"Pliability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railway companies was the same as that of the Alton tramp. They had found Congress as generous as the tramp had found the Mayor of Alton, and now reproached themselves for their modesty and resolved to bring the pliability of Congress to a severer test. They again appeared before that body in 1864 and asked that their charter be so amended as to grant to them ten alternate sections instead of five on each side of the road, and also ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... members of the Christian communities, and, being so, they still insisted that Judaism was to be eternal. They demanded that the patched and stiff leathern bottle, which had no elasticity or pliability, should still contain the quick fermenting new wine of the kingdom. And certainly, if ever man had excuse for clinging to what was old and formal, these Judaising Christians held it. They held by a law written with God's own finger, by ordinances awful by reason of divine appointment, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... with whom Ichabod Crane had to contend, and, considering all things, a stouter man than he would have shrunk from the competition, and a wiser man would have despaired. He had, however, a happy mixture of pliability and perseverance in his nature; he was in form and spirit like a supple-jack—yielding, but tough; though he bent, he never broke; and though he bowed beneath the slightest pressure, yet, the moment it ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... mathematics of the Animal Kingdom have a greater flexibility than those of the positive sciences, and are therefore not so easily resolved into their invariable elements, it is because they have the freedom and pliability of life, and evade our efforts to bring all their external variety within the limits of the same structural law which nevertheless controls and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... eight of these snug-built machines, all the same type and monogram, all with machine guns strapped solidly to the fuselage of each, and with motors of great power and pliability. ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... revolutionary, anarchistic completeness, she has renounced the idea of compromise or adaptability as finally as if she had seen and passed the end of the world. There is no more pliability in her with regard to Asbury than there is in a steel rod. How different she used to be with Brandt! How she consulted his wishes and accommodated ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... partnership of life and interest, circumstances cannot modify it; it ever remains the same to sweeten existence, to purify the cup of life, on the rugged pathway to the grave, and melt to moral pliability the brittle nature of man. It is the ministering spirit of home, hovering in soothing caresses over the cradle, and the death-bed of the household, and filling up the urn of all ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... — N. softness, pliableness &c adj.; flexibility; pliancy, pliability; sequacity^, malleability; ductility, tractility^; extendibility, extensibility; plasticity; inelasticity, flaccidity, laxity. penetrability. clay, wax, butter, dough, pudding; alumina, argil; cushion, pillow, feather ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the best for the purpose of wool scouring, as, owing to its ready solubility in water, it quickly penetrates the fibres, is easily washed out, and produces a good "feel" so essential in the best goods, and tends to preserve the lustre and pliability of the fibre. ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... assurance in his own merit, which no superiority could depress; and with a presumption which encouraged him to aim at all things, he blended a good-humour that no mortification could lessen. And while by the pliability of his disposition he avoided making enemies, by his readiness to oblige, he learned the surest way of making friends ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... MANUFACTURES.—The distinction between hair and wool is rather arbitrary than natural, consisting in the greater or less degrees of fineness, softness and pliability of the fibres. When the fibres possess these properties so far as to admit of their being spun and woven into a texture sufficiently pliable to be used as an article of dress, they are called wool. The sheep, llama, Angora goat, and the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... thee into entire conformity to His will, He must have thee pliable in His hands, and this pliability is more quickly reached by yielding in the little things than even by the greater. Thy one great desire is to follow Him fully; canst thou not say then a continual "yes" to all His sweet commands, whether small or great, and trust Him to lead thee ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... did not stop here—it was deeper than mere appearance—the character of their minds differed almost as strikingly as did their complexion. The fair-haired beauty had a large proportion of that softness and pliability of temper which physiognomists assign as the characteristics of such complexions. She was much more the creature of impulse than of feeling, and consequently more the victim of extrinsic circumstances than was her sister. Emily, on the contrary, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... has always wanted my wife's soul self, and I believe that if I could have you back, my conquered body self would never need to wander from home. A little more pliability—all you ever lacked, and which your trouble should have brought you, could make it so that we could live together in very perfect harmony. Then I could release a lot of good plays and good writings, much of which I know already has been completed by my subliminal self. I get frequent ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... crucial moment he came over to Lincoln. But not until he had done yeoman service with Lincoln's bitterest enemies. The clue to his earlier course was an honest conviction that Lincoln, though well-intentioned, was weak.(7) Was this the nemesis of Lincoln's pliability in action during the first stage of his Presidency? It may be. The firm inner Lincoln, the unyielding thinker of the first message, was not appreciated even by well-meaning men like Trumbull. The inner and the outer Lincoln were still disconnected. And the outer, in his caution, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... one who frequently changes his principles, always siding with the strongest party: an allusion to a vicar of Bray, in Berkshire, commemorated in a well-known ballad for the pliability of his conscience. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... name of German or Dutch Jews, live principally by their wits, and establish a system of mischievous intercourse all over the country, the better to enable them to carry on then-fraudulent designs in every way. The pliability of their consciences is ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Dutch people had nothing in common and their king, William of Orange (the descendant of an uncle of William the Silent), while a hard worker and a good business man, was too much lacking in tact and pliability to keep the peace among his uncongenial subjects. Besides, the horde of priests which had descended upon France, had at once found its way into Belgium and whatever Protestant William tried to do was howled down by large crowds ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... the very feelings, benumbed and congealed as they may hitherto have been, were suddenly dissolving under some happier influence, and that,—with the external sign—the weakness and pliability of childhood—we were magically regaining its singleness of feeling, and its ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... man more completely the antithesis of Gordon. His temperament, all in monochrome, touched in with cold blues and indecisive greys, was eminently unromantic. He had a steely colourlessness, and a steely pliability, and a steely strength. Endowed beyond most men with the capacity of foresight, he was endowed as very few men have ever been with that staying-power which makes the fruit of foresight attainable. His views were long, and ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... action was taken by the First Raad, and a change of front was effected by a measure alteration, which hung the question up for another year. Everyone realized that this was secured by the influence of the President in the first place and by the pliability of Raad members in the second, on the ground that the matter was too profitable to them personally to be disposed of until it became ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... art, as in all other useful arts, is fundamentally, although not exclusively, the resultant or expression of function, but at the same time it is further than in other shaping arts from expressing the whole of function. Such is the pliability of a large portion of textile products—as, for example, nets, garments, and hangings—that the shapes assumed are variable, and, therefore, when not distended or for some purpose folded or draped, the articles are without esthetic value or interest. The more rigid objects, ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... was in the right. But tho he cautioned the maid and me against repletion in respect of solids, it was made up by free permission to drink as much water as we liked. Far from prescribing us any limits in that direction, he would tell us sometimes: "Drink, my children: health consists in the pliability and moisture of the parts. Drink water by pailfuls: it is a universal dissolvent; water liquefies all the salts. Is the course of the blood a little sluggish? this grand principle sets it forward: too rapid? its career is checked." Our doctor was ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... with a fair, delicate complexion, a profusion of light hair waving in soft curls over his shoulders, a light elastic step, and a frame, which, though it showed the promise already of strength to be attained with maturity, was conspicuous as yet for ease and agility and pliability rather than for power ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... itself surprises us by the great simplicity which characterises it. The first stage is getting the liquid mass of glass about to be operated upon into a thorough state of toughness and pliability: one should be able to pull it like rosin or sealing-wax. The colouring of the mass is done while it is still in the furnace, by adding various chemicals, the principal of which are arsenic, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... hardness, stiffness, and toughness. 2. Of muscular tissue, contractility and irritability. 3. Of nervous tissue, irritability and conductivity. 4. Of cartilaginous tissue, stiffness and elasticity. 5. Of connective tissue, toughness and pliability. 6. Of epithelial tissue, ability to resist the action of external forces and power ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... many others, less serious in their nature, such as indecision, exaggerated scrupulousness, extreme pliability, hypochondria. All of these should be ruthlessly supprest the moment we become aware of them, for they are one and all the forerunners of that mentally diseased condition which gives rise to the phobias of which we have ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... I know you do not, sir,—and, what is worse—you never wull, understand it, as you proceed: in one word, Charles, I have often told you, and now again I tell you, once for aw, that the manoeuvres of pliability are as necessary to rise in the world, as wrangling and logical subtlety are to rise at the bar: why you see, sir, I have acquired a noble fortune, a princely fortune—and how do you think ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... pursuing purposes so remote from those of the trader, would become obnoxious to that bitterest of American reproaches, the charge of being unpractical. The directness of aim of scientific training and the lofty code of honor among students of science, with their fair share of cis-Atlantic pliability, makes them, however, most useful and trustworthy people whenever it becomes requisite to entrust to them the mixture of commercial and scientific labor which is needed by heads of boards of weights and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... Had he been softer with this venerable old man, we might have had more conversation; but his forcible spirit; and impetuosity of manner, may be said to spare neither sex nor age. I have seen even Mrs Thrale stunned; but I have often maintained, that it is better he should retain his own manner. Pliability of address I conceive to be inconsistent with that majestick power of mind which he possesses, and which produces such noble effects. A lofty oak will not bend like ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... unalloyed than Vetranio's. Gifted with a disposition the pliability of which adapted itself to all emergencies, his generosity disarmed enemies, while his affability made friends. Munificent without assumption, successful without pride, he obliged with grace and shone with safety. People enjoyed his hospitality, for they knew that it ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... sadly obvious. The fish, being hooked, had made off with the rush of a shark for the bottom of the pool. A thicket of saplings below the alder tree had stopped the judicious hooker from all possibility of following; and when he strove to turn him by elastic pliance, his rod broke at the breach of pliability. "I have learned a sad lesson," said ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore |
