"Impressibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... writes of giants such as Hogarth or Shakespeare, though often but in a stray note, you catch the sense of veneration with which those great names in past literature and art brooded over his intelligence, his undiminished impressibility by the great effects in them. Reading, commenting on Shakespeare, he is like a man who walks alone under a grand stormy sky, and among unwonted tricks of light, when powerful spirits might seem to be abroad upon the air; and the grim ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... themselves. Yet cocaine is chemically very different from caffeine, simply producing a similar physiological effect in much smaller doses. All these substances in their natural condition seem to be identical in their general physiological effect, but idiosyncrasy, or different individual impressibility or sensitiveness, causes a different action, as well in quality as in degree from the different ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... a year, whether he is a soldier or no? The question would seem to answer itself in the very asking. Nevertheless, being most profoundly ignorant of the art of war, like the majority of the General's critics, and, on the other hand, having some considerable impressibility by men's characters, I was glad of the opportunity to look him in the face, and to feel whatever influence might reach me from his sphere. So I stared at him, as the phrase goes, with all the eyes I had; and the reader shall have the benefit of what I saw,—to which he is the more welcome, because, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... man, in the sense of having that character less in quantity, and lower in quality. Tell these persons of the rapid perceptions and the instinctive intellectual insight of women, and they reply that the feminine mental peculiarities, which pass under these names, are merely the outcome of a greater impressibility to the superficial aspects of things, and of the absence of that restraint upon expression, which, in men, is imposed by reflection and a sense of responsibility. Talk of the passive endurance of the weaker sex, and opponents ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... mask he was keenly conscious of everything; in that apparent concentration there was a sharpening of all his senses and his impressibility: he saw the first trace of doubt or alarm in the face of a subaltern to whom he was giving an order; the first touch of sluggishness in a re-forming line; the more significant clumsiness of a living evolution that he knew was clogged ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... around her had in her eye all the value of the most solid and reasonable faith. With us, who may look on it from a colder and more distant point of view, doubts may be suggested whether this naive impressibility to religious influences, this simple, whole-hearted abandonment to their expression, had any real practical value. The fact that any or all of the actors might before night rob or stab or lie quite as freely as if it has not occurred may well give reason for such a question. Be this as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... virtuoso well known for his vigour and brilliancy. Were we, however, to form our judgment on this single item of evidence, we should again arrive at a wrong conclusion. Where musical matters—i.e., matters generally estimated according to individual taste and momentary impressibility alone—are concerned, there is safety only in the multitude of witnesses. Let us, therefore, hear first what Chopin's pupils have got to say on this point, and then go and inquire further. Gutmann said that ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... with brilliant trappings, gorgeous dress, and martial show. The magnificent Norman cathedrals struck the mind with devotional awe; the donjons and towers of the great baronial castles were suggestive of power and glory. To the impressibility of the senses was added the romantic spirit of adventure, which kept the knighthood of Europe in a constant ferment, and for lack of war, burst forth in tournaments, in private feuds, or in the extravagances of knight-errantry. The feudal system, growing ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Casaubon! Celia felt a sort of shame mingled with a sense of the ludicrous. But perhaps Dodo, if she were really bordering on such an extravagance, might be turned away from it: experience had often shown that her impressibility might be calculated on. The day was damp, and they were not going to walk out, so they both went up to their sitting-room; and there Celia observed that Dorothea, instead of settling down with her usual diligent interest to some occupation, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... with thick eyelids covering nearly half of the pupil, when taken in connection with the full brow, is indicative of genius, and is often found in artists, literary and scientific men. It is the eye of talent, or impressibility. The large, open, transparent eye, of whatever color, is indicative of elegance, of taste, of refinement, of wit, of intelligence. Weakly marked eyebrows indicate a feeble constitution and a tendency to melancholia, Deep sunken eyes are selfish, while eyes in which the whole ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens |
