"Pliant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stricken and needy, He tells graceless men of the mercy of God, 455 Of the Father's help; he hastens forth, Lessening the perils of this passing life, Its darksome deeds, and does God's will With bravery in his breast. His bidding he seeks In prayer, with pure heart and pliant knee 460 Bent to the earth; all evil is banished, All grim offences by his fear of God; Happy in heart he hopes full well To do good deeds: the Redeemer is his shield In his varied walks, the Wielder of victory, 465 Joy-giver to people. Those ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... could gain a foothold on the gallery, the formidable hunchback leaped to the head of the ladder, without uttering a word, seized the ends of the two uprights with his powerful hands, raised them, pushed them out from the wall, balanced the long and pliant ladder, loaded with vagabonds from top to bottom for a moment, in the midst of shrieks of anguish, then suddenly, with superhuman force, hurled this cluster of men backward into the Place. There was a moment when even the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... although the cytisus, unless I am mistaken, has no perfume except in M. de Lamartine's verses. Let us fix our attention on a cytisus with its yellow clusters hanging down, and the goat bending its pliant branches as it browses on the foliage. Here is a very small detail in the ample lap of nature. Let us come closer, and to help our ignorance, let us provide ourselves with a naturalist who will answer for us the questions suggested by this simple spectacle. And what have we now before us? The ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... cut off his last breath as he hung. And while he was still quivering Starkad rent away with his steel the remnant of his life; thus disclosing his treachery when he ought to have brought aid. I do not think that I need examine the version which relates that the pliant withies, hardened with the sudden grip, acted like a noose ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... deficient in learning, vigour, and originality, who will reject with the supercilious ignorance of incurable stupidity, these volumes, in which the habits, the interests, the inalienable rights, the sacred duties of one half of the species, (and of that half to which, at the most pliant and critical period of life, the health, the disposition, the qualities, moral and intellectual, of the other half must of necessity be confided,) are discussed with exemplary fairness, and placed in the most luminous point of view. But we have detained ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... give to Monsieur his secretary, whom, nevertheless, he valued very highly, that last touch of pliancy which he needed for his perfection. Count Kostia was of an age when even the strongest mind feels the necessity of occasional relaxation, and he would have been glad to have near him a pliant, agreeable companion, and enchanted could that ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... ends. A vegetable feeder, but an inhabitant of sterile and sandy deserts, its long slender neck and sloping body, enable it to reach with ease its favorite food: leaf by leaf is daintily plucked from the lofty branch by the pliant tongue, and a mouthful of tender and juicy food is speedily accumulated. The oblique and narrow apertures of the nostrils, defended even to their margins by a chevaux de frise of strong hairs, and surrounded by muscular fibres by which they can be hermetically ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... "is one of the most difficult forms of poetry. It has fallen almost entirely into disuse. No Frenchman can hope to rival Petrarch; for the language in which the Italian wrote, being so infinitely more pliant than French, lends itself to play of thought which our positivism (pardon the use of the expression) rejects. So it seemed to me that a volume of sonnets would be something quite new. Victor Hugo has appropriated the old, Canalis writes lighter verse, Beranger has monopolized ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... again on the Ottawa; as we advance, the river narrows and becomes studded with little islands covered with wild shrubs and forest trees, from whose stiff unyielding boughs the more pliant shoots droop playfully into the foaming stream below, like the children of Gravity coquetting with the family of Passion. Of course these islands form rapids in every direction: we soon, approach the one selected as the channel in which to try our strength. On we dash boldly—down rushes ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... know it is," replied Lily, gazing out at the silver light which flooded everything, but she still hesitated. A light in the house behind gave her a background of light. She was a beautiful girl, prettier than Maria, taller, and with a timid, pliant grace. Her brown hair tossed softly over her big, brown eyes, which were surmounted by strongly curved eyebrows, her nose was small, and her mouth, and she had a fascinating little way of holding her lips slightly parted, as if ready for ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... tempting bait—generally the side of a small perch—with amazing vigor and marvellous dexterity, oftentimes taking fifteen or twenty pickerel in less than an hour. To see him strike, manipulate and land a fish weighing three or four pounds, his pliant rod bending nearly to a semicircle, was a spectacle ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... satisfaction of seeing a considerable improvement in Elsie before she left Derbyshire, and used to have her company in his morning drives to visit his patients, when her pleasant conversation and winning manner made him ere long prefer her to her graver and less pliant sister. He missed both the girls when they went to London, and even Dr. Vivian paid Jane the compliment of regretting her society a little ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... children, suspect and dread the attention of an heir presumptive; and what has made this sting, as you call it, keener to you is—pardon me—is in some silly words of your mother, who, in showing you the letters, has hinted to you that that heir you might be, if you were sufficiently pliant and ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... than a parcel of marionettes. Or it is an expression of some sort of emotion. The Greeks understood that in their Orchiesis, each feeling had its corresponding movement. For me it means a number of things. When a woman is slender and pliant and smooth of step, and if she pleases me otherwise, then it is not waste of time!—Tonight I shall probably get drunk again," and he flicked the ash off his cigarette with his little finger; and even though Tamara was again annoyed with him, she could not help noticing that his ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... appeared more deliberately conscious of their depth and gleam; her lips, less responsive to the flying thought, grew to an habitual expression—not of discontent, but something akin unto it; not of self-will, but something that spoke a spirit neither tranquil nor pliant. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... tail—firmly anchored to a stone, while with the head it seized the first thing that touched it as it swam by. Then would begin a struggle, the trapped one darting off, and dragging to get away; while the worm, tough, thin, and pliant as a fishing-line, let it play about till tired out, when the thin, black-looking monster would quietly swallow his prey, boa-constrictor fashion, till nothing was visible of it but a large knob in the worm's thin body. Then there were ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... a tunnel before the eye. Such a device offers ready aid to the decorator whose figures must often receive a close encasement, fitted as they are into limited spaces, when many an ungracious line in the subject is made to disappear through the accommodation of pliant drapery or ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... language. You reprobated those accommodating rules by which I endeavoured to obtain happiness; and urged arguments that made a deep impression upon me. Now that self-interest gives you an impulse, are your principles become as pliant as mine; which you so ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... leader of the quartette that made life interesting in Number 28, was destined never to evolve into patriotic completion. He soon reached the limit of the endurance of the officials, that being, in the absence of a pliant guardian, the only method by which a cadet could be freed from the walls ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... INGER. I understand you. I have not been pliant enough. It has not proved so easy as some of you hoped to lure me over into your camp.— Yet methinks you have nought to complain of. My daughter Merete's husband is your countryman—further I cannot go. My position is no easy ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... the smiles of her own maid. Still her surprise was less than that which the reader will probably experience at this announcement; for, as has just been said, she had seen too much of the active and pliant enterprise of the lover, to feel much wonder at any of his moral tours de force. Even Eve, however, was not perfectly acquainted with the views and policy that had led Aristabulus to seek this consummation to his matrimonial schemes, which ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... vine.—More than most plants it needs a husbandman. It cannot stand upright like other fruit-trees, but requires a skillful hand to guide its pliant branches along the espaliers, or to entwine them in the trellis-work. It suggests a true thought of the appearance presented to the world by Christ and ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... civil commotion. Had the conditions been more favorable to the plot; had the conspirators of that day been as well prepared as those of 1861; had they been equally successful in sowing dissatisfaction and hatred in the minds of the Southern people; had they found in Gen. Jackson the weak and pliant instrument of treason which James Buchanan afterward became in the hands of Davis and his coadjutors, the present rebellion might have been anticipated, and the germ of secession wholly extirpated and destroyed, in the contest which would then have ensued. ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... men, if it be definite enough, is likely to pervade the whole room and conquer the reason or the opposition of the majority. One man "standing out" for the definite thought that is in him is apt to become either the triumphant leader of a pliant mass or the brutally battered target of a flaming, concentrated intellectual fire. Men despise dull opposition that is without reason. In a jury-room, of all places, a man is expected to give a reason for the faith that is ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... ascended—probably to ascertain if the hashish had acted successfully. That was the yellow dream-face which West saw bending over him. Then followed the Doctor, and to his giant will the drugged brain of West was a pliant instrument which he bent to his own ends. The court would be deserted at that hour of the night, and, in any event, directly after the ascent the ladder probably was pulled up, only to be lowered again when West had revealed the secret of his own safe and Fu-Manchu had secured the plans. The reclosing ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... the ploughman batters keen His blunted share's hard tooth, scoops from a tree His troughs, or on the cattle stamps a brand, Or numbers on the corn-heaps; some make sharp The stakes and two-pronged forks, and willow-bands Amerian for the bending vine prepare. Now let the pliant basket plaited be Of bramble-twigs; now set your corn to parch Before the fire; now bruise it with the stone. Nay even on holy days some tasks to ply Is right and lawful: this no ban forbids, To turn the runnel's course, fence corn-fields in, Make springes for the birds, burn up ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... limit that) continues yet To operate, that now it moves, and feels, As sea sponge clinging to the rock: and there Assumes th' organic powers its seed convey'd. 'This is the period, son! at which the virtue, That from the generating heart proceeds, Is pliant and expansive; for each limb Is in the heart by forgeful nature plann'd. How babe of animal becomes, remains For thy consid'ring. At this point, more wise, Than thou hast err'd, making the soul disjoin'd From passive intellect, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... he had promised his father and D'Artagnan to observe, Raoul could not resist uttering a few words of dark menace. "And yet," he continued, "if my name were De Wardes, and if I had the pliant character and strength of will of M. d'Artagnan, I should laugh, with my lips at least; I should convince other women that this perfidious girl, honored by the affection I have wasted on her, leaves me only one regret, that of having been abused and deceived by ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... stamped with the symbol of an elephant,—not more of an illusion, indeed, than the gifts of Kings to the Buddha! Gold upon her bosom also, less fine than the gold of her skin. Naked between the silken sash and the narrow breast-corslet, her young waist curved glossy and pliant as a bow. Richer the silver in her voice than in the hollow pagals that made a moonlight about her ankles! But her smile!—the little teeth like flower-stamens in the perfumed ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... men's voices shouting in excitement; doors opening, running feet. And then Jimmie Dale had snatched the revolver from the floor where Markel had dropped it in the scuffle, and was pressing it against Markel's forehead—and Markel, terror-stricken, had collapsed in a flabby, pliant heap. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the sore with his own hands and bound it up with some clean linen that he took from his knapsack. He displayed the gentleness of a woman and the deftness of a surgeon, whose big fingers can be so pliant ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... laws. The legislators are responsible for the laws; the judges for the spirit in which they interpret and enforce the laws. We stand aloof from the reckless agitators who would make the judges mere pliant tools of popular prejudice and passion; and we stand aloof from those equally unwise partisans of reaction and privilege who deny the proposition that, inasmuch as judges are chosen to serve the interests of the whole people, they should strive ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Naples, which kingdom he acquired by his own prowess, and where he established his residence, attracted, no doubt, by the superior amenity of the climate and the higher intellectual culture, as well as the pliant temper of the people, far more grateful to the monarch than the sturdy ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... the river that is called Vellus, that springeth out of the foot of Mount Carmel, at which shipmen arrived. For upon the gravel of that river shipmen made fire of clods medlied with bright gravel, and thereof ran streams of new liquor, that was the beginning of glass. It is so pliant that it taketh anon divers and contrary shapes by blast of the glazier, and is sometimes beaten, and sometimes graven as silver. And no matter is more apt to make mirrors than is glass, or to receive painting; ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... the pliant, patient woman altered suddenly. She turned out a regular scold; a perfect vixen, who was ever at his heels, distorting his most harmless acts, and starting a new jealousy every day. Once she went for him with finger-nails and scissors; but he had ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... thought it worth while to bring out from home, was a certain pair of riding boots, by which I set especial store. They were such as many of our field-officers now in Canada are in the habit of wearing—coming high up on the thigh, perfectly water-proof, but very light, and pliant as a glove. I saw nothing of American manufacture to compare with them. Some of my duck-shooting acquaintance at Baltimore were never weary of admiring their fair proportions; nor did my sage counselor, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... between him and a Chinese, and, needless to say, brought him great gains. He was purveyor to the prisoners at Bilibid, and furnished zacate to many Manila houses. On good terms with all authority, shrewd, pliant, daring in speculation, he was the sole rival of a certain Perez in the awards of divers contracts which the Philippine Government always places in privileged hands. From all of which it resulted that Captain Tiago was as happy as can be a man whose small head announces his ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... that a blind custom of obedience should be a surer obligation than duty taught and understood, it is to affirm that a blind man may tread surer by a guide than a seeing man can by a light. And it is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, generous, manageable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwart, and mutinous: and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... crime. I know all; I saw you! Not a word of excuse. I would not listen to it. Candaules himself concealed you behind the door. Is it not so the thing happened? And you fancy, doubtless, that it is all over? Unhappily I am not a Greek woman, pliant to the whims of artists and voluptuaries. Nyssia will not serve for any one's toy. There are now two men, one of whom is a man too much upon the earth. He must disappear from it! Unless he dies, I cannot live. It will be either you or Candaules. I leave you master of the choice. ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... damsels have long ago discarded the clumsy implement. First it dropped its iron ring and became a clog; afterwards it was fined down into the pliant galoshe—lighter to wear and more effectual to protect—a no less manifest instance of gradual improvement than Cowper indicates when he traces through eighty lines of poetry his 'accomplished sofa' back to ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... Dangler's prosy platitudes, which some deemed wit—Horner, par exemple—sank into nothingness, and Baby Blake, one of the "gushing" order of girlhood, appeared as a stick, or, rather, a too pliant sapling—her inane "yes's" and lisping "no's" having an opportunity of being "weighed in the balance," and consequently, in my opinion, "found wanting." All were mediocre beside her. Perhaps I was prejudiced; but, now, the remarks of the other girls ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... perfect knowledge of the art of driving, and the character of a "first-rate whip," were objects worthy his ambition; and that, to hold four-in-hand—turn a corner in style—handle the reins in form—take a fly off the tip of his leader's ear—square the elbows, and keep the wrists pliant, were matters as essential to the formation of a man of fashion as dice or milling: it was a principle he had long laid down and strictly adhered to, that whatever tended to the completion of that character, should be acquired ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... thunderclap that it shook the ground beneath her, and for some minutes she was unable to hear even the droning roar of the rain-laden tornado that came tearing down from the mountains, snapping off the branches of the gum-trees, bending low the pliant boles of the moaning she-oaks, and lifting the waters of the creek up ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... her native village—one could seem to see Luella Miller as she had really looked. According to this woman, Lydia Anderson by name, Luella Miller had been a beauty of a type rather unusual in New England. She had been a slight, pliant sort of creature, as ready with a strong yielding to fate and as unbreakable as a willow. She had glimmering lengths of straight, fair hair, which she wore softly looped round a long, lovely face. ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... easily go too far. It can well repress the genial current of the soul. It can force pliant natures into distortions and monstrosities. It can beget bigotry, breed hypocrisy or hebetate affections. Be a virtue never so noble, it has its counterpart and counterfeit. We must recognize in each virtue its own positive excellence and follow its positive ideal, and the ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... charming than the group formed by the girls. One held with her left hand the flowing reins, and with her right encircled the waist of her sleeping sister, whose head reposed on her shoulder. Each step of the horse gave a graceful swaying to these pliant forms, and swung their little feet, which rested on a wooden ledge in lieu of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... spectators was decidedly in favor of the accused. His youth—the noble bearing—the ease, the unobtrusive confidence—the gentle expression, pliant and, though sad, yet entirely free from anything like desponding weakness—all told in his favor. He was a fine specimen of the southern gentleman—the true nobleman of that region, whose pride of character ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... quick And graceful turned the head on the broad chest Encased in pliant steel, his constant vest, Whence split the sun off in a spray of fire Across the room; and, loosened of its tire Of steel, that head let breathe the comely brown Large massive locks discoloured as if a crown Encircled them, so frayed the basnet ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... loved and adored him with passionate idolatry. It has just been shown in what terms Louise of Savoy, in her daily collection of private memoranda, used to speak to herself of her son, "My king, my lord, my Caesar, and my son!" She was proud, ambitious, audacious, or pliant at need, able and steadfast in mind, violent and dissolute in her habits, greedy of pleasure and of money as well as of power, so that she gave her son neither moral principles nor a moral example: for him the supreme kingship, for herself ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... it [the mob] takes to weapons such as men Snatch when despair makes human hearts less pliant. Then comes 'the tug of war;'—'t will come again, I rather doubt; and I would fain say 'fie on't,' If I had not perceived that revolution Alone can save ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... slow you are," said she; "will you not go faster? Take care that I don't prick your neck with my sting." The Mule made answer: "I am not moved by your words, but I fear him who, sitting on the next seat, guides my yoke[21] with his pliant whip, and governs my mouth with the foam-covered reins. Therefore, cease your frivolous impertinence, for I well know when to go at a gentle pace, and ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... expressed in such fashion, did not fail in its appeal to the romantic girl; and when, a little later, Gabrielle visited the Royalist army then besieging Chartres, it was a much more pliant Gabrielle who listened to the King's wooing and whose eyes brightened at his stories of bravery and danger. Henri might be old and ugly, but he had at least a charm of manner, a frank, simple manliness, which made him the idol ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... poorly paid railway officials in these parts are the obsequious servants of those who liberally bribe. The station-master, though a very grand personage, indeed, in his uniform and metal-bound cap, became pliant as an East Indian waiter and accepted without question the explanation of the lady. It was she who was spokesman throughout. She said that she and her companion were play-actors and that their baggage was detained by a cruel manager of a Munich musical beer-hall; ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... such a cluster of "niggers" to exhibit unhappiness, at a moment when there were so many grounds of excitement. The people of this race know nothing of the word, perhaps; but they delight in the thing, quite as much as if they did nothing but electioneer all their lives. Most pliant instruments would their untutored feelings make in the hands of your demagogue; and, possibly, it may have some little influence on the white American to understand, how strong is his resemblance to the "nigger," when he gives himself up ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... godlike an attempt the world to mend; The world, where lucky throws to blockheads fall, Knaves know the game, and honest men pay all. How hard for real worth to gain its price! A man shall make his fortune in a trice, If blest with pliant, tho' but slender, sense, Feign'd modesty, and real impudence: A supple knee, smooth tongue, an easy grace, A curse within, a smile upon his face; A beauteous sister, or convenient wife, Are prizes in the lottery of life; Genius and virtue ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... at the ceiling. "You see, I'm naturally tough. Always went in for rough sports—football, rowing, boxing. Poor old Stefani's idea; and not so bad, either. Of course he was always worrying about my hands; but I always took great care to keep them soft and pliant. Which sounds rummy, considering the pounding I used to give and take. My word, I used to go to bed with my hands done up in ointments like a professional beauty! Of course I'm dizzy yet, and the bally spot is sore; but solid food and some exercise will have me off ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... Khudstick, An alpenstock made of tough wood, usually of Cotoneaster baccillaris (lun); should be well tested before purchase, as life may depend on its strength. Killanmarg, A wide sloping marg above Gulmarg, just above the pine forest on the slopes of Apharwat. Kilta, Creel made of the pliant withes of the Wych Hazel, Parrotia Jacquemontiana (Chob-i-poh). Kishenganga, A large affluent of the Jhelum which drains the Tilail Valley, passes Gurais, and joins the Jhelum below Muzafferabad. Kitardaji, Forest house in the Machipura. Kitmaghar, Bearer. ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... to make a bend to the left, and enter La Mancha and the kingdom of Murcia. The youth thanked them cordially, and gave them on the spot a hundred gold crowns to divide amongst them, whereupon they became as pliant as washed leather. Preciosa, however, was not pleased with the continuance among them of Don Sancho, for that was the youth's name, but the gipsies changed it to Clement. Andrew too was rather annoyed at this arrangement; ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... stubborn will, But prudent, wary, pliant still, Who, since his work was good, Would do it as ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... relieved here and there by patches of wiry shrubs, used as fuel at the desert stations, or lines of hillocks succeeding each other like waves on the surface of the shoreless deep. The wind, even more than the natural barrenness of the soil, prevents the growth of any vegetation except low, pliant herbage. Withered plants are uprooted and scattered by the gale like patches of foam on the stormy sea. These terrible winds, which of course were against us, with the frequently heavy cart-tracks, would make it quite impossible to ride. The monotony of many weary hours of plodding was ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... green crowns of the tallest palms, wrapping them in the fatal embrace which eventually levels the strongest monarch of the tropical forest to the earth. The thick mantle of glossy foliage often hides the multitude of hooks, loops, and nooses which the pliant cane flings round branch and stem, gripped by long ropes of flexible fibre, hardening into thick coils, rigid and unyielding as iron. The immense export of rattan for chairs, couches, and innumerable domestic purposes, indirectly results in the ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... were soft lights and low divans and the strumming of a painted ukulele that sang its little twisted soul out under the caress of Penelope's white fingers. I can still see the big black opal in its quaint setting that had replaced her wedding ring and the yellow serpent of pliant gold coiled on her thumb with two bright rubies for its eyes. Penelope Wells! How little we realized what sinister forces were playing about her that pleasant evening as we smoked and jested and sipped our glasses, gazing from time to time up the broad vista of Fifth Avenue with ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... prettier than I supposed," he thought. Her lips, her nose, her eyes of deep gray with their wonderfully long lashes—each had a particular charm of its own. He admired the grace of her figure. He felt an odd surprise at her apparent soft and pliant strength, as at a discovery. His mind thrilled with delight at ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... not thin, and her figure struck me as being one that might revive love when it believed itself exhausted. She perfectly represented the idea conveyed by the word mignonne, for she was one of those pliant little women who allow themselves to be taken up, petted, set down, and taken up again like a kitten. Her small feet, as I heard them on the gravel, made a light sound essentially their own, that harmonized with ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... quarters. She stood some minutes talking with Mr. Ghyrkins, not noticing us in the shadow of the tent some thirty yards away; Isaacs and I watched her intently—with very different feelings, possibly, but yet intensely admiring the fair creature, so strong and pliant, and yet so erect and straight. She turned half round towards us, and I saw there were flowers in the front of her dress. I wondered where they had come from; they were roses—of all flowers in the world to be blooming ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... resented them bitterly; and among the kinsfolk, one of them, I have reason to know, made a strong private protest. Mr. Morley's attitude in reply could only have been that which is well expressed by a sentence of Darmesteter's about Renan: "So pliant in appearance, so courteous in manner, he became a bar of iron as soon as one sought to wrest from him an act or word contrary to the ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and featureless. The light was behind it, and it stood out in silhouette like a forced effect, and Truda, remarking it, frowned, for of late she found herself impatient of forced effects. She was a pale, slender, brown-haired woman, with a small clear, pliant face, and some manner of languor in all her attitudes that lent them a slow grace of their own and did not at all impair the startling energy she could command for her work. While she looked out at the city ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... his astonished eyes a backbone that was evidently made of iron. She was immovable, he admitted, and because she was immovable he was conscious of a sharp unreasonable impulse to reduce her to the pliant curves of her girlhood. After eight years of an absolute supremacy, which had been far from good for him, his will had been tripped up at last by so small a thing as a mere ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... an understanding, which, whenever unbiassed by her affections, was sure to direct her unerringly; but the extreme softness of her temper frequently misled her judgment, by making it, at the pleasure either of misfortune or of artifice, always yield to compassion, and pliant to entreaty. Where her counsel and opinion were demanded, they were certain to reflect honour on her capacity and discernment; but where her assistance or her pity were supplicated, her purse and her tears were immediately bestowed, and in her ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the pain in his eyes, he managed to get his eyelids open. He tried to struggle to his feet, only to discover that he was firmly bound with what appeared to be tough creepers, pliant as ropes. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... to each other when opposite that precise point. Both stopped, and a conversation ensued, that may be said to have passed directly over the heads of those who were concealed. Indeed, nothing sheltered the travellers but the branches and leaves of plants, so pliant that they yielded to every current of air, and which a puff of wind a little stronger than common would have blown away. Fortunately the line of sight carried the eyes of the two parties of savages, whether they stood in the water or on the land, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... were going to steal over my senses now, but they did not. A copper-colored skeleton, with a rag around him, brought me a glass decanter of water, with a lighted tobacco pipe in the top of it, and a pliant stem a yard long, with a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mount their colts of speed, Their sculptur'd cars full little here they need; From the right side they take the arrow keen, Ne'er to its quiver to return, I ween; The bow, the left side's fitting ornament; The bow, the tough and pliant bow is bent; It yields a sound, like thunder from afar, While flies the arrow, like ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... viewed her mother with a shrewdly sparkling eye. Madame caught his rallying looks without resenting them—she had too much good sense for that. Supple as the young doctor seemed, one could not despise him—this pliant part was evidently not adopted in the design to curry favour with his employer: while he liked his office at the pensionnat, and lingered strangely about the Rue Fossette, he was independent, almost careless in his carriage there; and yet, too, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... bloodshot eyes. Fascinated, his glance dwelt upon her; nothing of her fresh beauty was lost on him; the smooth curve of her soft white throat, the alluring charm of her warm sensuous lips, the tiny dimple that came and went when she smiled, the graceful pliant lines of her figure, the rare poise of her small head—his glance observed all. For better or for worse he loved her with whatever of the man there was in him; he might hate her in some sudden burst of fierce anger because of her ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... lawyers can with ease Twist words and meanings as you please; That language, by your skill made pliant, Will bend to favour every client; That 'tis the fee directs the sense, To make out either side's pretence. When you peruse the clearest case, You see it with a double face: For scepticism's your profession; You hold there's ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... tinge of color had crept into Betty's cheeks. "Will you let me renew our acquaintance at Belle Plain? I shall be in West Tennessee before the summer is over; probably I shall leave here within a week," he said, bending toward her. His glance dwelt on her face and the pliant lines of her figure, and his sense swam. Since their first meeting the girl's beauty had haunted and allured him; with his passionate sense of life he was disposed to these violent fancies, and he had a masterful way with women just as he had a masterful way with men. Now, however, ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... morning it was still one night nearer home! Eight days had passed. They beheld that distant bank of mist that forever haunts the vast shallows of Newfoundland. Boldly they made it; and plunging in, its pliant wreaths wrapped them about. They shall never emerge. The last sunlight has flashed from that deck. The last voyage is done to ship and passengers. At noon there came noiselessly stealing from the north that fated instrument of destruction. In that mysterious shroud, that vast atmosphere of mist, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... unhonored stand-still at thirty! I am a successful tradesman, and in this character I shall probably die. Could I begin to be a painter now, say you? Alas! my knowledge of the art is too great for patience with the slow hand! I could not draw a line without despair. The pliant fingers and the plastic mind must keep pace to make progress in art. My taste is fixed, and my imagination uncreative, because chained down by certainties; and the shortsighted ardor and daring experiments which ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... "dago" known as Anatole that Mrs. Doyle commended her trio of allies, and being rid of them she turned back to her prisoner, their erstwhile companion. Absinthe wrought its work on his meek and pliant spirit, and the shaking hand was nerved to do the woman's work. At her dictation, with such corrections as his better education suggested, two letters were draughted, and with these in her hand she went aloft. In fifteen minutes she returned, placed one of these letters in ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... Shadows of Power! Rise to your duty— 160 This is the hour! Walk lovely and pliant[cz] From the depth of this fountain, As the cloud-shapen giant Bestrides the Hartz Mountain.[209] Come as ye were, That our eyes may behold The model in air Of the form I will mould, Bright as the Iris 170 When ether is spanned;— Such his desire is, [Pointing to ARNOLD. Such my command![da] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... has always waited on human action. The power is only in the Holy Spirit. The most astute and strong leadership amounts to nothing without Him flooding it with His presence. But the power needs a channel. The Spirit needs men strongly pliant to His will. The great world-plan waits, and always has waited, for willing men. And so our great Friend asks us to follow because He really needs us ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... strength, its downward grasp and its upward reach, the hardening of the tender stem and slender cylindrical trunk into the massive oak or pine, the growth of its tough, strong garment of bark, its winter times of rest and spring times of renewal, until from the tender green twig so frail and pliant it has become too large to clasp with the arms, and high enough to swing its dry leaves into the ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... respect to its navigation and commerce. It is the generally received opinion, that the Britons, at the time of the invasion of their island by Caesar, had no ships except those which he and other ancient authors, particularly Solinus and Lucan, describe. These were made of light and pliant wood, their ribs seem to have been formed of hurdles, and they were lined as well as covered (so far as they were at all decked) with leather. They had, indeed, masts and sails; the latter and the ropes were also made of leather; the sails could ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... The pliant harebell swinging in the breeze, On some grey rock: The single sheep, and the one blasted tree, And the bleak music from that old stone wall:— In the meadows and the lower ground, Was all the sweetness of a common dawn:— And that green corn all day ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... him that confesseth to be her seruaunt, and whose wil dependeth at her commaundement. And when the whole matter shalbe rightlye iudged, shee that reuealeth imperfection of a Suter, sheweth her opinion and minde to be more pliant to yelde, then indewed with reason to abandone pleasure and to reiect the insolencie of the same, sith Reason's force doth easely vanquish light affections of sensuall partes, whose fancies imprinted wyth ficklenes, do make them so ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... Genius and Destiny are your handmaidens." Malone leaned across the table, resting his weight on his planted knuckles. Under his shaggy brows his eyes burned deeply and satirically. Across from him Hamilton Burton stood, younger, slenderer and more pliant of pose; his eyes meeting those of his protagonist, level and unwavering. "Grant that all your self-adulation is warrantable. Now that you have attained this place in the councils of the few, do you mean to become only a wrecker ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... he wished it to be. As soon as they clearly understood what his desires were, they went off into the bush and, armed with a small tomahawk lent them by Leslie, proceeded to cut down some forty or fifty young and pliant saplings, the butt-ends of which they sharpened to a point, and then thrust vertically, into the ground in a circle some twelve feet in diameter. They then brought the tops of the saplings all together and bound them; thus producing a skeleton structure exactly ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... taxes levied for the support of a church which they never entered. And so, before the Revolution opened, the Western imagination had conjured up the specter of a corrupt and effete "East": land of money-changers and self-styled aristocrats and a pliant clergy, the haunt of lawyers and hangers-on, proper dwelling-place of "servants" and the beaten slave: a land of cities, scorning the provincial West, and bent on exploiting its laborious and upright people. And who could ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... which characterized their ancestors, but which are too small to assail horned cattle, mark the vanishing stages of this great stock, which will soon be known only in memory. The history of this peculiar herd-dog shows us how marvellously pliant the body and mind of this species has become under the conditions of civilization. The rude process of unconscious selection, acting without steadfastness of purpose or rationally developed skill, serves to sway the qualities of the animal this way or that to meet the ever-changing requirements ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... the name of imperator, [26] with which the soldiers had been wont to salute a victorious general. Though he abolished none of the old republican forms, the Senate became simply his advisory council, the assemblies, his submissive agents the consuls, praetors and tribunes, his pliant tools. The laurel wreath, the triumphal dress, the conqueror's ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... pliant body. His thought is father to his deed, and there is the usual resemblance between son and parent. What matters it that he has lived in his employer's house, and has found him no Egyptian taskmaster, but a benefactor, lavish of favours? What matters it that he has in charge ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... Boer war both governments began with bluff but could n't stay there, the military tension was too much for them. In 1898 our people had read the word "war" in letters three inches high for three months in every newspaper. The pliant politician McKinley was swept away by their eagerness, and our squalid war with Spain became ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... the mechanical motor which shall be found to be most universally adaptable, that is to say, most pliant in accommodating itself to the various lines and to the varying work of the traffic, will be the form of motor which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... contours of a ship's sail bellying in the wind are not more inevitable, nor more graceful, than the curves of an adze-head or of a plough-share. Cast in iron or steel, the gracefulness of a plough-share is more indestructible than the metal, yet pliant (in the limits of its type) as a line of English blank verse. It changes for different soils: it is widened out or narrowed; it is deep-grooved or shallow; not because of caprice at the foundry or to satisfy ...
— Progress and History • Various
... that throws light on this rapid change. On speculative points any man may be suddenly converted; for these may depend on facts or arguments which might never have occurred to him before. But when we watch the weathercock chopping with the wind, so pliant to move, and so stiff when fixed—when we observe this "preciousest grueller" clothed in purple, and equally hardy in the most opposite measures—become a favourite with James II., and a furious advocate for arbitrary power; when we see him railing ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the Southern style is made up of half-tints, with a feeling of reserve and intentional restraint, which gives it, with equal power, at times a more appealing charm. The lines are pliant, immersed in shading, color is suggested in a subtle fashion and, in contrast to the almost brutal emphasis of the North, it finds expression in chiaroscuro and ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... appeared here in a federal paper, besides the mutilated hue which these translations and re-translations of it produced generally, gave a mistranslation of a single word, which entirely perverted its meaning, and made it a pliant and fertile text of misrepresentation of my political principles. The original, speaking of an Anglican, monarchical, and aristocratical party, which had sprung up since he had left us, states their object to be 'to draw over us the substance, as they had already done the forms of the British ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... said he, "three kinds of friendships which are profitable, and three which are detrimental. To make friends with the upright, with the trustworthy, with the experienced, is to gain benefit; to make friends with the subtly perverse, with the artfully pliant, with the subtle in ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... of the owner. The sharp points, after the cutting, are guarded by plaited twigs. The door is made of quite a number of stout sticks driven into the ground at equal distances apart, through which, in and out, are woven pliant sticks. When this is accomplished, the maker cuts off the irregular ends to make it fit the door, and removes it to its place. Screens are often used inside to keep out the wind: they are made so as to be placed in whatever position the wind is blowing. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... as if he had been polished with a shoe-brush) entered the kitchen of the hotel, and asked for the largest knife they had. The head-cook gave him a sort of carving-knife, some eighteen inches long, sharp as a razor, and pliant as a foil. The negro looked at it, shook his head as if in doubt whether it would do, but nevertheless took it up stairs with him. Presently he brought it down again, and asked for a larger one. The cook opened all his drawers, and at last found a sort of cutlass, which he hardly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... grew careless and confident, reckless of giving offence, ruder in their behaviour, more grasping in their exactions, more domineering, more oppressive. Prudence should perhaps have counselled the Phoenician cities to submit, to be yielding and pliant, to cultivate the arts of the parasite and the flatterer; but the people had still a rough honesty about them. It was against the grain to flatter or submit themselves; constant voyages over wild seas in fragile vessels kept up their manhood; constant encounters with pirates, cannibals, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... where they 'scape the plagues of Pox and Pills, The Sin is liable to fifty Ills, Of equal Danger, tho' a diff'rent Cure, As he that dreading Claps wou'd Sin secure; For soon the pliant Wretch he has beguil'd Hath to his Charge and wonder prove with Child: At which, 'tmay properly be said a Man, Leaps from the Fire to the Frying-pan, This for his Reputation sake must be reveal'd When Claps are only as a Jest reveal'd She's now Remov'd—Deliver'd—and ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... mercy! Harley had contrived to lead a little bubbling brook through a green walk in the middle of the ground, upon which he had erected a mill in miniature for the diversion of Edwards's infant grandson, and made shift in its construction to introduce a pliant bit of wood that answered with its fairy clack to the murmuring of the rill that turned it. I have seen him stand, listening to these mingled sounds, with his eye fixed on the boy, and the smile of conscious satisfaction on his cheek, ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... afternoon. At that distance the wagon-road narrowed to a bridle-path, and the figure moving slowly along it and entering the forest at the base of the mountain was shrunk to a toy. For a moment Clayton stood with his face to the west, drinking in the air; then tightening his belt, he caught the pliant body of a sapling and swung loose from the rock. As the tree flew back, his dog sprang after him. The descent was sharp. At times he was forced to cling to the birch-tops till they lay flat on ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... imaginary species of screech-owl, which they superstitiously think attends the windows of dying persons. The plumage of the remiges of the wings of every species of owl that I have yet examined is remarkably soft and pliant. Perhaps it may be necessary that the wings of these birds should not make much resistance or rushing, that they may be enabled to steal through the air unheard upon ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... so I seek the shades, I presently do see The god of love forsake his bow and sit me by; If that I think to write, his Muses pliant be; If so I plain my grief, the wanton boy will cry. If I lament his pride, he doth increase my pain If tears my cheeks attaint, his cheeks are moist with moan If I disclose the wounds the which my heart hath slain, He takes his fascia off, and wipes them dry anon. If ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... impurities the chief physical characteristics of flax are its snowy whiteness, silky luster and great tenacity. The individual fibers may be from ten to twelve inches in length; they are much greater in diameter than cotton. It is less pliant and elastic than cotton and bleaches and dyes less readily. Linen cloth is a better conductor of heat than cotton and clothing made from it is cooler. When pure, it is, like ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... in the usual manner. The instrument used in writing on wood, was made of metal, and called a style. For stone, brass, &c., a chisel was employed. When the bark and leaves of trees, skins, and other materials of a more pliant nature, superseded the above-named tables, the chisel and the style, or stylus, gave way to the reed and cane, and afterwards to the quill, the hair pencil (as now used by the Chinese,) and ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... distain'd with crimes, Rousing elate in these degenerate times; View unsuspecting Innocence a prey, As guileful Fraud points out the erring way; While subtle Litigation's pliant tongue The life-blood equal sucks of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... before you observed the prodigious size of the ears, which also adorned this extraordinary countenance. The costume of this being was not less remarkable than his natural appearance. He wore a complete under dress of pliant leather, which fitted close up to his throat and down to his wrists and ankles, where it was clasped with large fastenings, either of gold or some gilt material. This, with the addition of a species ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... connexion. It frequently occurs in common conversation, as a verb and noun, but not as frequently in the books as formerly. The farmer says to his hired man, "Go and get a withe and come and withe up the fence;" that is, get some pliant twigs of tough wood, twist them together, and withe or bind them round these posts, so that one may stand firm with, or withed to, the other. A book with a cover, is one that has a cover joined, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... sarcasms on women have never been equalled in severity, and we cannot but hope that they were unjust. From an historical point of view, as a delineation of the manners of his age, his satires are priceless, even like the epigrams of Martial. This uncompromising poet, not pliant and easy like Horace, animadverted like an incorruptible censor on the vices which were undermining the moral health and preparing the way for violence; on the hypocrisy of philosophers and the cruelty of tyrants; on the frivolity of women and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... shared its dark recesses with hosts of others. Through the air, on wings of skin or feathers or tissue membrane; crawling or leaping by night; burrowing underground; gnawing up through the great supporting posts; swarming up the bamboos and along the pliant curving stems to drop quietly on the shingled roof;—thus had the jungle-life come past Hope's unseeing eyes and found the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... well known to politicians as an industrious and useful official man, and as an upright and consistent member of Parliament. He has been one of the most moderate, and, at the same time, one of the least pliant members of the Conservative party. His conduct has, indeed, on some questions been so Whiggish, that both those who applauded and those who condemned it have questioned his claim to be considered as a Tory. But his Toryism, such as it is, he has held fast through all changes of fortune and fashion; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... upon the pavement of a mosque whose roof is heaven. In the level light the scythes of the mowers flash as we move past. From their bronzed foreheads the men toss masses of dark curls. Their muscular flanks and shoulders sway sideways from firm yet pliant reins. On one hill, fronting the sunset, there stands a herd of some thirty huge grey oxen, feeding and raising their heads to look at us, with just a flush of crimson on their horns and dewlaps. This is the scale of Mason's ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... of dignity, he displayed wonderful contradictions in his character and bearing. He had, says Madame de Maintenon, 'beaucoup d'esprit, et peu de savoir;' an expressive phrase. 'He was,' she adds, 'pliant in nature, intriguing, and cautious;' nevertheless she never, she declares, possessed a more steady friend, nor one more confiding and better adapted to advise. Brave as he was, he held personal valour, or affected to do so, in light estimation. His ambition was to rule others. Lively in conversation, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... how it was. He had never been treated so before. He was not proof against entreaty and submission; but I had neither supplicated nor submitted. The stuff that I was made of was at once damnably tough and devilishly pliant. When he thought of my impudence, in staying in his house after he had bade me leave it, he was tempted to resume his passion. When he reflected on my courage, in making light of his anger, notwithstanding his known impetuosity ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... sparingly of the meal that had been prepared for him. But he never for a moment forgot the grave of his friend. He carefully visited it throughout the spring, and weeded out the grass, and kept the ground in a soft and pliant state. Very soon he saw the tops of the green plumes coming through the ground; and the more careful he was to obey his instructions in keeping the ground in order, the faster they grew. He was, however, careful to conceal the exploit from his father. Days and weeks had ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... When, issuing naked, to the wondering herd, He charm'd their eyes; and, for they loved, they fear'd: Not arm'd with horns of arbitrary might, Or claws to seize their furry spoils in fight, Or with increase of feet to o'ertake them in their flight: Of easy shape, and pliant every way; Confessing still the softness of his clay, 270 And kind as kings upon their coronation day: With open hands, and with extended space Of arms, to satisfy a large embrace. Thus kneaded up with milk, the new-made man His kingdom o'er his kindred ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... and far the garden growths. The sweet, the frail, the rude, Draw close, as if with one consent, And find each other good, Held by the bind-weed's pliant ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... "Poor pliant Prince Max," sighed Jacqueline, "he is still being influenced to stay in Mexico! Come, Berthe, we must make all speed to San ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... where genial friendship plays The pleasing game of interchanging praise. Self-love, grimalkin of the human heart, Is ever pliant to the master's art; Soothed with a word, she peacefully withdraws And sheathes in velvet her obnoxious claws, And thrills the hand that smooths her glossy fur With the light tremor ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... child of want who may not freely receive an education which will fit him for any office in his country. The common school is one of the glories of America, and every citizen may be justly proud of it. It brings together while in a pliant condition the children of people of different origins; and besides diffusing knowledge among them, it softens the prejudices of race and party, and carries on a continual ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... membrane. In this are deposited the harder mineral substances, which are composed principally of carbonate and phosphate of lime. In very early life, the bones consist chiefly of the animal part, and are then soft and pliant. As the child advances in age, the bones grow harder, by the gradual deposition of the phosphate of lime, which is supplied by the food, and carried to the bones by the blood. In old age, the hardest ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... priesthoods, armed with exclusive cognizance of things human and divine and familiar with the whole routine of political procedure, influential in the public assembly through the large number of pliant adherents attached to the several families, and, lastly, entitled to examine and to reject every decree of the community,—the patricians might have long preserved their practical power, just because they had at the right time abandoned ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... he might let her fall. The arms that held her felt pliant and strong as steel, and their clasp about her filled her with a strange, new ecstasy that thrilled her from head ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... sifted, as if through stained glass. With the slender stems of the trees rising on each side in the semi-twilight, the grove was like the transept of a cathedral. It seemed a profanation to speak in such a place. Lynde could have wandered on forever in contented silence, with that tall, pliant figure in its severely cut drapery moving before him. As he watched the pure outline defining itself against the subdued light, he was reminded of a colored bas- relief he had seen on a certain Egyptian vase in the Museum at Naples. Presently ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... to Wainamoinen, There with him to offer battle; He will charm thee with his singing Will bewitch thee in his anger, He will drive thee back dishonored, Sink thee in the fatal snow-drift, Turn to ice thy pliant fingers, Turn to ice thy feet and ankles." These the words of Youkahainen: Good the judgement of a father, Better still, a mother's counsel, Best of all one's own decision. I will go and face the minstrel, Challenge ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... foremost, now delight to cleave, With pliant arm, thy glassy wave? The captive linnet which enthrall? What idle progeny succeed, To chase the rolling circle's speed, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... enchain the attention of Desdemona, that if she were called off at any time by household affairs, she would despatch with all haste that business, and return, and with a greedy ear devour Othello's discourse. And once he took advantage of a pliant hour, and drew from her a prayer, that he would tell her the whole story of his life at large, of which she had heard so much, but only by parts: to which he consented, and beguiled her of many a tear, when he spoke of some distressful stroke which ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... He stood in a huge chamber circling to a dome far overhead. Before him, on a dais a full thousand feet in diameter, stood—sat—rested, whatever it might be called—another monster, far larger than any he had yet seen, like a mountain of pliant thinking, living metal. And Phobar knew he stood in the ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... lawyer, who was the eldest of the four, long, brown, toughly and dryly pliant as an old blade of marsh-grass, he showed in speech, look, nor manner no sign of enthusiasm, but he ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... vision he brings. There are no facts, like bricks, to build stories with. What, pray, in the realm of human life is a fact? By no means a stubborn thing, as the proverb pretends. On the contrary, a most pliant, shifting, chameleon-coloured thing, as flexible as figures in the hands of the statistician. What is commonly called a fact is merely a one-sided piece of information, a dead thing, not the series of complex, mutually inter-working relations that constitutes a ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... fingers, and "a diamond pin" on his "shirt frill," a "curb chain" with large gold seals hanging from his waistcoat—(a "curb chain" proper was then a little thin chain finely wrought, of very close links.) Then there was the "pliant ebony cane, with a heavy gold top." Ebony, however, is not pliant, but the reverse—black was the word intended. Then those "smalls" and stockings to match. Mr. Pickwick, a privileged man, appeared on this occasion, indeed always, in his favourite ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... exteriors and forms of life. His present ambition was not to make a figure at his father's table, but to eclipse his rivals at school, and to acquire an influence and authority among these confederates. Nevertheless, Fathom might possibly have fallen under his displeasure or contempt, had not that pliant genius found means to retain his friendship by seasonable compliances and submission; for the sole study, or at least the chief aim of Ferdinand, was to make himself necessary and agreeable to those on whom his dependence ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... came up quietly again, but repeated the disagreeable business, still more dangerously. Having broken off several more, and again pulled back the others, the skittish animal consented to pass. But in passing he bent down a very pliant bough, which, when released, flew back and hit my peaceful steed sharply on the legs. For a few seconds his efforts to get free were—to put it mildly— unpleasantly severe, especially as he became with each effort more entangled in the tree. When the reins were at length unknotted, ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... shining bright as yellow gold; that square breast and Brahma voice; that you! possessing all these excellent qualities, should have entered on the sorrow-giving forest; what fortune now remains for the world, losing thus the holy king of earth? That those delicate and pliant feet, pure as the lily and of the same color, should now be torn by stones and thorns; O how can such feet tread on such ground! Born and nourished in the guarded palace, clad with garments of the finest texture, washed in ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... Douglas was found an able and pliant instrument. Like Clay, Webster and Calhoun before him, Judge Douglas had the presidential bee in his bonnet. He thought the South would, as it could, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... much interested in the manoeuvring of a raft which was passing by. 'Dear Miss Power,' he resumed, 'before I go and join your uncle above, let me just ask, Do I stand any chance at all yet? Is it possible you can never be more pliant than you ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... wells up through the white sand and gravel as through a sieve, and fills the broad space that has been arranged for it so gently and imperceptibly that one does not suspect its copiousness until he has seen the overflow. It turns no wheel, yet it lends a pliant hand to many of the affairs of that household. It is a refrigerator in summer and a frost-proof envelope in winter, and a fountain of delights the year round. Trout come up from the Weebutook River and dwell there and become ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... effort to produce that "map of busy life," which is diurnally, almost hourly, spread out before us, and for a consideration, too, which in many instances is not equivalent to the cost of the material upon which it is sketched: with the lightning harmlessly conducting along the pliant wire, stretched from one end of the continent to the other, thoughts which have annihilated time: with another element, which has nearly obliterated space, they are spread over its face; and by another application of the same magic power are wafted hundreds and hundreds of ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... who is an excellent Anatomist, has promised me by the first Opportunity to dissect a Woman's Tongue, and to examine whether there may not be in it certain Juices which render it so wonderfully voluble [or [3]] flippant, or whether the Fibres of it may not be made up of a finer or more pliant Thread, or whether there are not in it some particular Muscles which dart it up and down by such sudden Glances and Vibrations; or whether in the last Place, there may not be certain undiscovered Channels running from the Head and the Heart, to this little Instrument ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... barbaric music ceased; the orchestra broke forth afresh with a light Parisian waltz, and down between the lines of tables came a negro and a negress—properties of the place, as were the glasses and the table linen—waltzing with the pliant suppleness, the conscious sensuality of their race, and close behind them followed a second couple—a Spaniard, restless and lithe, small of stature and pallid of face, and a young ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... thrush that robs the raspberry canes is busy; yesterday he had little but dust for his guerdon, but now fresh, juicy fruit repays him as he swings to and fro on the pliant branches. The blackbirds and starlings find the worms an easy prey—poor brother worm ever ready for sacrifice. I can hear the soft expectant chatter of the family of martins under the roof; there will be good hunting, and ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... however, very polite of him not to press me on the spot. His arguments, and the weight with which he advanced them, had already convinced my pliant youth; and I now first saw the difficulties and doubtfulness of a matter which I had privately pictured to myself as so feasible. Frau Hofrath Boehme invited me shortly afterwards. I found her alone. She was no longer young, and had very delicate health; ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... The comte Jean had scarcely returned an hour, when we received a letter from M. Morand, stating, that he had gone, in consequence of the instructions of comte Jean, to the comtesse de Bearn; that he had found the lady pliant enough on the first point, and disposed to content herself with the half of the sum originally demanded; that on point the second, I mean the appointments of herself and son, she would come to no compromise, and stuck hard and fast to the written promise of ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... into the upper air. Growing nowhere else, and unknown in earlier centuries, By no means great in size, it stretches not far its Spreading branches, nor lifts a lofty top to heaven; But lowly, after the manner of myrtle or pliant broom, It rises from the ground. Many a nut bends its rich branches. Small, like a bean, dark and dull in color, Marked by a slight groove in the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... hands that tightest grasp Each other—the two cords that soonest knit A fast and stubborn tie: your true love-knot Is nothing to it. Faugh! the supple touch Of pliant interest, or the dust of time, Or the pin-point of temper, loose, or not, Or snap love's silken band. Fear and old hate, They are sure weavers—they work for the storm, The whirlwind, and the rocking surge; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... toward the doorway and her pliant figure bent for an instant in the prescribed form of Japanese courtesy and salutation. Then she clasped both hands together with a little cry of dismay. "Oh, so sorree," she murmured in contrition, "forgot ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... core. I read his letter again, and when he bade me think of him, even at the altar, even when pledging my faith to Edward, I murmured to myself, "Ever between him and me, in thought if not in deed; ever with thy smooth tongue, thy determination strong as iron, and thy character pliant as steel; ever claiming thy share in my heart, and thy place in my thoughts; ever toiling for thine own ends, and hinting at revenge, even while boasting of thy love, and of the ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... says M. Faguet, "and disconcerted criticism by the impossibility of explaining his methods of procedure; he was luminous, supple, naturally pliant and yielding; beneath his apparently effeminate grace an extraordinary strength of character would suddenly make itself felt; he had, more than any nineteenth-century writer, the quality of charm; he exercised a caressing innuence which ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... of all coquetting with both the extreme radical and military parties which is going on daily in Peking and the provinces the secret object of Japanese diplomacy is either the restoration of the Manchu dynasty, or the enthronement of some pliant usurper, a puppet-Emperor being what is needed to repeat in China the history of Korea. Japan would be willing to go to any lengths to secure the attainment of this reactionary object. Faithful to her "divine mission," ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... not oil mingle with moist things? A. Because, being pliant, soft and thick in itself, it cannot be divided into parts, and so cannot be mingled; neither if it be put on the earth ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... is no place so sweet as the greenwoods In summer, heaven and earth awake with sounds Melodial; the ripple of the breeze Amongst the sun-green leaves, and pliant boughs, Just like the rustle of young summer's dress; The songs of birds, and the low mystic hum Of bees amongst their floral treasuries; Sweetest of all, the cool and liquid tones Of brooks—nature's true-hearted bards, who draw Bright inspirations from a pebbled ridge, And frame them ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... were all brownfaced, sturdy little country children, with no very marked traits save a love of mischief controlled by the fear of their father. These, with Martha the serving-maid, formed our whole household during those boyish years when the pliant soul of the child is hardening into the settled character of the man. How these influences affected me I shall leave for a future sitting, and if I weary you by recording them, you must remember that I am telling these things rather for your profit than for your amusement; ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... realize the Northern ideal of a Southern overseer. He was an obstinate man, and his cruelty was low, vulgar, and brutal like his mind. He would have been hypocritical, but that his character was too coarse-grained to be pliant enough for successful dissimulation. The members of the Board of Directors (with one or two exceptions) were men of much the same stamp as the Warden—with rather more cultivation perhaps, and less force. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... can always influence the individual members by holding out prospects of advancement and decorations, and if this device fails, he can make refractory members retire, and fill up their places with men of more pliant disposition. A Council constituted in this way cannot, of course, display much independence of thought or action, especially in a country like Russia, where no one ventures to ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... As the pliant saw coaxed beams, and slabs, and flooring boards out of the forest trees I grew to like beginning at the beginning of things, and realised there was an underlying truth in Dan's whimsical reiteration, that ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... up with mucous matter, causing it unduly to expand at the bridge, and giving it rather a stumpy, fat appearance. The nostrils are not very sharply and powerfully cut in most cases, and are rounded up and undecided, a sign of pliant character. ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... little child." The orator saw his opportunity and swooped upon it, with a flash of dazzling teeth from under his pliant lips. "This sweet little girl asks if I am preaching. I thank her for the word. Preaching, indeed! Preaching a blessed gospel, for this world of pain and suffering; a gospel of hope and happiness ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams |
