"Adaptability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... office be thoroughly shaken and mixed, it could produce Goethe's Faust by chance. If we insist upon adhering to the theories of natural selection, or survival of the fittest, be it so; we only transfer the choice to a Something which can choose, and leave the fitness or adaptability to the judgment of an originator, who can really judge ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... in his most lordly, patronizing tone. Macgregor was a very good, earnest fellow, but he should judge him to be lacking in tact or adaptability, fine sensibilities, and that sort of rot. But never mind. Didn't he catch it! Oh, no. My Sally Ann! Boiling lard and blue vitriol, and all in the chief's most sweet-scented lavender style, though all the time I could see the danger lights burning through his ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... Navy!" said the first official whom I met. He threw his hat in the air and the peasants standing about raised a cheer. It was my first view of the marvellous adaptability of this great people. I noticed that many of them were wearing little buttons with ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... has need of every means that may serve to define and illuminate its design; and hence the superior frequency and perfection of the Three-Part form, which, in its Third Part, provides for and executes this Return to the beginning. Its superiority and greater adaptability is fully confirmed in the practice of composition; the number of Three-Part forms exceeds the Two-Part, in musical literature, to an almost surprising degree; and it may therefore be regarded as the design peculiarly adapted to the purposes ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... not know then how readily people can forget the life of toil behind them and adapt themselves to one of luxury and ease; and with her the adaptability commenced in some degree the moment Shannondale station was reached, and she saw the handsome carriage waiting for them. A carriage finer far and more modern than the one from Collingwood, in which Mrs. Atherton ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... wealth could satisfy. The Chinese phenomenon was therefore in no sense new; the dearth of coined money and the variety of local standards made the methods used economic necessities. The system was not in itself a bad system: its fatal quality lay in its woodenness, its lack of adaptability, and in its growing weakness in the face of foreign competition which it could never understand. Foreign competition—that was the enemy destined to achieve an overwhelming triumph and dash to ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... unpicking, and Griffith, finding his ghost of self-reproach laid for the time being, watched her in a supremely blissful state of mind. He never tired of watching her, he frequently told her in enthusiastic confidence. The charm in Dolly Crewe was her adaptability; she was never out of place, and it had been said that she suited herself to her accompaniments far oftener than her accompaniments suited themselves to her. Seeing her in a shabby dress, seated in the shabby parlor, one instinctively ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and an orchestra of two hundred pieces under the direction of Theodore Thomas. In 1874 he made a metrical version of "The Legend of Don Munio" from Irving's "Alhambra," and set it to music for a small orchestra and chorus. Its adaptability to the resources of the vocal societies of smaller cities has made it one of ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... bone, and fat, the general shape and thickness of a piece of beef should be noted when its quality is to be determined. In addition, its adaptability to the purpose for which it is selected and the method of cookery to be used in its preparation are also points that should ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... orchards. We recommend the Indiana pecan in many states; the improved black walnuts over a much wider area, and the chestnut in many localities where it is not a native tree. The top-working of native hickories and black walnuts also can be confidently recommended. In every case, however, the adaptability of the kind of nut to the locality should be passed upon by an expert. In every case, also, even in that of top-working native hickories and walnuts, intelligent and generous care is essential for ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... the forest? I asked for nothing better, but I had no trout-rod with me. He produced a rod, SUCH a trout-rod! A long bamboo with a piece of string tied to it! To fish for trout with a worm was contrary to every tradition in which I had been reared, but adaptability is a great thing, so with two turns of a spade I got enough worms for the afternoon, and started off. The Foret d'Aiguebelle is not a forest in our acceptation of the term, but an endless series of little bare rocky hills, dotted with pines, and fragrant with tufts of wild lavender, thyme ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... What is said of the use of dialogue? What is the nature of the great epic? What is meant by heroic here? Illustrate. What is a metrical romance? How does it differ from the grand epic? What is said of the adaptability of the metrical romance? Illustrate. What is a metrical tale? Name an example or two. What is a mock epic? For what ends may it be used? Mention a ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... of diet depends upon its adaptability for entering into combinations within the system. This, in turn, depends solely upon its higher or lower standing in respect to vibrations. This is the reason why the human organism ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... the sum. And the resulting prophecy would necessarily be an evil, or at least a pessimistic one. He was so helpless, so lacking in all the practicalities of human life. He seemed to have one little focus that was quite incapable of expansion, of adaptability. That focus was almost entirely filled by his Jessie's image, with just a small place in it reserved for his twins. Take the woman out of it, and, to all intents and purposes, he looked out upon a dead ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... no effort on his wife's part, had she wished to make such effort, could have forced him to spend more than two-thirds of his income. Of this she also was aware, and had trimmed her sails accordingly, likening herself to him in this respect. But of such wisdom, and such trimmings, and such adaptability, what likelihood was there with Mr ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... electricity is decidedly preferable to any other agent. Heat may be transformed into motive power by a suitable engine, but there its adaptability is at an end. An electric current drives not only a motor, but every machine and tool attached to the motor, the whole executing tasks of a delicacy and complication new to industrial art. On an electric railroad an identical current propels the train, directs it by telegraph, operates ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... willing to modify ill-fitting social conventions into rules of conduct which are of actual service to their children in their daily lives of factory work and of city amusements. Those mothers, through their sympathy and adaptability, substitute keen present interests and activity for solemn warnings and restraint, self-expression for repression. Their vigorous family life allies itself by a dozen bonds to the educational, the industrial ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... years the present sources of water supply will be inadequate. The whole subject of water supply for northern New Jersey demands immediate consideration, and it would not be wise to take up the matter of prevention of flood damage in the Passaic without basing the value of every project upon its adaptability for use in future ...
— The Passaic Flood of 1903 • Marshall Ora Leighton
... latter, there is an automatic weighing machine, by which the material may be weighed as it is delivered, before it goes to the bottom of the elevator, to be again transferred by its means to the barge or granary. Simplicity, efficiency, and adaptability to any position in which elevators of this class are desirable, are the claims the patentees, Messrs. Behrns & Unruth, Lubeck, make for the advantages ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... Its abundance and adaptability did much to change the nature of their diet as well as to save them from starvation. The colonists learned from the Indians how to plant, nourish, harvest, grind, and cook it in many Indian ways, and in each way it ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... truth of human vicissitudes. On the whole, no other vehicle of emotion and no other means to ecstasy has served man so well. In art any flood of spiritual exaltation finds a channel ready to nurse and lead it: and when art fails it is for lack of emotion, not for lack of formal adaptability. There never was a religion so adaptable and catholic as art. And now that the young movement begins to cast about for a home in which to preserve itself and live, what more natural than that it should turn to the one religion of unlimited forms and ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... several vocations; indeed, there was the general over-proportion of intellect, characteristic of such Scotch gatherings, and often in excess of minor social qualities. There was the usual foreigner, with Latin quickness, eagerness, and misapprehending adaptability. And there was the solitary Englishman—perhaps less generously equipped than the others—whom everybody differed from, ridiculed, and then looked up to and imitated. There were the half-dozen smartly frocked women, who, far from being the females of the foregoing species, were quite ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... illumination as to the real meaning of this strange new life. Not that Mrs. Sharp was in the least subtle, quite the contrary. She was as hard-headed, practical a person as one could well imagine. But her natural powers of adaptability must have been unusually great. From a small shop in one of the outlying suburbs of London, with its circumscribed outlook, moral as well as physical, to the limitless horizon of the prairie was indeed a far cry. How much inward readjustment such a violent transplanting must require, Nora ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... bird creation. Not, of course, because pretty Poll can talk (in a state of nature, parrots only chatter somewhat meaninglessly to one another), but because the group display on the whole, all round, a greater amount of intelligence, of cleverness, and of adaptability to circumstances than any other birds, including even their cunning and secretive rivals, the ravens, the jackdaws, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... simple spirit. With one and all she was at home, for all were to her, by no merely formal phrase, "dearest brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus." One knows not whether to be more struck by the outspoken fearlessness of the woman or by her great adaptability. She could handle with plain directness the crudest sins of her age; she could also treat with subtle insight the most elusive phases of spiritual experience. No greater distance can be imagined than that which separates the young Dominican ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... the resistance to English rivalry proved fruitless, in spite of the repeated prohibitions decreed by Philip the Good, the country turned, with extraordinary adaptability, to the linen industry as a substitute for the woollen. Linen replaced cloth, and the same processes and looms which had been applied to the old industry were successfully applied to the new. Clothmaking took refuge either in the Flemish country districts, ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... "The adaptability and economy of Nature," said Cortlandt, "have always amazed me. In the total blackness of the Kentucky Mammoth Cave, where eyes would be of no use to the fishes, our common mother has given them ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... aristocracy, that throughout the South had guarded its patrician ranks with almost Brahmin jealousy, she sternly decried every infringement of caste custom and etiquette. Nature and education had combined to deprive her of any adaptability to the new order of things; and she rejected the idea that "a lady should transact business", with the same contemptuous indignation that would have greeted a proposition to wear "machine-sewed garments", ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... nothing, and have to learn everything in the school, at which they consequently spend four years. Well, in spite of the absence of selection or competition for entrance, the result is quite excellent. The knowledge, spirit of discipline and duty of the American officer, and his adaptability to no matter what task, leave nothing to ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... lettering: adaptability and decorative effect. Development of historic writing and lettering and its influence on type design. Classification of general forms in lettering. Application of design to lettering. Drawing for reproduction. Fully ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... their powerful incisors, worked by strong jaws, they can soon gnaw through a tree of this size. But they are capable of attacking trees, even more than 100 cc. in circumference and some forty metres in height, with great skill and adaptability; "no better work could be accomplished by a most highly-finished steel cutting tool, wielded by a muscular human arm" (Martin). They operate seated on their hind quarters, and they make their incision in the wood with a feather edge. It was once supposed ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... for freedom and for France. Some of us may hope and believe that, in after years, when he was at leisure to view history in perspective and carry his psychology a little deeper, he would have allowed, if not more potency, at any rate more adaptability, to the human will. In order to do so, it would not have been necessary to abandon his fatalistic creed. He would have seen, perhaps, that even if we only will what we have to will, the factors which shape the will—of the individual, the nation, or the race—are ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... probable that half the general average cleverness of men is due to their having learned, as boys, games, or the art of making something, or mending and repairing. In any case, if they had learned to use their hands and their inventiveness or adaptability, they would have been the better for it. That the innumerable multitude of people who can do nothing of the kind, and who take no real interest in anything except spending money and gossiping, are to ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... twenty-two to twenty-five; the ideal age for men is from twenty-five to twenty-eight. It is not my province to deal at length with this subject, but I may state that I believe that continence beyond these ages becomes increasingly difficult, that immorality is encouraged, that adaptability becomes lessened, and that wiser selection of mates does not occur. But how bring about early marriages in a time when the luxuries seem to have become necessities, and therefore the necessity of marriage is eyed more and ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... countenance: neither should the learned look in vain for reasonings; the poet for sublimities; the curious mind for mystery; nor the sorrowing heart for prayer. I do discern, in that great book, a wondrous adaptability to minds of every calibre: and it is just what might antecedently have been expected of a volume writ by many men at many different eras, yet all superintended by one master mind; of a volume meant for every ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... thoughtfully noted that all the selections in this and the three succeeding chapters have been chosen for their easy adaptability to use in the first natural period of art— expression, the Colossal period. They are selections with an easily distinguishable theme. Throughout these chapters the mind of the student should be engaged with the motif of the selection as it first catches the mind. Nothing in later study can ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... and country practice which have brought to him the ripe experience of what would be called a "physician's life-time." His success has been, in part, due to his honesty, kindliness and conscientiousness, as well as to his thorough training and natural adaptability to the profession. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... mercifully busy. She had the temperament that finds a virtue in the day's work, and a balm in its mere iterative quality. Her sympathy and intelligence made her a good nurse and her adaptability, combined with her loveliness, ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... of his life in the study of disagreeable animals, that he might prove the adaptability of organism to environment. How much pleasanter and briefer had been his task, if he had begun his studies at once with the creature whose long history has been one unbroken succession of inspired and ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... adaptability of Hamlet to the stage, Mr. Maurice Solomon"—who may have been quite fifteen—"passed on to review the chief points in the character of the Prince of Denmark, concluding with a slight review of the other characters which he did not think Shakespeare ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... made, particularly with the filberts, the hybrids developed by J. F. Jones, G. L. Slate, S. H. Graham, Heben Corsan and some others, showing great improvement over previous European varieties in their adaptability to the northern United States. At the present time there are filbert varieties of hybrid origin better than those in the nursery trade which should be propagated and made available. Work with the Chinese chestnuts has ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... almost eternal frost, many of them have been preserved as entire as at the fatal moment they sank under the rigors of external conditions no longer fitted for their existence. It has been attempted by some to prove the adaptability of these animals to the present conditions of the northern hemisphere; but so untenable in every phase is this opinion, that it would be sheer waste of time and space to attempt its refutation. That they may have migrated northward and southward with the seasons is more than probable, though it has ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... adaptability, too,' said Gwendolyn. 'I watched her at dinner, and she never made a single slip, although I imagine there were several things that were new to her ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... of bookmaking, more especially in that of illustration. The art of wood-engraving has been carried, one could almost say, to perfection. In its marvellous capability of imitation it has, perhaps, lost individuality, but it has proved its adaptability to the production of the most diverse and beautiful effects. In the hands of artistic workmen,—for an engraver must nowadays be an artist as well as a workman,—a wood cut may imitate a true engraving, an etching, a mezzotint, a charcoal or crayon drawing, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... planet will again be well placed for observation, and we may learn more about it. Already a few of the much-disputed lines, which people wrongly call "canals," have been traced on photographs. Astronomers who are sceptical about life on Mars are often not fully aware of the extraordinary adaptability of life. There was a time when the climate of the whole earth, from pole to pole, was semi-tropical for millions of years. No animal could then endure the least cold, yet now we have plenty of Arctic plants and ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... premature as to be obnoxious, correcting his taste, subduing his enthusiasm, and modifying even his behaviour. The tourist would presumably pay off the unwelcome guide, but the children cannot pay off the teacher: they can and do rebel, but docility and adaptability seem to play a large part in self-preservation. For the young child freedom must precede docility, because the only reasonable and profitable docility is one that comes after initiative and experiment have been satisfied, and when ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... credit for the brilliant achievement I have tried to outline belongs to the skill and adaptability of British airmen, and how much to successful organisation, would be difficult and rather unnecessary. But it is obvious that those who guided the R.F.C. from neglected beginnings to the status of a great air service ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... "Second Royal Mendicant's Adventure," could not more easily transform themselves than the French peasant. Husbandman to-day, mechanic on the morrow, at one season he plies the pruning-hook, at another he turns the lathe. This adaptability of the French mind, strange to say, is nowhere seen to greater advantage than in out-of-the-way regions, just where are mental torpidity and unbendable routine. Not one of Millet's blue-bloused countrymen but masters a ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... limited in their distribution also by their adaptability, in which they vary greatly. Thus a bald cypress will grow both in wetter and in dryer land than an oak; a red cedar will flourish from Florida to the Canadian line, while other species, like the Eastern larch, the Western mountain hemlock, or ...
— The Training of a Forester • Gifford Pinchot
... to America, the most democratic of countries, comes here, not as to a strange land, but as to a home? The ability of the Russian Jew to adjust himself to America's essentially democratic conditions is not to be explained by Jewish adaptability. The explanation lies mainly in the fact that the twentieth century ideals of America have been the ideals of the Jew for more than twenty centuries. We have inherited these ideals of democracy and of social justice as we have the qualities of mind, body and character to which ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... APPEARANCE OF SAUCES AND GRAVIES are of the highest consequence, and in nothing does the talent and taste of the cook more display itself. Their special adaptability to the various viands they are to accompany cannot be too much studied, in order that they may harmonize and blend with them as perfectly, so to speak, as does a pianoforte accompaniment with the voice of ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Aileen were all on the team, Beverly having made it through adaptability rather than knowledge, for she had never seen a basketball before coming to school, but being as quick as a cat had made good. Consequently the occupants of Suite 10 were glad to rest their weary bodies upon ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... to find the original of Ligorio's masterpiece in some ancient building, whereas the perfect adaptability of its plan to new requirements proves that it could never have been produced earlier than the Renaissance. It has been well epitomised as the "day-dream of an artist who has saturated ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... luggage, it should be borne in mind that large trunks and dress boxes are inadmissible. From Pindi to Srinagar everything must be transported by wheeled conveyance, and, in Kashmir itself, all luggage must be selected with a view to its adaptability to the backs of coolies or ponies. In Srinagar one can buy native trunks—or yakdans—which are cheap, strong, and portable; and the covered creels or "kiltas" serve admirably for the stowage of kitchen ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... and his friend had that inflexibility of principle in criticism and literary utterance which they adhered to as though it were a matter of high morals. This feeling contrasts with the easy adaptability of our day, when the critic so often has to shape his views according to interested aims. He indeed will hold in his views, but may not deem it necessary to produce them. I could recall instances in both men of this sternness of opinion. Forster knew no compromise in such matters; though ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... orders, it is a life that would seem to have no attraction whatever. The hours are absurd, the work distasteful, and the mode of living repulsive. But strange to say, it fully contents me. The secret of happiness lies in the supple adaptability to conditions. When I found that it was necessary to perform ridiculous antics with my legs and arms, I entered into the comicality of the idea and performed them with an indulgent zest which soon won me the precious encomiums of my superiors in rank. When ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... things are added in time, if the brother be worthy, the power of glib speech that neither man nor woman can resist when a meal or a bed is in question, the eye of a horse-cope, the skill of a cook, the constitution of a bullock, the digestion of an ostrich, and an infinite adaptability to all circumstances. But many die before they attain to this degree, and the past-masters in the craft appear for the most part in dress- clothes when they are in England, and thus their glory ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... de' Medici's country villa at Careggi and was brought here when the palazzo was refurnished for Francis I, Cosimo I's son and successor, and his bride, Joanna of Austria, in 1565. Nothing could better illustrate the accomplishment and imaginative adaptability of the great craftsmen of the day than the two works of Verrocchio that we have now seen: the Christ and S. Thomas at Or San Michele, in Donatello and Michelozzo's niche, and this exquisite fountain splashing water so musically. Notice the ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... follies of mankind. He traces the causes, the origin, and the science of superstition—its phenomena and its devotees, proving that all the sacrifices, prayers, and customs of idolatry are the same in all ages, they only differ in language and adaptability of climate, and that with the fall of judicial astrology, idolatry received its greatest blow, for while men thought that priests could control destiny, they feared them—but this idea destroyed, it removed the terror which so long had ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... throughout New England. Its long life, noble proportions, beautiful foliage, dense shade, moderately rapid growth, usual freedom from disease or insect disfigurement, and adaptability to almost any soil not saturated with water make it a favorite in cultivation; readily obtainable in nurseries, transplants easily, recovers its vigor quickly, and has a nearly uniform ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... continued the poet, 'must conform to the word, when the word honours the idea by making use of it. What care I for the conventional, the threadbare significance? My heart recognises, through the outer vestment of apparent insanity, the inner adaptability. Soar, my mind!' ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... the quick wit and ready adaptability of her race, she did see; and as she adored her young mistress above any one on earth, she was only too willing to please her; and, too, the occasion had its charms ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... bedding and house plants. Next to the geranium, begonias are probably the most popular for house culture of the entire plant list. The ease of culture, great variety of kinds, profusion of bloom or richness of foliage, together with their adaptability to shade, make ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... hear a name which might not harmonize with their idea of the fitness of things, the cowboys of the Bar-20 had, with a freedom born of excellent livers and fearless temperaments, bestowed names befitting their sense of humor and adaptability. The official title of the Sioux was By-and-by; the dog was known as Fleas. Never had names more clearly described the objects to be represented, for they were excellent examples of ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... grasp them and, in the endless labour and sense of usefulness, Conning learned to know content and comparative peace. He grew to look upon his present life as a kind of belated reparation. He was not depressed; with surprising adaptability he accepted what was inevitable and, while reserving, in the personal sense, his past for private hours, he managed to construct a philosophy and cheerfulness that carried him well on the tide ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... all, for eighteen months she had been more to him than any other woman. He had talked freely to her. He had concealed naught from her. He had spoken to her of his discouragements and his weaknesses. He had had no shame before her. By her acquiescences, her skill, her warmth, her adaptability, her intense womanliness, she had created between them a bond stronger than anything that could keep them apart. The bond existed. It could not during the whole future be broken save by a disloyalty. A disloyalty, she divined, would irrevocably destroy it. But she had no fear ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... family, and the upper classes of all the towns invariably supported the show, while the lower classes came as a matter of course. Mr Wopples, however, was equally as clever in providing a bill of fare as in inducing the public to come to the theatre, and the adaptability of the family was really wonderful. One night they would play farcical comedy; then Hamlet, reduced to four acts by Mr Wopples, would follow on the second night; the next night burlesque would reign supreme; ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... We have lost utterly the older sense of a hallowed fealty towards man-made law; we are not suffering from the inflexibility of the Medes and the Persians. We manufacture laws as readily as we do steam-rollers and change their patterns to suit the roads we have to build. But with the profit of our adaptability we are in danger of losing the underlying sense of purpose that inspires and continues to justify measures, and to lose also a certain intimate intercourse with problems of theory and philosophy which is one of the requisites of a professional equipment and one nowhere better appreciated ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... history, distribution, characteristics, adaptability, uses, and standards of excellence of all pedigreed breeds of cattle, sheep and swine in America. The accepted text book in colleges, and the authority for farmers and breeders. Illustrated. 371 pages. 5 x ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... assume, that, when God dispersed the sons of Noah, he fixed the "bounds of their habitation," and, that, from the earth and sky the various races have secured their civilization. He sent the different nations into separate parts of the earth. He gave to each its racial peculiarities, and adaptability for the climate into which it went. He gave color, language, and civilization; and, when by wisdom we fail to interpret his inscrutable ways, it is pleasant to know that "he worketh all things after the counsel ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... roles. It was designed and partly completed during Wagner's stay in Riga as orchestra leader. In his Autobiography the composer says that he first read the story at Dresden in 1837, and was greatly impressed with its adaptability for opera. He began it in the fall of the same year at Riga, and says: "I had composed two numbers of it, when I found, to my annoyance, that I was again fairly on the way to the composition of music a la ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... also that the Senator made the acquaintance of Mr. Washington Hawkins, and was greatly taken with his innocence, his guileless manner and perhaps with his ready adaptability to enter ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... incessantly engaged in travelling for his patron in Greece and Asia Minor, and was too valuable a coadjutor to be tied down to the routine of teaching until he had completed his work. During the next decade he became the "professor," and discharged the duties with a genius and an adaptability to circumstances that won for him the admiration and love of all ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... confiscation, unless contraband of war. It was frankly stated at the time that without this addition the abolition of privateering was not in the interest of Powers like the United States, with a small navy, but a large and active merchant fleet. This peculiar adaptability of privateering at that time to the situation of the United States might have warranted the suspicion that its professions of a desire to make the Declaration of Paris broader than the other nations wished only masked a desire to have things ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... territorial expanse rather than for depth. Of course, he did with astonishing ease assume the color of the person he was talking with; but this involved, with him, no conscious mental process, no deliberate insincerity. It was rather owing to a kind of constitutional adaptability, an unconquerable distaste for quarrelling, and the absence of any decided ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... hence it fittingly signifies and causes the cleansing from sins. By reason of its coolness it tempers superfluous heat: wherefore it fittingly mitigates the concupiscence of the fomes. By reason of its transparency, it is susceptive of light; hence its adaptability to Baptism as ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... protection has been the ruling principle; thirdly, that free trade was not a necessity imposed by circumstances and position, not the result of a barter of value for value, but of free and spontaneous choice, and as the result of the profound conviction of the superior excellency and adaptability of the abstract principle. We shall deal briefly with the subject, because it has been discussed more at length heretofore in those special articles in which we have treated of the rise and progress of the cotton manufacture in this and other countries. In regard ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... coconut shell in which the Negro carver often expressed his ingenuity. These represent in their carving a varied number of forms, including human beings, animals and plants. The interest in these carvings, as Roth tells us, "lies in their demonstration of the adaptability of the native to perform creditably on a material very different from ivory. Fair ingenuity is displayed in the manner in which the figures are grouped on a confined surface without overcrowding. In fact, the feature of the work is the careful ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... fear that he would be driven out by the Allies so long as he contrived to hit it off with the Hungarians. Should these turn away from him, however, the cosmopolitan financiers, whose cardinal virtues are suppleness and adaptability, would readily work with his successor, whoever he might be. The few who knew of this quickening of high ideals with low intrigue were shocked by the light-hearted way in which under the aegis of the Conference a discreditable pact was made with the "enemy of the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... exempt the best and firmest Macadam; and that is the effect of atmospheric changes on the surface of the road. The difference of tractive power in summer and winter must be immense, and the great disadvantage of mechanical, as compared with animal draught, is its want of adaptability to the exigencies of an ordinary road. A steam-carriage of ten horse power cannot under any circumstances, when it encounters a newly mended part of the road, or a softer soil, put forth an additional power ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... completely habituated to. He did it through the year at intervals of from three to six months; during the busy summer season among the Swiss pensions he had done it once every fortnight, or oftener. His nature was full of adaptability, receptivity, fluidity; he made friends everywhere he went, and snatched up ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... followed her through the scullery (a spacious and airy place) into the kitchen, having first carefully rubbed the dust off my horny soles on the door-mat. And then, with a boy's ready adaptability in the matter of meals, I gave a good account of myself behind a plate of bacon and eggs, with plentiful bread and butter and tea, though I had broken my fast in the bush an hour or two earlier by polishing off the sketchy remains of the previous ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... from the Fort Canibas district, became still more indispensable in General Waymouth's daily life. Duties at a desk had worn upon him. This everlasting mingling with men was more to his taste. He had natural adaptability. He was a good judge of human nature. He had serene good nature. Physique and manner made him master of many situations at the old brick house that otherwise would have sadly tried the General's strength and temper. Therefore, ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... David Willet that no matter what the situation he always made the best of it. His mind was a remarkable mingling of vigor, penetration and adaptability. If one had to wait, well, one had to wait and there was nothing else in it. He sank down in the little cove in the cliff and rested his back against the stony wall. He, Robert and Tayoga filled it, and his moccasined feet touched the dwarfed shrubs which ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... hot and tiresome, and the never-ending work is oppressive, and Dr. H. comes in from the field two or three times in the day, dizzy and faint, and they condole with each other, and I feel that the Colorado settler needs to be made of sterner stuff and to possess more adaptability. ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... "Arthur has great adaptability," Helen returned. "I think he believes he is in love. I'm sure I hope you'll not feel it your duty to tell him ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... still further his power, his ability to bend men and things to his iron will, and their awe of him increased proportionately. To the isolated community of obscure persons Symes seemed very nearly omnipotent. They had no criticism to make of the law's adaptability to Symes's needs; it was enough for them that Crowheart was in the limelight and the influx of settlers meant their ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... been following, with sunny adaptability, the line of the least resistance. Thrown out of his groove by the jealousy and resentment of the dark time in his married life, Jim had realized himself as fairly cornered by Fate, and had run away from the whole situation ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... abeyance. He became, too, almost reconciled to his dress, or want of dress—though, to be sure, a coat of paint and a blanket cannot, at the best, be regarded as more than a passably efficient hot-weather costume. With the easy adaptability of boyhood, Andrew Kerr had become almost ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... There are weighty authorities who assert that through the female alone comes those modifications of form, capacity and ability which constitute evolutionary progress. It was the mothers who first developed cunning in chase, ingenuity in escaping enemies, skill in obtaining food, and adaptability. It was they also who attained unfailing discretion in leadership, adaptation to environment and boldness in attack. When the animal kingdom as a whole is surveyed, these stand out as distinctly feminine traits. ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... cannot too often meditate on the words of the wisest and noblest forerunner of that future: "The whole world still lies before us like a quarry before the master-builder, who is only then worthy of the name when out of this casual mass of natural material he has embodied with all his best economy, adaptability to the end, and firmness, the image which has arisen in his mind. Everything outside us is only the means for this constructing process, yes, I would even dare to say, also everything inside us; deep within lies the creative force which is able to form what it will, and gives ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... these systems have all the disadvantages of anything that is written. That is to say, they require considerable adaptability on the part of the man who is using them. He must consider his own mind, and the amount of time which he must put on studying; he must consider his own work, and adapting that method to his work while still obeying instructions. In the case of the ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... stimulating the intellectual life and molding the political future of the colony. He so far forsook the strait "Manchester School" of his upbringing as to support Macdonald's campaign for protection in 1878. But that was the limit of his adaptability. To the end he remained out of touch with Canadian feeling. His campaign for annexation, or for the reunion of the English-speaking peoples on this continent, as he preferred to call it, was able and persistent but moved ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... those who came in contact with him with his apparent sincerity. If he duped others, it seemed he also duped himself. Moreover, and this was perhaps the secret of his continued success, his "visions" were invariably symbolic and mysterious; they possessed an adaptability of character that was truly Delphic. Indeed, his hearers were compelled to put their own interpretation upon his visions. The seer seldom pretended to understand or ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... claimed that it would restore confidence, prevent the wholesale stoppage of mills, and at the same time establish a cotton reserve to counteract the fluctuations of crops in the future.[1] These matters need but to be stated as examples of the remarkable adaptability of the State and the possibility of drastic action under the pressure ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... tower-cornice, without mutilating the tower or violating the pure outlines of the spire. The heavenward aspiration, as it were, ascends without effort from the solidity of the tower. It seems to typify a certain fitness and adaptability to heavenly things even in the gross and earthly nature of man. One cannot fail to admire its unaffected dignity, its harmonious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... sceptical. A fairy who could put away quite a respectable cut from the joint, followed by two helpings of pie, does take a bit of believing in. To-night the Professor found no difficulty. The White Ladies had never been averse to accepting mortal hospitality. There must always have been a certain adaptability. Malvina, since that fateful night of her banishment, had, one supposes, passed through varied experiences. For present purposes she had assumed the form of a jeune fille of the twentieth century (anno Domini). An appreciation of Mrs. Muldoon's excellent cooking, together with a glass ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... kinds of poetry alike there was one point on which they were rigidly exacting; the adaptability of the subject to the kind of poetry selected, and the careful construction of ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... his active and versatile temperament leading him to become in turn a rope-walker, gymnast, actor, ventriloquist and, singularly enough, electro-physician. For most of these varied callings he had a certain adaptability by reason of his splendid physique, perfect health, entire abstinence from stimulants, ready wit, good-humor, fertility in expedients and promptitude and energy in execution, as well as by the daring and ambition naturally associated with such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... the sunlit chink. Why should I struggle more? Could I not, in fancy, hearken to the measured splash of the drops from the sodden moss? Could anything be more consoling than this cushion to my bruised and aching arms? Ease and sloth were sweet indeed. I was free, but not at large. The amazing adaptability of the human mind had reconciled me in a few suffering hours to this confined space. Verily do I believe that the overcoming of this subtle anodyne demanded the expenditure of more vital force than the sum of all the long-sustained automatic exertion by which ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... adaptability proved a valuable asset that day. Everybody was so cordial and friendly that, although she was the only woman without the white cap, there was no shadow of any holier-than-thou spirit. She was accepted as a friend; as a lady from Philadelphia she became invested with ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... dispossessed officials who had taken so picturesque a part in the public ceremonials of the court. All Odo's philosophy could not fortify him against such disillusionments. He felt the lack of Fulvia's unquestioning faith not only in the abstract beauty of the new ideals but in their immediate adaptability to the complex conditions of life. Only a woman's convictions, nourished on sentiment and self-sacrifice, could burn with that clear unwavering flame: his own beliefs were at the mercy of every wind of doubt or ingratitude that ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... on the Pacific Ocean, inviting enterprising agriculturalists from all sides, were indeed an object lesson. The civilisation of the West too is the civilisation of the East, and the Church, with her adaptability, is as much at home by the Golden Gate as in New York or Boston or Philadelphia. The Convention will help the Church in California. Its influences have gone out among the people in healing streams. Its character and work were a revelation to the populations by the Pacific; and already men who ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... instances on record of trees set out in February bearing the following autumn. This is no criterion, however, merely an instance illustrating the unusual richness of Oregon soil, and its perfect adaptability to walnut culture. ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various
... is not a degrading one, but the reverse. Nothing is so pleasant to a reasonable and truly noble mind as to pay obedience to those to whom it is due; and if the adaptability of the same individual to be both master and servant was more practically carried out, our civilisation would work more smoothly, and we should probably approach more to that desirable state in which no one would have a stigma attached ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... society and his adaptability to all grades, Mr. Bucket is presently standing before the hall-fire—bright and warm on the early winter ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... of trees appear to be growing almost at random, yet each species shows a decided preference for peculiar altitude, soil, temperature, and moisture conditions. It is an interesting demonstration of tree adaptability to follow a stream which comes out of the west, in the middle mountain-zone, and observe how unlike the trees are which thrive on opposite sides. On the southerly slopes that come down to the water is an open forest of yellow ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... of movement and graceful length of limb gave him an air of youth. He was one of the creatures to whom the passage of years would mean but little, but added charm and adaptability. His eyes were singularly living things—the eyes that almost unconsciously entreat and whose entreaty touches one; the fine, irregular outline of his profile was the absolute expression of the emotional at war with itself, the passionate, the tender, the sensitive, and complex. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Morse patiently repeated his story from the time he had left his backwoods cabin to his selection of the river bank for a "location." He pointed out the rich quality of this alluvial bottom and its adaptability for the raising of stock, which he hoped soon to acquire. The stranger smiled grimly, raised himself to a sitting position, and, taking a penknife from his damp clothes, began to clean his nails in the bright moonlight—an occupation ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... pool of cold water in which he sometimes was forced to lie. In the woods, when a thing is to be done, do not consider how you have done it, or how you have seen it done, or how you think it ought to be done, but how it can be accomplished. Absolute fluidity of expedient, perfect adaptability, is worth a dozen volumes of theoretical knowledge. "If you can't talk," goes the Western expression, "raise a yell; if you can't yell, make signs; if you can't make signs, wave ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... better evidence than that he has kept himself on top of a rolling log for thirty years? To keep his position through the dethronement of the Emperor and the convulsions of the Boxer War required agility and adaptability of no mean order. Personally I have seen much of both princes. They are abler men than one would expect to find among the ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... more permanent phenomenon for the greater portion of men, for whom the accident of birth will less and less determine the course of their future life. And the abnormal man who is below the minimum of adaptability to social life and bears the marks of organic degeneration, develops either a passive or an aggressive form of abnormality and ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... that living in apartments will be only a temporary arrangement, the furniture should be chosen with a view to its adaptability for a house. Thus folding-beds should be avoided, and other articles that gain space by complexity, however ingenious. Simplicity is the quality to be desired. Thus if the exigency of space requires that a living room ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... industry to-day. There is a diversity of outlook and of animating spirit among the various groups or classes. There is no very settled opinion among them as to the place of the wage earner in the industrial system. There is besides a diversity of racial and sex faculty and adaptability. ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... aboard the Golden Fleece; and I have been endeavouring—I must confess with not altogether brilliant success—to picture her doing the cooking and washing, ashore there. But I know—or at least I have been told—that woman's power of adaptability surpasses belief, and I have already seen that you possess it to a marvellous degree; therefore, despite what I said just now, I shall be astonished at nothing you do, or prove ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... and restricted in the possession of personalty, is it any wonder that they are not to-day in the van of industrial and commercial progress? Nay, more, was it to have been expected that the character of a people so persecuted and ostracised should have come out of the ordeal of centuries with its adaptability and elasticity unimpaired? That would have been impossible. Those who are intimate with the Roman Catholic people of Ireland, and at the same time familiar with their history, will recognise in their character and mental ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett |
