"Docility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... latter task was no easy one, owing to the restlessness of the child, who would join in all the gymnastic exercises suitable to his age, whereas absolute repose was prescribed for him. Dr. Glennie says, however, that, once back in the study-room, Byron's docility was equal to his vivacity. He had been instructed according to the mode of teaching adopted at Aberdeen, and had to retrace his steps, owing to the difference of teaching prescribed ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... said Ives, with such docility that Paresi shot him a startled, suspicious glance. The big communications man went to his station and sat, half-turned away from ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... the Indian Territory, south of Kansas, where the mildness of the climate and the fertility of the soil would repay their labors, and where, it is thought, from their willingness to labor and their docility under the control of the government, they would in a few years become wholly self-supporting. The question of their removal has been submitted to them; and they seem inclined to favor the project, but have expressed ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... unspoken, fearing lest he might suggest to so sensitive a subject those hallucinations of the sense of hearing, which, by reason of their imperious nature, he dreaded far more than visual hallucinations. He was familiar with the docility of the sick in obeying orders given them by voices. Abandoning the idea of questioning Felicie, he resolved, at all hazards, to remove any scruples of conscience which might be troubling her. At the same time, ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... many of the most ferocious among them would attack a stranger without hesitation, if he came within their grasp. In fact, the training of these animals was no fool's play, as Old Adams learned to his cost; for the terrific blows which he received from time to time, while teaching them "docility," finally ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... the big, desolate house where Rob reigned in solitary state and the sitting-rooms were shrouded in holland wrappings. He allowed himself to be persuaded, submitted to the sponging and binding which ensued with a docility which advanced him far in the host's good graces, and ate his luncheon on the sofa in ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... watching from the trees, amongst the branches of which we saw a number of them perched like so many birds of prey. The whole credit of the embarkation is due to the efficient manner in which the naval officers under my command carried out the instructions given them, and the great docility of the Turkish soldiers. Soon after sunset the general and staff left the shore, and their example was followed by every military officer of any rank; so that the whole work devolved upon those I had placed in command of ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... our adult notions about the relations between teaching and learning. We exalt the function of teaching, and seem to imagine that it might go on automatically. We sometimes think of the teacher as a lawgiver, and of the learner as one who with docility receives what is ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... feet and stood back on guard. But as soon as she was set free her resistance came to an end. She did not fly at either, but coolly turned her back and shook herself and smoothed her plumage like a ruffled bird. This unexpected docility surprised them afresh. They watched ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... the Middle Empire. Finally I decidedly opposed the wearing of a clasp of cloisonne enamel. In fact, this jewel was a most odious anachronism. We at last agreed to replace this by a boss of precious stones deep set in fine gold. She listened with great docility, and seemed so pleased with me that she even asked me to stay to dinner. I excused myself because of my regular habits and the simplicity of my diet and took my leave. I was already in the vestibule when she ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... trained for the ring. He entirely ignored the other dogs, stood erect on his hind feet at his master's word of command, jumped a chair with exquisite grace and agility, and in a variety of other ways exhibited both wonderful suppleness and remarkable docility. The collie was handsome, beautifully groomed, and rather snappish. The Stone bulldog made a picture of good-humored British stolidity, and if his hind quarters had been equal to his superbly massive front and marvelously "smashed-up" face ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... man would like to put down. But it wasn't easy; she slipped out of your grip—gave you unexpected tits for tats. One would have thought after that business with the will, she would be anxious to make up—to show docility. In such a relation one expected docility. But not a bit of it! She grew bolder. The Squire admitted uncomfortably that it was his own fault—only, in fact, what he deserved for making a land-agent, accountant, and legal adviser out ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... residence of nigh twenty years in West Africa, I saw the beauty and felt the charm of the native female character. I saw the native woman in her heathen state, and was delighted to see, in numerous tribes, that extraordinary sweetness, gentleness, docility, modesty, and especially those maternal solicitudes which make every African boy both gallant and defender of ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within.[217] Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... him dubiously; and a moment's thought decided him to assume a certain amount of meekness and docility with this evident brother of some religious order, so that he might obtain both sympathy and confidence from him, and from all whom he might be bound to serve. Ill and weak as he was, the natural tendency of his brain to scheme for his own ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... hesitated, but went up to the bars, where Neddy, half trembling, awaited him, and took the sweet morsel of hay from the child's hand. Jane, encouraged by this evidence of docility, put her hand on the animal's neck, and stroked his long head gently with her hand, while Neddy gathered handful after handful of hay, and stood close by the mouth of the old horse, as he ate it with the air of one who ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... has a good disposition and a reasonable degree of handiness, and the housekeeper understands her profession, she may make a good servant out of an indifferent one. Some of my best girls have been those who came to me directly from the ship, with no preparation but docility and some natural quickness. The hardest cases to be managed are not of those who have been taught nothing, but of those who have been taught wrongly,—who come to you self-opinionated, with ways which are distasteful to you, and contrary to the genius of your housekeeping. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... habit I was told, guiding them himself, and personating the Cid, which was the name of the ballet, if I remember right, making his horses go clear round the stage, and turning at the lamps of the orchestra with such dexterity, docility, and grace, that they seemed rather to enjoy than feel disturbance at the deafening noise of instruments, the repeated bursts of applause, and hollow sound of their own hoofs upon the boards of a theatre. ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... ducal House and weakened the private Families. He exalted the sovereign, and depressed the ministers. A transforming government went abroad. Dishonesty and dissoluteness were ashamed and hid their heads. Loyalty and good faith became the characteristics of the men, and chastity and docility those of the women. Strangers came in crowds from other States [5].' Confucius became the idol of the people, and flew in songs through their mouths [6]. But this sky of bright promise was soon overcast. As the fame of the reformations in Lu went ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... in the stocks? I always thought you were mild and docile as a lamb. It was for your docility that I most esteemed you. Benjamin! Benjamin! you have not only disgraced yourself, but your friends, by this shameless conduct, Bless me! bless me! Mr. Doolittle, he seems to have knocked your face all ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... ours. The juries who acquit every criminal are ours. The prosecutor who trembles at a trial for fear he should not seem advanced enough is ours, ours. Among officials and literary men we have lots, lots, and they don't know it themselves. On the other hand, the docility of schoolboys and fools has reached an extreme pitch; the schoolmasters are bitter and bilious. On all sides we see vanity puffed up out of all proportion; brutal, monstrous appetites.... Do you know how many we shall catch by little, ready-made ideas? When ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... sagacity of the shepherd-dog, and the faithfulness and watchfulness of the mastiff, with the courage and strength of them all combined. To this imposing array of canine virtues, those who enjoyed his more intimate acquaintance—the few—would have added the affectionate docility of the Newfoundland, and the delicate playfulness of the Italian greyhound. It must be owned, however, that he displayed little enough of the last-named qualities, excepting to Burlman Reynolds, Jemima Reynolds, and little Bushie, in whose society only would he now ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... eat with his knife when he came, with docility, a day after he received the invitation. Remember, he appears originally in this story as a chosen of Cattley's, one warranted to defy detection by the best-informed genteelologist. He went through ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Margaret's enthusiasm taught him that there was a side of life he did not realize. Though beauty meant little to his practical nature, he sought, in his great love for Margaret, to appreciate the works which excited her to such charming ecstasy. He walked by her side with docility and listened, not without deference, to her outbursts. He admired the correctness of Greek anatomy, and there was one statue of an athlete which attracted his prolonged attention, because the muscles were indicated with the ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... supposed, it takes a long time to make him understand that he is to turn to the right when the left rein is pulled, and to the left when the right rein is pulled. And it is only the meek-spirited and docile who will do this at all. Such, however, is the general docility of the half-bred horse, that a great proportion of them are, after long ill-usage, taught to answer these false indications, in the same way that a carthorse is brought to turn right or left by the touch of the whip on the opposite side of the neck, or the word of the ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... hitherto known, none allows itself, with so much docility, to be modified by external circumstances which constitute the national character as does Roman Catholicism; and there are many causes for this: Roman Catholicism exercises an infinitely greater dominion over ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... be too much or too little—according to the point of view—to assume that Fouchette was patient under her yoke and that she went about her tasks with the docility of a well-trained animal. On the contrary, she not only rebelled in spirit, but she often resisted with all her feeble strength, fighting, feet, hands, and teeth, with feline ferocity. Having been brought to the level of brutes, she had become ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... thirty years had passed since the Saracens first invaded the valley of the Nile. The people, with traditional docility, had liberally adopted the religion of their rulers, and the Moslems now formed the great majority of the population. Arabs and natives had blended into much the same race that we now call Egyptians; but so far the mixture had not produced any conspicuous men. The few commanding figures ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... was an inflexible maxim of Roman discipline, that a good soldier should dread his officers far more than the enemy. From such laudable arts did the valor of the Imperial troops receive a degree of firmness and docility unattainable by the impetuous ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... complied with, and the hunter stood by the side of the pallet, submitting to the wishes of the girl with the docility ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... chairmanship at a meeting of the Leeds Mechanics' Society on the 1st of December, and his opening of the Glasgow Athenaeum on the 28th; where, to immense assemblages in both,[147] he contrasted the obstinacy and cruelty of the Power of ignorance with the docility and gentleness of the Power of knowledge; pointed the use of popular institutes in supplementing what is learnt first in life, by the later education for its employments and equipment for its domesticities and virtues, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... of the Prophet, the Mohammedan priests fix a bias on the minds, and form the character, of their young disciples, which no accidents of life can ever afterwards remove or alter. Many of these little schools I visited in my progress through the country, and I observed with pleasure the great docility and submissive deportment of the children, and heartily wished they had had better instructors ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... undesirable, are weeded out rapidly. Penal offences are of course tried in the Courts and punished with imprisonment. It is indeed curious after travelling in America and our colonies, to find, sturdy, rough, independent characters behaving with extraordinary meekness and docility. Drunken brawls and promiscuous revolver shooting are unknown in the Congo, for the simple reason, that it is impossible up country to procure drink. There are no drink shanties or gambling dens and indeed no amusements ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... and sensation. I never played except by myself, and then only acted over what I had been reading or fancying, or half one, half the other, with a stick cutting down weeds and nettles, as one of the "Seven Champions of Christendom." Alas! I had all the simplicity, all the docility of the little child, but none of the child's habits. I never thought as a child, never had the ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... Indians, and were zealously served by missionaries. The Jesuits, whose first appearance in New France dates from 1611, were active and devoted. Their aim was to reduce the fierce Red men to a state of childlike docility to priests, and they discouraged all colonization in their neighbourhood. It was true that the most active French colonial element, the trappers, were barbarized by the natives, and that the pursuit of the fur trade and other causes had brought the French into sharp collision with the most ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... child, devoted the remainder of his life to religion. Just as every American boy is expected to go to school, so every Siamese youth is expected to enter a monastery, the stern discipline enforced during this period accounting, I have no doubt, for the docility which is so noticeable a part of the Siamese character. While I was in Siam I was the guest one day of the officers' mess of the crack regiment of the household cavalry. Though my hosts, with few exceptions, spoke fluent English, though several of them had been educated at English ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... commons and a majority of the senate. And any who shall read the speech made against him by Publius Sempronius, tribune of the people, will find therein all the Claudian insolence exposed, and will recognize the docility and good temper shown by the body of the citizens in respecting the laws ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... them—or any other person of true imagination—would call abominable a wonderful piece of mechanism with the power of flattening mountains into plains, triumphing over space, annihilating distance; a machine combining fiercest energy with the mildest docility. No, only old fogies would close their hearts to a machine fit for the gods, and pride themselves on being motophobes forever. We felt ourselves, car and all, to be worthy of this magic way, lined with blossoms that played like rosy children among the strange rocks characteristic of Provence—rocks ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... will be the case, that good but imperious woman pushed her advantages too far, and her successes quite unmercifully. She had in the course of a few weeks brought the invalid to such a state of helpless docility, that the poor soul yielded herself entirely to her sister's orders, and did not even dare to complain of her slavery to Briggs or Firkin. Mrs. Bute measured out the glasses of wine which Miss Crawley was daily allowed to take, with irresistible accuracy, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... him an idea that perhaps, after all, it was not too late— and then had come confidence, and the desire to fight. And he had fought. He had almost won. But now, he knew that he had lost; for in Schuyler's eyes he saw dull, hopeless docility, and in The Woman's, conscious power and ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... found her pale and bathed in perspiration. Her lips were trembling, stammering. It was five minutes before she recovered herself. She described her dream, and the old Mademoiselle prescribed a little walk in the air. The child followed her chaperon with nervous docility. ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... the most amiable, but the tenderest of women, wholly sincere, thoughtful for others, and, though careless of appearances, submitting with docility to the better arrangements with which her children or friends insisted on supplementing her own negligence of dress; for her own part indulging her children in the greatest freedom, assured that their own reflection, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... her his arm, and supported her to the carriage, followed with great docility by Armstrong, who broke out into occasional snatches of music, once a common habit, but in which he had not been known to indulge for a ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the significance of the subdued exclamation, Robert nevertheless followed the detective with confiding docility, and the pair hastened down a flight of stairs which conducted them to ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... with the aggravation of flies, they could hardly have been more refractory than their bovine substitutes. Persons whose whole experience of bullocks, as beasts of draught and burthen, consists in having seen a pair of them tugging, with painful docility and resignation, at a heavy continental cart—a ponderous yoke across their necks, or their heads attached with multitudinous thongs to the extremity of a massive pole—can form but a faint idea of the tribulations of the Doctor and his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... spiritual forces which we might have named, and which would have manifested the same incontestable supremacy: there is the energy of meekness, that spirit of docility which communes with the Almighty in hallowed and receptive awe: there is the boundless vitality of love which lives on through midnight after midnight, unfainting and unspent: there is the inexhaustible energy of faith which hold on and out amid the massed hostilities ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... and put on, one by one, in the most detailed and interesting fashion. During all this "mamma" kept up a stream of baby talk to her infant: "Now your stockings, my darling; now your skirt, sweetness—O! no—not yet—your shoes first," etc., etc. Baby acceded to all the details with more than the docility which real infants usually show. When this was done—"Now we must go tell papa good-morning, dearie," said mamma. "Yes, mamma," came the reply; and hand in hand they started to find papa. I, the spectator, carefully read my newspaper, thinking, however, that the reality ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... the grey Arab in the next stable. This magnificent horse was presented to Her Majesty by the Thakore of Morvi, and does not bear the best of stable reputations, but when mounted he is docility itself, and a very faithful worker. The grey's wardrobe, when he came to England, consisted of the following gorgeous trappings:—Saddle of red and green cloth, under felt, pad for saddle, embroidered saddle-cloth, embroidered bridle, plume, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... till four years after Strickland's death that Maurice Huret wrote that article in the <i Mercure de France> which rescued the unknown painter from oblivion and blazed the trail which succeeding writers, with more or less docility, have followed. For a long time no critic has enjoyed in France a more incontestable authority, and it was impossible not to be impressed by the claims he made; they seemed extravagant; but later judgments have confirmed his estimate, and the reputation of Charles Strickland is now firmly ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... beginning to see that it was a part of Pellerin's wonderfulness to fall in, quite simply and naturally, with any arrangements made for his convenience, or tending to promote the convenience of others. Bernald felt that his extreme docility in such matters was proportioned to the force of resistance which, for nearly half a life-time, had kept him, with his back to the wall, fighting alone against the powers of darkness. In such a scale of values how little the small daily alternatives ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... sentiment of obedience is rooted in the instinct of discipline, sociability, and honor, you find, as in France, a complete military organization, a superb administrative hierarchy, a weak public spirit with outbursts of patriotism, the unhesitating docility of the subject along with the hot-headedness of the revolutionist, the obsequiousness of the courtier along with the reserve of the gentleman, the charm of refined conversation along with home and family bickerings, conjugal ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... are implanted by nature, and are called involuntary; the other, of those which depend on the will, and are more often spoken of by their proper name of virtues; whose great excellence is attributed to the mind as a subject of praise. Now in the former class are docility, memory, and others, nearly all of which are called by the one name of ingenium, and those who possess them are called ingeniosi. The other class consists of those which are great and real virtues; which we call voluntary, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... laughed heartily at the picture of the awkward creature to which his own imagination had given birth; Greenly joining in the merriment, partly from the oddity of the conceit, and partly from the docility with which commander-in-chief's jokes are usually received. The feeling of momentary indignation which had aroused Sir Gervaise to such an expression of his disgust at modern inventions, was appeased by this little success; and, inviting his captain to sup with ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... habit of obedience to his superior, and the instinctive docility of his temper compelled Adone to submit; he drew a long, deep breath and the blood ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... election like that of Westminster was absolutely unknown in the whole course of Scottish history. Further, it was notorious that the 45 Scottish members were the most obedient group of placemen in the House of Commons; and their docility had increased under the bountiful sway of Henry Dundas, whose control of patronage sufficed to keep the Caledonian squad ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... hands took the admonition seriously, and there was no occasion to punish any of them. As for Hunt, while he observed the docility of a true sailor in all his duties, he always kept himself apart, speaking to none, and even slept on the deck, in a corner, rather than occupy a bunk in ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... terrible in proportion as he is tame: it is his loyalty and his virtues that are awful to the stranger, even the stranger within your gates; still more to the stranger halfway over your gates. He is alarmed at such deafening and furious docility; he flees from that great monster ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... favored underhand, then disavowed after failure, those filibustering expeditions in Central America and in the islands of Cuba. They were the policy of the South, executed by Mr. Buchanan with his accustomed docility. The point in question was to make conquests, and conquests for slavery. By any means, and at any price, the South was to procure new States. Cuba would furnish some, several would be carved out of Mexico and Central America; for otherwise the ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... own lesson, and you cannot learn that lesson in the next period. The boy has one set of lessons to learn, and the young man another, and the grown-up man another. Let us consider one single instance. The boy has to learn docility, gentleness of temper, reverence, submission. All those feelings which are to be transferred afterwards in full cultivation to God, like plants nursed in a hotbed and then planted out, are to be cultivated first in youth. Afterwards, those habits which have been merely habits ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... have gone off at such a gait, without some powerful motive to impel it. Up to that moment it had shown no particular penchant for rapid travelling, but had been going, under their guidance, with a steady, sober docility. Something must have attracted it towards the interior. What could that something be, if not the knowledge that its home, or its companions, were to be found ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... happens, an immediate arrest is put upon the expedition, and the whole party face about, and return without any sense of shame or mortification. A whole party is thus often arrested by a single person; and their return is applauded by the tribe, as a respectful docility to the divine impulse, as they deem it, from the Great Spirit. These dreams are universally reverenced, as the warnings of the guardian spirits of the tribe. There is in that country a sparrow, of an uncommon species, and not often seen. This bird is called in the Shawnese ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... perfectly recovered of the hurt it had received, and showed so great a degree of affection to its protector, that it would run after him like a dog, hop upon his shoulder, nestle in his bosom, and eat crumbs out of his hand. Tommy was extremely surprised and pleased to remark its tameness and docility, and asked by what means it had been made so gentle. Harry told him he had taken no particular pains about it; but that, as the poor little creature had been sadly hurt, he had fed it every day till it was well; and that, in consequence of that kindness, it had conceived a great ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... the family of Senator Benton, where he is well taken care of, and conciliates good-will by his docility, intelligence, and amiability. General Almonte, the Mexican minister at Washington, to whom he was of course made known, kindly offered to take charge of him, and to carry him back to Mexico; but the boy preferred to remain where he was ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... venison dinner was announced for Sunday and received by the Valley in a spirit of hilarious enthusiasm. The preacher refused to deliver the sermon while the meal was in progress, but it was such a gustatory success that at its close, the guests sat in complete docility through a sermon on future punishment. It was a good sermon, quite as modern in most aspects as Lost Chief. Douglas had seen to that. Mr. Fowler had reached the closing sentence when a bull bellowed outside and the door opened disclosing ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... passiveness in all her dealings with Philip; he would have given not a little for some of the old bursts of impatience, the old pettishness, which, naughty as they were, had gone to form his idea of the former Sylvia. Once or twice he was almost vexed with her for her docility; he wanted her so much to have a will of her own, if only that he might know how to rouse her to pleasure by gratifying it. Indeed he seldom fell asleep at nights without his last thoughts being devoted to some little plan for the morrow, that he fancied she would like; and when he ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... idlers swear employers ne'er get ready— Thieves that the constable stole all they had, The mad that all except themselves are mad; So, in another's clear escutcheon shown, Barnes rails at stains reflected from his own; Prates of "docility," nor feels the dark Ring round his neck—the Ralston collar mark. Back, man, to studies interrupted once, Ere yet the rogue had merged into the dunce. Back, back to Yale! and, grown with years discreet, The course a virgin's lust cut short, complete. Go drink again at ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... Romakas, some cannibals and many possessing only one leg. I say, O king, standing at the gate, being refused permission to enter. And these diverse rulers brought as tribute ten thousand asses of diverse hues and black necks and huge bodies and great speed and much docility and celebrated all over the world. And these asses were all of goodly size and delightful colour. And they were all bred on the coast of Vankhu. And there were many kings that gave unto Yudhishthira much gold and silver. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... artist's brush, awaiting the completion of a particular plan, or the result of a combination of colors, and suggesting various modifications to the painter, which the latter consented to adopt with the most respectful docility. And again, when the artist, following Malicorne's advice, was a little late in arriving, and when Saint-Aignan had been obliged to be absent for some time, it was interesting to observe, though no one witnessed them, those moments of silence full of deep expression, which united ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... would clutch eagerly all the food offered him, and crouch, huddled over it, with his face to the rock-wall, while he devoured it with frantic haste and bestial noises. But as he found himself treated with invariable kindness, he began to develop an anxious gratitude and docility. On A-ya's tall form his little round eyes, shy and fierce at the same time, came to rest with an adoring awe. The smell of him being extremely offensive to all this cleanly tribe, and especially to A-ya and Grom, who were more fastidious than their ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Her ready docility would of itself have been sufficient to surprise Lord James. But, in addition, there was a soft note in her voice and a glow in her beautiful hazel eyes that caused him to glance quickly from her to his friend. Blake was already turning about to wade ashore. ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... one. Frances would have liked to run up-stairs to the nursery, and to sit down there and then to the long letter to 'mamma,' to the outpouring of confidence to the almost unknown friend she had learned to trust. But common-sense and a certain docility, which was strongly developed in her, in spite of her superficial self-assertion and blunt, even abrupt outspokenness, made her ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... insistence. His hand held the Frenchman's arm. It was obvious that he would listen to no refusal. And the man in rags attempted none. He went with him meekly, as if bewildered into docility. His single flash of pride had died out like the final ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... resign our territories. No Englishman or Japanese or American will ever understand us when we tell him that this military discipline of ours, this war-lust, did not represent a passion for dominion and aggression, but was merely the docility of a childish people which wants nothing, and can imagine nothing, but that things should go on as they happen, at the ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... thing, not to say impossible, to Gallicize or civilize them. We have more experience in this than any one else, and we have observed that of a hundred who have passed through our hands we have hardly civilized one. We find in them docility and intelligence, but when we least expect it, they climb over our fence and go off to run the woods with their parents, where they find more pleasure than in all the comforts of ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... but the tossing of a weary, distressed mind under the dreadful influences of a hateful dream. And what little there is in the early records of the colony of New Jersey is at once a compliment to the humanity of the master, and the docility of the slave. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... say to her with extreme sweetness and docility: "My dear child, if I'd had a father and mother like yours I shouldn't do these things." And I have heard him say almost with bitterness: "Does that shock you? Good Heavens, you should see ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... quick feeder; and a most satisfactory animal in all particulars. From the Devons, spring those beautifully matched red working-oxen, so much admired in our eastern states; the superiors to which, in kindness, docility, endurance, quickness, and honesty of labor, no country can produce. In the quality of their beef, they are unrivaled by any breed of cattle in the United States; but in their early maturity for that purpose, are not ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... lot and monument were very beautiful; that there never had been any cremations in the family connection; and that she hoped he would not break a long-established custom and leave behind him a positively irreligious request. Various stories of Mr. Valentine's docility had crept into circulation, and it is said that on this occasion he turned his head meekly to the wall and sighed: "Very well, Emma! Do just as you think best; ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... well pleased to be married, because I imagined thereby I should have full liberty, and that I should be delivered from the ill-treatment of my mother, which doubtless I brought on myself by want of docility, you, however, O my God, had quite other views, and the state in which I found myself afterwards frustrated my hopes, as I shall hereafter tell. Although I was well pleased to be married, I nevertheless continued all the time of my engagement, and even long after ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... gardens to the park. Janey was flying like the wind over the level turf, but she was well under guidance, and when her rider brought her round to the spot where Mr. Fairfax and the young lady stood to watch, she quite bore out his encomium on her docility. She allowed Bessie to stroke her neck, and even took from her hand an apple which the groom produced from a private store of encouragement and ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... was it transmitted, and so continually did he find his commands anticipated. As he went, his four generals parted off, to examine the forts on either hand, and to inspect and animate the militia. Everywhere the same story was told, and everywhere was it received with the same eagerness and docility. "The French are coming to make slaves of us again; but there shall never more be a slave in Saint Domingo. They are coming; but they are our countrymen till they have struck the first blow. We will demand of them an account of our brethren in Cayenne, in Guadaloupe, and in Martinique. We will ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... at finding the morality also very different. But in truth the morality of these conventional worlds differs from the morality of the real world only in points where there is no danger that the real world will ever go wrong. The generosity and docility of Telemachus, the fortitude, the modesty, the filial tenderness of Kailyal, are virtues of all ages and nations. And there was very little danger that the Dauphin would worship Minerva, or that an English damsel ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... possessed much of the plumpness and sleekness which distinguish that breed, but looking in his eyes you would have been undeceived in a moment; a wild savage fire darted from the restless orbs, and so far from exhibiting the docility of the other noble and loyal animal, he occasionally plunged desperately, and could scarcely be restrained by a strong curb and powerful arm from resuming his former headlong course. The rider was a youth, apparently about eighteen, dressed as a European, with a Montero cap on his ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... had come he acknowledged its value. That Clara Amedroz was a self-willed woman he thought that he was aware. She was self-reliant, at any rate and by no means ready to succumb with that pretty feminine docility which he would like to have seen her evince. He certainly would not wish to be 'nagged' by his wife Indeed he knew himself well enough to assure himself that he would not stand it for a day. In his ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... solicit benevolence, he always wished to retain authority, and leave his company impressed with the idea that it was his to teach in this world, and theirs to learn. What wonder, then, that all should receive with docility from Johnson those doctrines, which, propagated by Collier, they drove away from them with shouts! Dr. Johnson was not grave, however, because he knew not how to be merry. No man loved laughing better, and his ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... to trade." The fools echo, "We can not have prosperity in state, county, or town without the dram-shops." The brewers and distillers say, "It enhances the value of property and products of all kinds." The fools answer, with idiotic promptness and docility, "Yes, we must continue this ulcerous cancer upon the body politic—this unclean, pestilential, gangrenous sore, reeking with disease, vice, poverty, madness, to increase the price of grain." Yes, gentlemen, grain is more profitable deposited in the stomach of your son or your neighbor's ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... all went on in monotonous regularity at Haytersbank Farm for many weeks. Hepburn came and went, and thought Sylvia wonderfully improved in docility and sobriety; and perhaps also he noticed the improvement in her appearance. For she was at that age when a girl changes rapidly, and generally for the better. Sylvia shot up into a tall young woman; her eyes deepened in colour, her face increased in expression, and ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... instincts of the English aristocrat reappeared amid the accomplishments of the petit-maitre, and poor Mrs. Allison's spirits revived. Then the golden-haired Lady Madeleine was asked to stay at Castle Luton. When she came Ancoats devoted himself with extraordinary docility. He drew her, made songs for her, and devised French charades to act with her; he even went so far as to compare her with enthusiasm to the latest and most wonderful "Salome" just exhibited in the Salon by the latest and most wonderful of the impressionists. But Lady Madeleine fortunately ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sufficient indication of internal purity by the delighted parents; who, knowing the deceitfulness of these flattering appearances, should eagerly avail themselves of this period, when once wasted never to be regained, of good humoured acquiescence and dutiful docility: a period when the soft and ductile temper of the mind renders it more easily susceptible of the impressions we desire; and when, therefore, habits should be formed, which may assist our natural weakness to resist the temptations to which we shall be exposed in the commerce ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... ought to be.'[232] Occasionally, it would seem, they descended lower, and made a little fun of the shy and over-sensitive intruder.[233] The ladies, however, made it up to him. Shelburne made him read his 'dry metaphysics' to them,[234] and they received it with feminine docility. Lord Shelburne had lately (1779) married his second wife, Louisa, daughter of the first earl of Upper Ossory. Her sister, Lady Mary Fitz-Patrick, married in 1766 to Stephen Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, was the mother ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... little German and Swede babies. Tell of the surly drunken men that come, and how a week of cleanliness in bed, with a broken leg, or it may be a cracked skull, will change them into quiet, polite, pleasant patients; and how, later, they will take their turn at washing dishes, with a docility that would make their wives stupid with amazement. All such matters (and the more you try to think of them, the more you will be able to recall) will amuse and really edify your patient, many of whom think of a hospital only as a ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... cow-stable, with the two cows and the yoke of red oxen. He throve on the fare Jabe provided for him—good meadow hay with armfuls of "browse" cut from the birch, poplar and cherry thickets. Jabe trained him to haul a pung, finding him slower to learn than a horse, but making up for his dulness by his docility. He had to be driven with a snaffle, refusing absolutely to admit a bit between his teeth; and, with the best good-will in the world, he could never be taught to allow for the pung or sled to which he was harnessed. If left alone for a moment he would ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... just as the frequent use by the author of this book of the actual words of Bergson are a tribute to the excellence and essential rightness of his style. The Frenchman, himself a free and candid spirit, would be the last to require unquestioning docility in others. He knows that thereby is the philosophic breath choked out of us. If we read him in the spirit in which he would wish to be read, we shall find, however much we may diverge from him on particular issues, that our labour has been far from wasted. ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... enumeration one other quality, one without which this harvest will not ripen. I speak of mental docility and reverence. A man will have looked forth to little purpose on the universe if he does not see that, even with his expanding circle of light, there is an ever-enlarging circle of darkness around it. He will have compared his achievements with those of the race to little profit, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... witnessed such amazed eagerness as that with which, for the first time, they comprehended that salvation is without money and without price—absolutely free and gratuitous. It was to them news—good news; and when I call to mind Meekha's impetuous temperament, and see him listen with such docility to Christ's teaching, I cannot but hope that, though imperfectly sanctified, the 'good work' is begun in him, which God's grace will complete. He accepts no new truth without a challenge, and nothing short of a 'Thus saith the Lord,' will give it currency with him. At one of my evening lectures ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... Kid, faithful to the bitter end, assisted in the paddock as usual. Last Chance, his tail braided in a hard knot and minus the ribbons in his mane, submitted to the saddling process with unusual docility. His customary attitude of protest seemed to be swallowed up in a gloomy acquiescence to fate. It was as if he said: "You can do this to me again if you want to, but I assure you now that it is useless, ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... he could distinguish in the row of Virtues certain female figures with symbolical creatures by their side: Docility accompanied by an ox; Chastity by a phoenix; Charity by a sheep; Meekness by a lamb; Fortitude by a lion; Temperance by a camel. Why should the phoenix here typify Chastity, for it is not used generally in that sense in the Bird-books of the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... docility gave way, and the press of people became entirely Canadian. The essential spirit of the Canadian, like that of the citizen of another country, is that "he will be there." Or perhaps I should say he "will be right there." Anyhow, there he was as close to the Prince as he could get without actually ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... sister of a man who shot another. He is no criminal. There was a quarrel about a matter of money. The lie was given, a blow followed, and then a shot. Her brother a murderer! Her brother, all kindness, docility, and goodness, locked up in a place like this with thieves and hardened convicts! It was a fatal shot—ah, me, so very fatal, ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... being in the covenant of grace; others because they had not personally transgressed; supposing that the sufferings and death of the body is the penalty of original sin. Holy Scripture appears to settle this question very satisfactorily, by requiring childlike docility as a preparation for the Spirit's working. The language of the Saviour is, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God" (Luke 18:16). "Such" as die in infancy—"such" adults ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... young wife sat enthroned, he looked at her submissively between every two words that he addressed to me, as if he waited for her permission to open his lips and speak. Whenever she interrupted him—and she did it, over and over again, without ceremony—he submitted with a senile docility and admiration, at once absurd and shocking ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... least superior to ours in being founded upon an ever-present and overwhelming reverence for the truth behind the veil. The vision of the mountain-peaks, however clouded, was worth the toil of the ascent; and there was reason in the docility with which the vulgar bowed themselves before the forms and ceremonies and rules of outward conduct which the visible Church prescribed; since they believed that so they might find the way, in this life or a better, to that higher rule of service, exemplified in the finest characters ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... the reins with a great show of solicitude and vigilance, appearing to dread another display of viciousness from the mare, that was now most sheeplike in her docility; and thus, with his confiding victim, he jogged along through the crowded street, the object of ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... German princess should never be educated save as a German. By this I mean to convey that her education should not go beyond German literature, German history, German veneration of laws, German manners and German passivity and docility. The Princess Hildegarde had been educated in England and France, which simplifies everything, or, I should say, to ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... with the conflict just finished. Youth, courage—all combined to turn him from obedience; but obedience bade fair to conquer, when Marcia's laugh rang in his ears, and he could hear her gravely complimenting his prudence and discoursing on the rare value of docility in a husband. Besides, what did it all matter? Had he not said that he sought death? and, surely, the way it came ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... of these little wanderings, she would go through her recitations with as much correctness and docility as a sharp-witted child of twelve years. She felt a childlike pride in gaining the approval of her teacher. When she was under Miss Pillbody's instructions, and knew that every mistake would be courteously but firmly corrected on the spot ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... discouragement, a wretched state of things, that would have prolonged without end these ages of lead, and debarred them from all progress! Worst of all things is it to resign oneself so readily, to welcome death with so much docility, to have strength for nothing, to desire nothing. Of more worth was that new era, that close of the Middle Ages, which at the cost of cruel sufferings first enabled us to regain our former energy; namely, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... ranks, and bore down all before him. Say, goddess, whom he slew first and whom he slew last! First, Gondibert advanced against him, clad in heavy armour and mounted on a staid sober gelding, not so famed for his speed as his docility in kneeling whenever his rider would mount or alight. He had made a vow to Pallas that he would never leave the field till he had spoiled Homer of his armour: madman, who had never once seen the wearer, nor understood his strength! ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... (for albeit the Sergeant may have already numbered the allotted years of man, still his form is erect, his step is firm, his hair retains its sable hue, and, more than all, he hath a winning way about him, an air of docility and sweetness, if you will, and a smoothness of speech, together with an exhaustless fund of funny sayings; and, lastly, an overflowing stream, without beginning, or middle, or end, of astonishing ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... full appreciation of his reputation. Whether it was that the outlaw had for the time given up all notion of resistance and hostility, or that he felt the difference between the girl's gentle touch and the rough handling he had undergone, he did not stir. But this docility, this understanding, was only a part of the sight that brought Haig to ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... ride over to Cherbury at least once a week, besides Sunday, provided Lady Annabel would undertake that his directions, in his absence, should be attended to. This her ladyship promised cheerfully; nor had she any difficulty in persuading Cadurcis to consent to the arrangement. He listened with docility and patience to her representation of the fatal effects, in his after-life, of his neglected education; of the generous and advantageous offer of Dr. Masham; and how cheerfully she would exert herself to assist his endeavours, if Plantagenet would willingly submit to her supervision. The little ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... palace. Volterra did not intend to take that way of making enquiries about Sabina, if he made any at all, and the Baroness knew that when he did not mean to do a thing, the obstinacy of a Calabrian mule was docility compared with his dogged opposition. Moreover, she would not have dared to do it unknown to him. There was some good reason why he did not ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... tongues, remarkable for their regularity and copiousness, such as the Quichua and the Guarani. They endeavoured to substitute these languages for others which were poorer and more irregular in their syntax. This substitution was found easy: the Indians of the different tribes adopted it with docility, and thenceforward those American languages generalized became a ready medium of communication between the missionaries and the neophytes. It would be a mistake to suppose, that the preference given to the language ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... attempted to read the prophecy with accuracy were of opinion that the prophet had intimated that had the nation, even in this its crisis, consented to take him, the prophet, as its sole physician and to obey his prescription with childlike docility, health might not only have been re-established, but a new juvenescence absolutely created. The nature of the medicine that should have been taken was even supposed to have been indicated in some very vague terms. Had he been allowed to operate ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... they think of him? This is no longer an ordinary man; he seems clothed with the majesty of God, whose orders he has just received, and in whose name he brings them. This idea gives him strength and assurance, and his audience respect and docility. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... in the Philippines under Spanish rule was quite a different being to the obstinate, self-willed, riotous coolie in Hong-Kong or Singapore. In Manila he was drilled past docility—in six months he became even fawning, cringing, and servile, until goaded into open rebellion. Whatever position he might attain to, he was never addressed (as in the British Colonies) as "Mr." or "Esqre," or the equivalent, "Senor D.," but always ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... some of the wars of the Old World during the close of the last century and the first part of this; but for scouting, foraging, and sudden dashes against outposts and unguarded companies of their enemies. In this service, fleetness, perfect docility, and endurance for a few hours or a day, are requisite in the make-up of the horses used. And in these traits Morgan's blooded horses are admirable. And then, with the exception of some of the Western troopers, the Southerners are more ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... did not even trouble to write himself about the matter, but sent back an answer by his wife, that the price of transporting the freight from one railway to another at Breslau, Berlin, Magdeburg, and Cologne, would render the scheme impossible. Balzac showed unusual docility at this juncture; he was evidently already half-hearted about the enterprise, and remarked that since his first letter he had himself thought of the objections pointed out by M. Surville, and had remembered hearing that a forest purchased ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... sutler, under pretence of securing their passage to the North, disappeared with the little they had saved. They were quite destitute now, but looked to the future with no foreboding, and huddled together in the straw, made a picture of domestic felicity that impressed me greatly with the docility, contentment, and unfailing good humor of their dusky tribe. The eyes of the children were large and lustrous, and they revealed the clear pearls beneath their lips as they clung bashfully to their mother's lap. The ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... thought of good things gone by, though she had but the faintest idea of what those good things had been. She imagined that a purity had existed which was now gone; that a piety had adorned our pastors and a simple docility our people, for which it may be feared history gave her but little true warrant. She was accustomed to speak of Cranmer as though he had been the firmest and most simple-minded of martyrs, and of Elizabeth as though the pure Protestant faith of her people had been the one anxiety of her life. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Undeceived by this apparent docility, the cowboy, when the time came for him to bunk down under the chuck wagon for a few hours of sleep, tethered his mount quite securely to a deep-driven stake. Before the cattleman had taken more than a round dozen of winks the black had tested ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... the large group of excellent qualities which are associated with affectionate respect for a more fully informed authority. In a world where necessity stands for so much, it is no inconsiderable gain to have learnt the lesson of docility on easy terms in our earliest days. If in another sense the will of each individual is all-powerful over his own destinies, it is best that this idea of firm purpose and a settled energy that will ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... The docility of the child, who believes whatever is told him, has in it an element of submissiveness. There is submissiveness also in the receptive attitude appropriate in observation and forming opinions—the attitude of looking for the facts and accepting them as they ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... the march upon Manassas be hereafter reckoned. The whole business, though connected with the destinies of a nation, takes inevitably a tinge of the ludicrous. The vast preparation of men and warlike material,—the majestic patience and docility with which the people waited through those weary and dreary months,—the martial skill, courage, and caution, with which our movement was ultimately made,—and, at last, the tremendous shock with which we were brought suddenly up against nothing at all! The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and moral chants, and to attend learned societies, in order that she may fortify her mind by amusements of an elevated character. And she endeavours, by such discipline, to assure to the child whom she is about to bring into the world, intelligence, docility, and fitness for the duties imposed by social ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... distinguished the administration of the Sovereign, marked Mrs. Mellicent's superintendance of Ribblesdale. She was a politician of the school of Elizabeth, very willing to do good to her inferiors, but positively requiring that they should obey her. Prescription and authority, docility and respect, old principles and old manners, were her favourite topics; and in preaching submission to all superiors from the King to the village constable, precedence and decorum were her constant texts. Her notions were perhaps urged too far, but this was an age of ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... like other German scientists, had co-operated with the imperial militaristic government for many years to bring the Germanic mind into a condition of docility. So well did they understand the mentality and the trends of character of the German people that it was comparatively easy to impose upon them a militaristic system and philosophy by which the individual yielded countless personal liberties for the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... phrases, which the men condescendingly use to soften our slavish dependence, and despising that weak elegancy of mind, exquisite sensibility, and sweet docility of manners, supposed to be the sexual characteristics of the weaker vessel, I wish to show that elegance is inferior to virtue, that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex; and that secondary ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... they had all been disenchanted. Hobbes alone clung to his ridiculous mistress. Repeatedly confuted, he was perpetually resisting old reasonings and producing new ones. Were only genius requisite for an able mathematician, Hobbes had been among the first; but patience and docility, not fire and fancy, are necessary. His reasonings were all paralogisms, and he had always much to say, from not understanding the subject of ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... observing the high hopes and aims, the diligent alacrity of our extended thoughts and reasonings in the pursuance of truth and freedom, but that he would cry out as Pyrrhus did, admiring the Roman docility and courage: If such were my Epirots, I would not despair the greatest design that could be attempted, to make a ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... to seek to live every hour—every moment—as pensioners on God's grace and love, following in all things His directing hand! As the servant has his eyes on his master, or the child on its parent, "so should our eyes be on the Lord our God." Howsoever He speaks, be it ours with all docility to follow the voice, indorsing every utterance of providence, and every precept of Scripture, with our Lord's own words, "This ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... know that it would do any good," said Tarzan, "as I have an idea that these lions are a little different from any that we are familiar with and possibly for the same reason which at first puzzled me a little—I refer to the apparent docility in the presence of a man of the lion who was with us today. A man is out there ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... humorously, as his lesson—sank his previous self-consciousness, with excellent effect, in grateful docility. "I only meant that there are perhaps better things to be done with Miss Stant than to criticise her. When once you begin THAT, with anyone—!" He ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... another question. Poetry is a good deal a matter of heart-beats, and the circulation is more languid in the later period of life. The joints are less supple; the arteries are more or less "ossified." Something like these changes has taken place in the mind. It has lost the flexibility, the plastic docility, which it had in youth and early manhood, when the gristle had but just become hardened into bone. It is the nature of poetry to writhe itself along through the tangled growths of the vocabulary, as a snake winds through the grass, in sinuous, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... was a good deal of kicking, and plunging, and flinging, and many hard gallops, and some ugly falls, before it came to this; but both the Bushman Swartboy and the Bush-boy Hendrik were expert in the manege of horses, and soon tamed the quaggas to a proper degree of docility. ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... to intellect, or even intellect itself, and moral worth, or the absence of ferocity, or the presence of positive amiability, render it possible that the barbarian is not a fiend, or that he may be schooled to tolerable docility, while the general tenor of barbarism is to wrong, cruelty, violence, ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... set George's ordinarily pale countenance into a flame. Harry, his brother's fondest worshipper, could not but admire George's haughty bearing and rapid declamation, and prepared himself, with his usual docility, to follow his chief. So the boys went to their beds, the elder conveying special injunctions to his junior to be civil to all the guests so long as they remained under the maternal ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Baron rewarded his wife's fanaticism confirmed her in her opinion that gentleness and docility were ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... between the tone of these words and of the preceding! There all is gentleness, docility, still communion, submission, patient endurance. Here all is energy and determination, resistance and martial vigour. It is like the contrast between a priest and a warrior. And that gentleness is the parent of this ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... exceedingly well made; your fur boasts of the delicate varieties of the tiger; your eyes are lively and pleasing; your velvet coat and tail are of enviable beauty; and your agility, gracefulness, and docility are, indeed, the admiration of all who behold you! Your moral qualities are not less estimable; and we will ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... strict diet had been imposed upon him, but no access of fever supervened. And then, the poor boy submitted with such docility to all the prescriptions ordered him! He longed so to ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... and developments had time led them to this moment of change and consciousness?—representing in her, sharp recoil, an instant girding of the will—and in him a new despair, which was also a new docility, a readiness to content and tranquillise her at any cost. As they stood thus, for these few seconds, amid the shadows of the rich encumbered room, the picture of the weeks and months they had just passed through flashed through both minds—illuminated—thrown ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... point. But the doubts and fears of the morning had unnerved her already. She went downstairs again softly, and took her hat from the stand in the hall. "He told me to put my hat on," she said to herself, with a meek filial docility which was totally out of ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... lovers, never think of objecting to the propriety of a custom, in which they have been constantly brought up. Never having seen any example that contradicted it, they have not the least idea of varying from it. Thus being submissive from the habit, as well as from reason, they, by their docility, maintain that peace in their families, which they ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... the voice and touch of his master, restoring Woodfall to his feet with a docility that made him, if possible, more hateful to the ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... country as the most advanced of all the Indian nations in the Amazons region. Under what influences this tribe has become so strongly modified in mental, social, and bodily features it is hard to divine. The industrious habits, fidelity, and mildness of disposition of the Passes, their docility and, it may be added, their personal beauty, especially of the children and women, made them from the first very attractive to the Portuguese colonists. They were, consequently, enticed in great number from ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... general thing they are not nearly so superior as they suppose they are. They think "Irreverence for the dreams of youth" always comes from "the hardening of the heart." But youth has some fantastic as well as some noble dreams, so that docility is a better quality than independence in a very young person. If a worldly minded mother inculcates worldliness in her daughter, the daughter certainly ought to stand firm against the teaching; but if the daughter merely thinks she would rather read ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... composed here of a twofold part; The first of nature, and the next of art; Art presupposes nature; nature, she Prepares the way for man's docility. ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... Jesuit Father, the author of an anonymous work in, manuscript on that country, written in the year 1762 at Alamo, it was thought also to be the most important among the many Provinces of Mexico, whether for fertility of soil, gold washings, or silver mines; and not less distinguishable for the docility and loyalty of those aboriginal inhabitants who had early given their adhesion to the government to secure ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith
... you know that?" Nancy asked, as she followed him with a docility quite new to her, past the big green gate, and the row of nondescript shops between it and ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... since Jerome's confession of love, had experienced a curious revulsion from her maiden dreams. She had such instinctive docility of character that she was at times amenable to influences entirely beyond her own knowledge. Not understanding in the least Jerome's attitude of renunciation, she accepted it for herself also. She no longer builded bridal air-castles. ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... docility of the Dutch people, combined with the simplicity, honesty, and practical sagacity of the earlier burgher patricians, made the defects of the system tolerable for a longer period than might have been expected; nor was it until theological dissensions had gathered to such intensity as to set the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I have too shortly specified in the Saxon character,—its imagination, its docility, its love of knowledge, and its love of beauty, you will be prepared to accept my conclusive statement, that they gave rise to a form of Christian faith which appears to me, in the present state of my knowledge, one of the purest and most intellectual ever attained in Christendom;—never ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... was to marry Saidjah); and when the little brothers of Adinda came to the limit of their fields just at the same time that the father of Saidjah was there with his plow, then the children called out merrily to each other, and each praised the strength and the docility of his buffalo. Saidjah was nine and Adinda six, when this buffalo was taken by the chief of the district of Parang-Koodjang. Saidjah's father, who was very poor, thereupon sold to a Chinaman two silver curtain-hooks—heirlooms from the parents of his wife—for eighteen ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... courage is unbounded, a property not possessed by the wolf: he appears never to forget a kindness, but soon loses the recollection of an injury, if received from the hand of one he loves, but resents it if offered by a stranger. His docility and mental pliability exceed those of any other animal; his habits are social, and his fidelity not to be shaken; hunger cannot weaken, nor old age impair it. His discrimination is equal, in many respects, to human intelligence. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... foothills, thinking and thinking. There were times when the flame of that strange exaltation burned low indeed; times when it seemed almost to expire. There were moments—hours—of misgivings. She could not understand the strange docility which had come over her; the unprecedented willingness to have her course shaped by another. That strange willingness came as near to frightening Zen as anything had ever done. She felt that she was being carried along ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... know what I answered,—my heart was heavy and aching,—but I tried with true feminine docility to follow the lead he had set me. He continued for some time in the same vein; but as we approached the house the effort seemed to become too much for him, and we ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... reading passion is partly the cause and partly an effect of the new zest in and docility to the adult world and also of the fact that the receptive are now and here so immeasurably in advance of the creative powers. Now the individual transcends his own experience and learns to profit by that of others. There is now evolved a penumbral region in the soul more or less beyond the reach ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... were then told to find their quickest way to the rear. Like other German prisoners we had seen, they went willingly enough. German discipline obtains even after a man has been made a prisoner. He obeys his captors with the same docility with which he had previously obeyed his own officers. Left to themselves, and started on the right road, the prisoner will plod along, their N.C.O.'s saluting the English officers, and inquiring the way to the concentration ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... women. It is said that before she had reached the age of eight-and-twenty, she had learned to read Latin and Greek with facility, and made herself more than passably acquainted with various arts and sciences. To the indomitable will and perseverance of her sister Maria, she added a docility and gentleness to which the elder daughter of Garcia had been a stranger. Pauline was a favorite of her father, who had used pitiless severity in training the brilliant and willful Maria. "Pauline can be guided ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... speak—to repeat things after him, even "God Save the Queen." Some people say that he ruined the bird by these methods. Others maintain that, on the contrary, but for him the bird would have died of a disease akin to the staggers. They say, moreover, that the tameness and docility of the bird, while he was looking after it, have been greatly exaggerated, and they deny that it was entirely bald of ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... not have done? His star might have flamed to the zenith! Meanwhile it was a privilege to help him, to such extent as his extreme delicacy of feeling permitted. That it really permitted a good deal, one way or another, displaying considerable docility under the infliction of benefits, would have been coarse to perceive and unpardonably brutal to mention.—Such, anyhow, was the opinion held by his cousin, General Frayling, at whose expense he now enjoyed a recuperative sojourn upon ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... is by no means a condemnation of the system of government which has made these developments possible. On the contrary, it is a proof that the system has had an invigorating effect. For the existence and the expression of discontent is a sign of life; it means that there is an end of that utter docility which marks a people enslaved body and soul. India has never been more prosperous than she is to-day; she has never before known so impartial a system of justice as she now possesses; and these are legitimate grounds of pride to her rulers. But they ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... yet was not his mind rough and boisterous. Success had not taught him a despotic and untractable temper, applause had not made him insolent and vain. He was gentle as the dove. He listened with eager docility to the voice of hoary wisdom. He had always a tear ready to drop over the simple narrative of pastoral distress. Victor as he continually was in wrestling, in the race, and in the song, the shout of triumph never escaped his lips, the exultation of insult he was never heard to utter. ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... Prov. xxx. 17: "An eye that mocketh at his father, and despises the [Hebrew: iqhh] of his mother."[10] To this view we are led also by the Arabic, where the word [Arabic: **], does not denote obedience in general, but willing obedience, docility, in the viii. sq. [Hebrew: l] dicto audientem se praebuit more discipuli. (Compare Camus in Schulten, on Prov. l. c.) Cognate is [Arabic: **], "to take care," "to guard oneself," specially of the conflict with the higher ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... necessary." Byron, superior to vulgar prejudice, saw in the manners of the pallikares an ingenuous simplicity, a manly frankness and rustic procedure, but full of honour; he observed in the people a docility and constancy capable of the greatest efforts, when it shall be conducted by skilful and virtuous men; he observed amongst the Greek women natural gaiety, unstudied gentleness, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various |
