"Stiffness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Authorised Version, his special work being given to the earlier parts of the Old Testament: he acted, however, as a sort of general editor. He was considered as, next to Ussher, the most learned churchman of his day, and enjoyed a great reputation as an eloquent and impassioned preacher, but the stiffness and artificiality of his style render his sermons unsuited to modern taste. His doctrine was High Church, and in his life he was humble, pious, and charitable. Ninety-six of his sermons were published in 1631 by command ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... the two colossal Madonnas by Cimabue, preserved at Florence. The first, which was painted for the Vallombrosian monks of the S. Trinita, is now in the gallery of the academy. It has all the stiffness and coldness of the Byzantine manner. There are three adoring angels on each side, disposed one above another, and four prophets are placed below in separate niches, half figures, holding in their hands ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... stiffness is imparted to the design of the York window by the central mullion which reaches from the basement to the top of the arch. The tracery branches outwards from this on each side, and depends upon the arch for support; while the tracery in the Carlisle window is not so dependent. Neither in skilful ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... Passion, on copper, are all of them noteworthy successes of more or less the same kind; and in these, too, we come upon that racy sense for narration which can enhance dramatic import by emphasising some seemingly trivial circumstance, as in the gouty stiffness of one of Christ's scourgers in the Flagellation, or the abnormal ugliness of the man who with such perfect gravity holds the basin while Pilate washes his hands: while in the Crown of Thorns and Descent into Hades we have peculiarly fine and ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... added to Lucy's enjoyment of her stay at Oakvale. The cousins very soon had the pleasure of spending an afternoon in Dr. Eastwood's family,—a Christian household after Lucy's own heart. Now that the first stiffness of their school-relations had been brushed off by the surprise of their meeting, the two girls found each other delightful companions, and soon became fast friends. It was the first time Lucy had ever found a congenial companion of her own sex, and their friendship afforded a new ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... arms, wrist and shoulders, the tone will be hard and the whole performance constrained and unmusical. There is no need of having tired muscles or those that feel strained or painful. If this condition arises it is proof that there is stiffness, that relaxation has not taken place. I can sit at the piano and play forte for three hours at a time and not feel the least fatigue in hands and arms. Furthermore, the playing of one who is relaxed, who knows how to use his anatomy, will not injure the piano. We must remember the piano ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... the brother of Professor John Playfair, the mathematician, says, "Those persons who have ever had the pleasure to be in his company may recollect that even in his common conversation the order and method he pursued without the smallest degree of formality or stiffness were beautiful, and gave a sort of pleasure to ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... survived, however, to the age of two, but was crippled and nearly blind, in addition to internal weaknesses. It was then brought to Mlle. Kauffmant. Three months later, when I saw it, nothing remained of its troubles but a slight squint and a stiffness in one of its knee-joints. These conditions, too, were ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... returned to place Skippy rallied, took the introductions with preternatural stiffness, and gravitated to Snorky. The white shirt front in the most unaccountable manner had swollen to alarming dimensions, the coat tails must be dragging on the floor. His collar cut under his imprisoned neck and his large white hands, longing for sheltering pockets, seemed to float before him like ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... best room, with a look of pleasantness in spite of the spring chill and the stiffness of the best chairs. They lingered before the picture of Mrs. Hender's soldier son, a poor work of a poorer artist in crayons, but the spirit of the young face shone out appealingly. Then they crossed the room and stood before some bookshelves, and Abby Hender's face brightened ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... felt something of a restraint in the household. He attributed it to the social stiffness of the German. This increases when intercourse comes to a point. Affecting moments jolt hard in him—moments when embarrassment ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... mangroves as soon as possible, where I knew I should find plenty of birds. The walk of the day previous had made me a little stiff; but I felt lightly clad, without the heavy blanket, which I had left in camp; and, by way of getting rid of the stiffness, I started off at a run and soon reached my destination, where I sat down until there was sufficient daylight to enable me to see the game. As I rested on the root of a tree, perfectly motionless, I saw something large moving among the mangroves; but the dawn was as yet ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... doors of the hall to be made fast, and all wondered at his words, but none could divine the cause. And Ulysses took the bow into his hands, and before he essayed to bend it, he surveyed it at all parts, to see whether, by long lying by, it had contracted any stiffness which hindered the drawing; and as he was busied in the curious surveying of his bow, some of the suitors mocked him and said, "Past doubt this man is a right cunning archer, and knows his craft well. See how he turns it over and over, and looks into it, as if he could see through the ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... been pleased by an angular gesture in some expressive girlish figure in an early painting. The letter renewed that impression of strong feeling combined with an almost rigid simplicity, which Roderick's betrothed had personally given him. And its homely stiffness seemed a vivid reflection of a life concentrated, as the young girl had borrowed warrant from her companion to say, in a single devoted idea. The monotonous days of the two women seemed to Rowland's fancy to follow each other like the tick-tick ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... mind and character of the individual was always insinuated, often with a dramatic dressing, and plenty of sauce piquante. At Sydenham he used to give us a dialogue among the actors, each of whom found fault with another for some defect or excess of his own. Kemble objecting to stiffness, Munden to grimace, and so on. His representation of Incledon was extraordinary: his nose seemed actually to become aquiline. It is a pity I can not put upon paper, as represented by Mr. Mathews, the singular gabblings of that ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... had tact enough to make herself and her father's house very agreeable to Mrs. Bold. There was with them all an absence of stiffness and formality which was peculiarly agreeable to Eleanor after the great dose of clerical arrogance which she had lately been constrained to take. She played chess with them, walked with them, and drank tea with them; studied or pretended to study ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... look, he was avoiding her eye, as though he were afraid that he had betrayed himself. Audrey's maidenly consciousness was up in arms in a moment. The gleam in Cyril's eyes had opened hers. Some instinct of self-defence made her suddenly entrench herself in stiffness; the soft graciousness that was Audrey's chief charm seemed to desert her, and for once in her life she was ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... very fresh from their respective universities, thrown as corporals at the head of a company of professional soldiers. We were determined that, whatever vices we might have, we should not be accused of "swank." The sergeants, after a trifle of preliminary stiffness, treated us with fatherly kindness, and did all they could to make us comfortable and teach us what ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... wheeled and with a military stiffness marched back. Slowly she nodded her head. "I gives ye thet pledge too;" she said, "since ye wants hit—but I gives hit with a ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... reach the age of maturity well prepared for its responsibilities. They have more adipose tissue than the men, yet are never fat. The head is carried erect, but with a certain stiffness — often due, in part, no doubt, to shyness, and in part to the fact that they carry all their burdens on their heads. I believe the neck more often appears short than does the neck of the man. The shoulders ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... afterwards he opened his eyes, divested of their feverish glare, but still dull and heavy. He spoke to Mrs. Robson by her name, which gave her such delight, that she caught his hands to her lips and burst again into tears. The action was so abrupt and violent, that it made him feel the stiffness of his arm. Casting his eyes towards the surgeon's, he conjectured what had been his ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... a little, thickset man, with a civil but blunt electioneering manner. He started when he heard Lord Vargrave's name, and bowed with great stiffness. Vargrave saw at a glance that there was some cause of grudge in the mind of the worthy man; nor did Mr. Winsley long hesitate before he cleansed his bosom of ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Cicero's correspondence is almost incredible. Even those epistles which remain number more than eight hundred. In them we find the eloquence of the heart, not of the rhetorical school. They are models of pure Latinity, elegant without stiffness, the natural outpourings of a mind which could not give birth to an ungraceful idea. In his letters to Atticus he lays bare the secret of his heart; he trusts his life in his hands; he is not only his friend but his confidant, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Thracian and Galatian horse to fall upon their flank, and beat down their lances with their swords. The only defense of these horsemen-at-arms are their lances; they have nothing else that they can use to protect themselves, or annoy their enemy, on account of the weight and stiffness of their armor, with which they are, as it were, built up. He himself, with two cohorts, made to the mountain, the soldiers briskly following, when they saw him in arms afoot first toiling and climbing up. Being on the top and standing ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... four-year-old Lolotte in her high chair. But to Anne, after the tedious formality of the second table at the palace, stiff without refinement, this free family life was perfectly delightful and refreshing, though as yet she was too much cramped, as it were, by long stiffness, silence, and treatment as an inferior to join, except by the intelligent dancing of her brown eyes, and replies when ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... out like the first. He did not look at Claude, but while he watched the wind plough soft, flowery roads in the field, the boy's face was clearly before him, with its expression of reticent pride melting into the desire to please, and the slight stiffness of his shoulders, set in a kind of stubborn loyalty. Claude lay on the sod beside him, rather tired after his walk in the sun, a little melancholy, though ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... advocated the continuous cultivation of the ground with different kinds of crops, 'for I find', he said, 'by experience that if such crops are sown as are full of fibrous roots, such roots greatly help to open the parts of grounds inclining to too much stiffness.'[422] ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... dinner on the side of a mountain which they had begun to ascend shortly before noon. Mr. Hardy proved himself an old campaigner. He had a fire made, and bacon frying before the boys had the stiffness from their legs, caused by their ride. Then, with bread and coffee, they made a better meal than they had partaken of ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... see, as distinctly as though I were there, the church of my boyhood and the tall dyspeptic preacher looming above the pulpit, the peculiar way the light came through the coarse colour of the windows, the barrenness and stiffness of the great empty room, the raw girders overhead, the prim choir. There was something in that preacher, gaunt, worn, sodden though he appeared: a spark somewhere, a little flame, mostly smothered by the gray dreariness ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... conversation—of which he was fond—and songs. He did not sing like a trained singer who knows he is listened to, but like the birds, evidently giving vent to the sounds in the same way that one stretches oneself or walks about to get rid of stiffness, and the sounds were always high-pitched, mournful, delicate, and almost feminine, and his face at such ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... window dressing is in its infancy, O' Man—in its blooming Infancy. All balance and stiffness like a blessed Egyptian picture. No Joy in it, no blooming Joy! Conventional. A shop window ought to get hold of people, 'grip 'em as they go along. It stands to ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... and Buckingham did not very willingly submit to the stiffness and formality of the Spanish court. As soon as they came to feel a little at home, they began to act with great freedom. At one time the prince learned that the Infanta was going, early in the morning, to take a walk in some private pleasure grounds, at a country house in the neighborhood of ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Wales." Thus it was that the English language seemed always more natural to Meurig Wynne than the Welsh. His sermons were always thought out in that language, and then translated into the vernacular, and this, perhaps, accounted in some degree for their stiffness and want of living interest. His descent from the Flemings had the disadvantage of drawing a line of distinction between him and his parishioners, and thus added to his unpopularity. In spite of this, Cardo was an immense favourite, ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... ever, Josephine's skirts had a mud stain on their hem, Jarvis's rent showed plainly, and everybody's foot-gear was decidedly the worse for the run over wet sod and fresh earth. But they had left behind them all stiffness born of untried acquaintance, had discovered that there was nobody in the company who could not be depended upon to play a gallant part in whatever emergency might arise, and were in a mood thoroughly to enjoy ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... stood at the threshold, well pleased to see how the sunbeams glistened on him, as if all his magnificence were real, and how diligently and lovingly he smoked his pipe, and how handsomely he walked, in spite of a little stiffness of his legs. She watched him until out of sight, and threw a witch benediction after her darling, when a turn of the road snatched ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the study of the language, that its "iconographic phrase" dates from the most ancient times and goes back even to Menes the first king. The grammar, vocabulary and the construction of words and sentences betray the awkward stiffness of a language in its first literary beginnings, but it is shown in all its youthful strength ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... to be so impatient, Louis," the one who had acted as interrogator said. "Anyone could see, with half an eye, that those two fellows were, as they said, old men-at-arms. There is a straightness and a stiffness about men who have been under the hands of the drill sergeant there is no mistaking; and I could swear that fellow is a Gascon, as ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... is wounded in three places on the abdomen: in the middle and on either side. On the first day, the insect seems to have felt nothing; I see no sign of stiffness in its movements. No doubt it is suffering acutely; but these stoics keep their troubles to themselves. Next day, the Ephippiger drags her legs a little and walks somewhat slowly. Two days more; and, when laid on her back, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... figure that had just entered. It was that of a young man attired in the extravagance rather than the taste of the prevailing fashion, which did not, however, in the least conceal a decided rusticity of limb and movement. A long mustache, which looked unkempt, even in its pomatumed stiffness, and lank, dark hair that had bent but never curled under the barber's iron, made him notable even ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... chivalrous men—is it not written on the very shield of your nation, honi soit? Ah, it is hard for me to learn, hard for me to dare to be myself. You must not judge me yet awhile; I shall end by conquering this stiffness, I shall end by growing English. Do ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... transformations were wrought in those who went to the Continent for their long vacations. From France they returned with marked French manners and tones and clothes, while from Germany they brought the distinctive marks of German stiffness in manner and general bearing. It was noted as still more curious that the same student would illustrate both variations, provided he spent one summer in Germany ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... pace, and I also, much at a loss to know what had come to her, yet not venturing, or rather, perhaps, deigning to inquire. And then I saw what she had doubtless seen before, the masts of a ship rising straightly among the trees with that stiffness and straightness of dead wood, which is beyond that of live, unless, indeed, in a storm at sea, when the wind can so inspirit it, that I have seen a mast of pine possessed by all the rage of yielding of its hundred years on ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... however, if the joints remain painful and the heart is dilated, the thermal gaseous saline water of Nauheim, augmented by Schott's resistance movements, will often appear to work wonders. Chronic rheumatism, where there is much exudation round a joint or incipient stiffness of a joint, may be relieved by hot thermal treatment, especially when combined with various forms of massage and exercises. Simple thermal waters, hot sulphur springs and hot muriated waters are all successful in different ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... distance the squeak of Puncinello? Ah! why have we none of this happy carelessness in England?—we who take our pleasures moult tristement—why have we not this lightheartedness, this camaraderie of enjoyment? Why cannot we throw aside our insular stiffness, our British hauteur, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Nasmyth's Titanic steam-hammer to his aid—the first occasion, we believe, on which this prodigious power was employed in bridge pile-driving. A temporary staging was erected for the steam-engine and hammer apparatus, which rested on two keels, and, notwithstanding the newness and stiffness of the machinery, the first pile was driven on the 6th October, 1846, to a depth of 32 feet, in four minutes. Two hammers of 30 cwt. each were kept in regular use, making from 60 to 70 strokes a minute; and the results were astounding to those who had been accustomed to the ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... her she saw the stiffness, the aloofness had gone from him. Kathleen had made him feel at home. He looked younger. There was ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... a sweet girl, and I am very partial to her, there's the truth,' cried Lady Clonbrony, in an undisguised Irish accent, and with her natural warm manner. But a moment afterwards her features and whole form resumed their constrained stillness and stiffness, and, in her English ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... wrong about Poussin's Orion. I found this out on my second visit to it. What disappointed me, and perhaps him, at first sight, was a certain stiffness in Orion's own figure; I expected to see him stalk through the landscape forcibly, as a giant usually does; but I forgot at the moment that Orion was blind, and must walk as a blind man. Therefore ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... station. Education and influence had done their best work on a character of great rectitude and uprightness, even tending to severity, such as softened with advancing years. Remarkably handsome, and with a high-bred tone of manners, he was almost an ideal country gentleman, with, however, something of stiffness and shyness in early youth, which wore off in later years. In 1826 he became member for the county ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... sailing away south, and that the men seemed to be enjoying themselves, for there was a good deal of singing and shouting—strong indications of drinking going on. Mr Frewen was far better, and my pains had passed into an unpleasant stiffness; ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... and that there was far more matter in this arrival than a stranger might have supposed. I noticed how her eye lighted on me, when she thought my attention otherwise occupied; and what a curious process of hesitation appeared to be going on within her, while she preserved her outward stiffness and composure. I began to reflect whether I had done anything to offend her; and my conscience whispered me that I had not yet told her about Dora. Could it by any ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... can find a small hickory sapling it will be the most serviceable, because its natural strength and stiffness will permit us to use a ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... been sitting before that table writing incessantly, conversing, pen in hand, with his Augusta and all the family in Cassel. Better that this good man should carry off his stuff than those other domineering officers with cutting voices and insolent stiffness. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... acquaintance, I am afraid we showed a great deal of pride and stiffness. They were kinder than we deserved, but we thought it prying and patronage, and would not accept what ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... feeling at every step as if she was getting further into the Wreath of Beauty. Across a great drawing-room,—such a beautiful grand room,—a folding door is opened; "Miss Arundel" is announced, and there she stands in all her stiffness. ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... never have tacked the word beauty on to her; a buxom, rotund, beady-eyed young female would have made the word beauty spring to his lips—Cleo de Bromsart, never. But she was getting more pleasant looking and her eyes were getting over their "stiffness"—which was something, and he ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... superseded by the very narrow one which is always in good taste, regardless of style. Napkins come by the piece and must be divided and hemmed on two sides, rubbing well between the hands first to remove the stiffness. ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... reminiscences of Imperial fashions were blended with a sort of afterwaft and lingering perfume of the coquetry of the Incroyable—with an indescribable finical something in the folds of the garments, a certain air of stiffness and correctness in the demeanor that smacked of the school of David, that ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... and acts of the being who bore his name years ago?' He has no consciousness of his youth—no sympathy with children. In him is to be discerned 'his father's intellectual and emotional qualities, together with a certain stiffness of moral attitude derived from his mother.' He reveals already a wonderful palate for pure literary flavour. His prejudices are intense, their character being determined by the refinement and idealism of his nature. All this is profoundly significant, knowing as we do that this was ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... England of the Russian language, will prevent the possibility of that important merit—strict fidelity—being tested by the British reader. Let the indulgent, therefore, remember, if we have in any case left an air of stiffness and constraint but too perceptible in our work, that this fault is to be considered as a sacrifice of grace at the altar of truth. It would have been not only possible, but easy, to have spun a collection of easy rhymes, bearing a general resemblance to the vigorous and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... say superstitiously, devoted to the cultivation of his professional talents, he left nothing undone which industry could accomplish, and whenever he went wrong, failed from an almost pedantic desire to do too much—from a stiffness and stateliness of deportment, and an embarrassment of which he had begun to get rid but a few years before his death. Mr. Cooper labours under no ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... him to do his work, yet it is not a little ungraceful here and there. Suppose this stubbornness and self-trust in a youth, laboring in an art of which the executive part is confessedly to be best learnt from masters, and we shall hardly wonder that much of his work has a certain awkwardness and stiffness in it, or that he should be regarded with disfavor by many, even the most temperate, of the judges trained in the system he was breaking through, and with utter contempt and reprobation by the envious and the dull. Consider, farther, that the particular system to be overthrown was, in the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... being truncated immediately beyond the point of intersection. The painfulness of this ill-judged adaptation was conquered by association—the eye became familiarized to uncouth forms of tracery—and a stiffness and meagerness, as of cast-iron, resulted in the moldings of much of the ecclesiastical, and all the domestic Gothic of central Europe; the moldings of casements intersecting so as to form a small hollow square at the angles, and the practice being further carried out into ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... excited, and seemed even then to be settled to his place in this world, which was to be Sadler's heeler. He followed Sadler all his after days, so far as I know, same as Stevey Todd did me. I don't know why, but I'd say as to Irish, that he was a man without much stiffness or stay-by, if left to himself, whereas Sadler was one that would rather be in trouble than not, if he ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... of how cramped he had become from long inaction, began to move his legs and uninjured arm and body, and at length overcame a paralyzing stiffness. Then, digging his hand in the sand and holding the plank with his knees, he edged it out into the river. Inch by inch he advanced until clear of the willows. Looking upward, he saw the shadowy figures of the men on the bluff. He realized they ought to see him, feared that they would. ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... the very horse he ought to have had—old, weary, infirm, decently hiding its disabilities under a blanket, and, when this was stripped away, confessing them in a start so reluctant that they had to be explained as the stiffness natural to any young, strong, and fresh horse from resting too long. It did, in fact, become more animated as time went on, and perhaps it began to take an interest in the landscape left so charmingly wild wherever it could be. It apparently liked being alive there with its fares, kindred ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... a protest against the stiffness of all cast-iron systems, and a warning against trusting in what is worn out. But it shows how the modern world, so complex, so refined, so wonderful, is, in all that it accounts good, but a reflection ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... lift their hands to their mouths. As for foreigners, if they happened to sit between Russians, they were little likely to have any appetite to eat. All this Peter encouraged, on the plea that ceremony would produce uneasiness and stiffness. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... grande vie d'autrefois" in the hotel of the Florians. Their garden is enchanting—quantities of flowers, roses particularly. They have made two great borders of tall pink rose-bushes, with dwarf palms from Bordighera planted between, just giving the note of stiffness which one would expect to find in an old-fashioned garden. On one side is a large terrace with marble steps and balustrade, and beyond that, half hidden by a row of fruit-trees, a very good tennis ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... something more than happiness; there is a sense of ease, of comfort, of general joy, that is quite unmistakable. There is nothing of stiffness or constraint. And with it all there is full reverence. It is no wonder that he is accustomed to fill every seat ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... heads, Madonnas and kneeling Magi, the manger under a kind of penthouse, and similar subjects—subjects the highest that could be chosen. The gilding of the nimbi seemed well done certainly, and was still bright, but to the ordinary eye the stiffness of the figures, the lack of grace, the absence of soul in the composition was distressingly apparent. It was, however, the squire's hobby, and it must be admitted that he had very high authority upon his side. Some sensitive persons rather shrank from seeing him ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... level. On the other hand, he was hampered by an overcoat. After the first hundred yards he took this off, and carried it in an unwieldy parcel. This, he found, answered admirably. Running became easier. He had worked the stiffness out of his legs by this time, and was going well. Three hundred yards from the station it was anybody's race. The exact position of the other competitor, the train, could not be defined. It was at any rate not yet within earshot, which meant that ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... their Hands, should be very careful that they do not abuse it, nor squander it away. The best Genius may be spoiled. It suffers by nothing more, than by neglecting it, and by an Habit of Sloth and Inactivity. By Disuse, it contracts [J]Rust, or a Stiffness which is not easily to be worn off. Even the sprightly and penetrating, have, thro' this neglect, sunk down to the Rank of the dull and stupid. Some Men have given very promising Specimens in their early Days, that they could think well themselves; but, whether ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... splendour of their coming faded—faded imperceptibly day after day; Denton's eloquence became fitful, and lacked fresh topics of inspiration; the fatigue of their long march from London told in a certain stiffness of the limbs, and each suffered from a slight unaccountable cold. Moreover, Denton became aware of unoccupied time. In one place among the carelessly heaped lumber of the old times he found a rust-eaten spade, and with this ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... He had seen at an early stage of their acquaintance that Rosy was greatly impressed by the superiority of his bearing, that he could make her blush with embarrassment when he conveyed to her that she had made a mistake, that he could chill her miserably when he chose to assume a lofty stiffness. A man's domestic armoury was filled with weapons if he could make a woman feel gauche, inexperienced, in the wrong. When he was safely married, he could pave the way to what he felt was the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... contemporaneousness. It has become in part archaic, but it does not become antiquated. It is the first book in a modern tongue in which prose begins to have freedom of structure, and ease of control over the resources of the language. It shows a steady progress in Dante's mastery of literary art. The stiffness and lack of rhythmical charm of the poems with which it begins disappear in the later sonnets and canzoni, and before its close it exhibits the full development of the sweet new style begun by Dante's predecessor Guido Guinicelli, and of which the secret lay in obedience to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... new baldric—the red one. I report at the Palais Royal at eight, and I've an empty stomach to attend to. Be lively, lad. Duty, duty, always duty," snatching the towels. "I have been in the saddle since morning; I am still dead with stiffness; yet duty calls. Bah! I had rather be fighting the Spaniard with Turenne than idle away at the Louvre. Never any fighting save in pothouses; nothing but ride, ride, ride, here, there, everywhere, ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... undertaking—indeed a portion of the lime had been already used—when I received sudden notice to appear before the majordomo. I found him, after his Excellency's dinner, in the hall of the clock. [1] On entering, I paid him marked respect, and he received me with the greatest stiffness. Then he asked who had installed me in the house, and by whose authority I had begun to build there, saying he marvelled much that I had been so headstrong and foolhardy. I answered that I had been ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... step, that had in it none of the stiffness or fatigue of a long night's ride, Commines mounted the stairs, answering friendly salutes at every turn. As at all times with the King in residence, the halls, corridors, and ante-rooms were like those of a barrack rather than of a royal chateau. Here and there he was challenged ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... the open window, and with no shyness or stiffness whatever about them, Daisy and Polly Jenkins were to be seen. Daisy was a full-blown girl with a rather loud voice, and a manner which was by some considered very fascinating; for it had the effect of instantly taking you, as it were, behind the scenes, ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... carriage have ever been considered very important in the training of soldiers. In marching, the head and trunk should remain immobile, but without stiffness; as the left foot is carried forward the right forearm is swung forward and inward obliquely across the body until the thumb, knuckles being turned out, reaches a point about the height of the belt plate. The upper arm does not move beyond the perpendicular plane while the forearm is swung ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... hand, in the best faith, might have an air of caricature. I would not, therefore, like to trust my own impression of social diversions. They were, very probably, much more lively and brilliant than I thought them. But Italians assembled anywhere, except at the theatre or the caffe, have a certain stiffness, all the more surprising, because tradition has always led one to expect exactly the reverse of them. I have seen nothing equal to the formality of this people, who deride colder nations for inflexible manners; and I have certainly never seen society in any small town in America so ill at ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... the warm comfort of sleep giving place slowly to the stiffness of his uncomfortable position with the hobnails of a boot from the back of a pack sticking into his shoulder. Andrews was sitting in the same position, lost in thought. The rest of the men sat at the open doors ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... than he had hitherto used towards me, and looked me at the same time enquiringly in the face. It seemed as if he wished to read there whether his courtesy and kindness were likely to be requited by the same ungracious stiffness that I had shown him on the preceding day. Well, I will do my best to obliterate the bad impression I have apparently made. They are good people, these Creoles—not particularly bashful or discreet; but yet I like their forwardness and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... twenty years old. His dark eyes gleamed out of hollow sockets, and his black hair, curling thickly, was rough with neglect. But he had snatched off his ragged soft hat even before he was inside the door, and for all the stiffness of his chilled limbs his attitude, as he stood before his hosts, had the unconscious ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... was not so. Some subtle element of his character had forsaken him. He felt it. He knew it. Some certain stiffness that had given him all his rigidity, that had lent force to his authority, weight to his dominance, temper to his fine, inflexible hardness, was diminishing day by day. In the decisions which he, as President of the League, was called upon to make so often, he now hesitated. He could no longer ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... of our client, Mr. Carless," observed Methley, with some stiffness of manner, "there is no need for ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... well-known African horse-sickness broke out. In spite of every precaution, my horses died. The disease commenced by an appearance of languor, rapid action of the heart, scantiness of urine, costiveness, swelling of the forehead above the eyes, which extended rapidly to the whole head; stiffness and swelling of the neck, eyes prominent and bloodshot, running at the nose of foul greenish ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... stability; immutability &c. adj.; unchangeability, &c. adj.; unchangeableness|!; constancy; stable equilibrium, immobility, soundness, vitality, stabiliment[obs3], stiffness, ankylosis[obs3], solidity, aplomb. establishment, fixture; rock, pillar, tower, foundation, leopard's spots, Ethiopia's skin. permanence &c. 141; obstinacy &c. 606. V. be firm &c. adj.; stick fast; stand firm, keep firm, remain firm; weather the storm, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... quarter-deck, an elderly flag-officer was pacing to and fro, with a self-conscious dignity to which a touch of the gout or rheumatism perhaps contributed a little additional stiffness. He seemed to be a gallant gentleman, but of the old, slow, and pompous school of naval worthies, who have grown up amid rules, forms, and etiquette which were adopted full-blown from the British navy into ours, and are somewhat too cumbrous for the quick spirit of to-day. This order of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... almost miraculous, a wave of warmth surged through them, and presently the American was on his feet, and, with Dick's arm linked in his, was staggering to and fro upon the surface of the ice. As the stiffness and cramp worked out of their limbs they were able to increase their pace, until within a few minutes they were trotting to and fro across the mass and feeling almost ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... other textiles. Therefore it is necessary to use proper finishing materials and processes which will fill up the openings or interstices as produced in the fabric by the interlacing of warp and filling, and at the same time give to the fabric a certain amount of stiffness. Of course this finish will disappear during wear or washing, it having been imparted to the fabric to bring the latter into a ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... her. Dear Magdalen, I am so glad," said Mrs. Best, crossing over to kiss her; for the first stiffness had worn off, and they were together again, as had been the solicitor's daughter and the chemist's daughter, who went to the same school till Magdalen had been sent away to be finished ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... found the last day of the voyage to Liverpool dull enough. Mr. Hethcote did not seem to feel it in the same way: on the contrary, he grew more familiar and confidential in his talk with me. He has some of the English stiffness, you see, and your American pace was a little too fast for him. On our last night on board, we had some more conversation about the Farnabys. You were not interested enough in the subject to attend to what he said about them while you ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... hope so," Mr. Tufton said encouragingly, and as if stiffness were one of the most desirable things in life. "I like to see young ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... for the excellency of his Bow-Hand using a free and loose Arm. To deliver my own opinion: I do much approve the streightness of the Arm, especially in Beginners, because it is a means to keep the Body upright, which is a commendable posture. I can also admit the stiffness of the Elbow, in smooth and Swift Division; for which it is most properly apt; but Cross and Skipping Divisions cannot (I think) be so well express'd without some consent or yielding of the Elbow-Joint unto the motion of the Wrist.... This motion or looseness of the Wrist I mention, is chiefly ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... let her hand fall. He bowed with icy stiffness, and said, with a courtesy so fierce that Mr. Hicks, on whom he glared as he spoke, quailed before it, "I yield to your ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... brother hung. But when she had finished the last, and weighed the pros and cons, the little personal revelation of character contained in them forced itself on her notice. It was evident enough, from the stiffness of the wording, that Mr. Lennox had never forgotten his relation to her in any interest he might feel in the subject of the correspondence. They were clever letters; Margaret saw that in a twinkling; but she missed out ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Agnes, always look out for heroism at dinner. It is their great time. They live up to the stiffness of their shirt fronts. Do you mean to say that you never noticed how he ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... hardens soonest and more severely. Begin with the southern and south-western aspects, then dig the western aspects, then the eastern, and lastly the northern aspects. When all the soil is of much the same degree of stiffness, this order should be followed, but the rule may require to be modified on some estates, where the soil may be of loose character on a southern slope, and of stiffer character on another aspect, in which case the stiff soil aspect should be ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... not think what had come to every one, and tried in vain to make them sociable. In the evening they had recourse to a game, said to be for Charlotte's amusement, but in reality to obviate some of the stiffness and constraint; yet even this led to awkward situations. Each person was to set down his or her favourite character in history and fiction, flower, virtue, and time at which to have lived, and these were all to be appropriated to the writers. ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... course we did make plans, for all her stiffness. We sat in the red cedar grove, playing at tea-parties with a beautiful china tea-set, and Master Dick was to marry her, and I was to live with them and be nurse to the children, with one ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... breakfast table. Even he had hardly reckoned on such extreme cordiality. He had expected a bid for acquaintanceship with the "millionaire" and his bride, but he had fancied there would be a certain stiffness in ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... libido. Some of the charm and freedom may be due to the important circumstance that he was not writing for the public. He was not exposed to the reaction of a large unknown audience upon style; hence the absence of all the stiffness of literary pose. But the positive conditions of such success lay in the resources of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... diametrically opposite in its tendency, has been silently introduced into our prose. In this we have oscillated from freedom to restraint;—from the easy, natural, and colloquial style of Swift, Addison and Steele, to the perpetually strained, ambitious, and overwrought stiffness, of which the author we are now considering affords a striking exemplification. "He's knight o' the shire, and represents them all." There is not the smallest keeping in his composition:—less solicitous what he shall ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... peculiarly unhappy, attended with flaccid solids; vapid, sizy, and scarce fluids; and a low tide of spirits; often occasioning a kind of childish weakness and contemptibleness of speech, presence and demeanour; with a disagreeable dulness and stiffness, much unfitting me for conversation, but more especially for the government of a college,' which he was requested to undertake (i. 86). He was, says his admiring biographer, 'thorough in the government of his children,' ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... official breakfast-party. This is not because his tone is bookish; on the contrary, his tone and level are distinctly those of the man of the world. But one always seems to find that neither a wide range of cultivation, nor familiar access to the best Whig circles, had quite removed the stiffness and self-conscious precision of the Clapham Sect. We would give much for a little more flexibility, and would welcome ever so slight a consciousness of infirmity. As has been said, the only people whom men ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... emptied it. Thereupon, feeling that he could not possibly eat with those implacable eyes crushing him, he pushed his plate away. This angry gesture acted on La Teuse like a whip stroke, rousing her from her obstinate stiffness. She fairly jumped. ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... narrow selfishness; sentiments of fear degrading to the Deity; a bigotry that contracts the view, that freezes the heart, that shuts up the avenues to benevolent and generous feeling. This buckram stiffness does not suit me. Out upon such monastic parade! I will have ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... all the consciousness of a shining success into the stiffness of the neck which upheld the slight additional weight of the Earl's gold buckle in his cap, found himself, not wholly by accident, in the neighbourhood of his heart's beloved, Maud Lindesay. For, like a valiant seneschal, she had kept ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... distress. He was in the act of trying in vain to stand on one foot, so as to get the other into the garment, when he fancied he heard the step of his executioner, returning doubtless to resume his torture. He dropped the rag, and darted out of the door, forgetting aches and stiffness and agony. All naked as he was, he fled like the wind, unseen, or at least unrecognized, of any eye. Fergus did catch a glimpse of something white that flashed across a vista through the neighbouring wood, but he took it for a white peacock, of which there were two or three ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... for the moment is that the number of prose-writers increases. They write more abundantly than formerly; they translate old treatises; they unveil the mysteries of hunting, fishing, and heraldry; they compose chronicles; they rid the language of its stiffness. To this contributes Sir Thomas Malory, with his compilation called "Morte d'Arthur," in which he includes the whole cycle of Britain. The work was published by Caxton, the first English printer, who was also a prose-writer.[874] They ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... in the most laudatory terms; but it is little they do that makes them worthy of the epithets with which they are honored. Their talk is often of a kind not known to human society. One peculiarity is especially noticeable. A stiffness, not to say an appearance of affectation is often given to the conversation by the use of thou and thee. This was probably a survival in Cooper of the Quakerism of his ancestors; for he sometimes used it in his private letters. But since the action of his stories was in nearly all ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... himself as well as he could, but was unable to locate his wound. It was in his back somewhere, for he felt a stiffness and numbness all down his spine, but he still could move his arms, and felt no faintness. He decided that it must be merely a scratch, and climbed up as fast as he could to get into ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... the ocean, seemed actually to pin us down to the rigging. It was hard work making head against them. One after another we got out upon the yards. And here we had work to do; for our new sails had hardly been bent long enough to get the stiffness out of them, and the new earings and reef-points, stiffened with the sleet, knotted like pieces of iron wire. Having only our round jackets and straw hats on, we were soon wet through, and it was every moment growing colder. Our hands were soon ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... first line to the last, from his premises to his conclusion, he travels with a swift, unerring directness which no logician ever excelled,—an argument complete and full, without the affectation of learning, and without the stiffness which usually accompanies dates and details. A single easy, simple sentence of plain Anglo-Saxon words contains a chapter of history that, in some instances, has taken days of labor to verify, and must have cost the author months ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... down at the sleeve of my uniformed coat and could not even see the hole where the bullet had entered. Neither was there any sudden flow of blood. At the time there was no stiffness or discomfort in the arm and I continued to use it ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... inn—formerly an assistant butler in Madame du Barry's hotel at Versailles, was a sharp, sour-natured old fellow, truculent and avaricious. The spine of this man was a sort of social barometer; by its exact degree of curvature or stiffness in the presence of a guest the stable-boys and housemaids knew whether his rank was great or small, and whether, to please their cantankerous master, they were to fly or walk at his beck, or in the case of a mere bourgeois, to drink his wine on ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... both men and women, beautiful. The men wear a flat Scotch cap of some bright colour, and call it 'berretta.' The women tie a gaudy handkerchief round their heads, and compel one corner to stand forward from behind the ear in a triangle, in proportion to the size and stiffness whereof the lady seems to think herself well dressed. But the pretty Basque handkerchief will soon give place to the Parisian bonnet. For every cove among the rocks is now filled with smart bathing-houses, from which, in summer, the gay folk of Paris issue in 'costume de bain,' to float ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... horse should not be sent on a journey or any other hard work immediately after new shoeing;—the stiffness incidental to new shoes is not unlikely to bring him down. A day's rest, with reasonable exercise, will not be thrown away after this operation. On reaching home very hot, the groom should walk him about for a few minutes; this done, he should take off ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... a letter cannot be written with white gloves goes without saying. The first requisite is freedom from stiffness. The realm of good letters is a republic in which no man need lift his hat to another. It is hail-fellow well met, or not met at all. So when the humble address their superiors, or when children write to austere grandfathers, they suffer from an awkwardness ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... the Count," said Sir Pierre with some stiffness, "insisted upon exact punctuality. I have formed the habit of referring ...
— The Eyes Have It • Gordon Randall Garrett
... important naval business," we learn through his confidential secretary at this period, "he preferred a turn on the quarter-deck with his captains, whom he led by his own frankness to express themselves freely, to all the stiffness and formality of a council of war."[63] An interesting instance of these occasional counsels has been transmitted to us by one of his captains, then little more than a youth, but the last to survive of those who commanded ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... with crowns, garlands, bracelets, and other ornaments, endued with mighty arms, possessed of prowess and vigour and bursting with strength and energy, those princes could not, even in imagination, string that bow of extraordinary stiffness. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... stays and trusses; the former mainly concerned about the monetary loss involved, and the other demonstrating with a chair that the statue might have been kept up. As for Mahoudeau, still very shaky and growing dazed; he complained of a stiffness which he had not felt before; his limbs began to hurt him, he had strained his muscles and bruised his skin as if he had been caught in the embrace of a stone siren. Christine washed the scratch on his cheek, which had begun to bleed again, and it seemed to her as if the mutilated bathing girl ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... was there, and looked upon me as if with kindness restrained, bending coldly to my compliment to her as she sat; and then cast an eye first on my brother, then on my sister, as if to give the reason [so I am willing to construe it] of her unusual stiffness.—Bless me, my dear! that they should choose to intimidate rather than invite a mind, till now, not thought either ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... pounds. Each has the usual stiff shoulders, back, and limbs. One lifts heavy weights until he can raise eight hundred pounds. Inevitably he has become still more inflexible. The other engages in such exercises as will remove all stiffness from every part of the body, attaining not only the greatest flexibility, but the most complete activity. Does any intelligent physiologist doubt that the latter will have done most for the promotion of his health? that he will have secured ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... whether the groups are sufficiently varied and connected by rhythmic lines. Yet the concords of yellow and orange with blue in the "Sposalizio," and the blendings of dull violet and red in the "Disputa," make up for much of stiffness. Here, as in the Chapel of St. Catherine at Milan, we feel that Luini was the greatest colourist among frescanti. In the "Sposalizio" the female heads are singularly noble and idyllically graceful. Some of the young men too have Luini's special ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... home any good friend who had been away a long time. He could now see that the lieutenant belonged to the Tenth United States Cavalry; he knew that the Tenth was a colored regiment; he understood a certain stiffness that he felt rather than saw in the courtesy that was so carefully shown him by the Southern volunteers who were about him; and he turned away to avoid meeting him. For the same reason, he fancied, Judith ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... bracket between 3 and 4 inches along the cylinder, for the sake of additional support; and in large engines the feather is continued through the interior of the belt, and cruciform feathers are added for the sake of greater stiffness. The projection of the outer face of the trunnion flange from the side of the cylinder is 6-1/2 inches; the thickness of the flange round the mouth of the cylinder is 3/4 of an inch, and its projection 1-3/8 inch; the height of the ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... vehicle to take us home. A sorry carriole or patache it proved to be, with the accessories of a lumbering white mare and a little wizened, ancient peasant, who had put on, in honor of the occasion, a new blouse of extraordinary stiffness and blueness. We hired the trap of an energetic woman who put it "to" with her own hands; women in Touraine and the B1esois appearing to have the best of it in the business of letting vehicles, as well as in many other industries. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... with gigantic rowels, a round-crowned small-brimmed black hat, with an ostrich feather placed in the side and hanging over the top, a long rapier on his hip, and a dagger in his girdle. This buckram attire, it will be easily conceived, contributed no little to the natural stiffness of his thin ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... aware of a most unpleasant feeling of helplessness and inefficiency. Then she seemed to receive inspiration and optimism from somewhere. She knew not exactly from where, but perhaps it was from the shy stiffness of the demeanour of her old acquaintance, Inspector Keeble. Moreover, the Irishman's twinkling eyes ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... "here is something to be thankful for, at least," and so saying and shaking the stiffness out of his knees and elbows, he started off for the white walls and the red roofs ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... same as one of ourselves, of course, Sholto. But I believe you delight in stiffness and ceremony. Will you not ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... contradict him after he had spoken, to press an opinion or a measure on a man whose belief in his own wisdom was infinite, to risk not only being set down as a dreamer, but the King's displeasure, and the ruin of being given over to the will of his enemies, this Bacon had not the fibre or the stiffness or the self-assertion to do. He did not do what a man of firm will and strength of purpose, a man of high integrity, of habitual resolution, would have done. Such men insist when they are responsible, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... specimen of the long-service soldier of those days; a not unhandsome man, with a certain undemonstrative dignity, which some might have said to be partly owing to the stiffness of his uniform about his neck, the high stock being still worn. He was much stouter than when Selina had parted from him. Although she had not meant to be demonstrative she ran across to him directly she saw him, and he held her in ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... often cruel to hear; that she but spoke these things because he let himself drift into weak conniving at the intrigues of Johanna Elizabetha. Then she recounted the petty spite and the thousand taunts to which she was subjected. She painted Stuttgart in sombre colours, the dullness, the stiffness. Why should Wirtemberg be the least brilliant, least gay, of all the German courts? She talked of Berlin and the splendours of the newly made King Frederick I. Of Dresden with the Elector-King of Poland, Augustus the Strong; of his splendid residence, the Zwinger, which, like an enchanted ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... stiffness in these dialogues, nothing which smacks of the school. The discussion starts from things which they had under the eyes, often from some slight accidental happening. One night when Augustin could not sleep—he often suffered from insomnia—the dispute began in bed, for the ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Consequent upon a relaxed full arm is the occasional dropping of the wrist below the level of the keyboard. A few great players practice this at a public recital, and lo! and behold! a veritable cult of 'wrist-droppers' arises and we see students raising and lowering the wrist with exaggerated mechanical stiffness and entirely ignoring the important end in which this wrist dropping was only ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... rather above the heads of his fellow-passengers, but with a quick, easy turn of his own, which is lightly set on his shoulders; his mouth is a little open, his eye is bright, rather restless, but penetrative, his port has something of defiance, his form is erect, but without stiffness. Such was the appearance of the baron's companion. And as Randal turned round at Levy's voice, the baron said to his companion, "A young man in the first circles—you should book him for your fair lady's parties. How d' ye do, Mr. Leslie? Let me introduce you to Mr. Richard ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Arnim, Count, German ambassador in Paris; succeeded by Prince Hohenlohe Aumale, Duc d', president of Bazaine court-martial; at ball at British embassy Austria, description of Empress of, when in Paris; stiffness of ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... Fourth of July afternoon in the middle eighties. The sawdust streets and high board sidewalks of the lumber town were filled to the brim with people. The permanent population, dressed in the stiffness of its Sunday best, escorted gingham wives or sweethearts; a dozen outsiders like myself tried not to be too conspicuous in a city smartness; but the great multitude was composed of the men of the woods. I sat, chair-tilted ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... portion of what remains seems to indicate rapid decay. The whole stands indeed greatly in need of reparation. Ducarel, if I remember rightly,[108] has made, of this whole front, a sort of elevation, as if it were intended for a wooden model to work by: having all the stiffness and precision of an erection of forty-eight hours standing only. The central tower is of very stunted dimensions, and overwhelmed by a roof in the form of an extinguisher. This, in fact, was the consequence ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Ornstein and the age of steel. And Ravel has some of the squareness, the sheerness and rigidity for which the ultra-modern are striving. The liquescence of Debussy has given away again to something more metallic, more solid and unflowing. There is a sort of new stiffness in this music. And in the field of harmony Ravel is steadily building upon Debussy. His chords grow sharper and more biting; in "Le Tombeau de Couperin" and the minuet on the name of Haydn there is a harmonic daring and ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... track traversing the calf, will more or less tie the whole thickness of the structures perforated at one spot, and the apertures of entry and exit may be visibly retracted when the muscles are put in action with consequent pain and stiffness to the patient. Such pain and stiffness form some of the most troublesome after-consequences of many simple wounds. It is remarkable for how long a period after the healing of the wound and resumption ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... so melted down the rude stiffness of the Tetchy family as this wonderful revolution in my domestic prospects. They became amusingly disposed to sociability, as well as to inquisitiveness. But I was glad to see my mother stiffen up in proportion to their sudden condescension, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... well worth one's while to look over the volumes of the "Anthology" to see what our fathers and grandfathers were thinking about, and how they expressed themselves. The stiffness of Puritanism was pretty well relaxed when a Magazine conducted by clergymen could say that "The child,"—meaning the new periodical,—"shall not be destitute of the manners of a gentleman, nor a stranger to genteel amusements. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Castruccio, with great stiffness, and speaking in French, which was his wont when he meant to be distant—"sir, I do not come to renew our former acquaintance—you are a great man [here a bitter sneer], I an obscure one [here Castruccio drew himself up]—I only come to discharge a debt to you ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... marine deities were incorruptible. It was not possible to starch the sea; and precisely as the stiffness fastened upon men, it vanished from ships. What had once been a mere raft, with rows of formal benches, pushed along by laborious flap of oars, and with infinite fluttering of flags and swelling of poops above, gradually began to lean more heavily into the deep water, to sustain ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... of procedure was as follows: The reinforcing rings were erected to a height of 7 ft. The bars were bent by being pulled through a tire binder and around a curved templet by a steam engine. The bending gave some trouble, due, it was thought, to the stiffness of the high carbon steel. Vertical channels 4 ins. deep were set with webs in radial planes or across wall at four points in the circumference. The flanges of these channels were punched exactly to the vertical spacing of the ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... usually employed for managing the boat, and both of them when it is stormy. With the second they keep the boat from getting unsteady, which would follow from its lightness, that rudder giving the boat more stiffness and serving as ballast. That is a precaution rendered necessary by its very lightness, the vessels that are lightest being those that require most care by being unsteady. In the middle they have a scaffold, four or six brazas long, which they call ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... fighters. He was in himself both weapon and wielder of weapon. He was a concentrated force. His white body was knotted with nerves and muscles. The chances were good if—Gordon pictured it to himself—and again the horror and doubt were over him. He himself had acquired a certain stiffness and lassitude from years, and long drives in one position. He would stand no chance unarmed against a bullet. But the dog—that was another matter. The dog would make a spring like the spring of death itself, and that white leap of attack might easily cause the aim to go wrong. It ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... fatigue. As a result of fatigue the normal irritability of muscular tissue becomes weakened, and its force of contraction is lessened. There is, also, often noticed in fatigue a peculiar tremor of the muscles, rendering their movements uncertain. The stiffness of the muscles which comes on during severe exercise, or the day after, are familiar results ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... moment Stubbs gazed at him angrily, the while he worked his fingers back and fro to chase away the stiffness. ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... estimable Mrs Tilman was installed in her place. It was an uncomfortable time for all. Rose was indignant, and took no pains to hide it. Graeme was annoyed and sorry, and, all the more, as Nelly did not see fit to confine the stiffness and coldness of her leave-takings to Mrs Elliott as she ought to have done. If half as earnestly and frankly as she expressed her sorrow for her departure, Graeme had expressed her vexation at its cause, Nelly would have been content. ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson |
