"Pliancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... repeated applications and strong representations could have availed, I should have been free long ago. But many autocrats might take a lesson from the insolent indifference of this Administration, when an argument or a request is to be set aside; it is exactly in proportion to the pliancy they display when confronted with demands enforced by a substantial threat. Lord Lyons' reputation for courtesy and kindness of heart stands too high to need any testimony of mine; but I cannot forbear ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... certain flexibility or pliancy of organization, which renders them capable of change to a greater or less extent. When in a state of nature, variations are comparatively slow and infrequent; but when in a state of domestication they occur much oftener and to a much greater extent. The greater variability in the ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... trodden on; but there is a jewelled breast-plate. Let the wealthy men, the monarchs of commerce, the learned in all knowledge, the skilful in all arts, the speakers, the political counsellors, who carry in their veins the Hebrew blood which has maintained its vigor in all climates, and the pliancy of the Hebrew genius for which difficulty means new device—let them say, 'We will lift up a standard, we will unite in a labor hard but glorious like that of Moses and Ezra, a labor which shall be ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... prevailing creed of Christendom, are to be included some of the most authoritative names of the last three centuries; our present formulas would not have been subscribed by Bacon, Newton, Locke, Kant; unless from mere pliancy and for the sake of quiet, like Hobbes. If they had been in clerical orders, and had freely avowed their opinions as we know them, they would have been liable to deposition. Yet the difficulties ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... sacerdotal corporations—shown hostility to new ideas and then chiefly when such ideas (like those of Buddhism) implied that the rites by which they gained their living were worthless. Otherwise they showed great pliancy and receptivity, for they combined Vedic rites and mythology with such systems as the Sankhya and Advaita philosophies, both of which really render superfluous everything which is usually called religion since, though their language is decorous, they teach that ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... intruders from Kaintock. He bestowed only a single glance upon them, as if his victory over such insignificant opponents were already assured. The blood slowly rose to the faces of Paul and Henry, but they were about to witness an extraordinary exhibition of Spanish pliancy and dexterity. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... noteworthy thing about these productions, and about others of equally mistaken direction, was the sincerity of their workmanship. Had Yule been content to manufacture a novel or a play with due disregard for literary honour, he might perchance have made a mercantile success; but the poor fellow had not pliancy enough for this. He took his efforts au grand serieux; thought he was producing works of art; pursued his ambition in a spirit of fierce conscientiousness. In spite of all, he remained only a journeyman. The kind of work he did best was ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... personally conducted to a happy consummation, but from no quarter have I seen any general scheme of "reconstruction" emerge which I thought it likely we could force our spirited business men and self-reliant laborers to accept with due pliancy and obedience. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... the great men who had done it, including in his list many whom the common opinion that he praised would not have characterised at all in the same way. At each name Marchmont denied either the greatness or the pliancy. The Dean could see with what ardour he maintained his position; in spite of the unvarying suavity of his manner there was something naturally repulsive to him in yielding a hair's breadth in deference to the wishes or ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... to themselves and the country. By the difference just mentioned, between Mr. Pitt and Lord Thurlow, the ministerial arrangements of 1793 were facilitated, and the learned Lord, after all his sturdy pliancy, consigned to a life of ineffectual discontent ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... unnecessary burden to her already overfull day. The administration, on the other hand, contended with much justice that there was a constant danger in a great public school system that teachers lose pliancy and the open mind, and that many of them had obviously grown mechanical and indifferent. The conservative public approved the promotional examinations as the symbol of an advancing educational standard, and their sympathy with ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... play with, being well balanced and of controllable flexibility. This is a point in a bow that is frequently overlooked. Many imagine that flexibility alone is the chief desideratum, and bows have been shown to me almost indiarubber-like in their pliancy; the owners expecting me to wax enthusiastic over this—to my mind—serious defect. As a matter of fact, flexibility and pliancy are not correct definitions of a bow's chief quality, as they amount to weakness. What is really meant is elasticity, by which is conveyed ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... time she heard Fiorsen play she was alone. Unlike most violinists, he was tall and thin, with great pliancy of body and swift sway of movement. His face was pale, and went strangely with hair and moustache of a sort of dirt-gold colour, and his thin cheeks with very broad high cheek-bones had little narrow scraps of whisker. Those little ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... so answered her stupidly. For all my day-dreams of the week that I had been away I was not prepared for her. And indeed she had altered. The strain of fear and incessant watchfulness was removed, and with the lessening of that tension had come a pliancy of look and gesture, a richness of tone that found me unprepared. I made but a poor figure. It was as well that work clamored at me, and that I had to turn away ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... saturated with water, clung fast to our limbs; the light wind and warm sunshine soon dried them again, and then we were all incased in armor of intolerable rigidity. Roaming all day over the prairie and shooting two or three bulls, were scarcely enough to restore the stiffened leather to its usual pliancy. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... course of his life. It is skill surmounting difficulty, and beauty triumphing over skill. It seems as if the difficulty once mastered naturally resolved itself into ease and grace, and as if to be overcome at all, it must be overcome without an effort. The smallest awkwardness or want of pliancy or self-possession would stop the whole process. It is the work of witchcraft, and yet sport for children. Some of the other feats are quite as curious and wonderful, such as the balancing the artificial tree and shooting a bird from each branch ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... was no part of the Presbyterian view, and portended a laxity which their consciences would not permit them to accept, and which might even embrace the hated Roman Catholics. If it was Hyde's intention by this announcement to countercheck their demand for a compromise which, in the pliancy of the King's temper, might have conceded all their main tenets, and to expose the hollowness of their demand for release from an over-strict conformity, his design succeeded admirably. The Presbyterians were forced into an illogical position. ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... music being in the same voice with that of his 'Barber of Seville.' The distinct rapidity, without hurry, of many passages, was remarkable in both performers. But perhaps the most wonderful exhibition of her vocal skill and pliancy and of her active intimacy with nature was in the Trio Concertante, with two flutes, from Meyerbeer's 'Camp of Silesia.' Exquisitely her voice played in echo between the tasteful flute-warblings of Messrs. ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... employment. Each day's food was to be obtained by the rifle. Wood was to be procured for their fire. All their clothing, from the cap to the moccasin, was to be fashioned by their own hands from the skin of the deer, which they had carefully tanned into pliancy and softness; and there were to be added to their cabin many conveniences which required much ingenuity with knife and hatchet for their only tools, and with neither nail nor screw for their construction. In addition to this they were under the necessity of being ever on the alert to ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... days, a man may best distinguish himself in statesmanship, for the mind is a weapon not to be slighted—when it is builded with strength, sharpened with careful use, and so wielded"—his gaze fell full upon Marcantonio for a weighty moment—"so wielded that it hath no pliancy save at the will of its owner. For sometimes it chanceth"—again he paused for a moment—"that a mind hath more masters than one, and Venice ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... satiny skin. The somewhat crude outline of the arms is seen again in the shoulders. Strictly speaking, indeed, I have no shoulders, but only two bony blades, standing out in harsh relief. My figure also lacks pliancy; there is a stiffness about the ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... Texans and his own people, to whom he had come after the long journey of perils, they made a wonderful appeal. These were the bold riders, the dauntless, the fearless. He would not find here the pliancy, the cunning, the craft and the dark genius of Santa Anna, but he would find men who talked straight, who shot straight, ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... England and in the United States the architect and engineer produce more than we do with greater pliancy, fertility, originality and boldness of invention, with a practical capacity at least equal and without having passed six, eight or ten years in purely theoretical studies.—Cf. Des Rousiers, "La Vie Americaine," p. 619: "Our polytechnicians are scientific erudites.... The American engineer is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... all unconscious of the dark phantoms of the future that were gathering around her; her melancholy turned, with the pliancy of childish years, at sixteen not yet lost, into a softened manner which was infinitely charming. By-and-by she cleared up into sunny happiness. The evening was still and full of mellow light, and the new-born summer was so delicious that, in common with all young creatures, she ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the scenes with hurried paces, or to speak in phrases that lack dignity and fine sentiment. But the popular advocate must in turn fill every role. If childish simplicity be his client's leading characteristic, his intonations will express pliancy and foolish confidence; or if it is desirable that the jury should appreciate his client's honesty of purpose, he speaks with a voice of blunt, bluff, manly frankness. Whatever quality the advocate may wish to represent as the client's distinctive characteristic, it must be suggested ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the situation as a Republican could desire. As soon as the Assembly had organised, therefore, DeWitt Clinton, Ambrose Spencer, Robert Roseboom, and John Sanders became the Council of Appointment. Sanders was a Federalist, but Roseboom was a Republican, whose pliancy and weakness made him the tool ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... of running away from them. This is to be accounted for by the fact that the larger and more developed the brain, and the thinner, in relation to it, the spine and nerves, the greater not only is the intelligence, but also at the same time the mobility and pliancy of all the limbs; because they are controlled more immediately and decisively by the brain; consequently everything depends more on a single thread, every movement of which precisely expresses its purpose. ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the impenetrable. Consequently it shattered one fruitless conviction after another—convictions which, happily for my after life, I never lacked the courage to abandon as soon as they proved inadequate. From all this weary mental struggle I derived only a certain pliancy of mind, a weakening of the will, a habit of perpetual moral analysis, and a diminution both of freshness of sentiment and of clearness of thought. Usually abstract thinking develops man's capacity for apprehending the bent of his mind at certain moments and laying it to heart, but my inclination ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... yet greater treasure to be discovered and recovered from the keeping of "dust and damned oblivion." Meantime we may be heartily thankful for the recovery of an excellent piece of work, written throughout with the easy mastery of serious or humorous verse, the graceful pliancy of style and the skilful simplicity of composition, which might have been expected from a mature work of Heywood's, though the execution of it would now and then have suggested an earlier date. The clown, it may be noticed, is the same who ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... being like that of a convicted pickpocket, nor his gait resembling that of a fox who has lost his tail; yet he never believed himself adapted for the appointment, being aware that he had no aptitude for the doing of dirty work, if called to do it, nor pliancy which would enable him to submit to scurvy treatment, whether he did dirty work or not—requisites, at the time of which he is speaking, indispensable in every British official; requisites, by the bye, which his friend the ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... among themselves and deeply rent by differences of opinion. What one set deems necessary, in order somewhat to calm and reconcile the increasingly discontented masses, the other considers as going too far, and unpardonable weakness and pliancy, only calculated to prick the longing after greater concessions. Striking evidences thereof are the debates in the 1894-5 sessions of the Reichstag, both on the floor of the house and in committee, on the so-called "revolutionary bill," as ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... interesting to note the similarity of the merely emotional gestures and attitudes of modern Italy with those of the classics. The Pulcinella, Fig. 73, for instance, drawn from life in the streets of Naples, has the same pliancy and abandon of the limbs as appears in the supposed foolish slaves of the ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... species of beings whom nature seems to have intended for slavery; their pliancy of temper, patience under injury, and innate passiveness, all concur to justify this position; unlike the savages or aborigines of America, who could never ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... round, carnation cheeks. She wore about her neck an orange-colored cravat, of the same material as her loose sash. Her tight jacket and narrow vest of light green velvet, with silver ornaments, displayed to the best advantage a charming figure, the pliancy of which must have well suited the evolutions of the Storm blown Tulip. Her large trousers, of the same stuff and color as the jacket, were not calculated to hide any ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... that the lid is broken and repaired repeatedly, sometimes on the same day. In spite of the earthy casing, the silk woof gives it the requisite pliancy to cleave when pushed by the anchorite and to rip open without falling into ruins. Swept back to the circumference of the mouth and increased by the wreckage of further ceilings, it becomes a parapet, which the Lycosa raises by degrees in her long moments of leisure. The bastion ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre |
