"Pliancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... His fine ear, abhorrent of barbarous dissonance, his dainty tongue that loves to prolong the relish of a musical phrase, made possible the transition from the cast-iron stiffness of "Ferrex and Porrex" to the Damascus pliancy of Fletcher and Shakespeare. It was ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... all the many household slaves, white-headed and shrunken, and bent with the toil of years, squatted by the fire in the court of the slaves' quarters, cleaning a copper pot with a swab of twigs soaked in oil to pliancy. Within the house a feast was in progress, so that all the slaves were there on service, and Marcus had the fire to himself. He crooned softly as he scrubbed; and the flames struck gleams of light from the collar of brass about his neck and ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... England and in the United States the architect and engineer produce more than we do with greater pliancy, fertility, originality and boldness of invention, with a practical capacity at least equal and without having passed six, eight or ten years in purely theoretical studies.—Cf. Des Rousiers, "La Vie Americaine," p. 619: "Our polytechnicians are scientific ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... not show in favor of the principle (as seen by the consequences). But between ourselves we must not conceal the fact that a great part of the laxity and corruption of our musical condition in Germany (as also elsewhere) is to be attributed to the too great—or too petty—yielding and pliancy of conductors and music-directors. I well know that the Euterpe Committee nourishes and cherishes quite another idea than that of the company X. Y. Z., or of the Court Theater directors A. B. C. D. Yet the question ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... the woman who encourages, applauds, and—from a distance—inspires: the combination is common enough; but Miss Nightingale was neither an Aspasia nor an Egeria. In her case it is almost true to say that the roles were reversed; the qualities of pliancy and sympathy fell to the man, those of command and initiative ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... men of that day, and were attended with consequences so important to themselves and the country. By the difference just mentioned, between Mr. Pitt and Lord Thurlow, the ministerial arrangements of 1793 were facilitated, and the learned Lord, after all his sturdy pliancy, consigned to a life of ineffectual discontent ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... laxity which their consciences would not permit them to accept, and which might even embrace the hated Roman Catholics. If it was Hyde's intention by this announcement to countercheck their demand for a compromise which, in the pliancy of the King's temper, might have conceded all their main tenets, and to expose the hollowness of their demand for release from an over-strict conformity, his design succeeded admirably. The Presbyterians were ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... doubtless, who will), despite all axioms, in considering Lord Byron as a changeable, capricious, fickle man? I reply, that Lord Byron proved, once more, the truth of the observation made by that moralist, who said: "The most beautiful souls are those possessing the greatest variety and pliancy," and that he realized in himself, after a splendid fashion, the moral phenomenon remarked in Cato the Elder, who, according to Livy, possessed a mind at once so versatile and so comprehensive, that whatever he did it might be thought he was ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... by contact has also been introduced into the topographical studios. The plan, or the original drawing, is placed against a glass plate, coated with a mixture of bitumen and of marine-glue dissolved in benzine. The marine-glue gives the bitumen greater pliancy, and prevents it from scaling off when rubbed, particularly when the plate is retouched with a dry point. These bitumen plates are so thoroughly opaque to the penetration of the actinic rays, that the printing-frame ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... boy had been zealously inoculated with Western knowledge and Western points of view; and with the deceptive pliancy of the Oriental he had smilingly submitted to the process. But deep down in the unplumbed heart of him he waited for the good day when he would be rid of these well-meaning interlopers,—tireless as their own fire-carriages,—who troubled the still waters of life and talked so vigorously about ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... been absolutely necessary for our well-being, nature would not have made the body so proper for it, by giving such an activity to the limbs, and such a pliancy to every part as necessarily produce these compressions, extensions, contortions, dilatations, and all other kinds of motions that are necessary for the preservation of such a system of tubes and glands ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... feelings of cowardice when she came face to face with the dejected and broken-down Therese, amidst the icy silence of the shop. She was not one of those dry, rigid persons who find bitter delight in living a life of eternal despair. Her character was full of pliancy, devotedness, and effusion, which contributed to make up her temperament of a stout and affable good lady, and prompted her to live in a ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... overshot his mark, and mistook the character of the man he was treating with. Thorn was a plain, straightforward sailor, who never had two minds nor two prices in his dealings, was deficient in patience and pliancy, and totally wanting in the chicanery of traffic. He had a vast deal of stern but honest pride in his nature, and, moreover, held the whole savage race in sovereign contempt. Abandoning all further attempts, therefore, to bargain with his shuffling ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... prepared camp and supper. Besides being the Texans and his own people, to whom he had come after the long journey of perils, they made a wonderful appeal. These were the bold riders, the dauntless, the fearless. He would not find here the pliancy, the cunning, the craft and the dark genius of Santa Anna, but he would find men who talked straight, who shot straight, ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sail, and add a little to your ballast: exchange a little of the courage of the lion for a little of the wisdom of the serpent: give up a little, and only a very little, of the stubbornness of the oak, for a little, and only a very little, of the pliancy of the reed: do this, and trust to the folly and knavery of these stupid and malignant wretches to make you a ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... without dissent. Cannot one see them, these Fellows of Judas, huddled together round the sun-dial, like so many sheep in a storm? The King's wrath, according to a contemporary record, was so appeased by their pliancy that he deigned to lie for two nights in Judas, and at a grand refection in Hall "was gracious and merrie." Perhaps it was in lingering gratitude for such patronage that Judas remained so pious to his memory even after smug Herrenhausen had been dumped ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... worded envelope to warm convexity. Only he has the fine tact and discernment to know the full meaning of each word he uses. The best style is organic in its details as well as its structure; it shows modeling, a handling of words and phrases with the pliancy and plastic effects of clay in the hands of the sculptor. Goethe says that only poets and artists have method, because they require to see a thing before them in a completed, rounded form. Writing is a fine art, and one of the finest; ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... curiosity he had great difficulty in submitting himself to the intellectual routine of the University, a difficulty which ultimately cost him much; but at the bottom of the lad, all the time, there was a strength of will, a force and even tyranny of conscience, which kept his charm and pliancy from degenerating into weakness, and made it not only delightful, but profitable to love him. He knew that his mother was bound up in him, and his being was set to satisfy, so far as he ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... unbarred a shutter and the light touched her face. Such a face it was, with a flicker of laughter over it like the wind on a June meadow, and a singular tender pliancy of mien, as though one of Tiepolo's lenient goddesses had been busked into the stiff sheath of a seventeenth ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... so much through pliancy as through listlessness, and presently Hilda was going ahead with matters and acting as a sort of specially appointed general manager of the marriage. She directed Ruth what to wear, saw it was put on, almost bundled Ruth and her mother into the carriage, and ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... over that subject; but the real source of it was the cowardice of those invertebrate and timorous politicians who desired to evade the responsibility of expressing opinions concerning this power. General Cass was the putative father of it, and it might well have come from one of his pliancy and calibre; but as Slavery itself, embodied in the person of Calhoun, scouted the feeble bantling, there was soon no one so mean as to confess the paternity. Abandoned of its begetters, Squatter Sovereignty wandered the streets like a squalid and orphaned outcast, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... days, a man may best distinguish himself in statesmanship, for the mind is a weapon not to be slighted—when it is builded with strength, sharpened with careful use, and so wielded"—his gaze fell full upon Marcantonio for a weighty moment—"so wielded that it hath no pliancy save at the will of its owner. For sometimes it chanceth"—again he paused for a moment—"that a mind hath more masters than one, and Venice brooks ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... brought from the Dalmatian coast. This stone, like the Istrian stone of Venetian buildings, takes and retains the chisel mark with wonderful precision. It looks as though, when fresh, it must have had the pliancy of clay, so delicately are the finest curves in scroll or foliage scooped from its substance. And yet it preserves each cusp and angle of the most elaborate pattern with the crispness and the sharpness of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... of the voice require vigour and pliancy of muscle, to perform their office with energy ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... of mutual concession—more willing than most to be guided as a Minister by the tradition of his office, to leave the administration for which he must answer in Parliament to the practical experience of his permanent subordinates—but one whom, assuredly, no one ever accused of undue pliancy, or excessive deference ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... of it grew upon her, either from the ambient air of the University or from a native passion to excel in all she did. Her teachers were bewildered by the mental change in Miss Flaxman. The qualities of intellectual swiftness, vigor, pliancy, whose absence they had once noted in her, became, on the contrary, conspicuously hers. Once initiated into the tricks of the "Great Essay" style, she could use it with a dexterity strangely in contrast with the flat and fumbling manner in which poor ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... softness, pliableness &c. adj.; flexibility; pliancy, pliability; sequacity[obs3], malleability; ductility, tractility[obs3]; extendibility, extensibility; plasticity; inelasticity, flaccidity, laxity. penetrability. clay, wax, butter, dough, pudding; alumina, argil; cushion, pillow, feather ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... great talents and great defects he had learnt how to profit by. The Regent's feebleness was the main rock upon which he built. As for Dubois' talent and capacity, as I have before said, they were worth nothing. All his success was due to his servile pliancy ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... against the Gulf storms from high rocks, or some such cause, called my attention to a monster fish that must have weighed at least sixty pounds, and insisted upon letting me have it at a reduced price. I shook my head and smiled. In that smile I suppose the sagacious old fishwoman discovered the pliancy of my disposition, for she immediately commenced a wild harangue on the merits of the fish, scarcely a word of which I understood. Two or three times I started to leave, but each time she made a motion to detain me. The fact is, I was afraid she would get ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... So far as my own observation goes, this is incorrect; and I am assured by officers of experience, that in regard to changing his treatment, his hours, or his occupation, an elephant evinces no more consideration than a horse, but exhibits the same pliancy and facility. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... interesting to note the similarity of the merely emotional gestures and attitudes of modern Italy with those of the classics. The Pulcinella, Fig. 73, for instance, drawn from life in the streets of Naples, has the same pliancy and abandon of the limbs as appears in the supposed foolish ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... could not help paying a special attention to Douglas Falloden's. What a hard and glittering mind the fellow had!—extraordinarily competent and well-trained; extraordinarily lacking, as it seemed to Sorell, in width or pliancy, or humanity. One of the ablest essays sent in, however, was a paper by Falloden on the "Sentimentalisms of Democracy"—in which a reasoned and fierce contempt for the popular voice, and a brilliant glorification ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sincerity of their workmanship. Had Yule been content to manufacture a novel or a play with due disregard for literary honour, he might perchance have made a mercantile success; but the poor fellow had not pliancy enough for this. He took his efforts au grand serieux; thought he was producing works of art; pursued his ambition in a spirit of fierce conscientiousness. In spite of all, he remained only a journeyman. The kind of work he did best was poorly paid, and could bring ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... beauty triumphing over skill. It seems as if the difficulty once mastered naturally resolved itself into ease and grace, and as if to be overcome at all, it must be overcome without an effort. The smallest awkwardness or want of pliancy or self-possession would stop the whole process. It is the work of witchcraft, and yet sport for children. Some of the other feats are quite as curious and wonderful, such as the balancing the artificial tree and shooting a bird from each branch through a quill; though none ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... seeing her there, so answered her stupidly. For all my day-dreams of the week that I had been away I was not prepared for her. And indeed she had altered. The strain of fear and incessant watchfulness was removed, and with the lessening of that tension had come a pliancy of look and gesture, a richness of tone that found me unprepared. I made but a poor figure. It was as well that work clamored at me, and that I had to turn away and ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... aside or waive in the face of opposition. They rest on an entirely different basis; they are, so to speak, the inalienable possessions of God; and it would neither be charity nor humility, but sheer treachery, for the Church to exhibit meekness or pliancy in matters such as these, given to her as they are, not to dispose of, but to guard intact. On the contrary here, exactly, comes the command, He that hath not, let him sell his cloak and buy a sword,, for here comes the line between the Divine ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... obtaining the means of existence.—Had not exercise been absolutely necessary for our well-being, says the elegant Addison, nature would not have made the body so proper for it, by giving such an activity to the limbs, and such a pliancy to every part, as necessarily produce those compressions, extensions, contortions, dilatations, and all other kinds of motions, that are necessary for the preservation of such a system of tubes and glands.—And that we might not want inducement to engage us in such exercise of ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... presence in the house, but the exercise of his influence over her, which in old times had been perhaps a trifle autocratic. He had hated being told what Joe thought and said; yet he could hardly object to her docility. That was the way he had brought her up. He did not reckon pliancy in a woman as a weakness; or if he had had any temptation to do so, it had vanished in the period when Joe Severance had taken to drink. In that crisis Adelaide had been anything but weak. Every one had been so grateful to her,—he and Joe and the Severances,—and ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... this mixture of the faith which clings and aspires, with the intellectual pliancy which allows the mind to sway freely under the pressure of life and experience, and the deep respect for truth, which will allow nothing to interfere between thought and its appointed tasks—that Amiel's special claim upon us lies. It is ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mandate is this which can thus be made to bend and truckle and compromise as if it were a simple rule of expediency that might admit of exceptions upon motives of countervailing expediency. There can be no such pliancy in the peremptory provisions of the Constitution. They cannot be obeyed by moieties and violated in the same ratio. They must be followed out to their full extent, or treated with that decent neglect which has at least the merit of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... command is "domineering." Irish peasants are accustomed to easier and pleasanter ways, and like to be coaxed and petted. It is only just to admit that under this treatment they display the utmost goodwill and pliancy. They will do anything to serve those who take them rightly, but they hate discipline. To the Saxon again it seems hard that he should be called upon to waste time in coaxing a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water, who, moreover, hews wood very badly, and draws water with ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... epistles, as well as a great many of his songs. The metre of this poem Burns has evidently taken from The Cherry and the Slae, by Alexander Montgomery, which he must have read in Ramsay's Evergreen. The stanza is rather complicated, although Burns, with his extraordinary command and pliancy of language, uses it from the first with masterly ease. But there is much more than mere jugglery of words in the poem. Indeed, such is this poet's seeming simplicity of speech that his masterly manipulation of metres always comes as an afterthought. ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... State, we may remember, persisted for several years in refusing her concurrence, although the enemy remained the whole period at our gates, or rather in the very bowels of our country. Nor was her pliancy in the end effected by a less motive, than the fear of being chargeable with protracting the public calamities, and endangering the event of the contest. Every candid reader will make the proper reflections on these important facts. A patient who finds his disorder daily growing worse, and ...
— The Federalist Papers
... repeated applications and strong representations could have availed, I should have been free long ago. But many autocrats might take a lesson from the insolent indifference of this Administration, when an argument or a request is to be set aside; it is exactly in proportion to the pliancy they display when confronted with demands enforced by a substantial threat. Lord Lyons' reputation for courtesy and kindness of heart stands too high to need any testimony of mine; but I cannot forbear ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... could not shake from his brain and vision the warm recollection of those bronze slippers, that clinging gown, and all the feminine softness and pliancy of Dede in her pretty Berkeley rooms. Once again, on a rainy Sunday, he telephoned that he was coming. And, as has happened ever since man first looked upon woman and called her good, again he played the blind force of male compulsion ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... eagle cannot be tamed down to the softness of a dove, and no art of the husbandman can send into the gnarled and knotted oak the juices that shall smooth and melt its stiffness into the yielding pliancy of the willow. I wage no war with the work of the gods. Besides, the demands of Rome have now grown to such a size that they swallow up our very existence as a free and sovereign state. They leave us but this single city and province out of an empire that now stretches from the Nile to the ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... of its highest efforts will be merely successful imitation. We need not be surprised therefore to find that the Russians, in becoming acquainted with foreign literature, became imitators and plagiarists. In this kind of work their natural pliancy of mind and powerful histrionic talent made them wonderfully successful. Odes, pseudo-classical tragedies, satirical comedies, epic poems, elegies, and all the other recognised forms of poetical composition, appeared in ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... contingencies. True, there is a popular image of an impossible He, in whose plastic hands the submissive destinies of mankind become as wax, and to whose commanding necessity the toughest facts yield with the graceful pliancy of fiction; but in real life we commonly find that the men who control circumstances, as it is called, are those who have learned to allow for the influence of their eddies, and have the nerve to turn ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... be accounted for by the fact that the larger and more developed the brain, and the thinner, in relation to it, the spine and nerves, the greater not only is the intelligence, but also at the same time the mobility and pliancy of all the limbs; because they are controlled more immediately and decisively by the brain; consequently everything depends more on a single thread, every movement of which precisely expresses its purpose. The whole matter is analogous to, nay dependent on, the fact that the higher ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... consider another law, by which that of similarity is greatly modified, to wit, the law of variation or divergence. All organic beings, whether plants or animals, possess a certain flexibility or pliancy of organization, rendering them capable of change to a greater or less extent. When in a state of nature variations are comparatively slow and infrequent, but when in a state of domestication they occur much oftener and to a much greater extent. The greater variability in the latter ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... here proposed requires serious application, perseverance, diligence: it is difficult; but they who have the courage to continue to write, undeterred by difficulties, will gain more than they hope for. They will grow in strength, in accuracy, in pliancy, in openness of mind; they will become capable of profound and just views, and will gradually rise to worlds of truth and beauty of which the common man does not dream. And it will frequently happen that there will be permanent value in what is written not to please the crowd or ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... He had not been there a week, when a small deputation called on him, and informed him he had been elected honorary member of a certain scientific society. The compliment was followed by others, till at last certain ladies, with the pliancy of their sex, find out they had always secretly cared for butterflies. Then the naturalist smelt a rat, or, in other words, began to scent that entomology, a form of idiocy in a poor man, is a graceful decoration of the intellect in ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... reef outside are among its component parts. One other element invokes perpetual thanksgiving—the flaked mica, which glistens delusively with hues of silver and gold, and gives to the tide-swept track that singular pliancy which resists the stamp of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... look of the greatest affection. He turned it round to the light, to see that no rust had rested on it, and then pressed its point on the deck, and let it spring up again, to assure himself that it had not lost its pliancy. ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... those of grain; the latter have their flowers in the form of spikes, often bearded with prickly fibres, which not only protect them from marauders, but likewise serve as little roofs to shelter them from the rain; and besides, as Fritz has just told us, owing to the pliancy of their stalks, strengthened at intervals by hard knots and the spear-shaped form of their leaves, these plants escape the fury ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... am ashamed to think, my dear Leonela, how lightly I have valued myself that I did not compel Lothario to purchase by at least some expenditure of time that full possession of me that I so quickly yielded him of my own free will. I fear that he will think ill of my pliancy or lightness, not considering the irresistible influence he ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... flexibility or pliancy of organization, which renders them capable of change to a greater or less extent. When in a state of nature, variations are comparatively slow and infrequent; but when in a state of domestication they occur much oftener and to a much greater ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... before, he found himself out. It was that he was to lose her, had perhaps lost her, just as he had found out how inexpressibly dear she was to be. And amazement came upon him, and dismay to realise that this sweetness of hers, this pliancy of temper, this strength within beauty were really there in her apart from him. As if he had believed that they lay in his esteem! No, indeed: they were her own; she could bestow ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... conviction after another—convictions which, happily for my after life, I never lacked the courage to abandon as soon as they proved inadequate. From all this weary mental struggle I derived only a certain pliancy of mind, a weakening of the will, a habit of perpetual moral analysis, and a diminution both of freshness of sentiment and of clearness of thought. Usually abstract thinking develops man's capacity for apprehending the bent of his mind at certain moments and laying ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... Her pliancy was beginning to sicken him. Had she really no will of her own—no theory about her relation to these men? She had accepted Haskett—did she mean to accept Varick? It was "less awkward," as she had said, and her instinct was to evade difficulties or to circumvent them. With sudden ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... others, it is not as they regard them, but as their opinion reacts on his own interest and safety. He is therefore either pragmatical and offensive, or if he tries to please, he becomes cowardly and fawning. His public spirit wants pliancy; his selfish compliances go all lengths. He is as impracticable as a popular partisan, as he is mischievous as a tool of Government. We do not wish to press this argument farther, and must leave it involved in some degree ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... the man whose esteem she most valued, and a loving woman is glad to recognize the superiority of her lover. Besides, from her earliest childhood—and she was only two years younger than Dion—she had belonged to circles where no quality was more highly prized than mental pliancy and keenness. Her dark eyes, which at first had glittered distrustfully and questioningly and afterwards glowed with a gloomy light, now gained a new expression. Her gaze sought her friend's with a tender, pleading look as, admitting ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... these were as nearly as possible the very words of my father; for they made an impression on me that I could hardly account for: and as he had recently been explaining to the children the nature of a hauberk, as a coat of defensive armor, and remarking on its pliancy and being often worn out of sight, the metaphor fixed itself in ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... only a single glance upon them, as if his victory over such insignificant opponents were already assured. The blood slowly rose to the faces of Paul and Henry, but they were about to witness an extraordinary exhibition of Spanish pliancy and dexterity. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... we see a modified survival of the usual archaic attitude. A lingering archaism may be seen in other features too; very plainly, for example, in the arrangement of Apollo's hair (Fig 110). The garments represent a thick woolen stuff, whose folds show very little pliancy. The drapery of Sterope (Fig. 108) should be especially noted, as it is a characteristic example for this period of a type which has a long history She wears the Doric chiton, a sleeveless woolen ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... heard much counsel as to the plans that should be formed and personally conducted to a happy consummation, but from no quarter have I seen any general scheme of "reconstruction" emerge which I thought it likely we could force our spirited business men and self-reliant laborers to accept with due pliancy ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... genius of an extremely versatile character. Like all his fraternity, he was possessed of a pliancy of adaptation to circumstances that enabled him to succumb with true philosophy to misfortunes, and also to grace the more exalted sphere of prosperity with that natural ease attributed to gentlemen ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... the stone conduits, the sea-walls, the public washing-troughs, the ramparts on which the weary soldiers rest themselves when returned to Troy, are fair and smooth; all the fine qualities, in colour and texture, of woven stuff are carefully noted—the fineness, closeness, softness, pliancy, gloss, the whiteness or nectar-like tints in which the weaver delights to work; to weave the sea-purple threads is the appropriate function of queens and noble women. All the Homeric shields are more or less ornamented with ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... expected to aid the Southern wing of the party with their votes, and yet were often deserted when they desired offices. "It is," said one of them, "paying us a great compliment for our principles, or great contempt for our pliancy." Mr. Buchanan wrote to a Virginia Democratic leader, "Poor Forney deserves a better fate than to be wounded 'in the house of his friends,' and to vote for a Whig in preference to him was the unkindest cut of all. It will, I am confident, produce no change in his editorial course, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... ice-wagon, but greatly admired for his retorts to the vociferous chaser: the other boys rightly considered that what he said to the ice-man was much more horrible than what the ice-man said to him. The ice-man had a fair vocabulary, but it lacked pliancy; seemed stiff and fastidious compared with the flexible Saxon in which Hedrick sketched a family tree lacking, perhaps, some plausibility as having produced even an ice-man, ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... especially as exhibited in his most characteristic work, Don Juan,—it will be found that even the strength and impressiveness of his poetry is sometimes not a little injured by the capricious and desultory flights into which this pliancy of wing allures him. It must be felt, indeed, by all readers of that work, and particularly by those who, being gifted with but a small portion of such ductility themselves, are unable to keep pace with his changes, that the suddenness with which he passes ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... time she heard Fiorsen play she was alone. Unlike most violinists, he was tall and thin, with great pliancy of body and swift sway of movement. His face was pale, and went strangely with hair and moustache of a sort of dirt-gold colour, and his thin cheeks with very broad high cheek-bones had little narrow scraps of whisker. Those little whiskers ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... parent kissed her, and assented. The result was gratifying beyond her expectation. In that few weeks' sojourn at Sacramento, the young girl seemed to have adapted and assimilated herself to the latest modes of fashion with even more than the usual American girl's pliancy and taste. Equal to all emergencies of style and material, she seemed to supply, from some hitherto unknown quality she possessed, the grace and manner peculiar to each. Untrammeled by tradition, education, or precedent, she had the Western girl's confidence in all things being possible, ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... population to grow effeminate, and help the country to grow too fast. But that is her destiny, to grow too fast: there is no use talking against it. Their extreme ignorance, their blind devotion to their priesthood, their pliancy in the hands of demagogues, threaten continuance of these ills; yet, on the other hand, we must regard them as most valuable elements in the new race. They are looked upon with contempt for their wont of aptitude in learning ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of the mind and health exerts an influence upon the vocal organs. "The organs of the voice, in common with all other parts of the bodily frame, require the vigor and pliancy of muscle, and the elasticity and animation of mind, which result from good health, in order to perform their appropriate functions with energy and effect. But these indispensable conditions to the exercise of vocal ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... curious pliancy of mind, this lack of conviction, this absolute want of moral sense, which ought to have given the Count such great advantages in his conflict with the world, were, in reality, the main source of his weakness. Fortune had made a soldier of the man, and he filled ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... flint of the savage has become the scimitar of Saladin, keeping the keenness of its edge in a velvet sheath and flashing out only on the field of battle. Compare that paw with the foot of a dog, and you will, perhaps, see with me that the servility and pliancy of the slave of man has usurped a place in his esteem which is not its due. The cat is much the nobler animal. Dogs, with wolves, jackals, and all of their kin, love to fall upon their victim in overwhelming force, like a rascally mob, and bite, tear, and worry until the life ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... the lid is broken and repaired repeatedly, sometimes on the same day. In spite of the earthy casing, the silk woof gives it the requisite pliancy to cleave when pushed by the anchorite and to rip open without falling into ruins. Swept back to the circumference of the mouth and increased by the wreckage of further ceilings, it becomes a parapet, which ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... and noble creatures of whom Goethe has given us a model in his Claire of Egmont; we are thinking of those women who seek no other glory than that of playing their part well; who adapt themselves with amazing pliancy to the will and pleasure of those whom nature has given them for masters; soaring at one time into the boundless sphere of their thought and in turn stooping to the simple task of amusing them as if they were children; understanding well the inconsistencies of masculine and violent souls, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac |
