"Impressible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... On the other hand, that the stadholder would have sent the enemy reeling back to his bogs, with hardly the semblance of an army at his heels, was almost certain: The effect of such a blow upon impending negotiations, and especially upon the impressible imagination of Henry and the pedantic shrewdness of James, would have been very valuable. It was not surprising that the successful soldier who sat on the French throne, and who had been ever ready to wager life ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... organs are highly impressible or diseased, it is very important to adopt a nutritious, unstimulating, vegetable diet, as soon as the ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... beasts; and boys whose looks showed that sin had already stamped them with its foul insignia, and burned into their souls the shame which is to be one of the elements of its eternal punishment. A less impressible man than I would have felt moved at the sight of that throng of bruised and broken creatures. A hymn was read, and when Burnet, Kelsay, Neal, and others of the preachers, struck up an old tune, voice after voice joined in the melody ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... smallness, perching structure, and restless habits, fit it for continual activity, and its flitting, active life within the bars bears some resemblance except in the great matter of flight, to its life in a state of nature. Again, its lively, curious, and extremely impressible character, is in many ways an advantage in captivity; every new sound and sight, and every motion, however slight, in any object or body near it, affording it, so to speak, something to think about. It has the further advantage of a varied and highly musical ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... "pretty good," as he walked down to the station with his friend; but he looked splendidly in his new outfit, and we are willing to excuse certain impressible young ladies, who cast an admiring glance at him as he passed down the street. It was not Tom's fault that he was a handsome young man; and he was not responsible for the conduct of those who chose ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... the thirty pieces of silver for which Judas sold his Master, will ever come back again. After Jesus had cast a legion of demons out of the demoniac that dwelt among the tombs, this man was far more impressible with regard to motives addressed to his better nature than while he was possessed by these demons; so we may charitably hope that now, after ten thousand evil demons have been cast out of the hearts of the mayor and common council of the city of Atchison, these dignitaries ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... a vigorous nature. He was a favorite with his female patients,—perhaps many of them would have said because he was good-looking and pleasant in his manners, but some thought in virtue of a special magnetic power to which certain temperaments were impressible, though there was no explaining it. But he himself never claimed any such personal gift, and never attempted any of the exploits which some thought were in his power if he chose to exercise his faculty in that direction. This girl was, as it were, a child ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... were over-excited, not depressed. A solemn solitude like this would, to my thinking, be much more likely to lower your spirits. I don't like solitude, myself, and therefore, I suppose it is that I thought an impressible nature, like yours, would find something sad in the loneliness of ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... love and war, the bristling moustache, the grizzled beard, the bold, vigorous, and withal somewhat odd features of the mountaineer of Warn. To few has human liberty owed so deep a gratitude or so deep a grudge. He cared little for creeds or dogmas. Impressible, quick in sympathy, his grim lip lighted often with a smile, and his war-worn cheek was no stranger to a tear. He forgave his enemies and forgot his friends. Many loved him; none but fools trusted him. Mingled of mortal good and ill, frailty ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... which occurred in his practise would now have been deemed either mythical or miraculous. He seemed to reproduce the wonders of Gospel history. But all this was only an exhibition of the force of suggestion, or the action of the law of faith, over a patient in the impressible condition." ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... who, however, tolerated my odd ways better than might have been expected. I was easily brought to appreciate good literature, but I never had much power of expression or of strenuous thought. I was extremely susceptible and impressible, moved by beauty of any kind, but never at all ambitious or in any way creative. I was easily stimulated to work, and then loved to work; but, unless the stimulus were maintained the natural indolence of my disposition ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... by a little stretch of my imagination. But, alas! for the uncertainty even of the presentiments of one of Nature's most impressible children. The "lake" was a pond, perhaps twenty feet in diameter; an antiquated boot, two or three abandoned milk cans, and a dead cat, reposed upon its placid beach; and from a sheltered nook upon its southerly side, an early-aroused frog ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... by occasionally teaching in the palace, which was for some time thrown open to the ladies of her faithful sisterhood. Here, as elsewhere, the blended force and gentleness of her character wrought marvels in the impressible and grateful minds ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... adapted in speech for notifying and communicating thoughts. That the Jew did not think, consequently did not speak, like a European is self-evident. Where are we to find people, children in thought, keenly alive to the outer world, impressible, emotional, but devoid of the power of abstract thought, to whom long involved processes of thought and long involved sentences of speech are unknown? Consequently, the contrivances for stringing together dependent clauses don't exist. Then some wiseacre of an 18th or 19th century German writes ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... marae in the dark wood, with its hideous idols, its piles of human bones, and its hoary priest—fit minister of such a religion. I remembered the aged woman at Mowno's house, and the frightful doom in reserve for her. I felt that perhaps to such impressible spirits, even a passing word, unskilfully and feebly spoken, might by God's blessing do good; and yielding to the impulse of the moment, instead of declaiming the verses from Comus, I began to speak to them in their ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... softened brilliance—when the atmosphere, in fine, is as mild as in the month of August in Europe,—then I am more sad than usual. All memories, pleasant or painful, fall with the same weight upon my heart. Beautiful weather dilates the heart and renders it more impressible, while bad weather contracts it. The passions alone are independent of the changes of the seasons. When we left the barracks of Austerlitz, a flurry of snow fell upon us. Colonel Vaudrey, to whom I made the ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... sun having long sunk below its top, hirsute with all kinds of trees, from the highest pinnacle down to the torrent's brink. Cut on the top surface of the wall, which was of slate, and therefore easily impressible by the knife, were several names, doubtless those of tourists, who had gazed from the look-out on the prospect, amongst which I observed in remarkably bold letters that of T . ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... sentimental ways could be called by such a name. I had seen poor Lelia at Baden-Baden; and I dare say you can recall what we heard of another love of his nearer home. Well, I encountered my Hero of Ladies that very evening, wandering amid the ruined aisles of Mucross Abbey. I saw that his impressible nature had taken a thoughtful, if not a religious tone, from the scene. And he commenced the conversation by declaring, that ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... years 'mid a young, impressible people like ours, ever reflecting the exalted virtues of the true woman, the earnest reformer, the religious teacher, must have left her impress for good in every relation of life. When we remember that every word we utter, every act we perform, the individual atmosphere ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... obstacles to living there. Are not their windows darkened by the light of other days? An old mansion of brick or stone has more character of its own, and is less easily overshadowed by its own antiquity; but these impressible wooden abiding-places, that have managed to cling to the soil through so many generations, seem rife with the inspirations of mortality. They have a depressing influence, and must often mould the occupants and leave a peculiar impress on ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... his patient's bed, Jermyn would also tell him about his travels, and relate passages of adventure in various parts of the world; and he came oftener, and staid longer, and talked more and more freely, until at length in Cosmo's vision, the more impressible perhaps from his weakness, the doctor seemed a hero, an admirable ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the ivy-leaves, the name of John Sterling. Could there be any fitter resting-place for that most, weary, and gentle spirit? There I seemed to know he had the rest that he could not have anywhere on these brilliant historic shores. Yet so impressible was his sensitive nature, that I doubt not, if he had given himself up to the enchantment of these coasts in his lifetime, it would have led him by a spell ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... distinct, but in the sense that it obtruded itself less and less frequently. The experience may be worth considering by some who have the care of children. It would be difficult to overstate the intensity and accuracy of an intelligent child's observation. At that impressible time of life, it must sometimes produce a fixed impression. If the fixed impression be of an object terrible to the child, it will be (for want of reasoning upon) inseparable from great fear. Force ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... of exaggerated self-confidence, mismeasurement of forces, and pliability to external influences could not but be baleful in one of the leaders of an assembly composed, as was the Paris Conference, of men each with his own particular ax to grind and impressible only to high moral authority or overwhelming military force. It cannot be gainsaid that no one, not even his own familiars, could ever foresee the next move in Mr. Lloyd George's game of statecraft, and it is demonstrable that on several occasions he himself was so little aware ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... since the close of the Rebellion the Negro has been taking on better and purer traits of character. Possessed of an impressible nature, a discriminating sense of the beautiful, and a deep, pure taste for music, his progress has been phenomenal. Strong in his attachments, gentle in manners, confiding, hopeful, enduring in affection, and benevolent ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... turned down to a subdued light. The evening light entered through the domed roof. Hebrew texts which the curate could not decipher were painted on the dark walls. He took off his hat reverently and sat down. There was no one there. He felt very much surprised at finding himself alone. To his impressible nervous nature it seemed that he had suddenly entered a place far removed in time and space from the every-day life with which he was so familiar. He sat a long time; it was cold, and the evening light grew dim, and yet no one came. Issachar entered now and then, and made ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... story that had a pause in front of the snapper on the end, and that pause was the most important thing in the whole story. If I got it the right length precisely, I could spring the finishing ejaculation with effect enough to make some impressible girl deliver a startled little yelp and jump out of her seat—and that was what I was after. This story was called "The Golden Arm," and was told in this fashion. You can practice with it yourself—and mind you look out for the pause and get ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the portal in which the charioteer was seated, a figure stretched upon the floor. At the same time, I thought I smelt tobacco. The latter impression passed quickly from me; the former remained. Curious to know whether this prostrate figure was the one impressible man of the whole capital who had been stricken insensible by the terrors revealed to him, and whose form had been placed in the car by the charioteer, from motives of humanity, I followed the procession. It turned into Leadenhall-market, and ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... a forbidden subject in National schools, and this fact makes the appellation of "National" seem rather a misnomer. The result of this deliberate exclusion was graphically described by the honorable member. The youth comes forth educated, and at a most impressible age he reads for the first time the history of his country, and burns with indignant desire to avenge her many wrongs. The consequences are patent to all. It is, then, for the advantage of England, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... rose-bud, is emphatically a botanical emotion. A sweet, tender perception of beauty, such as this study requires, or develops, is at once the most subtile and certain chain of communication between impressible natures. Richard Hilton, feeling that his years were numbered, had given up, in despair, his boyish dreams, even before he understood them: his fate seemed to preclude the possibility of love. But, as he gained a little ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... well applied the words first used as describing George Sand: "Thou large-brained Woman, and large-hearted Man." She blended in closest union and swift interplay feminine receptiveness with masculine energy. She was at once impressible and creative, impulsive and deliberate, pliant in sympathy yet firmly self-centred, confidingly responsive while commanding in originality. By the vivid intensity of her conceptions, she brought out in those around their own consciousness, and, by the glowing ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the world, spoke the language of the most cultivated race in the world, and lived under the most masterly and fully organized government. All these three influences left their mark on a soul which was always impressible towards everything great and noble. But his nature was not only impressible; it was endowed as well by God with a strong pure heat which could fuse truths together into an orderly and well-proportioned form, ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... is something touching, soothing, and delightful in his inherent respect for gentleman and lady. His aptitude for domestic service; his love for and his power of amusing children and winning their fickle heart, their attachment to him being one of the most delightful traits of Southern life; his impressible, religious and devout nature, mark him as a wonderful element of variety in the domestic texture of our life such as it shall be when he is free, educated in accordance with his nature, and happy. He is not ambitious, he likes to serve those ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... we had!' said Sylvia, rather regretfully; for, though all the way into Monkshaven her head had been full of the purchase of this cloak, yet she was of that impressible nature that takes the tone of feeling from those surrounding; and though she knew no one on board the Resolution, she was just as anxious for the moment to see her come into harbour as any one in the crowd who had a dear ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... gentle, yielding in character, impressible, unelastic. But the positive blondes, with the golden tint running through them, are often full of character. They come from those deep-bosomed German women that Tacitus portrayed in such strong colors. The negative blondes, or those women whose ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... born Marie Madeleine de Chauvigny, a scion of the haute noblesse of Normandy. Seventeen years later she was a young lady, abundantly wilful and superabundantly enthusiastic,—one who, in other circumstances, might perhaps have made a romantic elopement and a msalliance. [ 1 ] But her impressible and ardent nature was absorbed in other objects. Religion and its ministers possessed her wholly, and all her enthusiasm was spent on works of charity and devotion. Her father, passionately fond of her, resisted her inclination for ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... his side Sitting affectionate, nor utt'ring word? Another wife lives not who could endure Such distance from her husband new-return'd To his own country in the twentieth year, After much hardship; but thy heart is still As ever, less impressible than stone, To whom Penelope, discrete, replied. 120 I am all wonder, O my son; my soul Is stunn'd within me; pow'r to speak to him Or to interrogate him have I none, Or ev'n to look on him; but if indeed He be Ulysses, and have reach'd his home, I shall believe ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... sensuality. To be successful in this direction, parents must cultivate a love for the same objects themselves. Take the little ones into the country, if they are not so fortunate as to live there, and in the midst of nature's glories, point their impressible minds upward to the Author of all the surrounding loveliness. Gather flowers and leaves and call attention to the peculiarities and special beauties of each, and thus arouse curiosity and cultivate habits ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... was most commendable, and a worthy example to those young ladies who have to extinguish the tiny embers of a month or two's idle fancy, created by an impressible nature, by girlhood's frantic longing after unseen mysteries, and by the terrible misfortune of having nothing to do. But Miss Bowen's demeanour, so highly creditable, cannot be set forward in words, as it consisted in the ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Unco Gude, are satires against bigotry and hypocrisy. But in spite of the rollicking profanity of his language, and the violence of his rebound against the austere religion of Scotland, Burns was at bottom deeply impressible by religious ideas, as may be seen from his Prayer under the Pressure of Violent Anguish, and Prayer ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... rascal,' says the saying, and it rightly represents the feeling of primitive communities when the sudden impact of new thoughts and new examples breaks down the compact despotism of the single consecrated code, and leaves pliant and impressible man—such as he then is—to follow his unpleasant will without distinct guidance by hereditary morality and hereditary religion. The old oligarchies wanted to keep their type perfect, and for that end they were right not to allow foreigners to touch it. ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... of the sitting was devoted to the discussion of the Zoellner experiments, the Medium narrating some of the phenomena that had been witnessed in the presence of Dr. Zoellner. He said, however, that Zoellner was a peculiarly impressible person, and one who had entire confidence in ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... see it in the Hydra, the units are all endowed both with impressibility and contractility; but as we ascend to higher types of organization, the ectoderm differentiates into classes of units which divide those two functions between them: some, becoming exclusively impressible, cease to be contractile; while some, becoming exclusively contractile, cease to be impressible. Similarly with societies. In an aboriginal tribe, the directive and executive functions are diffused in a mingled form throughout ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... and seemed a little revived, but anxieties were gathering around her horizon, to which it became evidently impossible her ardent and active mind could remain passive or indifferent, and which recalled every feeling, every energy of her impressible nature into action. Her elder brother, who had long chosen music as his profession, was sent to Germany to pursue his studies; the younger determined upon entering the sea service. The excitement of these changes, and ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... the indolent Mortimer, which seems to hint that if good society might on any account allow itself to be impressible, he, one of good society, might have the weakness to be impressed by what he here relates. It is hidden with great pains, but it is in him. The gloomy Eugene too, is not without some kindred touch; for, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... a lady from whom society expected so much as from Mrs. Marsden could not give her time to her children. In the impressible period of infancy and early childhood, Lottie and her brother, and an invalid sister older than herself, had been left chiefly to the charge of servants. But Mrs. Marsden's conscience was at rest, for she paid the highest prices ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... very impressible, and their character—the quality, that is, of their life—is fixed by prevailing influences, which show themselves in fashions, habits, and tendencies, in the common types of thought, or ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... stimulating the proper organs with the fingers, which should be placed upon the organ of Somnolence on each side of the head, in the temples, about an inch horizontally behind the brow. In persons who are impressible this produces a quiet dreamy feeling, and a disposition to close the eyes. If carried further, the eyes become closed so that it is difficult to open them, and the unconscious state soon follows. The same effect may be produced by placing the hand on the body just below the breastbone (sternum). ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... age, with the probability that, so long as the language in which it is written endures, it will not cease to be read by a great number of the youth of all future generations at that period of life when their minds, their imaginations, and their hearts are most impressible with moral excellence, splendid picture, and religious sentiment. It would be difficult to name another work of any kind in our native tongue, of which so many editions have been printed, of which so many readers have lived and died, the character of whose lives and deaths must have been ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... missiles when he gets a new inspiration. Change of opinion is generally progress. Continuity, an absolute lack of change, means stagnation and death in the mental as well as in the physical world. As the count is impressible and reads much, his reading and meditation are fruitful of novelties, which he bravely submits to the judgment of the world without pausing to consider whether they coincide with his other utterances or not. That he does not always ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... years, among a people of simple habits and scenery of a sweet and pastoral dignity. His earliest intimacies were with the mountains, lakes, and streams of his native district, and the associations with which his mind was stored during its most impressible period were noble and pure. The boys were boarded among the dames of the village, thus enjoying a freedom from scholastic restraints, which could be nothing but beneficial in a place where the temptations ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... nature remarkably impressible and susceptible to influence, owing to the delicacy of her organization and the peculiarities of her structure. Her proper culture therefore calls for the greatest possible skill and care to protect her from those corrupting influences to which she is by ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... strayed through that sweet wilderness, she felt more and more the influence of his elastic temperament. Miriam was an impressible and impulsive creature, as unlike herself, in different moods, as if a melancholy maiden and a glad one were both bound within the girdle about her waist, and kept in magic thraldom by the brooch that clasped it. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... noble mansion, helping forward the general demoralization. It was probably at this comparatively late period that certain foreign customs of a sadly lowering character were adopted by this plastic and impressible people, who learnt the vice of paederasty from the Greeks, and adopted from the Assyrians the worship of Beltis, with ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... and it was not always that his soberest and most conscientious relations (in type) were received without a shade of suspicion on that account. It may have been that the loneliness of the night before had not quite worn away, and that it left him sadder and more impressible than usual; and it may have been that the one element before wanting in his nature, that of earnest and undivided human love, had changed him when it was supplied. At all events, there was a something ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... may forget all about them while he is engaged in the daily routine of his business, even though the resultant forms are hanging round him in a heavy cloud, because his attention is otherwise directed and his astral body is therefore not impressible by any other rate of vibration than its own. When, however, the marked vibration slackens and the man rests after his labours and leaves his mind blank as regards definite thought, he is very likely to feel the vibration of impurity stealing insidiously upon him. If the consciousness of the man ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... becomes unpleasant? I will confess that I have been often puzzled by this question. For some time I could not make up my mind whether their unholy alliance was the result of the influence of the dog on the boy, or vice versa, and which was the weakest and most impressible nature. I am satisfied now that, at first, the dog is undoubtedly influenced by the boy, and, as it were, is led, while yet a puppy, from the paths of canine rectitude by artful and designing boys. As he grows older and more experienced in ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... The very same temper is deep in us all. Israel holds up the mirror in which we may see ourselves. If blows do not break iron, they harden it. A wasted sorrow—that is, a sorrow which does not drive us to God—leaves us less impressible ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... mine. One would not have guessed from her quiet gaze that she knew—what John had told me she knew, this morning. But these two in their perfect union had a wonderful strength—a wonderful fearlessness. And she had learned from him—what perhaps originally was foreign to her impressible and somewhat anxious mind—that steadfast faith, which, while ready to meet every ill when the time comes, until the time waits cheerfully, and will not disquiet ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... the results proceed entirely from imagination acting with a peculiar condition of the brain, and that this peculiarly passive and impressible condition of the brain is induced by the fixed gaze upon the disk. These are the only agencies which we believe to be necessary, in order to give us an explanation of the phenomena in question. In saying so, however, we are aware that such data will seem to some inquirers ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... Her fine name was the only romantic thing about her. She had had more than one offer of marriage in her day, but she had no talent for matrimony, and had turned such a very cold shoulder on her admirers that the swains became dispirited, and betook themselves to the courtship of more impressible damsels. There was no hidden romance or tale of unreturned affection in Miss Sophonisba's experience. The simple fact was, she had never wished to be married. Miss Faithful was five years her sister's ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... not being a captain of horse as his father had been before him. About the same time, or a little later, he performed a pilgrimage of a kind that could hardly help making a mark upon a character so deeply impressible. In company with D'Alembert he went to Ferney and saw Voltaire.[4] To the position of Voltaire in Europe in 1770 there has never been any other man's position in any age wholly comparable. It is true that there had been one or two ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... was so impressible that there are in his writings traces of the authors whom he was reading, if he did not mean to make them models ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... impressible, for one thing. You can work them up into any kind of passion you want to. Then they're more submissive to discipline; they're used to being ordered about and kicked and cuffed, and they don't mind it. Besides, they're accustomed from their low social position to be subordinate to superiors, ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... pervading spirit of disorder. In such dwellings there is no love of home. The common house is a mere lodging and feeding place. Society is sought elsewhere, pleasure elsewhere; and for the young and easily impressible there is the strongest inducement to those modes of dissipation in which vice conceals its grossness behind fair exteriors and under attractive forms. On the other hand, the well-ordered house affords to its inmates the repose, comfort, and enjoyment ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... phrase. The spectacle of a nation so distinguished, which had carried tyranny to a perfection and invested it with a splendor never before seen, becoming the coryphaeus of freedom, might easily have fascinated a mind less impressible by nature, and less disposed by education for favorable impressions, than that of Jefferson. He shared the feeling of the hour. His advice was asked, and respectfully listened to. This experience, while, as he says, it strengthened his preconceived convictions, must have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... was the only ingredient of romance in the affair, for the young lady was decidedly plain, though good-humoured looking, with that style of features which is termed potato; and in figure she was a little too plump, and rather short. But she was impressible; and the handsome young English Lieutenant was too much for her monastic tendencies, ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... of homes do we find among these people, where the children with their impressible minds are ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... opportunities of observation, in taking care of Maria and listening to Mervyn, and Miss Charlecote enjoyed scenery, poetry, art, and natural objects with relish keener than even that of her young friends, who were less impressible ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... accessibility, of extreme salubrity, of contiguity to a charming little tumbled country in which the troops may indulge in ingenious imitations of difficult man[oe]uvres; to which it behooves me to add the advantage of enchanting drives and walks for the entertainment of the impressible visitor. In winter, possibly, the great circle of the camp is rather a prey to the elements, but nothing can be more agreeable than I found it toward the end of May, with the light fresh breezes hanging about, and the sun-rifts from a magnificently cloudy sky lighting up all around ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... he was not impressible, or at least that the outward trappings of wealth and rank did not impress him. But he was distinctly pleased to find that Sir John's carriage and pair, which met them at the station, was irreproachable, and that ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... term a composite character. His frame was a mixture of gutta-percha, leather, and brass. His brain was a compound of vivid fancy and slow perception. His heart was a union of highly inflammable oil and deeply impressible butter, with something remarkably tough in the centre of it. Had he been a Red Indian he would have been a chief. If born a nigger he would have been a king. In the tenth century he might have been a Sea-king or something similar. Born as he was in the nineteenth century, he was only ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... forgiven or explained in the long run; but self-love, vanity, never ceases to bleed from a wound given, and never forgives it. The moral being is actually more sensitive, more living as it were, than the physical being. The heart and the blood are less impressible than the nerves. In short, our inward being rules us, no matter what we do. You may reconcile two families who have half-killed each other, as in Brittany and in La Vendee during the civil wars, but you can no more reconcile the calumniators and the calumniated than you can the spoilers ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... have been counteracted by the atmosphere of a school which, if not godless, has been without that fragrance of spiritual devoutness and consecration which is indispensable to the true training of impressible children during the plastic years when character ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... "Goody," so called, or sweeper, who was positive on the subject, but had a strange horror of referring to an affair of which she was thought to know something.—I tell you it was not so pleasant for a little boy of impressible nature to go up to bed in an old gambrel-roofed house, with untenanted, locked upper-chambers, and a most ghostly garret,—with the "Devil's footsteps" in the fields behind the house, and in front of it the patched dormitory where the unexplained occurrence had taken place which startled those godless ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to be so dazzled by his own light as to hold himself wiser than his teachers. But whatever blemishes others might discern in William, to his friend's mind he was faultless; for Marner had one of those impressible self-doubting natures which, at an inexperienced age, admire imperativeness and lean on contradiction. The expression of trusting simplicity in Marner's face, heightened by that absence of special observation, that defenceless, deer-like ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... always the profit of learning in renewed enjoyment. Yet he surprises us from time to time by intuitions which could come only from a deep experience and power of observation; and men listen to him, old and young, in spite of themselves. He is quickly impressible to the slightest clouding of the spirits in social intercourse, and has his moments of extreme seriousness: his trial-task may well ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... the sinews of Patrick Prunty and to nerve his determination to rise above his surroundings. He grew up a tall and strong young fellow, unusually handsome with a well-shaped head, regular profile and fine blue eyes. A vivacious impressible manner effectually masked a certain selfishness and rigour of temperament which became plain in after years. He seemed a generous, quick, impulsive lad. When he was sixteen years of age Patrick left his father's roof resolved to earn a position for himself. At Drumgooland, a neighbouring ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... after a day spent in one manner as in another. The test of a distaste for former simple pursuits, and want of interest in them, is a much safer one, more universally applicable, and not so easily evaded. It is equally effectual, too, as a religious safeguard; for the natural and impressible state in which the mind is kept by the absence of habitual stimulants is surely the state in which it is best qualified for the exercise of devotion,—for self-denial, for ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... ambition. Now it was the idyllic beauty that took possession of him, transformed as it was by the presence of a woman, that supreme interpreter of nature to a youth. And yet scarcely a woman—rather a vision of a girl, impressible still to all the influences of such a scene and to the most delicate suggestions of unfolding life. Probably he did not analyze this feeling, but it was Evelyn he was thinking of when he admired the landscape, breathed with exhilaration the fresh air, and watched the white clouds sail ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... an inspiration to Mr. Burroughs cannot be doubted. Possibly we should never have had him as a nature writer at all, had he spent his impressible youthful years in a less favored locality. It is, however, a curious fact that the town which produced this lover of nature also produced one other man of national fame, who was as different from him ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... what was feasible, wise, and right for him, as a New Englander whose surroundings and prospects were widely different from those of the society about him. He must have been strongly imbued by nature with the instincts of his birthplace to have formed, after a seven years' absence at his impressible age, so correct a judgment of the necessities and possibilities of his own career in relationship to the people and ideas ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... course, gains in force by the energy with which it is expressed; it strikes where the brain sends it, by a law as mathematically exact as the law that determines the course of a shell from a mortar. The amount of impression it makes is not to be determined so exactly. Sometimes, in an impressible nature, the idea works havoc, but there are, no less, natures so robustly protected, that this sort of projectile falls flat and harmless on skulls of triple brass, as cannon-shot against solid masonry; then there are flaccid and spongy-fibred natures ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... to my care. When I replied to the advertisement respecting her, I thought too much about our worldly affairs and the importance of this money to us in our position, and without sufficiently reflecting on the danger of bringing a girl at so impressible an age under your influence. The responsibility rests with me, and I cannot help having some very sad apprehensions. Wait, Constance, you must let me finish. I have settled what to do, and I have Miss Starbrow's authority to take on myself the guidance of the girl in all spiritual matters. ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... remarked La Corne St. Luc; "I have spoken to the Sieur Philibert and cautioned him, but he is not impressible on the subject of his own safety. The Intendant spoke savagely of him in public the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... mind.—The most wonderful of all the changes which attend pregnancy are those in the nervous system. The woman is rendered more susceptible, more impressible. Her character is transformed. She is no longer pleasant, confiding, gentle, and gay. She becomes hasty, passionate, jealous, and bitter. But in those who are naturally fretful and bad-tempered a change for the better is sometimes observed, so that the members of the household learn from ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... said cuts across your prejudice, coming from the South. I have sought to speak sincerely to you, because you are young, impressible, and anxious for knowledge; and it is better to know an unwelcome truth, than to find out by-and-by you have all your life been believing an untruth. Nothing is more sickening to the candid and sincere heart, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... thought-dust, imperceptible, but potent to enrich the nations. The French alone, says Michelet, understood Italy. How terrible would have been a conquest by Turks with their barbarism, of Spaniards with their Inquisition, of Germans with their brutality! But France, impressible, sympathetic, ardent for pleasure, generous, amiable and vain, was capable of comprehending the Italian spirit. From the Italians the French communicated to the rest of Europe what we call the movement of the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... adds to their number, and intensifies their power. It limits and lowers her action very much, as man is limited and degraded by dissipation. The saddest part of it all is, that this neglect of herself in girlhood, when her organization is ductile and impressible, breeds the germs of diseases that in later life yield torturing or fatal maladies. Every physician's note-book affords copious illustrations of these statements. The number of them which the writer has ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... that, since he no longer loved her, he would send her back to her native place, away from the hollow world of Rome—to assume toward him, by a strong effort of will, a like indifference—to watch until she could find some season when his better nature appeared more impressible, and then to throw herself before him, as she had once before done, and plead for a return of his love—these and like expedients fruitlessly passed in review before her. All in turn failed in promise of relief; and at times it seemed as though the only course left to her was to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... don't know that there is anything very serious the matter with them, but Maria is at an age when she is very impressible, and there are many who are not exactly desirable. There is Gladys Mann, for instance. I saw Maria walking down the street with her the other day. Now, Harry, you know that Gladys Mann is not exactly the kind of girl whom Maria's own mother ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... embryo man or woman, in the nursery, the traits, the habits, the customs of the best etiquette, and you have stamped upon them, at an age when the character is impressible as wax, not only the outer semblance, but, in a great degree, the inner reality, of a true ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... me," she said, cheerily; "keep your weapons for more impressible subjects. You know I am not in the least afraid of any such arguments. I have been talking downright truth and common sense, and you know it, and are hit; that is what makes you sarcastic. Did you know that was at the bottom of most ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... part of an ancient Roman, like Augustus, to believe in portents and omens, however insignificant; it might even require some philosophy to despise them; and among ourselves in modern times it will be found, if we mistake not, that strong poetical sensibilities, or a peculiarly impressible temperament, is the foundation of what can be regarded in no other light than an hallucination. The world of spirits, with all its shadowy tenants and imaginary impulses, might be a reality to Scott, whose demonology never for one moment obscured the lucid ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... salutes, returned them by graciously lifting off his hat, and, with an engaging air, prevented Frederick the free from running against the company, or being jostled against the wall. The Collegians as a body were not easily impressible, but even they, according to their various ways of wondering, appeared to find in the two brothers ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... efficacy of treatment were similarly rewarded in the Scandinavian countries, where German propaganda, ever resourceful and many-sided, was facilitated by kinship of race, language, folklore and literature. Of the three kingdoms Sweden, the strongest, was also the most impressible owing to the further bond of fellowship supplied by a common object of distrust—the Russian empire. Suspicion and dislike of the Tsardom had been long and successfully inculcated by the German Press, from which ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... have originated, we do not know; nor how it is that they have become, in all quarters of the world, so deeply impressed on the mind of men; but it is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, whilst the brain is impressible, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... voices, many of them blending for the last time,—for the scholars were soon to be scattered all over the country, and some of them beyond its boundaries,—but why the Mistress was so carried away, I did not know. She must be more impressible than most of us; yet I thought Number Five also looked as if she were having a struggle with herself to keep down some rebellious signs ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... some fifteen hundred dollars a year, I believe, Lynde at first thought to go abroad. It was always his dream to go abroad. But I persuaded him out of that, seeing how perilous it would be for a young fellow of his inexperience and impressible disposition to go rambling alone over the Continent. Paris was his idea. Paris would not make a mouthful of him. I have talked him out of that, I repeat, and have succeeded in convincing him that the wisest course for him to pursue is to go to some pleasant town ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... exhausted were we by the excitement that we had passed through since sunrise; but our friends were bent on entertaining us with stories and sights of the New World, and we followed them rather reluctantly. I have since been glad that I did so; for my mind was in a state that rendered it far more impressible than usual, and therefore better fitted to observe much that would have been lost to me in a less-excited condition. Here I first saw the type of common German life on Sunday in America; and I saw enough of it on that one Sunday afternoon to last a whole lifetime. My friends called on several ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... demonstrativeness of her son's at this point, to say from afar:—"I hope we are going to have some 'Ifigenia in Aulide.' Because I should have enjoyed that." Which carried an implication that the musical world had been palming off an inferior article on a public deeply impressible by the higher ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of the drama; and, as these qualities are known to have appertained to many of those who really filled the roles enacted at the period now represented, the scene had, as might be expected, a powerful effect on a people so impressible as the French, and so liable to be hurried into enthusiasm by aught ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... we again remark he was fighting less for her than for his master—or rather for her in his master's interest. And besides, it was the moment of victory, when, of all moments, the difference between the man born and reared under Christian influences and the savage is most impressible. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... he would grasp tighter his crutch and look wrathfully about the room for a seat. 'Bolt!' he would continue, having adjusted his shabby drab hat, 'soon learned that in Europe tradesmen are exceedingly impressible, and notwithstanding they are held in utter contempt by the fine gentlemen of the diplomatic world, will be their humble servant to any amount, asking no other security than the, to them, immaculate character of the mission. I do not mean to say that Bolt made such facilities a study; ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... way by striking one slip of wood upon another. They are wilder in appearance than the Hindu Jogi or Sanyasi, who also affects the use of ashes, but neglects that of the palm-thatch. It is certainly enough to startle a man of impressible nerves— one, for instance, who cannot enter a room without a side-long glance at an unexpected coffin—to see these hideous beings starting with their savage cry from the depths of an African forest. Evidently, also, such is the intention of ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... distinct view of right and wrong, would not allow himself to find any excuses for the crime, though anxious as his wife for the good of the criminal; nor did he fail to blame himself, as Mrs Morgan blamed herself, for allowing their child, during the most impressible years of his life, to ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... New York earlier than usual, worked steadily at my profession and with increasing success, and began to accept opportunities (which I had previously declined) of making myself personally known to the great, impressible, fickle, tyrannical public. One or two of my speeches in the hall of the Cooper Institute, on various occasions—as you may perhaps remember—gave me a good headway with the party, and were the chief cause of my nomination for the State office which I still hold. (There, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... a feeling of sisterly affection had sprung up. Miss Pillbody turned with a feeling of relief from her dull elderly pupils, stiff in manners, and firmly set in their habits, to this fresh, impressible young creature. What she did conscientiously to the others for pay, she would have done to Pet for love, had not her bills been settled in advance. Whenever Miss Pillbody had a spare hour or two, afforded by the indisposition of one of her older scholars (from excessive fatigue ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... the doubt in the world comes from the fact that there are in it so many more of the impressible as compared with the originating minds. Where the openness to impression is balanced by the power of production, the painful questions of the world are speedily met by their answers; where such is not the case, there are often long periods ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... other parts of the once bright and cheerful house, —its atmosphere was so stagnant and full of mould. The family spoke only in suppressed tones; their countenances were as sad as their garments. All this was terrible to the impressible, imaginative, and naturally buoyant temper of Mildred. It was like dwelling in a tomb, and her heart cried out for very loneliness. She must do something to take her mind out of the sunless vault,—she must resume her relations with the dwellers in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... any remark, and there was silence in the carriage as the stranger approached. The ladies bowed somewhat coolly, except Minnie, who threw upon him the most imploring look that could possibly be sent from human eyes, and the Italian's impressible nature thrilled before those beseeching, pleading, earnest, unfathomable, tender, helpless, innocent orbs. Removing ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... with you for wanting to laugh, and I like to make you laugh, well enough, when I can. But then observe this: if the sense of the ridiculous is one side of an impressible nature, it is very well; but if that is all there is in a man, he had better have been an ape at once, and so have stood at the head of his profession. Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... of our human existence that has a stronger influence upon us than the house we dwell in,—especially that in which our earlier and more impressible years are spent. The building and arrangement of a house influence the health, the comfort, the morals, the religion. There have been houses built so devoid of all consideration for the occupants, so rambling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... I dreamed that when father went to feed the chickens in the barn yard, a beautiful bird with silky wings of blue fluttered down among them to be fed. How impressible my artless brain! As great an event was this to me, as the inauguration of our highest ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... The impressible visitor declares that he felt disposed to fall upon his knees before this grand and simple human being, but refrained. They went to the middle of a bridge thrown across an arm of the lake, and Chateaubriand drew from his pocket a piece of bread which he had placed there after breakfast. This ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... his encircling arm, went to a book-stand near and took from it a richly bound Bible. With this she came and stood before Gus, who was half trembling with fear and perplexity, and said in a tone so grave and solemn that his weak impressible nature was ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... more noted for beauty than for decorum, was afterward married to Bachaumont, a well-known bel esprit, who appreciated the gifts of the young girl, and brought her within a circle of wits who did far more towards forming her impressible mind than her light and frivolous mother had done. She was still very young when she became the wife of the Marquis de Lambert, an officer of distinction, to whose interests she devoted her talents and her ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... lights of the workshop, Charles IX., left alone by the departure of the Comte de Solern, heard the door of the apartment turn on its hinges, and saw his mother standing within it in the dim light like a phantom. Though very nervous and impressible, the king did not quiver, albeit, under the circumstances in which he then stood, this apparition had a certain ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... floors instead of beds, the brick and mortar physiognomy of the very court itself looks worn and jaded. And now the neighbourhood, waking up and beginning to hear of what has happened, comes streaming in, half dressed, to ask questions; and the two policemen and the helmet (who are far less impressible externally than the court) have enough to do to keep ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the calm of an out-of-the-way country village. Such a thing had never occurred before in his lifetime, nor within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. All were therefore properly impressed with the importance of the occurrence, and none more so than the excitable, impressible, enthusiastic Poet. For days before the one appointed to make the journey to the Market Town, he was in a great state of excitement and hilarious pleasure, and with difficulty controlled his inclinations ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... poet while it lasts. Mr. Quincy caught the enchantment through his ears, a song of Burns heard from the next room conveying the infection,—a fact still inexplicable to him after lifelong meditation thereon, as he "was not very impressible by music"! To us there is something very characteristic in this rapid energy of Mr. Quincy, something very delightful in his naive account of the affair. It needs the magic of no Dr. Heidegger to make these dried roses, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... new heart which is given to the penitent sinner at his new birth. Regeneration implies the impartation of a new life by the Divine energy of the Holy Ghost. And this new life is comparable to the "heart of flesh," not, of course, a carnal heart, but a heart tender and teachable, and impressible to heavenly influences, such a heart as we always find in the new-born ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... engrossed in business and pleasure, when people had time to ponder on what is profound and lofty; an age not so brilliant as our own in mechanical inventions and scientific researches, but more contemplative, and more impressible by grand sentiments. I do not say that the former times were better than these, as old men have talked for two thousand years, for those times were hard, and the struggles of life were great,—without facilities of travel, without luxuries, without ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... deep feeling—moments when, amid the wretched trivialities and hypocrisies of modern society, the image will present itself to their minds of some woman, fresh, innocent, gentle, sincere; some woman whose emotions are still warm and impressible, whose affections and sympathies can still appear in her actions, and give the colour to her thoughts; some woman in whom we could put as perfect faith and trust, as if we were children; whom we despair ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... spirit of ether, etc., which would yield a prompt effect upon many individuals seem to have little or no effect upon him, nor do moderate quantities of wines or spirits stimulate him. That is to say, he has not a very impressible nervous organization, is not imaginative, nor very liable to accept results ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... the virtues of other types of men. He will be a man raised to the highest power. He will be self-centred, equipoised, and ever master of himself. His sensibility will not be deadened or blunted by violation of nature's laws. His whole character will be impressible, and will respond to the most delicate touches ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... practise love in a cottage. Thus the fair and loyal Canadiennes are responsible for the loss of many and many a gallant officer to her majesty's service. Throughout these colonial stations there has been, and there will be, a fearful depletion, among the numbers of these brave but too impressible men. I make this statement solemnly, as a mournful fact. I have nothing to say against it; and it is not for one who has had an experience like mine to hint at a remedy. But ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... a variety. The connecting link is that clairvoyance is found to be unusually active during and by means of moonlight. What psycho-physical effect either basalt or moonlight has upon the nervous system of impressible subjects appears to be somewhat obscure, but there is little difference between calcium light and moonlight, except that the latter is moderated by the greater atmosphere through which it comes to us. It is only when we come to know the psychological values of various chemical bodies ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... husband of a wife or wives (for a wife or two more or less is no encumbrance in Indian plays), is suddenly smitten with the charms of a lovely woman, sometimes a nymph, or, as in the case of [S']akoontala, the daughter of a nymph by a mortal father. The heroine is required to be equally impressible, and the first tender glance from the hero's eye reaches her heart. With true feminine delicacy, however, she locks the secret of her passion in her own breast, and by her coyness and reserve keeps her lover for a long period in the agonies of suspense. ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... Mrs. Leroy; "the colored nurse could not nestle her master's child in her arms, hold up his baby footsteps on their floors, and walk with him through the impressible and formative period of his young life without leaving upon him ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... effect of a sinister omen. This, to be sure, was only another reason for persevering in his intention, and getting an additional security against himself. Nevertheless, at this point in the conversation, he was conscious of increased disinclination to tell his story about Hetty. He was of an impressible nature, and lived a great deal in other people's opinions and feelings concerning himself; and the mere fact that he was in the presence of an intimate friend, who had not the slightest notion that he had had any such serious ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... 1861, was so unsettled, the popular mind so impressible, that a spirit of discontent soon began to spread over the loyal States on the part of those who had hoped for what they termed a vigorous administration. For a few weeks the conduct of the government fell under the animadversion of all classes in the North. To those who wanted an instant ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... and the scene became so painful to me, that I made haste to shake hands with the ill-mated couple, say a few soothing words, and take leave of them. From that time, I saw Pendlam occasionally, but avoided the house. It was a peculiarity of his impressible nature, to imbibe, unconsciously to himself, the sentiments of powerful persons with whom he came in contact, retain and revolve them in his intellect, until they reappeared as his own original convictions. He now went ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... and it made such an indelible impression on his mind that he in after years spoke of it as having been one of the most potent influences of his life, since it stimulated the natural melancholy of his character when his nature was most flexible and impressible. ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... was impressible, easily influenced, yet stubborn, intractable, incoherent, passionate, and unreliable; sometimes inclining to the Guises, sometimes to Coligny and the Huguenots, and always submitting at last, after vain struggle, to his imperious mother's will, in her efforts ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... limbs, compactness in the body, smallness in hands and feet, and exceeding symmetry and comeliness throughout. Possibly between the two sides of the occipital profile there may have been an Incaean tendency to inequality; but if by any good fortune her impressible little cranium should escape the cradle-straps, the shapeliness that nature loves would soon appear. And this very fortune befell her. Her father's detestation of an infant that had not consulted his wishes as to sex prompted a ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... victims to one idea, of once noble souls who sink themselves in sensuality, and so go down to death, and of all the sad cases one hears and reads of day after day and year after year, are made so through unceasing aggravation at the most impressible time of life. Do any of you who may be my readers know of half a dozen happy families in your circle of friends and acquaintance? Do you know of half a dozen where boys prefer home and their sisters to the streets, or where girls do not court the most uninviting boy in preference ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... supports by a voluntary contribution on his own part, because he knows that it is at all times in his power to see the thing as it really is. I have often observed that little children are actually deceived by stage-scenery, never by pictures; though even these produce an effect on their impressible minds, which they do not on the minds of adults. The child, if strongly impressed, does not indeed positively think the picture to be the reality; but yet he does not think the contrary. As Sir George Beaumont was shewing me a very ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... guessed it! Yes, indeed. Do you know, there seems to be nothing else to do. Tom is in actual danger. I know he goes very often to Mrs. Wishart's; and you know Tom is impressible; and before we know it he might do something he would be sorry for. The only thing is to ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... Young Graham became reticent and to superficial observers shy. Those who cared to observe him closely, however, discovered that it was not diffidence, but indifference toward others that characterized his manner. In the most impressible period of his life he had received instruction, advice and discipline in abundance, but love and sympathy had been denied. Unconsciously his heart had become chilled, benumbed and overshadowed by his intellect. The actual world gave him little and ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... rooms in the house be the children's nursery. It is good philosophy, too, to furnish it attractively, even if the sum expended lower the standard of parlor luxuries. It is well that the children's chamber, which is to act constantly on their impressible natures for years, should command a better prospect, a sunnier aspect, than one which serves for a day's occupancy of the transient guest. It is well that journeys should be made or put off in view of the interests of the ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... high favor with ours. They are always Oxonians, as the sons of green grocers and fishmongers are sure to be when they come over here (so Mr. Toddleworth has it, and he is good authority), and we being an exceedingly impressible people, they kindly condescend to instruct us in all the high arts, now and then correcting our very bad English. They are clever fellows generally, being sure to get on the kind side of credulous ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... situated, who have made impress on the age in which they lived. We seldom remember from whence we first received the idea which gave impulse to an honorable action; we received it, however, most probably from tongue or pen. For impressible youth such biography should be as easy of access ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... the ferocity of his old Roman blood had been roused in Vetranio, as he threatened Ulpius, the father's look of cold, silent, frightful despair froze it in his young veins in an instant. His heart was still the impressible heart of youth; and, struck for the first time in his life with emotions of horror and remorse, he advanced a step to offer such explanation and atonement as he best might, when the voice of Ulpius suspended his intentions, and ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... under the chill and dismal shadow of death once more, such was the eloquence of Puddock, and so impressible his own nature, as he followed the appeal of his second. 'Life is sweet;' and, though the compound was nauseous, and a necessity upon him of swallowing it in horrid instalments, spoonful after spoonful, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu |
