"Susceptibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to humour and pacify them, which H—— had dwelt upon with so much commendation. There was no hurrying from case to case—no sign of impatience at the reiterated unmeaning queries of the patients—no coarse jest at their expense—not a syllable that could wound the susceptibility of the most sensitive. Did one poor fellow betray an anxiety to take up as little of the baron's time as possible, and, speaking hurriedly, almost exhaust his little stock of feeble breath, it was absolutely touching to mark ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... story has the peculiar feature of being true. Several reliable men, including some who have not allowed the ardent pursuit of Isaac Walton's pet pastime to blunt their susceptibility of veracity, have performed this apparently impossible feat, or have seen it done right before their very eyes. A year or so ago, when an appropriation was asked for in Congress for the further preservation of Yellowstone Park, a member made this extraordinary possibility an argument ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... carefully followed during each menstruation, in order that future trouble may be prevented. First of all, it is necessary to avoid taking cold; yet a person should not stay in the house by the side of a fire, or in a warm room all the time, for this would increase the susceptibility ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... been blessed with the advantages of a religious education, and recurs to his own years of juvenile susceptibility, cannot forget the strong impressions he received by these means; and must have had frequent occasion to remark the tenaciousness with which they have lingered in his memory, and sprung up amidst his recollections at every subsequent period. In many ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... for which to be thankful, and how much I have lost.... The whole year after her death was a year of great emptiness, as if there was not motive enough in the world to move me. I used to pray earnestly to God either to take me away, or to restore to me that interest in things and susceptibility to motive I had ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... between the old and the young. The story of Ninon and her Abbe—the unfortunate relationship, and the unfortunate catastrophe excepted—was the story of hundreds or thousands in every city of France fifty years ago. It arises from the vividness of the national mind, the quick susceptibility to being pleased, and the natural return which the heart makes in gratitude. If it sometimes led to error—it was the more to be regretted. But I do ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... to low-carbon pearlitic manganese steel has a very marked effect, increasing greatly the dynamic strength and changing slightly the susceptibility of this steel to heat treatments, giving a greater margin for the hardening temperature. Manganese steel with added vanadium ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... happen often again. We have seen cases of "revival" which were purely physical, with little religious knowledge and no religious character, in those who were most under the influence of the preacher, but with much ignorance and great nervous susceptibility. Preachers as ignorant as these people have been deceived by such appearances, which, not being able to account for by any natural cause, they at once attribute to supernatural agency. But, putting aside those illustrations ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... the selection system, although natural to tolerant species, is the only one adaptable to them. While the one class demands light, the other does not demand shade. It is merely capable of enduring it. Indeed, except for the greater susceptibility of some species to extreme heat and dryness when very young, as a rule shade bearing trees grow much better if they do have ample light supply. Consequently clean cutting may be the best system for these also under ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... of slight disappointment, perceptible in the last few lines, arose from her great susceptibility to an opinion she valued much,—that of Miss Martineau, who, both in an article on 'Villette' in the Daily News, and in a private letter to Miss Bronte, wounded her to the quick by expressions of censure which she believed to be ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... corruptness of the Chinese! They are corrupt, all the officials, or the greater part of them. But you don't hear much about those who corrupt them. Why? Because it suits the great Western nations to keep this government in a state of weakness, of indecision, of susceptibility to bribes and threats; it makes China easier to control. The one ray of hope for China lies in the fact that there are so many foreign nations trying to gain control of her. One could do it, two could do it, three could do it, but a dozen! China plays off one greedy predatory power ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... which remind me of the susceptibility of your temper. I beg your pardon I was looking at you critically. Being myself indulgent and kindhearted, I was only looking at you from an artist's point of view—as is always allowable in my profession. Remember, ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... a temporary feeling. My mind had always been active, and I was probably indebted to the sufferings I had endured, and the exquisite and increased susceptibility they produced, for new energies. I soon felt the desire of some additional and vigorous pursuit. In this state of mind, I met by accident, in a neglected corner of the house of one of my neighbours, with a general dictionary ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... inclination of such natures with punishment, or harsh correctives, is as useless as would be an attempt to stop the ebbing and flowing of the tide. You must nurture the feelings, he thought, create a susceptibility, get the heart right, by holding out the value of a better state of things, and make the head to feel that you are sincere in your work of love; and, above all, you must not forget the stomach, for if that go empty crime will surely creep into the head. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... instance, has no alternative but to declare war. But though complete security is impracticable, it does not follow that no precautions should be taken, or that a democratic tradition is no safer than a feudal tradition. A far graver doubt is raised by the susceptibility of the masses to war fever, and the appalling danger of a daily deluge of cheap newspapers written by nameless men and women whose scandalously low payment is a guarantee of their ignorance and their servility to the financial department, controlled by a moneyed class which not only ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... might, after a certain time, and in consequence of suitable contrivances on my part, give a new direction to her feelings. To gain your concurrence, I relied upon your simplicity, your gratitude, and your susceptibility to the charms of ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... might have seen a clear and steady light where he has only beheld difficulties and confusion. As we have already seen, and as we shall still more fully see, Edwards confounds the power by which we act with the susceptibility through which we feel: the will with the emotive part of our nature. Every one knows that we may feel without acting; and yet feeling and acting, suffering and doing, are expressly and repeatedly identified in his writings. Having merged the will in sensibility, he regarded ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... public expenditures by reducing subsidies, privatizing state industries, and laying off civil servants. Prospects for foreign trade and investment in the 1990s remain poor, however, because of the small size of the economy, its technological backwardness, its remoteness, and susceptibility to natural disaster. The international community provides funding for 70% of Nepal's developmental budget and for 30% of total budgetary expenditures. The government, realizing that attempts to reverse three years of liberalization ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... this concession to his susceptibility, suddenly jerked his head forward, without bending his body, while he waved the hat that he held slowly to and fro, making, according to his ideas, a salute that was a judicious mingling of the soldier's and the courtier's—which ceremony being concluded, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... same extreme susceptibility to the moods of nature. He loved her first for herself, and then with a sense of those inherited primitive associations with her scenes and hid influences which still play upon us to-day; and nothing ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... instead of carefully tending the many spontaneous and sensitive processes of growth within.[82] Nobody has shown a finer appreciation of the delicacy of the material out of which character is to be made, and of the susceptibility of its elementary structure; nor of the fact that education consists in such a discipline of the primitive impulses as shall lead men to do right, not by the constraint of mechanical external sanctions, but by an instant, spontaneous, and almost inarticulate repugnance ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... of middle life did not add the seal of the virtues which adorn maturity to those generated by the vehement spirit of youth. Through life also he was a martyr to ill-health, and constant pain wound up his nerves to a pitch of susceptibility that rendered his views of life different from those of a man in the enjoyment of healthy sensations. Perfectly gentle and forbearing in manner, he suffered a good deal of internal irritability, or rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was almost always on the stretch; ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... world can divorce them. In outward social intercourse, on the other hand, they will gladly and easily allow themselves to take their tone from the person with whom at the moment they are occupied; and thus by a mixture of impassiveness and susceptibility, by persisting and by yielding, they continue to keep the government to themselves, and no man in the cultivated world can ever take ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... she, bred in the mountains of Switzerland, had no conception of such an idiosyncrasy as that of M. de Maurepas, a man who saw in an outspoken expression of feeling only an opportunity of discovering the vulnerable point. As soon as he knew M. Necker's susceptibility he flattered himself that, by irritating it, he would drive him to give in his resignation." [onsiderations sur la ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... tale that some young child has committed suicide, and for reasons which to our judgment seem most trivial—from fear of punishment, or even from mere dread of reproof. These facts deserve special attention, they show how much more the susceptibility and sensitiveness of children need to be taken into ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... denial of the reckless generosity with which she had credited him. To think that he had done it in order to produce the effect which had given her so distinct a sensation of pleasure changed that effect into absolute pain. And yet in the fantastic susceptibility of her nature, there was something in old Judkin's half-crown which soothed her again. A shilling would have been generous, Elinor said to herself, with a feminine appreciation of the difference of small things as well as great, whereas half-a-crown ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... most educable. Of all animals, it is man in whom heredity counts for least, and conscious building forces for most. Consider that his infancy is longest, his instincts least fixed, his brain most unfinished at birth, his powers of habit-making and habit-changing most marked, his susceptibility to social impressions keenest; and it becomes clear that in every way nature, as a prescriptive power, has provided in him for her own displacement. His major instincts and passions first appear on the scene, not as controlling forces, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the gaps of imagination. We are restless, because invisible things are not the objects of vision—and philosophical systems, for the most part, are received not for their Truth, but in proportion as they attribute to Causes a susceptibility of being seen, whenever our visual organs shall have ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of her outward frame lodgeth a soul in all respects disproportionate. Of more than mortal make, she evinceth withal a trembling sensibility, a yielding infirmity of purpose, a quick susceptibility to reproach, and all the train of diffident and blushing virtues, which for their habitation usually seek out a feeble frame, an attenuated and meagre constitution. With more than man's bulk, her humors and occupations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... 1586 six poor wretches convicted of plotting the assassination of Queen Elizabeth were dragged to Tyburn, "hanged but for a moment, taken down while the susceptibility of agony was unimpaired and cut in pieces afterwards with due precautions for the protraction of the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... the nut tree planter, he should first consider the large, hardy hybrids, known as hazilberts, which I have produced between a large Wisconsin wild hazel and European filberts. Hazilberts equal the best European filberts in every way, without the latter's disadvantage of susceptibility to hazel blight and its lack of hardiness. They are as hardy as the common wild hazel and are more adaptable to environment and soil conditions than any other native nut tree. They may be trained into trees or allowed to grow as large ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... to outward appearance, a timid man, if not a fool. The sensibilities of the young fellow, preserved pure, were not worn by contact without; he remained so chaste, so scrupulous, that he was keenly offended by actions and maxims to which the world attached no consequence. Ashamed of this susceptibility, he forced himself to conceal it under a false hardihood; but he suffered in secret, all the while scoffing with others at ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... characteristic of our canine friends is shown in their susceptibility to ridicule. Faint traces of this quality are to be found in monkeys and perhaps even in the more intelligent horses, but nowhere else save in man, and hardly there, except in the more sensitive natures, do we find contempt, expressed in laughter of the ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... in all ways so foreign to my friend's nature that I was daunted out of all my just susceptibility. Sure, an offensive expression, however vivacious, appears a wonderfully small affair in circumstances so extreme! But here there is a strange thing to be noted. He had only once before referred to the lady with whom he was contracted. That was when we came in view of the town of New ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... powerful thought, seeks and finds relief in expression; the wisdom of Divine benevolence has so arranged, that what brings relief to one, generally affords peace or pleasure to another. And, further, where there is a susceptibility, a capacity of enjoyment, there will be efforts made in order to its gratification. The human heart loves the things of romance, and in the exercise of its native privilege, delights to feel. Scottish song has been written in harmony with nature, scenery, and circumstances; ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... resented, as a weakness, his susceptibility to the influence of others' moods; he did so to-day, when having gone to Mrs. Borisoff in an unusually cheerful frame of mind, he came away languid and despondent. But his scheme of life permitted no such idle brooding as used to waste his days; self-discipline sent him to his work, as usual, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... studied effects, and responsive to motive. It is not the voice of entertainment, but of influence above all. The orator should be taught self-mastery. The orator who is not moved by high moral sense is a trickster or a hypocrite; the former juggles with human susceptibility for unworthy or inadequate ends, and the latter poses for motives he has not. So complex is human nature that this can be done by a good actor so as to deceive the judgment and feelings; but the influence will ultimately reveal the truth, if the auditor will use intuition ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... of it, darling," cried Charlotte, pursing up her mouth for a kiss in a manner which might have been distraction to a masculine mind of average susceptibility. "You shan't talk of anything or think of anything the least, least, least bit unpleasant; and you shall have my gold pencil-case," added Miss Halliday, wrenching that trinket suddenly from the ribbon by which it hung at her side. Perhaps there was just the least touch of Georgy's ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... but in such carefully guarded terms, that even the most exquisite susceptibility on the part of Maxime could not have been hurt. It was five o'clock, when the power-of-attorney and the deed were signed, and the two friends left the worthy notary's office. It was too late now for Daniel to write to Henrietta to send him for that same evening the ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... the crowd and caught the infection of the universal joyful excitement, I felt unbearably sore on Ieronim's account. Why did they not send someone to relieve him? Why could not someone of less feeling and less susceptibility go on the ferry? 'Lift up thine eyes, O Sion, and look around,' they sang in the choir, 'for thy children have come to thee as to a beacon of divine light from north and south, and from east and from the ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Cornelius de Latour, aged so many years, days, hours. Yes! the cold pavement under one's feet had once been molten lava. Surely the resources of sorrow were large in things! The fact must be duly marked and provided for, with due estimate of his own susceptibility thereto, in his scheme of life. Might he pass through the world, unriven by sorrows such as those! And already it was as if he stept softly over the earth, not to outrage its so abundant ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... step of advance in that scale payment is required. The animal is higher than the vegetable; the animal, accordingly, is subject to the sense of pain, the vegetable not; and among animals the pain may be keener as the organization is nobler. The susceptibility not only to pain, but to vital injury, observes the same gradation. A little girdling kills an oak; but some low fungus may be cut and troubled and trampled ad libitum, and it will not perish; and along the shores, farmers year after year pluck ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... grouped a forest along a trickling inch-deep sheet of water. Green things softened the hard, dry aspect of the desert. There were birds and parrots and deer and wild boars. All these Madeline remarked with clear eyes, with remarkable susceptibility of attention; but what she strained to see, what she yearned for, prayed ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... the measures of success already attained, is constantly stimulating his disciples to more strenuous exertions. He shares with other sectarian chiefs who have played a prominent part in the world's history that indefinable quality which stirs emotional susceptibility and renders those who approach him more easily accessible to ideas toward which they began by manifesting repugnance. Lenin is credibly reported to have made several converts ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... could enliven it much. Other houses had flowers or birds in the windows, or at least pleasant glimpses of white curtains, but this one, with its half-closed blinds, had almost a funereal aspect. Nelly had a keen susceptibility of externals, and her heart sank a little; but she rang the bell, determined to make the best of it. The door was opened by an elderly woman in rusty black, with a hard, careworn face, which did not ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... impregnated me with an unreasonable amount of anti-French susceptibility, for certainly he abuses our dear allies with a zeal and a gusto that does one's heart good to listen to; and I do feel like that honest Bull, commemorated by Mathews, that "I hate prejudice—I hate the ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... could help it, while she would watch her slumbers with breathless anxiety, fearing she would never awaken. She also speaks of suffering much from fear, so that she could not bear to be left alone in the dark. This nervous susceptibility followed her for years, although, with a shyness of disposition and reserve which was but little understood she refrained from telling her fears. She was considered rather stupid and dull, and, from being continually described as such, grew neglectful of her studies; while, at the same time, ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... taste; to the woman, its sensibility. The taste of the former seems more derived from reason; that of the latter from instinct: witness their impulsive maternal affection; that inherent ornament of their sex, modesty; their tender susceptibility of the benevolent ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... manures (containing phosphates) were used together, much higher than the average produce of the crop grown in ordinary rotation in the United Kingdom, and very much higher than the average in most other countries when so grown. The requirements of barley within the soil, and its susceptibility to the external influences of season, are very similar to those of its near ally, wheat. Nevertheless there are distinctions of result dependent on differences in the habits of the two plants, and in the conditions of their cultivation ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... as much for pleasure as for instruction. Music and hall rent and a knowledge of the latest dances could be obtained cheaper in this way than in any other. The pupils had made rapid progress, displaying in fact a natural aptitude for rhythmic motion, and a keen susceptibility to musical sounds. As their race had never been criticised for these characteristics, they gave them full play, and soon developed, most of them, into graceful and indefatigable dancers. They were now almost ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... grave and earnest person like her, had little chance with one so full of playful wit and fun as Bessie Keith, to whom her very dignity and susceptibility of annoyance made her the better game. To have involved the grave Rachel in such a parody of an adventure was perfectly irresistible to her, and to expect absolute indifference to it would, as Grace felt, have been requiring ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ill-conditioned individuality, all pleasure is like delicate wine in a mouth made bitter with gall. Therefore, in the blessings as well as in the ills of life, less depends upon what befalls us than upon the way in which it is met, that is, upon the kind and degree of our general susceptibility. What a man is and has in himself,—in a word personality, with all it entails, is the only immediate and direct factor in his happiness and welfare. All else is mediate and indirect, and its influence can be neutralized and frustrated; but the influence of personality ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... to say that Libault told me himself that the hypnotic is only one particular psychical state, increasing susceptibility to suggestion. ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... before her as other girls do in their parent's absence. From children they had never been repressed nor unnaturally subdued; their childish preferences and tastes had been known and respected; no thoughtless criticism had wounded their susceptibility; imperceptibly and gently maternal advice had ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... temperament. The slightest emotion upset him and excited him to an indescribable extent. Such intense sensibility was the result of heredity as well as education. His father, Colonel Campo, had been a self-centred sensitive man, of such keen susceptibility that he was quite a martyr to it the last years of his life. Everybody in Lancia recollected the interesting touching episode which closed the life ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... sheep, and rabbits. It was indeed relatively difficult to exhaust the skunks and armadillos by trauma. These experiments are too few to be conclusive, but they are of some value and furnish an excellent lead. It seems more than a coincidence that proneness to fear, distribution of nociceptors, and susceptibility to shock go hand-in-hand in these comparative observations (Figs. 6, 7, ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... place occupied by it in the chest, asking to have some of the demonstrations repeated two or three times, and when he went out, questioning some of the young men who were following the medical courses, about the susceptibility of the organ, which cannot receive ever so slight a blow without death ensuing from that blow: all this with so perfect an indifference and calmness that no one about ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... sit on the hay with her, when at leisure. Evidently, Priscilla found but scanty requital for her love. Hollingsworth was likewise a great favorite with her. For several minutes together sometimes, while my auditory nerves retained the susceptibility of delicate health, I used to hear a low, pleasant murmur ascending from the room below; and at last ascertained it to be Priscilla's voice, babbling like a little brook to Hollingsworth. She talked more largely and freely with him ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... feature in this statement, beside the phenomenon of sadism, later taken over by the daughter, the urethral eroticism and the susceptibility toward the moonlight, is the behavior of the mother while walking in her sleep. She plainly has an idea where the flower pots stand, which she removes from the box and the window, but on the other hand she comes in contact neither with the bed nor the chamber, ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... immediately that no one had been so universally employed as that of the refrain. The universality of its employment sufficed to assure me of its intrinsic value, and spared me the necessity of submitting it to analysis. I considered it, however, with regard to its susceptibility of improvement, and soon saw it to be in a primitive condition. As commonly used, the refrain, or burden, not only is limited to lyric verse, but depends for its impression upon the force of monotone—both in sound and ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... remarks on the susceptibility of the donkey to the bite of the tsetse fly are exceedingly important. Hitherto Dr. Livingstone had always maintained, as the result of his own observations, that this animal, at all events, could be taken through districts in which horses, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... disarmed, and at the generosity which had spared him, M. de Pontmartin, in the first moment of his defeat,—before he had had time to recover his (bad) temper, to arm himself for more fiery assaults to be followed by fresh overthrows,—declared that, in spite of the susceptibility of his friends, he himself was well satisfied with a criticism which "assigned to him nearly all the merit to which he could pretend," and in which, "for the first time in his literary life, he had seen himself discussed, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... possible," said Dupin. "The present peculiar condition of affairs at court, and especially of those intrigues in which D—— is known to be involved, would render the instant availability of the document—its susceptibility of being produced at a moment's notice—a point of nearly ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... Agricola's master, Mother Bunch could not suppress a movement of surprise, and also blushed slightly. The superior naturally mistook this surprise and confusion for a proof of the modest susceptibility of the young sempstress, and added: "I have told you all this, my dear daughter, that you might be on your guard. I have even mentioned reports that I believe to be completely erroneous, for the daughter of Mme. de Bremont has always had such good examples before her that she cannot have so forgotten ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... lost my sleep and my appetite; I felt dissatisfied with all the world, sometimes blaming myself, and sometimes her—yet ready to excuse and forgive her at a moment's notice. A boy in experience even more than in years, I loved with a boy's headlong passion, and suffered with all a boy's acute susceptibility. I was intensely sensitive—abashed by a slight, humbled by a glance, and so easily wounded that there were often times when, seeing myself forgotten, I could with difficulty drive back the tears that kept rising ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... life or in a book, La Gioconda, the hills of Carrara, Pico of Mirandola, are valuable for their virtues, as we say, in speaking of a herb, a wine, a gem; for the property each has of affecting one with a special, a unique, impression of pleasure. Our education becomes complete in proportion as our susceptibility to these impressions increases in depth and variety. And the function of the aesthetic critic is to distinguish, to analyse, and separate from its adjuncts, the virtue by which a picture, a landscape, a fair personality ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... From the fashionable Fifth avenue establishment down to the cellar lodging-houses of the Five Points, all boarding-houses are alike in this respect. Their success in tormenting their victims depends upon the susceptibility and refinement of feeling and taste on the part of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Disappointed of the Empire which he had contemplated on the edge of the African desert, the champion of the Cross turned to the cold islands of the northern seas. There sighed, in captivity, the beauteous Mary of Scotland, victim of the heretic Elizabeth. His susceptibility to the charms of beauty—a characteristic as celebrated as his courage—was excited, his chivalry aroused. What holier triumph for the conqueror of the Saracens than the subjugation of these northern infidels? He would dethrone the proud Elizabeth; he would liberate and espouse ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and his good manner, a very promising substitute for her Bath admirers (nor in the prospect of Pulwick a profitable exchange for Bath), came forward with her bolder grace to flounce him a saucy "reverence," measuring him the while with a certain air of mockery which his thin-skinned susceptibility was quick to seize. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... they not, even more emphatically, the very flower of yours? Eighteen and twenty-five are ages at which to marry, not ages to defer. During this time the entire flow of my existence is at its crowning fulness—passion, thought, joy, tenderness, susceptibility to beauty and sweetness—all I have that can be diminished or tarnished, or made dull by advancing age and contact with the world, is thrown away—for its spring and summer. Will the autumn of life repay us for this? Will it—even ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... of the things Estelle most disliked in him was the way in which it seemed as if he had some curious sense of delicacy of his own. She wanted to think of Winn as a man impervious to all refinement, born to outrage the nicer susceptibility of her own mind, but there were moments when it seemed as if he didn't think the susceptibilities of her mind were nice at all. He was not ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... issue of lava and ashes for several centuries may have been limited to a few isolated points. Just how these vents have been reopened is one of the most difficult questions still left for investigation. Given a line of weakness in the rocks, though, and a susceptibility to fresh fracture is afforded. Professor McGee suggests that the overloading of the ocean bed by silt from the Mississippi river or other sources may have been the immediately exciting cause of the recent outbreaks. Other geologists have found a similar explanation ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... this the qualification of the subject-observer should be an important consideration. The susceptibility to pleasurable and painful affection by rhythmical and arrhythmical relations among successive sensory stimuli varies within wide limits from individual to individual. It is of equal importance to know how far consonance exists between the experiences ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... with his carefully developed flair for character study, guessed them from the first. Susceptibility to musical intoxication was a thing which he understood, a thing to which he himself was more or less subject. He knew the danger and the value of it. Without some such susceptibility, he believed, artistic accomplishment was ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... of the phobia is not always clear, but given the necessary susceptibility, circumstances doubtless dictate the direction the phobia shall take. A startling personal experience, or even reading or hearing of such an experience may start the fear which the insistent thought finally moulds into ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... there was his god-mother, who was very fond of him, and at her home he would spend whole days and nights. As his talents developed, the boy became the spoilt darling of everybody. This lay at the foundation of his extreme susceptibility, even the ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... like the actualities of life itself, they demand from the reader the faculty of observation which is rare, the power of appreciation which is generally wanting in most of us who are guided mainly by empty phrases requiring no effort, demanding from us no qualities except a vague susceptibility to emotion. Nobody has ever gained the vast applause of a crowd by the simple and clear exposition of vital facts. Words alone strung upon a convention have fascinated us as worthless glass beads strung on a thread have charmed at all times our brothers ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... produce evil rather than good. It has been not infrequently remarked that talents are more common among younger brothers than among elder brothers, but it can scarcely be imagined that younger brothers are, upon an average, born with a greater original susceptibility of parts. The difference, if there really is any observable difference, can only arise from their different situations. Exertion and activity are in general absolutely necessary in one case and are ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... Lammermoor, with great effect. It was probably the vivacity with which he realized the violence which such incidents do to the terrestrial common sense of our ordinary nature, and at the same time the sedulous accuracy of detail with which he narrated them, rather than any, even the smallest, special susceptibility of his own brain to thrills of the preternatural kind, which gave him rather a unique pleasure in dealing with such preternatural elements. Sometimes, however, his ghosts are a little too muscular to produce their due effect as ghosts. In translating Buerger's ballad his ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... air. He saw too that this pain of diffidence becomes more subtle as the progress of culture makes us more sensitive to vague impressions from our environment, and tunes the nerves to a higher pitch. A shy nature upon this plane of susceptibility suffers anguish from an uncontrollable body; and even in peaceful moments the memory of the discomfitures so inflicted may distort a man's whole view of the world around him. He is impatient of the wit which demands a versatility ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... a moral being? What powers, what capacities are involved in his nature! What capacity to enjoy, and what power to impart happiness to others! Who can reflect on the nature of such a creature, his intelligence, his susceptibility, his will, his conscience, the dignity, the excellence of which he is capable, the moral victories and triumphs he may win, his fitness to hold on his way with archangels, strong in advancing all that good which infinite wisdom could devise, and infinite benevolence could love, the graces with ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... W.C. Bryant's lines "To a Water-fowl." They charmed me then and charm me now as nothing else has quite charmed me; I become a child again as I think of them, with a child's virgin subtlety of perception and magical susceptibility to vague suggestions ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... contends, or does the said "insight," as Mr. Newman believes, tell us nothing about the matter? Surely the "Absolute Religion," after having removed from it all in which different religions differ, is in danger of vanishing that imperfect susceptibility of some religion, which I have already conceded, and which is certainly not such a thing as to render an external revelation very obviously superfluous. It may be summed up in one imperfect article. All men ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... to know the lot of other animal creatures—however far below us, they are still the sole created things which share with us the capability of pleasure and the susceptibility to pain. ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... said, a noble, or prince, by descent, though he had for some time been dwelling away from the city, and among the mountains, rearing flocks and herds. Here Aphrodite saw him, and when Jupiter inspired her with a sudden susceptibility to the power of love, the shepherd Anchises was the object toward which her affections turned. She accordingly went to Mount Ida, and giving herself up to him, she lived with him for some time among the mountains as his bride. AEneas ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... approach of their courage and virtue. For the present distress, however, of those who are predisposed to suffer from the tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy remedies. To remove your residence a couple of miles, or at most four, will commonly relieve the most extreme susceptibility. For, the advantages which fashion values are plants which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. Out of this precinct, they go for nothing; are of no use in the farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... against him. Irascible, envious, arrogant,—bad enough, but not the worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold, repellent cynicism,—his passions vented themselves in sneers. There seemed in him no moral susceptibility, and, what was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honor. He had, to a morbid excess, that desire to rise which is vulgarly called "ambition," but no apparent wish for fame or esteem or the love of his species; only the hard wish to succeed, not shine, not serve,—succeed, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... granted to public officers, for they would be of no use without it. But the ostensible semblance of authority is by no means indispensable to the conduct of affairs, and it is needlessly offensive to the susceptibility of the public. The public officers themselves are well aware that they only enjoy the superiority over their fellow-citizens which they derive from their authority upon condition of putting themselves on a level with the whole community ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... attain. Vainly do most of us flap our wings in the effort to soar; if we rise from the ground it is because some unusually strong or deep burst of feeling makes us for the moment better than ourselves. In Mr. Gladstone the capacity for feeling was at all times so strong, the susceptibility of the imagination so keen, that he soared without effort. His vision seemed to take in the whole landscape. The points actually in question might be small, but the principles involved were to him far-reaching. The ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... appeared and he had a crop. Evidently he got fertilization from some outside source. The Persian walnut in the eastern part of the United States is like many other trees in that its trouble does not arise from susceptibility to winter cold, for when it is dormant it appears to stand great cold. The trouble with the Persian walnut is its tendency to start growing at the first approach of warm weather and if the cold comes later it may kill the tree. Mr. Pomeroy's farm there near the shores of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... one of the clerks on that famous and unfortunate voyage of the Tonquin, against the disparaging description of himself and his colleagues given in the former work, should be fairly recorded. At the same time, I can not help stating my own impression that a natural susceptibility, roused by those slighting remarks from Captain Thorn's correspondence, to which Mr. Irving as an historian gives currency, has somewhat blinded my excellent friend to the tone of banter, so characteristic of the chronicler of the Knickerbockers, in which all these particulars are given, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... here below. But they shall not trouble me. They affect only the Nature with which I am, in some strange way, connected; not myself, the being which is elevated above all Nature. The sure end of all pain, and of all susceptibility of pain, is death; and of all which the natural man is accustomed to regard as evil, this is the least so to me. Indeed, I shall not die for myself, but only for others, for those that remain behind, from whose connection I am severed. For myself, the hour of death is the hour of birth ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... If you deny the susceptibility of a temperament like his, you deny the whole operation of externals upon character and action. You deny, for example, the success of the Roman Catholic Church which relies, for its moral effects, upon such optic appeals to the senses, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... G. H. Lewes's "Sea-Side Studies," for some excellent remarks, beginning at p. 329, as to the small susceptibility ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... am not sure that mobility is English; but it is expressive of a quality which rather belongs to other climates, though it is sometimes seen to a great extent in our own. It may be defined as an excessive susceptibility of immediate impressions—at the same time without losing the past: and is, though sometimes apparently useful to the possessor, a ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... and in the concrete, richly clothed in attributes and circumstances, a mental habit which is commonly called Imagination, and is one of the peculiarities of the painter and the poet; while persons of more moderate susceptibility to pleasure and pain will have a tendency to associate facts chiefly in the order of their succession, and such persons, if they possess mental superiority, will addict themselves to history or science rather than to creative ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... susceptibility. Born cautious," explained Dona Rita crisply with the slightest possible quiver of her lips. "Suddenly I had the inspiration to make use of Azzolati, who had been reminding me by a constant stream of messages that he was an old friend. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... little do we know? how little will even the severest scrutiny enable us to discover? Yet, at one time, we were inseparable "like Juno's swans"; we were as brothers, nor dreamt we of ought else, in the susceptibility of our youthful imagination, than that we were to pass through all the future scenes of life, side by side; and, mutually supporting and supported, lengthen out the endearments, the ties, and the feelings of boyhood unto ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... This knowledge is not confined to the Catholic church alone; in all denominations the pubescent human being is considered most susceptible to religious influences. The cause or raison d 'etre of this susceptibility is, by ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... important in France than in most other countries. Besides, the French are a more ideal people than others; live more from the brain, less from the spinal axis; take a deeper delight in the mere social reflection and echoing of life. And in this, on account of their instinctive swiftness of susceptibility, perception, and adroitness, refined women can have no rivals in the other sex. The luxury of the British is taciturnity; but to this day the favorite excitement of the French is conversation; and conversation is the ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... said the artist, calmly. "As I told you, it has imbibed a spiritual essence—call it magnetism, or what you will. In an atmosphere of doubt and mockery its exquisite susceptibility suffers torture, as does the soul of him who instilled his own life into it. It has already lost its beauty; in a few moments more its mechanism would ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... together, and they begin to talk with unaccustomed glibness. A shy woman always attracts a shy man. But women who are gifted with that rapid, gay impressionability which puts them en rapport with their surroundings, who have fancy and an excitable disposition, a quick susceptibility to the influences around them, are very charming in general society, but they are terrible to the awkward and the shy. They sympathize too much, they are too aware of that burning shame which the sufferer ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... made of fine sand. The latter was the least durable, but possessed considerable elasticity and made a very fine driving park. They were experimenting when I came away on sanded glass for road beds. The difficulty was to overcome its susceptibility to attrition. After business hours every street was swept by a machine. The streets and sidewalks, in dry weather, were as free from soil as the floor of a ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... bad, Geraldine, and as the Chevalier, save for this one weakness, this exceeding susceptibility, was a man of penetration, he decided that he would rescue himself once and for all from these drains upon him. With this purpose he went to a very famous monastery in Champagne called—well, anachronistically known ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Hugh Flaxman's apparent susceptibility to them, the possibility of results, and the satisfactory disposition of the family goods and chattels that would be brought about by such a match, the opportunity it would offer the man, too, of rehabilitating ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of proportion, then, is that fineness of susceptibility by which we appreciate in a given object, person, force, or mood, serviceableness in regard to reason's work; in other words, by which we estimate the capacity to transform the Universe in such a way that men may ultimately be enabled to give their hearty consent to its existence, which at present ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... Bridge, the lights of the barges lying in the stream, looking themselves like huddled reptiles seeking the warmth of each other's bodies, the lights of the little buildings on the eyot, and the lamps of the bridge itself, all dancing quaint measures in the black water, brought to the susceptibility of Sally's mind a sense of romance. For the moment, until he spoke, she forgot the actual presence of Mr. Arthur. The vague knowledge that some one was with her, stood for the indefinite, the unknown quantity whose ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... that the susceptibility of rats and mice to the influence of musical sounds has been known for ages. The legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin is by no means recent, nor is it confined to European peoples alone; in one form or another it exists ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... very claims to admiration into prejudices against him. Irascible, envious—bad enough, but not the worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold repellant cynicism, his passions vented themselves in sneers. There seemed to him no moral susceptibility; and, what was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honor. He had, to a morbid excess, that desire to rise which is vulgarly called ambition, but no wish for the esteem or the love of his species; only the hard wish to succeed—not shine, not serve—succeed, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... spectre which they took for her. A country owes much to human beings whose bodies she has worn out and whose immortal parts she has left undeveloped or debased, as we find them here; and having wasted an idle paragraph upon them, let me now suggest that old men have a kind of susceptibility to moral impressions, and even (up to an advanced period) a receptivity of truth, which often appears to come to them after the active time of life is past. The Greenwich pensioners might prove better ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... the nervous susceptibility induced by a guilty conscience, he seized his musket and cocked it. As quickly he set it down again, and smiled at his weakness. Next moment he heard a voice shouting. It ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Spirit of the Bog had followed him into the bush, preserving his noxious innocence and all-round ineptitude in their pristine integrity. Naturally, he had taken a slight local colour, but this seemed to express the limit of his susceptibility ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... other hand, I had gradually acquired a certain self- reliance in mixing with men of my own age. Owing to the exceptional vivacity and innate susceptibility of my nature— qualities which were brought home to me in my relations with members of my circle—I gradually became conscious of a certain power of transporting or ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... friends, and thought of them no more. But such is the difference between barbarism and tyranny on the one side, and civilization and freedom on the other: that which was death in the former, is but court disgrace in the latter. George IV. was not cruel—he had even a certain susceptibility; the spectacle of human suffering revolted him: but suffering to affect him must have been present to his sense. Was Henry VIII. gratuitously cruel? That does not appear. He took no pleasure for itself in shedding blood, and avoided being a witness of it. Had he been obliged ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... really satisfy her. "What, after all, except for the fun of the frisson," she reflected, "would he really care for any of their old ghosts?" And thence she was thrown back once more on the fundamental dilemma: the fact that one's greater or less susceptibility to spectral influences had no particular bearing on the case, since, when one DID see a ghost at Lyng, one did ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... MRS. FULLERTON is a rather tall woman, with dark hair and a quick eye. He, one of those clean-shaven naval men of good presence who have retired from the sea, but not from their susceptibility. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the burning of 'Pickwick' and 'Bleak House' by the common hangman do more to appease Nonconformist susceptibility than even Disestablishment? 'Salem Chapel,' again, and 'Adam Bede.' Fancy 'Adam Bede 'without Mr Irwine, who yet is not held ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... avoided the circles where it spread deepest, in their nervous terror of the social process, of "getting to know the right people." They confessed that, in the beginning, they had fought shy even of each other, lest one of them should develop a hideous susceptibility and impart the taint. There were points at which they both might have touched the aristocracy of journalism; but they had had no dealings with its proletariat or its demi-monde. Below these infernal circles they had discerned the fringe of the bottomless pit, popularity, ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... soothing consolation. I have only to take care that the rectitude of my own behaviour shall refute every suspicion that I am conniving at, or even apologizing for Henry's errors. And though I know the poor fellow's feelings were too keen for his peace, and though, in my own exquisite susceptibility of kindness, I could find motives to mitigate his fault, I will leave his conduct to the mercy of candid people. I will now end my perhaps tedious visit, lamenting that my corps was not raised when Dr. Beaumont's library was destroyed by that infuriate rabble. I extremely regret the loss ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... dealing with disease and other evils.[1559] It is not unusual that the candidate is required to submit to a test, sometimes of physical endurance (as is required also in the case of the young warrior), but chiefly of susceptibility to supernatural influences and capacity of insight, and of the conduct of magical operations.[1560] Generally in the lower tribes the office comes by free choice of the individual, or by choice of the body of magicians, without regard to the social position of the man. In West ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... daughter was a woman. Could that child, that pretty, white doll, really care for men? He felt the strange sensation of the father who has loved many women in his youth, but who, later in life, judging by his own lack of susceptibility, cannot understand his daughter's ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... regulation of the mind, so long as it is dependent upon the body. Happiness and its reverse are constitutional in many persons, and it is then only that they are independent of circumstances. Make the health, the frames of all men alike—make their nerves of the same susceptibility—their memories of the same bluntness, or acuteness—and I will then allow, that you can give rules adapted to all men; till then, your maxim, 'never to regret,' is as idle as Horace's 'never to admire.' It may be wise to you—it is impossible ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... often repeated make, in the end, a large sum of human life; but the heart incessantly demands a genuine and enduring happiness, and is incessantly denied. It is a poverty which even helps to keep alive the susceptibility it tortures; for the man who has never loved, or been the object of affection, whose heart has been fed only by an untaught imagination, feels a passion—feels a regret—it may be far more than commensurate with that envied reality which life possesses ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... protection has been performed by the minister and the consul-general at Paris, and the various consuls in France under the supervision of the latter, with great kindness as well as with prudence and tact. Their course has received the commendation of the German Government, and has wounded no susceptibility ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant |
