|
|
|
More "Pliant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in all "the pomp and circumstance" of official station, and joined Waddell on the 4th of June, near Salisbury, about eight miles east of the Yadkin river. He then marched by a circuitous route to Hillsboro, where he had court held to try the Regulators, by his pliant tool, Judge Howard. On the 20th he left Hillsboro, and reached Newbern on the 24th; and on the 30th left North Carolina for the colony of New York, over which he had just been appointed Governor. Thus was our State rid of one who had acted the part of an oppressive ruler ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... system of military discipline truly, and shows that my good friend Burd is either made a cat's-foot of himself, or little knows me if he imagines that sixty scoundrels are to direct me in my measures."[650] Bouquet, with a pliant tact rarely seen in the born Briton, took great pains to please these troublesome allies, and went so far as to adopt one of them as his son.[651] A considerable number joined the army; but they nearly ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... But youth is very pliant. Employers of young men are familiar with the fact. Something always came along to quiet Evan's mind before he had gone so far as to write an "indiscreet" letter to head office. What a grand thing it is to be discreet! Why was mention of this attribute, discretion, omitted from the ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... convenience. Five or six men can draw it and manage it. Its small dimensions require but small area, either for work or storage. One hundred feet or more of its light, pliant hose can be carried on a man's arm up any number of stairs inside a building, or, if fire forbids, up a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... polished with a shoe-brush) entered the kitchen of the hotel, and asked for the largest knife they had. The head-cook gave him a sort of carving-knife, some eighteen inches long, sharp as a razor, and pliant as a foil. The negro looked at it, shook his head as if in doubt whether it would do, but nevertheless took it up stairs with him. Presently he brought it down again, and asked for a larger one. The cook opened all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... a SERVILE PRINCIPLE. It leads to practical passive obedience far better than all the doctrines which the pliant accommodation of theology to power has ever produced. It cuts up by the roots, not only all idea of forcible resistance, but even of civil opposition. It disposes men to an abject submission, not by opinion, which may be ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... young man, undersized and slightly deformed, with close-cut hair, and a large face, droll, pliant and ugly as a gutta-percha mask. Before he opened his ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his wrist pliant, and his arm was gaining more and more of his father's strength, so he soon performed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a cunning knave! do it again." This time Essper made the very wood echo. In a few minutes a horseman galloped up; he was as spruce a cavalier as ever pricked gay steed on the pliant grass. He was dressed in a green military uniform, and a gilt bugle hung by his side; his spear told them that he was hunting the wild boar. When he saw Vivian and Essper he suddenly pulled up ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... is plainly this,—that rhyme was not his talent; he had neither the ease of doing it, nor the graces of it: which is manifest in his 'Juvenilia,' or verses written in his youth, where his rhyme is always constrained and forced, and comes hardly from him, at an age when the soul is most pliant, and the passion of love makes almost every man a rhymer, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... not yet remembering himself. For a little he stood by the elm-tree, clutching the ridges of its bark. Even so would he wrestle tomorrow, and Stephen, imperturbable, reply, "My body is my own." Or worse still, he might wrestle with a pliant Stephen who promised him glibly again. While he prayed for a miracle to convert his brother, it struck him that he must pray for himself. For he, ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... deep mourning. Beneath his cap, bordered with fine fur, long locks fell to his shoulders, and he was mounted on a powerful Binzgau charger. At his side, on a beautiful spirited bay, rode a very young woman whose pliant figure was extremely aristocratic in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... holy man went up to heaven from just such a death-bed as you shall have-a death-bed of fire and ashes. And see, my good Count, how willingly these honest men, whom you hired, with your damnable money, to destroy my father—see how willingly they work to prepare your funeral pile! What a supple and pliant thing, O Count, is human baseness. It has but one defect—it may be turned upon ourselves! And then, O my dear Count, it shocks us and hurts our feelings. But say your prayers, Count, say your prayers. Call ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... long ago discarded the clumsy implement. First it dropped its iron ring and became a clog; afterwards it was fined down into the pliant galoshe—lighter to wear and more effectual to protect—a no less manifest instance of gradual improvement than Cowper indicates when he traces through eighty lines of poetry his 'accomplished sofa' back ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... removal placed the courts under the control of the King and made it possible for him to use them as a means of oppressing the people. A striking example of the way in which this power could be abused was seen in the career of the notorious Jeffreys, the pliant judicial tool of the cruel and tyrannical James II. To guard against a repetition of this experience it was urged that the judges be made ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... fighting pitch, and no ruler can withstand it. In the Boer war both governments began with bluff but could n't stay there, the military tension was too much for them. In 1898 our people had read the word "war" in letters three inches high for three months in every newspaper. The pliant politician McKinley was swept away by their eagerness, and our squalid war with ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... adorn the central ridge of the island are very full in foliage, and, in August, showed the tender green and pliant leaf of June elsewhere. They are rich in beautiful mosses and ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... possessed either the arms or the uniform of a soldier, nor the desire of combating any other enemies than hunger and cold; but they still retained perseverance, firmness, the habit of danger and suffering, and a spirit always ready, pliant, and quick in making the most of their situation. Finally, among the soldiers still under arms, the dread of a nickname, by which they themselves ridiculed their comrades who had fallen ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... wrong in this total alienation of an Executive from the possessors of parliamentary power, the officials will incessantly be tempted to make tacks out of their own course; and thus they lose the coherency and continuity of absolutism without gaining the pliant strength of popular government. This is not a presumption of what would be likely to happen, but an account of what does happen, and what justified Mr. Disraeli in adding a weak Executive to the ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... that Evelyn's ignorance of life would prevent her from making the proper allowances. In her affectionate and trusting nature, which suspected little evil anywhere, there was no doubt that her father and mother had her entire confidence and love. But the likelihood was that she would not be pliant. Under Miss McDonald's influence she had somewhat abstract notions of what is right and wrong, and she saw no reason why these should not be applied in all cases. What her mother would have called policy and reasonable ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... forehead; a passable nose of no particular design, but a really beautiful mouth and chin, the latter dimpled, the former with a short curved upper lip, displaying the pearly teeth at the faintest smile; barely medium height, with a figure that was slim yet not thin, rounded, graceful, pliant, with some of the swift dazzling motions of ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... mixed together will form an excellent quality of stuff. It is a herb with long, fibrous stems which when well beaten out and bleached become like a soft mass of wool. After being carded it can be spun into the finest threads as shiny and pliant as ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... prostrate, and every thing that was most appalling and dreadful was most easily believed. In this state superstition unavoidably grew infectious; and the more the seniors inculcated and believed, the more the imagination of the juniors became a pliant and unresisting slave. ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... a nutshell. Examining the matter more closely, he thought it possible. One day this learned man trifled half an hour in demonstrating it. A piece of vellum, about ten inches in length and eight in width, pliant and firm, can be folded up, and enclosed in the shell of a large walnut. It can hold in its breadth one line, which can contain 30 verses, and in its length 250 lines. With a crow-quill the writing can be perfect. A page of this piece ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Calle de Anloague, and in the Calle Rosario; the exploitation of the opium traffic was shared between him and a Chinese, and, needless to say, brought him great gains. He was purveyor to the prisoners at Bilibid, and furnished zacate to many Manila houses. On good terms with all authority, shrewd, pliant, daring in speculation, he was the sole rival of a certain Perez in the awards of divers contracts which the Philippine Government always places in privileged hands. From all of which it resulted that ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... much interested in the manoeuvring of a raft which was passing by. 'Dear Miss Power,' he resumed, 'before I go and join your uncle above, let me just ask, Do I stand any chance at all yet? Is it possible you can never be more pliant than you have been?' ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... down by taps on a moving plate, the rate of its growth. The application of a chemical instantly arrested this growth, but an antidote timely applied, not only removed the torpor but enhanced the growth at an enormous rate. The life of the plant became pliant at the will of the experimenter, and nothing appeared more marvellous than the realisation that man has the power to pierce the veil that shrouds the mystery that ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... their homage and their fealty, the approaching Reformation: others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a Nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a Nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies?... Where there is much ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the way And at its limit that) continues yet To operate, that now it moves, and feels, As sea sponge clinging to the rock: and there Assumes th' organic powers its seed convey'd. 'This is the period, son! at which the virtue, That from the generating heart proceeds, Is pliant and expansive; for each limb Is in the heart by forgeful nature plann'd. How babe of animal becomes, remains For thy consid'ring. At this point, more wise, Than thou hast err'd, making the soul disjoin'd From passive intellect, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... desired, she revealed to his astonished eyes a backbone that was evidently made of iron. She was immovable, he admitted, and because she was immovable he was conscious of a sharp unreasonable impulse to reduce her to the pliant curves of her girlhood. After eight years of an absolute supremacy, which had been far from good for him, his will had been tripped up at last by so small a thing as a ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... few to see them, but every eye in range was aware of her and of a refined simplicity of dress adorning a figure whose pliant grace was the finishing touch to her joyous erectness. Hugh's gaze was frankly on her, and his mind on the first night he had ever seen her, when, with her hair wind-tossed in loose curls, she had stood at this spot on the ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... closely around the neck and shoulders that a bee cannot creep under it. Woolen stockings may then be drawn over the hands, or better still, India Rubber gloves, such as are now in very common use, may be worn; these gloves are impenetrable to the sting of a bee, and yet are so soft and pliant as scarcely in the least to interfere with the operations ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... this wild protest of the wilderness? Was it this wide-blown, scattered fire, whose sparks and ashes were sown broadcast, till but stubborn remnants clung under the sheltering back-log of the bivouac hearth? Was it this frail lodge, built upon pliant, yielding poles, covered cunningly with mats and bark, carpeted with robe of elk and buffalo? Yet why should the elements rage at a tiny fire, and why should they tear at a little house of nomad man, since these things were old upon the earth? Was it somewhat else that incited this elemental rage? ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... began to arouse a good deal of interest, and the flaneurs in those circles obtained kudos by pretending to precise information about her. The rumour of riches spread. Tradespeople became sweet and pliant—the plucking of a goose with golden feathers was not ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... the grassy mound Scarce bends its pliant form When overhead the autumnal wood Is thundering ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... It borrow'd ornament, or sought support: No juries here were pack'd to kill or clear, No bribes were taken, nor oaths broken here; No gownsmen, partial to a client's cause, To their own purpose turn'd the pliant laws; Each judge was true and steady to his trust, As Mansfield wise, and as old Foster[21] just. In the first seat, in robe of various dyes, A noble wildness flashing from his eyes, 260 Sat Shakspeare: in one hand a wand he bore, For mighty wonders famed in ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... Greeks, the "river within the river" of Emerson. This tendency is peculiarly marked, of course, in artists possessing the "diffluent" type of imagination, and Romantic poets and critics have had much to say about it. The imagination, said Wordsworth, "recoils from everything but the plastic, the pliant, the indefinite." [Footnote: Preface to 1815 edition of his Poems.] "Shakespeare, too," says Carlye, [Footnote: Essay on Goethe's Works.] "does not look at a thing, but into it, through it; so that he constructively comprehends it, can ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... me? The fool, and knave, 'tis glorious to offend, And Godlike an attempt the world to mend, The world, where lucky throws to blockheads fall, Knaves know the game, and honest men pay all. How hard for real worth to gain its price! A man shall make his fortune in a trice, If blest with pliant, though but slender, sense, Feign'd modesty, and real impudence: A supple knee, smooth tongue, an easy grace. A curse within, a smile upon his face; A beauteous sister, or convenient wife, Are prizes in the lottery of life; Genius and Virtue they will soon defeat, And lodge you ...
— English Satires • Various
... the square dances of England except that it was far more graceful, and the men rivalled the women in their supple glidings and bendings, doublings and swayings. Concha danced with Ignacio Sal, Rafaella with William Sturgis; their pliant grace, as facile as grain rippling before the wind, would have put the best ballet in Europe to the blush. Concha's skirts swept Rezanov's feet, her little slippers twinkled before his admiring eyes, and he lost no sinuous turn or undulation of her beautiful figure; but she never ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... the chest and lungs can be reduced by moderate and continued pressure. This is most easily done in infancy, when the cartilages and ribs are very pliant; yet it can be effected at more advanced periods of life, even after the chest is fully developed. For want of knowledge of the pliant character of the cartilages and ribs in infants, too many mothers, unintentionally, contract their chests, and thus sow the seeds of disease by the ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... —The pliant, persuasive body, the dancer, whose symbol and epitome is the self-enjoying soul. Of such bodies and souls the ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... we go wrong, as our consciences tell us; but it is for want of something that can conquer the evil tendencies within, and lift off the burden of a sinful past which weighs on us. As in the carboniferous strata what was pliant vegetation has become heavy mineral, our evil deeds lie heavy on our souls. What we need is not to be told what we ought to be, but to be enabled to be it. Electricity can light the road, and it can drive the car along it; and that is what we want, a dynamic as well as an ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... well apprized, I heard the doctor catechized, And trust he'll profit much thereby! Fain would the girls inquire indeed Touching their lover's faith and creed, And whether pious in the good old way; They think, if pliant there, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the line which they occupied at the moment could be defended with four divisions, whereas the new one could not be held by less than seven or eight. The Council was therefore about to commit another fateful mistake, the consequences of which it was certain to shift to the shoulders of the pliant people. It was then that Rumania's leaders kicked against ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... to his father's lodge, and partook sparingly of the meal that had been prepared for him. But he never for a moment forgot the grave of his friend. He carefully visited it throughout the spring, and weeded out the grass, and kept the ground in a soft and pliant state. Very soon he saw the tops of the green plumes coming through the ground; and the more careful he was to obey his instructions in keeping the ground in order, the faster they grew. He was, however, careful ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... for a boat lay on the shore and the rope which fastened it, was easy to untie. As no one was visible, from whom they could ask permission, they took the boat without hesitation, for Rudy could row well. The oars skimmed like the fins of a fish, over the pliant water, which is so yielding and still so strong; which is all back to carry, but all mouth to engulph; which smiles—yes, is gentleness itself, and still awakens terror—and is so powerful in destroying. The rapid current soon brought the boat to the island; they ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... meadow. Then Buondelmonte thrust out straight and sure, in the Italian fashion, and once the mortal wound was in the face, and once in the throat, and many times men felt it in their breasts through mail and gambison and bone. But Gilbert's great strokes flashed like lightnings from his pliant wrist, and behind the wrist was the Norman arm, and behind the arm the relentless pale face and the even lips, that just tightened upon each other as the deathblows went out, one by one, each to its place in a life. The Italian ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... up for a moment a few yards beyond the curve and broke off a long, slender switch from an overhanging bough. Then, urging the horse forward again, she picked off the small branches until at length she had produced a smooth, pliant switch, far more effective than bridle or stirrup. By the help of this new whip, she made a little better speed, but well she knew that her capture was only a matter of time unless she ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... her swing the horse aside from the culvert, and send him at the drain: and, with that danger-begotten fascination by trifles which, in situations like mine, you must often have experienced, I noticed her pliant waist spring in easy undulation to the horse's flying leap. And so, with that thick cable of platted hair flapping and surging down her back, she vanished from the scene. She was a phantom of delight, when first she gleamed upon my sight; but the revulsion of feeling was one of the quickest and fullest ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... to preserve no records. You, I think really look upon it with alarm. It is, no doubt, very desirable to you, that the blame of losing the Indian Country, which, if not already a fact accomplished, is a fact inevitable, should be made to fall upon me. You, as the pliant and useful implement of Gen. Hindman, are the cause of this loss; and you know I can prove it. You and he have left nothing undone, that could be done, to lose it. And you may rest assured, that whether I ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... ground that it would make her hands large. The same vanity would have urged her to it if she had even known of the beauty of a well proportioned, vigorous, active body. She had read and heard of small soft hands as a feminine attraction, but never of a smooth, strong neck, a well set head, a firm, pliant, muscular trunk, and limbs that cannot be beautiful ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... loved and adored him with passionate idolatry. It has just been shown in what terms Louise of Savoy, in her daily collection of private memoranda, used to speak to herself of her son, "My king, my lord, my Caesar, and my son!" She was proud, ambitious, audacious, or pliant at need, able and steadfast in mind, violent and dissolute in her habits, greedy of pleasure and of money as well as of power, so that she gave her son neither moral principles nor a moral example: for him the supreme kingship, for herself the rank, influence, and wealth of a queen-mother, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... which sections it attained its highest development. It was soon found that a commission after the Massachusetts model, when composed of men less competent or less disposed to do their duty, was liable to dwindle into a statistical board or even become a pliant tool in the hands of the railroads. Furthermore, the conditions in Massachusetts, where railroad owners and railroad patrons lived side by side and were in many instances even identical, differed materially from those found in the West and South, where ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... day will also reveal an interesting feature of the marsh. The soft, velvety grass, which abounds in such places, is so pliant and yielding that it responds to every breath, and each approaching wave of air is heralded by an advancing curl of the grass. At our feet these grass-waves intersect and recede, giving a weird sensation, as if the ground were moving, or as if we were walking on the water itself. Where ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... behind the rough stones that formed the jam of the fireplace a rude broom, made by shaving down to near its end long slender strips from a stick of pliant green hickory, then turning these over the end and confining them by a band into an exaggerated mop or brush. With this she swept back from the hearth of uneven stones the live coals flung ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... although the cytisus, unless I am mistaken, has no perfume except in M. de Lamartine's verses. Let us fix our attention on a cytisus with its yellow clusters hanging down, and the goat bending its pliant branches as it browses on the foliage. Here is a very small detail in the ample lap of nature. Let us come closer, and to help our ignorance, let us provide ourselves with a naturalist who will answer for us the questions suggested by this simple ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... the mind is stirred to activity by brisk bodily exercise." The presentable aspects of inmost thought and feeling became evident to him: the structure of all he meant, its order and outline, defined itself: his general sense of a fitness and beauty in words became effective in daintily pliant sentences, with all sorts of felicitous linking of figure to abstraction. It seemed just then as if the desire of the artist in him—that old longing to produce—might be satisfied by the exact and literal transcript of what was then passing ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... "Vigilius, a pliant creature of Theodora, ascended the papal chair under the military protection of Belisarius (538-554)."—"History of the Christian Church," ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... the rail, as though she had brought up abruptly against it, making impetuously for the void. He could see her slight pliant form, silhouetted against the jeweled horizon; upon her shoulders, her scarf floated like a vague phosphorescence, and her face was whitely turned toward the stars. He heard her take a long deep breath of the ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... voices are heard, with accents of genuine and natural feeling; the poets begin to treat the old themes with more freshness, and to deal with religion, politics, and morals, as well as with love. The language still possesses, indeed, the quality of youth; it is still pliant, its forms have not become stiffened by age, it is fit for larger use than has yet been made of it, and lies ready and waiting, like a noble instrument, for the hand of the master which shall draw from it ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... little Alexander straightened up and the pliant softness of her body stiffened in his arms. She pushed against his shoulders with steady hands. They were not struggling hands but firm and definite of meaning, and Halloway released her. He released her readily as a man may who can afford to be deferential ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects be considered ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... said Eliza. Then they spent the whole night in weaving a net with the pliant willow and rushes. It was very large and strong. Eliza laid herself down on the net, and when the sun rose, and her brothers again became wild swans, they took up the net with their beaks, and flew up to the clouds with their dear sister, who still slept. The sunbeams fell on her face, therefore ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... I am dead, to charge me with dishonor; let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence; or that I could have become the pliant minion of power in the oppression or the miseries of my countrymen. The proclamation of the provisional government speaks for our views; no inference can be tortured from it to countenance barbarily or debasement at home, or subjection, humiliation, or treachery from abroad. I would not have submitted ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... eating little children. It was boldly stated that a luxurious banquet was spread, and that at its conclusion the candles were extinguished, and a scene of the most indiscriminate lewdness ensued.[635] One of the judges of the tribunal of the Chatelet was found sufficiently pliant to declare, in contradiction to the unanimous testimony of the accused, that preparations for the repetition of similar crimes had been discovered in the rooms of the house in the rue St. Jacques, where the Protestants ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... they 'scape the plagues of Pox and Pills, The Sin is liable to fifty Ills, Of equal Danger, tho' a diff'rent Cure, As he that dreading Claps wou'd Sin secure; For soon the pliant Wretch he has beguil'd Hath to his Charge and wonder prove with Child: At which, 'tmay properly be said a Man, Leaps from the Fire to the Frying-pan, This for his Reputation sake must be reveal'd When Claps are only as a Jest reveal'd She's now Remov'd—Deliver'd—and the Nurse; ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... considerable improvement in Elsie before she left Derbyshire, and used to have her company in his morning drives to visit his patients, when her pleasant conversation and winning manner made him ere long prefer her to her graver and less pliant sister. He missed both the girls when they went to London, and even Dr. Vivian paid Jane the compliment of regretting her society a ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... so the mackerel, and still less the bear.... Ah! who has seen the mailed lobster rise, Clap her broad wings, and soaring claim the skies? When did the owl, descending from her bower, Crop, midst the fleecy flocks the tender flower; Or the young heifer plunge, with pliant limb, In the salt wave, and fish-like strive to swim? The same with plants—potatoes 'tatoes breed— Uncostly cabbage springs from cabbage seed, Lettuce from lettuce, leeks to leeks succeed, Nor e'er did cooling cucumbers presume To flower like myrtle, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... nothing of the oak in the sturdiness of my stature, I imagined that my mortality would remain pliant as long as I pleased. But I have taken so little care of myself this winter, and kept such bad hours, that I have brought a slow fever upon my nights, and am worn to a skeleton: Bethel has plump cheeks to mine. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... her pliant sinews inordinately tensed; with her deep eyes wide and terrified, yet voiceless of any outburst or exclamation, and near her, ill at ease, but seeking to treat the affair as an inescapable matter of business, and consequently a commonplace, the sheriff shifted his weight from foot to foot, and ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... happened to change this charming, if too pliant, personality into the critical, watchful, almost—so at moments it seemed to Malling—aggressive curate who was now, always in a gentlemanly way, making things rather ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... waste-cotton shrub, long useless, disobedient as the thistle by the wayside; have ye not conquered it, made it into beautiful bandana webs, white woven shirts for men, bright tinted air garments wherein flit goddesses? Ye have shivered mountains asunder, made the hard iron pliant to you as soft putty; the forest-giants— marsh-jotuns—bear sheaves of golden grain; AEgir—the Sea-Demon himself stretches his back for a sleek highway to you, and on Firehorses and Windhorses ye career. Ye are most strong. Thor, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... the district, but he was matched with an adversary who had drawn into himself the endurance of the wilderness and the quick resiliency of the young spruce tree. Were it only a contest of sheer force, Manson had won outright. Now, as his veins swelled and his arms stiffened around Fisette's pliant body, the latter seemed to convert itself into a mass of steel springs that somehow evaded compression. With feet sinking in the soft soil, crashing through the under-growth with no words but only the heart breaking gasp of supreme effort, they ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... of creepers, out of which I could form ropes; and selecting some of the toughest and most pliant, I secured them to the peccaries, which I dragged under the tree. Having, with no little satisfaction, hoisted up my spoils, I set out to return to the camp. On my way I stopped to look at a tree which seemed to bear a great variety of leaves. On examination, I discovered it to be a mora, ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... into the hands of a rascally "dago" known as Anatole that Mrs. Doyle commended her trio of allies, and being rid of them she turned back to her prisoner, their erstwhile companion. Absinthe wrought its work on his meek and pliant spirit, and the shaking hand was nerved to do the woman's work. At her dictation, with such corrections as his better education suggested, two letters were draughted, and with these in her hand she went aloft. In fifteen minutes ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... ambition quieted every unpleasant emotion. Conscious, in the state of political feeling, that there was little or no possible chance of maintaining even his present elevation, much less of rising higher, unless he became pliant in the hands of those who had elected him, he suffered all ideas of the general good to recede from his mind, and gave himself up wholly to furthering the schemes and interested views of his own party. ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... a chariot, and rebuking the Mule: "How slow you are," said she; "will you not go faster? Take care that I don't prick your neck with my sting." The Mule made answer: "I am not moved by your words, but I fear him who, sitting on the next seat, guides my yoke[21] with his pliant whip, and governs my mouth with the foam-covered reins. Therefore, cease your frivolous impertinence, for I well know when to go at a gentle pace, and ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... these fraternities appears to be deception; and particularly if a magistrate or a sheriff should be a conscientious, humane man, their study, their occupation is to deceive him, in which they are very likely to succeed; for a clever gaoler, surrounded by such pliant helpmates, will deceive the very devil, if he be not aware of their tricks; and how easily then may they cheat an honest, unsuspecting country justice! I have been led into this excusable digression from the recollection of Aris's exposure in the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... curing skins. The principle of each is the soaking of the gelatine fibers of the skin with oil, the union of the latter and the gelatine appearing in the form of oxide, and resulting in the insoluble, undecomposable, pliant, and tough material known to the commercial world as leather. The first step in the oil dressing, after the skins have been duly soaked to render them porous and absorptive, is to cover them with fish ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... Where do my affections turn when I am set free? The heart means the will. Is my will all saturated with, and so made pliant by, the will and commandment of Jesus Christ? If He is my treasure, then thoughts, affection, obedience will all turn to Him, and the current of my being, whatever may be the surface-ripple—ay, or the surface-storm—will be ever sliding surely, though it may be silently, towards Himself. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... have drawn. Mr. Macaulay may have painted his story a little too highly. His faults are less in his verbs and substantives than in his adjectives and his adverbs. Penn never in all probability became such an obsequious and pliant-principled courtier as he is represented in this history, but the simple facts which are authentically recorded of his court-life preclude any notion of the high-souled and spotless character which Mr. Forster would ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... the hindrance of the trade in spices, if they get it under their control. What should be still more thought of and defended, since it is in greater danger, is the Catholic faith, because the land is infested with heretics, and the Indians are a very pliant and changeable people. Don Pedro should be informed of what the marques has been commanded to do for his help, in order that he may understand, and arrange and provide for everything as is best, in order that the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... but not from the standards of the ethical text-books. The casuistry of feeling is of everlasting interest to him, and he is never tired of inventing imaginary cases, or pondering real ones, in which pliant feeling is invoked against the narrowness of duty. These are mostly in a kind of matter which modern taste hardly allows us to reproduce; nor, after all, is there much to be gained by turning the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... but saw nothing on the table to hold a man's words and passions suspended in that strange manner. Nothing was there but the lamp and Joe's old brown hat. That lay there, its innocent, battered crown presenting to Joe's eyes, its broad and pliant brim tilted up on the farther side as if resting on ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... a long, slender pole. It was as pliant as a buggy-whip, and once trimmed and rigged it was far from being a poor tackle. Herky-Jerky watched me with extreme attention, all the time grinning. Then he held ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... genius as if it were a mere knack, and the poet could only express what other men conceived. But in comparison with his task, the poet is the least talented of any; the writer of prose has more skill. See what talent the smith has. His material is pliant in his hands. When the poet is most inspired, is stimulated by an aura which never even colors the afternoons of common men, then his talent is all gone, and he is no longer a poet. The gods do not grant him any skill more ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... mistakes, although it is not a popular attribute of story-book detectives. His carefully kept brown moustache was daintily upturned at the ends. There was grim tenacity written all over the man, but none but his intimates knew how it was wedded to pliant resource and ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... four forms, even as the life springeth up, and yet hath not its dark beginning in the Center as the PHUR hath, but after the flash of fire, when the sour dark form is terrified, where the hardness is turned into pliant sharpness, and where the second will (viz. the will of nature, which is called the Anguish) ariseth, there Mercurius hath its original. For MER is the shivering wheel, very horrible, sharp, venomous, and hostile; which assimulateth ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... water-vessels are merely goat-skins, taken off with as little mutilation of the hide as possible; one of the legs serves as a faucet, and the tying or untying of a piece of string opens or closes the "tap." It is the handiest imaginable contrivance for carrying liquids on horseback, the tough, pliant goat-skin resisting any amount of hard usage and accommodating itself readily to the contour of the pack-saddle, or itself forming a soft enough seat ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... characteristic and congenial train. These were the instrumentalities with which Catharine and Marguerite hoped to bend the will of Henry and his friends to suit their purposes. Catharine had great confidence in the potency of the influence which these pliant maidens could wield, and they were all instructed in the part which they were to act. She was accustomed to call these allies her ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... barbaric music ceased; the orchestra broke forth afresh with a light Parisian waltz, and down between the lines of tables came a negro and a negress—properties of the place, as were the glasses and the table linen—waltzing with the pliant suppleness, the conscious sensuality of their race, and close behind them followed a second couple—a Spaniard, restless and lithe, small of stature and pallid of face, and a young Spanish girl of ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... these difficult trifles. Models of temples, pagodas, and other pieces of architecture, are beautifully worked in ivory; and from the shavings, interwoven with pieces of quills, they make neat baskets and hats, which are as light and pliant as those of straw. In short, all kinds of toys for children, and other trinkets and trifles, are executed in a neater manner and for less money in China, than in any ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... "Poor pliant Prince Max," sighed Jacqueline, "he is still being influenced to stay in Mexico! Come, Berthe, we must make all speed to San ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... intensify a personality, adding to it a distinctness, a power altogether commanding and irresistible, but even in our purest happiness we lose something of ourselves, and become, momentarily at least, less our own masters, and more pliant to the reproof of chance, the sport of destiny. As Robert uttered his passionate confession, he was conscious that much in him which had once seemed strong was conquerable enough, and, in the torture of the indescribable variety of vague, menacing feelings which this suspicion called ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... and so capable of dealing with them—between him and the farmer's boy he had been there was no more resemblance than between a living word and the dead root out of which it has been coined. In Emery Bland's case the word was not only living, but pliant, eloquent, and arresting to ear and eye. He was one of those men who overlook nothing that can be counted as self-expression, from their dress to the sound of their syllables. Superficially genial, but essentially astute, he had made everything grist that came to his ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... he now deem himself in having yielded to the counsel of his guide. Had he retained his unbending boot, it must have crushed whatever it pressed; whereas, the pliant mocassin, yielding to the obstacles it encountered, enabled him to pass noiselessly over them. Still, while exempt from danger on this score, another, scarcely less perplexing, became at every instant more obvious; for, as they drew ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... widen and the morning quicken. Islands swam up out of silver space, took form and colour, and there between the islands he saw the girl. She had gotten another oar from Giuseppe and stood delighting in the free motion; her sleeves were rolled up, her hat was off, her hair blew out; alive and pliant she bent to the long sweep of it, and her eyes were on the morning wonder. But when she caught sight of Peter she looked only at him and he knew that her seeing him appearing thus on the shining water was its chief and exquisite wonder, and that she ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... their colts of speed, Their sculptur'd cars full little here they need; From the right side they take the arrow keen, Ne'er to its quiver to return, I ween; The bow, the left side's fitting ornament; The bow, the tough and pliant bow is bent; It yields a sound, like thunder from afar, While flies the arrow, ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... advantageous 'tis, we now will prove: Folks laugh; your wife a pliant glove shall move; But, if you've twenty favourites around, A single syllable will ne'er resound. Whene'er you speak, each word has double force; At table, you've precedency of course, And oft will ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... "pliant hour;" they sprang upon their oars, and pulled back to the wreck with alacrity. The poor captain, who had witnessed all that passed, watched the progress of his cause with deep anxiety. No sooner did the boat touch the ship, than he leaped into her, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Chac-Mool, which serve to determine the different types, may be a guide to discover whence man and civilization came to America, if the American races can be proved not to be autochthonous. Notwithstanding a few guttural sounds, the Maya is soft, pliant, rich in diction and expression; even every shade of thought ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... and for some minutes she was unable to hear even the droning roar of the rain-laden tornado that came tearing down from the mountains, snapping off the branches of the gum-trees, bending low the pliant boles of the moaning she-oaks, and lifting the waters of the ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... trouble Mr. Bradlaugh lent me every assistance, furnishing me with legal books and advice and visiting me in Newgate between the first and second trials, while Judge North's underlings were preparing a more pliant jury than the one which had declined to ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... grains, somewhat resembling bunches of currants, but with this difference, that every grain adheres to the common stalk, which occasions the cluster of pepper to be more compact, and it is also less pliant. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... of Desdemona that if she were called off at any time by household affairs she would despatch with all haste that business, and return, and with a greedy ear devour Othello's discourse. And once he took advantage of a pliant hour and drew from her a prayer that he would tell her the whole story of his life at large, of which she had heard so much, but only by parts. To which he consented, and beguiled her of many a tear when he spoke of some distressful stroke which his youth ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... object approach nearer, and stretching out his hand felt something smooth, and instead of laying hold, as he expected, on the prickles of a hedgehog, he touched a little creature more soft and fine than Barbary wool, more pliant and tender than a marten's tail, more delicate than thistle-down, he flew from one thought to another, and taking her to be a fairy (as indeed she was), he conceived at once a great affection for her. The next morning, before the Sun, like a chief physician, went ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... them, the dramatist fill their lungs with salutary laughter or purge their emotions by pity or terror. The historian 'superinduces upon events the charm of order.' The novelist—well, even the novelist has his uses; and I would warn you against despising any form of art which is alive and pliant in the hands of men. For my part, I believe, bearing in mind Mr. Barrie's "Peter Pan" and the old bottles he renovated to hold that joyous wine, that even Musical Comedy, in the hands of a master, might become a thing of beauty. Of the Novel, at any rate—whether we like it or ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... of the room were two persons—a man resting in a chair high-backed, broad-armed, and lined with pliant cushions; and at his left, leaning against the back of the chair, a girl well forward into womanhood. At sight of them Ben-Hur felt the blood redden his forehead; bowing, as much to recover himself as in respect, he lost the lifting of the hands, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... the coupling. (2) A good back, wide from neck to tail, well fleshed, and straight. (3) A good front quarter, wide, deep, and full. (4) A good hind quarter, long, wide, and deep. (5) Good handling qualities, as indicated in elastic flesh and pliant skin. ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... will of the people, ought above all things to gaine the people to him, which he may easily effect, when he takes upon him their protection: And because men when they find good, where they look for evill, are thereby more endered to their benefactour, therefore growes the people so pliant in their subjection to him, as if by their favours he had attaind his dignity. And the Prince is able to gaine them to his side by many wayes, which because they vary according to the subject, no certaine rule can be ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... my throat with jacinths, green and glist'ning serpent-wise, My hot, dark throat that pulsed beneath the ardour of your eyes; And centuries have failed to cool the memory of your hands That bound about my arms those massive, pliant golden bands. ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... now, scarcely able to walk; but he could sit under the pliant, caressing leaves of his palm, loving it like an Arab; and there he sat till the grimmest of speculators came to him. But even in death Pere Antoine was faithful to his trust: the owner of that land loses it if ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... very easy to leave Hugues to the dog's death he merits and to take this woman for my own? For I know that she loves me a little. And thinking of this, he kissed her, quietly, as one might comfort a sobbing child; afterward he held her in his arms for a moment, wondering vaguely at the pliant thickness of her hair and the sweet scent of it. Then he put her from him gently, and swore in his soul that Hugues must die, so that this woman might ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... lily rocked hither and thither on the pond, with its blond leaves and petals of blue, and its pliant stem in danger at every tide, did the fond mothers watch it from the bank? That they did, thinking of the time when they were lilies of the pond themselves, with no fears of danger near. But at last it came, and, like blooming flowers, they swung to ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... rendered doubly harmonious by the tender tinkling of the wandering guitar, or the tones of the plaintive flute; while, from every third dwelling, rose the more stately but scarcely sweeter melodies stricken by pliant fingers from the yielding soul of the divine piano. The tastes even of the mechanic were refined by this language, the purest In which passion ever speaks; and an ambition—the result of the highest tone of ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... rods instead of the horizontal layer of willow canes. This answered his purpose just as well and rendered the making of large baskets the work of a few hours. He found, however, that the willow rods or osiers were not pliant enough to work well in fastening his coils of grass cables together. He tried several things and at last succeeded best when he used the long thread-like fibre of the century-like plant. He had, however, to make a stout framework of rods. ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... as the entireness of his limbs was held to be among the Athenians,) superadds the vast power, both actual and virtual, which would flow from the inviolability of the Royal office, and forecloses, so far, the chance which the more pliant Tory doctrine would leave open, of counteracting the effects of the King's indirect personal influence, by curtailing or weakening the grasp of some of his direct regal powers. Ovid represents the Deity of Light (and on an occasion, too, which may be called a Regency question) as crowned with movable ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... each carrying upon his head a huge bundle of some twining plant belonging to a species which we had not observed hitherto during our wanderings in Ceylon. From its appearance we likened it to a giant convolvulus, for, while the pliant stem was as thick as a man's arm, there hung from it huge leaves and petals resembling that flower in shape. We moved cautiously into the undergrowth behind, thus getting a little farther away from the Dhahs, and, lying with our bodies stretched ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the rope one of those ladders of silk and bamboo. One of the Doctor's servants ascended—probably to ascertain if the hashish had acted successfully. That was the yellow dream-face which West saw bending over him. Then followed the Doctor, and to his giant will the drugged brain of West was a pliant instrument which he bent to his own ends. The court would be deserted at that hour of the night, and, in any event, directly after the ascent the ladder probably was pulled up, only to be lowered again when West had revealed the secret of his own safe and ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... well into the mesquite before he put back the hair in the water the dog had left and went on with his plaiting: As he handled the pliant horsehairs he talked aloud, ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... quick And graceful turned the head on the broad chest Encased in pliant steel, his constant vest, Whence split the sun off in a spray of fire Across the room; and, loosened of its tire Of steel, that head let breathe the comely brown Large massive locks discoloured as if a crown Encircled them, so frayed the basnet where A sharp white line divided clean the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... urged to order the immediate election of a territorial legislature. The conspirators had already spent some months in organizing their "Blue Lodges," and now desired at once to control the political power of the Territory. But the Governor had too much manliness to become the mere pliant tool they wished to make him. He resented their dictation; he made a tour of inspection through the new settlements; and, acting on his own judgment, on his return issued a proclamation for a simple election of a delegate to Congress. At the appearance ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... an amazing writer," says M. Faguet, "and disconcerted criticism by the impossibility of explaining his methods of procedure; he was luminous, supple, naturally pliant and yielding; beneath his apparently effeminate grace an extraordinary strength of character would suddenly make itself felt; he had, more than any nineteenth-century writer, the quality of ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... in number.(1) Of these the Sanskrit is the oldest, and may truly be called the mother tongue of the country. It is one of the most ancient languages in the world, with a history of more than 3,000 years. It is strong, pliant, expressive—a worthy vehicle of noble thought and religious aspiration. Though not spoken today by any tribe or people, it is not a dead language, for it is the religious tongue of India. The best thought, the deepest philosophy, the highest religious aspiration, the laws, customs and legends ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... done by making a bow of a small willow or other pliant wood, for each hide, and then pulling the hide over it. The hides are thus left until they are dry, when the bows are taken out and the hides are packed in a frame made for that purpose, fifty in ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... was your language. You reprobated those accommodating rules by which I endeavoured to obtain happiness; and urged arguments that made a deep impression upon me. Now that self-interest gives you an impulse, are your principles become as pliant as mine; which ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... school-boy consists in the perpetual motion of thoughtless and playful agility, in which I was never qualified to excel. My name, it is most true, could never be enrolled among the sprightly race, the idle progeny of Eton or Westminster, who delight to cleave the water with pliant arm, to urge the flying ball, and to chase the speed of the rolling circle. But I would ask the warmest and most active hero of the play-field whether he can seriously compare his childish with his ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... change. On speculative points any man may be suddenly converted; for these may depend on facts or arguments which might never have occurred to him before. But when we watch the weathercock chopping with the wind, so pliant to move, and so stiff when fixed—when we observe this "preciousest grueller" clothed in purple, and equally hardy in the most opposite measures—become a favourite with James II., and a furious advocate for arbitrary power; when we see him railing at and menacing those, among whom he had committed ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... obedience should be a surer obligation than duty taught and understood, it is to affirm that a blind man may tread surer by a guide than a seeing man can by a light. And it is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, generous, manageable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwart, and mutinous: and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... like a horse that takes the bit and the driver was his own will—his own self. She made no resistance when he threw himself down beside her: she was pliant, her cheek cool, she even looked at him haughtily. He did not know that she slipped out of his arms just before he would have released her, nor that she was all one flame of triumphant happiness. She seemed as untouched ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... scarlet, furious nostrils and maddened eyes, the yellow horse was a thing of terror and of beauty. But the lithe figure on his back, bending like a reed in the wind to every movement, firm below, pliant above, with calm inexorable face, and eyes which danced and gleamed with the joy of contest, still held its masterful place for all that the fiery heart and the iron muscles of the ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... characterized their ancestors, but which are too small to assail horned cattle, mark the vanishing stages of this great stock, which will soon be known only in memory. The history of this peculiar herd-dog shows us how marvellously pliant the body and mind of this species has become under the conditions of civilization. The rude process of unconscious selection, acting without steadfastness of purpose or rationally developed skill, serves to sway the qualities ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... and, laterally disposing yourself, swear by her blushing and well-coloured cheek, the bright dye of her hair, her ivory teeth, (though they be ebony,) or some such white and innocent oath, to induce you. If regardant, then maintain your station, brisk and irpe, show the supple motion of your pliant body, but in chief of your knee, and hand, which cannot but arride her proud ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... of Aileen I got to carry with me through weary months of desire. From the window of her aunt's house she was waving a tartan scarf, and many a rugged kerne's face lighted at the girl's eager loyalty. Flushed with shy daring, the soft pliant curves of her figure all youth and grace, my love's picture framed in the casement was an unconscious magnet for all eyes. The Prince smiled and bowed to her, then said something which I did not catch to Creagh who was riding ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... polite society at least. Skippy's feet could skip, hop and jump with the best, but they were not, in any sense of the word, gliders. The change from the inanimate embrace of the dressmaker's form to Tootsie's pliant figure, however, worked such miracles that at the end of twenty minutes' industrious application, Tootsie expressed herself ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... say anything of the sort. In height, he was about five feet and a quarter of an inch, in his boots, and he was rather strongly set, with a little tendency to round shoulders:—but his limbs were pliant, and his ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... she came back with a coarse cloth, a thick plate, a wooden-handled knife, together with a fork made of some pliant material; these ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... designs was undoubted, and, if properly managed and bribed, Portocarrero would have been a pliant instrument in his hands; but the cardinal was soon estranged by the constant interference by the French agents in his own measures of government, and therefore turned against France that power of intrigue which he had recently used in her favor. He pretended to be devoted ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... of her native village—one could seem to see Luella Miller as she had really looked. According to this woman, Lydia Anderson by name, Luella Miller had been a beauty of a type rather unusual in New England. She had been a slight, pliant sort of creature, as ready with a strong yielding to fate and as unbreakable as a willow. She had glimmering lengths of straight, fair hair, which she wore softly looped round a long, lovely face. She had blue eyes full of soft pleading, little slender, clinging hands, and a wonderful grace ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... into his upturned face. The wistfulness sat heavy upon it. The youthfulness of this dashing trapper of the posts and settlements came out plain in the starlight. She saw again the pliant strength beneath the slender grace, caught the suggestion of contradicting forces that she had felt one day in Marie's doorway when young Dupre swung up the main way of Fort de Seviere, and beneath it all she saw that which had caused her to say on that first morning of the long trail ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... eyes were large and light blue, the lashes and eyebrows being only a shade or two darker than her long, straight rather dull-looking, yellow hair. She always wore her hair straight down her back; she was very willowy and pliant in figure, and had something of the grace ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... windows of which faced the Bois, she expressed to the air and surroundings the personality of a thoughtful, charming young woman,—no more. Her black silk gown, cut simply in the prevailing mode of definitely outlining the figure from throat to hips, and then springing out in pliant folds of trailing drapery, had nothing remarkable about it save its Parisian perfection of fit,—the pale "Gloire de France" rose that rested lightly amongst the old lace at her neck, pinned, yet looking ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... Opportunity to dissect a Woman's Tongue, and to examine whether there may not be in it certain Juices which render it so wonderfully voluble [or [3]] flippant, or whether the Fibres of it may not be made up of a finer or more pliant Thread, or whether there are not in it some particular Muscles which dart it up and down by such sudden Glances and Vibrations; or whether in the last Place, there may not be certain undiscovered Channels running from the Head and the Heart, to ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Casting of yellow sand.—Ver. 35. It was the custom of wrestlers, after they had anointed the body with 'ceroma' or wrestler's oil, in order to render the body supple and pliant, to sprinkle the body with sand, or dust, to enable the antagonist to take a firm hold. It was, however, considered more praiseworthy to conquer in a contest which was akoniti 'without the use ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... your digestive functions? Is it not exacting a little too much of human nature to require a man to consider himself a large sponge, in order that hospitality may be poured into him by the gallon? When a person of pliant and amiable disposition visits a set of good fellows, and they take some trouble to entertain him; when they think they are delighting him internally and externally—not to say infernally—with such tea as he never drank before, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... a few minutes as puzzled as he was. Then the bright thought came, and I took the lighter of the two canes, cut off the most pliant part, and then tearing my silk neckerchief in thin strips, I split the end of the cane, thrust in the haft of the knife, so that it was held as by a fork, and bound the cane tightly down the length of the knife-handle, and also below, so that the wood should ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... apparently much interested in the manoeuvring of a raft which was passing by. 'Dear Miss Power,' he resumed, 'before I go and join your uncle above, let me just ask, Do I stand any chance at all yet? Is it possible you can never be more pliant than ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... horse that takes the bit and the driver was his own will—his own self. She made no resistance when he threw himself down beside her: she was pliant, her cheek cool, she even looked at him haughtily. He did not know that she slipped out of his arms just before he would have released her, nor that she was all one flame of triumphant happiness. She seemed as untouched as ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... sore with his own hands and bound it up with some clean linen that he took from his knapsack. He displayed the gentleness of a woman and the deftness of a surgeon, whose big fingers can be so pliant when necessity requires it. ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... interests of the Scottish Church, a trust he shamefully betrayed by intriguing with Charles at Breda, and with Clarendon and the magnates of the English Church to restore Prelacy in Scotland, he himself (by way of reward) being appointed Archbishop of St. Andrews; henceforward he was but a pliant tool in the hands of his English employers, and an object of intense hatred to the Covenanters; in 1668 his life was attempted in Edinburgh by Robert Mitchell, a covenanting preacher, and ultimately on Magus Muir, May ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... bloodshot eyes. Fascinated, his glance dwelt upon her; nothing of her fresh beauty was lost on him; the smooth curve of her soft white throat, the alluring charm of her warm sensuous lips, the tiny dimple that came and went when she smiled, the graceful pliant lines of her figure, the rare poise of her small head—his glance observed all. For better or for worse he loved her with whatever of the man there was in him; he might hate her in some sudden burst of fierce anger because of her shallowness, her greed, her utter ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... a variety of creepers, out of which I could form ropes; and selecting some of the toughest and most pliant, I secured them to the peccaries, which I dragged under the tree. Having, with no little satisfaction, hoisted up my spoils, I set out to return to the camp. On my way I stopped to look at a tree which seemed to bear a great variety of leaves. On examination, ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... been twitched off her head by one of the branches of the young trees through which she was passing, and the pliant bit of wood, being released from the strain, had thrown it down into the dark bushes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... scoring they have a very good plan at the Military Tournament of chalking the competitors' sticks. This precaution ensures a mark upon the jacket every time the ash-plant hits it; but even this is not always sufficient, for it is quite possible for a true guard to be opposed to a hard cut with a pliant stick, with the result that the attacker's stick whips over and leaves a mark which ought not to be scored, for had the weapons been of steel ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... enslaved; his oath binds him to an implicit blind reception of tenets which he is not permitted to investigate, and which make him the pliant tool of a higher department of this detestable machinery. He receives his cue from the bishops, and they are wholly governed by the Propaganda at Rome, whither each of them is bound periodically to appear for personal ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... thunderclap that it shook the ground beneath her, and for some minutes she was unable to hear even the droning roar of the rain-laden tornado that came tearing down from the mountains, snapping off the branches of the gum-trees, bending low the pliant boles of the moaning she-oaks, and lifting the waters of the creek up ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... brushwood we next saw several Dhahs advance, each carrying upon his head a huge bundle of some twining plant belonging to a species which we had not observed hitherto during our wanderings in Ceylon. From its appearance we likened it to a giant convolvulus, for, while the pliant stem was as thick as a man's arm, there hung from it huge leaves and petals resembling that flower in shape. We moved cautiously into the undergrowth behind, thus getting a little farther away from the Dhahs, and, lying with our bodies stretched upon the ground ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... trees rising on each side in the semi-twilight, the grove was like the transept of a cathedral. It seemed a profanation to speak in such a place. Lynde could have wandered on forever in contented silence, with that tall, pliant figure in its severely cut drapery moving before him. As he watched the pure outline defining itself against the subdued light, he was reminded of a colored bas- relief he had seen on a certain Egyptian vase in the Museum at Naples. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... concealment already described, I watched her swing the horse aside from the culvert, and send him at the drain: and, with that danger-begotten fascination by trifles which, in situations like mine, you must often have experienced, I noticed her pliant waist spring in easy undulation to the horse's flying leap. And so, with that thick cable of platted hair flapping and surging down her back, she vanished from the scene. She was a phantom of delight, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... times there lived numberless creatures which we know nowadays as encrinites. These, when growing, were fixed to the bed of the ocean, and extended upward in the shape of pliant stems composed of limestone joints or plates; the stem of each encrinite then expanded at the top in the shape of a gorgeous and graceful starfish, possessed of numberless and lengthy arms. These encrinites grew in such profusion that after ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... yielded to her subtle feminine attraction. "She's even prettier than I supposed," he thought. Her lips, her nose, her eyes of deep gray with their wonderfully long lashes—each had a particular charm of its own. He admired the grace of her figure. He felt an odd surprise at her apparent soft and pliant strength, as at a discovery. His mind thrilled ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... sweat streaming down his face and a mind wholly absorbed in the immediate task has no desire to be bothered with inconsequential chatter. So she rambled along the creek one afternoon, armed with hook and line on a pliant willow ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... at once set to work to choose a more pliant successor to her rebellious tool. But her cup of crime was nearly full. Though the people remained silent, there was deep discontent among the officials of the realm, while the nobles were fiercely indignant at this virtual seizure of the throne by an ambitious woman. The ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... illusive vision of masses of fluffy golden hair above a face of radiant purity, of deft fingers moving in swift and sure precision as they wound the white rolls of bandages round bloody and broken flesh, of two round capable arms whose lines suggested strength and beauty, of a firm knit, pliant body that moved with easy sinuous grace, of eyes—but ever at the eyes he paused, forgetting all else, till, recalling himself, he began again, striving to catch and hold that radiant, bewildering, illusive vision. That was a sufficiently maddening process, but to ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... function is to interpret the laws. The legislators are responsible for the laws; the judges for the spirit in which they interpret and enforce the laws. We stand aloof from the reckless agitators who would make the judges mere pliant tools of popular prejudice and passion; and we stand aloof from those equally unwise partisans of reaction and privilege who deny the proposition that, inasmuch as judges are chosen to serve the interests of the whole people, they should strive to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... were of stuffed and figured velvet from the manufactories of the queen of the Adriatic, Venice. The scarcely less soft and pliant carpet was of eastern ingenuity, and no richer served the Turkish Sultan himself. Two opposite sides of the apartment were ornamented each with a mirror of extensive size. About their richly gilded frames was wound, ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... sword is this. Ferrara's temper, pliant as a snake, And deadlier, I doubt not. With such steel, One need fear nothing in the moil of life. I never touched so delicate a blade. I have a sword too, somewhat rusted now. We men of peace are taught humility, And to bear many burdens ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... more than one tentative essay in that direction. She had walked out with three or four sprigs of the Ailesworth bourgeoisie in her time, and the shadow of middle-age had crept upon her before she realised that however pliant her disposition, her lack of physical charm put her at the mercy of the first bright-eyed rival. At thirty-five Ellen had decided, with admirable philosophy, that marriage was not for her, and had assumed, with apparent complacency, the outward evidences of a dignified spinsterhood. ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... excuse this instant for not accepting an invitation above threescore miles off. One's limbs, when they grow old, will not go any where, when they do not like it. If yours should find themselves in a more pliant humour, you are always sure of being welcome here, let the fit of motion ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... his "shirt frill," a "curb chain" with large gold seals hanging from his waistcoat—(a "curb chain" proper was then a little thin chain finely wrought, of very close links.) Then there was the "pliant ebony cane, with a heavy gold top." Ebony, however, is not pliant, but the reverse—black was the word intended. Then those "smalls" and stockings to match. Mr. Pickwick, a privileged man, appeared on ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... where genial friendship plays The pleasing game of interchanging praise; Self-love, grimalkin of the human heart, Is ever pliant to the master's art; Soothed with a word, she peacefully withdraws And sheaths in velvet her obnoxious claws, And thrills the hand that smooths her glossy fur With the light ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... Giant, Is the shelf of a cupboard; I make bean-stalks, I'm A builder, like yourself, But bean-stalks is my trade, I couldn't make a shelf, Don't know how they're made, Now, a bean-stalk is more pliant— La, what ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... the last person to have had any influence in matters of State, whatever might have been the case with those who surrounded her. She was devoid of ambition or capacity to give her weight; and the Queen was not so pliant in points of high import as to allow herself to be governed or overruled, unless her mind was thoroughly convinced. In that respect, she was something like Catharine II., who always distinguished her favourites from her Minister; but in the present case she had no choice, and was under the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... church behold the mourners come, Sedately torpid and devoutly dumb; The village children now their games suspend, To see the bier that bears their ancient friend: For he was one in all their idle sport, And like a monarch ruled their little court; The pliant bow he form'd, the flying ball, The bat, the wicket, were his labours all; Him now they follow to his grave, and stand, Silent and sad, and gazing hand in hand; While bending low, their eager eyes explore The mingled relics of the parish poor. The bell ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... improper after January, the Sap then ascending into the Trunk, and expanding it self over all the Branches. See that your Stocks be Taper-grown, and your Tops of the best Ground-Hazle, that can be had, smooth, slender, and straight, of an Ell-long, pliant, and bending; and yet of a strength, that a reasonable jerk cannot break it, but it will return to its first straightness; lest otherwise you endanger your Line. Keep them two full years, before you use them; having preserved them from Worm-eating, or Rotting, by thrice a year ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... pliant the human animal is to work! Certainly it is no Gospel of Work that the world needs. It has ever been the great concern of the lawgivers of mankind, not to ordain work, but, as we see so interestingly in the Mosaic Codes, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... it matter just this once? They were there now and they might as well get all the fun they could out of it. The music started up, he held out his hand to Madeline and they wheeled into the maze of dancers, the girl's pliant body yielding to his arms, her eyes brilliant with excitement. They danced on and on and it was amazingly and imprudently late when they finally left the Swan and went ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... Adino the Eznite," etc. (2 Sam. xxiii. 8). This mighty man when studying the law was as pliant as a worm; but when engaged in war he was as firm and unyielding as a tree; and when he discharged an arrow he killed eight hundred men at ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... imaginary species of screech-owl, which they superstitiously think attends the windows of dying persons. The plumage of the remiges of the wings of every species of owl that I have yet examined is remarkably soft and pliant. Perhaps it may be necessary that the wings of these birds should not make much resistance or rushing, that they may be enabled to steal through the air unheard upon ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... that there followed gentle feelings, and gentler yet in her attendance on her patron's obsequies, in the discovery that all of which he died possessed he'd left to her, but it is the duller surfaces that are slowest to give refraction, the least used springs that are least pliant. She was come a long road from her first signs of hardening. She was past, now, the stage where, when grieving for the little old man, she would have felt contrition that her first thought at his death had been, not of him, but of his death's ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... district, gained the good-will of all those villages and marvelously influenced them to receive our holy faith. They went forth from his hands such model Christians that those who before baptism were fierce, rude, and intractable, you would see today, after baptism, tractable, gentle, pliant, and loving; they are now wholly freed from error, and feel a horror of their idols and former vices, and extreme love and affection for Jesus Christ our Lord, and for His mysteries. Children so small that they could hardly yet speak, gave such a good account ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... unpromising a subject as this large archaic tinamou should be able to maintain its existence in this country, even for a very few years, encourages one to believe that with better-chosen species, more highly organized, and with more pliant habits, such as the hazel hen of Europe for a game bird, success ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... coax something besides calamus to grow in the spongy little tract of swamp-land that he could stand in the middle of and "wobble" and shake the whole farm. Or, if you can't recall the many salient features of the minor disadvantages under which the old man used to labor, your pliant limbs may soon overtake him, and he will smilingly tell you of trials and privations of the early days, until your anxiety about the young man just naturally stagnates, and dries up, and ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... some others, relate of the industry of the Chinese most populous countries, not a beggar or an idle person to be seen, and how by that means they prosper and flourish. We have the same means, able bodies, pliant wits, matter of all sorts, wool, flax, iron, tin, lead, wood, &c., many excellent subjects to work upon, only industry is wanting. We send our best commodities beyond the seas, which they make good use of to their necessities, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... mark keenly, the initiative is in human hands. God's action has always waited on human action. The power is only in the Holy Spirit. The most astute and strong leadership amounts to nothing without Him flooding it with His presence. But the power needs a channel. The Spirit needs men strongly pliant to His will. The great world-plan waits, and always has waited, for willing men. And so our great Friend asks us to follow because He really needs us ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... born obedience, for only the humble man can be inwardly obedient. Obedience is a submission and pliant disposition, and a good will ready for all that is good. Obedience subjects a man to orders, to prohibitions, and to the will of God, and it subjects the soul and sensual force to the highest reason, in such a way that the man lives suitably and ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... it into cables about an inch thick and wove it into his frame of upright rods instead of the horizontal layer of willow canes. This answered his purpose just as well and rendered the making of large baskets the work of a few hours. He found, however, that the willow rods or osiers were not pliant enough to work well in fastening his coils of grass cables together. He tried several things and at last succeeded best when he used the long thread-like fibre of the century-like plant. He had, however, to make a stout framework of rods. He would first coil his grass rope into this frame ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... come from Paris, citizen?" said Corentin, approaching the stranger with a certain ease of manner, and a pliant, affable air which seemed intolerable to ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... determining force. Impulses of love, impulses of sacrifice toward the miserable, the vile, and the helpless—day by day she had felt them, day by day she had obeyed them. And thus all the arteries, so to speak, of the spiritual life had remained soft and pliant—that life itself in her was still young. It was there in truth that her Christianity lay; while she imagined it to lie in the assent to certain historical and dogmatic statements. And so strong was this inward and vital faith—so strengthened in fact by mere living—that when she ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the shrill discordant braying of many trumpets, and a roar like that of a football crowd arose surprisingly near. In response, the slave driver lashed the gaudily bedecked sacrificial victims to their feet with vicious cuts of his pliant whip, and herded them like a drove of calves down a very long passage, lit at intervals by those strange column lamps of incandescent gas. In their red glare the doomed six seemed as though already bathed ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... an enormous preponderance in the electorate. By using the Black Hundreds to work among the electors—bribing, cajoling, threatening, and coercing, as the occasion might require—it might be possible to bring about the election of a Duma which would be a pliant and ready ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... this wide-blown, scattered fire, whose sparks and ashes were sown broadcast, till but stubborn remnants clung under the sheltering back-log of the bivouac hearth? Was it this frail lodge, built upon pliant, yielding poles, covered cunningly with mats and bark, carpeted with robe of elk and buffalo? Yet why should the elements rage at a tiny fire, and why should they tear at a little house of nomad ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... standing and arguing with himself as to the right or wrong of what was now in his mind, he would have been incredulous. He had in reality become another man. Circumstances had evolved him, during the course of twenty years, into something different, as persistent winds evolve a pliant tree into another than its typical shape. Gordon ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... ago discarded the clumsy implement. First it dropped its iron ring and became a clog; afterwards it was fined down into the pliant galoshe—lighter to wear and more effectual to protect—a no less manifest instance of gradual improvement than Cowper indicates when he traces through eighty lines of poetry his 'accomplished sofa' back ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... of seeing a considerable improvement in Elsie before she left Derbyshire, and used to have her company in his morning drives to visit his patients, when her pleasant conversation and winning manner made him ere long prefer her to her graver and less pliant sister. He missed both the girls when they went to London, and even Dr. Vivian paid Jane the compliment of regretting her society ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... made glass vessels of that pliant harness, that they were no more to be broken than gold and silver ones: It so happened, that having made a drinking-pot, with a wide mouth of that kind, but the finest glass, fit for no man, as he thought, less ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... the velvet-covered stairway together, her arm around his neck, his encircling a slender, pliant waist that a girl of sixteen might have envied. Her maid ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... therefore, he likes Dash. The boy has fought a battle, in defence of his beauty, with another boy, bigger than himself, and beat his opponent most handsomely— and, therefore, he likes Dash; and the maids like him, or pretend to like him, because we do—as is the fashion of that pliant and imitative class. And now Dash and May follow us every where, and are going with us now to the Shaw, or rather to the cottage by the Shaw, to bespeak milk and butter of our little dairy-woman, Hannah ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... thought to himself that here were traces of the nymph after all—-at least, here was a girl who might conceivably look like one by artificial light and in the right gown. And beyond that, he was vaguely conscious of something in her that was pliant yet unbreakable—or almost unbreakable—and which defied ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... into the holster which dangled on her thigh from the cartridge-studded belt round her pliant, ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... nature forgave the one, so the excellency of his manners reformed the other. The desire of imitating so great a pattern, first awakened the dull and heavy spirits of the English from their natural reservedness; loosened them from their stiff forms of conversation, and made them easy and pliant to each other in discourse. Thus, insensibly, our way of living became more free; and the fire of the English wit, which was before stifled under a constrained, melancholy way of breeding, began first to display its force by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... of a tragic actor the man stretched out to Foma his hand, with its long, pliant fingers like those of a juggler, and he said in ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... as he could have desired, she revealed to his astonished eyes a backbone that was evidently made of iron. She was immovable, he admitted, and because she was immovable he was conscious of a sharp unreasonable impulse to reduce her to the pliant curves of her girlhood. After eight years of an absolute supremacy, which had been far from good for him, his will had been tripped up at last by so small a thing as a mere whim ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... against the horizon. This hill was studded with clumps of beeches, and sometimes enclosed as a meadow. In the month of July, when the grass on it was long, many an hour have I spent in solitary enjoyment, watching the wavy motion produced upon its pliant surface by the sunny winds, or the flight of the cloud-shadows, like gigantic phantoms, as they swept rapidly over it, whilst the murmur of the rocking-trees, and the glancing of their bright leaves in the sun produced a heartfelt pleasure, the ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... more pliant. I do believe that eight days would have produced some grave event; but, alas! those eight days, and perhaps eight days more, are to ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Lords were again on the alert when the Rents Bill came on, and objected to a clause giving the LORD CHANCELLOR power to order proceedings under the measure to be held in private. This time the LORD CHANCELLOR was less pliant, and plainly suggested that the newspapers were actuated in this matter by regard for their circulations. Does he really suppose that the disputes of landlords and tenants will supply such popular "copy" as to crowd out the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... I thought; from place to place, Apollo's song-bowed Scythian, I go on; Making in all my home, with pliant ways, But, provident of change, putting forth ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... it was with the languid drawl of the Western plainsman. In humor he feigned to conceal his passion, but Joyce knew him to be alertly conscious of her every word, every turn of her pliant body. ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... The pliant harebell swinging in the breeze, On some grey rock: The single sheep, and the one blasted tree, And the bleak music from that old stone wall:— In the meadows and the lower ground, Was all the sweetness of a common dawn:— And that green corn ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... seriously incline: But still the house Affaires would draw her hence: Which euer as she could with haste dispatch, She'l'd come againe, and with a greedie eare Deuoure vp my discourse. Which I obseruing, Tooke once a pliant houre, and found good meanes To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart, That I would all my Pilgrimage dilate, Whereof by parcels she had something heard, But not instinctiuely: I did consent, And often did beguile her of her teares, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Add to this, that it was unusually small and feeble, intimating duplicity and a want of moral energy and candor. In the mere face, therefore, there was something which you could not like, and which would have prejudiced you, as if by instinct, against the man, were it not that the pliant and agreeable tone of his conversation, in due time, made you forget everything except the fact that Tom Norton was a most delightful fellow, with not a bit of selfishness about him, but a warm and friendly wish to oblige and serve ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... with four divisions, whereas the new one could not be held by less than seven or eight. The Council was therefore about to commit another fateful mistake, the consequences of which it was certain to shift to the shoulders of the pliant people. It was then that Rumania's leaders kicked against ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... their horses is a halter and a saddle: the first is either a rope of six or seven strands of buffaloe hair platted or twisted together, about the size of a man's finger and of great strength; or merely a thong of raw hide, made pliant by pounding and rubbing; though the first kind is much preferred. The halter is very long, and is never taken from the neck of the horse when in constant use. One end of it is first tied round the neck ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... son now wore the crown of France. In Henry III. she had as pliant an instrument for her will as in the two brothers preceding him; and, like them, his reign was spent in alternating conflict with the Protestants and the Duke of Guise. At last, wearied and exasperated, ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... Doctor. "All the Tanagers of our country have pretty much the same habits. Even if we had found the nest we might have mistaken it for a Scarlet Tanager's. Those I have seen in the Museum are quite similar, built of twigs and pliant stems, and lined with fine rootlets. The position of the nest, saddled as it is on the horizontal limb of a tree, is very similar, and you could hardly ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... pray for yourself to-night," she said in a soft voice, throwing her pliant body on the pallet. "I do not understand anything about God any more. I do not see why He should send His Son to die for the thousands of people who do not care for Him. The great Manitou of the Indians ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... a future she must once have had before her, if she had but known what men were made of! It is only when too late that such women discover what they have missed. This mad Carew was tinder to a flash of these bright eyes; and the fool Yorke, except in his wild creeds, as pliant as a hazel twig. I used to think yonder woman was an idiot, because she believed in a place of torment; but she was right there. Yes, Joanna," she continued, apostrophizing the picture, "I'm compelled to confess ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... meal that had been prepared for him, and once more mingled in the cares and sports of the family. But he never for a moment forgot the grave of his friend. He carefully visited it throughout the spring, and weeded out the grass, and kept the ground in a soft and pliant state; and sometimes, when the brave Wunzh thought of his friend that was gone from his sight, he dropped a tear upon the earth where ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... snorer is not me, I flatter myself, so make no more remarks, but listen, you see I have brought you to a very pretty little spot on the cliffs, and here are six or seven nice little trees, that look so pliant and slender we can bend them into any shape, but you are ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... go indoctrinate our agent," continued the knight. "We shall find him pliant; for, hound as he is, he knows those who feed from those who browbeat him; and he holds a late royal master of mine in deep hate for some injurious treatment and base terms which he received at his hand. I must also farther concert with thee the particulars of thy practice, for saving ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... of the suggestion of supple strength conveyed by the rippling play of muscle beneath the white skin of his arms, bared to the elbow, and by the pliant swing of his body to each ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... which he called fatal, the insolence of a subject who was for wresting favours from his sovereign, sword in hand. The Queen was moved at this, and the poor Cardinal owned he had been too easy and pliant. ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... practice of the Republic, a common persuasion that slavery, as it cannot but be the natural foe of the one, has been the chief debaser of the other, and a common resolve to resist its encroachments everywhen and everywhere. They see no reason to fear that the Constitution, which has shown such pliant tenacity under the warps and twistings of a forty-years' pro-slavery pressure, should be in danger of breaking, if bent backward again gently to its original rectitude of fibre. "All forms of human government," says Machiavelli, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... the growth of my own nature. My brothers and my sister were all brownfaced, sturdy little country children, with no very marked traits save a love of mischief controlled by the fear of their father. These, with Martha the serving-maid, formed our whole household during those boyish years when the pliant soul of the child is hardening into the settled character of the man. How these influences affected me I shall leave for a future sitting, and if I weary you by recording them, you must remember that I am telling these things rather for your profit than ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... against one of the Angels of the Deliverance, and then came back and enlarged his testimony; it was he who declared the rescue an act of "treason;" he who hung the court house in chains, and brought down the pliant neck of the Massachusetts Judges beneath that symbolic line of linked fetters long drawn out. To what weak forces will such necks ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... vicegerent in ecclesiastical affairs, Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell, unlike Wolsey, was hostile to the temporal power of Rome. He made Thomas Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, who was inclined toward Protestant views, but, though sincere in his beliefs, was a man of pliant temper, indisposed to resist the king's will, preferring to bow to a storm, and to wait for it to pass by. By Cranmer the divorce was decreed, but this was after the marriage with Anne Boleyn had taken place. Henry was excommunicated by the Pope. Acts of Parliament ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... experience dearly bought, and probably all the fortune that he will ever require. The passions by which his course is directed being the last under whose scourge he will move, he is unpitying and determined, like the man carried away by a current who snatches at a green and pliant branch of willow, the ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... in such fashion, did not fail in its appeal to the romantic girl; and when, a little later, Gabrielle visited the Royalist army then besieging Chartres, it was a much more pliant Gabrielle who listened to the King's wooing and whose eyes brightened at his stories of bravery and danger. Henri might be old and ugly, but he had at least a charm of manner, a frank, simple manliness, which made him the idol of ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... a pliant whalebone, And his arrow a white-pine stick; Such a life as his archery practice Led the cats and each wretched chick! Our tea-sets were bits of dishes That mother had thrown away, With chincapin saucers and acorn-cups; And our ...
— The Nursery, Number 164 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... to change this charming, if too pliant, personality into the critical, watchful, almost—so at moments it seemed to Malling—aggressive curate who was now, always in a gentlemanly way, making things rather difficult for ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... vegetable feeder, but an inhabitant of sterile and sandy deserts, its long slender neck and sloping body, enable it to reach with ease its favorite food: leaf by leaf is daintily plucked from the lofty branch by the pliant tongue, and a mouthful of tender and juicy food is speedily accumulated. The oblique and narrow apertures of the nostrils, defended even to their margins by a chevaux de frise of strong hairs, and surrounded by muscular fibres by which they can be hermetically sealed, effectually ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... of stubborn will, But prudent, wary, pliant still, Who, since his work was good, Would ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... shoulders that a bee cannot creep under it. Woolen stockings may then be drawn over the hands, or better still, India Rubber gloves, such as are now in very common use, may be worn; these gloves are impenetrable to the sting of a bee, and yet are so soft and pliant as scarcely in the least to interfere with the operations ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... cook (a Nubian as black as ink, and as shining as if he had been polished with a shoe-brush) entered the kitchen of the hotel, and asked for the largest knife they had. The head-cook gave him a sort of carving-knife, some eighteen inches long, sharp as a razor, and pliant as a foil. The negro looked at it, shook his head as if in doubt whether it would do, but nevertheless took it up stairs with him. Presently he brought it down again, and asked for a larger one. The cook opened all his drawers, and at last found a sort of cutlass, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... be done? "Armistice for four years," Sigismund was still kind enough to consent to that: "Truce for four years: try everywhere, my poor Nephew; after that, your mind will perhaps become pliant." Albert tried the Reich again: "Four years, O Princes, and then I must do it, or be eaten!" Reich, busy with Lutheran-Papal, Turk-Christian quarrels, merely shrugged its shoulders upon Albert. Teutschmeister did the like; everybody the like. In Heaven or Earth, then, is there no ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... wayside,—have ye not conquered it; made it into beautiful bandana webs; white woven shirts for men; bright-tinted air-garments wherein flit goddesses? Ye have shivered mountains asunder, made the hard iron pliant to you as soft putty: the Forest-giants, Marsh-joetuns bear sheaves of golden-grain; AEgir the Sea-demon himself stretches his back for a sleek highway to you, and on Firehorses and Windhorses ye career. Ye are most strong. Thor red-bearded, with his blue sun-eyes, with his cheery heart and strong ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... to it. She was laughing with all the glee of a child; darting the piece of sugar about incessantly from place to place. Every moment, her head and neck assumed some new and lovely turn—every moment her figure naturally fell into the position which showed its pliant symmetry best. The last-left glow of the evening atmosphere was shining on her—the farewell pause of daylight over the kindred daylight of beauty ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... hand was out, though, I understood how truly it had been said that women's wits now swayed the destinies of France. Since this day, too, our country has suffered much through women, when under the next, and more pliant Louis, they ruled with even a scantier pretense at concealment or of decency. Jerome spoke slow and guardedly, when he turned to me again. He began in a tone subdued by the intensity of his feelings—which, as I soon learned, ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... to mend, The world, where lucky throws to blockheads fall, Knaves know the game, and honest men pay all. How hard for real worth to gain its price! A man shall make his fortune in a trice, If blest with pliant, though but slender, sense, Feign'd modesty, and real impudence: A supple knee, smooth tongue, an easy grace. A curse within, a smile upon his face; A beauteous sister, or convenient wife, Are prizes in the lottery of life; Genius and Virtue they will soon defeat, And lodge you in the bosom of the ...
— English Satires • Various
... governments began with bluff but could n't stay there, the military tension was too much for them. In 1898 our people had read the word "war" in letters three inches high for three months in every newspaper. The pliant politician McKinley was swept away by their eagerness, and our squalid war ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... into the colony.[212] This prohibition continued until 1733. If the whites of the colony were left in ignorance, what must have been the mental and moral condition of the slaves? The ignorance of the whites made them the pliant tools of the London Company, and the Negroes in turn were compelled to submit to a condition "of rather rigorous servitude."[213] This treatment has its reflexive influence on the planters. Men fear most the ghosts of their sins, and for cruel deeds rather expect and dread "the reward in ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... of a church which they never entered. And so, before the Revolution opened, the Western imagination had conjured up the specter of a corrupt and effete "East": land of money-changers and self-styled aristocrats and a pliant clergy, the haunt of lawyers and hangers-on, proper dwelling-place of "servants" and the beaten slave: a land of cities, scorning the provincial West, and bent on exploiting its laborious and upright people. And who could doubt that men who ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... is white, unchangeable, very acrid to the taste and abundant. The plant is reported as edible. A closely related species is L. pergamenus (Swartz) Fr., which resembles it very closely, but has a longer, stuffed stem, and thinner, more pliant pileus, which is more frequently irregular and eccentric, and not at first umbilicate. Figure 122 is from plants (No. 3887, C. U. herbarium) collected at Blowing Rock, N. ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... spectators was decidedly in favor of the accused. His youth—the noble bearing—the ease, the unobtrusive confidence—the gentle expression, pliant and, though sad, yet entirely free from anything like desponding weakness—all told in his favor. He was a fine specimen of the southern gentleman—the true nobleman of that region, whose pride of character is never ostentatiously displayed and is only to be felt in the influence ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... intelligence is a gross injustice to the child, for it leaves out the difference in character between the child and the cretin. The latter has none of the curiosity, the seeking for experience, the active interest, the pliant expanding will, the sweet capacity for affection, friendship and love present in the average child. The cretin is a travesty on the human being in body, mind ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... one of the most powerful factors for its extension, because the priests of all religions have been, throughout all the phases of history, the most potent allies of the ruling classes in keeping the masses pliant and submissive under the yoke by means of the enchantment of religion, just as the tamer keeps wild beasts submissive by the terrors of the cracks of ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... body retaining a kind of animal life after the soul had departed. If any relation existed between it and the vanished ghost, it was only sufficient to make it restless in its grave. Possessed of vitality enough to keep it uncorrupted and pliant, its only instinct was a blind hunger for the sole food which could keep its awful life persistent—living human blood. Hence it, or, if not it, a sort of semi-material exhalation or essence of it, retaining its form and material relations, crept from its tomb, and went roaming about till ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... who will reject with the supercilious ignorance of incurable stupidity, these volumes, in which the habits, the interests, the inalienable rights, the sacred duties of one half of the species, (and of that half to which, at the most pliant and critical period of life, the health, the disposition, the qualities, moral and intellectual, of the other half must of necessity be confided,) are discussed with exemplary fairness, and placed in the most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... Memnon, not a vestige of a hair was to be seen on the head of Split-log. His lips were, moreover, of the same unsightly thickness, while the elephantine ear had been slit in such a manner, that the pliant cartilage, yielding to the weight of several ounces of lead which had for years adorned it, now lay stretched, and coquetting with the brawny shoulder on which it reposed. Such was the Huron, or Wyandot Chief, whose cognomen of Split-log had, in all probability, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... poet, in his first intoxication of flattery and fame, guess what a lot of contest and strife is in store for him. The very breath which a literary man respires is hot with hatred, and the youthful proselyte enters that career which seems to him so glittering, even as Dame Pliant's brother in the 'Alchemist' entered town,—not to be fed with luxury, and diet on pleasure, but 'to learn to quarrel and live ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stream, Ulysses found A mossy bank with pliant rushes crown'd; The bank he press'd, and gently kiss'd the ground; Where on the flowery herb as soft he lay, Thus to his soul ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... "How slow you are," said she; "will you not go faster? Take care that I don't prick your neck with my sting." The Mule made answer: "I am not moved by your words, but I fear him who, sitting on the next seat, guides my yoke[21] with his pliant whip, and governs my mouth with the foam-covered reins. Therefore, cease your frivolous impertinence, for I well know when to go at a gentle pace, and ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... intrigue, as he knew, was already launched that might, at the last moment, sweep him from his goal. Most of the men concerned in it he either held for honest fanatics or despised as flatterers of the mob—ignobly pliant. He could and would fight them all with good courage ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... communicative, and so, after a week or so, people tired of asking questions about them and lapsed into merely exchanging greetings, and looking on with some interest at any changes they observed in the pretty, transparent, though always bright face, and the pliant, ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was the condition of Godfrey Cass in this six-and-twentieth year of his life. A movement of compunction, helped by those small indefinable influences which every personal relation exerts on a pliant nature, had urged him into a secret marriage, which was a blight on his life. It was an ugly story of low passion, delusion, and waking from delusion, which needs not to be dragged from the privacy of Godfrey's bitter memory. He had long known that the delusion ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... she was leaning out the opened canopy, then he stooped and grabbed her under the arms and swung her up. For a moment her soft hair brushed his ear, and a light scent from her neck suggested he keep her pliant form close to him ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll
... man, undersized and slightly deformed, with close-cut hair, and a large face, droll, pliant and ugly as a gutta-percha mask. Before he opened his lips the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nowhere else, and unknown in earlier centuries, By no means great in size, it stretches not far its Spreading branches, nor lifts a lofty top to heaven; But lowly, after the manner of myrtle or pliant broom, It rises from the ground. Many a nut bends its rich branches. Small, like a bean, dark and dull in color, Marked by a slight groove in the centre ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... its growth. The application of a chemical instantly arrested this growth, but an antidote timely applied, not only removed the torpor but enhanced the growth at an enormous rate. The life of the plant became pliant at the will of the experimenter, and nothing appeared more marvellous than the realisation that man has the power to pierce the veil that shrouds the mystery that had hitherto ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... the four forms, even as the life springeth up, and yet hath not its dark beginning in the Center as the PHUR hath, but after the flash of fire, when the sour dark form is terrified, where the hardness is turned into pliant sharpness, and where the second will (viz. the will of nature, which is called the Anguish) ariseth, there Mercurius hath its original. For MER is the shivering wheel, very horrible, sharp, venomous, and hostile; which assimulateth ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... blue eyes of sapphire. But what fascinated Nelson most was the curious armor they wore. Beneath breast plates of polished bronze, these strange warriors wore what seemed to be a kind of chain mail—yet it was not that, for the texture had more the appearance of some heavy but pliant leather, finished with a ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... again on the Ottawa; as we advance, the river narrows and becomes studded with little islands covered with wild shrubs and forest trees, from whose stiff unyielding boughs the more pliant shoots droop playfully into the foaming stream below, like the children of Gravity coquetting with the family of Passion. Of course these islands form rapids in every direction: we soon, approach the one selected as the channel in which ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... in the district for its ancient, unsanitary buildings, its poor management, its bad treatment of its hands. Yes, it was true that at the Victory you could hire out anything that could walk and talk. Johnnie caught her breath and hugged the small pliant body to her breast, feeling with a mighty throb of fierce, mother-tenderness, the poor little ribs, yet cartilagenous; the delicate, soft frame for which God and nature demanded time, and chance to grow and strengthen. Yet she knew if she gave up her wages to Pap she would ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... easy to leave Hugues to the dog's death he merits and to take this woman for my own? For I know that she loves me a little. And thinking of this, he kissed her, quietly, as one might comfort a sobbing child; afterward he held her in his arms for a moment, wondering vaguely at the pliant thickness of her hair and the sweet scent of it. Then he put her from him gently, and swore in his soul that Hugues must die, so that this woman might ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... is the door to God, and to all gospel-privileges, is now strangely handled, and so hath been of a long time among the sons of men; some of them making him the very in-let to all the vile and abominable crew in the world, counting all that are pliant to their ungodly humours, the saints of the Most High, and Christ the door and gate through whom they have right to enter; and to whom belong the delicates of the precious things of God, even those which he hath most choicely laid up and reserveth for none but ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, amiable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwarting, and mutinous; and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... excitement; doors opening, running feet. And then Jimmie Dale had snatched the revolver from the floor where Markel had dropped it in the scuffle, and was pressing it against Markel's forehead—and Markel, terror-stricken, had collapsed in a flabby, pliant heap. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... in motion by his own big work-callused hands. Those hands puzzled him now. He often looked at them curiously and in a detached sort of way, as if they belonged to someone else. So white they were, and smooth and soft, with long, pliant nails that never broke off from rough work as they used to. Of late there were little splotches of brown on the backs of his ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... London. She was living in a street off Berkeley Square, with an old lady who wore side-curls and shawls, and drove out every afternoon in a barouche with two stout horses and two lean men-servants. Sanchia sometimes accompanied her, stiff and pliant at once, bright-eyed and faintly coloured. She was taken about to parties also, and to the opera—and very often there were parties at the old lady's house— carriage-company, and gentleman in furred coats, who came ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... tight against the rail, as though she had brought up abruptly against it, making impetuously for the void. He could see her slight pliant form, silhouetted against the jeweled horizon; upon her shoulders, her scarf floated like a vague phosphorescence, and her face was whitely turned toward the stars. He heard her take a long deep breath of the night, and then her arms went up and ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... a pretty picture kneeling on the hearth-rug, with the fire-light playing on her dark face and pliant figure, in its closely-fitting black gown, throwing golden flickers on her hair, and coquetting with the lanterns in her eyes. She rose as Dartmouth approached, and he gave her one of ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... islanders results from a mixture of Irish blood. During the Catholic persecution before 1823 many fled the Emerald Isle to Tenerife, and especially to Orotava. The women's figures in youth are charming, tall, straight, and pliant as their own pine-trees. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... Morrice, eagerly, "there is not a more worthy man in the world! he has so much wit, so much politeness! I don't know a more charming man anywhere than my friend Mr Monckton." Cecilia now perceiving that the opinions of her new acquaintance were as pliant as his bows, determined to pay him no further attention, and hoped by sitting silent to force from him the business of his visit, if any he had, or if, as she now suspected, he had none, to weary him into ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... words with Mrs. Baxendale, he passed on to other ladies. Wilfrid's manner was now all that could be desired in a young man who, destined to succeed in politics, would naturally make a figure in society. He was pliant, he struck the note of good-breeding, he was unsurpassed in phrasing; with ladies who chose to be 'superior,' he could find exactly the right tone, keeping clear of pedantry, yet paying her with whom he spoke the compliment of uttering serious opinions. With ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... could gain a foothold on the gallery, the formidable hunchback leaped to the head of the ladder, without uttering a word, seized the ends of the two uprights with his powerful hands, raised them, pushed them out from the wall, balanced the long and pliant ladder, loaded with vagabonds from top to bottom for a moment, in the midst of shrieks of anguish, then suddenly, with superhuman force, hurled this cluster of men backward into the Place. There was a moment when even the most resolute trembled. The ladder, launched backwards, remained erect ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the theater is the reflexion, there are two kinds of truth; first, the absolute truth, which always in the end prevails, and secondly, if not the false, at least the superficial truth, which consists of customs, manners, social conventions; the uncompromising truth which revolts, and the pliant truth which yields to human weakness; in short, the truth of Alceste ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various
... the oak in the sturdiness of my stature, I imagined that my mortality would remain pliant as long as I pleased. But I have taken so little care of myself this winter, and kept such bad hours, that I have brought a slow fever upon my nights, and am worn to a skeleton: Bethel has plump cheeks to mine. However, as it would be unpleasant to die just at the beginning ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... propose to Vergennes that England should acknowledge American independence directly, and not through France. This Fox held gave him the whole conduct of the negotiations. As, however, Franklin was anxious not to lose so pliant a negotiator as Oswald, the cabinet agreed that Oswald should continue to confer with him. On June 4, Grenville complained to Fox that the separate negotiation between Oswald and Franklin rendered it impossible for him to make any progress, and further told ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... was a great horseman, exceedingly fond of horseback riding independent of the chase. He tried in 1800 to breed a satisfactory horse from the English thoroughbred race horse, but went from bad to worse until he resorted to the ever-pliant blood of the Arabian. He sent to Egypt and secured a thoroughbred Arabian stallion, paying $8,000 for him (in our money). This horse he bred to Danish mares, largely of Arabian blood, and created a very stout, short-backed horse, standing from 151/2 to 153/4 and 16 hands ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... accidental, but inherent and essential. The contours of a ship's sail bellying in the wind are not more inevitable, nor more graceful, than the curves of an adze-head or of a plough-share. Cast in iron or steel, the gracefulness of a plough-share is more indestructible than the metal, yet pliant (in the limits of its type) as a line of English blank verse. It changes for different soils: it is widened out or narrowed; it is deep-grooved or shallow; not because of caprice at the foundry or to satisfy an artistic fad, but to meet the technical demands of the expert ploughman. The most ...
— Progress and History • Various
... comprehension swept over Courtland. For the first time in his knowledge of her he suddenly grasped what was, perhaps, the true conception of her character. Looking at her clearly now, he understood the meaning of those pliant graces, so unaffected and yet always controlled by the reasoning of an unbiased intellect; her frank speech and plausible intonations! Before him stood the true-born daughter of a long race of politicians! All that he had heard of their dexterity, ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... he long have lived; man did not know Of gummy blood which doth in holly grow, How to make bird-lime, nor how to deceive, With feigned calls, his nets, or enwrapping snare, The free inhabitants of the pliant air. Man to beget, and woman to conceive, Asked not of roots, nor of cock-sparrows, leave; Yet chooseth he, though none of these he fears, Pleasantly three; then straitened twenty years To live, and to increase ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... resourceful woman who was glad to pit her brain against the contriving of those who fought her. So, at this moment, she seemed pliant to the will of the man who urged her thus cunningly. Her quick glance around the office was of a sort to delude the Inspector into a belief that she ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
