"Adaptability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... otherwise so unlike. Both are vertebrate animals, though the backbone of a fish is in some respects unlike that of a bird, still the plan is the same, and it has been truly said that "among the many wonders of nature there is nothing more wonderful than this—the adaptability of the one Vertebrate type to the infinite variety of life to which it serves an as organ and a home." But when you said that the herring had neither legs nor wings, you forgot to notice the fins, by means of which it moves from place to place in its watery home; as the bird, on its strong ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... vast Abyss, have to get their entire living from this tepid sea. They don't even possess wood to work with! If this doesn't prove the human race all but godlike in its skill and courage and adaptability, what does?" ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... in which he is born, so that emigration becomes an ever more permanent phenomenon for the greater portion of men, for whom the accident of birth will less and less determine the course of their future life. And the abnormal man who is below the minimum of adaptability to social life and bears the marks of organic degeneration, develops either a passive or an aggressive form of abnormality and ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... is quite neglected is the Japanese walnut. It has been on trial in this country for perhaps fifty or seventy-five years. It has indicated its adaptability to a wide range of the country; it succeeds on a great variety of soils and it is both hardy and early to come into bearing. It has this disadvantage, however,—the nuts are small; but in flavor the kernals can hardly be distinguished from those of the butternut. Very ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... technical training, his performance, and his career field preference, the board recommended him for reassignment in a specific duty field. Although Edwards had promised that the screening boards would also judge each man's "adaptability" to integrated service, this requirement was quickly dropped by Davis and his fellow board members.[16-23] In fact, the whole idea of having screening boards was resented by some black officers. Zuckert later admitted that the screening may have been a mistake, but at the time it had been considered ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... was always "a bad second," and none save herself attributed to her the normal status of privileges of an elder sister. Her wrath was not visited on me, but on those who exalted me so unduly; even while she resented my position she was not, as I have shown, above using it for her own ends; this adaptability was not due to guile; she forgot one mood when another came, and compromised her pretensions in the effort to compass her desires. Princess Heinrich seized on the inconsistency, and pointed it out to her daughter ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... by their advocates are thought to have the advantage of adaptability to changing conditions and to be more conformable to the theory of the consent of the governed ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... been following, with sunny adaptability, the line of the least resistance. Thrown out of his groove by the jealousy and resentment of the dark time in his married life, Jim had realized himself as fairly cornered by Fate, and had run away from the whole situation rather than own ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... those who could penetrate behind the embarrassed and painful reticence that was for him both an impediment and an unconscious shield, he gave lavishly of the gifts of temperament and spirit which were his; even that lack of ready address, of social adaptability and adjustment, which it is possible to deplore in him, was, for those who knew him and valued him, a not uncertain element of charm: for it was akin to the shyness, the absence of assertiveness, the entirely genuine modesty, which were of his dominant traits. Yet in his contact with the outer ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... all kinds of poetry alike there was one point on which they were rigidly exacting; the adaptability of the subject to the kind of poetry selected, and the careful construction ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... and that approximate somewhat in their flavour and manner of cooking to that used previously. A further change to a simpler diet can afterwards gradually be made, according to conviction, tastes and bodily adaptability. It must not be expected that a change, even an ultimately very advantageous one, will always meet with an immediate and proper response from digestive and assimilative organs which have been accustomed for many years, perhaps by inheritance for ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... and the upper classes of all the towns invariably supported the show, while the lower classes came as a matter of course. Mr Wopples, however, was equally as clever in providing a bill of fare as in inducing the public to come to the theatre, and the adaptability of the family was really wonderful. One night they would play farcical comedy; then Hamlet, reduced to four acts by Mr Wopples, would follow on the second night; the next night burlesque would reign supreme; and when the curtain arose on the fourth night Mr Wopples and the star artistes would ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... been having a 'toddy' at Morico's, that makes her lively," thought Gregoire. But the knowledge did not abash him in the least. He accommodated himself at once to the situation with that adaptability common to the American youth, whether of the South, North, ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... out from statistics the average age of the parents of the best babies. We must determine and analyse the qualifications of what constitutes the "best" babies, according to the eugenic ideal. We should give heed to the fixity of temperamental characteristics in order to determine their adaptability to conditions that prevail at certain ages. We should select an age in advance of the period at which science has determined individuals to have ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... granaries; apartments for her soldiers, her workers, etc.; and they and the multifarious halls and corridors which communicate with them are arranged and distributed with an educated and experienced eye for convenience and adaptability. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shut her eyes.)—'I have no misgivings. There is adaptability of character in Fanny. But my younger daughter, Mrs General, rather worries and vexes my thoughts. I must inform you that she has always been ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... in a week, possibly in a month. But persistence and a protean adaptability to meet his moods might accomplish something. I don't say will, I only say might. If Sweetwater had the job, with unlimited time in which to carry out any plan he may have, or even for a change of plans to suit a ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... countries, to America, the most democratic of countries, comes here, not as to a strange land, but as to a home? The ability of the Russian Jew to adjust himself to America's essentially democratic conditions is not to be explained by Jewish adaptability. The explanation lies mainly in the fact that the twentieth century ideals of America have been the ideals of the Jew for more than twenty centuries. We have inherited these ideals of democracy and of social justice as we have the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... people with such incipient social and political institutions as has the Bontoc Igorot should have developed a "money" is remarkable. The North American Indian with his strong tendency and adaptability to political organization had no such money. Nothing of the kind has been presented as belonging to the Australian of ultrasocial development, and I am not aware that anything equal has been produced by other similar primitive peoples. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... MR. PUNCH,—I wonder if any of your intelligent readers have noticed the wonderful adaptability of Nature, of which I send you the following remarkable instance:—The yellowhammer, which we are always told sings, "A little bit of bread and no che-e-ese," has (unless my ears grossly deceive me) changed its words this year to "A little bit of cheese ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... Mlle. Wiest in the principal roles. It was designed and partly completed during Wagner's stay in Riga as orchestra leader. In his Autobiography the composer says that he first read the story at Dresden in 1837, and was greatly impressed with its adaptability for opera. He began it in the fall of the same year at Riga, and says: "I had composed two numbers of it, when I found, to my annoyance, that I was again fairly on the way to the composition of music a la Adam. I put the work aside in disgust." Later he projected the ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... should have been offered to him, and pleased that for the present he should have declined it. He liked her dress and her willingness to change any portion of it at his slightest hint. He liked her activity and power of walking, and her general adaptability to himself. He was pleased with everything. But she had the secret at ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... form by caresses and endearments. Notice how closely they sit together, the lines of both figures inclining to each other. Why, you couldn't put a piece of tissue paper between their shoulders. His nose is slightly modeled after the Roman type, and as hers curves the other way the circle of adaptability is complete." ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... conciliate the audience? To this query there is no answer that will positively guarantee success. The arguer must always study his audience and suit his discourse to the occasion. What means success in one instance may bring failure in another. The secret of the whole matter is adaptability. Humor, gravity, pathos, even defiance may at times be used to advantage. It is not always possible, however, for the orator or writer to know beforehand just the kind of people he is to address. In this case it ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... experience of "getting hold of Johnny," Dan called it foolishness to wait for an expert, and the Dandy being away for the remainder of the stores, and the Quiet Stockman having his hands full to overflowing, the Maluka and Dan with that adaptability peculiar to bushmen, set to work themselves at the yard, with fifteen or twenty boys ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... adaptability proved a valuable asset that day. Everybody was so cordial and friendly that, although she was the only woman without the white cap, there was no shadow of any holier-than-thou spirit. She was accepted as a friend; as a lady from Philadelphia ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... from Europe and the United States, and simultaneously places it in condition to turn up in the world's market as a competitor. Should China also, as a result of the Japanese-Chinese war, be compelled to open her immense territory to European culture, then, in view of the great adaptability and marvelous unpretentiousness of the Chinese workingman, another competitive power will have risen, more dangerous than any that the world's market has yet had to reckon with. Truly, the future of bourgeois society is threatened ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... respectful—it was paternal; for she made no more secret of her early condition than Haney, and the colored man enjoyed serving them. He seemed perfectly happy in advising, cautioning, directing them, and was deeply impressed with their powers of adaptability—was, in truth, developing a genuine affection for them both. He was a lonely little man, Bertha had learned, with no near kin in the States, and the fact that he came from an Island in the sea made him less of a "nigger" to the Captain, who had the usual amount of prejudice against both black ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... saying that the crucial test of the frieze of the Parthenon is its adaptability to an apartment in Bloomsbury. So long as the illusion of the Acropolis gave credit to Pheidias' design, and the sunlight of Attica imposed its delicate intended shadows edging the reliefs, the countrymen of Pericles might be tricked; but the visitor to the ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... correspondents by the hundred. But if you offer anything to me for insertion in "All the Year Round," you may be sure that it will be honestly read, and that it will be judged by no test but its own merits and adaptability to ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... of mechanics electricity is decidedly preferable to any other agent. Heat may be transformed into motive power by a suitable engine, but there its adaptability is at an end. An electric current drives not only a motor, but every machine and tool attached to the motor, the whole executing tasks of a delicacy and complication new to industrial art. On an electric railroad an identical current propels the train, directs it by telegraph, operates its signals, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... with the foreign Jew. Just because he is willing and able to work so hard for so little pay, willing to undertake any kind of work out of which he can make a living, because he can surpass in skill, industry, and adaptability the native Londoner, the foreign Jew is such a terrible competitor. He is the nearest approach to the ideal "economic" man, the "fittest" person to survive in trade competition. Admirable in domestic morality, and an orderly citizen, he is almost ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... literature. But he had the old Norse energy; which not only drove him or his ancestors to settle and conquer in lands so distant and diverse as Russia and Sicily, Syria and North America, but enabled him to infuse new life into the countries he conquered. Further, he still retained that adaptability and power of assimilation which is characteristic of peoples in a primitive stage of civilisation. With a wonderful instinct he fastened on to the most characteristic and strongest features of the different nations he was brought in contact ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... facts relative to natural history: and this is the more lamentable, and perhaps the more surprising, when we consider its unlimited adaptability to all capacities, ages, sexes, and ranks; and, moreover, the absolute necessity of many parts of it to their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... for a new consular service have in recent years been submitted to the Congress. They are based upon the just principle that appointments to the service should be made only after a practical test of the applicant's fitness, that promotions should be governed by trustworthiness, adaptability, and zeal in the performance of duty, and that the tenure of office should be unaffected by ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... before a stroke reveals, as by a flash of lightning, the artistic purpose with which the parts are moving, and the enormous heat and energy that move them. When strength and sinew are wanted in the themes, they are there, and contrapuntal adaptability is there; but they are real living themes, not ossified or petrified formulas. Themes, part-writing and harmony are closely bound up in one another, and harmony is not the least important. Purcell liked daring harmonies, and they arise organically out of the firm march of individual parts. Excepting ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... forced him to spend more than two-thirds of his income. Of this she also was aware, and had trimmed her sails accordingly, likening herself to him in this respect. But of such wisdom, and such trimmings, and such adaptability, what likelihood was there with Mr Crosbie ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... knowledge of the subject. (1) This may be based on experience, or (2) It may be gained from others through conversation and reading. b. By the writer's interest in the subject. (1) This may exist from the first, or (2) It may be aroused by our search for information. c. By adaptability of the subject to the reader. It should be of present, vital interest ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... that there is an extreme of size, e.g., in the elephant, which makes its possessor clumsy, able to exist only where there are large amounts of food in limited areas, slow to reproduce, and lacking in adaptability. This extreme also is avoided in man; in this, as in many other particulars, he holds the golden mean. But we have also seen that large size is, as a rule, correlated with long life and great opportunity for experience and observation. And these ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... wonderful powers of adaptability, too,' said Gwendolyn. 'I watched her at dinner, and she never made a single slip, although I imagine there were several things that were new to her beside ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... since it was necessary for the human body to be the organ of touch, and consequently a mean between objects of touch: and this was impossible, were it not composed of contraries, as the Philosopher states (De Anima ii, 11). On the other hand, this condition is not attached to the adaptability of matter to form because, if it were possible, since the form is incorruptible, its matter should rather be incorruptible. In the same way a saw needs to be of iron, this being suitable to its form and action, so that its hardness ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... dyestuffs over those found in nature lies in their variety and adaptability. Practically any desired tint or shade can be made for any particular fabric. If my lady wants a new kind of green for her stockings or her hair she can have it. Candies and jellies and drinks can be made more attractive and therefore more appetizing by varied colors. Easter eggs and ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... work of the school has not appealed to the pupils as interesting or valuable. This has not been altogether the fault of the curriculum, but often has come from the lack of adaptability of the work to the pupils studying it. Through frequent changes of teachers, poor classification, and irregularity of attendance, rural pupils have often been forced to go over and over the same ground, without any reference to whether they were ready to advance or not. In other ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... House fly, Musca domestica, scarcely needs an introduction to any one of our readers, and its countenance is so well known that we need not present a portrait here. But a study of the proboscis of the fly reveals a wonderful adaptability of the mouth-parts of this insect to their uses. We have already noticed the most perfect condition of these parts as seen in the horse fly. In the proboscis of the house fly the hard parts are obsolete, ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... old question: How can firmness be combined with adaptability to circumstances? There is no answer except that the two qualities must be made to run concurrently in the mind. One must be responsive to the world, and yet sensible of one's own personality. It is only the special circumstance of a grave crisis which will put a young man to ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... and adaptability are beyond words. These hundreds of honest people, just relieved from the domineering of the Master Swine, and restored to their own good France again, were neither hysterical nor exhausted." The names of the new ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... had a touch of provincial accent,—Miriam, though she spoke well, was not wholly free from it,—but now it was impossible to discover by listening to her from what part of England she came. Mrs. Lessingham, whose admirable tact and adaptability rendered her unimpeachable in such details, had devoted herself with artistic zeal to her niece's training for the world; the pupil's natural aptitude ensured perfection in the result. Cecily's manner accorded with her utterance; it had every charm derivable ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... insecure at first, as well as stiff and self-conscious. With some this sensation will wear off sooner than with others, according to their adaptability, and the result will be assured power ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... bulk of the people, were those who accepted the thing at its face value, read its own papers, went about its business, and spared time to laugh at the absurdities or growl at the inconveniences of the phenomena. With true American adaptability, it speedily accustomed itself to both the expectation of, and the coping with, unusual conditions. It went forth about its daily affairs; it started for home a little early in order to get there in season; it eschewed subways and theaters; it learned to wait patiently, when ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... weighing machine, by which the material may be weighed as it is delivered, before it goes to the bottom of the elevator, to be again transferred by its means to the barge or granary. Simplicity, efficiency, and adaptability to any position in which elevators of this class are desirable, are the claims the patentees, Messrs. Behrns & Unruth, Lubeck, make for the advantages ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... ball of the American people, and occupies a position in public estimation which no other field sport in vogue approaches. The game has attained its present position of popularity, not only from its adaptability to our peculiar national characteristics, as regards its possession of special points of attraction; but also from its value as a field sport which presents sufficient excitement in itself to draw thousands of spectators, without the extrinsic aid of betting as its chief point of interest, ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... other vehicle of emotion and no other means to ecstasy has served man so well. In art any flood of spiritual exaltation finds a channel ready to nurse and lead it: and when art fails it is for lack of emotion, not for lack of formal adaptability. There never was a religion so adaptable and catholic as art. And now that the young movement begins to cast about for a home in which to preserve itself and live, what more natural than that it should turn to the one religion of unlimited forms ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... more about it. Already a few of the much-disputed lines, which people wrongly call "canals," have been traced on photographs. Astronomers who are sceptical about life on Mars are often not fully aware of the extraordinary adaptability of life. There was a time when the climate of the whole earth, from pole to pole, was semi-tropical for millions of years. No animal could then endure the least cold, yet now we have plenty of Arctic plants and animals. If the cold came slowly on Mars, as we have reason to ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... annexationist—not so much from the humanitarian view of President White and Dr. Howe, as from the belief that Santo Domingo, if once made our territory, would soon enrich our treasury from its commerce and its uncommon adaptability as a watering-place. We have spoken of this book as very thorough. It is so in every respect—historical, pictorial and narrative. The list of books pertaining to the subject occupies alone eight pages of small print: as the author, however, evidently wishes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... Bull was the least obvious of his characteristics; and even to-day the only people who never change their mind at general elections are the mercurial Celts. Certainly England has never suffered from that rigidity of social system which has hampered in the past the adaptability of its rivals. Even in feudal times there was little law about status; and when the customary arrangement of society in two agricultural classes of landlord and tenant was modified by commerce, capitalism, and competition, nobles adapted themselves to the ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... will not buy from him if he does not carry the goods, he will yet get their patronage over the other fellow if he has the right stock. Here's where a man's personality and adaptability are his stock in trade when he is on the road; and the good salesman gets the business over his competitor's head just by being able to turn the mood of the merchant he meets. The more moods he can ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... those who travel and those who reside there, are of a different conformation and belong to a different type. The crudeness which so shocked Europeans in their predecessors they have, with characteristic adaptability, readily and gracefully outgrown. But whether they have improved in other respects, and whether, on other grounds, we have cause to be particularly proud of our countrymen abroad at the present day, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... Frame has for more than twenty years been before the building public. Its success, adaptability, and practicability, have been fully demonstrated. Its simple, effective and economical manner of construction, has very materially aided the rapid settlement of the West, and placed the art of building, to a great extent, within the control of the pioneer. That necessity, ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... incorrectly in the second. In both cases they were sure that great difficulties in production would meet our attempts at retaliation. In general this proved true, but in this case and increasingly throughout the war, they reckoned without Allied adaptability. The French development of phosgene ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... first led to observation, and then to self-expression. As the simplest type-form as well as the most universal, it offers a satisfactory basis for the classification of objects in general; while its indefiniteness and adaptability make it a useful medium for the expression of the child's vague ideas. With the ball we give first impressions of Unity, Form, Color, Material, Mobility, Motion, Direction, and Position. The ball songs and plays are used as the first exercises ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Their control over the auspices was a favourite weapon of the patricians, and one which could naturally be better used at a distance from Rome. The frequency of its use would seem to argue adaptability in the devotional feelings of the nobles at least, which might modify our reliance upon the statement made above as to the respect for the gods then ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... this visit also that the Senator made the acquaintance of Mr. Washington Hawkins, and was greatly taken with his innocence, his guileless manner and perhaps with his ready adaptability to enter upon ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... standard, usages and traditions of an aristocracy, that throughout the South had guarded its patrician ranks with almost Brahmin jealousy, she sternly decried every infringement of caste custom and etiquette. Nature and education had combined to deprive her of any adaptability to the new order of things; and she rejected the idea that "a lady should transact business", with the same contemptuous indignation that would have greeted a proposition to wear "machine-sewed garments", that last resort of impecunious ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... lost utterly the older sense of a hallowed fealty towards man-made law; we are not suffering from the inflexibility of the Medes and the Persians. We manufacture laws as readily as we do steam-rollers and change their patterns to suit the roads we have to build. But with the profit of our adaptability we are in danger of losing the underlying sense of purpose that inspires and continues to justify measures, and to lose also a certain intimate intercourse with problems of theory and philosophy which is one ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... hand. Here was a trait that formed a bond of sympathy, and Mira took courage. It is not the contemplation of their nobler qualities, but their weaknesses, that puts us on easy terms with our fellow-men. Breakfast promised to last a long time. Gaffney, with the adaptability of the trooper of years of service on the frontier, had been worming something of their visitors' story out of them. The average Indian never wants to tell his name, but gets a friend to give it for him. It proved, however, to be Bear-Rides-Double who, with his wife, sister, and little ones, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... his dominion. It was within his capital that his rule was chiefly beneficial. Here and there his Norman names have survived, as in Robec (Redbeck) Dieppedal (Deepdale) or Caudebec (Coldbeck), but in the main he proved at once the high adaptability of his race. His first assembly was of necessity aristocratic, and without ecclesiastics, for every landowner was Scandinavian, and the remnant of the aborigines were serfs whose revolts were pitilessly crushed. Twice a year his barons came to his court, as ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... adventurers. The rising tide of wealth grows. Judicious use of early gained riches, trips to Europe, furtive lessons, the necessities of the changed station, and an unlimited cheek and astounding adaptability change the lucky men and women whom fortune's dower has ennobled. They ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... seem that there could be no variation to the sum. And the resulting prophecy would necessarily be an evil, or at least a pessimistic one. He was so helpless, so lacking in all the practicalities of human life. He seemed to have one little focus that was quite incapable of expansion, of adaptability. That focus was almost entirely filled by his Jessie's image, with just a small place in it reserved for his twins. Take the woman out of it, and, to all intents and purposes, he looked out upon ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... for the next three weeks to keep Wan Lee closely confined to the printing-office, and the purely mechanical part of the business. Here he developed a surprising quickness and adaptability, winning even the favor and good will of the printers and foreman, who at first looked upon his introduction into the secrets of their trade as fraught with the gravest political significance. He learned to set type readily and ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... for the British Navy!" said the first official whom I met. He threw his hat in the air and the peasants standing about raised a cheer. It was my first view of the marvellous adaptability of this great people. I noticed that many of them were wearing little buttons with pictures ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... Carew, with the easy adaptability which marked him, was the central figure of one of the groups where he acted as a species of toastmaster, to direct the trend of the stories and lead the singing. Weldon sat slightly apart, watching the firelit group before him, while his mind trailed lazily to and fro, from home, with its holly ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... able to gain by solitary wanderings in the localities in which he had, by circumstances, been forced to reside. His plan of operations must, therefore, have been largely modified and adapted as time went on, and as his finances allowed. To both, therefore, credit is due for the adaptability evinced under conditions not always congenial or conducive to the pursuits they ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... hundreds of plucky young men are working their way. The ways of earning money are various, depending upon the opportunities for work, and the student's ability and adaptability. To be a correspondent of city daily papers is the most coveted occupation, but only a few can obtain such positions. Some dozen or more teach night school. Several teach in the public schools in the daytime, and do their university work ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... of moral dyspepsia known as the Puritanical conscience was his by right of inheritance. In his nature there was no flexibility, no instinct for harmonious adaptability to any surroundings excepting those among which he had been born and in which he intended to end his days. Temperamentally he was of a fast colour. The leopard cannot change the spots and neither could he change his; nor did he will so to do. In short he was what he was, just ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Not, of course, because pretty Poll can talk (in a state of nature, parrots only chatter somewhat meaninglessly to one another), but because the group display on the whole, all round, a greater amount of intelligence, of cleverness, and of adaptability to circumstances than any other birds, including even their cunning and secretive rivals, the ravens, the jackdaws, the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... to be. He'd enjoy it so. He's the real American. He has imagination and adaptability. It's a shame: all the petits fours and Bach recitals wasted on Jeff Saxton, when a ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... the subtle adaptability of her father's race, nothing of the cold and rigid narrowness of her mother's class. Price had feared that her lively mind might reveal disconcerting shallows, but these little voids were but the divine hiatuses of youth. He sometimes wondered just how strong her character was. There ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... formation of the ground on the north side of the river between Missy and Soissons, and its extraordinary adaptability to a force on the defensive, the Fifth Division found it impossible to maintain its position on the southern edge of the Chivres Plateau, as the enemy in possession of the Village of Vregny to the west was able to bring a flank fire to bear upon it. The division ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... nut trees. Some progress in hybridization, of course, has been made, particularly with the filberts, the hybrids developed by J. F. Jones, G. L. Slate, S. H. Graham, Heben Corsan and some others, showing great improvement over previous European varieties in their adaptability to the northern United States. At the present time there are filbert varieties of hybrid origin better than those in the nursery trade which should be propagated and made available. Work with the Chinese chestnuts has ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... receive the German forces. When they entered order was restored without delay. Soldiers were immediately detached from their special command and formed into gangs under competent foremen and all put to work at once each according to his trade, fitness or adaptability. The forts that had been dismantled were hastily patched up and new guns ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... cattle flourishing at every elevation, from the sea-level to the mountain-pastures ten thousand feet above it. Horses and sheep show less adaptability to this variety of climates. The horses and mules come mostly from the States of the North, at a level of from 5,000 to 8,000 feet; that remarkable country of which Humboldt's observation gives us the best ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... of a long term of residence in the United States, this adaptability, this readiness to turn to whatever seems at the time to offer the best "opening" (which is so conspicuously a national trait but is not especially noticeable in the typical New Yorker) becomes so familiar that it ceases to be worth comment. I have seen among my own friends journalists become ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... place in the sun. The strongest, the most amply endowed with what we call vitality or power to live, win. Species have come to be what they are through this process. Immunity from disease comes through this fight for life; and adaptability—through trial and struggle species adapt themselves, as do our own bodies, to new and severe conditions. The naturally weak fall by the wayside as in an army ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... profound legal knowledge and a very extraordinary aptitude for public business. Originally an ardent Whig, his whole political life had been spent in earnestly opposing the men and measures of the Democratic party, nor did he possess that adaptability of opinion so characteristic of modern politicians. Born and reared in the days when the "giants of the Republic" were living, and to some extent, a contemporary actor in the leading events of the times, he had learned ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... of lettering: adaptability and decorative effect. Development of historic writing and lettering and its influence on type design. Classification of general forms in lettering. Application of design to lettering. Drawing for reproduction. Fully ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... which women excelled was that requiring a quick intelligence, nimble fingers, and the faculty of easy adaptability. In the realm of physical strength woman was not a competitor, but there was another field in which she more than made up for that loss, and in which she early began to show great native ability. That was in all pursuits demanding the ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... "Journal of Music," very justly and considerately discourses of the utility of violin accomplishment, and the adaptability of the instrument to ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... the reading and writing of Spanish among the boys. They taught them to serve in the church, to sing the plain-song, and to the accompaniment of the organ; to play the flute, to dance, and to sing; and to play the harp, guitar, and other instruments. In this they show very great adaptability, especially about Manila; where there are many fine choirs of chanters and musicians composed of natives, who are skilful and have good voices. There are many dancers, and musicians on the other instruments which solemnize and adorn ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... him. In his restless mood he had grasped at the situation, which had promised a stirring of the blood, but the train passed and thrust him back with a hand that seemed almost palpable in the staleness of ordinary life. When he left the Frontier he had left behind him the old content, the humorous adaptability to circumstances which had once been a main element of ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... her hypnotic power, or my adaptability, that in the atmosphere of Runnymede I became a Conservative of the good old type, and actually enjoyed the communion of soul necessarily subsisting between a pedigreed lady and a pedigreed gentleman. We habitually spoke of the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... mentioned that there are some carved coconut shell in which the Negro carver often expressed his ingenuity. These represent in their carving a varied number of forms, including human beings, animals and plants. The interest in these carvings, as Roth tells us, "lies in their demonstration of the adaptability of the native to perform creditably on a material very different from ivory. Fair ingenuity is displayed in the manner in which the figures are grouped on a confined surface without overcrowding. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... me, Margarita?" I demanded, tapping her foot with some irritation, for she really was irritating. In fact she completely upset the theory that tact and adaptability constitute her ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... the Indian problem depends very largely upon good administration. The personal fitness of agents and their adaptability to the peculiar duty of caring for their wards are of the ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... Boston Daily Globe says: "One need not concern herself about the 'Chatterbox,' or any of the annuals made up in England for American youth, when there are better books, in adaptability of matter to age, in engravings, paper and press-work, close by her at home. The mother may find a number of annuals published in this country which will suit her taste and purpose much better, and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... been my observation that these pecans have slowly cycled their way into our season, and it is gratifying to notice that this spring many leafed out at nearly the same time that the black walnut vegetated, which of course is much slower than the local butternut. This shows the tremendous adaptability of the pecan, and it is hoped that this ability to adapt itself to soil and climatic conditions will eventually cause it to produce small but edible pecans ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... "That adaptability, however, leads a man to excuse himself in his own eyes for actions that are diametrically opposed to each ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... our economic assets are more than equal to the task. Our independent farmers produce an abundance of food and fibre. Our free workers are versatile, intelligent, and hardworking. Our businessmen are imaginative and resourceful. The productivity, the adaptability of the American economy is the solid ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... else, till, after the lapse of ages, he had developed invention and adaptability. Besant and Rice, in "Ready-money Mortiboy," speak of Divine Discontent as the motive power impelling man to progress. Not till the chalk and the limestone shelters were stocked, and could hold no more, would men be driven ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... accompaniments for the piano are concerned, there is a mine practically inexhaustible and from which new treasures are constantly brought to light. For Recital purposes, the choice and sequence of a programme is second in importance only to its execution. And although suppleness and adaptability are valuable, even necessary, qualities, in a concert-singer, he will sometimes find that certain songs—admirable in themselves—are unsuited to him, for reasons which it is not always possible to define. In such cases it is not a matter of compass, or tessitura, of voice, or even temperament; ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... for such restrictions. In neither case would he find in "Mark" any serious stumbling-block. In fact, persons of all the categories admitted to salvation by Justin, in the middle of the second century,[7] could accept "Mark" from beginning to end. It may well be, that, in this wide adaptability, backed by the authority of the metropolitan church, there lies the reason for the fact of the preservation of "Mark," notwithstanding its limited and dogmatically colourless character, as compared with the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... out money like domestic champagne to polish their adopted one. Milliners, dancing masters and private tutors got it. Miss—er—McRamsey was grateful, loving, and tried to forget Hinkle's. To give ample credit to the adaptability of the American girl, Hinkle's did fade from her memory and speech most of ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... the adaptability of the electric arc in comparison with forge fire, oxy-acetylene or other method. The answer is somewhat difficult if made general. There are no doubt some cases where the use of a drop hammer and forge fire or the use of the oxy-acetylene ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... Household," and other similar compilations, which I have to bring under notice. The names, as usual, are often misleading, as in blanc manger, which is very different from our blanc-mange; and the receipt for "goose in a hog pot" leaves one in doubt as to its adaptability to the modern palate. The poetical ambition of the author has proved a source of embarrassment here and there; and in the receipt "for a service on a fish-day" the practitioner is prayed within four lines to cover his white herring for God's sake, ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... "The adaptability and economy of Nature," said Cortlandt, "have always amazed me. In the total blackness of the Kentucky Mammoth Cave, where eyes would be of no use to the fishes, our common mother has given them none; while if there is any light, though not as much as we are accustomed ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... children, and when improved circumstances enable them to move up to the county seat, she confronts many of the conditions for which she originally prepared herself, but with farm habits, diminishing adaptability and diminishing power of appealing to her husband. His powers are still comparatively unimpaired, and as a dealer in farm produce or farm machinery his interests undergo slight change. In general, it may be said that a woman's life falls into three ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... his career, Dr. Angell gave evidence of certain characteristics which had definite effects upon his policy as President. Professor Charles H. Cooley, '87, has characterized the especial qualities which made for his success as "his faith and his adaptability." Dr. Angell always believed in the tendency of the right to prevail, and was willing to wait with a "masterly inactivity," avoiding too much injudicious assistance. He was always able to maintain a broad and comprehensive ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... Landing during the severe battles which marked McClellan's movement from the Chickahominy to the James River. Amidst the terrible scenes of those eventful days, the quiet energy, the wonderful comforting and soothing power, and the perfect adaptability of Miss Gilson ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... within the past five years is very remarkable and shows, as well as anything could show, the adaptability of the Indian. At the same time, I believe that if it had not been for that fateful experience known as "the starvation winter," the progress made by the Blackfeet would have been very much less than it has been. The Indian requires a bitter ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... somewhat lacking in tact and adaptability; and a certain haughtiness of manner, a dignity too conscious of itself, at first repelled many who were disposed to feel kindly toward her. It is more than likely that under this proud mien she concealed a suffering spirit, or, ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... chief prominence of the potato will still consist in its adaptability as an article of food. Burbank does not overlook this. He has produced and is producing potatoes with better flavor, of larger and uniform size and which give a much greater yield to the area. Palatability in the end decides the permanence of ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... ignorant of the world, and having the very borne outlook on life which belongs to our gilded youth (67 per cent. of the candidates for the Diplomatic Corps being drawn from Eton alone), having also in high degree that curious want of cosmopolitan sympathy and adaptability which is characteristic of the English wealthy classes (every candidate for the Corps must have at least L400 a year of his own)—that such a type should be charged with the representation of the United Kingdom in foreign affairs is to-day a hopeless anomaly, and indeed a very great danger. ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... the man, and that at another he would have laid down his life for him. Perhaps it was rather a passive jealousy which he mistook for hatred. Abbott had never envied Courtlandt his riches; but often the sight of Courtlandt's physical superiority, his adaptability, his knowledge of men and affairs, the way he had of anticipating the unspoken wishes of women, his unembarrassed gallantry, these attributes stirred the envy of which he was always manly enough to be ashamed. ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... of this furnace will clearly indicate its adaptability, by reason of its flexibility, for any fuel and any design of stoker. The boiler lends itself readily to installation with an extension or Dutch oven furnace if this be demanded by the fuel to be used, and in general it may be stated that a satisfactory furnace arrangement ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... struggle more? Could I not, in fancy, hearken to the measured splash of the drops from the sodden moss? Could anything be more consoling than this cushion to my bruised and aching arms? Ease and sloth were sweet indeed. I was free, but not at large. The amazing adaptability of the human mind had reconciled me in a few suffering hours to this confined space. Verily do I believe that the overcoming of this subtle anodyne demanded the expenditure of more vital force than the sum of all the long-sustained ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... adaptability of the Semitic craftsman among men of Phoenician and Aramaean strain. Excavation in Palestine has failed to furnish examples of Hebrew work. But Hebrew tradition itself justifies us in regarding this ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... was subjected to many tests, and passed through them successfully, thus demonstrating its adaptability to many important uses. Mr. Goodyear readily obtained a patent for his process, and a partner with a large capital was found ready to aid him. He hired the old India-rubber works on Staten Island, and opened a salesroom ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... District of Columby and for the Constooshnel Amendment. In Kentucky we are hangin men uv the John Brown style, and mobbin all uv the persuasion uv the Connecticut nominee. Sich a variety uv principle,—a party uv sich adaptability,—kin hev but one great central idee, on wich there is no diversity uv opinion, and to which all other ideas is subordinate. That idea is POST OFFICE! and ef Androo Johnson could be got rite on that question, we'd care not wat else he ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... it, but not much. And what you do not do with it, it must do with you, if there is to be the contact which is essential to the artistic function. This contact may be closened and completed by the artist's cleverness—the mere cleverness of adaptability which most first-class artists have exhibited. You can wear the fashions of the day. You can tickle the ingenuous beast's ear in order to distract his attention while you stab him in the chest. You can cajole money out of him by one kind of work in order to gain leisure in which to force him to ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... smoothness, in this perfect adaptability of means to end, there is the spirit of art showing itself, not with colour or crayon, but working in tangible material substance. The makers of this plough—not the designer—the various makers, who gradually put it together, had many things to consider. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... of needs exist, we must of course employ special agencies. The vitality and adaptability of the Army in the presence of new opportunities is one of the happy auguries for the future. While all that is virile and forceful in it increases, there is less and less of the ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... connected plan. Its growth has been the outcome of the needs of many generations during the last half-dozen centuries, and it is at present a picturesque conglomeration of buildings of all sizes and shapes and styles, erected with no regard for architectural beauty or symmetry, and with no very great adaptability to their past or present use. Aside from the halls and libraries of the two societies, the Church of St. Mary, and one or two blocks of chambers, like Paper Buildings, there is no salient feature to impress the eye. Yet the uniform ugliness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... structure, however, as well as to the same power of adaptation, the monkey race, and especially the ourang-outang, closely typo approximates. Cuvier's reasoning, in my view, applies only to the adaptability (if I may be allowed the expression) of the human animal, without deciding how far he should avail himself of his ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... Ganger—so-called, they say, because his legs were so long that, when on horseback, he touched the ground and seemed to gang, or walk. He and his Norsemen had taken their share of France, and called it Normandy to this day; and meanwhile, with that docility and adaptability which marks so often truly great spirits, they had changed their creed, their language, their habits, and had become, from heathen and murderous Berserkers, the most truly civilised people of Europe, and—as was most natural then—the most faithful allies and servants of the Pope of Rome. So greatly ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... are more or less likely to be passed on to their children. There are cases of natural blindness, though, to which this rule does not apply. Criminals, alcoholics, and persons disproportionate in size should not marry. In the last-mentioned, lack of mutual physical adaptability may produce much unhappiness, especially on the part of the wife. Serious local disease, sterility, and great risk in childbirth may result. Disparity of years, disparity of race, a poverty which will not permit the proper raising of children, undesirable moral character ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... stop. Then he carried in the wood-box full, and piled it so neatly that even the grim handmaiden was pleased. After that, she sent him to the garden to pick the early beans. In the evening he milked three cows and did all the chores, falling into the ways of the place with a deft adaptability that went far to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Amzi's house in order. Phil lighted the open fire to take the chill from the living-room, which had been closed since the Perrys' departure. Amzi ran off in the machine to pay a visit to one of the county commissioners who lived near by: Lois with her usual adaptability produced a novel and made herself comfortable on a couch. She was absorbed in her book before Phil left the room. Her mother's ready detachment never ceased to astonish her. Sometimes in the midst of a lively conversation, Lois would abruptly take up a book, or turn away humming to look ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... discharged two footmen. This action may have shortened his life, but I believe it to be a fact that when he lay dying, some fifteen years later, he said to his heir, 'Discharge two more.' Such enlightenment and adaptability were not to be wondered at in so eminent a Whig. As time went on, even in the great Tory houses the number of retainers was gradually cut down. Came the Industrial Age, hailed by all publicists as the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... cleanses; and hence it fittingly signifies and causes the cleansing from sins. By reason of its coolness it tempers superfluous heat: wherefore it fittingly mitigates the concupiscence of the fomes. By reason of its transparency, it is susceptive of light; hence its adaptability to Baptism as the "sacrament ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... powerful nation, only kept from the war-path by a more powerful but mysterious chief. The Government sent an Indian agent to treat with them, in its usual half-paternal, half-aggressive, and wholly inconsistent policy. Elijah, who still retained the imitative sense and adaptability to surroundings which belong to most lazy, impressible natures, and in striped yellow and vermilion features looked the chief he personated, met the agent with silent and becoming gravity. The council was carried on ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... about it she could not have said, but in some way it seemed to be an emblem of her hopes. She wedged herself tightly between the roots, laid her head down upon the uppermost of them, and, such is the adaptability of youth and health, slept on her dangerous perch like a ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... phenomenal. By 1860 it was the leading grape in America and it so remains. Concord furnishes, with the varieties that have sprung from it, seventy-five per cent of the grapes grown in eastern America. The characters which distinguish the vine are: Adaptability to various soils, fruitfulness, hardiness and resistance to diseases and insects. The fruits are distinguished by certainty of maturity, attractive appearance, good but not high flavor, and by the fact that they may be produced so cheaply that no other grape can compete ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... assume the rights and fulfil the duties which God has specially devolved upon them, they would so lead man and society up to a higher point that the claims they put forth need not be discussed for an hour; because, then, having proved their adaptability to make good use of every lawful right, society, which in the end always adjusts its forces properly and instinctively, will have tacitly fallen into the necessity or ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... murder as well. He made no open move—he was a stranger in a strange land and much disturbed, besides, by his fears for his daughter—but he started a secret inquiry through his old valet, whom he ran across in the street, and whose peculiar adaptability for this kind of work ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... the boy's Colonel wrote in terms of affectionate pride of her boy's glorious passing, with new and strange adaptability her heart circle was extended to include her boy's comrades in war and those who like herself had sent them forth. Thenceforth every khaki covered lad was to her a son, and every soldier's ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... with which this is done is evidence of the widespread existence of that gift which our enemies call the power of "muddling through," but which has been termed—without wholly sacrificing truth to politeness—the "concurrent adaptability to environment." The British sailor as "handy man" has few equals and no superiors, and he is, in some sort, typical of the nation. The testimony of Thucydides to Themistocles ([Greek: kratistos de oytos aytoschediazein ta deonta ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... much the devil's heritage as the angels': it may be used for ill, as easily as for good. The first explorers, and the traders who followed them, were not idealists but rough adventurers. Breaking in, with the full tide of western knowledge and adaptability, to the quiet backwaters of primitive conservatism, they brought with them the worse rather than the better elements of the civilization, the control of environment, of which they were pioneers. To ...
— Progress and History • Various
... the never-ending work is oppressive, and Dr. H. comes in from the field two or three times in the day, dizzy and faint, and they condole with each other, and I feel that the Colorado settler needs to be made of sterner stuff and to possess more adaptability. ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... climatic conditions, fifty reported that peaches are reliably hardy in their sections, while fifty said they are not. This, according to the late Thomas P. Littlepage, is a fairly reliable index to the climatic adaptability of present varieties of northern grown pecans. Ninety-two planters reported that their seasons are long enough to mature Concord grapes. Only four said "no." For Catawba grapes? "Yes," said forty-two; "No," ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... actor refusing to play her part. Perhaps she was too resentfully conscious of its being but a part—of her having no approach save through a part. For the first time she failed in that adaptability which had always made the stories plausible. In the midst of her tale Katie met Ann's eyes, and ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... changing experiences of their daughters, who are willing to modify ill-fitting social conventions into rules of conduct which are of actual service to their children in their daily lives of factory work and of city amusements. Those mothers, through their sympathy and adaptability, substitute keen present interests and activity for solemn warnings and restraint, self-expression for repression. Their vigorous family life allies itself by a dozen bonds to the educational, the industrial and the recreational organizations of the modern city, and makes ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... how people forget even important events. If a blue sun arose to lighten the world instead of a yellow one, after nine days of wonder, man would settle down quite comfortably to a cerulean existence. Such is the wonderful adaptability of humanity. ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... dig. Adaptability to a varied diet is an element of well-being in the animal, a factor of prime importance for the extension and predominance of its race in the bitter struggle for life. The most unfortunate species ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... and Lord Crosland would have admitted him to their intimacy for the sake of Dorothy; but simple souls themselves, they recognised in him a kindred simplicity, and admitted him to their friendship. He possessed, to a great degree, the American adaptability; and it is not surprising that he fell into their way of taking life easily. It was only for the time being. The millionaire is a good deal of the Sindbad, and he must bear the burden and go the way of the golden Old Man ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... and me! What an idea! Why, he's helping us"—the inspiration to say this came from a blind belief in Gaston's quick adaptability—"he's helping me and ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... of an ancient people, who might as well have worn a jacket of lead for the comfort they had of their boast. The beauty of laws for human creatures is their adaptability to new stitchings." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... years of our development. The most prominent characteristic of our present language, therefore, is its dual character. Its best qualities—strength, simplicity, directness—come from Anglo-Saxon sources; its enormous added wealth of expression, its comprehensiveness, its plastic adaptability to new conditions and ideas, are largely the result of additions from other languages, and especially of its gradual absorption of the French language after the Norman Conquest. It is this dual character, this combination of native and foreign, of innate and exotic ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... especially within the last fifty years, but they have been undertaken under the pressure of general popular demands and have resulted in compromises between traditional forces and urgent popular needs. An adequate philosophical inquiry into the relative merit of studies and their adaptability to nurture mental, moral, and physical ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... prepared, but it seldom goes beyond commonplaces. We read there, for instance,[5] for the confectioner: "Boys in this industry must be clean, quick, and strong. The most important qualities desired are neatness and adaptability to routine"; or, for the future baker, the boy "ought to know how to conduct himself and to meet the public"; or for the future architectural designer, "he must have creative ability, artistic feeling, and power to sketch"; or for the ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... a few chickens still further solved her economic problems. Away from the Sawdust Pile, however, life meant parting with her baby. She would have to place him in some sort of public institution if she would be free to earn a living for them both, and she was not aware that she possessed any adaptability for any particular labor which would enable her to earn one hundred dollars a month, the minimum sum upon which she could, by the strictest economy, manage to exist and support her child. Too well she realized the difficulty which ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... determined by analysis and measurement of the factors entering into availability. Availability of iron ore is determined by percentage of iron, percentages of impurities, percentages of advantageous or deleterious minor constituents, physical texture, conditions for profitable mining, adaptability to present furnace practice, distance from consuming centers, conditions and costs of transportation, geographical and transportational relation to the coal and fluxes necessary for smelting, trade relations, tariffs and taxes, inertia of invested capital, and other considerations. ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... England. Its long life, noble proportions, beautiful foliage, dense shade, moderately rapid growth, usual freedom from disease or insect disfigurement, and adaptability to almost any soil not saturated with water make it a favorite in cultivation; readily obtainable in nurseries, transplants easily, recovers its vigor quickly, and has a nearly uniform habit ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... scarcely necessary to say that few schools have ever been established upon such a basis of conscientiousness and love, and with such adaptability in its conductors, as that at Eagleswood; few have ever held before the pupils so high a moral standard, or urged them on to such noble purposes in life. Children entered there spoiled by indulgence, selfish, uncontrolled, sometimes vicious. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... thirdly, that free trade was not a necessity imposed by circumstances and position, not the result of a barter of value for value, but of free and spontaneous choice, and as the result of the profound conviction of the superior excellency and adaptability of the abstract principle. We shall deal briefly with the subject, because it has been discussed more at length heretofore in those special articles in which we have treated of the rise and progress of the cotton manufacture in this and other countries. In regard to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various |
