"Rigid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... commonly a darker day of cloud, still hard and forbidding, though milder in promise, with a sky of lead, deepening near the horizon into darker films of iron. Then, while all the nerves of the universe seem rigid and tense, the first reluctant flake steals slowly down, like a tear. In a few hours the whole atmosphere begins to relax once more, and in our astonishing climate very possibly the snow changes to rain in twenty-four ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... a long-lived race. The poverty of their food may account for this, together with the want of shelter from the vicissitudes of the climate. The care taken by civilized man to preserve health is, by increasing susceptibility, the indirect cause of disease; the more rigid is the observance of regimen, the more pernicious will be the slightest aberration from it; but a total disregard of all the comforts of regular food, and efficient shelter, the habit of cramming the stomach when food is plentiful, and of enduring long abstinence when it cannot be procured, has ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... 7, 8, 14, 21. When the season of persecution arrived, and the constancy of Christians was tested in this very way, St Paul's own principles would require a correspondingly rigid abstinence from even apparent complicity in idolatrous rites. There is every reason therefore to believe that, if St Paul had been living when the Apocalypse was written, he would have expressed himself not less strongly on the same side. On the other hand these early Gnostics who are ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... banners, standards, flags, in the shape of long shirts, short shirts, sheets, and stockings, hanging out to dry.) They entered the house, resembling a hen-house, where the vettura was reposing, and commenced a rigid examination of the old vehicle, which looked guilty and treacherous enough to have committed all kinds of break-downs and upsets in its day. While they were thus engaged, the driver and an assistant mounted to the top and made fast the baggage, covering ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... with the garments of the world at large he wished to have no concern whatever. In the outer shop, looking into Conduit Street, there was a long counter on which goods were unrolled for inspection; and on which an artist, the solemnity of whose brow and whose rigid silence betokened the nature of his great employment, was always cutting out leather. This grave man was a German, and there was a rumour among young sportsmen that old Neefit paid this highly-skilled ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... disagreeable, unto Dhananjaya. Then the mighty-armed Bhimasena, filled with wrath, O bull of Bharata's race, reproaching Kunti's son, Arjuna, said these words, "Thou preachest truths of morality like an anchorite living in the woods or a Brahmana of rigid vows and senses under complete control. A person is called a Kshatriya because he rescues others from wounds and injuries. Being such, he must save himself from wounds and injuries. Showing forgiveness towards ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... by their chattering flocks. A noise in the upper air causes everyone to stop work. We look up, to count a flock of high-sailing cranes floating far to the south,—one hundred and fifty-three of them. The observers make a pretty picture,—the rigid figures and uplifted faces of the monks, the nuns with their up-kilted skirts, the happy children. "It is the Man with the Hoe," I murmur. "Yes," assents the Kid, "and The Angelus at ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... be found, I say; but at once to save you from disappointment, I must tell you that he is not here. By a wonderful chain of circumstances, not only has his life been preserved, but we can, without doubt, prove his identity to satisfy the most rigid demands ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... not, as a rule, wear a sour countenance; he seldom smiled, but his grave air had no cast of gloominess; it was profoundly meditative, tending often to the rapture of high vision. The lady had her own sufficient pursuits, chief among them a rigid attention to matters ecclesiastical, local and national. That her husband held notably aloof from such interests was the subject of Mrs. Otway's avowed grief, and her peculiar method of assailing his position brought about the periodical disturbance which seemed on the whole an ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... barricaded by two struggling horses and an overturned buckboard. The rigid figure of a man lay flat upon his back staring at the moon, another white-haired figure staggered forward from a rock. "Who goes there?" ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... forgetting his own—if I were about forming an expedition, and would provide myself with that character of man upon whom the issue of its success most depends; if, I say, I would seek the man possessing those rigid qualities of a moral nature which are a sure protection against doing aught that may degrade the councils of a nation, I would make this sandy cape my starting point, and draw from the upward growth of that stern energy to be found among ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... moment. His tall, thin form became rigid in the intensity of his service. In the silence, that deepened, the ticking of the clock in the front of the gallery, could be heard plainly in ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... kept silence until, as the first signs of spring came on again, while the country alternately was flooded or lay under rigid pools of ice, the line of her mouth seemed to soften and a glow crept into her eyes and a dreaming. I held my breath and waited. Thin she was, like something worn to the thread. The fine color had given place to a blue tint in the cold, and to a colorless gray as she bent over ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to that tender arm of his, but sat rigid. Something in her attitude chilled him and he dropped her hand and rose. When she looked up she saw that his face was white and set. He walked to the door ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... enacted numerous short-term reforms aimed at improving competitiveness and long-term growth. Italy has moved slowly, however, on implementing needed structural reforms, such as lightening the high tax burden and overhauling Italy's rigid labor market and over-generous pension system, because of the current economic slowdown ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Tenney sat rigid under her touch, and she went on, pouring out the mother sorrow that was the more overwhelming because it had been locked ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... she said grimly—"well, not even for Howard Talbot's sake will I receive a woman who is not a lady, or who has been divorced. In this wild city we are a class apart, above. No loose fish enters our quiet bay. Only by the most rigid code and watchfulness have we formed and preserved a society similar to that we were accustomed to in the old South. If we lowered our barriers we should be submerged. If Howard Talbot has married a woman ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... again as he caught sight of Juve and the director just entering the gallery, driving before them half a dozen patients and orderlies. Chaleck joined this little group, which had pulled up at the end of the gallery and was making laughing comments on the rigid inspection to which Juve was just about to ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... a social code. Anne was dead, but when Charlotte and Jerry were asked to sit down to turkey with their employer and familiar friend, it was Anne's unforgotten ideal that rose before her, the illuminated copy of the social code in its rigid hand. As he stood, he saw Jerry pulling the pung under a shed at the back of the barn. He knew Charlotte hadn't seen him, didn't intend to take the time to see him, but would presently be back with Jerry's ultimatum. That was ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... welcome warmth of the fire, when the figure of Antonina, still extended insensible upon the floor, caught his eye; he approached it with eager curiosity, and, raising the girl on his arm, looked at her with a long and rigid scrutiny. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... spread out along the bay back of the city, and all around the bay, except the entrance to it, are large hills, and on these a great many large guns are mounted. These natural barriers enable the Japanese to make the city a strongly fortified place. The government of Japan is good. Laws are rigid and strictly enforced. Theft is regarded as a very grave crime, and is punished with ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... kitchen, small, but as immaculately clean as the hall, and in a rocking-chair near the window sat an anxious-eyed young man with his bandaged foot up on another chair before him, and in his arms a tiny, rigid little form. ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... of Richard of Bordeaux, that prisoner must be heavily-charged to whom it did not mean at least a smile of pardon—not unfrequently a grant of lands, or sometimes a coronet. But in the reign of Henry of Bolingbroke, it meant rigid justice, as he understood justice. And his mercy, to any Lollard, convicted or suspected, usually meant solitary confinement in a prison cell. What inducement was there for Custance to throw herself on such mercy as that? Nor was she further encouraged by hearing of another ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... replied Anson dreamily. "I only know that I don't think he has any." And, as it happened, the most rigid examination failed to discover any of the gems. But, all the same, the culprit was set aside for punishment, two of the watchers present at the examination declaring that they had seen him put his hand to ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... man's heart really lies," said his stern critic, "even if he does drivel about his little flower with bones and a voice! Probably by now he's wishing the voice had been left out of his little flower." Impressively she planted a rigid forefinger on the print of ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... allow it to traverse curves easily, the front axle is fitted with a radial axle-box, which is in one casting from journal to journal, and fitted at each end with brass steps for the bearings; the box is radial, struck from the center of the rigid wheel base, and the horn plates are curved to suit the box, the lateral motion being controlled by strong springs. Another peculiarity of this engine is that, instead of the ordinary link motion, it is fitted with Joy's valve gear, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... in that rigid knot of people found power to leave the rest, and that was Ylga. She came out to the side of the Ark, and leaned up, and cried me a farewell through the gathering roar of ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... unintelligible. The shapes, faintly sketched, were transformed in the gloom which blurred every outline as it slowly faded. Below, in the vanishing mist, rose the immemorial trunks of fabulous white trees, planted as it seemed in wells that held them tightly in the rigid circle of their margin; and the night, now almost diaphanous on the level of the ground, was thicker as it rose, cutting them off at the spring of the branches, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... of stones forming the main body of the streets in his time; for it is absurd to suppose that he was so rigid an observer of the unities as to pay the slightest respect to the state of paving in the time of Julius Caesar ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... ceiling-wards. Her hair is rather scarce, and worn in bandeaux, and she commonly mounts a sprig of laurel, or a dark flower or two, which with the sham tour—I believe that is the name of the knob of artificial hair that many ladies sport—gives her a rigid and classical look. She is dressed in black, and has invariably the neatest of silk stockings and shoes: for forsooth her foot is a fine one, and she always sits with it before her, looking at it, stamping it, and admiring it a great deal. "Fido," she says to ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of judging as the compiler; that of the second will depend on their truth—and of this, too, we are as well, and in some respects better, able to judge than Calmet himself. Those accustomed to require rigid evidence will be but ill satisfied with the greater part of that which will be found in this work; simple assertion for the most part suffices—often first made long after the facts, or supposed facts, related, and not unfrequently ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... for the austerity of her manners, the rigid discipline which she maintained in the convent, and the inexorable disposition which she showed toward those who, having committed a fault, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... altogether an unhappy bondage. There was much to interest him. Something was always happening. There was no end to the strange things these gods did, and he was always curious to see. Besides, he was learning how to get along with Grey Beaver. Obedience, rigid, undeviating obedience, was what was exacted of him; and in return he escaped beatings and ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... his heart was lyric with joy; He plucked a posy of lilies; he sped like a love-sick boy. He stole up the velvety pathway—his cottage was sunsteeped and still; Vines honeysuckled the window; softly he peeped o'er the sill. The lilies dropped from his fingers; devils were choking his breath; Rigid with horror, he stiffened; ghastly his face was as death. Like a nun whose faith in the Virgin is met with a prurient jibe, He shrank—'twas the wife of his bosom in the arms ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... also there is evidently an effort to bring the deity, conceived as the abstract One, into closer union with man, an effort which is likewise visible in the later Yoga system of the Brahmins, in which, by the admission of Buddhistic elements, the visible world is recognized as real, the old rigid asceticism mitigated, Vishnu represented as the soul of the world, and immortality taught as a return of ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... boudoir was her bath and before the door leading from the one to the other was a cretonne covered screen behind which the burglar now concealed himself the while he listened in rigid apprehension for the approach of the enemy; but the only sound that came to him from the floor below was the deep laugh of Jonas Prim. A profound sigh of relief escaped the beardless lips; for that laugh assured the youth that, after all, ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that should be established from funds specially invested for that purpose in the hands of certain monasteries, bishops, &c., are grossly neglected, and it has already been suggested that a commission should be instituted by the British authorities, under the presidency of the archbishop, for a rigid investigation of the resources of all monasteries and the ACTUAL revenue of bishoprics, together with the disbursement of all sums that should have been expended either for education ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... her pass-book, and her paper of calculations. Never yet had her rigid arithmetic committed an error. Column by column she revised her figures—and made the humiliating discovery of her first mistake. She had drawn out all, and more than all, the money deposited in the bank; and the next half-yearly payment of income ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... upon the banister with her cheek against the smooth hand-rail, as if she would make a friend of it in her misery. Rigid in this position, more and more words fell successively upon her ear. But what amazed her most was the tone of her husband. He spoke merely in the accents of a man who made a ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... home. The house as a home is merely outer clothing, which should fit as an overcoat should, without wrinkles and creases that show their ready-made character. The woman, born housekeeper as she considers herself, is rigid in her ideas of what she thinks she wants, but when the builder has followed her plans she is far from satisfied with the result. She is used to material which puckers and stretches in her clothing; she cannot understand the inflexibility ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... up, the tensity grew. As each ball was delivered, a chill, rigid silence held the onlookers in its grip. When Trigson, with the field collected round him, almost to be covered with a sheet, stonewalled the most tempting lob, the click of the ball on his bat was an intrusion ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... before she could speak. No expense has been spared by her father. I never had such chances; and we are determined to give her a splendid education. In fact, she might come out this season, so far as that is concerned; but I have resolved to be rigid—not a day before she is seventeen. Then her ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... consider, but he was appointed custodian of Mary Queen of Scots when that unhappy personage was under the ban of Queen Elizabeth and was sent prisoner to Worksop Manor. She was kept strictly in durance vile, for the Earl was a rigid warder, and did not even allow her ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... and the mind that judges of the evidence; and it may be purely a mental set or bias on my part that causes me throughout this long discussion, to see, on the one side, dubious facts and defective logic, and on the other side firm reasoning and a knowledge of what rigid experimental enquiry demands. But, judged of practically, what, again, has the question of Spontaneous Generation to do with us? Let us see. There are numerous diseases of men and animals that are demonstrably the products of parasitic ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... grew up between the belligerents a tacit understanding that just as soon as the master entered upon a less rigid frame of mind they would settle the fast ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... followers, came in while the camp remained near Meroe. The chiefs were presented with costly habiliments, and the written protection of his Excellence, recognizing them as under his safeguard; and returned with their followers to their homes, tranquillized and contented. The most rigid discipline was observed in the camp, to prevent the people of the country from suffering by the presence of the army. Some soldiers and domestics were severely beaten for taking sheep and goats without paying for them, and five of the Abbadies (or auxiliaries mounted ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... ladies which are valuable works of art, signed by well-known artists. She has also magnificent long robes, fashioned in the old style, with trains trimmed at the bottom with thick pads, in order to give to the movements of the costume something rigid and ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... lay all thy naked soul before me? Can thy unconscious eye encounter mine? Canst thou endure the probe, and never shrink? Can thy firm hand meet mine, and never tremble? Art thou prepar'd to meet the rigid Judge? Or to embrace the ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More
... had not believed that Luther would really venture to appear at Worms, and his arrival filled them with consternation. The emperor immediately summoned his councilors to consider what course should be pursued. One of the bishops, a rigid papist, declared: "We have long consulted on this matter. Let your imperial majesty get rid of this man at once. Did not Sigismund cause John Huss to be burnt? We are not bound either to give or to observe the safe-conduct of a heretic." "No," ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Robin. He was sitting gripping the arms of his chair, with every muscle in his body rigid; and I knew that he, like myself, was praying God to strike down the cowardly devil that would torment ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... side, from the front, from the rear. I pricked him, shouting: 'That for the people of Las Villas! This for the women of the San Juan. And once again for the babies you have killed.'" Jacket carried out his pantomime by prodding with a rigid finger first one, then another of his listeners. "Oh, he went mad, like a bull, indeed, but I was another Rafael Guerra. He shed rivers of blood, the ground grew slippery and the grass became red. He stood rocking in his tracks, finally; ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... The set was the inevitable modern drawing-room, and she sat well out on a sofa with her hands, in long black gloves, resting stiffly, palm downward, on each side of her. It was as if she pushed her body forward in an impulse to rise: her rigid arms thrust her shoulders up a little and accented the swell of her bosom. It was a vivid, a staccato attitude. It expressed a temperament, a character, fifty other things, but especially epitomised ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... from her seat on the arm of the red-covered chair. She stood rigid, her expression reserved to blankness, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... aunt as he spoke; but she did not return his gaze. She was sitting rigid in her chair, staring over his shoulder with affrighted eyes. Alan turned round quickly, and ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Cazotte's face grew locked and rigid, his eyes dwelt vacantly on space, and in a low, hollow ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Ivanovna's letter, and going up to a table on which lay a visitors' book, began to write that he was sorry not to have been able to see any one; when the footman went up the staircase the doorkeeper went out and shouted to the coachman, and the orderly stood up rigid with his arms at his sides following with his eyes a little, slight lady, who was coming down the stairs with rapid steps not in ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... friendly smiles among all with whom she came into contact without running counter to the prejudices of some of the old courtiers who had been formed on a different system; to whom the maintenance of a rigid etiquette was as the very breath of their nostrils, and in whose eyes its very first rule and principle was that princes should keep all the world at a distance. Foremost among these sticklers for ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... link arms in response to a supreme call they received it with characteristic simplicity, incorporating self-sacrifice into the texture of their common task, and, as far as emotion went, framing the horror of mankind's catastrophic time within the rigid rules of their professional conscience. And who can say that they could have ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... face, she did not have the temerity to behave towards her as she would, had she found her in the high spirits of past days. All she did therefore was to stand aloof with her arms against her sides and to wait in rigid silence. Just at that moment, however, Pao-ch'ai dropped in, on her return from the upper rooms. T'an Ch'un quickly rose to her feet, and offered her a seat. But before they had had time to exchange any words, a married woman likewise ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... continued to exhibit the same finicking temperament in the petty details of the menage. His shirt fronts were never sufficiently starched, nor his boots sufficiently polished. Tom Peters, having no regard for rigid linen, was always good-tempered and satisfied, and never acquired the respect of his landlady. He wore blue check shirts and loose ties even on Sundays. It is true he did net go to church, but slept on till Roxdal returned from morning service, and ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... on my tongue to say, "Because I am beset." I did not, however; instead I asked her if she never noticed what a rigid look people wore in their best bonnets, and holding a card-case? She said, "Yes," and shook out her handkerchief, as if to correct her ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... washed his hands he was afraid of falling ill and dying there without help. A notice written in four languages hung upon the wall, and, to add to his cheerfulness, it advised him to leave all his valuables at the office of the hotel—as if he had penetrated a forest infested with brigands. The rigid writing warned him still further that they looked upon him as a probable sharper, and that his bill would ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... almost rigid for some brief space of time. A servant was arranging plates in front of them, their glasses were refilled, the music of a waltz stole in through the open door. Around them many other people were sitting. An atmosphere of gaiety began gradually to develop. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it was not. Whereupon, forgetting his promise made only three days before, he commanded me to liberate the prisoners immediately, although I reminded him of his promise to no purpose; and he sent one of the king's slaves to take them out of our house. I am satisfied this rigid course was taken on the suggestion of the Dutch, induced by Lackmoy, the great Chinese merchant, on purpose to prevent us from giving credit to the Chinese, that we might be constrained to deal only with himself: and, as he is provided by the Hollanders with all kinds of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... than any mere beauty. Her look met his straight and frankly, but he heard the breath flutter at her lips, and he thought to read in her eyes a question, a hunger, and a delight. His voice was under rigid control as he said: ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to smoke her cigarette, however rigid had I been in expressing my principles. And she would have found some excuse to shorten her visit under my roof, and then where would be ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and Miss Lorne were awaiting him and keeping close watch before the locked door of a communicating apartment in which sat the six men who had preceded him. He went in and put them all and severally through a rigid examination in quest of any trace of "make-up" or disguise of any sort, examining their badges and the marks on the handcuffs they carried with them to make sure that they bore the sign which he himself had scratched upon them ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Jallandhur in India, copied from a statue representing Queen Victoria in her younger days—a very fitting possession for the highest government official in Lahul. The thakur, Hara Chang, is wealthy and a rigid Buddhist, and uses his very considerable influence against the work of the Moravian missionaries in the valley. The rude path down to the bridle-road, through fields of barley and buckwheat, is bordered by roses, gooseberries, and ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... mercy was on her lips, but the instant our eyes met, it died away in long, low, hysterical moanings. Her cheeks were ghastly, her features were rigid, her eyes glared like an idiot's; guilt and terror had made her hideous ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... survey of what Americans are and how they get that way would probably see it as a paradox that within the armed establishment the inculcation of ideals is considered the most vital of all teaching, while in our gentler and less rigid institutions, there is steadily less emphasis ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... leathern pipe standing up from the bottom of a vessel of water: its sides collapse by the pressure of the ambient fluid, as a small part of that fluid passes through it; but if it has a living power, and by its inverted action keeps itself open, it becomes like a rigid pipe, and will admit the whole liquid to pass. See Sect. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... nothing to do with art; it flourishes best when they are not aware of its existence. He is very contemptuous of taste. All judgment of art must be based on expert knowledge, for art, he says, "is based upon laws as rigid and defined as those of the known sciences." Yet whereas "no polished member of society is at all affected by admitting himself neither engineer, mathematician, nor astronomer, and therefore remains willingly discreet and taciturn upon these subjects, still he would be highly offended were he supposed ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... second in 1138, the third three hundred years later. The main building, which is of the twelfth century, is sunk far below the level of the ground: one descends into it from the main portal by ten steps; and this unusual mode of entrance, the depth, the great height, the rigid absence of ornament, the grave colors, the long unbroken lines of the nave, give the interior a remarkable solemnity, and create an impression and emotion as different as possible from those excited by churches ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... opposed grows rigid, and dies a martyr. Let her alone; these things will all pass away by and by. I am ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... balance weight; this will weigh about 20 tons. The weight of the crane itself without load or ballast is about 80 tons. The crane was tested under steam with a load of 19 tons with the most satisfactory results; the whole machine appeared to be very rigid, an end often very difficult to obtain with portable wrought-iron structures and live loads. The result in the present case is probably greatly due to the careful workmanship, and to the fact that the sides and ends of the plates are planed throughout, so that the webs of the girders ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... the pretty Georgette, but she tells him rather anxiously, that all the wives of the village must needs remain entirely true to their husbands, for the hermit of St. Gratien, though dead for two hundred years, is keeping rigid watch, and betrays every case of infidelity by ringing a little bell, which is heard ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... not appear in any book which contained such rigid rules as to rhyme, as are contained in Watts's letter. I neither follow them, nor agree with them as regards the English language. Every sonnet-writer should show full capability of conforming to ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... is her name," said he, and then, as she remained rigid, he bent forward, with a whispered laugh, and kissed her on ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... incredible mental agility, contrived to continue to take a critical interest in the meal and the argument at the same time; Herries thrust away an unfinished plate, refused what was offered to him, pushed his glasses about as if they were chessmen, filled the nearest with water at intervals—he is a rigid teetotaller—and drank out of them alternately with ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... lord?" he said calmly, turning a face rigid with hidden conflict, and gleaming white, from the framework of the arch, upon his master, whose eyes ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... in an arch is a most extravagant one, because it means that the abutments must be rigid, that is, capable of taking bending moments. Rigidity in an abutment is only effected by a large increase in bulk, whereas strength in an arch ring is greatly augmented by the addition of a few inches to its thickness. By the elastic theory, the arch ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... there might have been no room for hope. But Slade was a white man. He might prefer gold to the lust of torture. The death of his victim would mean the loss of the ransom money. Lennon's tense nerves and rigid muscles relaxed. He allowed his upward—and backward-strained head to sink down until one cheek rested upon the hot sand. The change of position brought the top of his head very close to the snake. But he trusted to Slade's avarice to see ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... Linda Tressel, who is the heroine of the little story now about to be told, arose from the too rigid virtue of her nearest and most loving friend,—as troubles will sometimes come from rigid virtue when rigid virtue is not accompanied by sound sense, and especially when it knows little or nothing of the ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... successfully demonstrated the first lesson in the cruel and rigid course of mental training she had mapped ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... sermon on Slaughter he heard, and he did not protest. All rigid as April snowdrifts, he stood, hard and feeble; his chest Just showing the swell of the fire as it melted him. Smiting a rib, 'Heigh! what have we been about, Tom! Was this all a terrible fib?' He cried, and the letter forth-trembled. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... close of the autumn of 1809 (March), when I sailed for England; and, in the execution of this part of my task, I shall endeavour so to arrange my subject as to preserve an interest, unbroken and unfailing, throughout the whole. By a rigid adherence to facts, I shall enable the reader, by a comparison of my various statements with the previous details of the luminous narrators above mentioned, to form just and indisputable estimates ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... of the etiquette of a vessel of war to make her people keep close; it being deemed one sign of a well-ordered ship to let as few men be seen as possible, except on those occasions when duty requires them to show themselves. This rigid rule, however, was momentarily lost sight of, and the teeming masses that floated around La Minerva gave up their thousands like bees clustering about their hives. It was in the midst of such signs of expectation ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... face (a face perfectly at once fluent and angular, expressionless and sensitive) told me many things whereof even The Zulu might not speak, things which in order entirely to suffer he kept carefully and thoroughly ensconced behind his rigid and mobile eyes. ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... scarcely perceiving that he thought, so intensely conscious was he of that of which he thought. It was not that he understood anything of that on which he looked; he was but aware that there was something to be understood. And the trees hung rigid above him, and the clear blue sky still a hard stone beyond them, not yet flushed with dawn; and the grass lay before him, contracted, it seemed, with cold, and every blade soaked in wet; ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... too, were not in the least jealous of his being placed over them, but executed his orders with alacrity; for, he exercised his authority judiciously, remembering his former position—albeit he was ever a rigid and impartial disciplinarian. ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a rigid spire; dim light in the Parlors, and cheerful droning of choir-practise. The quivering green mercury-vapor light of a photo-engraver's loft. Then the storming lights of down-town; parked cars with ruby tail-lights; white arched entrances to movie theaters, like frosty mouths of winter caves; electric ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... in the centre of each cheek, fatal evidence of the inward fever which was consuming him. His classical features, already pinched and shrunken, their paleness enhanced by contrast with his black whiskers, were fixed and rigid as those of a corpse; while his eyes, which burned with an unnatural brilliancy, glared on us with an expression of mingled hate and terror. He seemed partially to recognise me, for, after watching me for a moment, his lips working convulsively, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... lined with faces, everyone as familiar as the scarred and scratched wall of the court room, and yet all were now alien—no one recognized him by a frank and friendly nod, and he moved past his old companions with sullen and rigid face. His father met him at the door and walked beside him down the aisle to ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... minute or two in a very rigid attitude, displeasure manifest on her lips. She did not find it easy to get to work again, and when the time came for her bicycle ride, she was in no mind for it, but preferred to sit over a book. At luncheon Lady ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... with deeper meaning than the seen. Sarah Pierrepont and Jonathan Edwards (p. 51) were in large measure transcendentalists. The trouble was that the former Puritan philosophy of the unseen was too rigid and limited to satisfy the widening ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... but hence, on the other, a singular limitation. The sister arts enjoy the use of a plastic and ductile material, like the modeller's clay; literature alone is condemned to work in mosaic with finite and quite rigid words. You have seen these blocks, dear to the nursery: this one a pillar, that a pediment, a third a window or a vase. It is with blocks of just such arbitrary size and figure that the literary architect is condemned to design ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... justiciar, became the real representatives of the English power. Cressingham was a pompous ecclesiastic, who appropriated to his own uses the money set aside for the fortification of Berwick, and was odious to the Scots for his rapacity and incompetence. Ormesby was a pedantic lawyer, rigid in carrying out the king's orders but stiff and unsympathetic in dealing with the Scots. Under such rulers Scotland was neither subdued nor conciliated. No real effort was made to track to their hiding-places in the hills the numerous outlaws, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... fought the enemy single-handed. Up and down, left and right, hip and thigh he smote with such terrific earnestness and drive that the enemy turned and fled. And we are told that the muscles of his hand became so rigid around the handle of his sword that he could not tell by the feeling where his hand stopped, and the sword began. Man and sword were one that day in the action of service against the nation's enemy. When we so absorb this Book, and the Spirit of Him who is its ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... my typical bakehouse. Proceedings will of course vary in details according to the neighbourhood, the season, and other circumstances. This makes, as my informant suggested, the race of bakers necessarily in some degree a varium atque mutabile genus, whom it is difficult to bind by rigid "hard and fast" lines. The first batch is in the oven at four, and is drawn about 5.30. During the intervals there has been the preparation of fancy bread and the "getting off" of the rolls. Then the "cottage" ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... pointed leaves of the willows of its broad surface with threads of fluffy mist clinging here and there upon it. To the right a field of rye shone dimly; on the left stood up my orchard trees, tall, rigid, drenched it seemed in dew ... The breath of the morning was already upon them. Across the pure grey sky stretched like streaks of smoke, two or three slanting clouds; they had a yellowish tinge, the first faint glow of dawn fell ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... of the disappointment. The husband gave himself up to loose connections with abandoned women, one of whom persuaded him one day, when he was drunk, to make her a promise of marriage, and she held him to his word. Then retribution came upon him, with the coarse, commonplace, yet rigid justice which fact really deals out. The second bad wife avenged the wrongs of the first innocent wife. He was mated with a companion 'who could fit him with cursing and swearing, give him oath for oath, and curse for curse. They would fight and fly at each other like cat ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... a brief authority. He does not wish to parade it in such a manner as might seem offensive. He is in danger of seeming to parade it if he goes beyond what is necessary in regulating the conduct of the lawyers who may appear before him. The judge who keeps a rigid watch on the examination of witnesses to exclude all improper testimony, whether objection be made to it or not, declines to hear argument on matters that may appear to him too clear to justify it, and is impatient when argument on doubtful points ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... American hurry, beget unnatural effort and tension. "Unclasp the fingers of a rigid civilization from off your throat." The student of the violin or the piano soon learns that only by a long and patient preparation can he fit himself to entertain even his admiring friends. The embryo singer, on the contrary, expects with far less expenditure ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... soldiers who went to the West Indies, and at the same time look forward to the peculiar facilities which the service in India afforded for developing the great qualities of mind which lay hid under the rigid exterior of the young soldier, it may truly be said, that the moment at which the destination of the 33rd regiment was countermanded, was the point at which the fate of the Duke of Wellington turned. Nay more, if it be admitted that you rarely ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... sacred word of honor, a man has but one contemplation; his thoughts are all towards suicide. Figure for yourself the life we lead here: the commandant a bachelor of sixty, and "—he lowered his voice and bent laughingly to my ear—"a bore the most intense, the most rigid, the most unbending, conceivable by the mind of man. But pardon me—that is my name. You have not travelled in this direction with Brunow without ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... Rigid propriety forbade that Mr. Palford should express annoyance, but the effort to restrain the expression of it was in his countenance. Was it possible that the American habit of being jocular had actually held its own in a matter ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... disposition the sight of Mr. Thomas Tilton's innocent-looking dwelling attracted him thither. Anyhow, old Dermott remained there, and it was noticeable that, from the day of his arrival, Tamasi Uliuli exacted the most rigid performance of morning and evening devotions by his family, and that the nightly scenes of riot and howling drunkenness, that had theretofore characterised the "hotel," had unaccountably toned down. In fact, burly old ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... not good! Forbear! 'Tis lifeless, magical, a shape of air, An idol. Such to meet with, bodes no good; That rigid look of hers doth freeze man's blood, And well-nigh petrifies his heart to stone:— The story of ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... innocent and soulless forces so sternly immutable—"the blowing clouds and falling rain." The two awful phenomena which Kant said struck him dumb—the starry heavens, and right and wrong—are vainly to be reduced to the same order of things. Nothing can be stranger than the contrast between the rigid, inevitable sequences of nature, apparently so elastic only because not yet perfectly comprehended, and the consciousness of man in the midst of it. Nothing can be stranger than the juxtaposition of physical law and man's ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... comments upon the reasons assigned by the President for returning this bill to the House of Representatives, with his objections to it, as specified in the veto message referred to this committee; and, after a rigid analysis and course of argument, pronounces them "feeble, inconsistent, and unsatisfactory;" after ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... less emotional Englishmen thought at first that they must be kinsmen. However, Arthur came in for a like embrace as the boy's preserver; and if Captain Beresford had not stepped back and looked uncomprehending and rigid he might have come in ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pushed aside her writing and stared out at the sallow frozen landscape framed by the window at which she sat. The sleet had ceased, and hollows of sunless blue showed through the driving wind-clouds. A hard sky and a hard ground—frost-bound ringing earth under rigid ice-mailed trees. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... stock several sizes too small. More wondrous, however, was the nether part of him. Owing to the padding of his long, white gaiters, his legs seemed thicker at the calf than at the thigh. Moving stiffly about in these blacking-stained gaiters, with knees rigid and unbent, he reminded one irresistibly of a stork." Freed now by his own bold act from military slavery, Schiller entered Mannheim with joyful hopes. With the manuscript of "Fiesco" under his arm, he called upon the regisseur, Meyer, in whose house he read two acts of the play before a ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... houses, also old-fashioned, but of red brick, and with gardens behind them, and fruit walls, which show here and there, among the nectarines, the vestiges of an old cloister arch or shaft, and looking in front on the cathedral square itself, laid out in rigid divisions of smooth grass and gravel walk, yet not uncheerful, especially on the sunny side, where the canons' children are walking with their nursery-maids. And so, taking care not to tread on the ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... Captain Nemo was standing before me, but I almost didn't recognize him. His facial features were transfigured. Gleaming with dark fire, his eyes had shrunk beneath his frowning brow. His teeth were half bared. His rigid body, clenched fists, and head drawn between his shoulders, all attested to a fierce hate breathing from every pore. He didn't move. My spyglass fell from his hand and rolled ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... should be the case, its principal movement is up and down in a vertical line—the precise movement required for the effective wingstrokes in flight. But note further. The elbow joint, unlike that of the shoulder, is a rigid hinge, permitting motion in only one plane, that of the wing itself, or nearly so. The same is true of the wrist joint, which holds the hand firmly, allowing no motion save that which opens ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... couldn't hear him again, haying lapsed into his trance and become entirely rigid and foolish. In the cold light of day his face now looked like a plaster cast of itself. Ben turned to us with a hunted look. "Blow after blow has fallen upon me to-night," he says tearfully, "but this is the most cruel of all. I can't believe ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... a rigid examination of one ear, and a loud chattering, probably a lecture upon its structure, Jack pulled the head over and proceeded to examine the other ear, after which he made several pokes at the dog's eyes, and held his head while he looked into them as if they were something entirely new, ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... She stood there quite rigid. Then she put her hand up to her head: what, what was it? She must not have understood him properly, she must be deaf, blind or beside herself. Or he must be deaf, blind or beside himself. She had gone up to him with her heart in her mouth, she had held out her hand, she had wanted to speak to him ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... Imagine a mighty river of as great a volume as the Thames—started down the side of a mountain,— bursting over every impediment,—whirled into a thousand eddies,—tumbling and raging on from ledge to ledge in quivering cataracts of foam,—then suddenly struck rigid by a power so instantaneous in its action, that even the froth and fleeting wreaths of spray have stiffened into the immutability of sculpture. Unless you had seen it, it would be almost impossible to conceive the strangeness of the contrast between the ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... he strove as never before to pierce the darkness enveloping his brain. Long he knelt there, his hands clinching the bedclothes convulsively, even the muscles of his body tense and rigid under the terrible mental strain he was undergoing, while at times his powerful frame ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... always been an ardent admirer of Mr. Jefferson and of the French political school. Benjamin had a wholesome horror of both,—not so much from any intimate knowledge of their theories, as by reason of a strong religious instinct, which had been developed under his mother's counsels into a rigid and exacting Puritanism. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... the barren level of the cavalry plain the gilded hands of the tower-clock on "the old Academic" were blended into one in proclaiming to all whom it might concern that it was five minutes past the half-hour 'twixt seven and eight, and there were girls in every group, and many a young fellow in the rigid line of gray and white before them, resentful of the fact that dress parade was wofully late and long, with tattoo and taps only two hours or so away. The season for the regular summer "hops" had not yet begun, for ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... of his own voice, to read the lessons at Matins and at Evensong. This duty, combined with that of warden, was fulfilled by Mr. Windle, an ardent church-goer, a staunch, if somewhat narrow-visioned Christian, and a man rigid in his adherence to the cause of ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... Long stood as rigid as a statue for several minutes, waiting for another chance, but none presented. Then he reflected that his position was much more favorable than Grimcke's, for not only had he but the single opening to guard, but his apartment was so shrouded in gloom that the sharpest-eyed warrior ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... should give place to informal dances, beach parties, house parties and the like, where boys and girls will have a chance to come to know each other, and, at the proper age, to fall in love. Let social stratification be not too rigid, yet maintained on the basis of intrinsic worth rather than solely on financial or social position. If parents will make it a matter of concern to give their boys and girls as many desirable acquaintances of the opposite sex as possible, and to give them opportunity ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... wretch before our startled sight, Struck as with lightning with some keen disease, Drops sudden: By the dread attack o'erpowered He foams, he groans, he trembles, and he faints; Now rigid, now convuls'd, his labouring lungs Heave quick, and quivers each ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... probably, in every government upon earth, circumstances which a man, accustomed to the abstract investigation of truth, may easily prove to be deviations from the rigid rule of strict political justice; but whilst these deviations are either generally not known, or, though known, generally acquiesced in as matters of little moment to the general felicity, I cannot think it to be the part, either of a good man or of a good ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... work of pure description indeed, like the present, where the incidents themselves are the sole objects of attraction, the part of an editor is necessarily subordinate, nor can his humble pretensions aspire beyond the merit of rigid adherence to facts as they are stated to him. This has been very diligently attempted, and for this, in its full extent, the editor ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... appear to comprehend the words; but he could not fail to understand the mild and deprecatory manner. His rigid features relaxed, and moving to a table in the center of the hall, where there were materials and implements for writing, he seized a pen, and traced one line: "I am deaf." He then held it ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... Through it all, MacMaine stood at rigid attention, flexing his calf muscles occasionally to keep the blood flowing in his legs. He had no desire to disgrace himself by passing out in front ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... these ten, was born another named Daksha. It is from Daksha that all creatures have sprung. Therefore is he, O tiger among men, called the Grandfather. Born of Prachetas the Muni Daksha, uniting himself with Virini, begat a thousand sons of rigid vows, all like himself. And Narada taught these thousand sons of Daksha the excellent philosophy of Sankhya as a means of salvation. And, O Janamejaya, the lord of creation, Daksha, then, from the desire of making creatures, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... enough. She wished Marvin to see the resemblance, and she frowned slightly because the rigid, staring figure did not respond. Why should she be impatient, this woman of the Pharaohs who had lain stiff and unresponsive while Babylon and Greece and Rome and Spain ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... traveling all day by rail. Of course, little liberty was allowed us. Military discipline is rigid, and must be maintained. Of its necessity we had a convincing proof at a small station between Hartford and New Haven. One of our number, who, I accidentally learned, is a Canadian, and had only been tempted to enlist ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... truthful look at her mistress, before which the defiant glance fell: but the rigid features alarmed her, and she would fain have remained, had not another. 'Go! I do not want you any longer!' sent her ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... standing there in the shadows, the expression of her face veiled, but there seemed no response, no softening in the rigid attitude of her figure. She did not care; was only interested in his immediate departure. The change had occurred with such abruptness, West was unable as yet to realize its full significance, but, with no attempt to combat her decision, ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... documents. They were written for the sake of money, and it is impossible to say how far the same mercenary motive actuated Ireland in his forgeries. Dr. Ingleby, in his 'Shakespeare Fabrications,' takes a very rigid view of the conduct, not only of William, but of old Samuel Ireland. Sam, according to Dr. Ingleby, was a partner in the whole imposture, and the confession was only one element in the scheme of fraud. Old Samuel was the Fagin of a band of ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... frantic to press her down once more into the chair, terrified at the rigid immobility of the upright figure, Mrs. Coblenz paused then, too, her clasp falling away, and leaned forward to the open sheet of the newspaper, its black headlines ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... waistcoat, with light-coloured trousers, and immaculate collar and cuffs. A top hat, well brushed and trim, was placed upon the floor beside him. His hands were clenched and his arms thrown abroad, while his lower limbs were interlocked as though his death struggle had been a grievous one. On his rigid face there stood an expression of horror, and as it seemed to me, of hatred, such as I have never seen upon human features. This malignant and terrible contortion, combined with the low forehead, blunt nose, and prognathous jaw gave the dead man a singularly simious and ape-like appearance, which ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... she had thought she should never see him again!—and here until Wednesday afternoon, she would be constantly reminded of the most disgraceful incident in her career. All brought upon herself, too, by her own action in having lapsed from the rigid rules in which Aunt Clara had brought ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... mind ought to be chained up, free for every man to read in every parish. These are the only books I do not wish to unlearn, one item only excepted, which I shall not here discuss. It is curious, too, that the Greek philosophers, in the more rigid sense of science, anticipated most of the drift of modern thought. Two chapters in Aristotle might almost be printed without change as summaries of our present natural science. For the facts of nature, of course, neither one hundred books nor a 10l. library would be worth mentioning; ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... attributed to the taste of Sir Peter Lely, rather than to that exhibited by the Beauties of Charles's court. "It was to his taste, as it was to that of a later artist, Sir Joshua Reynolds, that we are indebted for the freedom which characterized their treatment of the rigid and somewhat ungraceful costumes before them." Walpole, in his "Anecdotes of Painting," says, "Lely supplied the want of taste with clinquant; his nymphs trail fringes, and embroidery, through meadows and purling streams. Vandyke's habits are those of the times; Lely's, a sort of fantastic night-gown ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... He had won his way up to the rank he then held from before the mast. His build was rather squat, and his face was garnished with a pair of fiery red whiskers, so he was no beauty, added to which he was reckoned one of the most rigid martinets in the service; yet, for all that, his crew liked him, for they knew his heart was in the ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... brightly by a gas-jet, but no one was in sight, and the three doors opening upon it were shut. At the rear of the hall was a window; the blind was raised, and through the panes, dripping in the rain, Ford caught a glimpse of the rigid iron rods of a fire-escape. His spirits leaped exultantly. If necessary, by means of this scaling ladder, he could work entirely from the outside. Greatly elated, he tiptoed past the closed doors and mounted ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... would not for an instant deny; but the sense of the loss is not less painful to him if his mind be rightly constituted; and it would be with infinite gratitude that he would regard the man, who, retaining in his delineation of natural scenery a fidelity to the facts of science so rigid as to make his work at once acceptable and credible to the most sternly critical intellect, should yet invest its features again with the sweet veil of their daily aspect; should make them dazzling with the splendor of wandering light, and involve them in the unsearchableness of stormy obscurity; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... itself with passion. Agamemnon, nearly mad, was held back by his companions. Suddenly the girl stopped as if exhausted. A slight shudder ran through her, from her head down the dark limbs to her feet. Deep silence prevailed. The head of the Nubian was thrown back as if in a rigid swoon but above it the crotals still tinkled with an extraordinary languor, a dying vibration, quick and soft as the wing flutterings of a captured butterfly. Her eyes grew dim but in their inner depths glittered two sparks; the face remained ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... consoling rush of pity; at last, far off, thin and vague, yet not more vague than the most definite thoughts men have had through three centuries on a matter that has been so near their hearts, the new body—a passing light, a mere intangible, external effect, over those too rigid, or too formless faces; a dream that lingers a moment, retreating in the dawn, incomplete, aimless, helpless; a thing with faint hearing, faint memory, faint power of touch; a breath, a flame in the doorway, a feather ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... the old Fool torments himself! Suppose he could introduce his rigid Rules—does he think we cou'd not match them in Contrivance? No, no; Let the Tyrant Man make what Laws he will, if there's a Woman under the Government, I warrant she finds a way to break 'em: Is his Mind set upon the Spaniard for ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... takes up Latin, her study of Ovid and Virgil, dreams of being a poet and writes "Cleon," a drama, her conversion, doubts of relatives and friends, connects herself with First Church, Hartford, her struggle with rigid theology, her melancholy and doubts, necessity of cheerful society, visit to grandmother, return to Hartford, interest in painting lessons, confides her religious doubts to her brother Edward, school life in Hartford, peace at last, accompanies her father and family to Cincinnati, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... is not, as is the Congress of the United States, restrained within a very limited sphere of action; it is not, as are both the Congress and the State Legislatures of the Union, bound hand and foot by the articles of a rigid Constitution; it is not compelled to respect any immutable maxims of legislation. Hence the Victorian Parliament—in this resembling its creator, the British Parliament—exercises an amount of legislative ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... a hollow rumbling, the tramp of the horses was impetuous, the pole-chains rattled, as it swung out on to the bridge and drew up. The grooms whipped down and ran round to the horses' heads. And these stood, a little extended, still and rigid as of bronze, the red of their open nostrils and the silver mounting of their harness very noticeable. Lady Calmady called to Mr. Quayle. The young man passed round at the back of the carriage, and, standing on the far side of the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of cold and heat, and vibration; all these things must be thought of and considered in planning every part and determining the size of each. Also he must know what kind of material to use that is best fitted to stand each strain, whether to use steel that is rigid or that which is so flexible that it can be tied in a knot. On the designer depends the price asked for the work, and so it is his business to invent, for each bridge is a separate problem in invention, a bridge that will carry the required weight ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... conditions. To attempt to enforce the same code of conventions on human society in different countries, or at different stages of development, is necessarily artificial, and if pressed too far it provokes reaction, and in reaction we almost inevitably go to extreme lengths. So in reaction against too rigid conventionalities and a social ritual which was perhaps over-exacting, we are swinging out beyond control in the direction of complete spontaneity. And yet there is need for a code of conventions—for some established defence against the instincts of selfishness which find ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... walked up and down, he could see the purplish haze beyond which the sentry had told him lay the North. The North! Just beyond the ridge. There was a pain in his head, looking at it; his nerves grew cold and rigid, as yours do when something wrings your heart sharply: for there are nerves in these black carcasses, thicker, more quickly stung to madness than yours. Yet if any savage longing, smouldering for years, was heating to madness now in his brain, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... incarnations. But why spread these instances over more pages? The experience of other people, while of scientific interest and value as affording a basis for a theory or doctrine, will never supply the experience that the close and rigid investigator demands. Only his own experiences will satisfy him—and perhaps not even those, for he may consider them delusions. These experiences of others have their principal value as corroborative proofs of one's own experiences, and thus ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... he says "Malthus's law explains nothing just as it comprehends nothing. Bound by rigid formulas which are belied by history and demography, it is incapable of explaining not only the mystery of poverty, but the alternate reverses of ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... aggrandisment of an unfriendly and powerful court, but his own personal ambition remained ungratified." In his reply to Fox the minister exhibited a noble mind, in not making any use of his rival's unjustifiable conduct: conduct which was more unconstitutional than Pitt's rigid reserve, and which was to a certain extent, treasonable. In his reply Pitt defended his policy with great spirit. He asked whether any one conversant in politics could admit that the Turkish empire, being unable to defend itself against Russia and Austria, should be abandoned by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... rigid system in which nothing is left to the soldier's intelligence or initiative, and a tight uniform, which confines his movements, is both deep and evident. If a man is never to have his own way, his master ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... be wrapped in cotton and put in a cool place in the fall, and fed to the domestic animals in the spring. Geraniums should put on their buffalo overcoats about the middle of November in our rigid northern clime, and in the spring they will have the same luxuriant foliage as the tropical hat-rack. Vines may be left in the room during the winter until the furnace slips a cog and then you can pull them down ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the darkness, and there was an unbroken silence save for the breathing of the watchers and the restless movements of Mrs. Clear near the window. They saw her pass and repass the square of glass, when, unexpectedly, she paused, rigid and silent. ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... compensation; in addition to which each claimant was put upon his oath as to his alleged losses; and if in any case perjury or fraud were believed to have been practised, the claimant was at once cut off from his whole claim. The rigid rules which the Commissioners laid down and enforced in regard to claimants, examining each claimant and the witnesses in his behalf separately and apart, caused much dissatisfaction, and gave the proceeding more the character of an Inquisition than of Inquiry. It seemed to place the claimants ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... repose. Like the sun-crowned summit of the mountain, it stands erect and sublime nor heeds the cloudy tumult at its feet. In the school, the teacher who exemplifies and typifies this quality of serenity is never less than dignified but, withal, is never either cold or rigid. Children nestle about her in their affections and expand in her presence as flowers open in the sunshine. She cannot be a martinet nor, in her presence, can the children become sycophants. Her very presence generates ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... was—it, so to say, introduced itself. And it was answered by another yell, more formidable still, and again by a chorus of yells. Then it seemed to Bucks's unaccustomed ears as if a thousand lusty throats were opened, and scared rigid he looked behind him and saw the canyon below alive ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... hour before; for she had his open manuscript in one hand and was nervously pulling it about with the other. She looked frightened and pretty, and if, in invading the privacy of a fellow-lodger, she had been guilty of a departure from rigid custom, she was at least conscious of the enormity of the step and incapable of treating it with levity. The levity was for Peter Baron, who endeavoured, however, to clothe his familiarity with respect, pushing ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... or profession, has arisen in most cases, out of an absence of that firmness which enables a man to reject the pleasures of the world, and the world's frivolities, for the sake of the one purpose to which he should rightly devote all his energies. When men practise a rigid course of self-denial in this respect; immolating all vain desires upon the altar of science, or of interest, they seldom fail to attain the ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman |
