"Flexibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seems, the farthest reach of the author's great talent. It is couched, like so much of his work, in the autobiographic form, which next to the dramatic form is the most natural, and which lends itself with such flexibility to the purpose of the author. In 'Barry Lyndon' there is imagined to the life a scoundrel of such rare quality that he never supposes for a moment but he is the finest sort of a gentleman; and so, in fact, he was, as most ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Irish opposition, and the flexibility of some members of the Government combining, the Irish Parliament voted the regency to the Prince without any limitation whatever. This naturally directed the attention of ministers to the hazard of a collision between ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... authors, Thackeray is my favorite. Humor, pathos, satire, ripe culture, knowledge of the world and of the human heart, instinctive good taste and a style equaled by none of his fellows in its clearness, ease, flexibility and winning charm—these are some of the traits that make the author of Vanity Fair and Esmond incomparably the first literary artist as well as the greatest writer of his age. Whether he would have been ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... appears more frequently in anaemic persons, in whom the flexibility and elasticity of the muscles are weakened, than in those of a plethoric habit. It is generally contracted during youth, between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Persons of sedentary and indolent habits are especially liable to this deformity, hence, girls are ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... of the general introduction of hollow backs is probably somewhat as follows: Leather was doubtless first chosen for covering the backs of books because of its toughness and flexibility; because, while protecting the back, it would bend when the book was opened and allow the back to "throw up" (see fig. 1, A). When gold tooling became common, and the backs of books were elaborately ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... moral bearing of the questions which were before the country; to discern the principles involved; and to so apply the principles to the questions as to clarify and illuminate them. There is little difficulty in accounting for the lucidity, simplicity, flexibility, and compass of Mr. Lincoln's style; it is not until we turn to its temperamental and spiritual qualities, to the soul of it, that we find ourselves perplexed ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... may shelter itself under the royal mantle of Shakespeare. The poet has here achieved what he too often fails in, the triple union of simplicity, pathos, and (in the best sense) elegance. The dangerous repetitions of "roses, roses," "tired, tired," &c., come all right; and above all he has the flexibility and quiver of metre that he too often lacks. His trisyllabic interspersions—the leap in the vein that makes iambic verse alive and passionate—are as happy as they can be, and the relapse into the uniform dissyllabic gives just the right contrast. He must be [Greek: ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... mouth, whose lips, creased in many lines, were full of love and kindness. The throat was exquisitely round. The bust, well curved and carefully covered, attracted the eye and inspired reverie. It lacked, no doubt, the grace which a fitting dress can bestow; but to a connoisseur the non-flexibility of her figure had its own charm. Eugenie, tall and strongly made, had none of the prettiness which pleases the masses; but she was beautiful with a beauty which the spirit recognizes, and none but artists truly love. A painter seeking here below for a ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... diseases, performed in an instant at his command; than by the expulsion of evil spirits out of the bodies of men? Certainly all the wonderful things done by him for the good of mankind, such as restoring sight to the blind, firmness and flexibility to relaxed or contracted nerves, calling the dead to life, changing the properties of the elements, and others of the same kind, are testimonies of the omnipotence of the creator of the world, and demonstrate the presence of God; who alone ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... shells. The fire-trench was almost empty, and in many cases the real defenders of the French line were men with machine guns, hidden in dug-outs at some distance from the photographed positions at which the German gunners aimed. The batteries of light guns, which the French handled with the flexibility and continuity of fire of Maxims, were also concealed in widely scattered positions. The main damage caused by the first intense bombardment was the destruction of all the telephone wires along the French front. In one hour the German guns plowed up every yard of ground behind the observing posts ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... of the finest faculties are often ill used by fortune, but they are often the worst used. Their conscious superiority renders them fastidious of the lower arts of success; their sense of honour disqualifies them for all those services which require flexibility of conscience; and their sensibility to injustice makes them retort public injury, by disdainfully abandoning the struggle, and retiring from the vulgar bustle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... himself down on the floor of the grotto he slept soundly. At his waking Mignonne was gone. He mounted the little hill to scan the horizon, and perceived her in the far distance returning with the long bounds peculiar to these animals, who are prevented from running by the extreme flexibility ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... "The Legrohs" relies chiefly on its most exceptional member, who would be complete without the other two. He is most decidedly a virtuoso in vaudeville. Very gifted, certainly, if at moments a little disconcerting in the flexibility and the seemingly uncertain turns of his body. It is the old-fashioned contortionism saved by charming acrobatic variations. This "Legroh" knows how to make a superb pattern with his body, and the things he does with it are done with such ease and skill as to make you forget the ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... may say that they require of the pianist's fingers individualization and, consequently, a flexibility that is spiritual as well as material. The diligent daily study of Bach will form your style, your technics, better than all machines and finger exercises. But play him as if he were human, a contemporary and not a ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... occasionally fails to fuse and shape disparate materials. It is likely to fall short when he essays fancy or mystery, as in A Life for a Life; or when he has a whimsy for amusing melodrama, as in His Great Adventure. The flexibility which reveals itself in humor or in the lighter irony is not one of his principal endowments. Restrained and direct as he always is so far as language goes, he cannot always keep his action absolutely in hand: this or that person or incident now and then breaks out of the pattern; ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... picture of which hung in the old hall at Kirklands, of a mixed group of Cavaliers and Puritans. This preacher seemed in his appearance curiously to combine the varied characteristics of both the types of men in these portraits. That graceful flexibility of tone and movement, the high forehead and waving locks, surely belong to the gallant old Cavalier, but there is something of the stern Puritan too. The resoluteness of the firm though mobile mouth betokens ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... reflect upon such happy incidents in the history of a profession that probably offers more difficulties to the beginner than any other. Yet the very obstacles to success in it are apt to develop an intellectual agility and a flexibility of morals which, in the long run, may well lead not only to fortune, but to fame—of one sort or another. I recall an incident in my own career, upon my ingenuity in which, for a time, I looked back with considerable professional pride, until I found it a common ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... Chinese hard and inelastic, and therefore incapable of bringing out the finer shades of thought and emotion. Answering one a priori argument with another, one might fairly retort that, if anything, flexibility is the precise quality to be predicated of a language in which any character may, according to the requirements of the context, be interpreted either as noun, verb or adjective. But all such reasoning is somewhat futile. It will scarcely be contended ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... struck one of these standing very wide open, and trod upon a rope's end curled like a snake on the leads. I stooped down, and at a touch I knew that I had hold of Raffles's favourite Manila, which united a silken flexibility with the strength of any hawser. It was tied to the window-post, and it dangled into a room in which there was a dull red glow of fire: an inhabited room if ever I put my nose in one! My body must follow, however, where Raffles had led the way; and when it did I came ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... the first origination of life on earth, could not have been repeated later and oftener. The nearer a generation was to these individuals originated through primitive generation, the greater was undoubtedly its flexibility and changeableness; the farther, the greater ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... coat of oil. Stretching himself along the huge trunk on the side furthest from the cabin, and thus sheltered by the whole breadth of the tree with its surrounding creepers, he began to climb silently, with as much patience as caution. In the undulations of his form, in the flexibility of his movements, in the restrained vigor, which fully put forth would have been alarming, there was some resemblance to the stealthy and treacherous advance of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... usual volcanic dust and ashes, there is sometimes thrown from the crater of a volcano a substance resembling spun- glass or asbestos. It possesses the flexibility and lustre of silk. The volcano of Salazes, in the Island of Bourbon, is remarkable for this substance, and it has there been seen to form a cloud covering the entire surface of the mountain. But it has also been found in other places. How curious it would be to have ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... deep eye and powerful tone, the actor capable of reaching the heights of dramatic passion. He was scarcely above the middle size, with features whose magic consisted in neither their strength nor beauty, but in their flexibility. I had never seen a countenance so capable of change, and in which the change was so instantaneous and so total. From the most sportive openness, a word threw it into the most indignant storm, or the most incurable despair. From wild joy, it was suddenly clouded with a weight of sorrow that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... the circulation is more languid in the later period of life. The joints are less supple; the arteries are more or less "ossified." Something like these changes has taken place in the mind. It has lost the flexibility, the plastic docility, which it had in youth and early manhood, when the gristle had but just become hardened into bone. It is the nature of poetry to writhe itself along through the tangled growths ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... "Upon a steelyard, or spring-balance, dependent upon mere tension or flexibility, the attraction will have no influence. If I suspend a weight equivalent to the weight of a kilogramme, the index will register the proper weight on the surface of Gallia. Thus I shall arrive at the difference I want: the difference between the earth's attraction and the comet's. Will ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... brilliancy, picturesqueness, replaced cold propriety, conventional elegance and trite periphrasis; in its form, melody, variety of rhythm, richness and sonority of rhyme, diversity of stanza structure and flexibility of line were sought and achieved, sometimes at the expense of the old rules. By 1830 the young poets, who were now fairly swarming, exhibited the general romantic coloring very clearly. Almost from the first VICTOR HUGO had been their leader. His earliest volume ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... Hellenic than he. This may be perceived in his version of the Greek legends in "Tanglewood Tales." His style is much like that of Isocrates. Where Webster or Emerson would use Saxon words, Hawthorne would use Greek or Latin ones, and gain in grace and flexibility what he lost in force and vigor. He would seem to have been a southerner by nature, fond of warm ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... importance of a free and easy position of the body are too closely confined with stays, attention to toilet, tightly fitting dress coats and the like, to admit of being represented as if nature had endowed them with least possible power of flexibility. To such we would suggest the following, to be well learned and retained in the mind while presenting themselves before ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... be a queer one," the landlord replied, as he illustrated sadly the discovery reserved for a riper age—that human fingers have attained their present flexibility, form, and skill by habit of assuaging, for some millions of ages, the woes of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... usual situation, which is the essential element in all originality. By entering into the life of the characters and identifying himself with them, he develops a large sympathy and a sense of power, he gains insight into life, and a care for the interests of the world. Thus imagination grows "in flexibility, in scope, and in sympathy, till the life which the individual lives is informed with the life of nature and of society," and acquires what Professor ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... also, a woman was born in Chester without hands, to whom nature had supplied a remedy for that defect by the flexibility and delicacy of the joints of her feet, with which she could sew, or perform any work with thread or scissors, ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... bushes to escape the heat and the flies, and that is about the extent of their surgery. The dog licks his wound; it no doubt soothes and relieves it. The cow licks her calf; she licks him into shape; it is her instinct to do so. That tongue of hers is a currycomb, plus warmth and moisture and flexibility. The cat always carries her kittens by the back of the neck; it is her best way to carry them, though I do not suppose this act is the result of experiment ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... moment or two of suspense, Barnes experienced a peculiar, almost electric shock. Some one had seized the tip of the rod; it stiffened suddenly, the vibrations due to its flexibility ceasing. He felt a gentle tugging and wrenching; down the slender rod ran a delicate shiver that seemed almost magnetic as it was communicated to his hand. He knew what was happening. Some one was untying the bit of paper he had fastened ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... he seemed to see that she might do what she liked with her face. It was an elastic substance, an element of gutta-percha, like the flexibility of the gymnast, the lady at the music-hall who is shot from the mouth of a cannon. He winced a little at this coarser view of the actress; he had somehow always looked more poetically at that priestess ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... convenient handle, has little or no influence in determining the manner in which lime leaves are dragged into the burrows. The considerable proportion, viz., 17 per cent., drawn in more or less transversely depends no doubt on the flexibility of these half-decayed leaves. The fact of so many having been drawn in by the middle, and of some few having been drawn in by the base, renders it improbable that the worms first tried to draw in most of the leaves by one or both of these ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... to study coloratura first. Then, as the voice broadens, deepens and takes on a richer timbre, it will turn naturally to the more dramatic expression. The voice needs this background, or foundation in the old Italian music, in order to acquire flexibility and freedom. I was not trained to follow this plan myself, but my daughter Louise, who is just starting out in her public career, has been brought up to this idea, which ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... educational privileges. From its very nature it can stand for no political or social propaganda. It must, in a sense, give the warm welcome of an inn to all such propaganda, if perchance one of them be found an angel. The only thing to be dreaded in the Settlement is that it lose its flexibility, its power of quick adaptation, its readiness to change its methods as its environment may demand. It must be open to conviction and must have a deep and abiding sense of tolerance. It must be hospitable and ready for experiment. It should demand ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... spoken—so does amiability sometimes get the better of the feminine scientific spirit. To the credit of human nature, I say; for, though her practice of the romancer's art may doubtless have given to this good lady some peculiar flexibility of mind, some special, individual facility in subordinating a lower truth to a higher, it surely may be affirmed, also, of humanity in general, that few things become ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... an earlier sentence. I have thought it best to give both. In the Origin, Ed. i. p. 141, vi. p. 176, the author gives his opinion that the power of resisting diverse conditions, seen in man and his domestic animals, is an example "of a very common flexibility ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... persons, that is, adults, or those of a middle age; as from the flexibility of their vessels, the strength of their muscles, and the abundance of their vital spirits, they can more easily sustain ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... this furnace will clearly indicate its adaptability, by reason of its flexibility, for any fuel and any design of stoker. The boiler lends itself readily to installation with an extension or Dutch oven furnace if this be demanded by the fuel to be used, and in general it may be stated that a satisfactory furnace arrangement may be made in connection with a Babcock ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... difficulties, that the workman should feel sure at least of his regular day's rate, which is secured him by Mr. Gantt's system in case he falls short of the full task. There is still another case of quite frequent occurrence in which the flexibility of Mr. Gantt's plan makes it the most desirable. In many establishments, particularly those doing an engineering business of considerable variety or engaged in constructing and erecting miscellaneous machinery, it is necessary to employ ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... gaze—half-shrinking—was fixed on the face so near to her; on the profound and resolute changes which had passed over the features which when she first saw them had still the flexibility of youth. The very curls and black hair lying piled above the forehead in which there were already two distinct transverse lines, seemed to have ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... claims is the combination of the balance beam with the centre beam, by means of the recesses in the centre beam, spring plates, having tubes thereon on which the springs rest, and attached to the beam by bolts, by which a compact and secure connection is formed, while all the necessary flexibility is preserved. ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... Pina), and almost equal the best quality of cambric; and, notwithstanding the many little nodules occasioned by the tangling of the fiber, which may be discerned on close inspection, are clearer and stouter, and possess a warmer yellowish tint. [225] As to these last three qualities—purity, flexibility, and color—they stand in relation to cambric ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... shrine of the genius of the old world; as universal as our race, as individual as ourselves; of infinite flexibility, or indefatigable strength, with the complication and the distinctness of Nature herself; to which nothing was vulgar, from which nothing was excluded; speaking to the ear like Italian, speaking to the mind like English; with words like pictures, with words ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... transmission of power vary in size from 3/8 to 7/8 inch diam. For from 3 to 300 horse power; to promote flexibility, the rope, made of iron, steel, or copper wire, as may be preferred, is provided with a core of hemp, and the speed is 1 mile per minute, more or less, as desired. Tho rope should run on a well-balanced, grooved, cast iron ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... point of these three Gaboon tongues, as the Rev. Mr. Mackey observes, is "the surprizing flexibility of the verb, the almost endless variety of parts regularly derived from a single root. There are, perhaps, no other languages in the world that approach them in the variety and extent of the inflections of the verb, possessing ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... doubt possible to attain, by means of cultivation, to great nicety of discrimination within the narrow circle to which it limits and circumscribes them. But no man can be a true critic or connoisseur without universality of mind, without that flexibility which enables him, by renouncing all personal predilections and blind habits, to adapt himself to the peculiarities of other ages and nations—to feel them, as it were, from their proper central point, and, what ennobles human nature, to recognise and duly appreciate ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... this attempt. Since the age of Chaucer, at least, that is for more than 400 years, our language has been increased by continual transfusions from the French. To these have been added, from time to time, similar accessions from other languages, both ancient and modern. Thus a copiousness and a flexibility, which in the instance of the Greek seem to have arisen out of that subtilty of intellect which gave birth to endless subdivision and distinction, have been in some measure compensated in our own by the influxes which it has received from ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... his enormous feet, curving his arms, throwing back his shoulders, arching his chest, with a mixture of awkwardness, fatuity and stiffness the most curious and the most exhilarating.... In his general aspect," adds this merciless critic, "he recalls the circus-rider, minus the latter's flexibility: skin-tight garments, simpering mouth, smile of a dancing-girl, attempt to be impertinent and irresistible which culminates only in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... marshaled a long list of arguments to prove that exclusion of the Negro was not discriminatory, but "a means of promoting efficiency, dependability, and flexibility of the Navy as a whole." It concluded that no change in policy was necessary since "within the limitations of the characteristics of members of certain races, the enlisted personnel of the Naval Establishment is representative of all the citizens ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... seems only the natural mode of expression for those who so firmly, compactly and sternly carried their eagles in triumph over the world and assembled the deities of conquered nations in their own Pantheon; while the marvelous grace and flexibility spread like a transparent veil of ravishing beauty over the well-posed members of a Greek sentence could emanate, from no source so naturally as the gay, beauty-loving sons of the Hellenes, whose conceptions of beauty are the ideals ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... to the full as efficient as that of the West; for what it lacked in weight of metal, it gained in superior adroitness in the use of weapons, in the greater facility of its movements, and the better temper and flexibility of its armour. All these features of a high—though, as it proved, a less enduring—civilization are noted with wonder and applause by the early travellers, who cannot sufficiently express their admiration of such ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... worldly advantage lies. They are not schemers or financiers. The reason resides in a native politeness, a heritage, some have conjectured, from their Spanish forefathers. One sees hints of Spanish blood also in the exceptional flexibility and good carriage of the Walcheren women. Whatever the cause of Zeeland's friendliness, there it is; and in Middelburg the foreigner wanders at ease, almost as comfortable and self-possessed as if he were ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... of the old rhythmic story of "Jack's House" is a good illustration of the scope and flexibility of our language, and suggests the fact that tautological errors of writing need seldom ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... songs are placed before him almost as soon as he has mastered the elements of music. At a time, when his whole study and endeavour should be to form and cultivate the voice, and by long, patient, and persevering exercise, to develop and command its powers, and to acquire flexibility and certainty of execution, his efforts are expended in learning—as it is called—songs. This process may be carried on ad infinitum; but none of the objects of the pupil's study can be ever sung, in the real acceptation of the term, on this method of instruction. The well-known ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... was placed upon the books. The tariff, which became a law on October 3, 1913, was a revision whose downward tendency was beyond dispute. The Federal Reserve Act, revising the banking laws in the interest of flexibility and decentralization, was signed on December 23 of the same year. In January, 1914, President Wilson laid before Congress his plan of trust control, advocating a commission with powers over trade coordinate with those of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... with an interest quite paternal, and showing a workman's wisdom in this, that only when he saw him in a real difficulty would he come to his aid—as, for instance, when first he struggled with a piece of leather too thick for the bonds of paste, and must be taught how to pare it to the necessary flexibility and compliance. ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... even of these films, and of several other bodies, as we can these of Cork; there seems no probable reason to the contrary, but that we might as readily render the true reason of all their Phaenomena; as namely, what were the cause of the springingess, and toughness of some, both as to their flexibility and restitution. What, of the friability or brittleness of some others, and the like; but till such time as our Microscope, or some other means, enable us to discover the true Schematism and Texture of all kinds of bodies, we must grope, as it were, in the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... think, in the winter of 1773, that "the Iron hand of oppression tearing the choicest Fruit from the Fair Tree of Liberty" was a figure of speech which did not shape itself with nice flexibility to the exact form and pressure of observable facts. It is the limitation of moderate men to be much governed by observable facts; and if the majority could not at once rise to the rhetoric of Samuel Adams, it was doubtless because ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... also differs from that of the man in possessing greater softness and flexibility. These qualities depend upon the nature of its skeleton, which is composed of more bones than later in life, when several have fused together to form one to give the mature body a more rigid frame. ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... the delicacy of lace, and the glitter of jewels, I slipped on my spectacles, and saw a peacock's feather, flounced, and furbelowed, and fluttering; or an iron rod, thin, sharp, and hard; nor could I possibly mistake the movement of the drapery for any flexibility of ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... to wrongful conclusions, the legislature must intervene with a statute rectifying the wrong. The Romans, who were gifted with a higher legal genius than we, managed better. The praetor, by his edict, suppressed inconvenient precedents, and hence the Romans maintained flexibility in their municipal law without falling into confusion. We have nothing to correspond ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... head of water; flexibility; reliability; power conditions; mechanical efficiency; capital outlay. Systems of drainage,—steam pumps, compressed-air pumps, electrical pumps, rod-driven pumps, bailing; comparative value of ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... democratic view of life is conceived, not for emergencies and dangers, but for tranquillity and harmony. And so where masses of people must cooperate in an uncertain and eruptive environment, it is usually necessary to secure unity and flexibility without real consent. The symbol does that. It obscures personal intention, neutralizes discrimination, and obfuscates individual purpose. It immobilizes personality, yet at the same time it enormously sharpens the intention of the group and welds that group, as nothing else in a crisis ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... we have shown the disinterestedness which culture enjoins, and its obedience not to likings or dislikings, but to the aim of perfection, let us show its flexibility,—its independence of machinery. That [lii] other and greater prophet of intelligence, and reason, and the simple natural truth of things,—Mr. Bright,—means by these, as we have seen, a certain set of measures which suit the special ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... and proportion—made them in politics and letters the leaders of mankind. "Do nothing in excess," was their favorite maxim. They hated every thing that was out of proportion. Their language, without a rival in flexibility and symmetry and in perfection of sound, is itself, though a spontaneous creation, a work of art. "The whole language resembles the body of an artistically trained athlete, in which every muscle, every sinew, is developed into full play, where there is no trace of tumidity ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... as in the uplifting of her eyelids, the bending of her fingers, the pouting of her lip. The carriage of her head—motion within motion—a glide upon a glide—was as delicate as that of a magnetic needle. And this flexibility and elasticity had never been taught her by rule, nor even been acquired by observation, but, nullo cultu, had naturally developed itself with her years. In childhood, a stone or stalk in the way, which had been the inevitable occasion of a fall to her playmates, had usually left ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... the branches of their family that belong to England or the English counties where they were rooted; and there are enthusiasms for English literature and history which are as spontaneous as patriotism itself. Something of this may be put down to a certain promptitude and flexibility in all American kindness, which is never sufficiently stodgy to be called good nature. The Englishman does sometimes wonder whether if he had been a Russian, his hosts would not have remembered remote Russian aunts and uncles and ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... convenient to demonstrate the retention of awkward positions in the upward extremities. But any part or even the whole body may be involved; for example, Charles O. retained standing positions even where balance was difficult. This phenomenon is often accompanied by "waxy flexibility," where the joints move stiffly but retain whatever bend is given them, like a doll ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... unknown among women of any station in English society, has become the most ordinary accomplishment. Their object is to put into life from youth to old age as much as life can give, and they go far to attain their end. A wonderful nimbleness and flexibility of intellect capable of turning swiftly from subject to subject has been developed, and keeps them in touch with a very wide range both of interests ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... what is from the will cannot be involuntary. But some violent actions proceed from the will: for instance, when a man with a heavy body goes upwards; or when a man contorts his limbs in a way contrary to their natural flexibility. Therefore ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... culture of a raw tarpaulin, such physical surgery is, I think, a common way of 'making character'; perhaps it is, indeed, the only way. We can put in the quaint figure that spoke a hundred words with us yesterday by the wayside; but do we know him? Our friend with his infinite variety and flexibility, we know-but can we put him in? Upon the first, we must engraft secondary and imaginary qualities, possibly all wrong; from the second, knife in hand, we must cut away and deduct the needless arborescence of his nature, but the trunk and the few branches ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of utmost flexibility. This flexibility appears also in art instruction, and it is for this reason that in no two institutions of higher learning is the problem of art instruction attacked in the same way. There is, consequently, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... which were much used in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as giving protection by means of numerous small plates of metal disposed between the thicknesses of the material covering and lining them, and also great flexibility. In the cases on the right hand are specimens of chain mail in form of hoods, coats, sleeves, &c, mostly, if not all, of Eastern origin. Observe also some bronze swords ...
— Authorised Guide to the Tower of London • W. J. Loftie
... she did not possess that agility of purpose which, at a moment's notice, could enable her to twist her intentions—a mental somersault that needs the double-jointedness of cunning and all the consummate flexibility of tact. He might know that she had followed them, but she must never admit it. It seemed a feasible argument to her, in the whirling panic of her thoughts, that her admission would be fatal—just as the prisoner in the dock pleads "not guilty" against all the damning evidence of ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... the suppression of individuality. There will have to be sufficient authority lodged in those who exercise oversight to enable them to lead the Christian forces and administer their resources. But we dare not curtail the freedom of conscience, or impede liberty of prophesying, or turn flexibility of organization into rigidity, lest we hamper the Spirit, who divideth to every man severally even as He will. We do not want "metallic beliefs and regimental devotions," but the personal convictions of thinking ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... 226: Cf. Buttm. Lexil. p. 66. I. e. "a belt which he could easily move, and which, from its suppleness and flexibility, yielded to the pressure of ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... and social workers in after years, that this kind of "visiting" presents many perplexities to persons of a certain temperament, but I never entered any house where I felt the least sensation of being out of place. I don't think this flexibility is a gift of especially high order, nor that it would be equally valuable in all walks of life, but it is of great service in this sort of work. Whether I sat in a stuffed chair or on a nailkeg or an inverted washtub it was always ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... significant that whereas it was the soldier-admirals who first introduced formal tactics, it was a seaman's school that forced them to pedantry in the face of the last of the soldier-school, who tried to preserve their flexibility, and keep the end clear in view above the ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... evident, would seem to outweigh the difficulties encountered in metering and injecting minute quantities of fuel at the proper instant. Although the Diesel engine suffers upon comparison with the Otto cycle engine in flexibility there seems to be a definite field for employment of Diesels and a gradual extension of their use ...
— The First Airplane Diesel Engine: Packard Model DR-980 of 1928 • Robert B. Meyer
... Almanac of the Oppressed). In fact, it is aimed wholly at the Society of Jesuits, whose history it exposes in the blackest colors. It begins with the early life of Loyola, depicts his debaucheries, his ambition, the religious mechanism invented by his enthusiastic and fanatical genius, the flexibility of his morality, and goes on to give an account of the intrigues and crimes of his successors in various countries and times, with an analysis of their books, their missions and their miracles. Another of these publications is called ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... impresario, well-known by sight to regular opera goers and musicians generally. Having established his identity, the reason of his presence there that afternoon was at once apparent. The Tenor had been requested to sing a solo which was admirably calculated to display the range and flexibility of his voice to the best advantage, and the impresario had been brought to hear him. The mountain ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... quality of paper, now known as linen paper, had the merits of strength, flexibility, and durability in a high degree, but it was set aside by the copyists because the fabric was too thick and the surface was too rough. The art of calendering or polishing papers until they were of a smooth, glossy surface, which was then practised ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... vice capable of making us comic is, on the contrary, that which is brought from without, like a ready-made frame into which we are to step. It lends us its own rigidity instead of borrowing from us our flexibility. We do not render it more complicated; on the contrary, it simplifies us. Here, as we shall see later on in the concluding section of this study, lies the essential difference between comedy and drama. A drama, even when portraying passions or vices that bear a name, so completely ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... or where the mysteries of Christian doctrine have to so great an extent been made the subject of earnest discussion in every household. Hence we find in the New England of to-day a deep religious sense combined with singular flexibility of mind and ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... boards as the chief erudite measure in Spanish verse for four centuries, and taken all in all it is the noblest metrical form for serious poems in modern Spanish. A striking peculiarity of the line is its flexibility. It is not divided into hemistichs as were its predecessors, the 14-syllable Alexandrine and the 12-syllable arte mayor verse; but it consists of two phrases and the position of the inner rhythmic accent is usually variable. page lxiii A well constructed line of ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... construction. The suspension bridge dispenses with the compression member required in girders and with a good deal of the stiffening required in metal arches. On the other hand, suspension bridges require lofty towers and massive anchorages. The defect of the suspension bridge is its flexibility. It can be stiffened by girders and bracing and is then of mixed type, when it loses much of its advantage in economy. Nevertheless, the stiffened suspension bridge will probably be the type adopted in future for very great spans. A bridge on this system has been projected at New York of 3200 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... the moonlight, with his back to Jane, his face uplifted, and his hands clasped around one knee, Garth sang. Much practice had added greatly to the sweetness and flexibility of his voice; and he rendered perfectly the exquisite melody to which the ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... slender in figure and his movements were like quicksilver. His hair was black and straight and long, especially over the ears, and he had long, slender, delicate hands, which one noticed at once for their uncommon flexibility and deftness. ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... had been one of mild interest rather than of rapture. But she looked so lovely in the green world about her, her pink cheeks, her simple light dress, and the delicate flexibility of her movement acquired such rarity from their wild-wood setting, that his eyes kindled as ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... etc., are longer, and being more slender, have a certain amount of flexibility, but it does not appear that this latter qualification is sought for or considered indispensable. On the other hand, the now nearly obsolete Kokiu of Japan had a bow of about forty-five inches in length that was extremely elastic. It was made in sections after the manner ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... inexplicable pains and diseases. And not only have we to remember that we are dealing with disharmonies that may at the very best be only patched together, but we are dealing with matters in which the element of idiosyncrasy is essential, insisting upon an incalculable flexibility in any rule we make, unless we are to take types and indeed whole classes of personality and write them down as absolutely bad and fit only for suppression and restraint. And on the mental side we are further perplexed ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... a limit to the flexibility of gentle-souled women. Milly by this time had so grown to the idea of being one flesh with this young man, of having the right to bear his name as she bore it; had so thoroughly come to regard ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... school which he formed, not only imitated the spirit and form of the ancients, but aimed to subject his own language to combinations and inversions like those of the Greek and Latin, and foreign roots and phrases began to overpower the reviving flexibility of the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the Parthenon. Here a vast vault was introduced, the colonnade disappeared, the architrave was rounded into an arch from column to column, the capitals of these were changed from concave to convex, and a thousand other changes in structure and ornament introduced flexibility and variety. Architecture could in this way, precisely because more vague and barbarous, better adapt itself to the conditions of the new epoch. Perfect taste is itself a limitation, not because it intentionally excludes any excellence, but because ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro, by writing for a particular singer. The part of Figaro was, in fact, composed for Benucci. The sparkling brilliancy of Rossini would perhaps never have been so fully developed, had not the skill and flexibility of voice possessed by the singer David, for whom he wrote, enabled him to indulge it to the uttermost. The characters thus imparted to the music of the day are necessarily perishable and evanescent, to be again superseded ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... recollection of the subject, went through the whole tragedy. The scene thus portrayed was interesting although horrible. No actor, trained in the strictest rules of his art, could compete with George's vehemence of action. The flexibility of his features enabled him to vary the expression of each passion; and he represented hatred, anger, horror, and the imploring of mercy so ably that, in short, one would have imagined he had spent his whole life in practising ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... Braintree fair; and in the decline of life spent his days like an amateur. But Cheetre, for such was his real name, was haunted amidst his glory by a rival. Will Wimbars had a voice of as much flexibility as Dick. Dick was the most popular, for he sang every thing he could, but Will had a select list he never departed from. The former was sought as a companion; the latter pleased best in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... But flexibility is absolutely essential to a party system that adequately serves a growing democracy. And under a two-party system, as ours is probably bound to remain, the independent voter usually holds the balance of power. He may be merely ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... view of our heroine as she advances to her place in the ladies' line. She belonged to the taller division of middle height. Flexibility was her first characteristic, by which she appeared to enjoy the most easeful rest when she was in gliding motion. Her dark eyes—arched by brows of so keen, slender, and soft a curve, that they resembled nothing so much as two slurs in music—showed primarily a bright sparkle each. ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... and motions were all distinct, clear, and neat; proceeding from a strength so suppled, as to give their joints all the requisite flexibility and ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... storms or conflicts,—they plainly showed the inexhaustible resources of impetuous senses and the appetites of instinct; just as every motion revealed the perfection of the man's physical apparatus, the flexibility of his senses, and their fidelity when brought into play. This man might contend with savages, and hear, as they do, the tread of enemies in distant forests; he could follow a scent in the air, a trail on the ground, or see on the horizon the signal of a friend. His ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... always aimed at this flexibility. I think a mother, especially, ought to learn to enter into the gayer moods of her children at the very moment when her own heart is sad. And it may be as religious an act for her to romp with them at the time as to pray with ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... tell you what Goethe, the great German, said of this man: "If you wish depth, genius, imagination, taste, reason, sensibility, philosophy, elevation, originality, nature, intellect, fancy, rectitude, facility, flexibility, precision, art, abundance, variety, fertility, warmth, magic, charm, grace, force, an eagle sweep of vision, vast understanding, instruction rich, tone excellent, urbanity, suavity, delicacy, correctness, purity, cleanness, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... habits will in time conform. Nothing has brought pedagogical theory into greater disrepute than the belief that it is identified with handing out to teachers recipes and models to be followed in teaching. Flexibility and initiative in dealing with problems are characteristic of any conception to which method is a way of managing material to develop a conclusion. Mechanical rigid woodenness is an inevitable corollary of any theory which ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... and, killing them, stand erect themselves. The bark of a fine tree found in abundance here, and called "motuia", is used by the Barotse for making fish-lines and nets, and the "molompi", so well adapted for paddles by its lightness and flexibility, was abundant. There were other trees quite new to my companions; many of them ran up to a height of fifty feet of one thickness, and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... quite as well? But as survivals their presence is fully accounted for, since they are indispensable to many of the lower animals. Question may also be made of the utility of the large number of bones in the wrist and heel of man. Equal flexibility of the joint could certainly have been obtained with a smaller number of bones. It is only when these are traced back to their probable origin in the walking organs of the fish ancestor of the batrachians that their presence becomes explainable. They are apparently ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... them is spoken or understood by white men in all Oregon and Washington Territory. Notwithstanding its apparent poverty in number of words, and the absence of grammatical forms, it possesses much more flexibility and power of expression than might be imagined, and really serves almost every ...
— Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or, Trade Language of Oregon • George Gibbs
... are more numerous, relations are more shifting, intellectual affinities and repulsions are felt constantly; mental interactions are so frequent that stability of beliefs and independence of thought give way to flexibility and uncertainty and openness to impression. Group influence asserts its power over ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... muscles, while all below the knee is useless, as also are the fingers. Slowly the leg and foot are degraded to locomotion, slowly the great toe becomes more limited in its action, the thumb increases in flexibility and strength of opposition, and the fingers grow more mobile and controllable. As the body slowly assumes the vertical attitude, the form of the chest changes till its greatest diameter is transverse instead of from front to back. The shoulder-blades ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... reasoning, Julian had arrived at the same conclusion; in which, therefore, he heartily acquiesced. During the seaman's prosing, he was reflecting within himself, how much of the singular flexibility of her limbs and movements the unfortunate girl must have derived from the discipline and instructions of Adrian Brackel; and also how far the germs of her wilful and capricious passions might have been sown during her wandering and adventurous ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... of peculiar volume, mellowness, and flexibility was heard. The whistler was trilling 'Come lasses and lads' in tones as delightful as ...
— Bulldog And Butterfly - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... the armor was spaceworthy, Stevens picked up the coils of drag-line, built of a non-metallic fiber which could retain its flexibility and strength in the bitter cold of outer space, and led the girl into ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... differently trained from heavy ones. Madame Carvalho, who began her studies in his school, did not alter the flexible but feeble organ she brought there. Mlle. Chaudesaigues and Mlle. Jacob, under Delsarte's tuition, attained to marvels of flexibility, without losing any of ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... economy, private individuals and business firms make most of the decisions, and government buys needed goods and services predominantly in the private marketplace. US business firms enjoy considerably greater flexibility than their counterparts in Western Europe and Japan in decisions to expand capital plant, lay off surplus workers, and develop new products. At the same time, they face higher barriers to entry in their rivals' home ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Hudson, is extremely like the cypress, straight, slender, with erect, compressed ramification, and feathered to the ground, but its foliage is neither so dark nor so dense, the tree does not attain the majestic height of the cypress, nor has it the lithe flexibility of that tree. In mere shape, the Lombardy poplar nearly resembles this latter, but it is almost a profanation to compare the two, especially when they are agitated by the wind; for under such circumstances, the one is the most majestic, the other the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... already regrettable; but this imprisonment of centuries within the past, within the grooves of tradition, was far more serious and dangerous. It was all Catholicism which was thus imprisoned, whose dogmas and sacerdotal organisation were obstinately immobilised. Perhaps, in spite of its apparent flexibility, Catholicism was really unable to yield in anything, under peril of being swept away, and therein lay both its weakness and its strength. And then what a terrible world was there, how great the pride and ambition, how numerous the hatreds and rivalries! And how strange the prison, how singular ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... governor and council have wrought a necromantic miracle. I should not wonder if he were to crumble away, some morning, after you are gone, and nothing be seen of him more, except a heap of dust. Miss Hepzibah, at any rate, will lose what little flexibility she has. They both exist ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... than four feet eight inches high, but his limbs were of Herculean mould. His hands, especially, were so enormously thick and broad as hardly to retain a human shape. His arms, as well as legs, were bowed in the most singular manner, and appeared to possess no flexibility whatever. His head was equally deformed, being of immense size, with an indentation on the crown (like that on the head of most negroes), and entirely bald. To conceal this latter deficiency, which did not proceed from old age, he usually wore a wig formed of any hair-like material ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... rigid outlines of a soul buffeted by Destiny. Gallatin—the urbane, cosmopolitan Gallatin—must have derived much quiet amusement from his association with this robust New Englander who took himself so seriously. Two natures could not have been more unlike, yet the superior flexibility of Gallatin's temperament made their association not only possible but exceedingly profitable. We may not call their intimacy a friendship—Adams had few, if any friendships; but it contained the essential foundation for friendship—complete ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... please you very much, would it, darling?" says Adolphe, clasping Caroline round the waist, and noticing that she leans upon him as if to show the flexibility of her form. ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... The strongest and most reliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside, is by the flukes or tail; and as from its greater density that part is relatively heavier than any other (excepting the side-fins), its flexibility even in death, causes it to sink low beneath the surface; so that with the hand you cannot get at it from the boat, in order to put the chain round it. But this difficulty is ingeniously overcome: a small, strong line is prepared with a wooden float ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... to the factory all in big hanks of even thread. Nowadays it is usually of cotton, although they contend at the Gobelins that wool warp is preferable, for it gives the finished fabric a lightness and flexibility that the heavier, ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... 1815 and 1821, the great essayists, M. de Bonald and M. de Maistre (those two eagles of thought)—all the lighter French literature, in short, that appeared during that sudden outburst of first vigorous growth might bring delight into her solitary life, but not flexibility of mind or body. She stood strong and straight like some forest tree, lightning-blasted but still erect. Her dignity became a stilted manner, her social supremacy led her into affectation and sentimental over-refinements; she queened it with her foibles, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... make hard things easy to follow, it is a style like Bergson's. A 'straightforward' style, an american reviewer lately called it; failing to see that such straightforwardness means a flexibility of verbal resource that follows the thought without a crease or wrinkle, as elastic silk underclothing follows the movements of one's body. The lucidity of Bergson's way of putting things is what all readers are first struck by. It seduces you and bribes you in advance ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... alone the prerogative of an aristocracy. "It is the place of a court to make its servants insignificant. If the people should fall into the same humor, and should choose their servants on the same principles of mere obsequiousness and flexibility, and total vacancy and indifference of opinion in all public matters, then no party of the state will be sound, and it will be vain to think of saving it." Thus writes Burke, the champion of our American revolt against his own country. The ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... update of the 1993 "social pact," which has been widely credited with having brought Italy's inflation into conformity with EMU requirements. Italy must work to stimulate employment, promote wage flexibility, hold down the growth in pensions, and tackle the informal economy. Growth was 1.3% in 1999 and should edge up to 2.6% in 2000, led by ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... her, but not all. She has merit, very great merit; and with cultivation (instruction) she will rank among the very first vocalists of the age. She has a voice of great sweetness and power, with a wider range from the lowest to the highest notes than we have ever listened to: flexibility is not wanting, and her control of it is beyond example for a new and untaught vocalist. Her performance was received with marked approbation and applause from those who ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... covering and used to suspend incandescent lamps and at the same time to conduct the current to them. It is also used for other similar service, such as acting as conductors for small motors. Often each conductor is composed of a number of thin wires laid together. This gives flexibility to ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... my companion, and thickly covered with hair, with bushy tails, which they kept carefully erect so as not to touch the ground; creatures much resembling monkeys in movement, size, and length, and flexibility of limb, but in other respects more like gigantic squirrels. They held the stalks of the fruit they plucked in their mouths, filling with them large bags left at intervals, and from the manner in which they worked I suspected that they ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... unionists are those men and women who recognize the limitations of industrial organization, but who value it for its flexibility, for the ease with which it can be transformed into a training-school, a workers' university, while all the while it is providing a fortified stronghold from behind whose shelter the industrial struggle can be successfully carried on, and ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... are, in a state of nature almost continually in action both by night and by day. They either walk, creep, or advance rapidly by prodigious bounds; but they seldom run, owing, it is believed, to the extreme flexibility of their limbs and vertebral column, which cannot preserve the rigidity necessary to that species of movement. Their sense of sight, especially during twilight, is acute; their hearing very perfect, and their perception of smell less so than in the dog tribe. Their most obtuse sense is that of taste; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... signing documents, and went out behind the duchess, with the perfect sang-froid of a husband accustomed to such manoeuvres. What marvellously skilful workman, what incomparable maker of toys was able to endow the human countenance with its flexibility, its wonderful elasticity? Nothing could be prettier than that great nobleman's face, surprised with his adultery on his lips, the cheeks inflamed by the vision of promised delights, and suddenly assuming a serene expression of conjugal ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet |
