"Pliable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... useful in building piers (Fig. 78). But if you are in the woods, out of reach of barrels or other civilized lumber, you can make yourself cribs by driving a square or a circle of sticks in the ground a short distance and then twining roots or pliable branches inside and outside the stakes, basket fashion, as shown in Fig. 76. When the crib is complete it may be carefully removed from the ground and used as the barrels were used by filling them with stones to support the uprights. Fig. 79 shows an ordinary ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... of the breastbone. Long hairs denote age. (b) Turkeys.—These should be plump, have smooth, dark legs, and soft cartilage. (c) Geese.—These should be plump and have many pin feathers; they should also have pliable bills ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... Over his deer-skin vest he had drawn the coat of mail—that steel tissue, as pliable as cloth, as hard as diamonds; next, clothing his arms and legs in their proper armor, and his feet in iron-bound buskins, and concealing all this defensive equipment under loose trousers and an ample pelisse carefully ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... prove too dangerous and fatal, I was advised with for an antidote, who prescribed this infallible receipt of taking a wife, a creature so harmless and silly, and yet so useful and convenient, as might mollify and make pliable the stiffness and morose humour of man. Now that which made Plato doubt under what genus to rank woman, whether among brutes or rational creatures, was only meant to denote the extreme stupidness and Folly of that sex, a sex so unalterably simple, that for any of them to thrust ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... the barbaric vigor of the North with the delicate and infinitely pliable sensuousness of the South, the classic union of Strength and Desire, Chivalry was born. Leaping forth to light and power, a majestic creation, glittering in the knightly panoply, noble by its knightly vows, it stood resplendent against the dark background of the past ages, the inevitable and legitimate ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... outer garment, when needed, and for his cover at night. Many of the more important "big injins" owned also a buffalo robe. This was the whole hide of the buffalo, with the hair on it, the inner side tanned to a soft, pliable leather, and the irregularities of its natural shape neatly cut away. It furnished the owner an excellent storm robe, sufficient protection, head to ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... quart of whole-wheat flour mix a large cup of must be very stiff, and rendered soft and pliable by thorough kneading and afterward pounding with a mallet for at least half an hour in the following manner: Pound the dough oat flat, and until of the same thickness throughout; dredge lightly with flour; double the dough over evenly and pound ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... settling nowhere." Robert Southey, whose prose style was the perfection of neatness, and who was intimate with Coleridge throughout his life, laments that it is "extraordinary that he should write in so rambling and inconclusive a manner;" his mind, which was undoubtedly very pliable and subtle, "turning and winding, till you get weary ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... lib. xi., 3. The translations of these epithets are "open, obscure, full, thin, light, rough, shortened, lengthened, harsh, pliable, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... dozen fluttered young girls on her mind, whom she was providing with programmes, seats, ices, occasional murmured remarks and general support and protection. When the concert was over she supplied them with further entertainment in the form of several young men who had pliable backs and flashing breastpins and whom she inarticulately introduced to them, which gave her still more to do, as after this serious step she had to stay and watch all parties. It was strange to Raymond to see her transformed ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... conclusion, that of all men he was acquainted with, one at least never failed to right his humour; and that one was yonder flabby, pallid fellow with the velvet collar to his coat, and the rings on his fingers, and the gold hair, named Pliable, who sat beside Mr. Stubborn on the settle by ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... were dropped down at intervals; everywhere was green quiet, softened, made to glow enticingly by the sun's red disk about to dip behind the little hills.... All this Ruth saw and loved. It was an unaccustomed sight, for she was tied to the city. It altered her mood, softened her, made her more pliable. Bonbright could have planned no better than to have driven ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... geese should begin to fatten at six or seven weeks old, and be fed as above. Stubble geese require no fattening, if they have the run of good fields and pasture.—If geese are bought at market, for the purpose of cooking, be careful to see that they are fresh and young. If fresh, the feet will be pliable: if stale, dry and stiff. The bill and feet of a young one will be yellow, and there will be but few hairs upon them: if old, they will be red. Green geese, not more than three or four months old, should be scalded: a stubble goose ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... more one's under a good influence the better. The only thing is to see our steps as we take them—to understand them as we go. That, no doubt, I shall always do. I needn't be afraid of becoming too pliable; isn't it my fault that I'm not pliable enough?" It is said that imitation is the sincerest flattery; and if Isabel was sometimes moved to gape at her friend aspiringly and despairingly it was not so much because she desired herself to ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... the whole length of the front, and to about nine inches from the point at the back. The hilt is a roomy basket of iron, though in some Universities a bell-hilted sword is used, and in that case the guard is similar to the first position in sabre fencing or single stick. The blade is very pliable and not highly tempered, so that in unskilful hands it is apt to ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... taken to keep the hose soft and pliable, and to prevent its being affected by mildew. After being used, in order to dry them equally they should be hung up by the centre, with the two ends hanging down, until half dry. They should then be ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... business was uppermost, and business always is uppermost with you. I sometimes wonder if you think a woman has a soul. As for my marriage—you saw that Tom could be useful to you. He had the various distinctive points you have mentioned. Better than that he was pliable, capable of being molded to perform your work, to manipulate machine politics and procure for you the legislation you desired. You did not consider what kind of a husband he would make for your daughter whom ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... the day marched from ten to fifteen miles. And as they passed through it they laid waste the land. Railroads were torn up and thoroughly destroyed. The sleepers were made into piles and set alight, the rails were laid on the top of the bonfires, and when hot enough to be pliable were twisted beyond all possibility of being used again. Telegraph wires and poles were torn down, factories were burned, only private ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... so attractive to men in a young girl, were doubtless incompatible with "the solid comfort of a wife," and I must have been inexpressibly tiring to the Rev. Frank Besant. And, in truth, I ought never to have married, for under the soft, loving, pliable girl there lay hidden, as much unknown to herself as to her surroundings, a woman of strong dominant will, strength that panted for expression and rebelled against restraint, fiery and passionate emotions that were seething under compression—a ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... elastic and pliable to every new emergency—it may be, too pliable; and her system of ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... is here rendered 'made strong,' might be translated 'made pliable,' or 'flexible' conveying the notion of deftness and dexterity rather than that of simple strength. It is practised strength that He will give, the educated hand and arm, masters of the manipulation ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... order his dinner when he pleases. He must breakfast at nine, and dine at six, as others do—or go without. And whether he dine, or whether he do not, he must pay. The Medes and Persians were lax and pliable in their laws in comparison with ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... she had made them out of thin plates of gold and attached them in place by means of stitches through tiny holes bored in the metal. Gold is the most common metal in the Land of Oz and is used for many purposes because it is soft and pliable. ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... and Che' Mat Tukang—had rushed out, but all of them had gone back again to remove their effects, with the exception of Tungku Long himself, who stood looking at the flames. He was armed with a rattan-work shield, and an ancient and very pliable native sword. As he stood gazing upwards, quite unaware that any trouble, other than that involved by the conflagration, was toward, To' Kaya rushed upon him and stabbed him with his spear in the ribs. For a long time they fought, Tungku Long lashing To' Kaya with his little pliable sword, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... "tack," "short small," "small," "long small," "threepenny," "middleboro" and "great." Rods of two to three years' growth, known as "sticks," are used to form the rigid framework of the bottoms and lids of square work. In every case, except the last, the stuff is soaked in tanks to render it pliable before use—brown from three to seven days, white and buff from half-an-hour to half a day. The rods are used whole for ordinary work, but for baskets of slight and finer texture each is divided into "skains" of different degrees of size. "Skains" are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... before weaving it. Several minutes before you are ready to begin work, take four or five strands of the cane, and, after having doubled them up singly into convenient lengths and tied each one into a single knot, put them into the water to soak. The cane is much more pliable and is less liable to crack in bending when worked while wet. As fast as the soaked cane is used, more of it should be put into ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... encouraged, by this, to think that he was of a kind and pliable disposition; and seeing the wheels fortified, and the horses at rest, I felt more disposed to hold conversation with the man. "Who knows," I said to myself, "but that I may now make one new ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... edition of Cavalcaselle e Crowe, vol. viii., and to the "Life" by Vasari, whose reliability in this case the researches of the critics so well confirm. Born probably in 1408, he was already a man of mature age when Signorelli himself was a child, but his simple, pliable nature fitted him to be a follower rather than a leader, and we find him now influenced by Pier dei Franceschi, now by Signorelli, and again later by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. If it be true that the really splendid painting of the Sistine Chapel ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... a bit of tobacco. Every Indian carries his individual medicine, and his medicine is good or bad according to his success. If he finds a feather at wrong angle in his path, his medicine is bad for that day. The Indian fasts and dances and chants, using his mind, his spirit, and his body as pliable instruments in the making of his prayer. He finds in the veritable exhaustion of his body the spirit path made clear for his dreams, until the very stars seem as the eyes of the gods, and the sighing of the pines comes to ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... mountains, where the troops can only pass in single file, and the climate is very moist and rainy. The inhabitants are armed with long lances, having stone heads about an ell long, which have two edges as sharp as razors, and they are defended by pliable shields which cover their whole bodies. They are extremely nimble, and give signals to each other by loud whistlings, which echo among the rocks with inconceivable shrillness. Their province is named ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... followed the guide into another small chapel, which bore the name of Henry VII. upon the door. Surely they were great builders and great designers in those days! Had stone been as pliable as wax it could not have been twisted and curved into more exquisite spirals and curls, so light, so delicate, so beautiful, twining and turning along the walls, and drooping from the ceiling. Never did the hand of man construct anything more elaborately ornate, nor the brain ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... chink being kept open. The windpipe is composed of a series of cartilaginous or gristly rings connected together by softer tissues. These rings are not entire, but are completed behind by soft tissues including muscle. It follows that this tube is pliable and extensible—a very important provision, especially when large movements of the neck are made, during vigorous exercise, and also in singing ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... and their frown ruin to men of lesser position. The loss of including an unproductive concern at an unfair price would have been little to me personally—but it would have saddled the new amalgamated industry and the investors with a liability instead of an asset. It was certainly far easier to be pliable than to be firm. Every kind of private pressure was brought to bear on me to accede to the purchase of ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... naturally hard and brittle, can be made soft by the application of a little warmth, so that it will take any shape you please. In the same way, by being polite and friendly, you can make people pliable and obliging, even though they are apt to be crabbed and malevolent. Hence politeness is to human nature what warmth ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Pax, "Poker'll do for one. He'd be a capital member. Long and thin as a literary c'racter ought to be, and pliable too. We could make a'most anything of him, except a fire-screen or a tablecloth. Then there's Big Jack—he's ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... were transferred after the manner of Thiersch. A strip of human skin was placed in one section over the frog skin, but became necrotic in four days, not being attached to the granulating surface. The man was discharged cured in six months. The frog skin was soft, pliable, and of a reddish hue, while the human white skin was firm and rapidly becoming pigmented. Leale cites the successful use of common warts in a case of grafting on a man of twenty who was burned on the foot ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... had been inclined to rebel; but for once in his life he found that he had passed the limit of license, and his father, whom he had rather despised as foolishly pliable, was unexpectedly his master. He laid before Ferdy, with a power which the latter could not but acknowledge, the selfishness and brutality of his conduct since he was a boy. He told him of his own earlier privations, of his labors, of ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... the animal is in the act of running, its long split hoofs strike together, giving out a series of singular sounds that resemble the crackling of castanets. In the elk countries of North America the native Indians prize the skins—dressing them into a soft pliable leather. The flesh is also eaten; but it is inferior to the venison of either ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... sympathetic wave of emotion. It has a sort of compulsive force which hurries along even those who are sluggish or unwilling. Plato, in his Republic, gives the curious advice that, at meetings of older people wine should be distributed, in order to make them more pliable and receptive to the counsel of sages. Many would object to such a risky policy, which, moreover, can well be dispensed with, since music has quite as much power as wine to arouse a sympathetic and enthusiastic state of mind at a public assembly, and without any danger of disastrous consequences. ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... instant something rough and pliable struck his face with stinging force, and he felt the warm blood trickle down his cheeks. Instantly there came a second shock. The canoe was whirled forcibly from under him, and a heavy blow from some unseen object struck him with ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... first four weeks should be made of plain flannel; after this period a knitted band with shoulder straps is the better article. All petticoats and skirts should be supported from the shoulders. Stockinet is a good material for diapers; it is soft, warm, and pliable. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... what he may to suppress the bruit thereof, and yet comforteth himself with the hope that between the factions and partialities nourished by his industry, and musters among the towns, especially in Holland and Zeeland (where he is persuaded to find some pliable to a reconcilement) and the disorders and misgovernment of our people, there will be yet occasion offered him to make his profit and advantage. I find that the gentleman hath here many friends indifferently persuaded of his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... may be removed from the whole interior of the skin and be replaced with pieces of cotton, dampened as before, and the whole skin wrapped in a cloth or shut in a close box until with some scraping and manipulation it becomes as pliable as when first removed. Any little lumps of dried muscle should be broken up and the edges of the opening cut, scraped and stretched out as they are very apt to wrinkle and curl up, thus reducing the size ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... bark of the linden or American basswood. In June, when the bark slips easily, strip it from the tree, remove the coarse outside, immerse the inside bark in water for twenty days; the fibres will then easily separate, and become soft and pliable as satin ribbon. Cut it into convenient lengths, say one foot, and lay them away in a dry state, in which they will keep for years. This will afford good ties for many uses, such as bandages of vegetables for market, &c. Matting that comes around ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... seem to be the impressions of a hollow bone or reed. The whole exterior surface is embellished with a most elaborate ornamental design, which resembles the imprint of some woven fabric. If a woven fabric has not been used, a pliable stamp, producing the effect of a fabric, has been resorted to. The fact that the sharply concave portions of the neck are marked with as much regularity as the convex body of the vessel, precludes the idea of the use of a solid or ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... like a gigantic egg, with the small end turned towards the earth. The moon, liquid and pliable in the first days of her formation, was originally a perfect sphere. But soon, drawn within the pale of the earth's gravitation, she became elongated under its influence. By becoming a satellite she lost her native purity of form; her centre of gravity was in advance of the centre of her ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... flames were these, that at times glowed through him? Was it the power of the Evil One, that caused these wild thoughts to rage constantly within him? He punished his body, but without effect. What portion of his mind was that, which wound itself around him, pliable as a serpent, and which crept about his conscience under a loving cloak and consoled him! The saints pray for us, the holy Virgin prays for us, Jesus himself ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... catching their simplicity and music. You were reminded of the measured English of an old and lovable book, just as you grew used to read in his face what he was to say, before the words had begun to flow. Never was there a face more quick to reflect the mind, more pliable to humour, more luminous at some stirring idea or deed, more indignant at the bare notion of a wrong inflicted, softer ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... some favor. From these, therefore, I shall expect, and shall not be disappointed, considerable candor and allowance. Especially they will be candid, and I believe that there are many such, who have occasionally tried their own strength in this bow of Ulysses. They have not found it supple and pliable, and with me are perhaps ready to acknowledge that they could not always even approach with it the mark of their ambition. But I would willingly, were it possible, obviate uncandid criticism, because to answer it is lost labor, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Bianca, Faustina! It is a day's work to learn their names and titles. She wears a veil—to hide her satisfaction—a wreath of orange flowers, artificial, too, made of paper and paste and wire, symbols of innocence, of course, pliable and easily patched together. She looks down, lest the priest should see that her eyes are laughing. Her father is whispering words of comfort and encouragement into her ear. 'Mind your expression,' he is saying, no doubt—'you must not look as though you were being sacrificed, nor as ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... another Expedient for taking of great Fowl, being Rods that are long, small, strait, and pliable, the upper part apt to play to and fro; being besmeared with Bird-lime warm. Thus to be used, Observe the Haunts of the Fowl, have a Stale, (a living Fowl of the same kind you would take) and cross pricking your Rods, one into, and another ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... retaining some foreign element of gait or attitude, still perhaps with some relic (such as a single eye-glass) of the officer and gentleman, they sprawl in palm-leaf verandahs and entertain an island audience with memoirs of the music-hall. And there are still others, less pliable, less capable, less fortunate, perhaps less base, who continue, even in these isles of plenty, ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... that mountainous country is sheep raising and weaving baskets from a very pliable kind of shrub that grows on the slopes of the mountains. I hired as a shepherd to a sheep rancher, and also began to learn to weave baskets to while away the time as I watched the sheep. Before long I learned the language, which ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... a sheet of thin but pliable bark from a tree, and in some respects reminded Frank of birch bark, which he had often used in lieu of paper, when in the woods. The juice of some berry had afforded ink; and doubtless the college professor had ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... is this?" The children will simultaneously exclaim, "A piece of leather." This being answered, he will proceed to the qualities, and will have either from his class, or by his own help, the following answers: "It is dry, it is smooth, it is hard, it is tough, it is pliable, it is opaque," &c. He will then question them as to its uses, and will ask, "What is made from leather?" A. Boots and shoes. Q. What use is it of else? A. Books are bound with it; and so on through all its uses. ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... to answer you in the negative. You took me up a raw and inexperienced boy, capable of being moulded to any form you pleased. But you have communicated to me volumes of experience in a very short period. I am no longer irresolute and pliable. What is the power you retain over my fate I am unable to discover. You may destroy me; but you cannot make me tremble. I am not concerned to enquire, whether what I have suffered flowed from you by design or otherwise; whether you were the author ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... shampooing; a sort of stewing alive by steam, sweetened by being forced through odoriferous herbs, and undergoing the pleasant sensation of being dabbed all the while with pads of flannels through holes in the wet blankets that surround you, until the cartilaginous substances of your joints are made as pliable as the ligaments of boiled calves' feet, your whole system relaxed and unnerved, and your trembling legs as useless in supporting your body as a pair of boots would be without the usual quantity of flesh and bone within them. The Steyne affords excellent ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... were men of irreproachable character, the majority religious by nature and scholarly by disposition, and they found in their new field scope for an increased piety and a more enlarged benevolence. Their infinitely pliable philosophy expanded amiably to suit the requirements of any and every sect. The Rev. W. H. Furness, of Philadelphia, though not thoroughly identified with the movement, yet, in several volumes published at that time, manifested the influence of Rationalism ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... over-fed are too heavy to submit to properly. Just as we find that women who take physic whilst they are with child, bear leaner and smaller but better-shaped and prettier children; the material they come of having been more pliable and easily molded. The reason, however, I leave ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... have only, three or four at a birth. They feed on the leaves and fruit of trees, pulling down the large boughs with their trunks, and bringing them to their mouths. This trunk is composed of a very thick cartilage, and is pliable in every direction. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... against liberty churches proved more pliable than States. The authority of nearly all the leading denominations was directed against the abolitionists. The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church passed in 1836 a resolution censuring two of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... what they call the leaders of society. No life can better than that of Pepys illustrate the dangers of this respectable theory of living. For what can be more untoward than the occurrence, at a critical period and while the habits are still pliable, of such a sweeping transformation as the return of Charles the Second? Round went the whole fleet of England on the other tack; and while a few tall pintas, Milton or Pen, still sailed a lonely course by the stars and their own private compass, the cock- boat, Pepys, must go ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... caused by the breeze, the grass suddenly parted and bent in opposite directions, and from the middle there softly stepped out a full grown tiger. For a few seconds he stood perfectly still. His four, velvet paws were planted firmly on the ground; his pliable tail was waving slowly to and fro, and his bright yellow eyes glanced quickly and sharply in all directions. He was a splendid fellow and quite young. His light, tawny-yellow body was exquisitely marked with dark, velvety stripes—some double, some ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... even from their ruins, a wonderful and very evident Unity of expression, pervading and governing every possible mood and manner of thought. No phase of Art that ever existed gives us a line so very human and simple in itself as this Greek type, and so pliable to all the uses of monumental language. If this type were a mere mathematical type, its applicability to the expression of human emotions would be limited to a formalism absolutely fatal to the freedom of thought in Art. But ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... an appropriate molding of the head during birth so as to permit its easy passage through the bony pelvic cavity of the mother, and gains that end in two ways. The bones of the head remain pliable until after the infant is born, and, further, their edges are not welded together as in an adult, but are separated from one another by an appreciable distance. During the act of birth the edges are brought into ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... quadrangle, and were drilled in the Newe Parkes (the Parks of our day) to the number of four hundred, "in a very decent arraye, and it was delightsome to behold the forwardnesse of so many proper yonge gentlemen so intent, docile, and pliable to their business." Town and gown took opposite sides: the citizens were, most of them, ready to support the Parliament, or the King and Parliament, but not the King against the Parliament. Long before the Civil War began there were in Oxford and in the kingdom, as always in our history, though ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... with mere Constitutional work: wherein, unluckily, fellow-workmen are less pliable than, with one who has completed the Science of Polity, they ought to be. Courage, Sieyes nevertheless! Some twenty months of heroic travail, of contradiction from the stupid, and the Constitution shall be built; the top-stone of it brought out with shouting,—say rather, the top-paper, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... most sacred Institutions of Christianity may, by the Assistance of pliable Divines, be made serviceable to the most anti-christian Purposes of Tyrants and Usuerpers: Recollect, pray, what I have said concerning Sermons and Prayers, and what is done by some Clergymen under Pretence ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... grow stiff, case-hardened, difficult to change; but in America we have the newest and most pliable, and we are bravely used to altering things. It is high time we altered our system of education. The very crown and flower of our best minds and noblest characters are called for ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... those?" asked Bill, pointing toward the moccasins. The Indian regarded them thoughtfully, and again the toes wriggled comfortably beneath the pliable moose-skin ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... accumulates in drops of sweat, during long-continued exercise or exposure to a high temperature. The office of the perspiration is two-fold. It removes noxious matter from the system, and diminishes animal heat, and thereby equalizes the temperature of the body. It also renders the skin soft and pliable, thus better adapting it to the movements of the muscles. The Sebaceous Glands, which are placed in the true skin, are less abundant where the sudoriferous glands are most numerous, and vice versa. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... the most satisfactory method of softening sealing compound, making covers and jars limp and pliable. An open flame should never be used for this work, as the temperature of the flame is too high and there is danger of burning jars and covers and making them worthless. With steam, it is impossible to damage ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... much better article of leather. When dressed in the Indian fashion—that is to say, soaked in a lather composed of the brains and fat of the animal itself, and then washed, dried, scraped, and smoked—it becomes as soft and pliable as a kid-glove, and will wash and dry without stiffening like chamois leather. That is a great advantage which it has, in the eyes of the Indians, over the skins of other species of deer, as the moose and caribou—for the leather made ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... what other hunters, what other disconcerting incident, might follow; for catholic France very generally believed that the Huguenot leaders had a scheme for possessing themselves of the person of the young king, known to be mentally pliable. Meanwhile they led him to their daintiest apartment, with great silver flambeaux, that he might wash off the blood with which not his hands only were covered; for he hunted also with the eagerness of a madman—steeped in blood. He lay there for a few hours, after supping very familiarly ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... It was my intention to plank her upon the diagonal principle, using three thicknesses of comparatively thin plank, for I had no means by which to steam a single layer of planking of the necessary thickness and so render it pliable enough to bend to the correct shape; while I believed that by using thin plank I could bend it to shape unsteamed. I am getting somewhat ahead of my yarn, however; for the progress outlined above represented nearly three months' hard work, an appreciable proportion of which had ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... milk, and give the whole one boil up. Or, take stale bread crumbs, pour over them boiling water and boil till soft, stirring well; take from the fire and gradually stir in a little glycerine or sweet oil, so as to render the poultice pliable ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... all that Christian said, Pliable resolved to go with him, but Obstinate returned to the City of Destruction ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... and centuries ago, and peopled our little country, they brought their weather with them. It has never changed. Like the Breton temperament, it is founded upon a rock—though I often wish it were a little more pliable and responsive. Changes are good sometimes. I am not of those who think what is must always be best. If I were in your Parliament—but you don't have ladies in your Parliament, though they seem to have a footing everywhere else—I should be a Liberal; without going too ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... its impulse bears him along. At the foot of the waterfall he sits sequestered and hidden in its volume of sound. The birds know he has no designs upon them, and the animals see that his mind is in the creek. His enthusiasm anneals him, and makes him pliable to the scenes and ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... Rulihiere had already written an account of the events of 1762, of which he had been an eye-witness; she had tried first to buy him, and then to have him thrown into the Bastille. She will search Venice for a pliable historian; and her own letter on the coup-d'etat, together with her memoirs, shows how strong in her was that "besoin de parolier" analyzed by the great Pascal a century before. Catharine, be quite certain ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... improvement in the process of their production, he is said to have made a very good business of it for some time. A rich manufacturer of Chemnitz once gave him a large order to be delivered at the end of the year: the children, whose pliable fingers had already proved serviceable in this respect, had to work hard day and night, and in return the father promised them an exceptionally happy Christmas, as he expected to get a large sum of money. When the longed-for time arrived, however, he received the announcement ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... lives and minds. There is a lasting bond among schoolfellows because no one can become a boy again and have a new set of playmates. There is a persistent comradeship with one's countrymen, especially abroad, because seldom is a man pliable and polyglot enough to be at home among foreigners, or really to understand them. There is an inevitable comradeship with men of the same breeding or profession, however bad these may be, because habits soon monopolise the man. Nevertheless a ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... country affords are so highly prized, that the least exertion enables them to procure their very limited wants; and the skin of the rein-deer affords them the most comfortable clothing they could possess. They have a particular art, too, of dressing this skin, so as to render it as soft and pliable as chamois, in which state it becomes a ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... and ran on with a cry of Life! Life! The friends of his wife, too, came out to see him run, and as he went, some were heard to mock him, some to use threats, and there were two who set off to fetch him back by force, the names of whom were Obstinate and Pliable. Now, by this time, the man had gone a good way off, but at last ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... not got ten sore or galled animals. The reason is, because we do not use a single padded saddle or collar. Also, that the part of the harness that the heaviest strain comes on is kept as smooth and pliable as it is possible for it to be. Look well to your drawing-chains, too, and see that they are kept of an even length. If your collar gets gummy or dirty, don't scrape it with a knife; wash it, and preserve the smooth surface. Your breeching, ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... number they were, ranged themselves in a line, after having drawn lots for their places. Whilst they waited the signal to start, they practised, by way of prelude, various motions to awaken their activity, and to keep their limbs pliable and in a right temper.(134) They kept themselves in wind by small leaps, and making little excursions, that were a kind of trial of their speed and agility. Upon the signal being given they flew towards the goal, with a rapidity scarce to be ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... have nothing to do with these innovations. He left it all to his brother Ferdinand, King of Bohemia and Hungary, who was more elastic and pliable than himself. With the Turk over the border, he could not exist without the goodwill of both parties; and he desired the vote of Lutheran electors to make him emperor. He had no Inquisition in one part of his dominions contradicting ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... Spight of all the Appearances to the Contrary; if, I say, a Man had a Mind to maintain this, and had Euphranor's Capacity, he might make a great Shew for his Client, without the Learning of Crito, and would certainly baffle his Adversaries, if he had such pliable ones as Alciphron and Lysicles to deal with. Come, would Euphranor say, answer me, Alciphron; is it not demonstrable, that the more Money a Man has, the more able he is to buy Wine. Alciphron would answer, I cannot deny that; and here ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... fascinates me; I dote upon it. It is so pliable, so dreamy, and so opalescent that I can scarce restrain my enthusiasm. But if I should fit one of my boys out with the equipment necessary for a blacksmith, and then he should become a preacher, I'd find the situation ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... during some reigns, usually embraced, without scruple, the still varying religion of their sovereigns. But the French nation, where principles had so long been displayed as the badges of faction, and where each party had fortified its belief by an animosity against the other, were not found so pliable or inconstant; and Henry was at last convinced that the Catholics of his party would entirely abandon him, if he gave them not immediate satisfaction in this particular. The Hugonots also, taught by experience, clearly saw that his desertion of them was become absolutely ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... ultimately a solid lump of hard opaque sugar. To prevent this candying, as it is called several agents are used, such as glucose, cream of tartar pyroligneous acid, vinegar &c., the action of which will cause the sugar to boil clear, be pliable while hot and transparent when cold. It is therefore necessary to use some lowering agent for all boilings intended for clear goods, such ...
— The Candy Maker's Guide - A Collection of Choice Recipes for Sugar Boiling • Fletcher Manufacturing Company
... the Hazlitt soul would be a sidestepping. There were among his friends, men of dubious integrity with elastic scruples and pliable consciences. But skepticism thrust in vain at the Hazlitt armor. In him had been authentically born the mania for conformity. He was a prosecutor by birth. Against that which did not conform, against ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... he had seen at home. He first used long, tough, fine roots he had seen when digging up the tree at the mouth of his cave. Afterwards he discovered some tall, tough reeds growing near by. He laid in a supply of these. He found that when he wanted to use them, a good soaking in water made them as pliable and tough ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... builders of the past they have been carefully considered, mathematically calculated, and have finally resolved themselves into a recognized scale, composed of tones and half tones. These are the composer's plastic resources. He shapes them precisely as the sculptor fashions the pliable clay with which he strives to bring ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... My brethren: dried as I am with age, The tendrils of my heart are pliable; Nor have the tangles of this thicket-world So twisted all my grain as not to bend Before another's misery. Wherefore, I do beseech you, ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... surface. Here at once, the scientist began his work. The body of the ancient man was put in a large vat. Fluids submerged it, slowly soaking from that hardened flesh the alkali that had preserved it for so long. The fluid was changed often, until woody muscles and other tissues became pliable once more. ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... fear, he had a superabundance of doubt. He had not all the pliable, receptive, imaginative nature of his friend, Lord Evelyn. He had more than the ordinary Englishman's distrust of secrecy. He was not to be won over by the visions of a St. Simon, the eloquence of a Fourier, the epigrams ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... the odour of paints, varnishes, turpentine, and fixative; he opened the big window, let in air and sunshine, and picked up a sheaf of brushes, soft and pliable from a fresh washing in turpentine and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... court plaster. It is pliable, and never breaks, which is far from being the case with many of the spurious articles which are sold under that name. Indeed, this commodity is very frequently adulterated. A kind of plaster, with a very thick and brittle covering, ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... not proved a pliable person. The very name shows his sense of his own dignity. Though he held his land under feudal tenure he would not accept a designation that carried with it some sense of the servile status of the feudal vassal in old France. So the Canadian peasant, a feudal tenant en censive or en roture, ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... us. The figure was drawn up at its full height. It had in truth a noble dignity of outline. There was a Spartan vigor and severity in the lean, uncorseted shape, with the bust thrown out against the sky—the bust of a young warrior rather than a woman. There was a hardy, masculine freedom in the pliable motion of her straight back, a ripple with muscles that played easily beneath the close bodice, in her arms, and her finely turned ankles and legs, that were bared below the knee. The very simplicity of her costume ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... sub-divisions of the physical plane, but the gases and liquids still predominated, for as yet their vertebrate structure had not solidified into bones such as ours, and they could not, therefore, stand erect. Their bones in fact were pliable as the bones of young infants now are. It was not until the middle of the Lemurian period that man developed ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... in both cases pre-eminent. Daudet has, however, the advantage (or, as he himself asserts, the disadvantage) of working in a flexible and highly-finished language, which bears the impress of the labors of a hundred masters; while Kielland has to produce his effects of style in a poorer and less pliable language, which often pants and groans in its efforts to render a subtle thought. To have polished this tongue and sharpened its capacity for refined and incisive utterance is one—and not ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... candid enough to say, that we give up the argument as to the intrinsic beauty of this species of cap—truly we think it the very type of all that is slovenly; but for use, there is not a more comfortable, portable, pliable, buyable, and washable a commodity, than your—nightcap are we to say? no—than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... fingers, yet could he not once stir the string. Then called he to the attendants to bring fat and unctuous matter, which melting at the fire, he dipped the bow therein, thinking to supple it and make it more pliable; but not with all the helps of art could he succeed in making it to move. After him Liodes, and Amphinomus, and Polybus, and Eurynomus, and Polyctorides essayed their strength, but not any one of them, or of ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... a certain degree, at all times in a healthy horse. This moisture is not in the form of a perceptible sweat, but it is enough to keep the skin pliable and to cause the hair to have a soft, healthy feel. In some chronic diseased conditions and in fever, the skin becomes dry. In this case the hair has a harsh feel that is quite different from the condition observed in health, and from the fact of its being so dry the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... roof was bounded by chasms, impenetrable and black. "It doesn't matter," said Rickie, suddenly convinced of the futility of all that he did. "Oh, let us look properly," said Leighton, a kindly, pliable man, who had tried to shirk coming, but who was genuinely sympathetic now that he had come. They were rewarded: the manuscript lay in a gutter, ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... the water. The eyes of the two Malays at the wheel glittered towards the white men, but their dark hands remained closed on the spokes. The sharp hull driving on its way seemed to rise a few inches in succession through its whole length, as though it had become pliable, and settled down again rigidly to its work of cleaving the smooth surface of the sea. Its quivering stopped, and the faint noise of thunder ceased all at once, as though the ship had steamed across a narrow belt of vibrating water and ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... are so far worse than the individuals composing them, because the official takes place of the moral sense. The nerves that in themselves were soft and pliable enough, and responded naturally to the touch of pity, when fastened into a machine of that sort become callous and rigid, and throw off every extraneous application that can be made to them with perfect apathy. An appeal is made to the ties of individual friendship: the body in general ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... writing their obituaries; making the babes pure with that holy sprinkling which gives them, dying early, to a Christian immortality; launching our thunders upon the bold, softening the hearts of the errant, mingling with our unbending creed the more pliable ethics of worldly graces, and, in a word, walking like Saint John on the savage border of civilization, to thrill the brutal and unlettered with the tidings of one just day to come—our itinerant lives drift on till the ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... the wretched hovels at Terra del Fuego, and in some respects they are inferior even to them. At Botany Bay, where they were best, they were just high enough for a man to sit upright in; but not large enough for him to extend himself in his whole length in any direction: They are built with pliable rods about as thick as a man's finger, in the form of an oven, by sticking the two ends into the ground, and then covering them with palm-leaves, and broad pieces of bark: The door is nothing but a large hole at one end, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... them. Thou knowest not what she was, Cornelia; for I wrote to thee about her while she seemed but human. In my hours of sadness, not only her beautiful form, but her very voice bent over me. How girlish in the gracefulness of her lofty form! how pliable in her majesty! what composure at my petulance and reproaches! what pity in her reproofs! Like the air that angels breathe in the metropolitan temple of the Christian world, her soul at every season preserved one temperature. But it was when she ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... and blush as I did?" she said, screwing her pliable brows up to him winningly, and he bent his cheek against hers, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wildest moments, claimed for it. Success thus crowned his noble efforts, which had continued unceasingly through ten years of self-imposed privation. India-rubber was now seen to be capable of being adapted to at least five hundred uses. It could be made "as pliable as kid, tougher than ox-hide, as elastic as whalebone, or as rigid as flint." But, as too often happens, his great discovery enriched neither Goodyear nor his family. It soon gave employment to sixty thousand artisans, and annually ...
— The Junior Classics • Various |
