"Susceptibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Mode relate to the Conditions of Existence, as necessary and unnecessary, important and unimportant, etc. They are somewhat ambiguous as to their susceptibility to comparison. It is over this class of Adjectives that the Grammarians dispute. If a thing is necessary, then, it is said, it cannot be more necessary, or most necessary, the Positive Case being ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... touch us, when it has found stilted and turgid expression. Delicacy and warmth of affection were prominent characteristics in Vauvenargues. Perhaps if his life had been passed in less severe circumstances, this fine susceptibility might have become fanciful and morbid. As it was, he loved his friends with a certain patient sweetness and equanimity, in which there was never the faintest tinge of fretfulness, caprice, exacting vanity, or any of those ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... a long-established habit, the Wellands had left the previous week for St. Augustine, where, out of regard for the supposed susceptibility of Mr. Welland's bronchial tubes, they always spent the latter part of the winter. Mr. Welland was a mild and silent man, with no opinions but with many habits. With these habits none might interfere; ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... infinity, immortality, the beautiful, the holy, and God—it is certain that man's mind possesses both these classes or sets of thought." Now in regard to the higher of these elements, there are very many well authenticated cases where the extreme susceptibility of the mind (the seat of these elements) to outward impressions, and the reaction of the mental sensation on the nervous system, has led to the most singular and, in some instances, even fatal results. So marvellously delicate is this portion of ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... arriving at an estimate of a subject's grade of intelligence and his susceptibility to training, it would be a mistake to ignore the data obtainable from other sources. No competent psychologist, however ardent a supporter of the Binet method he might be, would recommend such a policy. Those who accept the method as all-sufficient are as much in error as those who consider ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... page, with the title of "Love at First Sight." On those remarkable words Amelius seized, with the desperation of the drowning man, catching at the proverbial straw. They offered him a chance of pleading his cause, this time, with a happy indirectness of allusion at which not even a young lady's susceptibility ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... menstruation, in order that future trouble may be prevented. First of all, it is necessary to avoid taking cold; yet a person should not stay in the house by the side of a fire, or in a warm room all the time, for this would increase the susceptibility to cold. ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... in a club. But this explanation did not really satisfy her. "What, after all, except for the fun of the frisson," she reflected, "would he really care for any of their old ghosts?" And thence she was thrown back once more on the fundamental dilemma: the fact that one's greater or less susceptibility to spectral influences had no particular bearing on the case, since, when one DID see a ghost at Lyng, one did not ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... female is one of them, and in small things he will exert his authority to make her feel his power, while she knows that on a question of real importance she has a good chance of getting her own way by working on his greater susceptibility. Perhaps an illustration will show what I mean. I was listening to the band and a girl and her fiance came up to occupy two seats near me. The girl sank into one seat, but for some reason the man ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... temperature, Carley knew there was frost in the air. She preferred summer. Steam-heated rooms with hothouse flowers lending their perfume had certainly not trained Carley for primitive conditions. She had a spirit, however, that was waxing a little rebellious to all this intimation as to her susceptibility to colds and her probable weakness under privation. Carley got up. Her bare feet landed upon the board floor instead of the Navajo rug, and she thought she had encountered cold stone. Stove and hot water notwithstanding, by the time she ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... drapery of oak and hemlock boughs had never been so graceful and bright; there was a presence in the old gorge that afternoon, which went with them and cleared their eyes from vapour and their minds from everything, it seemed, but a susceptibility to beauty and delight in its influence. Perhaps the young officer would have said that this presence was embodied in the unconscious eyes and fair calm brow which went beside him; I think he saw them more ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... exceptional but the normal child." The influence of all that he reads upon the mind of the child is sufficiently appalling, but it is not to be compared with the influence on his character. Henry Churchill King says: "It is his susceptibility to the faintest suggestion that makes the child so marvelous an imitator." The significance of this truth lies not only in the fact that he responds to the example in manners and morals of those about him, but equally, and perhaps even more exactly, to the heroes ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... Northern general, and beside which the sternest measures of Butler look lax and conciliatory. In like manner, the terrible treatment of Northern prisoners, and the most savage act of war in the whole contest, the massacre at Fort Pillow,[E] seemed hardly to graze that delicate susceptibility of Southern partisans which was lashed into a white rage by a few words of printed proclamation from Butler's hand; the facts were either ignored, or dismissed as of secondary importance in the general ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... by susceptibility to motive," says a modern American, turning with true American instinct to the practical side in which he has made experiences, and it is evidently one of the readiest ways of approaching the study of any individual ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... crowd and caught the infection of the universal joyful excitement, I felt unbearably sore on Ieronim's account. Why did they not send someone to relieve him? Why could not someone of less feeling and less susceptibility go on the ferry? 'Lift up thine eyes, O Sion, and look around,' they sang in the choir, 'for thy children have come to thee as to a beacon of divine light from north and south, and from east and from the sea. ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... was quiet: except that Rose was singing a simple air with a supprest voice, scarce audibly in her remote chamber. Edward was moved by it, and so strongly, that he could not help being surprised at his extreme susceptibility. Before he fell asleep, his melancholy had so increast, that he could ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... not of pictures like the above that galleries, in Rome or elsewhere, are made up, but of productions immeasurably below them, and requiring to be appreciated by a very different frame of mind. Few amateurs are endowed with a tender susceptibility to the sentiment of a picture; they are not won from an evil life, nor anywise morally improved by it. The love of art, therefore, differs widely in its influence from the love of nature; whereas, if art had not strayed away from its legitimate paths and aims, it ought to soften and sweeten the ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... embody, not the sensuous intoxicating power of an Emma Hamilton, but those more exquisite and spiritual influences which many women have exercised over some of the strongest and most virile of men. Fenwick indeed possesses the painter's susceptibility to beauty. Beauty comes to him and beguiles him, but it is a beauty akin to that of Michel Angelo's 'Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed'—which yet, for all its purity, is not, as Fenwick's case shows, without its ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... or twice will the vampyre's attack have sufficient influence on your mortal frame, as to induce a susceptibility on your part to become coexistent with such as he. The attacks must be often repeated, and the termination of mortal existence must be a consequence essential, and direct from those attacks, before such a result ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... destruction of irritability is confined to that individual part, while the rest retains the power of motion. Different persons are affected in very different degrees by electricity, according to their peculiar constitutional susceptibility. Dr. Young remarks, that a very minute tremor, communicated to the most elastic parts of the body, in particular the chest, produces an agitation of the nerves, which is not wholly unlike the effect of a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... national honor, national pride, and national fidelity. Nothing less unscrupulous would have answered to plot, to carry forward, and to manage the incidents of the attempted dismemberment of the Union. It required something worse in its nature than Benedict Arnold susceptibility. His might have been crime, springing from sudden resentment or imaginary wrong. The other is the result of thirty years' concoction under adroit, hypocritical, and unscrupulous leaders. The slaveholders' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... talk of it, darling," cried Charlotte, pursing up her mouth for a kiss in a manner which might have been distraction to a masculine mind of average susceptibility. "You shan't talk of anything or think of anything the least, least, least bit unpleasant; and you shall have my gold pencil-case," added Miss Halliday, wrenching that trinket suddenly from the ribbon by which ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... seen how this man had once believed that Providence had called him to an exceptional and brilliant destiny. The total renouncement of what once glowed as a mission requires a sturdy nature and plenty of active work. Clifton possessed an exceeding susceptibility of nervous organization; he was full of subtile intimations of what was passing in the minds of other men, and at times seemed to have a strange power of controlling them. The deep passion for metaphysical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... against the Swedish Minister for Foreign affairs having direct control over the Norwegian Consuls, a stipulation that was absolutely necessary both from a Swedish and a Union point of view. And Norwegian policy had generally with its sickly distrust and susceptibility an instinctive disinclination to bind Norway to anything referring to the burning question of the day. "As to one's rights, no one negotiates". This has become well nigh the axiom for Norwegian politics. And Norway now considers she ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... total score for the incidence of the disease caused by Labrella coryli on the variety Reed was 38 as compared with 9 for the Potomac variety. It would, therefore, seem that the Reed is about four times as susceptible to infection by this fungus as is the Potomac. Its less vigorous tree growth, susceptibility to leaf scorch, winter injury, and infection by L. coryli may be due to the differences between its nutritional requirements and those ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... turned out shortly to have been erroneous and, as the result of a practical trial, Lola changed her mind and voted for anything "between 12 deg.—16 deg.!" Here is one more test I put with regard to her susceptibility to touch: I got someone else to trace figures with their fingers on the dog's back, placing myself so that I could not see what was being described; then I put the questions, and each time her replies tallied almost invariably. One put to ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... nothing. One of the things Estelle most disliked in him was the way in which it seemed as if he had some curious sense of delicacy of his own. She wanted to think of Winn as a man impervious to all refinement, born to outrage the nicer susceptibility of her own mind, but there were moments when it seemed as if he didn't think the susceptibilities of her mind were nice at all. He was not awed ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... irresistible allurements, her starts of irregular grandeur, her bursts of ungovernable temper, her vivacity of imagination, her petulant caprice, her fickleness and her falsehood, her tenderness and her truth, her childish susceptibility to flattery, her magnificent spirit, her royal pride, the gorgeous eastern coloring of the character; all these contradictory elements has Shakspeare seized, mingled them in their extremes, and fused them into one brilliant impersonation ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Sterling, however, has intrinsic interest, even if it be viewed simply as the struggle of a restless aspiring soul, yearning to leave a distinct impress of itself on the spiritual development of humanity, with that fell disease which, with a refinement of torture, heightens the susceptibility and activity of the faculties, while it undermines their creative force. Sterling, moreover, was a man thoroughly in earnest, to whom poetry and philosophy were not merely another form of paper currency or a ladder to fame, but an end in themselves—one of those ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... developed flair for character study, guessed them from the first. Susceptibility to musical intoxication was a thing which he understood, a thing to which he himself was more or less subject. He knew the danger and the value of it. Without some such susceptibility, he believed, artistic accomplishment was not possible. He had been thrown much into the ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... fact that odious creatures possess a susceptibility of their own, that monsters are ticklish! At this word "villain," the female Thenardier sprang from the bed, Thenardier grasped his chair as though he were about to crush it in his hands. "Don't you stir!" he shouted to his wife; and, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... story of Ninon and her Abbe—the unfortunate relationship, and the unfortunate catastrophe excepted—was the story of hundreds or thousands in every city of France fifty years ago. It arises from the vividness of the national mind, the quick susceptibility to being pleased, and the natural return which the heart makes in gratitude. If it sometimes led to error—it was the more to be regretted. But I do not touch ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... typhus of America begins to appear. Those persons have not had typhus during their passage; it appears among them only after they have landed. Is the atmospheric constitution changed? or is it that a new form of disease develops itself among individuals whose susceptibility ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... speedily as he had departed, but in the ante-chamber he was forced to appeal to the king's authority. Villefort's dusty garb, his costume, which was not of courtly cut, excited the susceptibility of M. de Breze, who was all astonishment at finding that this young man had the audacity to enter before the king in such attire. The duke, however, overcame all difficulties with a word—his majesty's order; and, in spite of the protestations ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... had greatly obliged another in a subordinate station to experience the least opposition without at least an uncomfortable feeling. There must have existed a predisposition to misconstrue motives, as well as a susceptibility, in the closest alliance with offence. And now the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... that turned his very claims to admiration into prejudices against him. Irascible, envious, arrogant,—bad enough, but not the worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold, repellent cynicism,—his passions vented themselves in sneers. There seemed in him no moral susceptibility, and, what was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honor. He had, to a morbid excess, that desire to rise which is vulgarly called "ambition," but no apparent wish for fame or esteem or the love of his species; only the hard wish to succeed, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself. Well! This man pursued Miss Havisham closely, and professed to be devoted to her. I believe she had not shown much susceptibility up to that time; but all the susceptibility she possessed certainly came out then, and she passionately loved him. There is no doubt that she perfectly idolized him. He practised on her affection in that systematic way, that he got great sums of money from her, and he induced ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... matter for any man, and his is a soul as sensitive as God ever made. He was betrothed to a woman every way worthy; he loved her sincerely. His chief fault, and a serious one it is, came from his susceptibility to fresh impressions. The pleasure of the present had more power over him than any recollections of the past. The influence of the living woman at his side was greater, for the moment, than that of any absent love. In an evil hour, he committed himself to another. She was, doubtless, formed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... when educated, that against which vice is least effectual. To think of changing the natural inclination of such natures with punishment, or harsh correctives, is as useless as would be an attempt to stop the ebbing and flowing of the tide. You must nurture the feelings, he thought, create a susceptibility, get the heart right, by holding out the value of a better state of things, and make the head to feel that you are sincere in your work of love; and, above all, you must not forget the stomach, for if that ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... Thoreau's susceptibility to natural sounds was probably greater than that of many practical musicians. True, this appeal is mainly through the sensational element which Herbert Spencer thinks the predominant beauty of music. Thoreau seems able to ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... debilitated subjects with decayed teeth, and is specially liable to occur during the course of acute febrile diseases in which sordes accumulate about the teeth and gums. It also occurs in syphilitic subjects while under treatment by mercury—mercurial stomatitis. Some patients show a special susceptibility to mercury, and one of the first signs of intolerance of the drug is some degree of stomatitis, which may ensue after a comparatively small quantity has been administered. It begins in the gums, which become swollen and spongy, growing on to the teeth and into the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... reviewing his conduct he found it neither unkind nor unfair. While lamenting that Canning should thus have misunderstood his conduct, he expressed a resolve to forget the incident and a hope that their friendship might endure. Serenity such as this is the best cure to Celtic susceptibility. But other grievances were discovered, and on 12th July Canning dashed off to Frere a furious missive full of dashes and underlinings, charging Pitt with showing to him "confidence just enough to mislead and not enough to guide"; on which promising theme he fired off clause upon clause of an incoherent ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... listened to her he thought how like in some respects her story was to that of Julia Elston's. And as she sat there under the trees, she again looked like Julia, yet with a difference. Somehow the first girl had vanished but she had left behind in his heart a susceptibility to a form and face like this one beside him. Julia had come into his heart, not to dwell there, but to purify it, adorn it, and to make it ready for someone else;—and that other person had come. She filled ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... thousand times, was slipping away from her. She must be doing something or she would perish. Poor Mary! How a grand soul like hers, full of faults and weakness, can suffer! What an infinite disproportion between her susceptibility to pain and her power to combat it! She had the maximum capacity for one and the minimum strength for the other. No wonder it drove her almost ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... against him. Irascible, envious—bad enough, but not the worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold repellant cynicism, his passions vented themselves in sneers. There seemed to him no moral susceptibility; and, what was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honor. He had, to a morbid excess, that desire to rise which is vulgarly called ambition, but no wish for the esteem or the love of his species; only the hard wish to succeed—not ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... if she had only been less ignorant, would have been full of beauty its sadness would have been winged with hope. No nature could be less suspicious than hers: when she was a child she believed in the gratitude of wasps and the honorable susceptibility of sparrows, and was proportionately indignant when their ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... slowly replied, roughening his head more and more, "he is all sentiment, and—and susceptibility, and—and sensibility, and— and imagination. And these qualities are not regulated in him, somehow. I suppose the people who admired him for them in his youth attached too much importance to them and too little to any training that would have balanced and adjusted them, and so he ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... energy through the same brain centres as were involved in the original experience. The mental reproduction of any image is conditioned, therefore, by the physical reproduction of a nervous impulse through a formerly established path. That this is possible is owing to the susceptibility of nervous tissue to take on habit, or to retain as permanent modifications, all impressions received. From this it is evident that when we say we retain certain facts in our mind, the statement is not in a sense true; for there is no knowledge ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... full in the face,—for the pure, manly intonations arrested me. The voice was youthful, but full of character.—I suppose some persons have a peculiar susceptibility in the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... merely prescribe the imposition of moulds and casts from without, instead of carefully tending the many spontaneous and sensitive processes of growth within.[82] Nobody has shown a finer appreciation of the delicacy of the material out of which character is to be made, and of the susceptibility of its elementary structure; nor of the fact that education consists in such a discipline of the primitive impulses as shall lead men to do right, not by the constraint of mechanical external sanctions, but by an instant, spontaneous, and almost inarticulate repugnance to cowardice, cruelty, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... and mattress he occupied, in order to have them burned, deeming him already arrived at that stage of consumption in which it becomes so highly contagious We believe, however, if we may be permitted to say it, that his concerts were less fatiguing to his physical constitution, than to his artistic susceptibility. We think that his voluntary abnegation of popular applause veiled an internal wound. He was perfectly aware of his own superiority; perhaps it did not receive sufficient reverberation and echo from without to give him the tranquil assurance that he was perfectly appreciated. No doubt, in the ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... avoid to feel, for they are events of my nature, and I am and remain nature here below. But they shall not trouble me. They affect only the Nature with which I am, in some strange way, connected; not myself, the being which is elevated above all Nature. The sure end of all pain, and of all susceptibility of pain, is death; and of all which the natural man is accustomed to regard as evil, this is the least so to me. Indeed, I shall not die for myself, but only for others, for those that remain behind, from whose connection I am severed. For myself, the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... managed thus to lift her out of the mire and array her in his golden dress to idealize her, as we say. Reconciled for the hour were the contesting instincts in the nature of this youth the adoration of feminine refinement and the susceptibility to sensuous impressions. But Emilia walked with a hero: the dream of all her days! one, generous and gentle, as well as brave: who had fought for her, had thought of her tenderly, was with her now, having raised her to his level with a touch! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Scotch or the English, I have had no experience. I remember being impressed, in reading, many years ago, one of Miss Ferrier's novels, with the truth of a stroke that brought out very practically the ready susceptibility of injury manifested by the Celtic character. Some visitors of condition from the Highlands are represented as seeking out in one of our larger towns of the south, a simple Highland lad, who had quitted a remote northern district only a few months ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Genesistrine is a region in the Super-Sargasso Sea, and that parts of the Super-Sargasso Sea have rhythms of susceptibility ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... Wordsworth's sense perceptions was very remarkable. His susceptibility to impressions of sound is well illustrated in this passage, which closes (l. 43-46) with a color picture ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... impressionable temperament. The slightest emotion upset him and excited him to an indescribable extent. Such intense sensibility was the result of heredity as well as education. His father, Colonel Campo, had been a self-centred sensitive man, of such keen susceptibility that he was quite a martyr to it the last years of his life. Everybody in Lancia recollected the interesting touching episode which closed the life of ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... and the deuce is in it, if a little susceptibility will not put forth, now she receives my address; especially if I can manage it so as to be allowed to live under one roof with her. What though the sensibility be at first faint and reluctant, like the appearance ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the air, glitters in the sun, but we wait in vain to hear of its arrival in the destined harbour. Mr. Godwin, with less variety and vividness, with less subtlety and susceptibility both of thought and feeling, has had firmer nerves, a more determined purpose, a more comprehensive grasp of his subject, and the results are as we find them. Each has met with his reward: for justice has, after all, been done to the pretensions ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... or paralysis were not very definite, and she only understood that something very terrible had happened to her foster-father, whom she loved as though he had been her real parent. Leo was hardly less affected, though, being a boy, his susceptibility was not so keen. His first feeling was one of indignation that the banker had not told him before of the misfortune which had overtaken the family. It was cruel to have kept Maggie from her father a single ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... stories betray no great seriousness of purpose, and his personal environment removed him as far as possible from liberalism in ethics and religion, from socialistic proclivities even remotely democratic, and a ready susceptibility to the whole spirit of the age. Yet these are just the characteristics of his later books. They are strong, liberal, and modern; so much so that many of them have evoked a loud spirit of protest in Norway, where leaven of this sort is still striven against ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... committed suicide, and for reasons which to our judgment seem most trivial—from fear of punishment, or even from mere dread of reproof. These facts deserve special attention, they show how much more the susceptibility and sensitiveness of children need to be taken into consideration than ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... and indorsed by modern science, is one which ought to have great weight with the mother, her relatives and friends. The practical conclusion which it suggests is, that as during pregnancy there is unusual susceptibility to mental impressions, and as these impressions may operate on the fragile structure of the unborn being, this tendency should be well considered and constantly remembered, not only by the woman herself, but ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... eyes, such blooming cheeks, such honeyed lips and pearly teeth as these, to say nothing of a form all grace and ability, a voice that was the very essence of melody, and the fascinating smiles and blandishments of this wild young creature! It was enough to puzzle and confound any man of ordinary susceptibility, much less one who had a natural terror of the female sex. But I suppose it was all right. The old lady nodded approvingly; and the three old men smoked their pipes, and, touching their red night-caps, bid ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... flower of it!—a mutual loss, too, for are they not, even more emphatically, the very flower of yours? Eighteen and twenty-five are ages at which to marry, not ages to defer. During this time the entire flow of my existence is at its crowning fulness—passion, thought, joy, tenderness, susceptibility to beauty and sweetness—all I have that can be diminished or tarnished, or made dull by advancing age and contact with the world, is thrown away—for its spring and summer. Will the autumn of life repay us for this? Will it—even if ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... curiously wrought lace, and virtuous satin,—all bearing the tenderest burdens of love and despair. Bolt was indeed fairly set upon by rival candidates for his heart, which was supposed to possess a large portion of susceptibility. Nor were his admirers merely confined to the satin and velvet of the aristocracy, for 'pretty Betty,' maid of all work to the Legation, and on that account so vain of the honor that she would not condescend to associate ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... heart of a good man. Now that she saw her close she felt herself near to falling in love with her. Moreover, the incident of the fight and of Miss Boyce's share in it had thrilled a creature all susceptibility and curiosity; and the little merry thing would sit hushed, looking at the heroine of it, awed by the thought of what a girl only two years older than herself must have already seen of sin and tragedy, envying her with all her ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... if we rise from the ground it is because some unusually strong or deep burst of feeling makes us for the moment better than ourselves. In Mr. Gladstone the capacity for feeling was at all times so strong, the susceptibility of the imagination so keen, that he soared without effort. His vision seemed to take in the whole landscape. The points actually in question might be small, but the principles involved were to him ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... reflected on the true constitution of human happiness? His often enjoined Silence is the first condition of this supreme kind of liberty, for what is silence but the absence of a self-tormenting assertiveness, the freedom from excessive susceptibility under the speech of others, one's removal from the choking sandy wilderness of wasted words? Belief is the mood which emancipates us from the paralysing dubieties of distraught souls, and leaves us full possession of ourselves by furnishing ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... not made of the same clay as men? Even if we are of weaker texture, we have the same susceptibility which they have to receive impressions from what is taught to us. If it is good, we receive good as readily as they; and if evil, then evil. Of what use is a crown of gold on the brow of ignorance, and what loveliness is there in a jewelled star on the neck of coarseness and brutality, or ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... foretells you are soon to realize some desire which will greatly please your relatives. For a woman to have one stolen, foretells she will meet with crosses in love. If she comes by it dishonestly, she must suffer for yielding to hasty susceptibility in love. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... the voluntary defacement of the grandest characteristic of our being. The education of the intellect is not a question to be debated with men who have the slightest appreciation of their noble capacities. The obligation to improve it is commensurate with its susceptibility of advancement and our opportunities. It is not limited to a few years in early life, it presses on us still in manhood and declining age. Such is a general statement of the duty of ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... proportion, then, is that fineness of susceptibility by which we appreciate in a given object, person, force, or mood, serviceableness in regard to reason's work; in other words, by which we estimate the capacity to transform the Universe in such a way that men may ultimately be enabled to give their hearty consent to its existence, which at present ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... He did not wish to hear. Already he had repented. He was not a man of keen susceptibility, but he was a trifle ashamed of himself. At that moment he was tempted to draw the cork, and empty the ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was one of those short ages of almost insupportable suspense, when the mind, wound up to the keenest susceptibility of endurance, seems vibrating on the verge of annihilation,—as if the next pulse would snap its connection with ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... a weakness, his susceptibility to the influence of others' moods; he did so to-day, when having gone to Mrs. Borisoff in an unusually cheerful frame of mind, he came away languid and despondent. But his scheme of life permitted no such idle brooding as used to waste his days; self-discipline sent ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... as this the qualification of the subject-observer should be an important consideration. The susceptibility to pleasurable and painful affection by rhythmical and arrhythmical relations among successive sensory stimuli varies within wide limits from individual to individual. It is of equal importance to know how far ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... rooms with a spell of fascination to which many of those present had themselves succumbed—the brooding sense of illness, if not of impending death, in the room above; gave to these services a peculiar poignancy which in some breasts of greater susceptibility than the rest, took the form of a vague expectancy bordering ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... in the very prime and bloom of her beauty; and her mother had flattered herself that her charms would prevail over the young conqueror more than the arms or the statesmen of France. Nor had the designing lady altogether miscalculated the power of her daughter's charms, or the extent of Henry's susceptibility. His heart was touched at the first sight of Katharine, and the practised eyes of her mother saw that the victory was won. Her daughter (she observed) had overcome a prince who appeared till then invincible. But the ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... set before my readers the speeches of two advocates in a ceremony of this kind, at which I had the curiosity to be present. In order not to wound the susceptibility of the parties, the advocates never speak but in allegorical terms, and at the ceremony which I honoured with my presence the advocate of the ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... conspicuous symptom of threatened miscarriage, has not a uniform significance. Since it frequently occurs during the course of pregnancy in association with a number of conditions, it is not a reliable sign of danger. Moreover, the susceptibility to pain varies; thus, of two patients in the same stage of threatened miscarriage one may suffer intensely, while ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... aspect of the home, in short, must be created through the mind of the family or owner, and is only maintained by its or his susceptibility to true beauty and appreciation of it. It must, in fact, be a visible mould of invisible matter, like the leaf-mould one finds in mineral springs, which show the wonderful veining, branching, construction and delicacy ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... was not quite thirty-two—his life was cut short in a crescendo of all its nobler elements. Exquisite as was already his susceptibility to beauty and his mastership of the rarest poetic material, we cannot doubt that Chenier was preparing for still higher flights of lyric passion and poetic intensity. Nothing that he had yet done ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... They are corrupt, all the officials, or the greater part of them. But you don't hear much about those who corrupt them. Why? Because it suits the great Western nations to keep this government in a state of weakness, of indecision, of susceptibility to bribes and threats; it makes China easier to control. The one ray of hope for China lies in the fact that there are so many foreign nations trying to gain control of her. One could do it, two could do it, three could do it, but a dozen! China plays off ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... susceptibility to a pleasure or pain can be known only empirically and cannot hold in the same degree for all rational beings, a principle which is based on this subjective condition may serve indeed as a maxim for the subject which possesses this susceptibility, ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... victims to their temerity. I have often watched a cat act thus. Whatever explanation may be received, the fact cannot be questioned, and is ever attributed by the unreflecting, to some diabolic spell cast upon them by the animal. They have the same strange susceptibility to the influence of certain sounds as the vipers, in which lies the secret of snake charming. Most of the Indian magicians were familiar with this singularity. They employed it with telling effect to put beyond question ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... growth long enough for an apple or pear tree to go into complete or profound rest; then later, new shoot growth may be made from all or nearly all of the walnut or pecan shoots. Not only is this an important factor in promoting susceptibility to cold injury but in the case of bearing trees more often than not this late growth prevents the proper development of the kernels in the nuts and they are poorly filled or shriveled at harvest. Should the leaves of these trees in midsummer ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... My susceptibility to surprise had been pretty well exhausted by the numerous shocks it had received, but it was with some wonderment that I followed her into a room which I had not before entered. It was a small, cosy apartment, walled with ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... it, if such a thing might be. The Reverend Doctor was human, as the Apostle was not ashamed to confess himself. Half-devoutly and half-mischievously he repeated inwardly, "Resist the Devil and he will flee from you." As the Reverend Doctor did not show any lively susceptibility, she thought she would try the left shoulder on old Dr. Kittredge. That worthy and experienced student of science was not at all displeased with the manoeuvre, and lifted his head so as to command the exhibition through his glasses. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... recollections should rise into purer poetry than his; but if the mirror bear not its previous amalgam of taste and genius, what does it matter though the scene which sheds upon it its many-coloured light should be rich in grandeur and beauty? There is no corresponding image produced: the susceptibility of reflecting the landscape is never imparted by the landscape itself, whether to the mind or to the glass. There is no class of recollections more illusory than those which associate—as if they existed in the relation of cause and effect—some piece of striking ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... on these substances it used its antennae exactly as insects do, and showed an extraordinary degree of susceptibility when touched. I do not know that I have ever seen an animal which more decidedly evinced an acute sense of feeling and ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... embraced the idea that something considerable might be made of Roderick, it was impossible not to see that her friendship was not what might be called tonic. So Rowland reflected, in the glow of his new-born sympathy. There was a later time when he would have been grateful if Hudson's susceptibility to the relaxing influence of lovely women might have been limited to such inexpensive tribute as ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... outstanding characteristics of the subject were—firstly (a hereditary trait of the Coverlys) an intense pride of race and a fierce jealousy of any infringement upon what she regarded as prerogatives of birth; secondly, a susceptibility to sudden infatuations which invariably terminated in a ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... necessarily adequate in other food factors and may therefore not be fair bases for testing the antiscorbutic powers of the unknown combined with them. Abels has recently shown that scurvy increases susceptibility to infections and believes that the scurvy hemorrhages are brought about by the toxic effects of infection. It is therefore desirable in testing for antiscorbutic power that the basal diet be itself as complete as possible in all factors except ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy
... but which, however, I must confess, it may have an insensible influence in destroying. For instance, the sweetness, of the temper is seldom increased by increased refinement of mind; on the contrary, the latter serves to quicken susceptibility and render perception more acute; and therefore, unless it is guarded by an accompanying increase of self-control, it will naturally produce an alteration for the worse in the temper. This is one ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... sake of carrying out an idea. Perhaps in some cases this was a fault; but one cannot dwell on the mistaken side of such a phase, when it possesses another side so full of beneficent aid to humanity. And it must be remembered that with all this susceptibility, he was not a suffering poet, like Shelley, but distinctly an endurer. His moral enthusiasm was deeper than that of any scheme ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... scope to the boldest flights, and calling into play the energies of his exalted and enthusiastic genius—whilst with equal ardour it led him to entertain hopes of immediate and extensive fame—laid most probably the foundation of his subsequent derangement. His susceptibility and tenderness of feeling were great; and, when his sublime work met with unexpected opposition, and was even treated with contempt and derision, the fortitude of the poet was not proof against the ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... and to weep and long for death. She hated Concha as she did all the women who entered his studio. But this impression of sadness did not last very long in the painter; he was used to his wife's susceptibility. Besides, the consciousness of his faithfulness calmed him. His conscience was clean, and Josephina might believe what she would. It would only be one more injustice and he was resigned to endure his slavery ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... miles away. Between the two places were several blind sidings used as passing tracks. Dunraven was a cracking good little village and the day operator there was Miss Mary Marsh; there was no night office. Now I was just at the age where all a young man's susceptibility comes to the surface, and I was a pretty fair sample. I weighed one hundred and fifty pounds and every ounce of me was as susceptible as a barometer on a stormy day. Consequently it was not long until I knew Mary and liked her immensely. All my spare ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... the antiquarian hypothesis and the popular legend on the very spot to which both referred, a common susceptibility to the charms of romance at once determined us to pin our faith on the legend. Looking at the Hurlers, therefore, in the peculiar spirit of the story attached to them, as really and truly petrified ball-players, we observed, ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... for which to be thankful, and how much I have lost.... The whole year after her death was a year of great emptiness, as if there was not motive enough in the world to move me. I used to pray earnestly to God either to take me away, or to restore to me that interest in things and susceptibility to motive I had ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... "if it does not appear too formidable to your susceptibility, we will venture to meet the young ladies. Get your hat, Rosalie," he added, as his sister moved away; "we need ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... good ones. At the very least the quality and quantity of a good or bad characteristic shows the influence of all the other good and bad characteristics. Kindliness is influenced and partly created through weakness, indetermination, too great susceptibility, a minimum acuteness, false constructiveness, untrained capacity for inference; in the same way, again, the most cruel hardness depends on properties which, taken in themselves, are good: determination, energy, purposeful action, clear conception of ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... large than I would the few, who in everything which relates to Government are as little instructed as the many and more difficult to move. The very fickleness of the multitude, the theme of such constant declamation, is so far good that it proves a susceptibility to impressions to which men hedged round by impregnable conventionalities cannot ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... as it may, his susceptibility on the occasion was not suspected by any one—yet he passed that day the same as usual; the next day too, and the day after. On the morning of the fourth, he sent for his steward to his study, and after talking of ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... anxiety and the efforts to prevent a dangerous complication occurred after the envoys had been seized but some two weeks before that fact was known in London. "Adams," wrote Russell, "says it was all a false alarm, and wonders at our susceptibility and exaggerated notions[413]." But Russell was not equally convinced with Adams that the North, especially Seward, was so eager for continued British neutrality, and when, on November 27, the news of Captain Wilkes' action was received, Russell ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... self-mastery was as remarkable as his instinct for knowledge. As the result of his illness in Frankfort, his organs of sense were in a state of morbid susceptibility which "put him out of harmony with himself, with objects around him, and even with the elements." It throws a curious light on the nature of the man that amid all the preoccupations of his mind and heart in Strassburg he could ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... also has been cutting public expenditures by reducing subsidies, privatizing state industries, and laying off civil servants. Prospects for foreign trade and investment in the 1990s remain poor, however, because of the small size of the economy, its technological backwardness, its remoteness, and susceptibility to natural disaster. The international community provides funding for 70% of Nepal's developmental budget and for 30% of total budgetary expenditures. The government, realizing that attempts to reverse three years of liberalization would jeopardize this vital support, almost certainly will ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... virtue. For the present distress, however, of those who are predisposed to suffer from the tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy remedies. To remove your residence a couple of miles, or at most four, will commonly relieve the most extreme susceptibility. For, the advantages which fashion values are plants which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. Out of this precinct, they go for nothing; are of no use in the farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in the germ, as it expands to the sun, will have certain colours and a certain fragrance, and no other;—all which, indeed, though not very new or profound, is very important. But it is not so dear that it will give us any help on the present occasion. We have an original susceptibility of music, of beauty, of religion, it is said. Granted; but as the actual development of this susceptibility exhibits all the diversities between Handel's notions of harmony and those of an American Indian—between Raphael's notions of beauty and those of a Hottentot—between ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... altogether easy now, to resist the rapture of her radiant presence. Many a young person, and now and then one who is not in first youth, witnessing the sight in the religious atmosphere of such a church as this, without a suspicion of susceptibility, has suddenly seen what Paul saw on the road to Damascus, and has fallen on his face with the crowd, grovelling at the foot of the Cross, which, for the first time ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... mixture of alacrity and dignity, on their coming out of the station together. Densher didn't at all mind now that, he himself of necessity refusing a seat on the deep black cushions beside the guest of the palace, he had Milly's three emissaries for spectators; and this susceptibility, he also knew, it was something to have left behind. All he did was to smile down vaguely from the steps—they could see him, the donkeys, as shut out as they would. "I don't," he said with a ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... thither that night, and spent the night with his own wife." There is indeed the old Irish hero faring forth to battle as a lover to the love tryst! How natural, how inevitable with warriors of such absurd and magnificent susceptibility, such boyish love of swagger, how natural, I say, the free and generous emotion combined with an overmastering sense of personal honour, and a determination to win at all costs, which are so prominent in the ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... wishes were in common, how little do we know? how little will even the severest scrutiny enable us to discover? Yet, at one time, we were inseparable "like Juno's swans"; we were as brothers, nor dreamt we of ought else, in the susceptibility of our youthful imagination, than that we were to pass through all the future scenes of life, side by side; and, mutually supporting and supported, lengthen out the endearments, the ties, and the feelings of boyhood unto the extremities of existence. What a fine but a fond ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... "without persisting to his own destruction in the usage of the entire liturgy." The decent dignity of the ceremonial of his parish church had a powerful effect on Bunyan's freshly awakened religious susceptibility—a "spirit of superstition" he called it afterwards—and helped to its fuller development. "I adored," he says, "with great devotion, even all things, both the High Place"—altars then had not been entirely broken down and levelled in ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... French "mobilite." I am not sure that mobility is English; but it is expressive of a quality which rather belongs to other climates, though it is sometimes seen to a great extent in our own. It may be defined as an excessive susceptibility of immediate impressions—at the same time without losing the past: and is, though sometimes apparently useful to the possessor, a most painful ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... support from the facts of pigmentation among the American Indians from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Nevertheless climate undoubtedly modifies many physiological processes in individuals and peoples,[1411] affects their immunity from certain classes of diseases and their susceptibility to others, influences their temperament, their energy, their capacity for sustained or for merely intermittent effort, and therefore helps determine their efficiency ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... his feeling as a rule of conduct, we ask at once how far are his own life and deed in accordance with what he preaches? For every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action; and that while tenderness of feeling and susceptibility to generous emotions are accidents of temperament, goodness is an achievement of the will and a quality of the life. Fine words, says our homely old proverb, butter no parsnips; and if the question ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... personal accomplishments, might, after a certain time, and in consequence of suitable contrivances on my part, give a new direction to her feelings. To gain your concurrence, I relied upon your simplicity, your gratitude, and your susceptibility to the charms ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... a thousand times right. However, it is never a mistake in politics, your majesty knows better than myself, to be unjust in order to obtain a concession in your own favor. If your majesty were to complain as if your susceptibility were offended, you will stand in a far ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... acting against the susceptibility of China to the European civilization is the vastness of her territory. The power of resistance being equal, a force requires longer time to travel larger distance, but when the power of resistance against the force of civilization is much stronger, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... and senior representative of John Brown & Co., Jermyn Street, was particularly fond of pink, and extremely susceptible to deshabille. Whiskey-and-soda, personally prepared for him in sufficient strength by his charming debtor, increased the fondness and the susceptibility. ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... the same period; and Dr. Willis knew a whole family subject to it. It is considered by all medical men as a peculiar form of disease. It seldom manifests itself before the age of six, and scarcely ever continues beyond the sixtieth year. It depends, physically, upon the susceptibility or delicacy of the nervous system; and on this account females are more liable to it than males; and in youth it manifests itself more frequently than in mature age. It is caused mentally by any violent and profound emotion; as well as by excessive ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... been occupied with purpose to bring him here in order to put an end to her gloom and flood her life with sunshine; the universe could not be foiled in its attempt. Young love argues from effect to cause, and so limitless seemed the strength of his sentiment that the simplicity of her mind and the susceptibility of her girlhood were to him like some epic poem which arouses men to passion and strong deeds. Ignominiously bound as he was, his heart lightened; all doubt of his mission to love her and its ultimate success passed ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... was rendered fire resistant by heavily covering the floors, ceiling, and walls with cement on metal lath, and otherwise protecting the openings. In it are installed apparatus for determining calorific value of explosives, pressure produced on ignition, susceptibility to ignition when dropped, rate of detonation, length and duration of flame, and kindred factors. Elsewhere on the grounds is a gallery of boiler-steel plate, 100 ft. long and more than 6 ft. in diameter, solidly attached ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... universally employed as that of the refrain. The universality of its employment sufficed to assure me of its intrinsic value, and spared me the necessity of submitting it to analysis. I considered it, however, with regard to its susceptibility of improvement, and soon saw it to be in a primitive condition. As commonly used, the refrain, or burden, not only is limited to lyric verse, but depends for its impression upon the force of monotone—both ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... the revolution of the three days in Paris, and the triumph of the French people over Charles X. and his ministers, as a matter of course acted with great effect upon our national susceptibility. We all threw up our hats in excessive joy at the spectacle of a king dashed down headlong from his throne and chased out of his kingdom by his long- suffering and oppressed subjects. We took half the credit of the performance to ourselves, inasmuch as Lafayette was a principal actor in it. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... an elder brother of Alfred Tennyson; a man of fine nature and delicate susceptibility as a poet, whose friendship and "heart union" with his greater brother is revealed in "Poems ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... colour, and glassed itself in the llyns which shone with an enjoyment of the beauty like the magic mirrors of Snowdonian spirits. The loveliness indeed was so bewitching that one or two of the Gypsies—a race who are, as I had already noticed, among the few uncultivated people that show a susceptibility to the beauties of nature—gave a long sigh of pleasure, and lingered at the llyn of the triple echo, to see how the soft iridescent opal brightened and shifted into sapphire and orange, and then into green and gold. As a ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... unremitting effort, to counteract those traits in her disposition, which might hereafter lead her from happiness. She had discovered in her early years uncommon delicacy of mind, warm affections, and ready benevolence; but with these was observable a degree of susceptibility too exquisite to admit of lasting peace. As she advanced in youth, this sensibility gave a pensive tone to her spirits, and a softness to her manner, which added grace to beauty, and rendered her a very interesting object to persons of a congenial ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... certainly seems that she supposed the criticism to be mine]; "and that my 'thought' was really and decidedly anterior [sic] to my 'allegory.' Moreover, it is my thought still. I meant to say that the poetic organisation implies certain disadvantages; for instance an exaggerated general susceptibility, ...[1] which may be shut up, kept out of the way in every-day life, and must be (or the man is 'marred' indeed, made a Rousseau or a Byron of), but which is necessarily, for all that, cultivated in the very cultivation of art itself. There is an inward reflection and refraction of ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... a person who suffered from too delicate a susceptibility. The shame of his present position did not affect him deeply. Indeed, he was one of those men who have no sense of shame before certain persons; and Guy Oscard was one of those. The position was not in itself ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... garlands, what is the rude and humble potter? The amphora is tranquil and beautiful; he is wretched; he is tormented; he wills; he suffers; for to will is to suffer. Yes, I am jealous. I know what there is in my jealousy. When I examine it, I find in it hereditary prejudices, savage conceit, sickly susceptibility, a mingling of rudest violence and cruel feebleness, imbecile and wicked revolt against the laws of life and of society. But it does not matter that I know it for what it is: it exists and it torments me. I am the chemist who, studying the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of torment and the shock of joy, Amabel brought an extreme susceptibility to emotion that showed itself through all her life in a trembling of her hands and frame when any stress of feeling ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... to exist. His sensitive modesty seems to have made him unwilling to let his features be exposed to the flaring notoriety of canvas. Once, indeed, he allowed himself to be painted by Mr. George A. Flagg; but the picture having been exhibited in the Trumbull Gallery of Yale College, Percival's susceptibility took alarm, and he expressed annoyance,—though whether dissatisfied with the portrait or its public exposure I cannot say. The artist proposed certain alterations, and the poet listened to him with seeming assent. The picture was taken back to the studio; objectionable or questionable parts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... I felt dissatisfied with all the world, sometimes blaming myself, and sometimes her—yet ready to excuse and forgive her at a moment's notice. A boy in experience even more than in years, I loved with a boy's headlong passion, and suffered with all a boy's acute susceptibility. I was intensely sensitive—abashed by a slight, humbled by a glance, and so easily wounded that there were often times when, seeing myself forgotten, I could with difficulty drive back the tears that kept rising to my eyes. On the other hand, I was as easily elated. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... of romance. It is the borderland where is fought the battle of individuality, and it is probable that at this time is decided in a very deep way what is to be the trend of the whole after life. There is at this period such susceptibility to impressions that there may be indelibly stamped mental images that are the exact opposite of those of childhood, the childish memory remaining as a thing apart and by itself,—a curious separation and continuation of two lines of ideas, which every one has perhaps ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... weakness in an American's betraying undue susceptibility on the score of every little unpleasant occurrence that arises at home. No one of the smallest intelligence can believe that we are to be exempt from human faults, and we all ought to know that they will frequently lead to violence and wrongs. Still there is so much jealousy ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... beds on greenhouse benches is their liability to frequent and marked changes of atmospheric temperature and moisture, and to drying out. In midwinter they may be all right, but as spring advances and the sun's brightness and heat increase, the susceptibility of the beds to ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... behaviour shall refute every suspicion that I am conniving at, or even apologizing for Henry's errors. And though I know the poor fellow's feelings were too keen for his peace, and though, in my own exquisite susceptibility of kindness, I could find motives to mitigate his fault, I will leave his conduct to the mercy of candid people. I will now end my perhaps tedious visit, lamenting that my corps was not raised when Dr. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... always attracts a shy man. But women who are gifted with that rapid, gay impressionability which puts them en rapport with their surroundings, who have fancy and an excitable disposition, a quick susceptibility to the influences around them, are very charming in general society, but they are terrible to the awkward and the shy. They sympathize too much, they are too aware of that burning shame which ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... influence of such views, it is a great joy to think that we shall not always be so callous as we are now. Deep down in our souls there is a susceptibility to tenderness that we do not generally suspect. Sometimes, from no cause that we can see, there breaks on our hearts a ripple of peace like a breath of perfume from some far off land of flowers, or a snatch of melody from some distant ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... red-hot iron only in the plague without fever, which occurred in single cases; and was always ready to correct those over-hasty surgeons who, with fire and violent remedies, did irremediable injury to their patients. Michael Savonarola, professor in Ferrara (1462), reasoning on the susceptibility of the human frame to the influence of pestilential infection, as the cause of such various modifications of disease, expresses himself as a modern physician would on this point; and an adoption of the principle of contagion was the foundation of his definition ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... dealing with pathogenic organisms, it is often advisable to inoculate some of the impure culture (or even some of the original materies morbi) into an animal specially chosen on account of its susceptibility to the particular pathogenic organism it is desired to inoculate. Indeed, with some of the more sensitive and strictly parasitic bacteria this method of animal inoculation is practically the only method that will yield ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... on those two beautiful sisters. Those two beautiful sisters appealed to me more than anything else in the Gazette's obituary. Surely—Simon Fuge had obviously been a man whose emotional susceptibility and virile impulsiveness must have opened the door for him to multifarious amours—but surely he had not made himself indispensable to both sisters simultaneously. Surely even he had not so far forgotten that Ham ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... deny to him the faculty of speech. Every muscle in the frame of that stern, melancholy man quivered at the immortal promptings of the soul within him. There was something almost feminine in his universal susceptibility to the influence of one solitary emotion. Even the rough, desperate landholder felt awed by the enthusiasm of the being before him, and forgot his wrongs, terrible as they were—and his misery, poignant as it was—as he gazed upon his ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins |
