"Impressionable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... laid aside her traveling dress and slipped on a soft fur-trimmed crepe lounging robe with her feet in embroidered satin mules, and the impressionable Patricia was feasting her eyes on her. She was used to beauty—and beauty of a much higher class—in her own sister Elinor, and every day her mirror reflected quite as attractive features as those of her new companion, but the extreme ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... Hungarian dances. His lank figure and long hair worked in unison with the music which filled the room with a wild tumult of movement. I had not heard anything like it in my life. It set every nerve of me dancing. I suppose Paragot found his interest in me because I was such an impressionable youngster. When, at the abrupt finale, he asked me what I thought of it, I ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... South Africa as a possibility, and put it aside, knowing well that no other place could have the same indefinable charm that the Rocky Mountains possessed, for the reason that he had come to them at his most impressionable age. Then, too, the United States, for all their faults, seemed merely an extension of ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... were missing was not likely to be discovered in an inn until suspicion was aroused. Ronald laid his plans well, but how was he to know that in his path to the pit he walked over soil as plastic and impressionable as wax?" ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... carefully excluded. By this process it acquires a very remarkable facility in being blackened on a very slight exposure to light, even when the latter is by no means intense. The paper, however, rapidly loses its extreme sensitiveness to light, and finally becomes no more impressionable by the solar beams ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... was, and realized how dangerous it might be to her peace to communicate difficulties of such a nature in her present impressionable state; she therefore endeavoured to divert her mind into a safer channel by getting her ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... the girl. She bore a striking resemblance to him and had inherited his handsome features a thousandfold, albeit her eyes were different, being large, brown, and wide apart; from them beamed a sweetness, a benignancy, and tenderness that, to the impressionable Farrel, bespoke mental as well as physical beauty. She was gowned, gloved, and hatted ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... the Indians, if they are frequently moderated, thanks to the religion that they profess, wholly disappear but with difficulty, and generally even have some influence on the private life and religious character of the natives. Since they are, therefore, more superficial and more impressionable to new things than those of other races, they would perhaps be less constant in their Catholic practices, sentiments, and convictions, and would feel more easily than do others the evil influences of false doctrines and worships, if they had experience with these. They are readily inclined ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... touches my responsibility as Commander in Chief to the mothers and fathers and kindred of the men who came to France in the impressionable period of youth. They could not have the privilege accorded European soldiers during their periods of leave of visiting their families and renewing their home ties. Fully realizing that the standard of conduct that should be established for ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... years, had the character and appearance of an old man. As much as Hortense loved liberty, her suspicious husband wished to hold firmly the reins of conjugal authority. He was prematurely afflicted with various infirmities, almost always morbidly nervous and impressionable, disposed to take a dark view of everything, and bore no resemblance to the type of hero which Hortense had imagined. Moreover, the unhappy husband endured a hidden anguish which he had to conceal ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... saw now in those strange eyes that left him a bit wistful at thought of this? There was not a detail of her features, of her dress, of her speech, that he could not see now as vividly as though she were still standing before him. That was odd, too. He was not ordinarily so impressionable. It occurred to him that he would not like her to know what he was about to do. Bah, he was ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... fundamental and persistent self-consciousness—persistent in dreams, and even in the calmest sleep, which is always accompanied by a vague sensation—is the consciousness of a living subject, active, impressionable, exercising his will, capable of emotions and passions. It is not the consciousness of an inert thing, passive, dead, or extrinsic; for animal life consists in sensation of greater or less intensity, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... readiness to follow him to the death—which is the way of the world. "You have but to hold up your hand," cries the faithful follower. But wise men know that the hand must have something in it. The prince had been young and impressionable when Poland was torn to pieces, when that which for eight centuries had been one of the important kingdoms of the world was wiped off the face of Europe, like writing off a slate. He was not a ruffian, as Deulin had described ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... a wave of the hand suitable to his princely one-coloured costume of ruffled lavender silk, and the magnificent leg he turned to front me. My senses even up to that period were so impressionable as to be swayed by a rich dress and a grand manner when circumstances were not too unfavourable. Now they seemed very favourable, for they offered me an upward path to tread. His appearance propitiated me less after he had passed through the hands of his man Tollingby, but I had again surrendered ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... there is much exaggeration in all you have told me. Your imagination has been struck, and you have suffered it to carry you away, so that you believe all you say now; but I can assure you, you are mistaken. You are impressionable, susceptible, but too young to understand the real passion of love. At your age, young girls have very often some little love affair with the engaging young dancer they met at the last ball. You, who have been kept out of society on account of the masculine education you had received, have ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... admiration of these twelve or fifteen hundred persons, but that of thousands more! Magsie would be a rage! Magsie's young favors would be sought far and wide. Magsie's summer home, Magsie's winter apartments, Magsie's clothes and fads, these would belong to the adoring public of the most warmhearted and impressionable city in the world! Rachael saw it all coming with perhaps more certainty than did even the little actress behind ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... very sage in argument, pounding down his ideas on politics, religion, or social life with his fist as well as his voice. He was quick, perhaps, at making antipathies, and quick, too, in making friendships; impressionable, demonstrative, eager, rapid in his movements,—sometimes to the great detriment of his shins and knuckles; and he possessed the sweetest temper that was ever given to a man for the blessing of a woman. This was the man between whom and Mr. Glascock Nora Rowley found it ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Upon an impressionable child the effect of this continual and pretty accompaniment to life was deep. The woman's quietism and piety passed on to his different nature undiminished; but whereas in her it was a native sentiment, in him it was only an implanted dogma. Nature and the child's pugnacity ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... must please; if he wishes to be successful and popular, he must suit himself to the tastes of his public; and even if he be indifferent to immediate fame, he must, as belonging to one of the most impressionable, the most receptive species of humankind, live in a sense WITH and FOR his generation. To meet this demand upon his genius, Chaucer was born with many gifts which he carefully and assiduously exercised in a long series of poetical experiments, and which he was able felicitously to combine ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Wardle giv' Mrs. Tapping. It really sent your flesh through your bones, all on edge like, to see a child fly up in the air like that. So she testified, embellishing her other physiological experience with a new horror unknown to Pathologists. Mrs. Riley, less impressionable, kept an even mind in view of the natural invulnerability of childhood and the special guardianship of Divine Omnipotence. If these two between them could not secure small boys of seven or eight from ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... talked. He was halt and obscure, but I thought I saw a mind beating against the elms and stones of the village, and repelled by the concrete, asphalt, and lodging-houses of the seaside place. But I am impressionable, too. It may have been my fancy. What the boy finished with was: "There's no chance here. You never ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... Palmer said, dryly. "It seems to me I've heard somewhere that other young men have gone there 'almost every!' She doesn't last, apparently. Arthur's gallant, and he's impressionable—but he's fastidious, and fastidiousness is always the check on impressionableness. A girl belongs to her family, too—and this one does especially, it strikes me! Arthur's very sensible; he sees ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... with the whitest of napery and the brightest of glass and china. The friendly old gentleman, as he had found him from the first, became doubly and trebly so in that position which brings out whatever warmth of heart an Englishman has, and gives it to him if he has none. The impressionable and sympathetic character of Middleton answered to the kindness of his host; and by the time the meal was concluded, the two were conversing with almost as much zest and friendship as if they were similar in age, even fellow-countrymen, and had known one another all their lifetime. ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and Miss Leigh's voice was a little tremulous; "But artists are very impressionable, and live so much in a world of their own that I sometimes doubt whether they have much understanding or sympathy with the world of other people! Even Pierce Armitage—who was very dear to me—ran away with impressions like a child with toys. He would adore a person one day—and hate ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... landscape, over which perhaps some day, the mild lustre of friendship may beam. The girl is beautiful—extraordinarily so; but I'm not a 'man o' wax,' as Juliet's gabbling old nurse says—not in the least impressionable." ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... me!" cried the impressionable Della. "Don't tell me, Mrs. Cullen! I can most see 'em meself, right here in me own kitchen! Poor Tom! To think whin I bought me new hat, only last week, the first time I'd be wearin' it'd be to his funeral. To-morrow ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... upright. She held out her hands like a child, to the least impressionable boatman. In an instant she was ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... no public school. It was not the custom of the family; and Mrs. Allison could not be induced to break the tradition. There was accordingly a succession of tutors, whose Church-principles at least were sound. And Ancoats showed himself for a time an impressionable, mystical boy, entirely in sympathy with his mother. His confirmation was a great family emotion, and when he was seventeen Mrs. Allison had difficulty in making him take food enough in Lent to keep him in health. Maxwell was beginning to wonder where it would end, when the lad was ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... long suspected Ellis of feeling a more than friendly interest in Clara. Herself partial to Tom, she had more than once thought it hardly fair to Delamere, or even to Clara, who was young and impressionable, to have another young man constantly about the house. True, there had seemed to be no great danger, for Ellis had neither the family nor the means to make him a suitable match for the major's sister; nor had Clara made any secret of her dislike for Ellis, or of her resentment ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... nations moving in and out of New York Harbor — the gateway to the Western Hemisphere. Returning to Manhattan, he was sent to the Horace Mann School, but while still a lad, the family removed to Mexico where the most impressionable years of his boyhood were spent. The influence of the romantic Southern life is shown in his earliest poetry. Upon his return to America, several years later, he was prepared for college at the Hackley School at Tarrytown, N.Y., and entered Harvard in ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... April 14th, evening, but the portentous and prolix Courtney had shut him out, and he had to wait till the following evening. The change was, perhaps, desirable, for Mr. Asquith had thus the opportunity of addressing the House when it was fresh, vital, and impressionable. In these long debates the evenings usually became intolerably dull and oppressive. Though Mr. Asquith was an untried man when he went into office, in two speeches he succeeded in placing himself in the very front rank ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... say it?—Paris, which is so impressionable, so excitable, so romantic, in admiration before all that is bold, has but a moderate sympathy for that which is prudent. We may smile, as I did just now, at the emphatic proclamation of the Central Committee, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... Anthony Andover were passengers, bound on a sight-seeing trip through the East, and as Peter Moore was a very impressionable young man, it is only natural that the twins be discussed first, in virtue of ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... remember that you are now a soldier!" he would say to the newest recruit who had just scraped through with a margin of chest. His thunderous wrath and sorrow when one of his "boys" was guilty of conduct unbecoming a soldier were something which, in time, impressed even the least impressionable. His old regiment, which he delighted to talk about, he ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... for an evangelist. The Rev. Geoffrey Mountain, who came to assist the Avonlea minister in revivifying the dry bones thereof, knew this and reveled in the knowledge. It was not often that such a virgin parish could be found nowadays, with scores of impressionable, unspoiled souls on which fervid oratory could play skillfully, as a master on a mighty organ, until every note in them thrilled to life and utterance. The Rev. Geoffrey Mountain was a good man; of the earth, earthy, to be sure, but with an unquestionable sincerity of belief and purpose which ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... brave, manly impulse, and not think of him as a ludicrous spectacle when he donned the uniform, he would march away with a light heart. He did not analyze her influence over him, but only knew that she had a peculiar fascination which it was not in his impressionable nature to resist. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... impressionable, impulsive, emotional. This one was, and had no gift at hiding his feelings; or if he had it he took no trouble to exercise it. He carried his soul's prevailing weather in his face, and when he entered a room the parasols or the umbrellas went up—figuratively speaking—according ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... is the enclosing shore; measurable, impressionable, definite, and overt; thinking to house that sea, shaping it, over looking it, and staying and governing its tides. Yet changed by it, crumbling before it, yielding to it: at once its guardian and its slave. ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... little of anything here at Asensio's house—" "It is cold before the dawn—" ... Poor little Rosa! He had always thought of her as so proud, so high-spirited, so playful, but another Rosa had written this letter. Her appeal stirred every chord of tenderness, every impulse of chivalry in his impressionable Irish nature. She doubted him; she feared he would not come' to her. Well, he would set her doubts at rest. "O God! Come quickly, if you love me." He leaped to his feet; he dashed ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... man in the exploration party, was in the lounge listening to them. Chandler was a nice kid, clean-cut and right out of the finest tradition of Earth, but Chandler was, like all boys barely out of their teens, impressionable. He was particularly impressionable in these, his first ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... impersonality of the men, who, at twenty years old, seemed to set no value either on official or personal standards. Here were nearly a hundred young men who had lived together intimately during four of the most impressionable years of life, and who, not only once but again and again, in different ways, deliberately, seriously, dispassionately, chose as their representatives precisely those of their companions who seemed least to represent them. As far as these Orators and Marshals had any position at all in a ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... was simple and light, with a little break in its sweetness. Sissy's touch was childlike, but her impressionable temperament, quickened by the strangeness of that dark room behind her, overflowed into the melody her fingers brought out. The accompanying bass was rhythmic, and the nervous, fevered child found mental and physical occupation in letting the fingers of ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... though brief religious revival. The monk Savonarola preached against wickedness in high places, and thundered at the Florentines for their presumption and vanity. The impressionable people wept, they appointed a "day of vanities" and laid all their rich robes and jewels at Savonarola's feet. They made him ruler of the city. But, alas! they soon tired of his severities, sighed for their vanities back again, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... that there is no one who can take her place as teacher and companion of her children during their early impressionable years and she craves more time for their care. She feels the need of making the farm home an inviting place for the young people of the family and their friends and of promoting the recreational and educational advantages of the neighborhood in order to cope with the various forms of city allurements. ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... to him was pinched and colorless and blue about the lips. She seemed, of a sudden, as she leaned heavily on his arm, a presaging apparition out of the dim future, an adumbration of her own body grown frail and old, looking up to him for help, calling forlornly to him for solace. And in that impressionable moment his heart had gone out to her, in a burst of pity that seemed deeper and stronger than ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... sending him away to a sanitarium. Generally this is a wise course to pursue. The constant association with an insane person is undermining; the responsibility is often too heavy; children, often inheriting the same neurotic tendency and always impressionable, should not be exposed to the perverting influence; it may not be safe to keep a patient with suicidal or homicidal impulses in his home; the surroundings amid which the insane ideas first started may tend to continue a suggestion of these ideas. Removal to strange locality and new scenes, ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... invited to live with John Liddell created a tornado of amazement, envy, anticipation—with an undercurrent of exultant pride that they were at last recognized by the only rich man in the family—in the mind of the pretty, impressionable little widow. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... street, where there seemed more footfalls than before that evening, all though actual, were overpowered and formed the burden to the ghostly but delightful strains from that silvery voice. He was not only at the age to be impressionable, but he had not known one of those college amorettes which may be as innocent as a page of a scientific text-book. No woman even in the poetry had caused him to vibrate in the untouched heart-chords like this unexpected star in the firmament of beer fumes ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... state of my mind; I had read much; moreover I had learned to paint. I knew by heart a great many things, but nothing in order, so that my head was like a sponge, swollen but empty. I fell in love with all the poets one after another; but being of an impressionable nature the last acquaintance disgusted me with the rest. I had made of myself a great warehouse of odds and ends, so that having no more thirst after drinking of the novel and the unknown, I became an ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in regard to the secret of Senior's power of recording conversations which is worth noting by modern psychologists. I cannot help thinking that what Senior did, unconsciously of course, was to trust to his subconsciousness. That amiable and highly impressionable, if dumb, spirit which sits within us all, got busy when Thiers or Guizot was talking. The difficulty was to get out of him what he had heard, and had at once transferred to the files in the Memory cupboard. Senior, without knowing it, had, I doubt not, some little trick which ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... of the story that he had heard haunted him. This pitiful tragedy in real life stirred his youthful and impressionable sensibilities ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... him enemy. He took no interest in politics, but one day when a brutal ruffian, who had assaulted a lame native, escaped because the easy-going sheriff was too slow in pursuing, Charley was heard to exclaim, "Oh, if I were sheriff!" The man who heard him was both impressionable and practical. He said that Charley's face, when he made that remark, looked like Christ's might have looked when he was angry, but the hearer also remembered that the sheriff-incumbent's term of office had nearly expired, and he quietly ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... a poet by training, there developed in him a great sensitiveness to beauty and an almost abnormal capacity for great happiness and great sorrow; he felt things intensely, deeply. He never forgot. It was when he was eighteen or nineteen, at the formative and most impressionable period of his life, that he had met Angele Varian. Presley barely remembered her as a girl of sixteen, beautiful almost beyond expression, who lived with an aged aunt on the Seed ranch back of the Mission. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... her, after all," Wingrave continued coolly. "She possesses powers which you yourself have already admitted, and you, I should say, are a fairly impressionable person, so far as her sex is concerned. Confess now, that she did not leave ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... confidence in everyone she met that few could find the courage to undeceive her by being themselves, and it was easier, in the face of such an appeal as her eyes made to the best in every one, for each to act a part while he was with her. She was young, impressionable, and absolutely inexperienced. As a little girl she had lived on a great ranch, where she could gallop from sunrise to sunset over her own prairie land, and later her life had been spent in a convent outside of Paris. She had but two great emotions, her ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... still strongly marked upon the temples; the eyes, being deep and squarely set, imparted a look of intensity to her features which their own softness subdued; while the short upper lip, which trembled with every passing thought, spoke of a nature tender and impressionable, and yet impassioned. Her foot and ankle peeped from beneath her dark robe, and certainly nothing could be more faultless; while her hand, fair as marble, blue-veined and dimpled, played amidst the long tresses of her hair, that, as if in the wantonness of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... As usual, these qualities, together with the qualities of voice, the magnificent dress, and the carefully cultivated long hair, won for the actor demoralising influence over too large a number of the more impressionable and untrammelled Roman dames. ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... let me put you right on one question. Dicky is not in love with this girl yet. If he were, he would not wish any meeting between you and her. He is interested and attracted, of course, as any impressionable man with an eye for beauty would be if thrown in constant companionship with her. And, forgive me, but I am sure you have taken the ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... should drive over and meet us there, with peaches, and cream, and cakes, and we would sup, we three together, and come home by moonlight. It would be the very thing! if I really could hold the bridle? it was the very thing to remove the recollection of last night from his sister's mind, impressionable, as youth always is. (He said this, Melody, with an air of seventy years, and wisdom ineffable, that was comical enough.) "From my own mind," he cried, "never shall the impression be effaced. Thy heroism, my Jacques, shall be inscribed in the annals of our houses. To save the life of ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... accused Kate Peyton of having figured too largely in her son's life; of having failed to efface herself at a period when it is agreed that young men are best left free to try conclusions with the world. Mrs. Peyton, had she cared to defend herself, might have said that Dick, if communicative, was not impressionable, and that the closeness of texture which enabled him to throw off her sarcasms preserved him also from the infiltration of her prejudices. He was certainly no knight of the apron-string, but a seemingly resolute and self-sufficient young man, whose romantic ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... time and circumstance, shared fully the belief of Tayoga that their escape was a miracle. His nature contained much that was devout and spiritual and he, too, with his impressionable imagination, peopled earth and air almost unconsciously with spirits, good and bad. The good and bad often fought together, and sometimes the good prevailed as they had just done. There lay in the canoe the paddles, which they ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of feeling swept through the impressionable people. Her departure had been watched, the fall observed, and the serious nature of the accident was soon known; all hurried to the spot where she lay, full of sympathy and distress. Jean, perhaps not altogether ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... importance, Girolamo Genga, impressionable as his nature was, yet has much individual excellence to distinguish him from the rest of Signorelli's assistants. Born at Urbino in 1476, he was placed, at the age of fifteen, in the studio of Signorelli, with whom, according to Vasari, ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... work long. The school-master to whom he applied professed his entire readiness, even enthusiasm, to further such a laudable pursuit of knowledge under difficulties; but he was young himself, scarcely out of college, and the pretty girls in his school swayed his impressionable nature into many side issues, even when his mind was set upon the main track. Soon Jerome found himself of an evening in the midst of a class of tittering girls, who also had been fired with zeal for improvement ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... oppressive house, and some of its inmates? Half shyly, yet with a quickening of the heart, she remembered Marsham's farewell to her of that morning, his look of the night before. Intellectually, she was comparatively mature; in other respects, as inexperienced and impressionable as any ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the other girl's face appeared white and unreal. To any one so impressionable as Tory the past few hours bore ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... bookcase to bookcase, and take down whatever book my fingers lighted upon. And read I did, whether I understood one word in ten or two words on a page. The words themselves fascinated me; but I took no conscious account of what I read. My mind must, however, have been very impressionable at that period, for it retained many words and whole sentences, to the meaning of which I had not the faintest clue; and afterward, when I began to talk and write, these words and sentences would flash out quite naturally, so that my friends wondered at the richness of my vocabulary. I must ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... the victim Maggie and Barney and Old Jimmie were so cautiously and elaborately trying to trim! It seemed an impossible coincidence. But no, not impossible, after all. Their net had been spread for just such game: a young man, impressionable, pleasure-loving, with plenty of money, and with no strings tied to his spending of it. That Barney should have made his acquaintance was easily explained; to establish acquaintance with such persons as Dick was Barney's specialty. What more natural than that the high-spirited, irresponsible Dick ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... claims to be a "men specialist." The main speciality of these men is obtaining money from their ignorant dupes. Their advertisements would make nearly every man in the world think he were suffering from some grave disease. The young boy, at an impressionable age, is a ready victim to their lures. He is treated for a real or an imaginary disease until his money is all gone, then ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... fresh in my mind, and has at times presented itself to me unexpectedly, and always with an unwholesome effect. This I have found happen generally in times of physical depression, and the same air no doubt exerted a similar influence on Sir John, which his impressionable nature rendered from the first more deleterious ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... helpless to protect themselves and secure what they need for health of body and mind; they are exceedingly impressionable; and the future is always in their hands. The first and most imperative duty of parents is to give their children the best attainable preparation for life, no matter at what sacrifice to themselves. There are hosts ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... the moody, imaginative Hawthorne of America, was guided and influenced in his literary career by his wife, whose inspiring but practical mind guided his impulsive and impressionable nature into its ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... the Hutchinsons, and it was as well for her that a change in Jimmie's fortunes had taken her back to the Winchester and enabled her to accustom herself again to the amenities of gentler living. Like all sensitive and impressionable children she took on the color of a new environment very quickly. The strain of her studio experience had left her a little cowed and unsure of herself, but she had brightened up like a flower set in the cheerful surroundings of the ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... of the suggestion is always the illusion produced in an individual by more or less vague reminiscences, contagion following as the result of the affirmation of this initial illusion. If the first observer be very impressionable, it will often be sufficient that the corpse he believes he recognises should present— apart from all real resemblance—some peculiarity, a scar, or some detail of toilet which may evoke the idea of another person. The idea evoked may then become the nucleus of a sort of crystallisation ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... that boys thus trained often turn out, as men, time-servers and sycophants, and, finding their legitimate ambitions frustrated, become selfish and care little for the public weal? Their own inferiority has been so driven into them during their most impressionable years, that they do not even feel what Mr. Asquith called the "intolerable degradation ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... by nature a spiritual genius; he is only a modern man who is sincerely desirous of doing what is expected of him. I do not think that he is capable of inventing a duty, but he is morally impressionable, and recognizes one when it is pointed out to him. A generation ago such a man would have lived a useful and untroubled life in a round of parish duties. He would have been placidly contented with himself and his achievements. But when he came to a city pulpit he heard the Call of the Modern. ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... supporting it was worn rather for ornament than use, there was nothing except that promise not to run away immediately to detain me longer in the pleasant retreat of the Casa Blanca; nothing, that is, had I been a man of gutta-percha or cast-iron; being only a creature of clay—very impressionable clay as it happened—I could not persuade myself that I was quite well enough to start on that long ride over a disturbed country. Besides, my absence from Montevideo had already lasted so long that a few days more could not make much difference one way or the other; thus it came to pass ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... Korea we saw Korean flags cut in walls, carved on stones, and against excavations where the sand was impressionable to little fingers and sticks. I took many ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... first few years of grinding poverty, anxiety, and suspense. His mother's mind had stood the strain bravely, but it gave way at last; not, however, until that fatal winter journey to New Hampshire, when cold, exposure, and fatigue did their worst for her weak body. Religious enthusiast, exalted and impressionable, a natural mystic, she had probably always been, far more so in temperament, indeed, than her husband; but although she left home on that journey a frail and heartsick woman, she returned a different creature altogether, blurred and ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... may have been intended that the boy should see on this ecclesiastical pilgrimage, he returned to Rome at the end of three months with his quick, impressionable mind stuffed with food for reflection. Though he had seen the glories of the Church, worshiped in her matchless temples, and sat at the feet of her great scholars, now in the quiet of his little room he found himself dwelling upon a single thought, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... arguments against it, and refused the committee an opportunity to reply. The matter was not left with Mr. Johnson, however; and the committee turned its attention to the leading Republican statesmen, in whom they found more impressionable material. Under the leadership of Senators Sumner, Wilson, Wade, and others, the matter was fully argued in Congress, the Democratic party being in opposition, as always in national politics, to any measure enlarging the rights or ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... its essence is to aspire ardently after life, light, and emotion, to be expansive, adventurous, and gay. Our word GAY, it is said, is itself Celtic. It is not from gaudium, but from the Celtic gair, to laugh; {84} and the impressionable Celt, soon up and soon down, is the more down because it is so his nature to be up to be sociable, hospitable, eloquent, admired, figuring away brilliantly. He loves bright colours, he easily becomes audacious, ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... of sex is traditional among boys, and to some extent among girls of the school age. For good or evil, therefore, children are the real teachers of sexual morals in England. Children deal with the impressionable age and give the early bias. Adults stand aside, and teach only extreme reticence. The discussions of boys are often obscene. As a consequence vast numbers grow up with the idea that unchastity is a gallant adventure, or, at worst, only a peccadillo. Even ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... inspiring a miserable passion that cannot last a lifetime! You let the world see that I am a man to be aimed at for a temporary mark! And simply because I happen to be in your neighbourhood at an age when a young woman is impressionable! You make a public example of me as a for whom women may have a caprice, but that is all; he cannot enchain them; he fascinates passingly; they fall off. Is it just, for me to be taken up and cast down at your will? ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... company of chairs, and the villainous little maroon velvet ottoman, worn by the backs of many boarders; and beyond the blue-green folding doors the dim little chamber looking on a mews. And the boarders, growing familiar, too, to her sensitive impressionable brain; Miss Bramble, upright in her morning gown and poor little lace cap and collar; Mrs. Downey sitting, flushed and weary, in the most remote and most uncomfortable chair; Mr. Spinks reading the paper with an air of a ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... made a point of the advantages to be derived by carrying on our investigations beside the student lamp during the long evenings of early spring, which were then on us. What, I said, could be more inspiring, more uplifting, more stimulating in its effects on the impressionable mind of a boy than at the knee of some older person to wile away the happy hours learning of the budding of the leaflet, the blossoming of the flowerlet, the upspringing of the shootlet, and, through the medium of informative volumes on the subject by qualified authorities, ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... understood—in countries that have no similar institution. But, imagine one hundred thousand youths of the wealthiest, healthiest, and most influential classes passed during each generation at the most impressionable age, into a sort of ethical mold, emerging therefrom stamped to the core with the impress of a uniform morality, uniform manners, uniform way of looking at life; remembering always that these youths fill seven-eighths of the important positions in the professional ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the Leader of the Line graciously. But he turned a deaf ear to Isaac Borrachsohn's implorings to be allowed to join the party. Full well did Patrick know of the grandeur of Isaac's holiday attire and the impressionable nature of Eva's soul, and gravely did he fear that his own Sunday finery, albeit fashioned from the blue cloth and brass buttons of his ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... his belly." The Russian army, disconcerted by the unexpected resistance of the Swedes, ill-prepared for resistance, ill-commanded, ill-lodged, and ill-fed, was already demoralized to the last extent. The arrival of Charles caused a panic, and from that panic Peter, the most impressionable of men, was the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... think that she will return to you the exact measure of friendship that you offer her.... Because, Mr. Hamil, she is after all not very old in years, and a little sensitive and impressionable." ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... haggard expression and nervous manner, the fitful yet keen interest of his visitor were a novel change from the phlegmatic deliberations of the ordinary scientific worker with whom the Bacteriologist chiefly associated. It was perhaps natural, with a hearer evidently so impressionable to the lethal nature of his topic, to take the most effective aspect of ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... of something which would arouse my dormant heart and draw out in more passionate expression my too obscure affections. Your words haunted my sleeping and waking thoughts until it fortunately occurred to me that you yourself had the very means for accomplishing my reformation. You know how impressionable I am to every wave of sound. Who knows but your voice, which I am sure will be the sweetest in the world to me, may be the instrument destined to stir my drowsy soul, to loose my halting tongue, and even to force my proud knees to bend before you? In short, why not adopt my suggestion, ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... also been Mrs. Cross's inward comment, on first hearing of the effect produced by Mr. Robert Domeny on the impressionable Mrs. Maidment; for if truth be told he was anything but an Adonis. But she wisely kept her surprise to herself, and now once more clicked her tongue in token ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... the impressionable clerk, who had been looking at her through the display window as she stood on ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... "She is the only child I ever have had in my practice who managed to reach earth as all children should. During the impressionable stage, no one expected her, so there was no time spent in worrying, fretting, and discontent. I don't mean that these things were customary with Ruth. No woman ever accepted motherhood in a more beautiful spirit; but if she ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... at him] He is falling asleep! He is asleep! A remarkably rapid occurrence of hypnosis. The subject has evidently already reached a state of ansthesia. He is remarkable,—an unusually impressionable subject, and might be subjected to interesting experiments!... [Sits down, rises, sits down again] Now one might run a needle into ...
— Fruits of Culture • Leo Tolstoy
... in for society; they danced their feet off from seventeen to twenty-one. I never heard anything about any occupation; they had their swing and their fling, and their flirtations; they appeared to be skimming off of those impressionable, joyous years the cream ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... had swept many another girl off her feet were not to be thought of here. Alix was different. She was not an impressionable, hair-brained flapper, such as he had come in contact with in past experiences. Despite her sprightly, thoroughly up-to-the-moment ease of manner, and an air of complete sophistication, she was singularly ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... times before, yet they are a joy eternal, a changing joy of which neither the eye nor the mind ever grows weary. Both he and Merrihew were foremost in the press against the forward rail. To the latter's impressionable mind it was like a dream. In fancy he could see the Roman galleys, the fighting triremes, the canopied pleasure-craft, just as they were two thousand years ago. Yonder, the temples and baths of Nero of the ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... do," Richard Carter said, in quiet satisfaction. "I've imagined sometimes that you have a good influence on him— he's impressionable." He fell into silence, and for some time there was no further speech between them. Harriet was content to enjoy this restful interval between the hurry and crowding of Linda's house and the currents and cross-currents that she ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... impressive, but close up they are reduced to fifty or twenty-five per cent. who really fight. Wagram was not too well executed. It illustrated desperate efforts that had for once a moral effect on an impressionable enemy. But for once ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... he has escaped a grave danger; for if, in the impressionable period of youth, attention is given to one kind of knowledge, it may very likely be withdrawn from another. A life of sheltered study does not allow a boy to learn the hard facts of the world—and business is concerned with reality. The truth is that education is the ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... Venice till his death, in 1516, at the ripe age of ninety, and nearly to the end was he both a busy painter and an interested and impressionable investigator of art, open to the influence of his own pupil Giorgione, and, when eighty, being the only painter in Venice to recognize the genius of Duerer, who was then on a visit to the city. Duerer, writing home, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... high argument. For a brief period in his life it seemed as though peace might come back. Maximilian's death in 1519 followed by Charles' election to the Empire placed the sovereignty of Western and Central Europe in the hands of three young men, who were chivalrous and impressionable, Henry and Francis and Charles: only the year before they had been treating for universal peace. If they would really act in concord, it seemed as though the Golden Age might return, and Christendom show a united face against the watchful and unwearying Turk. But though ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... not a free-thinker—the phrase is always a mockery—but a man of extraordinary power, a man as great as a man can be without faith, the conjunction struck him. Moreover, the strongest men are naturally the most impressionable, and consequently the most superstitious, if, indeed, one may call superstition the prejudice of the first thoughts, which, without doubt, is the appreciation of the result in causes hidden to other eyes but perceptible to ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... shall try to prove that the great scientific development of our time has inspired hopes in the mind of all classes, hopes which it has not realised to the satisfaction of the most impressionable, therefore the most exacting and unreasonable minds. How such minds have returned with greater conviction to the belief in the existence of something more powerful than science, a something which can alleviate the evils from which they ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... indignation had subsided, and that the delicate health of his royal consort was not without its influence over his mind. Sully adroitly profited by this circumstance to impress upon Henry the danger of any agitation to the Queen, whose impressionable nature occasioned constant solicitude to her physicians, and reminded him that her late violence had been principally induced by the rumours which had reached her of a liaison between Madame de Verneuil and the Due de Guise, an indignity to his own person which she had declared herself unable ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... not translate his title,—these are side issues. But it is forgotten that the total examination in which the public school pupil presents his hastily crammed Latin and Greek, never implies a careful training in his most impressionable period of life. Hence the criminalist repeatedly discovers that the capacity for trained thinking belongs mainly to the person who has been drilled for eight years in Greek and Latin grammar. We criminalists have much ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... ready to help those who first helped themselves. In view, therefore, of the superior hygienic conditions, together with intelligent medical care, it is not surprising that seemingly marvellous cures should result, especially of impressionable persons affected ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... perfection, not only in its intrinsic attributes, but in the universal respect and adhesion with which it was received. He said, though he did not understand a word of English, he could have cried at the Queen's voice in reading the Speech. He is very "impressionable," and I am convinced at the time he was quite ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... these few moments nature had not been idle. In air and earth and tree top, following blind instincts, her myriad children were seeking their mates. And here, in the odorous sunshine of the May morning, these two young, impressionable and ardent beings, yielding themselves unconsciously to the same mysterious attraction which was uniting other happy couples, were drawn together in a union which time could not dissolve and eternity, ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... even have been that one of them who was so profoundly moved by some passages of Mrs. Bowes's letter, which the Reformer opened, and read aloud to them before they went. "O would to God," cried this impressionable matron, "would to God that I might speak with that person, for I perceive there are more tempted than I."[107] This may have been Mrs. Locke, as I say; but even if it were, we must not conclude from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... home as a fixed and old-established topographical point; as do the Arabs and Russians, neither of whom have a word expressing our "home" or "Heimat." Here, the nearest equivalent is la famiglia. We think of a particular house or village where we were born and where we spent our impressionable days of childhood; these others regard home not as a geographical but as a social centre, liable to shift from place to place; they are at home everywhere, so long as their clan is about them. That acquisitive sense which affectionately adorns ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... she declared, "must be impressionable. We ought to set ourselves to discover your ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... reflect all credit upon each. But they are not a safe basis from which any third person could argue. When they met, Boswell was in his twenty-third and Johnson in his fifty-fourth year. The one was a keen young Scot with a mind which was reverent and impressionable. The other was a figure from a past generation with his fame already made. From the moment of meeting the one was bound to exercise an absolute ascendency over the other which made unbiassed criticism far more difficult than it would be between ordinary father ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and were, in four minutes, fronting the ranks of the multitudinous and invincible army. Quin had not spoken a word all the way, and something about him had prevented the essentially impressionable Barker from ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... not impressionable, excitable or arousable. Things do not "stir him up" as they do other people. He is more self-contained, self-controlled and self-sufficient than any other. He is not easily carried off his feet and seldom yields to impulse. It is difficult to get him to do ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... boy he had copied into a wonderful copy-book that is still preserved in the Library of Congress some verses that set forth pretty accurately his ideal of life—an ideal influenced, may we not believe, in those impressionable years by these very lines. These are the verses—one can not call them poetry—just as I copied them after the clear boyish hand from the ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... Nor had Roger infused any fresh ideas into her mind on his return from serving in the Army. He had volunteered immediately war broke out, his sense of duty and loyalty to his country being as sturdy as his affection for every foot of her good brown earth he had inherited. But he was not an impressionable man, and when peace finally permitted him to return to his ancestral acres, he settled down again quite happily into the old routine ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... he wrote a few magazine articles. The explanation must be found in the temperament and character of the man. His "Two Years Before the Mast'' is a vivid representation of what he saw and experienced at a most impressionable age. He put his young life into it; he was not thinking of literature when he wrote it, and thus the book takes rank with those books which are bits of life rather than products of art. Afterward he was immersed in his law practice, and he was a prodigious worker. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... any of the half-casts. They possess a very great aptitude for mechanical employments, great dexterity and a remarkable degree of imitative talent, which, if well directed, might be brilliantly developed. They are exceedingly impressionable, and all their feelings are readily exalted into passions. Indifferent to all out sensual enjoyments, they indulge in the fleeting pleasure of the present moment, and are regardless of the future. There is a certain class of Mulattos, who, in a psychological point of view, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... which can come through the agency of many school forests will in good time turn the attention of young and impressionable minds to the potential wealth to be found in the trees. Normally, the young, who, of all people, should be forward-looking, are least concerned with the long-term future. They are not given to making plans or building estates for their grandchildren. As a consequence, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... there, amongst men of considerable position. And you know, what that means: thick waists, bald heads, teeth that are not—as some satirist puts it. Imagine amongst them a nice boy, fresh and simple, like an apple just off the tree; a modest, good-looking, impressionable, adoring young barbarian. My word! What a change! What a relief for jaded feelings! And with that, having, in his nature that, dose; of poetry which saves even a simpleton ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... had enjoyed the reputation of being a pretty blonde, and even in her fiftieth year her features were not unattractive, though they had lost somewhat of their fineness and delicacy. She was naturally sensitive and impressionable, rather than actually good-hearted, and even in her years of maturity she continued to behave in the manner peculiar to "Institute girls;" she denied herself no indulgence, she was easily put out of temper, and she would even burst into tears if her habits were interfered with. On the other ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... haste that made her almost indecipherable, "you must come. What are you dreaming of—to leave a proud, beautiful, impressionable creature like Christine the prey to so finished a villain as Linburne? You are not so ignorant of the ways of the world as not to know his intentions. Most people are saying you deserve everything that is happening to you. I try to explain, but I know you saw enough while you were here to be ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... greatest influence over him was a poor Sister of Charity, Soeur Marcelline, who was engaged to assist in nursing him. The untiring care, self-abnegation, angelic sweetness and serenity of this humble woman gained the attachment of the whole family, and established an ascendency over Alfred's impressionable imagination. She did not confine her office to her patient's physical welfare, but strove earnestly to minister to him spiritually. His long convalescence "was like a second birth. He did not seem more than seventeen: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... not. But artists are impressionable; and being looked at so, by one I esteem, night after night, when my nerves are strung—cela m'agace;" and she gave a shiver, and then was a little hysterical; and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... he was disturbed proves that he was already agog. Insolent he was and inexperienced, but sure enough the cities which the elderly of the race have built upon the skyline showed like brick suburbs, barracks, and places of discipline against a red and yellow flame. He was impressionable; but the word is contradicted by the composure with which he hollowed his hand to screen a match. He was a young man ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... An Impressionable Person (carried away by the local influence—to the Man at the wicket, blandly). Could you kindly oblige me by exchanging this "Note in Black and White" for an "Arrangement in Silver ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... and impressionable, this gifted Irishman, with a trace of the melancholy of his race and all of its cheer. Melancholy was the one mood in which Joan did not seem to flutter just ahead. Always then she followed, gentle, compassionate and shyly tender. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... differently have soothed and silenced the crying infant, could not long bear the solitude of his broken home, and so began the years of wanderings, which lasted as long as his life, and through which he seems so largely to have lost sight of his young son at his most impressionable age, save to provide for his material wants, and to some extent, also, his education. When with him in later years he appears to have enjoyed his society, or at least the evidences which he gave of implicit, unreasoning obedience, illustrated by his remark, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various |
