"Toughness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plaster; they were spread so thin upon the crust that they were better fitted to draw out hunger than to satisfy it. They used to be made up by the great oven-full and kept in the dry cellar, where they hardened and dried to a toughness you would hardly believe. This was a long time ago, and they make the pumpkin-pie in the country better now, or the race of boys would have been so discouraged that I think they would have stopped coming ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the breast. The property belonged, as it still does, to the Ashburnham family, who are said to have derived great wealth from the manufacture of guns at their works, which were among the last carried on in Sussex. The Ashburnham iron was distinguished for its toughness, and was said to be equal to the best ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... the true power of money,—and no trouble with it, nor any thinking required either. He thought with difficulty and felt vividly; to his blunt brain the problems offered by any ordered scheme of life seemed in their cruel toughness to have been put in his way by the obvious malevolence of men. As a shipowner everyone had conspired to make him a nobody. How could he have been such a fool as to purchase that accursed ship. He had been abominably swindled; there was no end ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... The toughness of your sons in our armed forces is not surprising. They come of fine, rugged stock. Men who work in the mines are not unaccustomed to hardship. It has been the objective of this government to reduce that hardship, to obtain for miners and for all who do the nation's work a better ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... of these films, and of several other bodies, as we can these of Cork; there seems no probable reason to the contrary, but that we might as readily render the true reason of all their Phaenomena; as namely, what were the cause of the springingess, and toughness of some, both as to their flexibility and restitution. What, of the friability or brittleness of some others, and the like; but till such time as our Microscope, or some other means, enable us to discover the true Schematism and Texture of all kinds ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... making a face of contempt. "The match o' that good soul's pastry for hardness an' toughness isn't found this side of the ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... do you think of that?" said he, giving it two or three switches in the air to try its suppleness and toughness; "don't that look like a whip? Now we'll ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... echoes of a thoughtless crowd, Not foreign or domestic treachery, Gould warp thy soul to their unjust decree. So much thy foes thy manly mind mistook, Who judged it by the mildness of thy look: Like a well-temper'd sword it bent at will; But kept the native toughness of the steel. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... together very thoroughly. I am not ungrateful nor unfaithful to Harbury; in your turn you will go there, you will have to live your life in this British world of ours and you must learn its language and manners, acquire its reserves and develop the approved toughness and patterning of cuticle. Afterwards if you please you may quarrel with it. But don't when the time comes quarrel with the present conditions of human association and think it is only with Harbury you quarrel. What man has become and may become beneath the masks and impositions of civilization, ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... misfortune—that sort of hypocrisy is the homage that strength pays to weakness. He talks foolishly and yet very finely about his own city that has never deserted him. He wears a flaming and fantastic flower, like a decadent minor poet. As for his bluffness and toughness and appeals to common sense, all that is, of course, simply the first trick of rhetoric. He fronts his audiences with the venerable affectation of ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... we are, Lignum and myself"—she often speaks of her husband by this appellation, on account, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitae having been his old regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in compliment to the extreme hardness and toughness of his physiognomy—"just looked in, we have, to make it all correct as usual about that security. Give him the new bill to sign, George, and he'll sign it ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... negligeable.' The prospects of the Church in Italy and Spain do not seem very much better. In fact the only comfort which we can suggest to those who regret the decline of an august institution, is that decadent autocracies have often shown an astonishing toughness. But as head of the universal Church, in any true sense of the word, Rome has finished ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... embankments, and concrete, and the prospect is for largely increased demands for such uses in the future. For the purpose of road building, it is necessary to consider a stone's resistance to abrasion, hardness, toughness, cementing value, absorption, and specific gravity. Limestone cements well, but in other qualities it is not desirable for heavy traffic. Shales are soft and clayey, and grind down to a mass which is dry and powdery, and muddy in wet weather. Basalt and related ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... whether the Maluka or the Dandy, or the moon, he forgot to specify. "The old heathen to beat us all too," he added, "just when it had got us all dodged." Dan took all the credit of the suggestion to himself. Then he looked philosophically on the toughness of the problem: "Anyway," he said, "the missus must have learnt a bit about beginning at the beginning of things. Just think what she'd have missed if any one had known when Easter ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... good school for a boy with any toughness of mind or originality; but it tended in the case of normal and unreflective boys to develop a conventional type; good-mannered, sensible, with plenty of savoir faire, but with a wrong set of values. It made boys over-estimate ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... words which it is my sorrowful pride to remember have had literal fulfillment: "I look back with unmingled pleasure to every link which each ensuing week has added to the chain of our attachment. It shall go hard, I hope, ere anything but Death impairs the toughness of a bond now so firmly riveted." It ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... to an open market for fish, except that there was nothing to pay for them. As fast as a line could be thrown, and its little silvery trap set a whirling, the hook was seized by some trout or other, large or small. Some of them were so heavy as to test the toughness of the upper joints of the rods, and now Two Arrows made a discovery. He had watched Sile work his reel until he had caught the secret of it, and could let a strong fish run a little before he drew him in. It was an idea that suited him exactly, and it made ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... to wrong by way of remonstrance and petition, sometimes even by force; laudable efforts toward self-education; benevolent and philanthropic movements; reform organizations, and commendable business enterprise both in individuals and associations. These show a toughness of fibre and steadiness of purpose sufficient to make the ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... was published on the last day of 1817. The toughness of the job was caused by constant pain, and by struggles with "the lassitude of opium." So seldom sentimental, so rarely given to expressing his melancholy moods in verse, Scott, while composing "Rob Roy," wrote the beautiful poem "The sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill," in ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Athletics should not be too severe, however, yet, the boy ought not to have century runs and long halves of football, especially if the heart is still weak. The tissues of the body have not yet gained the toughness that they will gain at a later time. Every commander in the field dreads to have boys of eighteen, nineteen, or twenty sent to him, because, as Napoleon said of his young recruits, "they die off like flies." The hard bed, with light covering, the cold room, the cold bath will now aid in ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... resplendent. Thus the Birch Canoe was builded In the valley, by the river, In the bosom of the forest; And the forest's life was in it, All its mystery and its magic, All the lightness of the birch tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews; And it floated on the river, Like a yellow leaf in autumn, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... heated bar of Iron, which we finde also to be employ'd by some Artificers in the tempering of such great Instruments, as are too big to be soon heated sufficiently by the flame of a Candle. And you may easily satisfie your self Pyro: of the differing hardness and toughness, which is ascribed to Steel temper'd at different Colours, if you break but some slender wires of Steel so temper'd, and observe how they differ in brittleness, and if with a file you also make tryal of ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... entering into the composition of any casting, the denser and tougher it will be. The constituent atoms of the different kinds of iron appear to be of different sizes, and the mixture of different kinds maintains the toughness, while it adds to the density and cohesive power. Hot blast iron was at one time generally believed to be weaker than cold blast iron, but it is now questioned whether it is not the stronger of the two. The cohesive ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... year or two short of fifty, Mr. Daffy began to be old; he was shoulder-bent, knee-shaky, and had a pallid, wrinkled visage, with watery, pathetic eye. At fifty turned, Mr. Lott showed a vigour and a toughness such as few men of any age could rival. For a score of years the measure of Mr. Lott's robust person had been taken by Mr. Daffy's professional tape, and, without intimacy, there existed kindly relations between the two men. Neither had ever been in the other's house, but they ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... them one by one, as you might say, out of the depths of his moral consciousness. His benignant and imperturbable pomposity gave Roderick the sense of suffocating beneath a large fluffy bolster, and the worst of the matter was that the good gentleman's placid vanity had an integument whose toughness no sarcastic shaft could pierce. Roderick admitted that in thinking over the tribulations of struggling genius, the danger of dying of over-patronage had never ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... peeled Rivera's sweater over his head. His body seemed leaner, because of the swarthiness of the skin. He had muscles, but they made no display like his opponent's. What the audience neglected to see was the deep chest. Nor could it guess the toughness of the fiber of the flesh, the instantaneousness of the cell explosions of the muscles, the fineness of the nerves that wired every part of him into a splendid fighting mechanism. All the audience saw was a brown-skinned boy of eighteen with what seemed the body of a boy. With Danny ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... of Mr. Tubbs. With a righteous joy, I saw the fabric of Aunt Jane's illusions shaken by the rude blast of reality. Would it be riven quite in twain? I was dubious, for Aunt Jane's illusions have a toughness in striking contrast to the uncertain nature of her ideas in general. Darker and darker disclosures of Mr. Tubbs's perfidy would be required. But judging from his present recklessness, they would be forthcoming. For where was the Tubbs of ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... that they are so distinct and separately evident throughout, the very emphasis of individuality they carry with them, but proves their distinct origin. The other elements of our life, various though they be, and of the very fibre, giving toughness and consistency to the fabric, are merged in its texture, united, confused, almost indistinguishable, so thoroughly are they mixed, intertwined, interwoven, like the essential strands of the stuff itself: ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... movement. The shield, in fact, became a fine coat of mail. The Trilobite is an early and imperfect experiment of the class, and the larva of the modern king-crab bears witness that it has not perished without leaving descendants. How later Crustacea increase the toughness of the coat by deposits of lime, and lead on to the crab and lobster, and how one early branch invades the land, develops air-breathing apparatus, and culminates in the spiders and insects, will be considered later. We shall see that there is most remarkable ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... that Turnus, when his steeds he join'd, Hurrying to war, disorder'd in his mind, Snatch'd the first weapon which his haste could find. 'T was not the fated sword his father bore, But that his charioteer Metiscus wore. This, while the Trojans fled, the toughness held; But, vain against the great Vulcanian shield, The mortal-temper'd steel deceiv'd his hand: The shiver'd fragments ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... that animal food should be hung up in the open air, till its fibres have lost some degree of their toughness; yet, let us be clearly understood also to warn you, that if kept till it loses its natural sweetness, it is as detrimental to health, as it is disagreeable to the ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... coherence, adherence, adhesion, adhesiveness; concretion accretion; conglutination, agglutination, agglomeration; aggregation; consolidation, set, cementation; sticking, soldering &c v.; connection; dependence. tenacity, toughness; stickiness &c 352; inseparability, inseparableness; bur, remora. conglomerate, concrete &c (density) 321. V. cohere, adhere, stick, cling, cleave, hold, take hold of, hold fast, close with, clasp, hug; grow together, hang together; twine round &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... who speak of the sitting upon an easy-chair as a moral set-back. The strained and posed life which such savants lead is not to be regarded as a rough one; for there is constant luxury in the thought of their own toughness, and infinite comfort in the sense of superiority which they permit themselves to feel. It is not roughing it to feed from a bare board when a tablecloth adds insignificantly to the impedimenta of the camp: it is pretending to rough it. It is not ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... terms satisfied the diplomatists both of France and England; they would probably have been less complacent could they have foreseen the day when this hard-won treaty would be torn up by the Power they seemed to be binding hand and foot with sworn obligations of perdurable toughness; least of all would that foresight have been agreeable to Lord Palmerston, Premier of England when the peace was signed, and quite at one with the mass of the people of England in their deep dislike and distrust ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... them. His vest was equally close; and as the hanging cloak which he wore over it did not reach far enough down his back, it was impossible to view him behind without convulsive laughter. His shoes were made of some description of foreign bark, which had by some chemical process been tanned into toughness, and on his head he wore a turban of linen, made of the same material which furnished his other garments. Altogether, a more ludicrous figure could not be seen, especially if a person happened to stand ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... hung over their heads, and when they die it is hung over their graves. The largest cross-bows have a span of fully five feet, and require a pull of thirty-five pounds to string them. The bow is made of a species of wild mulberry, of great toughness and flexibility. The stock, some four feet long in the war-bows, is usually of wild plum wood, the string is of plaited hemp, and the trigger of bone. The arrow, of sixteen to eighteen inches, is of split bamboo, about four times the thickness of an ordinary knitting needle, hardened and pointed. ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... portion of the Merced Canon I found a lonely miner seeking his fortune in a quartz vein on a wild mountain-side planted with this singular tree. He told me that he called it the Hickory Pine, because of the whiteness and toughness of the wood. It is so little known, however, that it can hardly be said to have a common name. Most mountaineers refer to it as "that queer little pine-tree covered all over with burs." In my studies of this species ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... towards the room. And, above all, the marital mind is strangely exasperated by the log. Smite it with the poker, and you get but a sullen resonance, a flight of red sparks, a sense of an unconquerable toughness. It is worse than coke. The crisp fracture of coal, the spitting flames suddenly leaping into existence from the shiny new fissures, are altogether wanting. Old-seasoned timber burns indeed most delightfully, but then it is as ugly as coal, and withal very dear. So Euphemia went back to coal ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... over the Menai Strait and at Saltash near Plymouth, erected in the middle of the 19th century, were entirely of wrought iron, and subsequently wrought iron girder bridges were extensively used on railways. Since the introduction of mild steel of greater tenacity and toughness than wrought iron (i.e. from 1880 onwards) it has wholly superseded the latter except for girders of less than 100 ft. span. The latest change in the material of bridges has been the introduction of ferro-concrete, armoured concrete, or concrete strengthened with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... away that stretched the heart out till the strings grew. The tragedy of sin revealed the toughness and tenderness of love. For that heart never let go of the man whom it borned. Man tried to pull away, poor thing. In his foolish misunderstanding and heady wilfulness he tried to cut loose. If he had known God better he would never have tried that. He'd never have started away; and he'd ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... such as our five-cent piece is made of, and that steel made from such a mixture is harder and tougher than any other kind. Bicycle-makers have found this out for themselves, and know the reason of the toughness, but it was a great mystery ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... first sighed, and then grumbled to herself, over the increasing toughness of the potato-cakes she had ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and how beautiful and desirable a substance it was, for work of that kind. In oil painting, its unctuous quality is to be delighted in; in fresco, its chalky quality; in glass, its transparency; in wood, its grain; in marble, its softness; in porphyry, its hardness; in iron, its toughness. In a flint country, one should feel the delightfulness of having flints to pick up, and fasten together into rugged walls. In a marble country, one should be always more and more astonished at the exquisite color and structure of marble; in a slate country, one should feel as if every ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... against the force of the tropical raindrops. The direct influence of the rain cannot be the cause of this power of resistance, for the leaves, while they were still thin, would simply have been torn to pieces. Their toughness must therefore be referred to selection, which would favour the trees with slightly thicker leaves, though we cannot calculate with any exactness how great the first stages of increase in thickness must have been. Our hypothesis receives further ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... sugar-refineries. According to age, the color of the creature varies from yellowish to black;— the younger ones often have several different tints; the old ones are uniformly jet-black, and have a carapace of surprising toughness,—difficult to break. If you tread, by accident or design, upon the tail, the poisonous head will instantly curl back and bite the foot through any ordinary thickness of ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... the most beautiful make, of hickory, which is as durable as metal-spokes, not thicker than the middle finger, but strong enough for any required weight, and with great flexibility; and from its extreme toughness, calculated for the woodwork of implements. The apartment on the ground-floor was entirely occupied by machines in motion, and each was attended by a person who explained, with the greatest civility and intelligence, the uses of the various parts of the machine, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... heated with walking, and he repeatedly passed his handkerchief over his forehead, with a somewhat wearied gesture. And yet he was evidently not a man to whom fatigue was familiar; long, lean, and muscular, he suggested the sort of vigor that is commonly known as "toughness." But his exertions on this particular day had been of an unwonted sort, and he had performed great physical feats which left him less jaded than his tranquil stroll through the Louvre. He had looked out all the pictures to which an asterisk was affixed in those formidable ...
— The American • Henry James
... easily caught or shot. There are some large quadrupeds too, as the Indian rhinoceros, and the Sumatran tapir; and although the flesh of these great thick-skinned animals is neither tender nor delicate, yet men who can get no other soon find themselves in a position to relish it, despite its toughness and its coarse texture. But neither rhinoceros nor tapir was seen by our castaways; neither seemed to frequent that part of the coast, as no tracks of them were observed during their excursions. If they had fallen in with a rhinoceros, they would have had some difficulty ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... finished or bust a trace," Barnard said. They bunked together in one of the old cabins and Tom enjoyed the isolation and the pioneer character of their task. Relieved of the tremendous strain of lifting the logs alone, his shoulder regained some of its former strength and toughness, and the confidence of success in time cheered him no less than did the amusing and sprightly ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... deal of whipcord fiber in his make-up. He stood the test and grubbed at his books every night until the clock tolled twelve. He was born at a peculiar time, being a child of the Reformation married to the Renaissance. The toughness and grimness of Calvin were united in him with the tenderness of Erasmus. From out of the Universal Energy, of which we are particles, he had called into his being qualities so diverse that they seemed never to have been before or since united in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... you want, but toughness. Metals have several properties, which are utilized for various purposes in the arts. Surprising as it may seem, wood has greater resisting power than diamond, and yet the precious stone is the hardest of ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... "I'll answer for the toughness of the handle, at any rate!" cried Peterkin; "my arms are nearly pulled out of the sockets. But see here, our luck is great. There is iron on the blade." He pointed to a piece of hoop-iron as he spoke, which had been nailed round the blade of the ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... is often combined chromium, increases the strength, springiness and toughness and helps ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... my good fellow," said the doctor, with his great coarse laugh. "I rather suspect that you have already got beyond the age when the great medicine could do you good; that speech indicates a great toughness and hardness and bitterness about the heart that does not ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his niggardliness is shown in the saying, 'The Meo will not give his daughter in marriage till he gets a mortar full of silver'; his pugnacity is expressed in, 'The Meo's son begins to avenge his feuds when he is twelve years old'; and his toughness in, 'Never be sure that a Meo is dead till you see ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... things on the moon; doors tables, everything corresponding to our terrestrial joinery was made of metal, and I believe for the most part of gold, which as a metal would, of course, naturally recommend itself—other things being equal—on account of the ease in working it, and its toughness and durability.] ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... this, and err rather on the safe side. This shaft has been in use eight years, and no sign of any flaw has been observed. Since then the tensile strength of mild steel has gradually been increased by Messrs. Vickers, the steel still retaining the elasticity and toughness to endure fatigue. This has only been arrived at by improvements in the manufacture and more powerful and better adapted hammers to forge it down from the large ingots to the size required. The amount of work they are now able to subject the steel to renders it more fit to sustain the fatigue ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... might be supposed that they understood the tonic properties of the plant had not the same decoction been used by the women as a hair wash, and by the ball players to bathe their limbs, under the impression that the toughness of the roots would thus be communicated to the hair or muscles. From this fact and from the name of the plant, which means at once hard, tough, or strong, it is quite probable that its roots are believed to give strength to the patient solely because they themselves are so strong and not because ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... wheat, cotton and the innumerable other products of the soil; it governs no less the transformation of crude ores into steel and alloys, which, with the cunning born of chemical knowledge, may be given practically any conceivable quality of hardness, elasticity, toughness or strength. And exactly the same thing may be said of the hundreds of national activities that lie between the two extremes of ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... no reason why ordinary paper should not be better made, even allowing the necessity for a very low price; but any improvement must be based on showing openly that the cheap article is cheap, e. g., the cheap paper should not sacrifice toughness and durability to a smooth and white surface, which should be indications of a delicacy of material and manufacture which would of necessity increase its cost. One fruitful source of badness in paper is the habit that publishers have of ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... he was looking back ruefully to the time when he had supposed that an artist's model had a soft job. In the first five minutes muscles which he had not been aware that he possessed had started to ache like neglected teeth. His respect for the toughness and durability of artists' models was now solid. How they acquired the stamina to go through this sort of thing all day and then bound off to Bohemian revels at night was more ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... in your keeping and swore and swore it wasn't; item, repeatedly exhausted by your toughness eight strong lictors equipped with pliant elm rods. (pause) Have I celebrated my colleague highly enough to pay ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... night; he shook his fist at her, and called her fool. It was because she had broken the Princess's umbrella. This was the new umbrella bought by him with so much trouble in Gerstein two days before, and therefore presumably of a sufficient toughness to stand any reasonable treatment for a time. There was a mist and a drizzle at Calais, and Priscilla, refusing to go under shelter, had sent Fritzing to fetch her umbrella, and when he demanded it of Annalise, she offered it him in two pieces. This alone was enough to upset a wise ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... attitude apparently relaxed. His face was still white. It could not acquire color in that close cell, but he had never felt stronger. A powerful heart pumped vigorous blood through every artery and vein. His muscles had regained their toughness and flexibility, and above all, the intense desire for freedom had keyed ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of which one may distinguish the various gems from each other is hardness. By hardness is meant the ability to resist scratching. The term "hardness" should not be taken to include toughness, yet it is frequently so understood by the public. Most hard stones are more or less brittle and would shatter if struck a sharp blow. Other hard stones have a pronounced cleavage and split easily in certain directions. True hardness, then, ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... too. One thing we can really be proud of here, besides the toughness of our citizens, is our public library. When people have to stay underground most of the time to avoid being fried and/or frozen to death, they have a lot of time to kill, and reading is one of ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... jack-knives and "squrruls," of domestic Bible-reading and attendance at "evening lecture," of the fear of parental discipline and the cultivated art of dodging it, combined with great personal toughness and hardihood, an almost envied liability to warts on hard brown hands, a familiarity with garments domestically wrought, a brave rusticity in short that yet hadn't prevented the annexation of whole tracts of town life unexplored by ourselves and achieved by ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... with a hope forlorn,— I knew what toughness meant, And sighed that ever I was born To die ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... the amazing toughness of his skin, and its looseness, the ratel managed to, as it were, slide the bone of his leg between the jaws of the trap, leaving the skin and fur in, and the rest was mainly determined ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... separates itself into the grosser and the thinner parts: we see this in bleeding; and from the toughness of the red cake may guess how very difficult it will be to dissolve a substance of like firmness in the vessels of the body. That it can thus become thickened within the body, a Pleurisy shews us too evidently: in that case it is brought on suddenly, and with inflammation; in this other, ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... have ever succeeded in lifting up their heads above water in an open sea. Why were they not swept away during storms into some adjoining abysses, the highest parts of each shoal being always planed off down to the depth of a few fathoms? The hardness and toughness of some rocks already exposed to windward and acting as breakwaters may perhaps have assisted; nor must we forget the protection afforded by a dense and unbroken covering of barnacles, limpets, and other creatures which flourish most between high and low water and shelter ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... of the key is immaterial. The keys made by me have levers 1 inch wide and 5-1/2 inches long, oak being chosen as material, on account of its toughness. K is in each case a small wooden knob on a piece of 3/16-inch brass rod; O a 1-1/2-inch brass screw; A a piece of sheet brass 3-1/2 inches long, marked off carefully, drilled 1/8 inch from the centre ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... threw up his commission and returned to Europe, trusting, he told me, that after five years' absence, the governor's bowels would yearn towards his youngest-born. In this he was entirely mistaken; he greatly underrated the toughness of paternal viscera. Far from killing the fatted calf on the prodigal's return, the incensed old Hollander refused him the smallest cutlet, and shutting the door in his face, consigned him, with more energy than affection, to the custody of the evil one. Van Haubitz ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... cut from one of the oxen, was brought by the cook, emitting an aroma agreeable enough; but it did not tempt the young officer, whose one idea was to mount and ride away for the kopje. Certainly it was not only like fresh meat—very tough—but it possessed the toughness of years piled-up by an ox whose life had been passed helping to drag a tow-rope on trek. So half of it was left, and the young ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... In thus preserving the toughness of Sir Pertinax consistently to the end, Macklin remained true to the tradition of critical, satiric comedy that he had been bred in but that by this time had almost disappeared. Protesting against the refusal of a license for his ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... reader's attention on the form of the bracket itself; a most important feature in modern as well as ancient architecture. The first idea of a bracket is that of a long stone or piece of timber projecting from the wall, as a, Fig. XXXIX., of which the strength depends on the toughness of the stone or wood, and the stability on the weight of wall above it (unless it be the end of a main beam). But let it be supposed that the structure at a, being of the required projection, is found too weak: then we may strengthen ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... structure and, on this account, differ in their properties.(3) Their different properties enable them to serve different purposes in the body. Somewhat as glass is adapted by its transparency, hardness, and toughness to the use made of it in windows, the special properties of the tissues adapt them to the kinds of service which they perform. Properties that adapt tissues to their work in the body are called essential properties. The most important ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... pecan tree I saw growing in Easton, Maryland, in 1927, for example, was then seventeen feet in circumference at breast-height, one hundred twenty-five feet in height and having a spread of one hundred fifty feet. The wood of the pecan is similar to that of the hickory in both toughness and specific gravity, although for practical purposes, such as being used for tool handles, the shagbark hickory is enough harder and tougher to make it the superior ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... the age of development. She still retains the type of periodicity; and her best work, both as to quality and amount, is accomplished when the order of her labor partakes of the rhythmic order of her constitution. Still the fact remains, that she can do more than before; her fibre has acquired toughness; the system is consolidated; its fountains are less easily stirred. It should be mentioned in this connection, what has been previously adverted to, that the toughness and power of after life are largely in proportion to the normality of sexual development. If there is error then, the organization ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... convictions are consecrated into a creed which it is a sacred duty to believe, experience is but like water dropping upon a rock, which wears it away, indeed, at last, but only in thousands of years. This theory was and is the central idea of the Jewish polity, the obstinate toughness of which has been the perplexity of Gentiles and Christians from the first dawn of its existence; it lingers among ourselves in our Liturgy and in the popular belief; and in spite of the emphatic censure of Him after whose name we call ourselves, is still ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... official expressed the thanks of the audience and there was another round of applause. Then everybody connected with the arrangement of the meeting gathered in the anteroom and one after the other made appreciative speeches and bows. I marvelled at the orator's toughness. Before he went on the platform he had been pestered with unending introductions and beset by conversation. But I do not know that my friend felt any strain. Nor did the fashion in which the speakers wandered on ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... base of its pink walls, which are separated from the ground by a substantial granite foundation. The spruce rafters and weather-boarding have acquired such hardness and toughness with age that the sharpest hatchet can make little or no impression upon them. Between the roughly hewn rafters, which are placed horizontally one above the other, a mixture of clay and turf forms a stanch ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... in this moment of awareness and non-understanding is almost sufficient to cause a choice of death rather than life at this point. Only because of the developed toughness, acquired through the aeons, does the majority of mammalian life choose ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... more carbon is introduced into the iron, it combines with the iron and distributes itself throughout the metal in extremely small crystals of cementite, and this brittle, hard substance lends more and more hardness and strength to the steel, at the expense of the original toughness of the iron. As more and more carbon is contained in the alloy—for steel is a true alloy—it begins to appear as graphite, and its properties counteract the remaining brittle cementite. Eventually, in gray cast iron, we have properties which would be expected of wrought iron, ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... moved restlessly from place to place, roamed at all times of the day and night through the city and its suburbs, trying vainly to exhaust his physical strength; gradually, as his lethargy deepened into a numb, helpless despair, it seemed somehow to impart a certain toughness to his otherwise delicate frame. Olson, who was now a junior partner in the firm of Remsen, Van Kirk and Co., stood by him faithfully in these days of sorrow. He was never effusive in his sympathy, but was patiently forbearing with his friend's whims and moods, and humored him as if he had ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... picked up one of the papers when there came a shuffling of feet in the passage outside, followed by a knock upon the door. The next moment there appeared in the doorway a short, stout young man. There was an indescribable air of toughness about him, partly due to the fact that he wore his hair in a well-oiled fringe almost down to his eyebrows, which gave him the appearance of having no forehead at all. His eyes were small and set close together. His mouth was wide, ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... material, and when it was finished invited his friends to see the new work; amongst others, the Duchess of Buckingham begged a small piece of the precious wood, and it soon became the fashion. On account of its toughness, and peculiarity of grain, it was capable of treatment impossible with oak, and the high polish it took by oil and rubbing (not French polish, a later invention), caused it to come into great request. The ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield |
