"Toughness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all in all, Jan was probably as finely conditioned and developed a hound as any in England when he reached his second birthday, and it is hardly likely that a stronger hound could have been found in all the world. It may be that for hardness and toughness and endurance he might have found his master without much difficulty; for hardship begets hardihood, and Jan had known no hardship as yet. But at the end of his second year he was a very splendid specimen of complete ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... enwrapped and enmeshed by the psychic nature, the emotional and mental powers; and as unable to come to clear consciousness, unable to stand and see clearly, because of the psychic veils of the personality. Nine of these are enumerated, and they go pretty thoroughly into the brute toughness of the psychic nature. ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... walnut, and it is quite the exception to find among any Persian walnuts growing on the Atlantic Coast or the Pacific Coast or in the middle of the country walnuts that are free from this tendency to astringency, to insipidity, and to toughness. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... you favor libertarian government," he said. "In the past it's always broken down sooner or later and the main reason has been that there aren't enough people with the intelligence, alertness and toughness to resist the inevitable ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... you want, but toughness. Metals have several properties, which are utilized for various purposes in the arts. Surprising as it may seem, wood has greater resisting power than diamond, and yet the precious stone is the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... cross-bows, when they go to sleep the 'na-kung' is hung over their heads, and when they die it is hung over their graves. The largest cross-bows have a span of fully five feet, and require a pull of thirty-five pounds to string them. The bow is made of a species of wild mulberry, of great toughness and flexibility. The stock, some four feet long in the war-bows, is usually of wild plum wood, the string is of plaited hemp, and the trigger of bone. The arrow, of sixteen to eighteen inches, is of split bamboo, about four times the ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... that arises in this moment of awareness and non-understanding is almost sufficient to cause a choice of death rather than life at this point. Only because of the developed toughness, acquired through the aeons, does the majority of mammalian life ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... plant of a peculiar appearance, to the complete exclusion of the tall grasses and herbage in other parts. It grew in little tussocks like bushes, each plant composed of twenty or thirty stalks of a woody toughness and about two and a half feet high. The stems were thickly clothed with round leaves, soft as velvet to the touch and so dark a green that at a little distance they looked almost black against the bright green of the moist turf. Their beauty was in the blossoming season, when every stem produced ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... us say, been in the service of the Empress for, perhaps, four years. He will leave in another two years. He has no inherited morals, and four years are not sufficient to drive toughness into his fibre, or to teach him how holy a thing is his Regiment. He wants to drink, he wants to enjoy himself—in India he wants to save money—and he does not in the least like getting hurt. He has received just sufficient education ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... have defied him with all his strength untouched on his head, and she would have overcome him too. Judith and Jael were both probably large women. The work they went about demanded a certain strength of muscle and toughness of sinew; but who can say that Jezebel was not a small, freckled, auburn-haired Lady Audley of her time, full of the concentrated fire, the electric force, the passionate recklessness of her type? Regan and Goneril might have been beautiful demons of the same pattern; we have the example ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... animal food should be hung up in the open air, till its fibres have lost some degree of their toughness; yet, let us be clearly understood also to warn you, that if kept till it loses its natural sweetness, it is as detrimental to health, as it is disagreeable to the ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... of a barb, being supplied by a small piece lashed horizontally across the top of the end of the curve. These peculiar wooden hooks are grown; the roots of a tree called ngiia, whose wood is of great toughness, are watched when they protrude from a bank, and trained into the desired shape; specimens of these hooks may be seen in almost any ethnographical museum. To sink the line, coral stones of three or four pounds weight are used, attached by a very thin piece of cinnet or bark, which, when the fish ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... when he was transferred from the Parliament of Dublin to the Parliament of Westminster. Kitchener was sixty-four when he turned his face westward to the problem of his own country. There clung to him already all the traditional attributes of the oak—its toughness, its angularity, its closeness of grain and ruggedness of outline—when he was uprooted from the Arabian sands and replanted in the remote western island. Yet the oak not only grew green again and put forth new leaves; ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... demands of Mr. Tubbs. With a righteous joy, I saw the fabric of Aunt Jane's illusions shaken by the rude blast of reality. Would it be riven quite in twain? I was dubious, for Aunt Jane's illusions have a toughness in striking contrast to the uncertain nature of her ideas in general. Darker and darker disclosures of Mr. Tubbs's perfidy would be required. But judging from his present recklessness, they would be forthcoming. For where was the Tubbs of ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... crushed form for road building, railway embankments, and concrete, and the prospect is for largely increased demands for such uses in the future. For the purpose of road building, it is necessary to consider a stone's resistance to abrasion, hardness, toughness, cementing value, absorption, and specific gravity. Limestone cements well, but in other qualities it is not desirable for heavy traffic. Shales are soft and clayey, and grind down to a mass which is dry and powdery, and muddy in wet ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... In thus preserving the toughness of Sir Pertinax consistently to the end, Macklin remained true to the tradition of critical, satiric comedy that he had been bred in but that by this time had almost disappeared. Protesting against the refusal of a license for his play, in 1779, ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... however, of the people of the province of Holland, and of its sister and closely allied province of Zeeland, its qualities of toughness, of endurance, of seamanship and maritime enterprise, spring from the peculiar amphibious nature of the country, which differs from that of any other country in the world. The age-long struggle against the ocean and the river floods, which has converted the marshes, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... noise?" said Jack, suddenly, as he was on about a quarter of a mile ahead with his brother, Mr Rogers being busily transferring some water-beetles to Chicory's spirit-bottle, which escaped breaking after all from the toughness ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... had changed. He glanced about him at the well-bred, well-dressed men and women, and breathed into his lungs the atmosphere of culture and refinement, and at the same moment the ghost of his early youth, in stiff- rim and square-cut, with swagger and toughness, stalked across the room. This figure, of the corner hoodlum, he saw merge into himself, sitting and talking with ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... begun. For a time I pulled myself together very thoroughly. I am not ungrateful nor unfaithful to Harbury; in your turn you will go there, you will have to live your life in this British world of ours and you must learn its language and manners, acquire its reserves and develop the approved toughness and patterning of cuticle. Afterwards if you please you may quarrel with it. But don't when the time comes quarrel with the present conditions of human association and think it is only with Harbury you quarrel. What man has become and may become beneath the masks and impositions ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... out into a roar of laughter. Job's fat and comfortable countenance was swollen out to nearly twice its natural size from mosquito bites, and Leo's condition was not much better. Indeed, of the three I had come off much the best, probably owing to the toughness of my dark skin, and to the fact that a good deal of it was covered by hair, for since we had started from England I had allowed my naturally luxuriant beard to grow at its own sweet will. But the other ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... conversation—consisting chiefly of a succession of commonplace remarks, expressed with frigid formality: but this might be more my fault than hers, for I really could NOT converse. In fact, my attention was almost wholly absorbed in my dinner: not from ravenous appetite, but from distress at the toughness of the beefsteaks, and the numbness of my hands, almost palsied by their five-hours' exposure to the bitter wind. I would gladly have eaten the potatoes and let the meat alone, but having got a large piece of the latter on to my plate, I could not be so impolite as to leave it; so, after many awkward ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... little to do, were generally engaged in looking after their physical comforts by laying in a stock of shell-fish. Oysters were found in abundance all along shore, and of excellent quality; also the large clam known as the QUAHAUG, which when properly cooked and divested of its toughness is capital food; crabs, of delicate flavor and respectable size, were taken in hand-nets in any quantity; and flounders, mullets, and drum-fish were captured with little trouble. Ducks and teal, and other kinds of water fowl, abounded in the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Michael and Joseph and John—and you too, Leaf! a merry Christmas all! We shall have a rare log-wood fire directly, Reub, to reckon by the toughness of the job I had in cleaving 'em." As he spoke he threw down an armful of logs which fell in the chimney-corner with a rumble, and looked at them with something of the admiring enmity he would have bestowed on living people who ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... forms give an appearance of great strength and toughness, a tense look. And this quality is very useful in suggesting such things as joints and sinews, rocks, hard ground, or gnarled tree-trunks, &c. In figure drawing it is an interesting quality to use ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... a dozen flaxen-haired Germans. It was my ninth serious attachment if I remember rightly, and desperately smitten I was and remained, until one unlucky day when the mamma of my adorata invited me to a dinner en famille. The toughness of the mutton-chops took the edge off my teeth for forty-eight hours, and off my love for ever. As regards the Menous, however, I have hardly known them long enough to form a very decided opinion concerning ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... surprises us by the great simplicity which characterises it. The first stage is getting the liquid mass of glass about to be operated upon into a thorough state of toughness and pliability: one should be able to pull it like rosin or sealing-wax. The colouring of the mass is done while it is still in the furnace, by adding various chemicals, the principal of which are arsenic, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... to melancholia may expect his brain, sooner or later, to degenerate from its original strength, and relax the toughness and compactness of its fibre. Absolute dementia may not be the result for some years, but there will be occasional and painful indications of the end for a long space before it arrives. The indications, as a rule, will assume the form of visions and dreams and wild imaginings of various ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... were exposed for sale; ladies with Hungarian hats crushed their crinolines into queer old cabriolets; gentlemen with business-faces and an aspect of wealth smoked paper cigars; and numbers of hucksters offered baskets of biscuit and cakes, of a disagreeable yellow color and great apparent toughness. It was a repetition, with slight variations, of a village-fair anywhere else, or an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... that as soon as she grew accustomed to it she would sail along as swimmingly as Garnet Emerson, or Olave Parry, or Hilda Langley, or Agatha James. Most unfortunately she found her theory acted in the opposite direction. Closer acquaintance with her Form subjects proved their extreme toughness. She was not nearly up to the standard of the rest of the girls. Her Latin grammar was shaky, her French only a trifle better, she had merely a nodding acquaintance with geometry, and had not before studied ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... of the thicket was painful. From every direction the thorns jabbed at him, and but for the toughness of his jungle suit, Astro would have been ripped to shreds. After easing his way back into the clearing, the cadet pulled out the remains of his jungle pack. He then saw that his suit was torn to ribbons, and the many slashes on his chest and arms were bleeding profusely. The scent of the blood ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... visits to the "Blue Boar," losing flesh and gaining toughness with every lesson. The more he saw of Joe Bevan the more he liked him, and appreciated his strong, simple outlook on life. Shakespeare was a great bond between them. Sheen had always been a student of the Bard, and he and Joe would sit on the little verandah of the inn, looking over ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... and the eye of a pariah dog for any stray morsel of food; with an extraordinary capacity for taking rest in snatches, and recouping himself by a roll whenever you take his saddle off; and of course, from the natural toughness of his constitution, too, he is able to stand the long and gradual strain of being many hours under the saddle every day (and perhaps part of the night, too) in a way that unaccustomed horses cannot do. By this time we all know his merits, and there is ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... of the armed establishment of the United States that when American men lead a personal life which is based on high moral standards, and when their aim is equally high as to physical fitness and toughness, under training conditions they will mature those qualities which are most likely to produce inspired leading and stout ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... unless go on a campaign?—and because while she had still citizens without land to hoe cabbages in, she must look about and provide them with that prime necessity. All of which amounts to saying that she began with a habit of empire-winning,—which must have been created in the past. On her toughness the spirited Gaul broke as a wave, and fell away. On her narrow unmagnanimity the chivalrous mountain Samnite bore down, and like foam vanished. She had none of the spiritual possibilities of the Gaul; but the Crest-Wave ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... and then his head and all his body began to tremble and totter to such a degree that he had to sink hurriedly into his great arm-chair. It seemed as if he were about to refute Bodoeri's good opinion as to the strength and toughness of his eighty summers. Bodoeri, in fact, could not keep back the peculiar smile that darted across his lips; innocent, un* sophisticated Annunciata observed nothing; and happily no one else was present Finally ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... desirable a substance it was, for work of that kind. In oil painting its unctious quality is to be delighted in; in fresco, its chalky quality; in glass, its transparency; in wood, its grain; in marble, its softness; in porphyry, its hardness; in iron, its toughness. In a flint country, one should feel the delightfulness of having flints to pick up, and fasten together into rugged walls. In a marble country one should be always more and more astonished at the exquisite colour and structure ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Balder reflected that he could climb, and that the top of the tree would show him more than he could see now. The birch looked tolerably climbable and was amply high; as to toughness, he thought not about it. Beneath what frivolous disguises does destiny mask her approach! Discretion is a virtue; yet, had Balder been discreet enough to examine the tree before getting into it, the ultimate ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... there was nothing to pay for them. As fast as a line could be thrown, and its little silvery trap set a whirling, the hook was seized by some trout or other, large or small. Some of them were so heavy as to test the toughness of the upper joints of the rods, and now Two Arrows made a discovery. He had watched Sile work his reel until he had caught the secret of it, and could let a strong fish run a little before he drew him in. It was an idea that suited ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... in your keeping and swore and swore it wasn't; item, repeatedly exhausted by your toughness eight strong lictors equipped with pliant elm rods. (pause) Have I celebrated my colleague highly enough to ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... when I have felt so crisp, so springy, and so gloriously unconscious of lungs." During these intervals of good health he was mentally alert, — a prodigious worker, feeling "an immortal and unconquerable toughness of fibre" in the strings of his heart. There was something more than the cheerfulness that attends the disease to which he was subject. There was an ardor, an exuberance that comes only from "a lordly, large compass of ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... the creature has. And all the more so, since for strength and toughness its eyes by nature are ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... two small repairs, additions and improvements to the place. This manual work interested me, and, I dare say, bettered my health, though I was ashamed to note the poor staying power I had as compared with Isaiah Fetch, who, whilst fully ten years my senior, was greatly my superior in toughness and endurance. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... eating even to Tarzan of the Apes, but hunger served as a most efficacious disguise to toughness and rank taste, and ere long, with well-filled stomach, the ape-man was ready to sleep again. First, however, he must remove the hide, for it was as much for this as for any other purpose that he had desired to ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... said the doctor, with his great coarse laugh. "I rather suspect that you have already got beyond the age when the great medicine could do you good; that speech indicates a great toughness and hardness and bitterness about the heart that does not accumulate ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... indisposed, as eternally leans and presses upon her; and often in my reading perceive that our masters, in their writings, make examples pass for magnanimity and fortitude of mind, which really are rather toughness of skin and hardness of bones; for I have seen men, women, and children, naturally born of so hard and insensible a constitution of body, that a sound cudgelling has been less to them than a flirt with a finger would have been to me, and that would neither ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... their wages being four shillings a week. Some of the very old people of Winterbourne Bishop, when speaking of the principal food of the labourers at that time, the barley bannock and its exceeding toughness, gave me an amusing account of a game of balls invented by the flint-gatherers, just for the sake of a little fun during their long weary day in the fields, especially in cold, frosty weather. The men ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... do you think of that?" said he, giving it two or three switches in the air to try its suppleness and toughness; "don't that look like a whip? Now we'll ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... weak or made of poor material, the whole belt is affected by them. It is therefore of vital importance that only the best and most solid leather be used in making the links; second, the leather must be made very pliable, but at the same time its toughness and tenacity must not be injured, or it will stretch ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... he wrote, "and with unmingled pleasure, to every link which each ensuing week has added to the chain of our attachment. It shall go hard I hope ere anything but death impairs the toughness of a bond now so firmly riveted. That beautiful passage you were so kind and considerate as to send to me has given me the only feeling akin to pleasure, sorrowful pleasure it is, that I have yet had connected with the loss of my dear young friend and companion, ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... consecrated into a creed which it is a sacred duty to believe, experience is but like water dropping upon a rock, which wears it away, indeed, at last, but only in thousands of years. This theory was and is the central idea of the Jewish polity, the obstinate toughness of which has been the perplexity of Gentiles and Christians from the first dawn of its existence; it lingers among ourselves in our Liturgy and in the popular belief; and in spite of the emphatic censure of Him after whose name we call ourselves, is still the instant ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... and as if the chief occupation of his life would be gone; but with renewed health his confidence returned, and in a few weeks he was able to look the situation in the face. The reception of the book had brought home to him the direction in which he was drifting. He saw that a certain toughness and hardness of fibre had been wanting. He saw that he had tried to fill a book up out of his own mind, in a leisurely and trifling mood. He had not attempted to grasp his subjects, but had allowed himself to put down loose and half-hearted impressions, instead of trying ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... If his experiences of the previous evening had been distressing, the breakfast which was set before him was positively heart-rending. A muddy-looking liquid which they called coffee—strong, soggy biscuits, a beefsteak that would rival in toughness a piece of baked gutta percha, and evidently swimming in lard, and potatoes which gave decided tokens of having been served on more than one previous occasion. With a smothered groan he attacked the unsavory viands, and by dint of great effort managed to appease his hunger, to the ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... that she was as blind as a mole, and as rickety on her legs as a child of a year old. Now you have encouraged her to take to walking, she will be more obstinate than ever, and is sure to tumble down daily, out of doors as well as in. Not even the celebrated Malkinshaw toughness can last out more than a few weeks of that practice. Considering the present shattered condition of my constitution, you couldn't have given her better advice—upon my word of honor, you couldn't have given ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... and more distant eating-house, adding to it by way of rider that the gentleman was induced to send so far, not only by the great fame and popularity its beef had acquired, but in consequence of the extreme toughness of the beef retailed at the obdurant cook's shop, which rendered it quite unfit not merely for gentlemanly food, but for any human consumption. The good effect of this politic course was demonstrated by the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... bracket itself; a most important feature in modern as well as ancient architecture. The first idea of a bracket is that of a long stone or piece of timber projecting from the wall, as a, Fig. XXXIX., of which the strength depends on the toughness of the stone or wood, and the stability on the weight of wall above it (unless it be the end of a main beam). But let it be supposed that the structure at a, being of the required projection, is found too weak: then we may strengthen it in one of three ways; ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... distinctly reflected; to discover heathen gods masked in the garb of Christian saints; and thus to see a proof of our assertion above, that a nation more easily changes the form than the essence of its faith, and clings with a toughness which endures for centuries to what it ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... will find a grayish, tough, elastic lump before you, while in the pan below, when the water is carefully poured off, will be pure wheat-starch, the water itself containing all the sugar, dextrine or gum, and mineral matter. This toughness and elasticity of gluten is an important quality; for in bread-making, were it not for the gluten, the carbonic-acid gas formed by the action of yeast on dough would all escape. But, though it works its way out vigorously ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... my toughness and wrastling powers show themselves. I just wrastled and wrastled, ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... exists, no matter how you account for it—a certain toughness of moral fibre, an indestructibility ...
— 21 • Frank Crane
... furniture of every kind, even to the boats, and the guns, firearms, and weapons of every description with which the ship was liberally provided, were, like her hull, constructed of aethereum, the most striking properties of which metal were its extraordinary lightness, toughness, hardness, strength, and its stubborn resistance to ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... membrane has been so long exposed as to have lost many of its characters, and to resemble leather in its toughness, excision will be found less painful and much more rapid ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... imprisonment, he several times passed the girl upon deck. He noticed that she shrank from him in disgust and terror; but what surprised him was that instead of the thrill of pride which he formerly would have felt at this acknowledgment of his toughness, for Billy prided himself on being a tough, he now felt a singular resentment against the girl for her attitude, so that he came to hate her even more than he had before hated. Formerly he had hated her for the things she stood for, now he hated her ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... true power of money,—and no trouble with it, nor any thinking required either. He thought with difficulty and felt vividly; to his blunt brain the problems offered by any ordered scheme of life seemed in their cruel toughness to have been put in his way by the obvious malevolence of men. As a shipowner everyone had conspired to make him a nobody. How could he have been such a fool as to purchase that accursed ship. He had been abominably swindled; there was no end to this swindling; ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... over nine inches thick that were ever made were produced at these works. The process of rolling toughens the iron, seeming to draw out its fibres; and iron that has been twice rolled is considered fit for ordinary uses. For the various parts of a bridge, however, where great toughness and tensile strength are necessary, as well as uniformity of texture, the iron is rolled a third time. The bars are therefore cut again into pieces, piled, re-heated and rolled again. A bar of iron which has been rolled twice is formed from a pile of fourteen separate pieces of iron that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... met with an instance of an extensive stellate fracture in the case of the ilium. Such may have occurred in some of the cases fatal on the field or shortly afterwards, but I never came across one in the hospital. It says much for the combined density and toughness of the human pelvis. ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... of medium size and height, with a figure pleasingly proportioned. His shoulders squarely set, and chest rounded out, tell of great strength; while limbs tersely knit, and a firm elastic tread betoken toughness and activity. Features of smooth, regular outline—the jaws broad, and well balanced; the chin prominent; the nose nearly Grecian— while eminently handsome, proclaim a noble nature, with courage equal to any demand that may be made upon it. Not less the glance of a blue-grey ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... The toughness of the sheets made them preferable to the softer and more yielding blankets, and the youth decided to use them exclusively. Each, of course, had been put together by deft hands and spinning-wheel, and was of firm, strong texture. Jethro was so familiar with where these were ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... but slight holds for winds, however violent. The other alpine conifers—the Needle Pine, Mountain Pine, Two-leaved Pine, and Hemlock Spruce—are never thinned out by this agent to any destructive extent, on account of their admirable toughness and the closeness of their growth. In general the same is true of the giants of the lower zones. The kingly Sugar Pine, towering aloft to a height of more than two hundred feet, offers a fine mark to storm-winds; but it is not densely foliaged, and its long horizontal arms swing round ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Iron, which we finde also to be employ'd by some Artificers in the tempering of such great Instruments, as are too big to be soon heated sufficiently by the flame of a Candle. And you may easily satisfie your self Pyro: of the differing hardness and toughness, which is ascribed to Steel temper'd at different Colours, if you break but some slender wires of Steel so temper'd, and observe how they differ in brittleness, and if with a file you also make tryal of their various ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... of her husband by this appellation, on account, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitae having been his old regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in compliment to the extreme hardness and toughness of his physiognomy—"just looked in, we have, to make it all correct as usual about that security. Give him the new bill to sign, George, and he'll sign ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... conversation, it is worse than anarchy to not only get no greeting, but to note the discontent on his wife's face, and to listen to a tirade of fault finding. Your husband has troubles of his own. The maid's impudence, the crossness of the baby, the noise of the neighbor's children, the toughness of the meat from the butcher, do not interest him. He is hungry, he wants to eat, and above all, he wants rest and peace. We are considering this subject from the economic standpoint. The young wife must recognize that if she is a fault ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... found in the forest. It is often seventy or eighty feet tall, with a trunk not more than a foot around. The color of the trunk is a dark granite-gray and the bark is rough. The wood is remarkable for its toughness, and for making baskets the Indians prefer it to any other, except the trunk of ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... they would travel down from the back country to grub up acres on acres of splendid sheep pasture in search of roots. The only good they do is to dig up the Spaniards for the sake of their delicious white fibres, and the fact of their being able to do this will give a better idea of the toughness of a wild pig's snout than anything else ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... were at one time placed in a product prepared from linseed oil. It was found that a material could be produced from it which would to a certain extent equal India rubber compositions in elasticity and toughness. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... second picture shows the way they are driven. Their skins are used for everything that good strong leather can be used for. Their meat is good for food; but heaven help anybody who is obliged to eat it, and when it is prepared, as it often is, by drying the steaks in the sun, then the toughness exceeds that of the tanned hide. A sausage mill could not chew dried carabao. The milk is watery and poor, but the natives like it very much. The horns are used for handles for bolos, the hoofs for glue, and the bones are turned into carved articles ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... Whatever may be the temporary political status of Manchuria, it will remain a part of Chinese civilization, and can be recovered whenever Japan happens to be in difficulties. The Chinese derive such strength from their four hundred millions, the toughness of their national customs, their power of passive resistance, and their unrivalled national cohesiveness—in spite of the civil wars, which merely ruffle the surface—that they can afford to despise military methods, and to wait till the feverish energy of their oppressors ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... the amrita and Indra also of great prowess, the wielder of the thunder, stood with them. And the gods wore curious breastplates of gold, of great value, and set with gems, and bright leathern armour of great toughness. And the mighty deities wielded various sharp-edged weapons of terrible shapes, countless in number, emitting, even all of them, sparks of fire with smoke. And they were also armed with many a discus and iron mace furnished ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... one loves the softness of fur or the coolness of marble. One of the profound philosophical truths which are almost confined to infants is this love of things, not for their use or origin, but for their own inherent characteristics, the child's love of the toughness of wood, the wetness of water, the magnificent soapiness of soap. So it was with Scott, who had so much of the child in him. Human beings were perhaps the principal characters in his stories, but they were certainly not the only characters. A battle-axe was a person of ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... you can get anything more ridiculous than that, I should like to know where you can find it. Athletics should not be too severe, however, yet, the boy ought not to have century runs and long halves of football, especially if the heart is still weak. The tissues of the body have not yet gained the toughness that they will gain at a later time. Every commander in the field dreads to have boys of eighteen, nineteen, or twenty sent to him, because, as Napoleon said of his young recruits, "they die off like flies." ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... fund of quiet stoicism, that energy to resist if not to dare, which formed the backbone of an otherwise somewhat weak, shadowy, and uninspiring character. And now, in the rapid fall of his fortunes, the greatest adventurer of the nineteenth century showed to the full those qualities of toughness and dignified reserve which for twenty years had puzzled and imposed on that lively emotional people. By the side of the downcast braggarts of the Court and the unstrung screamers of the Parisian Press, his mien had something of the heroic. Tout peut se retablir—"All ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Already he was looking back ruefully to the time when he had supposed that an artist's model had a soft job. In the first five minutes muscles which he had not been aware that he possessed had started to ache like neglected teeth. His respect for the toughness and durability of artists' models was now solid. How they acquired the stamina to go through this sort of thing all day and then bound off to Bohemian revels at night was ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... gleaming necklace, On its breast two stars resplendent. Thus the Birch Canoe was builded In the valley, by the river, In the bosom of the forest; And the forest's life was in it, All its mystery and its magic, All the lightness of the birch tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews; And it floated on the river, Like a yellow leaf in autumn, Like a ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... speak of the sitting upon an easy-chair as a moral set-back. The strained and posed life which such savants lead is not to be regarded as a rough one; for there is constant luxury in the thought of their own toughness, and infinite comfort in the sense of superiority which they permit themselves to feel. It is not roughing it to feed from a bare board when a tablecloth adds insignificantly to the impedimenta of the camp: it is pretending ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... rights and privileges, and consequently possesses a greater amount of both biological and pathological initiative. In many respects purely mechanical in its function, fastening the muscles to the bones, the bones to each other, giving toughness to the great skin-sheet, and swinging in hammock-like mesh the precious brain-cell or potent liver-lobule, it still possesses and exercises for the benefit of the body considerable powers of discretion and aggressive vital action. Through its activity chiefly ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... and the shortest route from Philadelphia to New Orleans. You grow by slow stages into the new attitude; at Malta you are still regretting Europe; after Aden, your mind dwells most on the hire of punkah-wallahs and the proverbial toughness ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... upon the ground; it is then well scrubbed with a rough stone, and fresh mimosa bark well bruised, with water, is rubbed in by the friction. About four days are sufficient to tan the thin skin of a gazelle, which is much valued for its toughness and durability; the aperture at the hind quarters is sewn together, and the opening of the neck is closed, when required, by tying. A good water-skin should be porous, to allow the water to exude sufficiently to moisten the exterior: ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... of all the cereals in California, and no attention has been paid to selection of varieties. That which is produced is "just rye," of some common variety which came to the State years ago and still remains. No rye is grown for hay, as the toughness of the stem renders it undesirable for that purpose. There is a certain amount of rye grown for winter feeding. This is grown in the foothills principally and it serves an excellent purpose, but it is fed ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... yet nearly always he had talked in the language of the uneducated Westerner, in the jargon of yeggmen, and the vernacular of the professional tramps with whom he had hoboed over the West—a "gay cat," as he was pleased to call himself, when boasting of the "toughness" of his life. He had affected uncleanliness, uncouthness; but in spite of his efforts the glimmer of the "something good" of which he was ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... shook his fist at her, and called her fool. It was because she had broken the Princess's umbrella. This was the new umbrella bought by him with so much trouble in Gerstein two days before, and therefore presumably of a sufficient toughness to stand any reasonable treatment for a time. There was a mist and a drizzle at Calais, and Priscilla, refusing to go under shelter, had sent Fritzing to fetch her umbrella, and when he demanded it of Annalise, she offered it him in two pieces. This alone was enough ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... became the principal artillery afloat and ashore, yet cast bronze was superior in withstanding the stresses of firing. Because of its toughness, less metal was needed in a bronze gun than in a cast-iron one, so in spite of the fact that bronze is about 20 percent heavier than iron, the bronze piece was usually the lighter of the two. For "position" ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... such as the "Honduras silk grass" (Rhea or Ramie), valuable for beauty, fineness, and toughness, have been worked or woven into stuffs.[135] This material is ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... wasters who trade upon our country's prestige to rob, harry, and even enslave the members of a subject race while they pose as pioneers of Empire and are held up by sentimental travellers, like Mr. Roosevelt, as examples of toughness and courage to the victims of monotonous toil who live at home at ease. There is no call either for Mr. Roosevelt's pity or admiration. I have known those wasters well, and have studied all their tricks for turning a dirty half-crown. They enjoy more pleasure ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... place, roamed at all times of the day and night through the city and its suburbs, trying vainly to exhaust his physical strength; gradually, as his lethargy deepened into a numb, helpless despair, it seemed somehow to impart a certain toughness to his otherwise delicate frame. Olson, who was now a junior partner in the firm of Remsen, Van Kirk and Co., stood by him faithfully in these days of sorrow. He was never effusive in his sympathy, but was patiently forbearing ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... with an air of hard toughness, but deep inside he felt small and cheap. He was used to wrangling and boisterous striving for what he wanted. Yet, for all of his roughness, a finer streak of his nature could, on occasion, respond to ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... minute yellow crystals of rutile. The red coloration which these specimens possess is due to thin films of hematite. The rock is therefore fibrolite schist, and from a lithological standpoint it is very interesting. The fibrolite imparts the toughness to the rock, which, I should judge, would increase its value for the purposes to which the ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... sometimes observed in the neighborhood of distilleries (rhommeries) and sugar-refineries. According to age, the color of the creature varies from yellowish to black;— the younger ones often have several different tints; the old ones are uniformly jet-black, and have a carapace of surprising toughness,—difficult to break. If you tread, by accident or design, upon the tail, the poisonous head will instantly curl back and bite the foot through any ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... authority of law. So we shall make again the old experiment, discredited by a thousand failures, of preventing crime by tenderness to caught criminals. And the criminal uncaught will treat us to a quality of toughness notably augmented by the Christian spirit ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... therefore, specially procured a starling, as I consider this bird the very best for the amateur's purpose, not only on account of the toughness of the skin, but also because, being a medium-sized bird, it presents no difficult points in skinning, and with this bird before me I shall minutely instruct my pupil, pointing out each step that has to be taken and each difficulty that is likely ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... spirits mounted invincibly. It was the joy of the open road and the care-free heart. Like some hideous nightmare was the memory of the tunnel and the gravel pit. The bright blood in me rejoiced; my muscles tensed with pride in their toughness; I ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... The Trilobite is an early and imperfect experiment of the class, and the larva of the modern king-crab bears witness that it has not perished without leaving descendants. How later Crustacea increase the toughness of the coat by deposits of lime, and lead on to the crab and lobster, and how one early branch invades the land, develops air-breathing apparatus, and culminates in the spiders and insects, will be considered later. We shall see that there ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... to be reduced. It had no Maori troubles worth speaking of, but the hills that beset its site, rugged and bush-covered, were troublesome to clear and settle, the winter climate is bleaker than that of northern or central New Zealand, and a good deal of Scottish endurance and toughness was needed before the colonists won their way through to the more fertile and open territory which lay waiting for them, both on their right hand and on their left, in the broad province of Otago. Like General Grant in his last campaign, they had to keep on "pegging away," and they ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... for up to twenty or thirty fights, I struck as nature guided me, no wiser than a father-long-legs in the heat of a lanthorn; but I had conquered, partly through my native strength, and the Exmoor toughness in me, and still more that I could not see when I had gotten my bellyful. But now I was like to have that and more; for my heart was down, to begin with; and then Robert Snell was a bigger boy than I had ever encountered, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... separates itself into the grosser and the thinner parts: we see this in bleeding; and from the toughness of the red cake may guess how very difficult it will be to dissolve a substance of like firmness in the vessels of the body. That it can thus become thickened within the body, a Pleurisy shews us too evidently: in that case it is brought ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... From shoulder to shoulder he measured several ells and his rocklike mountainous knees were covered, as was likewise the rest of his body wherever visible, with a strong growth of tawny prickly hair in hue and toughness similar to the mountain gorse (Ulex Europeus). The widewinged nostrils, from which bristles of the same tawny hue projected, were of such capaciousness that within their cavernous obscurity the fieldlark might easily have lodged her nest. The eyes in which a tear and a ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... attitude apparently relaxed. His face was still white. It could not acquire color in that close cell, but he had never felt stronger. A powerful heart pumped vigorous blood through every artery and vein. His muscles had regained their toughness and flexibility, and above all, the intense desire for freedom had keyed him ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... called in the colony Badger (Phascolomys wombat, Peron.), is an animal weighing forty to eighty pounds, having a large body, with short legs. Notwithstanding its burrowing habits, and the excessive thickness and toughness of its skin, it is usually so easily killed, that it is becoming ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... fraction of manhood. At a year or two short of fifty, Mr. Daffy began to be old; he was shoulder-bent, knee-shaky, and had a pallid, wrinkled visage, with watery, pathetic eye. At fifty turned, Mr. Lott showed a vigour and a toughness such as few men of any age could rival. For a score of years the measure of Mr. Lott's robust person had been taken by Mr. Daffy's professional tape, and, without intimacy, there existed kindly relations between the two men. Neither had ever been ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... as possible. Dim light causes rapid growth at the expense, however, of strength of tissue, but as these young trees are protected in the woods from the strain of wind storms, their slimness and lack of toughness is a benefit rather than a hindrance to them. Also, the limbs near the ground die off while the trees are still young and small, giving us the clear timber tree, free from large knots, tall and straight. Make ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... The toughness of glass, i.e., its ability to withstand variations of temperature, depends on its composition and the care taken in its annealing. In general, large pieces of glass should be heated very slowly in the smoky flame, and ...
— Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing • Francis C. Frary
... onward course, and to bring it into subjection. The necessity of some form of religion for the interests of humanity, has been generally acknowledged: but where was the concrete representative of things invisible, which would have the force and the toughness necessary to be a breakwater against the deluge? Three centuries ago the establishment of religion, material, legal, and social, was generally adopted as the best expedient for the purpose, in those countries which separated from the Catholic ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... sod land for the purpose of renewing pastures, disking them will prepare them for receiving the seed. The extent of the disking will depend on such conditions as the toughness of the sod and the nature of the soil. Usually disking once when the frost is out a little way from the surface, and then disking across at an angle will suffice, and in some instances disking one way only will be sufficient. On newly cleared lands the clovers will ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... first sighed, and then grumbled to herself, over the increasing toughness of the potato-cakes she had made for ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... now preferred, though tin, from its toughness when in the leaf, is perhaps the most suitable. Americans are superior to British in filling." ("Plain Advice on Care of the Teeth," ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... forces together, provide at his own expense for their food and transportation, and take them back to Tennessee in good order. He accomplished this, putting sick men on his own three horses, and himself marching on foot with the men, who, enthusiastic over his elastic toughness, dubbed him "Old Hickory,"—a title of affection that is familiar to this day. The government afterwards reimbursed him for his outlay in this matter, but his generosity, self-denial, energy, and masterly force ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... necessarily toughness. I believe in doing one job at a time—and my contract reads veterinary service, not personal problems. The job comes first and there's ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... her reserved behaviour, and frigidly declining to understand the Major whenever he called (which he often did) on any little fishing excursion connected with this project, the Major, in spite of his constitutional toughness and slyness, was fain to leave the accomplishment of his desire in some measure to chance, 'which,' as he was used to observe with chuckles at his club, 'has been fifty to one in favour of Joey B., Sir, ever since his elder brother died of Yellow ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... bark and cedar splints, the ribs being shaped from spruce roots. Covered with the pitch of yellow pine, and light enough to be carried on the shoulders of four men across portages, these canoes yet had toughness equal to any river voyage. They were provisioned with smoked meat and Indian corn. Shoved clear of the beach, they shot out on the blue water to the dip of paddles. Marquette waved his adieu. His Indians, remembering the dangers of that southern country, scarcely hoped ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... by substituting Mr. Harvey Davis of Oregon for Mr. Messick. It may be urged by gentlemen that the hardships and privations of a frontier life have rendered Mr. Davis tough; but, gentlemen, is this a time to cavil at toughness? Is this a time to be fastidious concerning trifles? Is this a time to dispute about matters of paltry significance? No, gentlemen, bulk is what we desire—substance, weight, bulk—these are the supreme requisites now—not talent, not genius, not education. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Let us first get a hint from what foreigners think of us ultra-modernized Americans. Wandering journalists, of an ethnological turn of mind, who visit these shores, profess to be struck with the slenderness, the apparent lack of toughness, the dyspeptic look, of the American physique. And from such observations it has been seriously argued that the stalwart English race is suffering inevitable degeneracy in this foreign climate. I have even seen it doubted ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... for a feeling of weakness and languor, from which it might be supposed that they understood the tonic properties of the plant had not the same decoction been used by the women as a hair wash, and by the ball players to bathe their limbs, under the impression that the toughness of the roots would thus be communicated to the hair or muscles. From this fact and from the name of the plant, which means at once hard, tough, or strong, it is quite probable that its roots are believed to give strength ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... charities still maintain a foothold. A cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has a virtue in it; and accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan toughness. All things beside seem to be called in for shelter, and what stays out must be part of the original frame of the universe, and of such valor as God himself. It is invigorating to breathe the cleansed air. Its greater fineness and purity are visible ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... Islanders are found to have much of the negro toughness and docility, and, as has been seen, when away from their homes they are easily amenable, and generally pleasant in manner, and intelligent. Often too they have a spirit of enterprise, which makes them willing to leave home, or some feud with a neighbour renders it convenient. Thus the earlier ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fastened; and as they wave up and down in the water with the dark mass around them, they must be almost indistinguishable from the wrack itself by the keenest-sighted of their enemies. This protective resemblance, coupled with the toughness and slipperiness of their leathery envelope or egg-shell, renders them almost perfectly secure from all evil-minded intruders. As a consequence, the dog-fish lay but very few eggs each season, and those few, large and well provided with nutriment for ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... forest life is in it All its mystery and its magic, All the tightness of the birch-tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews. And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in autumn, ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... Annealing. Toughness and Elasticity. The Process. Tempering. Tempering Contrasted with Annealing. Materials Used. Gradual Tempering. Fluxing. Uniting Metals. Alloying Method. Welding. Sweating. Welding Compounds. Oxidation. Soldering. Soft Solder. Hard Solder. Spelter. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... the beauty of the tree. An established tree is more valuable on this account. In some places hickories are quite subject to disease or to the attacks of borers. Like the walnuts, hickories which produce edible nuts are subject to the attacks of boys, but, on account of the toughness of the wood and the roughness of the bark, they are usually quite able to withstand these attacks. Hickories are suitable for use in all landscape work so far as their appearance is concerned. The fact that they are not so used is due to the difficulty of transplanting them. In the fall when ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... has a masculine spirit, And wherefore should I pule, and, like a girl, Put finger in the eye? Let's be all toughness Without distinction betwixt ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... the toughness of the handle, at any rate," cried Peterkin; "my arms are nearly pulled out of the sockets. But see here, our luck is great. There is iron on the blade." He pointed to a piece of hoop-iron ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... which was swept nearly clean of snow I noticed a small, but somehow ominous-looking drift at the southern end. It had such a disturbed, lashed-up appearance. The snow was still loose, yet packed just hard enough to have a certain degree of toughness. You could no longer swing your foot through it: had you run into it at any great speed, you would have fallen; but as yet it was not hard enough to carry you. I knew that kind of a drift; it is treacherous. On a later drive one just like it, only built on a vastly ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... Division did remarkably well in the recent fighting. I am not surprised, for I saw them training in England, and was impressed by their toughness—hard-bitten, short, powerfully built men, who took things ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... labor, effort, will undergo a weeding-out process. Populate the land with more animal life than it can support, or with more vegetable forms than it can sustain, and a weeding-out process will begin. A fuller measure of vitality, or a certain hardiness and toughness, will enable some species to hold on longer than others, and, maybe, keep up the fight till the struggle ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... Inside it is lined with cotton, and the cotton has a lining of fine white silk. You at once observe that it is intended to protect some delicate and precious article of jewelry, and that the maker of this box must have been acquainted with the strength of wood, the toughness of leather, the adhesiveness of glue, the softness and elasticity of cotton, the tenacity of silk, and the mode of spinning and weaving it, the form of the jewel to be placed in it, and the danger against which this box would protect it—ten entirely ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... classical though insipid bird on its back, and expose the plucked breast from which he was to dispense a delicate slice to each of the honourable company, unless any one should be of so independent a mind as to decline that expensive toughness and prefer ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... which was admired by every one. He then ordered a bureau of the same material, and when it was finished invited his friends to see the new work; amongst others, the Duchess of Buckingham begged a small piece of the precious wood, and it soon became the fashion. On account of its toughness, and peculiarity of grain, it was capable of treatment impossible with oak, and the high polish it took by oil and rubbing (not French polish, a later invention), caused it to come into great request. The term "putting one's knees under a friend's mahogany," probably dates ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... is due to the fact that they contain considerable protein in the form of gluten. This is the substance that produces elasticity in the dough mixture, a condition that is absolutely essential in the making of raised bread. In fact, the toughness and elasticity of bread dough are what make it possible for the dough to catch and hold air and gas and thus ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... Fundamental considerations and definitions Tensile strength Compressive or crushing strength Shearing strength Transverse or bending strength: Beams Toughness: Torsion ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... property belonged, as it still does, to the Ashburnham family, who are said to have derived great wealth from the manufacture of guns at their works, which were among the last carried on in Sussex. The Ashburnham iron was distinguished for its toughness, and was said to be equal to the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... inveterate imbiber of alcohol, he was never positively drunk during the whole voyage. The evil spirits seemed to make no impression upon the iron fibres of his stubborn brain and heart. He judged his morality by the toughness of his constitution, and congratulated himself on being a sober man, while he complained of his second mate, and stigmatised him as a drunken, worthless fellow, because one glass of punch made him intoxicated. This is by no means an ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... a good school for a boy with any toughness of mind or originality; but it tended in the case of normal and unreflective boys to develop a conventional type; good-mannered, sensible, with plenty of savoir faire, but with a wrong set of values. It made boys over-estimate athletics, despise intellectual things, ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson |
