"Pliancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... incalculable. His fine ear, abhorrent of barbarous dissonance, his dainty tongue that loves to prolong the relish of a musical phrase, made possible the transition from the cast-iron stiffness of "Ferrex and Porrex" to the Damascus pliancy of Fletcher and Shakespeare. It was ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... beginning of ages. Then, as a change: noise, glitter, throngs, the brilliancy of capitals, and in those capitals a multitude of doors, some of which open with freedom, while others are closed hermetically; before doors of the second sort the pliancy of the cat's paw is needed; this finds a hole where ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... shell-grit ground to pollen-like fineness and certain chemicals from the reef outside are among its component parts. One other element invokes perpetual thanksgiving—the flaked mica, which glistens delusively with hues of silver and gold, and gives to the tide-swept track that singular pliancy which resists ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... was a sporting genius of an extremely versatile character. Like all his fraternity, he was possessed of a pliancy of adaptation to circumstances that enabled him to succumb with true philosophy to misfortunes, and also to grace the more exalted sphere of prosperity with that natural ease attributed to gentlemen with bloated ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... 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.
... 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. ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... a complete master of the Latin language in its more colloquial forms. Whatever he wishes to say he finds no difficulty in expressing without the least shadow of obscurity. His full, flowing style, his inexhaustible wealth of words, the pliancy which in his skilful hands is given to the comparatively rude instrument with which he works, are remarkable in the highest degree. In the invention of new words, and the fertility of his combinations, [19] he reminds us of Shakespeare, and far exceeds any other Latin ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... public, I should think, about the middle of February. We may give it to the road for a valentine," and Senator Hanway smiled in congratulation of himself for something light and fluffy, something to mark in him a pliancy ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Drew successfully pretended for a time that he was fully subservient. Ostensibly to carry out Vanderbilt's plans he persuaded that magnate to allow him to bring in as directors two men whose pliancy, he said, could be depended upon. These were Jay Gould, demure and ingratiating, and James Fisk, Jr., a portly, tawdry, pompous voluptuary. In early life Fisk had been a peddler in Vermont, and afterwards had managed an itinerant circus. Then he had become a Wall street ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... means of existence. Had not exercise been absolutely necessary for our well being, says the elegant Addison, nature would not have made the body so proper for it, by giving such an activity to the limbs, and such a pliancy to every part, as necessarily produce those compressions, extensions, contortions, dilatations, and all other kinds of motion, as are necessary for the preservation of such a system of tubes ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... miles from Hay, and as the contractor had been cursing me steadily for the last four weeks—well, if I asked him anything about it, he thought that ten shillings came nearer the mark, and was almost as easily counted. Finally, with that pliancy of temper which keeps me down in the world, I assented to these terms; whereupon Spanker, with characteristic perversity, called ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... necessitating constant repairs, but these were quickly made, for not a scrap of metal enters into the construction of a Kolyma dog-sled; merely wooden pegs and walrus-hide thongs, which are more durable and give more spring and pliancy than iron nails. Three days after leaving Cape North, and in fine weather, Wrangell Land was sighted, or, I should perhaps say, was probably sighted, for at times huge barriers of icebergs can easily be mistaken for a distant ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... frequently than other 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 ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... supplanted by linen and muslin, nankeen coat striped with green, a white silk waistcoat elegantly needle-wrought, cassimere pantaloons, stockings of variegated silk, and shoes that in their softness, pliancy, and polished surface vied with satin. I could scarcely forbear looking back to see whether the image in the glass, so well proportioned, so gallant, and so graceful, did not belong to another. I could scarcely recognise any lineaments of my own. I walked to the window. "Twenty ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... but did it with such a sudden breaking up of her rigidity into the pliancy of a naturally hospitable nature, that my heart was touched, and I followed her into the great bare apartment, which must have once answered the purposes of a drawing-room, with very different feelings from those with which I had ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... poetic justice in 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 of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Besides being the 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, and ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... high rocks, or some such cause, called my attention to a monster fish that must have weighed at least sixty pounds, and insisted upon letting me have it at a reduced price. I shook my head and smiled. In that smile I suppose the sagacious old fishwoman discovered the pliancy of my disposition, for she immediately commenced a wild harangue on the merits of the fish, scarcely a word of which I understood. Two or three times I started to leave, but each time she made a motion to detain me. The fact is, I was afraid she would get hold of me with her fishy hands, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... indenture in the crown; there the enormous mouth, spreading from ear to ear, with the lips which, as he gave a chuckle, and the wrinkles about his eyes evinced a passing facial contortion, I saw to be wholly wanting in pliancy. There was the expression, fixed at least as far as the mouth and lower face was concerned, the protruding teeth, and the grotesque appearance of a smile such as a demon might have smiled over ruined innocence. Oh, there was no possibility of a mistake. Doctor Castleton glanced at me questioningly, ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... rest of the population to grow effeminate, and help the country to grow too fast. But that is her destiny, to grow too fast: there is no use talking against it. Their extreme ignorance, their blind devotion to their priesthood, their pliancy in the hands of demagogues, threaten continuance of these ills; yet, on the other hand, we must regard them as most valuable elements in the new race. They are looked upon with contempt for their wont of aptitude in learning new things; ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... 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 ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... was that he was to lose her, had perhaps lost her, just as he had found out how inexpressibly dear she was to be. And amazement came upon him, and dismay to realise that this sweetness of hers, this pliancy of temper, this strength within beauty were really there in her apart from him. As if he had believed that they lay in his esteem! No, indeed: they were her own; she could bestow ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett |
