; and when, with volley after volley, they announced their arrival, ships and camp replied in glad salute. And this responsive firing was continued, says Palou, in his lively description of the scene, "until, all having alighted, they were ready to testify their mutual love by close embraces and affectionate rejoicing to see the expeditions thus joined, and at their desired destination." ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson

... delightful of comrades, for their writing is so apt, so responsive, so saturated with the promptings and the glamour of spring. It is because 'If Youth But Knew' has all these adorable qualities that it is so ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... Responsive in kind to either a talkative mood or a silent one, always gentle in manner, and always unobtrusively melancholy, Saffren never took the initiative, though now and then he asked a question about some rather simple matter which might be puzzling him. Whatever the answer, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... seemed to relish the ceremony exceedingly, and responsive mirthfulness gleamed for a moment in Amy's eyes. Then he dragged Webb forward, saying, "Let me introduce to you the grave and learned member of the family, to whom we all speak with bated breath. You ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... in her voice touched a responsive chord in me. I looked at her earnestly; she raised ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... face only expressed dejection and weakness, it was no longer that of your child. He gave a kind of sigh, and his heavy eyelids drooped. You took his hands, elongated, transparent, and with colorless nails; they were warm and moist. You kissed them, those poor little hands, but there was no responsive thrill to the contact of your lips. Then you turned round, and saw your wife weeping behind you. It was at that moment when you felt yourself shudder from head to foot, and that the idea of a possible woe seized on you, never more to leave you. Every moment ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... certainly not violent. Bernard said to himself that if he were not in the secret, a spectator would scarcely make the discovery that Gordon cherished an even very safely tended flame. Angela Vivian, on her side, was not strikingly responsive. There was nothing in her deportment to indicate that she was in love with her systematic suitor. She was perfectly gracious and civil. She smiled in his face when he shook hands with her; she looked at him and listened when he talked; she let him stroll beside her in the Lichtenthal Alley; ...
— Confidence • Henry James

... the glimpse I caught of myself in one of the mirrors startled me into thinking so. For had it not been for the odd color of my dress and the unique way in which I wore my hair that night, I should not have recognized the beaming girl who faced me so naively from the depths of the responsive glass. ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green

... we understand a government which is responsive to the will of a majority of the entire population, as opposed to an oligarchy where the sole power is in the hands of a small minority of the entire population, who are able to impose their will on the rest of the nation. In discussing immigration, we have pointed out that it is ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... in the demeanor of the beautiful girl that was responsive; no indication of the sweet surrender that doubly endears, and which makes such irresistible appeals for protection and sensitive understanding to a man worthy of the name; and what evidences of ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... sky. Somehow, despite the long roads of light that this splendid pioneer blazed out in the wilderness, it seemed only to reveal the loneliness of the forests, and to give new meaning to the solemnity of the shadows. The heart was astir with some responsive thrill that jarred vaguely, and was pain. Yet the night had its melancholy fascination, and they were all awake later than usual. When at last the doors were barred, and the house grew still, and ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... doubt great flirts, but each has a special favorite among the young girls of his acquaintance, and the girls well know to whose touch and pressure in the dance each maiden's heart is especially responsive," will not mislead any reader of this book, who will know that it indicates merely individual preference, which goes with all sorts of love, and is moreover, characteristically shallow here; for, as Dalton has told us, these ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... scenes of his boyhood, dwelling mournfully on the vanished joys and the delightful associations of forty years ago. It is not likely that there was much in Lincoln's lost youth that he would wish to recall; but there was a certain melancholy and half-morbid strain in that song which struck a responsive chord in his heart. The lines sank into his memory, and I remember that he quoted them, as if to ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... demand of the intellect, as has been well said, is simply to feel itself alive. The critic may, indeed, desire to exercise influence; but, if so, he will concern himself not with the individual, but with the age, which he will seek to wake into consciousness, and to make responsive, creating in it new desires and appetites, and lending it his larger vision and his nobler moods. The actual art of to-day will occupy him less than the art of to-morrow, far less than the art of yesterday, and as for this or that person at present ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... idea of their union be realized, and, in the end, all happen for the best. That might easily be possible with a different nature under different conditions-a nature less passionate, in contact with the world and responsive to varied interests; but not with Easter -alone with a love that had shamed him, with mountain, earth, and sky unchanged, and the vacant days marked only by a dreary round of wearisome tasks. He remembered Raines s last words-" Air ye goin' to ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.

... blue of the night is yielding to the green which foretells the sun. The east grows lighter; the birds begin to stir in the bushes, and the cry of a gull rises from the base of the cliff. The sea becomes responsive, and in a moment is overspread with continually changing colour, partly that of the heavens above it and partly self-contributed. With what slow, majestic pomp is the day preceded, as though there had been no day before it and ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... attitude—"here you have the umbrageous trees stooping down to dip their leaves in the purling waters; here you have the sweet foliage lending a delicious perfume to the balmy air; here you have the murmuring waterfalls playing music of the spheres to the listening birds, who sit responsive upon the dancing boughs; here you have all the fragrance of the briny ocean, mingling with the scent of a bank of violets, and wrapping the senses in Elysium; here you may never tire of an existence that presents never-ending charms, and that, in the full enjoyment of which, you may ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... The Institute of France was represented for the first time. This celebration was highly important and significant, and the scenes of Petrarch's inspirations and the memories of the founder of the Renaissance must have awakened responsive echoes in the hearts of the poets who aimed at a second rebirth of poetry and learning in ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... found, would have thrown the imputation of insincerity upon her grief. While they were preparing to bring the coffin out, I could hear the chat and conversation of those who were standing in crowds before the door, and occasionally a loud, vacant laugh, and sometimes a volley of them, responsive to the jokes of some rustic wit, probably the same person who acted master of the revels at ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... to the boat boy. He answered. They fell into conversation. She asked him about his family, his life, whether he would have to be a soldier; whether he had a sweetheart. She forced herself to listen attentively to his replies. He was a responsive boy and soon began to talk volubly, letting the oars trail idly in the water. With energy he paraded his joyous youth before her. Even in his touches of melancholy there was hope. His happiness confirmed her in her resolution. She put herself in contrast with this boy, and her heart sank below ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... the defect of its qualities has already been pointed out. Here we may appropriately indicate those qualities as positive elements of his power. His diction, rich alike in the most learned words and the most colloquial, is responsive to all demands. His power of phrasing runs the whole gamut from the most pellucid simplicity to the most triumphant originality. His figures of speech, drawn from all realms, are penetrating in quality, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... Responsive to my call, and the quick flash That shriveled resolution, vanquished will, And with a blood-red flame consumed the crown Of peace upon his brow, taught him how weak— How miserably imbecile—he had become, Tampering with temptation. Such a groan, Wrung from such agony, ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland

... in school brings us to daily tasks in tone. What do we learn? After the difficulties of reading the notes and making the voice responsive are somewhat overcome, we study for greater power in both, the one-, two-, or three-part exercises and songs; the exercises for skill and the songs to apply the skill, and make us acquainted with the music of ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper

... but a moment they had to note these things; eyes and ears gathered them all at once. Two of the warder's men already held their horses, while two other men, responsive to the warder's whistle, came running from the hall and helped them to dismount. Hardly had they reached the ground ere a man-servant came, who led the way to the left towards a porch of carved stone on the same side of the court. The door stood open, revealing a flight of stairs, rather steep, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... it was an eager, responsive congregation that waited for his word. The people were fully prepared for a sermon that would shake them to their souls' depths. The younger portion shivered and shrank from the ordeal; the older and more experienced shivered and waited with not unpleasing anticipations; ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... the hovering mist of morn Hath caus'd thy locks with glittering gems to glow? How oft hath eve her dewy treasures borne To fall responsive ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous

... in order to find out whether it is a "genuine antique" or only a modern reproduction; but it is obvious that years of stroking would be necessary before an article of furniture would be properly responsive. Is it worth while wasting these years of one's life? Indeed, is it worth while (I ask nervously) bothering whether a chair or a table is antique or modern so long as it is both useful ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne

... stranger—'this is gratitude for years of labour and study in behalf of the masses. I alight wet and weary; no enthusiastic crowds press forward to greet their champion; the church bells are silent; the very name elicits no responsive feeling in their torpid bosoms. It is enough,' said the agitated Mr. Slurk, pacing to and fro, 'to curdle the ink in one's pen, and induce one to ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... which all men whose opinion we value now recognize as supremely worthy of cultivation. To seek to know things as they really are; to fit our actions to our best knowledge; to conform in word and act to the truth as we see it; to seek the good of others as well as our own; to be sympathetic and responsive; to be open-eyed to beauty, open-hearted to our fellow creatures; to be reverent and aspiring; to resolutely subject the lower elements of our nature to the higher; to taste frankly and freely the innocent joys of life; to renounce ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... left hand toward THE PORTER'S, and pressing a half dollar into his instantly responsive palm). But there's nothing to prevent my looking if I feel ...
— The Sleeping Car - A Farce • William D. Howells

... opened suddenly, his eyes unbandaged, and he heard the rhythmical fall of the rain and saw the charm of the brown fields with a vividness that he had never found in his enjoyment of a summer's day. Human life also moved him to responsive sympathy, and he felt a great aching tenderness for his blind mother and for his sisters, with their narrowed and empty lives. His own share in the world, he realised, was but that of a small, insignificant failure; he had been crushed down like a weed in his tobacco field, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... delight and strange, I saw the spirit-stirring change, As warr'd the wind with wave and wood, Upon the ruin'd tower I stood, And felt my heart more strongly bound, Responsive to the lofty sound, While, joying in the mighty roar, I mourn'd that tranquil ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... enchanting mother—to-morrow; yes, there had been definite agreement upon that. But Lois had seemed as indifferent to days after to-morrow as to days before yesterday. And while this troubled Phil, she had caught so much of her mother's spirit, she had been so responsive to the new amazing language that fell so fascinatingly from her mother's lips, that she accepted the promise of a single to-morrow without misgivings. Sufficient unto the day was ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... convey notice to the inner regions of the house when any customer should cross the threshold. Its ugly and spiteful little din (heard now for the first time, perhaps, since Hepzibah's periwigged predecessor had retired from trade) at once set every nerve of her body in responsive and tumultuous vibration. The crisis was upon her! Her first customer was at ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... pleased. This responsive family, with its ready enthusiasm, made the kind of audience he liked. He passed a delicate white hand gracefully over his tall, pale forehead, and ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... Stuart hated all girls, as at his uncomfortable subdued manner, which she now began to notice. She felt vaguely sorry for him. Charles Stuart never acted like that unless his father had been giving him a scolding. Her sympathy made her responsive. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... became one to him. When the toil of day was over, he would gaze at it for hours, until he began to imagine that those vast features recognized him, and gave him a smile of kindness and encouragement, responsive to his own look of veneration. We must not take upon us to affirm that this was a mistake, although the Face may have looked no more kindly at Ernest than at all the world besides. But the secret was, that the boy's tender and ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... up at him and her eyes danced; he returned the look with a responsive glow in his own ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... telegraphy, by which a ship at sea may call for aid from ashore, perhaps a thousand miles away, has great possibilities. Modern marine architecture is making steamships almost unsinkable, more quickly responsive to their helms, more seaworthy in every way. Perhaps with the perfection of the submarine boat, ships, instead of being tossed on the boisterous surface of the waves, may go straight to their destination through the placid depths of ocean. But whatever the future may bring, the history ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... a large part of the time cutting the thick grass with their hunting knives, and it was now stored in the stable in a considerable quantity, out of the reach of the longest neck among the horses and mules. They were responsive as usual when he came among them, and nuzzled him, because they liked him and because they knew he was the provider of food, that is, he was in ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler



Words linked to "Responsive" :   respondent, response, answering, respond, unresponsive, reactive, sensitive



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