"Flexibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not speaks volumes for the flexibility and suppleness of Persian men, women and children, of whom, stuck tight against the walls in order to escape being trampled upon or crushed to death, one got mere glimpses, at the ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... sympathise with their opponents. Nor can we help noting as curiously significant that whereas it was the soldier-admirals who first introduced formal tactics, it was a seaman's school that forced them to pedantry in the face of the last of the soldier-school, who tried to preserve their flexibility, and keep the end clear in view above ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... opportunity that life affords for practicing, not rules, but principles, she has never been taught. Flexibility, adaptation, fair-mindedness, the habit of supplementing the weakness of the one by the strength of the other, all the fine things upon which the beauty, durability, and growth of human relations depend,—these are what ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... fairer during the winter, and had not rambled about so much nor been on the water so often. Her slim figure, in its virginal lines, was as lissome as the child's, but there was an exquisite roundness to every limb and it lent flexibility to her movements. A beautiful girl, Mademoiselle Fleury acknowledged to herself, and she wondered that no one beside M. St. Armand had ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Of the real action of the toes, either in running, or hopping, nothing is told us by the anatomists—(compare lecture on Robin, Sec. 26); but I hope before long to get at some of the facts respecting the greater flexibility of the gripping and climbing feet, and elasticity of running ones; and to draw up something like a properly graduated scale of the length of the toes in proportion to that of ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... who deserve to be placed beside Reynolds, came from Ireland to seek their fortunes in London. Edmund Burke, incomparably the greatest writer upon political philosophy in English literature, the master of a style unrivalled for richness, flexibility, and vigour, was radically opposed to Johnson on party questions, though his language upon the French Revolution, after Johnson's death, would have satisfied even the strongest prejudices of his old friend. But he had qualities which commended him even to the man who called ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... singular composition of this rich language, appears to be borrowed; but all belongs to it as its lawful property. But the great pre-eminence of the Russian appears in the use which it made of these adopted treasures. Its greater flexibility made it capable of employing foreign words merely as roots, from which it raised stems and branches by means of its own native resources. It is this copiousness and variety of radical syllables, which gives to the Russian in certain respects ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... white and transparent, quite flexible, and altogether a delicate and beautiful fabric, but not sufficiently strong to be put to any useful purpose: as it becomes older and tougher, it assumes a yellow colour, and loses much of its flexibility and beauty. A quantity of hibiscus bark was also collected, to be used in the manufacture of ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... rather than stifling creative thought, flexibility is a characteristic of any form capable of application in such dissimilar circumstances as may be presented by the varying scope of military problems. The Estimate Form is such a flexible guide. If a commander, ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... are, in a state of nature almost continually in action both by night and by day. They either walk, creep, or advance rapidly by prodigious bounds; but they seldom run, owing, it is believed, to the extreme flexibility of their limbs and vertebral column, which cannot preserve the rigidity necessary to that species of movement. Their sense of sight, especially during twilight, is acute; their hearing very perfect, and their perception of smell less so than in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... expediency, because a wide conception of the various interacting elements of a society naturally extends the considerations which a balance of expediencies will include. Hence, in time, there came a strong and lofty ideal of the true statesman, his breadth of vision, his flexibility of temper, his hardly measurable influence. These are the principal thoughts in the Discontents to which that tract owes its permanent interest. "Whatever original energy," says Burke, in one place, "may be supposed ...
— Burke • John Morley
... strange, that it may well seem incredible. Yet we cannot think that we have misrepresented the tendency of the argument; though, of course, we have given no ideas of the acuteness and flexibility of the reasoning, the extent of the knowledge, and mastery of logic, in this work. That such a position should be taken by a religious man, in the supposed interest of Christianity, is sufficiently strange; for it seems to us equally untenable in its grounds, unfounded in its statements, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... theatre or church the currents of thought are different. Social contacts are more numerous, relations are more shifting, intellectual affinities and repulsions are felt constantly; mental interactions are so frequent that stability of beliefs and independence of thought give way to flexibility and uncertainty and openness to impression. Group influence asserts ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... be two opinions as to that: he has acted upon a principle which is, beyond question, liberating and stimulating. And the adaptability to his own peculiar temperament of the wavering and fluid order of discourse which is permitted by the flexibility and variety of the antique ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... the crowd gave a roar of delight, and clapped their hands, and stamped their feet, and shouted. She had no unusual beauty. Her voice was untrained though possessed of strength and flexibility. It wasn't what she had sung, surely. You heard the song in a hundred cafes. Every street boy whistled it. It wasn't that expressive pair of shoulders, exactly. It wasn't a certain soothing tonal quality that made you forget all the things you'd ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... beauty of grace: then intellect too, I repeat, has its beauty, and it has those who aim at it. To open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to know, and to digest, master, rule, and use its knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, resource, address, eloquent expression, is an object as intelligible (for here we are inquiring, not what the object of a Liberal Education is worth, nor what use the Church makes ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro, by writing for a particular singer. The part of Figaro was, in fact, composed for Benucci. The sparkling brilliancy of Rossini would perhaps never have been so fully developed, had not the skill and flexibility of voice possessed by the singer David, for whom he wrote, enabled him to indulge it to the uttermost. The characters thus imparted to the music of the day are necessarily perishable and evanescent, to be again superseded by later artists, whose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... market-oriented economy, private individuals and business firms make most of the decisions, and government buys needed goods and services predominantly in the private marketplace. US business firms enjoy considerably greater flexibility than their counterparts in Western Europe and Japan in decisions to expand capital plant, lay off surplus workers, and develop new products. At the same time, they face higher barriers to entry in their rivals' home markets ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... handsome peasant of the tropics; yet, as his part advanced, I could discover in his deep eye and powerful tone, the actor capable of reaching the heights of dramatic passion. He was scarcely above the middle size, with features whose magic consisted in neither their strength nor beauty, but in their flexibility. I had never seen a countenance so capable of change, and in which the change was so instantaneous and so total. From the most sportive openness, a word threw it into the most indignant storm, or the most incurable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... performed in an instant at his command; than by the expulsion of evil spirits out of the bodies of men? Certainly all the wonderful things done by him for the good of mankind, such as restoring sight to the blind, firmness and flexibility to relaxed or contracted nerves, calling the dead to life, changing the properties of the elements, and others of the same kind, are testimonies of the omnipotence of the creator of the world, and demonstrate the presence of God; who alone commands all nature, and at his ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... of literary education, they implicitly concluded qualified to teach all that was to be learned from a scholar. He thought himself sufficiently exalted by being placed at the same table with his pupil, and had no other view than to perpetuate his felicity by the utmost flexibility of submission to all my mother's opinions and caprices. He frequently took away my book, lest I should mope with too much application, charged me never to write without turning up my ruffles, and generally brushed ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... which should be sloped, loins very powerful. The dog should be straight in front. THE FORE-LEGS should be straight and muscular, neither in nor out at elbows, with a fair amount of bone; the forearm somewhat fleshy, the pasterns showing flexibility without weakness. THE HIND-LEGS should be muscular at the thighs, clean and sinewy below the hocks, with well bent stifles. THE FEET should be oval in shape, soles well padded, and the toes arched and close together. The hind feet less arched, the hocks well ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... general introduction of hollow backs is probably somewhat as follows: Leather was doubtless first chosen for covering the backs of books because of its toughness and flexibility; because, while protecting the back, it would bend when the book was opened and allow the back to "throw up" (see fig. 1, A). When gold tooling became common, and the backs of books were elaborately decorated, it was found that the creasing of the leather injured ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... implying large transfers, especially as a proportion of GDP of the less prosperous Member States; NOTING that the European Investment Bank is lending large and increasing amounts for the benefit of the poorer regions; NOTING the desire for greater flexibility in the arrangements for allocation from the Structural Funds; NOTING the desire for modulation of the levels of Community participation in programmes and projects in certain countries; NOTING the proposal to take greater account of the relative prosperity ...
— The Treaty of the European Union, Maastricht Treaty, 7th February, 1992 • European Union
... workers in after years, that this kind of "visiting" presents many perplexities to persons of a certain temperament, but I never entered any house where I felt the least sensation of being out of place. I don't think this flexibility is a gift of especially high order, nor that it would be equally valuable in all walks of life, but it is of great service in this sort of work. Whether I sat in a stuffed chair or on a nailkeg or an inverted washtub it was always equally agreeable to me. The "getting into relation," perfectly, ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... human skulls. Several tufts of black and blonde hair. A human jaw, furnished with fine white teeth. A forearm and hand, all the fingers of the latter intact. The flesh was white and fresh, and both the arm and hand preserved a degree of flexibility in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... representations in English within this time and a considerable number in Italian, our operatic institutions being quick, as a rule, to put it upon the stage whenever they have at command a soprano leggiero with a voice of sufficient range and flexibility to meet the demands of the extraordinary music which Mozart wrote for the Queen of Night to oblige his voluble-throated sister-in-law, Mme. Hofer, who was the original representative of that character. The same operatic conditions ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... by love, to a lower creature, so too is it an evil for it, if it submit not to God, but presumptuously revolt against Him or contemn Him. Now this evil is possible to a rational creature considered as to its nature on account of the natural flexibility of the free-will; whereas in the blessed, it becomes impossible, by reason of the perfection of glory. Therefore the avoidance of this evil that consists in non-subjection to God, and is possible to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... electro-galvanic process. Copper has also been deposited, by the same process, upon aluminum plates to facilitate their being rolled very thin; for unless the metal be pure, it requires to be annealed at each passage through the rolls, and it is found that its flexibility is greatly increased by rolling. To avoid the bluish white appearance, like zinc, Dr. Stevenson McAdam recommends immersing the article made from aluminum in a heated solution of potash, which will give a beautiful white frosted ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... of a raw tarpaulin. Such psychical surgery is, I think, a common way of 'making character'; perhaps it is, indeed, the only way. We can put in the quaint figure that spoke a hundred words with us yesterday by the wayside; but do we know him? Our friend, with his infinite variety and flexibility, we know—but can we put him in? Upon the first, we must engraft secondary and imaginary qualities, possibly all wrong; from the second, knife in hand, we must cut away and deduct the needless arborescence of his nature, but the trunk and the few branches that remain we may ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... something in the art of the last which seemed to me then, and still seems, the farthest reach of the author's great talent. It is couched, like so much of his work, in the autobiographic form, which next to the dramatic form is the most natural, and which lends itself with such flexibility to the purpose of the author. In 'Barry Lyndon' there is imagined to the life a scoundrel of such rare quality that he never supposes for a moment but he is the finest sort of a gentleman; and so, in fact, he was, as most gentlemen went in his day. Of course, the picture ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of form—including a perception of beauty, and of harmony and proportion—made them in politics and letters the leaders of mankind. "Do nothing in excess," was their favorite maxim. They hated every thing that was out of proportion. Their language, without a rival in flexibility and symmetry and in perfection of sound, is itself, though a spontaneous creation, a work of art. "The whole language resembles the body of an artistically trained athlete, in which every muscle, every sinew, is developed into full play, where there is no trace ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... to viewing objects at different distances. The muscles upon which the form of the eye and the size of the pupil depend are subject to the general laws of muscular action. Their strength and flexibility, which are increased by healthful exercise, are impaired by disuse. Hence students who have neglected this rule, and have accustomed themselves for a long time to view objects near by, lose the power of adjusting the eye so as to view things at a distance. As a ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods. For your lexicographer, having written his dictionary, comes to be considered "as one having authority," whereas his function is only to make a record, not to give a law. The natural servility of the human understanding having invested him with judicial ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... theory, but may be demonstrated as clearly as the problems of the geometer. The naturalist has his mathematics, as well as the geometer and the astronomer; and if the mathematics of the Animal Kingdom have a greater flexibility than those of the positive sciences, and are therefore not so easily resolved into their invariable elements, it is because they have the freedom and pliability of life, and evade our efforts to bring all their external ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... benefit of knowing a foreign tongue. There is no other way—not even residence in a foreign land if we are ignorant of the language—to take us out of the customary circle of our own traditions. It imparts a mental flexibility and emotional sympathy which no other discipline can yield. To ordain that all non-English-speaking peoples should learn English in addition to their mother tongue, and to render it practically unnecessary for English-speakers (except the small class of students) to learn ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... the bees' hooks and teeth may possibly produce slight projections, at regular intervals, on the opposite side of the comb; or that they may be able to estimate the thickness of the block by the flexibility, elasticity, or some other physical quality of the wax; or again, that their antennae, which seem so well adapted for the questioning of the finer, less evident side of things, may serve as a compass in the invisible; ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... elderly author. It has been only within a year or two that we have formed the taste for an English writer, no longer living, save in his charming books. James Payn was a favorite with many in the middle Victorian period, but it is proof of the flexibility of our tastes that we have only just come to him. After shunning Anthony Trollope for fifty years, we came to him, almost as with a rush, long after our half-century was past. Now, James Payn is the solace of our ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... the circulation is more languid in the later period of life. The joints are less supple; the arteries are more or less "ossified." Something like these changes has taken place in the mind. It has lost the flexibility, the plastic docility, which it had in youth and early manhood, when the gristle had but just become hardened into bone. It is the nature of poetry to writhe itself along through the tangled growths of the vocabulary, as a snake winds through the grass, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... capable of making us comic is, on the contrary, that which is brought from without, like a ready-made frame into which we are to step. It lends us its own rigidity instead of borrowing from us our flexibility. We do not render it more complicated; on the contrary, it simplifies us. Here, as we shall see later on in the concluding section of this study, lies the essential difference between comedy and drama. A drama, even when portraying passions or vices that bear a name, so completely ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... letters of that Correspondent, on the flexibility of their English, on the boldness of their grammar, on the originality of their quotations (never to be found as they are printed, in any book existing), on the priority of their information, on their intimate acquaintance with the secret thoughts and unexecuted intentions of men, it ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... the longer this conversation continued, the more he should be embarrassed; he put an end to it, by appearing to acquiesce in what HAMET had proposed. HAMET withdrew, charmed with the candour and flexibility which he imagined he had discovered in his brother; and not without some exultation in his own rhetoric, which, he supposed had gained no inconsiderable victory. ALMORAN, in the mean time, applauded himself for having thus far practised the arts ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... got up especially for that purpose; as if he could invent better materials for poetic imagery than ancient Nature had furnished! Still, it is not unlikely that we owe to him somewhat of the polish and flexibility of the Shakespearian dramatic diction: that he could have helped the Poet in any thing beyond mere diction it were absurd ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... factors are omnipresent and complementary. Except for purposes of analysis they are two inseparable aspects of every human society. Where form predominates, social status results. Where function predominates fluidity, flexibility and dynamism are the outcome. Rapid change occurs on the home front at the same time that ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... of command, exultation, denunciation, defiance, etc., and in using this force the lungs must be inflated to their utmost capacity. In giving the accompanying examples the student must exert every energy of the body and mind, and by earnest practice he will increase the power and flexibility of his voice to a surprising extent, and also acquire a distinctness of tone and earnestness of manner, that will serve him well, as ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... the original text to believe that the most complex plants and animals may have been evolved by natural processes, lasting for millions of years, out of structureless rudiments. A person who is not a Hebrew scholar can only stand aside and admire the marvellous flexibility of a language which admits of such diverse interpretations. But assuredly, in the face of such contradictions of authority upon matters respecting which he is incompetent to form any judgment, he will abstain, as I do, ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... are forced to run, which has been seen by Carguet and by the illustrious Gaubius; a similar affection of the speech, when the tongue thus outruns the mind, is termed volubility. Mons. de Sauvages attributes this complaint to a want of flexibility in the muscular fibres. Hence, he supposes, that the patients make shorter steps, and strive with a more than common exertion or impetus to overcome the resistance; walking with a quick and hastened step, as if ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... attempt towards a philosophical history of dogma, less patient and minute than the works of the specialists of modern Germany on the same subject, but for spirit, clearness, and breadth it is superior to those profound but somewhat barbarous writers. The flexibility of intellect which can do justice in quick succession to such diverse subjects is very extraordinary, and assuredly implies great width of sympathy and large ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... letter, writing and rewriting till he could shape the massive character with firm true hand. He cut his quills with the patience of a monk in the scriptorium, shaving and altering the nib, lightening and increasing the pressure and flexibility of the points, till the pen satisfied him, and gave a stroke both broad and even. Then he made experiments in inks, searching for some medium that would rival the glossy black letter of the old manuscripts; and not till he ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... efforts and expedient alternatives that are available, some within hours, to aid in restoration of transportation capacity. In addition, transportation systems generally have an inherently significant degree of redundancy and flexibility. Consequently, an unquantified but significant movement capability in all transport modes is expected to survive. Finally, these loss estimates do not take into account the question of availability of essential supporting resources, particularly petroleum fuels, electricity, and communications. ...
— An Assessment of the Consequences and Preparations for a Catastrophic California Earthquake: Findings and Actions Taken • Various
... From the others free election among groups is allowed. The movement here and elsewhere seems to be in the direction of requiring the completion of a full four-year high school course, with increasing flexibility as to specific subjects. And ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... which is the essential element in all originality. By entering into the life of the characters and identifying himself with them, he develops a large sympathy and a sense of power, he gains insight into life, and a care for the interests of the world. Thus imagination grows "in flexibility, in scope, and in sympathy, till the life which the individual lives is informed with the life of nature and of society," and acquires what Professor ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... indeed that any movement, under any circumstances (for from his earliest childhood he liked to carry his theories to their legitimate conclusion), would be physically impossible for one who was really sleeping; forgetful, oh! unhappy one, of the flexibility of his own body on being carried up stairs, and, more unhappy still, ignorant of the art of waking. He therefore clenched his fingers harder and harder as he felt my mother trying to unfold them, while his head hung listless, and his eyes were closed ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... an attitude apparently relaxed. His face was still white. It could not acquire color in that close cell, but he had never felt stronger. A powerful heart pumped vigorous blood through every artery and vein. His muscles had regained their toughness and flexibility, and above all, the intense desire for freedom had ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... this is so alarming, if taken the right way—a woman with some courage in her heart and some flexibility in her mind supports the shock and does not die under it; but the firmest of us are amazed at it, and stand open-mouthed amid all these strange novelties, like a penniless gourmand in the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a great responsibility to officers, but it is the secret of that flexibility which makes the French army ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... not? What had those accidents of Paul's life to do with Paul, except as occasions which elicited the flexibility of his nature and the extent of his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... products of art in which the elements or parts employed in construction are more or less filamental, and are combined by methods conditioned chiefly by their flexibility. The processes employed are known by such terms as wattling, interlacing, plaiting, netting, ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes
... the reasonable people of your own age Easy without too much familiarity Employ your whole time, which few people do Exalt the gentle in woman and man—above the merely genteel Eyes and ears open and mouth mostly shut Fit to live—or not live at all Flexibility of manners is necessary in the course of the world Genteel without affectation Geography and history are very imperfect separately Good-breeding Gratitude not being universal, nor even common Greatest fools are the greatest liars He that is gentil doeth gentil deeds If once we quarrel, ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... from Liszt, and there is comparatively little disclosure of personality. But the manipulation is, throughout, the work of a music-wright of brilliant executive capacity. In fundamental logic, in cohesion, flexibility, and symmetry of organism, it is a brilliantly successful accomplishment. As in all of MacDowell's writing, its allegiance is to the basic principles of structure and design, rather than to ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... The Ring and the Book undoubtedly is. But it is the volubility of a consummate master of expression, in whose hands the difficult medium of blank verse becomes an instrument of Shakespearian flexibility and compass, easily answering to all the shifts and windings of a prodigal invention, familiar without being vulgar, gritty with homely detail without being flat; always, at its lowest levels, touched, like a plain just before sunrise, with hints of ethereal light, momentarily ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... indications, fragmentary as they are, give us the clue to the character of the most ancient fishes. A large proportion of them were no doubt Ganoids; for they had the same peculiar articulation of the vertebrae, the flexibility of the neck, and the hard scales so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... law? My dear lady, one might as well be sure of a woman—pardon me; you know that I regard this quality of infinite flexibility as one of the supreme charms of your sex. I can't say that I feel it to be the supreme charm of the law. Mrs. Temperley claims to have her authority through the mother, because she has the written consent of the aunt to the adoption, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... form of verse the possibilities in the way of contrast are largely increased. The high degree of perfection to which Horace brought the balancing and interlocking of ideas in some of his Odes, illustrates the great advantage which the Latin poet had over the English writer because of the flexibility of the medium of expression which he used. This advantage was the Roman's birthright, and lends a certain distinction even to the verses of the people, which we are discussing here. Certain other stylistic qualities of these metrical epitaphs, which are intended to produce somewhat the same effects, ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... they serve as contributory to some future narrative of the revision, the object of their publication will have been accomplished. So much has been said as to the poverty of our gains on the side of "enrichment," as compared with what has been secured in the line of "flexibility," that it has seemed proper to append to the volume a Comparative Table detailing the additions of liturgical matter made to the Common Prayer at ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... please you very much, would it, darling?" says Adolphe, clasping Caroline round the waist, and noticing that she leans upon him as if to show the flexibility of her form. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... mind or heart, only the rigid outlines of a soul buffeted by Destiny. Gallatin—the urbane, cosmopolitan Gallatin—must have derived much quiet amusement from his association with this robust New Englander who took himself so seriously. Two natures could not have been more unlike, yet the superior flexibility of Gallatin's temperament made their association not only possible but exceedingly profitable. We may not call their intimacy a friendship—Adams had few, if any friendships; but it contained the essential foundation for ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... moment or two of suspense, Barnes experienced a peculiar, almost electric shock. Some one had seized the tip of the rod; it stiffened suddenly, the vibrations due to its flexibility ceasing. He felt a gentle tugging and wrenching; down the slender rod ran a delicate shiver that seemed almost magnetic as it was communicated to his hand. He knew what was happening. Some one was untying the bit of paper he had fastened to the rod, and with fingers that shook and ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... generosity; and surely those qualities go a great way in making up the catalogue of all that is amiable and estimable in human nature. One of the most conspicuous features in his character seems to have been a remarkable, and, as some think, a culpable degree of flexibility. That such a disposition is preferable to its opposite extreme, will be admitted by all who think that modesty, even in excess, is more nearly allied to wisdom than conceit and self-sufficiency. He who has attentively considered the political, or, indeed, the general concerns of life, may possibly ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... upon vowel and diphthongal sounds, or of drawling, if that term is insisted upon.... But it is often noticed by foreigners as both making us more readily understood by them when speaking our own tongue, and as connected with a flexibility of organ, which enables us to acquire a better pronunciation of other languages than is usual with Englishmen. In any case, as, in spite of the old adage, speech is given us that we may make ourselves ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... in 1998 to 4.7% in 2003; unemployment has persisted around the 6% level. Germany is by far Hungary's largest economic partner. Short-term issues include the reduction of the public sector deficit and further increasing the flexibility of ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... article the closest scrutiny. Nothing offered any clew, except the wallet. That, worn as it was, showed its costly texture, and the marks of careful mountings. It was unmistakably a man's wallet, and its flexibility denoted constant use. Brencherly set it on ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... the grotto he slept soundly. At his waking Mignonne was gone. He mounted the little hill to scan the horizon, and perceived her in the far distance returning with the long bounds peculiar to these animals, who are prevented from running by the extreme flexibility of their spinal column. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... not be good for the girl. Even if he could not lift all Niggertown, he could at least help Cissie. He had had no idea, when he first planned his work, what a tremendous task he was essaying. The white village had looked upon the negroes so long as non-moral and non- human that the negroes, with the flexibility of their race, had assimilated that point of view. The whites tried to regulate the negroes by endless laws. The negroes had come to accept this, and it seemed that they verily believed that anything not discovered ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... irritated amour-propres; consequently the slightest deficiency in proportion would be promptly detected,"[2250] But she is never mistaken, and never hesitates in these subtle distinctions; with incomparable tact, dexterity, and flexibility of tone, she regulates the degrees of her welcome. She has one "for women of condition, one for women of quality, one for women of the court, one for titled women, one for women of historic names, another for women of high birth personally, but married ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... hip muscles, while all below the knee is useless, as also are the fingers. Slowly the leg and foot are degraded to locomotion, slowly the great toe becomes more limited in its action, the thumb increases in flexibility and strength of opposition, and the fingers grow more mobile and controllable. As the body slowly assumes the vertical attitude, the form of the chest changes till its greatest diameter is transverse instead of from front to back. The shoulder-blades are less parallel than in quadrupeds, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... he uttered glibly, and, despite the extraordinary pronunciation, she understood it. She took his long hand, the fingers amazed her. He bent them back until they touched his wrist, and was proud of their flexibility. He walked to the dining-table and tossed its cover-cloth on a chair. Upon his two thumbs he went around it like an acrobat. "Shall I hold you out with one arm?" he softly asked. Lora was vastly amused; this was indeed a courtship out of the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... that governs and shapes the will, giving it that flexibility and at the same time that constancy so prevalent among the greater part of women, leading them, with unflinching stubbornness of determination to the accomplishment of the end proposed. All difficulties vanish that stand between them and the object of their ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... they talk as much as you will; but their conversation teaches you nothing but their politeness; it betrays neither their feelings nor opinions. They have been frequently compared to the French, in my opinion with the least justice in the world. The flexibility of their organs makes imitation in all things a matter of ease to them; they are English, French, or German in their manners, according to circumstances; but they never cease to be Russians, that is to say uniting impetuosity and reserve, more capable of passion than friendship, more bold than ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... other bodies, as we can these of Cork; there seems no probable reason to the contrary, but that we might as readily render the true reason of all their Phaenomena; as namely, what were the cause of the springingess, and toughness of some, both as to their flexibility and restitution. What, of the friability or brittleness of some others, and the like; but till such time as our Microscope, or some other means, enable us to discover the true Schematism and Texture of all kinds of bodies, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... began, "La Ligue des Rats: fable de La Fontaine." She then declaimed the little piece with an attention to punctuation and emphasis, a flexibility of voice and an appropriateness of gesture, very unusual indeed at her age, and which proved she ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... time, also, a woman was born in Chester without hands, to whom nature had supplied a remedy for that defect by the flexibility and delicacy of the joints of her feet, with which she could sew, or perform any work with thread or scissors, as well as ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... this fine instinct, we may trust, secondly, in the profound earnestness which still marks our people. With all this flexibility, there is yet a solidity of principle beneath, that makes the subtile American mind as real and controlling as that of the robust race from which it sprang. Though the present tendency of our art is towards foreign models, this is but a temporary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... scarcity of distinctive forms, and to the consequent flexibility of English speech, words which are usually other parts of speech are often used as nouns; and various word groups may take the place of nouns by ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... motions were all distinct, clear, and neat; proceeding from a strength so suppled, as to give their joints all the requisite flexibility ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... bottom of the sea; and it is composed of numerous separate plates, so jointed together that whilst the amount of movement between any two pieces must be very limited, the entire column acquires more or less flexibility, allowing the organism as a whole to wave backwards and forwards on its stalk. Into the exquisite minutioe of structure by which the innumerable parts entering into the composition of a single Crinoid are adapted for their proper purposes ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... nitride formed under tremendous pressure—while the softer matrix is composed of tungsten carbide. If the fibers are only a thousandth or two thousandths of an inch in diameter—the thickness of a human hair or less—then the cable from which they are made has tremendous strength and flexibility. ...
— Thin Edge • Gordon Randall Garrett
... made by Joseph Gillott, at Birmingham. Before this goose-quill pens had been exclusively used, and there was in each House of Congress and in each Department a penmaker, who knew what degree of flexibility and breadth of point each writer desired. Every gentleman had to carry a penknife, and to have in his desk a hone to sharpen it on, giving the finishing touches on one of his boots. Another new invention ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... all future generations, than in any other war ever waged,—it is not right that the burden should fall exclusively on ourselves. Nor is it necessary. There is, perhaps, no feature in our modern civilization in which its beauty, flexibility, and strength, as compared with that of antiquity, is more signally displayed, than the well-organized credit-system of a prosperous State: the system which makes men not only willing, but desirous, to forego the actual possession of that darling property which has been the great object ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... at a stone sphinx of inflexible fate, that admirer would have been very much puzzled by the next passage of his life. Kitchener was something much more than a machine; for in the mind, as much as in the body, flexibility is far more masculine ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... undoubtedly the heroic couplet, which the latter had first applied to satire and used with such conspicuous success, was still further polished and improved by Pope until, as Mr. Courthope says, "it became in his hands a rapier of perfect flexibility and temper". From the time of Pope until that of Byron this stately measure has been regarded as the metre best suited par excellence for the display of satiric point and brilliancy, and as the medium best calculated ...
— English Satires • Various
... that 'these few strophes may serve as sufficient proof that Haller's poetry is still, even among the mass of Alpine poetry, unsurpassed for intense power of direct vision, and easily makes one forget its partial lack of flexibility of diction.' ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the strain must have been greatest, as at a, Figure 63, is often very remarkable, and not always easy of explanation. We must imagine that many strata of limestone, chert, and other rocks which are now brittle, were pliant when bent into their present position. They may have owed their flexibility in part to the fluid matter which they contained in their minute pores, as before described, and in part to the permeation of sea-water while they were ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... social and financial foundations of power. National states were forming; the state which could best adapt itself to these changed and changing conditions would outdistance its rivals; and its capacity to adapt itself to them would largely depend on the strength and flexibility of its national organization. It was the achievement of the New Monarchy to fashion this organization, and to rescue the country from an anarchy which had already given other powers the start in the race and promised ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... traditional democratic view of life is conceived, not for emergencies and dangers, but for tranquillity and harmony. And so where masses of people must cooperate in an uncertain and eruptive environment, it is usually necessary to secure unity and flexibility without real consent. The symbol does that. It obscures personal intention, neutralizes discrimination, and obfuscates individual purpose. It immobilizes personality, yet at the same time it enormously sharpens the intention of the group ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... which is supplied beneath it, as in bark of trees; fourthly, organic substance of skin cracked symmetrically into plates or scales which can increase all round their edges, and are connected by softer skin, below, as in fish and reptiles, (divided with exquisite lustre and flexibility, in feathers of birds); and lastly, true elastic skin, extended in soft unison with the creature's growth,—blushing with its blood, fading with its fear; breathing with its breath, and guarding its life with sentinel beneficence ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... there was no room for doubt. He was glad he had ordered the Challonari to withdraw from contact. To accept the existence of such beings required a flexibility under shock, an adaptability of reasoning, that the limited Challonari could never rise to. It was like a blow at the structure of the universe, but it raised a fascinating, age-old problem—what possible means of adequate ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... those subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection of the whole. Their very language—a type of the understandings of which it was the creation and the image—in variety, in simplicity, in flexibility, and in copiousness, excels every other language of the western world. Their sculptures are such as we, in our presumption, assume to be the models of ideal truth and beauty, and to which no artist of modern times can produce ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Edgar Allan Poe described him as "about five feet, eight inches in height; rather stout; fair complexion; hair light and inclined to curl; forehead remarkably broad and high; eye gray, clear, and penetrating; mouth well-formed, with excellent teeth—the lips having great flexibility, and consequent power of expression; the smile particularly pleasing. His address in general is bold, frank, cordial, full of bonhomie. His whole air is distingue in the best understanding of the term—that is to say, he would impress anyone at first sight with ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... language, but it lacked the wealth of expression and the flexibility necessary to respond to the most delicate touches of the master-musicians who were to come. When Shakespeare has Lear say ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... (the Russian place of publication is not given), pp. 223-224 (Russian). We know the word "Statism" is a barbarism, but Bakounine uses it, and the flexibility of the Russian language lends ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... mobilisation, we have still to deal with the two others which, in a great measure, are mutually contradictory. The essential distinction of strategic deployment, which contemplates dispersal with a view to a choice of combinations, is flexibility and free movement. The characteristic of an army massed for a blow is rigidity and restricted mobility. In the one sense of concentration we contemplate a disposal of force which will conceal our intention from the enemy and will permit ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... such training has not met the problem of adequately fitting for specific employments the young worker who has but a few months to spare. The lack in this instruction has been in specific trade application and flexibility as to method, artistic needs, and mechanical devices. These points are essential to place the girl in immediate touch ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... character of the people, occupations, and aspirations of "these States," as yet undeveloped but vital and inclosing the seed of unguessed-at possibilities, to tally the fluid, indeterminate, outward-reaching spirit of democracy and a new world, the poet required a medium of corresponding scope and flexibility, all-inclusive and capable of endless modulation and variety. Finding none ready to his hand, he created it. Not that Whitman did not draw for his resources on the great treasury of world-literature; and he profited by the efforts and achievement of predecessors. ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... of the sound must come from the apoggio, or breath prop. In attacking the very highest notes it is essential, and no singer can really get the high notes or vocal flexibility or strength of tone without the attack coming from this ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... now known as linen paper, had the merits of strength, flexibility, and durability in a high degree, but it was set aside by the copyists because the fabric was too thick and the surface was too rough. The art of calendering or polishing papers until they were of a smooth, glossy surface, which was then practised ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... flexible bit is one in which the axles have their points of junction broad and smooth, (8) so as to bend easily; and where the several parts fitting round the axles, being large of aperture and not too closely packed, have greater flexibility; whereas, if the several parts do not slide to and fro with ease, and play into each other, that is what we call a stiff bit. Whatever the kind of bit may be, the rider must carry out precisely the same rules in using it, as follows, if he wishes to turn out ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... question that Mr. Strathmore was the more generally popular candidate. He was a man who appealed strongly to the common heart, both by his sympathy and by flexibility of character and temperament which made it impossible for him to be repellantly stern or austere. He preached the high ideals which are dear to the best thought of the children of the Puritans; he demanded high purpose and high life, noble aims and unfailing charity; while he laid little ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... of man.—The same remark will apply to another peculiarly human character, the wonderful power, range, flexibility, and sweetness, of the musical sounds producible by the human larynx, especially in the female sex. The habits of savages give no indication of how this faculty could have been developed by natural selection; because ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... lips become thick and swollen, and if treatment is neglected the swelling may become hard and indurated, or an abscess may form. This condition renders it difficult for the animal to get food into its mouth, on account of the lips having lost their natural flexibility. In such cases an ox will use his tongue more in the prehension of food to make up for the incapacity of the lips. In cases of snake bite the swelling is soft or puffy and its limits are not ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... paraphrase of the old rhythmic story of "Jack's House" is a good illustration of the scope and flexibility of our language, and suggests the fact that tautological errors of ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... stiff, straight lines is afforded by the use of the curved line in decoration, which offers soft, rich and lovely effects. In general, curved lines make for grace, flexibility and softness. ...
— Prepare and Serve a Meal and Interior Decoration • Lillian B. Lansdown
... time she managed both court and King, possessed vast patronage, perhaps more general court popularity than any Queen of the age; led a pleasant life, enjoying the sweets without the responsibilities of royalty; and by judicious liberality of purse, and equally dexterous flexibility of opinion, contrived to carry some degree of public respect with her, while she lived, and be followed by some degree of public regret ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... He placed the new Tenth Army under Maud'huy north of De Castelnau's force, reaching almost to the Belgian frontier. The small British army under Sir John French moved north of that, and the new Eighth French Army, under General d'Urbal, was intended to fill the gap to the Channel. With remarkable flexibility the Germans initiated the movement with their right as fast as the French extended their left, and the whole strategy of both sides developed into a feverish race for the northern shore. Before General d'Urbal could reach his appointed sector, however, that "gap" had been filled by the remnants ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... prohibitions, and exclusions on the other. The bolts and the bars and the chains of all other nations will remain undisturbed. It is, indeed, possible, that our industry and commerce would accommodate themselves to this unequal and unjust state of things; for, such is the flexibility of our nature, that it bends itself to all circumstances. The wretched prisoner incarcerated in a jail, after a long time, becomes reconciled to his solitude, and regularly notches down the passing days ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... accommodated only to motion or duration, and different degrees of motion were perhaps expressed by verses rapid or slow, without much attention of the writer, when the image had full possession of his fancy: but our language having little flexibility, our verses can differ very little in their cadence. The fancied resemblances, I fear, arise sometimes merely from the ambiguity of words; there is supposed to be some relation between a SOFT line ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... count; and the flat of the entire foot the fourth count. These four different parts of the foot become an exercise by counting 1, 2, 3, 4, with the left foot, and 5, 6, 7, 8, with the right foot, beginning with the right toe on the count of 5. This exercise if practiced faithfully will give flexibility to the muscles and ligaments that control the entire foot, all of which are used in musical comedy dancing, for the American tap, step and specialty work (clogging), for social or ballroom dancing, for exhibition dancing, as well as in the ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... which thought had already furrowed between the eyebrows, and made the expression of untameability perhaps a shade too strong. The voice of this charming child, whom her father, delighting in her wit, was wont to call his "little proverb of Solomon," had acquired a precious flexibility of organ through the practice of three languages. This advantage was still further enhanced by a natural bell-like tone both sweet and fresh, which touched the heart as delightfully as it did the ear. If the ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... than a mere academic exercise. Forced to adjust itself to the facts of actual production, theory has had to follow new paths as literature has followed new paths, and in the process it has acquired fresh vigor and flexibility. Even as we leave the period of Pope, we can see the dull inadequacy of a worn-out collection of rules giving way before the honest, individual approach of Cowper. "Many a fair precept in poetry," says Dryden ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... and its decorations. The Eastern chivalry also was to the full as efficient as that of the West; for what it lacked in weight of metal, it gained in superior adroitness in the use of weapons, in the greater facility of its movements, and the better temper and flexibility of its armour. All these features of a high—though, as it proved, a less enduring—civilization are noted with wonder and applause by the early travellers, who cannot sufficiently express their admiration of such ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... of exquisite softness and flexibility. His every word was like a caress. There are voices which so move and stir the hearer that they arouse an emotion which for the moment may override reason; voices which appeal to the senses like beguiling music, and which ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... visited the islands in 2001. The Samoan Government has called for deregulation of the financial sector, encouragement of investment, and continued fiscal discipline, meantime protecting the environment. Observers point to the flexibility of the labor market as a basic strength for future economic advances. Foreign reserves are in a relatively healthy state, the external debt is stable, and inflation ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the genius of the old world; as universal as our race, as individual as ourselves; of infinite flexibility, or indefatigable strength, with the complication and the distinctness of Nature herself; to which nothing was vulgar, from which nothing was excluded; speaking to the ear like Italian, speaking to the mind like English; with ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... as the hard and fast rules of an age when conditions of life were simpler are no longer practicable under the more complex relationships of modern times, there is today an inevitable tendency to force these rules to greater flexibility. * ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... never acquired the definiteness of character and conduct that some animals have. He learned more from animals, it may be, than he inherited from them, and it is quite likely that far back in his animal ancestry he had greater flexibility or adaptability than other animals. The aggressive instinct, the herd instinct, the predatory instinct, the social instinct, the migratory instinct, may never have been carried very far in the stock ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... proximity he most dreaded, were among the number of those who dashed into the heart of the forest—Captain de Haldimar now stood alone, and full twenty paces in front of the nearest of the savages. For a moment he played with his mocassined foot to satisfy himself, of the power and flexibility of its muscles, and then committing himself to his God, dashed the blanket suddenly from his shoulders, and, with eye and heart fixed on the distant soldiery, darted down the declivity with a speed of which he had never yet believed himself capable. Scarcely, however, had his fleeing ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... meet increased competition from both EU and Central European countries, particularly the new EU members, Austria will need to continue restructuring, emphasizing knowledge-based sectors of the economy, and encouraging greater labor flexibility and greater labor participation by its ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... may say that they require of the pianist's fingers individualization and, consequently, a flexibility that is spiritual as well as material. The diligent daily study of Bach will form your style, your technics, better than all machines and finger exercises. But play him as if he were human, a contemporary and not a historical reminiscence. Yes, you may indulge in rubato. I would ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... was obvious, even without the aid of any tracing, that the uppermost part of the stem bent successively to all points of the compass, like the stem of a twining plant. A little increase in the power of circumnutating and in the flexibility of the stem, would convert the common asparagus into a twining plant, as has occurred with one species in this genus, ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... occasionally fails to fuse and shape disparate materials. It is likely to fall short when he essays fancy or mystery, as in A Life for a Life; or when he has a whimsy for amusing melodrama, as in His Great Adventure. The flexibility which reveals itself in humor or in the lighter irony is not one of his principal endowments. Restrained and direct as he always is so far as language goes, he cannot always keep his action absolutely in hand: this or that person or incident now and then breaks out of the pattern; ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... the hive." Huber has tried to explain it by saying that at certain intervals, by the pressure of their feet or their teeth, they produce a slight projection of the wax on the other side of the comb, or that they can determine the thickness of the block of wax by its flexibility, its elasticity, or some other physical property which it may possess; or, again, that their antennae are able to serve as compasses in enabling them to examine what is going on in the darkness of the other side; or, last of all, he suggests that all the cells mathematically ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... peaks in our canton they cling to customs that bear the impress of an older time, and that vaguely recall scenes in the Bible. Nature has traced out a line over our mountain ranges; the whole appearance of the country is different on either side of it. You will find strength of character up above, flexibility and quickness below; they have larger ways of regarding things among the hills, while the bent of the lowlands is always towards the material interests of existence. I have never seen a difference ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... for the transmission of power vary in size from 3/8 to 7/8 inch diam. For from 3 to 300 horse power; to promote flexibility, the rope, made of iron, steel, or copper wire, as may be preferred, is provided with a core of hemp, and the speed is 1 mile per minute, more or less, as desired. Tho rope should run on a well-balanced, grooved, cast iron wheel, of ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... dust-cloud, he rode hopefully, sure of himself, carrying his range credentials in his eyes, in his perfect saddle-poise, in the tan on his face to his eyebrows, and the womanish softness of his gloved hands, which had all the sensitive flexibility ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... great merit; and with cultivation (instruction) she will rank among the very first vocalists of the age. She has a voice of great sweetness and power, with a wider range from the lowest to the highest notes than we have ever listened to: flexibility is not wanting, and her control of it is beyond example for a new and untaught vocalist. Her performance was received with marked approbation and applause from those who knew ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... Ravanastron, Omerti, etc., are longer, and being more slender, have a certain amount of flexibility, but it does not appear that this latter qualification is sought for or considered indispensable. On the other hand, the now nearly obsolete Kokiu of Japan had a bow of about forty-five inches in length that was extremely elastic. It was made in sections after the manner of a fishing-rod, and ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... between 1815 and 1821, the great essayists, M. de Bonald and M. de Maistre (those two eagles of thought)—all the lighter French literature, in short, that appeared during that sudden outburst of first vigorous growth might bring delight into her solitary life, but not flexibility of mind or body. She stood strong and straight like some forest tree, lightning-blasted but still erect. Her dignity became a stilted manner, her social supremacy led her into affectation and sentimental over-refinements; she queened it with her foibles, after the usual fashion of those who allow ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... already. In Egypt the girls as well as the boys are kept to such gymnastic exercises. My limbs were trained to flexibility by running, postures, and games with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sincerity and simplicity; to feel the moral bearing of the questions which were before the country; to discern the principles involved; and to so apply the principles to the questions as to clarify and illuminate them. There is little difficulty in accounting for the lucidity, simplicity, flexibility, and compass of Mr. Lincoln's style; it is not until we turn to its temperamental and spiritual qualities, to the soul of it, that we find ourselves perplexed ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... accomplished, otherwise the latter cannot be undertaken satisfactorily. A good and reliable technique is undoubtedly of primary necessity. But it is by no means all. One may have a voice which is well-posed and of good resonance, and also have sufficient flexibility to perform neatly all the rapid passages with which the pages of the classic composers abound. But this is not singing; nor is the possessor of these an artist. He has simply the necessary and preliminary knowledge which should ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... line, though of foreign origin, has held the boards as the chief erudite measure in Spanish verse for four centuries, and taken all in all it is the noblest metrical form for serious poems in modern Spanish. A striking peculiarity of the line is its flexibility. It is not divided into hemistichs as were its predecessors, the 14-syllable Alexandrine and the 12-syllable arte mayor verse; but it consists of two phrases and the position of the inner rhythmic accent is usually variable. page lxiii A well constructed line of this type has a rhythmic accent ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... turn, yields to Crassus [f], an orator more polished, more correct, and florid. Cicero rises superior to both; more animated, more harmonious and sublime. He is followed by Corvinus [g], who has all the softer graces; a sweet flexibility in his style, and a curious felicity in the choice of his words. Which was the greatest orator, is not ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... been tantalizing his business manager, or maybe he really was doubtful about the flexibility of the bar. At any rate, when he applied pressure he did not seem surprised when the glass became straight again. Then he proceeded actually to tie a knot in it, so bendable was ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... state of things the legs perform their movements with the joints as their only centers or bases of action, with no participation of intermediate points, while with a fracture the flexibility and motion which will be observed at unnatural points are among the most strongly characteristic signs of the lesion. No one need be told that, when the shaft of a limb is seen to bend midway between the joints, with the lower portion swinging freely, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... and gifted minds which have startled us by the versatility of their powers, whence do they derive the high character of their genius? Their durable claims are substantiated by what is inherent in themselves—what is individual—and not by that flexibility which may include so much which others can equal. We rate them by their positive originality, not by their variety of powers. When we think of YOUNG, it is only of his "Night Thoughts," not of his tragedies, nor his poems, nor even of his satires, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... by a formula. But the problem defies all the artifices of analysis if the oscillating body is a real body, endowed with volume and friction; if the suspensory thread is a real thread, endowed with weight and flexibility; if the point of support is a real point, endowed with resistance and capable of deflection. So with other problems, however simple. The ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... another purpose: that of a toilet-sponge and brush. At a moment of rest, after a meal, the Glow-worm passes and repasses the said brush over his head, back, sides and hinder parts, a performance made possible by the flexibility of his spine. This is done point by point, from one end of the body to the other, with a scrupulous persistency that proves the great interest which he takes in the operation. What is his object in thus ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... 23. We went to breakfast at Mr. Cobden's. Mr. C. is a man of slender frame, rather under than over the middle size, with great ease of manner, and flexibility of movement, and the most frank, fascinating smile. His appearance is a sufficient account of his popularity, for he seems to be one of those men who carry about them an atmosphere of vivacity and social exhilaration. We ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... fastenings left us without the power of moving a limb. The only member over which we had any control was the head; and this, thanks to the flexibility of our necks, we could turn about, so as to see what was going on in front or on either ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... a wrinkled hag, with a leering, repulsive face, with her feet planted firmly on her mattress, her knees elevated, her long, ape-like arms closely embracing these—her fingers, strung with brass and silver rings, intertwined with snake-like flexibility. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Madden saw they were entering a great machine shop. A full complement of men worked at every lathe, table, drill or saw. The clang of hammers, the guttering of drills, the whine of steel planes smote his ears in a cheerful din of labor. The laborers worked at their tasks with that peculiar flexibility of forearms, wrists, fingers that mark skilled machinists. The scent of lubricating oil the faint tang of metal dust filled the air. Strange to say, the air down here was even cooler than that ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... must be alert to take all that it has to give, and to re-create this in terms of your own experience. Thus by making it a part of your imaginative experience, you widen your actual experience, you enrich your life, and you increase the flexibility and ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... preponderance. For while Hoshkanyi was a weak man,—while he was mortally afraid of his inflexibly honest colleague, the maseua Topanashka, he was dependent upon Tyope and upon the chief of the Delight Makers, because both belonged to his clan. He very soon began to display an utter flexibility to the desires of the two last-mentioned individuals, to the disadvantage of those who did not coincide with ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... same time to conduct the current to them. It is also used for other similar service, such as acting as conductors for small motors. Often each conductor is composed of a number of thin wires laid together. This gives flexibility ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... by a set of native tumblers, who presently exhibited before us various feats of extraordinary agility and strength—some of these are almost too curious to be believed by those who are not aware of the flexibility and dexterity of the Hindoos. We were most surprised and amused by the exploits of a lady of forty, which is considered a very old age in that climate, who ran up the pole more like a monkey than a human being, and then sticking herself on the top horizontally ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... it, the Balaninus is suspended in the air, far from the supporting surface of the acorn. It is dried, mummified, dead I know not how long. The legs are rigid and contracted under the body. Even if they retained the flexibility and the power of extension that were theirs in life, they would fall far short of the surface of the acorn. What then has happened, that this unhappy insect should be impaled like a specimen beetle with a pin through ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... reserved voice seemed suddenly to lose its flexibility, and the crimson leaf came fluttering ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... these characters are all later creations than Hamlet, and that Shakespeare's own fondness for this kind of play, like the fondness of the theatrical audience for it, diminished with time. But the main reason is surely that this tendency, as we see it in Hamlet, betokens a nimbleness and flexibility of mind which is characteristic of him and not of the later less many-sided heroes. Macbeth, for instance, has an imagination quite as sensitive as Hamlet's to certain impressions, but he has none of Hamlet's delight in freaks and twists of thought, or of his tendency ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... surface, agreeably varied by play of light and shade. Another advantage of the ancient method is that the completed work is very flexible; this point will appeal to those who have experienced the extreme stiffness of a large surface of ordinarily couched metal threads. Flexibility is an invaluable quality for any work destined, like copes and ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... he was proud of it and would make as much of it as possible. To the last his movements remained quick and sudden, his short firm legs, as he walked, seemed to twinkle rather than display the scissors-stride of common humanity, and he never seemed to have knees, but instead, a dispersed flexibility of limb. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... those powers, whatever be their affinity, one may be possessed in a great degree by him who has very little of the other; it must be allowed that they depend upon different faculties, or on different use of the same faculty; that the actor must have a pliancy of mien, a flexibility of countenance, and a variety of tones, which the poet may be easily supposed to want; or that the attention of the poet and the player has been differently employed; the one has been considering thought, and ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... is the arch formed by a string fixed at both ends, and swaying loose in all the intermediate points. Thus at liberty, they must finally take that position, wherein every one will be equally pressed; for if any one was more pressed than the neighboring point, it would give way, from the flexibility of the matter ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... good hand or a good style," he said, "without experience with scissors. They give your palm flexibility and that is soon imparted to the mind. But perfection is attained by an alternate use of the scissors and the pen; if a little paste be prescribed at the same time, cohesion and steadfastness is imparted ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... became could never have been predicted. Technically, as one critic has written, "he was the first to understand the charm of silhouettes, the first to linger in expressing the joining of the arm and body, the flexibility of the hips, the roundness of the shoulders, the elegance of the leg, the little shadow that marks the springing of the neck, and above all the carving of the hand; but even more he understood 'le ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... from parallelisms in thought and phrase, from inversions, archaisms, and the almost excessive wealth of metaphor and epithet. In its early stages, there is apparent perhaps a poverty of resource, a lack of flexibility; but this charge cannot be sustained against the best prose of the later period. In the translations from the Latin it shows a certain stiffness, and becomes sometimes involved, in the too conscientious effort of the translator to follow the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory. A few naturalists, endowed with much flexibility of mind, and who have already begun to doubt the immutability of species, may be influenced by this volume; but I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality. ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... lie and she did not possess that agility of purpose which, at a moment's notice, could enable her to twist her intentions—a mental somersault that needs the double-jointedness of cunning and all the consummate flexibility of tact. He might know that she had followed them, but she must never admit it. It seemed a feasible argument to her, in the whirling panic of her thoughts, that her admission would be fatal—just as the prisoner in the dock pleads "not guilty" ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... one of these artists, and some ingenious, though unsatisfactory speculations are given on the means by which the effects are produced. This power is, perhaps, given by nature, but is doubtless improvable, if not acquirable, by art. It may, possibly, consist in an unusual flexibility or exertion of the bottom of the tongue and the uvula. That speech is producible by these alone must be granted, since anatomists mention two instances of persons speaking without a tongue. In one case, the organ was originally wanting, but ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown |
