"Pliant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... naked, to the wondering herd, He charm'd their eyes; and, for they loved, they fear'd: Not arm'd with horns of arbitrary might, Or claws to seize their furry spoils in fight, Or with increase of feet to o'ertake them in their flight: Of easy shape, and pliant every way; Confessing still the softness of his clay, 270 And kind as kings upon their coronation day: With open hands, and with extended space Of arms, to satisfy a large embrace. Thus kneaded up with milk, the new-made ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... But what fascinated Nelson most was the curious armor they wore. Beneath breast plates of polished bronze, these strange warriors wore what seemed to be a kind of chain mail—yet it was not that, for the texture had more the appearance of some heavy but pliant leather, finished with a ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... This was the "pliant hour;" they sprang upon their oars, and pulled back to the wreck with alacrity. The poor captain, who had witnessed all that passed, watched the progress of his cause with deep anxiety. No sooner did the boat touch the ship, than he leaped ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... with a long rubber slicker tight-buttoned from collar to hem. Below that Brent saw rubber boots. She stood with a lance-like straightness, very tall, very pliant, and as he stared with a fixity which would have amounted to impertinence had it not been disarmed by amazement she looked past him and through him as if he were ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... more! You are a one!" Emmy was not pliant enough. In her voice there was the faintest touch of—something that was not self-consciousness, that was perhaps a sense of failure. Perhaps she was back again suddenly into her maturity, finding ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... of the language is, however, far less than the whole set of difficulties with your own mind. Unless you can make it pliant enough to follow the African idea step by step, however much care you may take, you will not bag your game. I heard an account the other day of a representative of Her Majesty in Africa who went out for a day's antelope shooting. There were plenty of antelope about, and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Lord of the Bedchamber sat in his shirt, (And D—dy the pliant was there), And his feelings appeared to be very much hurt And his ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... held to be among the Athenians,) superadds the vast power, both actual and virtual, which would flow from the inviolability of the Royal office, and forecloses, so far, the chance which the more pliant Tory doctrine would leave open, of counteracting the effects of the King's indirect personal influence, by curtailing or weakening the grasp of some of his direct regal powers. Ovid represents the Deity of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... than that of Portuguese Algarves. The beauty of the islanders results from a mixture of Irish blood. During the Catholic persecution before 1823 many fled the Emerald Isle to Tenerife, and especially to Orotava. The women's figures in youth are charming, tall, straight, and pliant as their own pine-trees. All remark ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... to school—their faces bear that shut-in look of the illiterate, a look impossible to define, but just as impossible to mistake when once it has been recognized. With the mothers are a group of girls of ten or twelve, who are learning sewing at an earlier age, when fingers are more pliant and less like to thumbs. Then there are the babies, too—most of them health-centre babies, who come for milk, for medicine, for weighing, over a familiar and oft-traveled road. Fond mothers exhibit them with pride to the doctor, and there is much comparison ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... and now pawing eight feet high in the air, with scarlet, furious nostrils and maddened eyes, the yellow horse was a thing of terror and of beauty. But the lithe figure on his back, bending like a reed in the wind to every movement, firm below, pliant above, with calm inexorable face, and eyes which danced and gleamed with the joy of contest, still held its masterful place for all that the fiery heart and the iron muscles of ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... —The pliant, persuasive body, the dancer, whose symbol and epitome is the self-enjoying soul. Of such bodies and souls the self-enjoyment calleth ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... silent. It was a brave thing to do, to defy such a master. This is Lynch's last voyage in the Golden Bough, as he well knows. So our canny skipper set to work his crooked wits, and for weeks he has been fomenting a rebellion of the port watch. Mister Fitz is a more pliant and obedient tool ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... his "shirt frill," a "curb chain" with large gold seals hanging from his waistcoat—(a "curb chain" proper was then a little thin chain finely wrought, of very close links.) Then there was the "pliant ebony cane, with a heavy gold top." Ebony, however, is not pliant, but the reverse—black was the word intended. Then those "smalls" and stockings to match. Mr. Pickwick, a privileged man, appeared on this occasion, indeed always, in ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... they get it under their control. What should be still more thought of and defended, since it is in greater danger, is the Catholic faith, because the land is infested with heretics, and the Indians are a very pliant and changeable people. Don Pedro should be informed of what the marques has been commanded to do for his help, in order that he may understand, and arrange and provide for everything as is best, in order that the desired ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... large, very shallow cups, from 6 to nearly 8 inches in external diameter, and from 2.5 to 3.5 in height; exteriorly all are composed of coarse grass, of bamboo-spathes, with occasionally a few dead leaves intermingled, loosely wound round with creepers or pliant twigs, while interiorly they are composed and lined with black, only moderately fine roots or pliant flower-stems of some flowering-tree, or both. Sometimes the exterior coating of grass is not very coarse; ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... indefatigable trifler who is said to have enclosed the Iliad in a nutshell. Examining the matter more closely, he thought it possible. One day this learned man trifled half an hour in demonstrating it. A piece of vellum, about ten inches in length and eight in width, pliant and firm, can be folded up, and enclosed in the shell of a large walnut. It can hold in its breadth one line, which can contain 30 verses, and in its length 250 lines. With a crow-quill the writing can be perfect. A page of this piece of vellum will then contain 7500 verses, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... being alike unknown to him, we may extend or contract it around him as we will. We may bind him down, incite him to action, restrain him by the leash of necessity alone, and he will not murmur. We may render him pliant and teachable by the force of circumstances alone, without giving any vice an opportunity to take root within him. For the passions never awake to life, so long as ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... well into the mesquite before he put back the hair in the water the dog had left and went on with his plaiting: As he handled the pliant horsehairs ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... of the oak in the sturdiness of my stature, I imagined that my mortality would remain pliant as long as I pleased. But I have taken so little care of myself this winter, and kept such bad hours, that I have brought a slow fever upon my nights, and am worn to a skeleton: Bethel has plump cheeks to mine. However, as it would be unpleasant to die ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Rosario; the exploitation of the opium traffic was shared between him and a Chinese, and, needless to say, brought him great gains. He was purveyor to the prisoners at Bilibid, and furnished zacate to many Manila houses. On good terms with all authority, shrewd, pliant, daring in speculation, he was the sole rival of a certain Perez in the awards of divers contracts which the Philippine Government always places in privileged hands. From all of which it resulted that Captain Tiago was as happy as can be ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... attempted to elect a king. At first the most favoured candidate was Auguste Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg, the grandson of Napoleon's first consort. Louis Philippe naturally objected to the establishment on his frontier of a prince so closely connected with the house of Bonaparte. The pliant Belgians accordingly transferred their preference to the Duke of Nemours, the second son of Louis Philippe. It was in vain that Sebastiani declared that France could not allow such a selection, as it would be interpreted by the powers as evidence of a French design to reincorporate Belgium ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Affectionate, suffering natures came to Rome for comfort; but her scanty kindness is only to be drawn with anguish from the cruel sharpness of asceticism. The worldly, the audacious, escape easily; but these pliant excitable temperaments, so anxiously in earnest, may be made useful. The more dangerous, frightful, or unnatural their performances, the more profit for their keepers. Men and women are trained by torturing processes to deny their nature, and then they are exhibited to bring grist ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... foothold on the gallery, the formidable hunchback leaped to the head of the ladder, without uttering a word, seized the ends of the two uprights with his powerful hands, raised them, pushed them out from the wall, balanced the long and pliant ladder, loaded with vagabonds from top to bottom for a moment, in the midst of shrieks of anguish, then suddenly, with superhuman force, hurled this cluster of men backward into the Place. There was a moment when even the most resolute trembled. The ladder, launched backwards, remained ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... As the pliant saw coaxed beams, and slabs, and flooring boards out of the forest trees I grew to like beginning at the beginning of things, and realised there was an underlying truth in Dan's whimsical reiteration, that "the missus was in luck when she struck this place"; ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... waves that crowned her vivid face, wondered whether he was or not. If she had been a woman to desire in the queenly, half-insolent indifference of manner with which she had first met him, how much more of charm lay in this piquant gaiety, in the warm sweetness of her softer and more pliant mood! It seemed to him she had the ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... downward grasp and its upward reach, the hardening of the tender stem and slender cylindrical trunk into the massive oak or pine, the growth of its tough, strong garment of bark, its winter times of rest and spring times of renewal, until from the tender green twig so frail and pliant it has become too large to clasp with the arms, and high enough to swing its dry leaves into the ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... possession of a group of dead creatures with fingers, conceived the idea that the fingers of these dead, when dried, would make most artistic, not to say suggestive, necklaces. So they strung these dried fingers upon something strong and pliant, and wore ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... Just beneath its lowest branches, Just above the roots, he cut it, Till the sap came oozing outward; Down the trunk, from top to bottom, Sheer he cleft the bark asunder, With a wooden wedge he raised it, Stripped it from the trunk unbroken. "Give me of your boughs, O Cedar! Of your strong and pliant branches, My canoe to make more steady, Make more strong and firm beneath me!" Through the summit of the Cedar Went a sound, a cry of horror, Went a murmur of resistance; But it whispered, bending downward, "Take my boughs, O Hiawatha!" Down he hewed the boughs of cedar Shaped ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... a long and pliant proboscis for the purpose of acquiring this grateful food, as a variety of bees, moths, and butterflies: but the Sphinx Convolvuli, or unicorn moth, is furnished with the most remarkable proboscis in ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... soldiers had been wont to salute a victorious general. Though he abolished none of the old republican forms, the Senate became simply his advisory council, the assemblies, his submissive agents the consuls, praetors and tribunes, his pliant tools. The laurel wreath, the triumphal dress, the conqueror's scepter—all proclaimed ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... obedience should be a surer obligation than duty taught and understood, it is to affirm that a blind man may tread surer by a guide than a seeing man can by a light. And it is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, generous, manageable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwart, and mutinous: and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... reveal power working upon the human will. In three of these—Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the accused sinful woman—the will becomes pliant and is radically changed, so morally affecting the whole life. In five—the temple cleansing, at the Tabernacles Feast, the first and second attempt at stoning, and the kingly entry into the city—the human will is stubbornly aggressively antagonistic to Jesus, but ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... irritably, incessantly twisting and turning and preening his tail-feathers; the still mistrustful rooks cawed now and then, sitting high, high up on the bare top of a birch-tree; the sun and wind played softly on its pliant branches; the tinkle of the bells of the Don monastery floated across to me from time to time, peaceful and dreary; while I sat, gazed, listened, and was filled full of a nameless sensation in which all ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... street, we see Emanuel Downing, a grave and worthy citizen, with his son George, a stripling who has a career before him; his shrewd and quick capacity and pliant conscience shall not only exalt him high, but secure him from a downfall. Here is another figure, on whose characteristic make and expressive action I will stake the ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... magnificent, of many colors, and one with fifteen arms covered with sharp, gray spines, and underneath pale yellow, fleshy feelers with suckers like a sea-anemone. These were as pliant as rubber in the water, but, when long out, as hard as stone. The sea-urchins were of many kinds, some with large spikes, as firm as rock, and others almost as brittle as glass, their needles, half ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... right hand be pressed against thy side Beneath thy waistcoat, and the other hand Upon thy snowy linen rest, and hide Next to thy heart; let the breast rise sublime, The shoulders broaden both, and bend toward her Thy pliant neck; then at the corners close Thy lips a little, pointed in the middle Somewhat; and from thy month thus set exhale A murmur inaudible. Meanwhile her right Let her have given, and now softly drop On the warm ivory a double kiss. ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... voices are heard, with accents of genuine and natural feeling; the poets begin to treat the old themes with more freshness, and to deal with religion, politics, and morals, as well as with love. The language still possesses, indeed, the quality of youth; it is still pliant, its forms have not become stiffened by age, it is fit for larger use than has yet been made of it, and lies ready and waiting, like a noble instrument, for the hand of the master which shall draw from it its full harmonies ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... letter and a dash— Where Vice reduced in size shrinks to a failing, And loses half her grossness by curtailing. Faux pas are told in such a modest way,— "The affair of Colonel B—— with Mrs. A——" You must forgive them—for what is there, say, Which such a pliant Vowel must not grant To such a very pressing Consonant? Or who poetic justice dares dispute, When, mildly melting at a lover's suit, The wife's a Liquid, her good man a Mute? Even in the homelier scenes ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... by whose evidence this legend was principally supported, was Jennet Device, a child about nine years old, and grand-daughter of old Demdike. A more dangerous tool in the hands of an unscrupulous evidence-compeller, being at once intelligent, cunning and pliant, than the child proved herself, it would not have been easy to have discovered. A foundation being now laid capable of embracing any body of confederates, the indefatigable justice proceeded in his inquiries, and in ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... brings. There are no facts, like bricks, to build stories with. What, pray, in the realm of human life is a fact? By no means a stubborn thing, as the proverb pretends. On the contrary, a most pliant, shifting, chameleon-coloured thing, as flexible as figures in the hands of the statistician. What is commonly called a fact is merely a one-sided piece of information, a dead thing, not the series of complex, mutually inter-working relations that constitutes a fact ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the Xanthian flood, retires To native Delos, and his sacred choirs; 185 Mingled in carols loud around his shrine, Cretans and Greeks, and painted Scythians join. Graceful on high the god o'er Cynthio glides, His wanton locks with pliant gold divides, With tender foliage crowns his radiant hair; 190 Wide sounds the dart bu ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... steadying her as she balanced. A quick glance upward showed her a bare stretch of bole with the nearest limb on her side of the tree just barely beyond her reach. Slowly she straightened, lengthening her pliant body the imperceptible fraction of an inch, gradually thrusting her two arms up high above her head, still with her hands steadying her as they clung to the bark, her moccasined feet curving to the limb on which she stood. And ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... its towers, to feel the blow had shook! Yet lay the beast unwounded; safely sheath'd With scaly armour, and his harden'd hide:— His skin alone the furious blow repell'd. Not so that hardness mocks the javelin,—fixt Firm in the bending of the pliant spine His weapon stood,—and all the iron head Deep in his entrails sunk. Mad with the pain, Reverse he writhes his head;—beholds the wound; Champs the fixt dart;—by many forceful tugs Loosen'd at length, he tears the shaft away; But deep the steel within his bones ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Buddhism never had a similarly paramount and unchallenged position. It never attempted to extirpate its rivals. It coexisted with a mass of popular superstition which it only gently reprobated and with a powerful hereditary priesthood, both intellectual and pliant, tenacious of their own ideas and yet ready to countenance almost any other ideas as the price of ruling. Neither Islam nor Christianity had such an adversary, and both of them and even Judaism resemble Buddhism in having won greater success outside ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... night, and the moon shone in a serene sky among the lesser stars; when you, about to violate the divinity of the great gods, swore [to be true] to my requests, embracing me with your pliant arms more closely than the lofty oak is clasped by the ivy; that while the wolf should remain an enemy to the flock, and Orion, unpropitious to the sailors, should trouble the wintery sea, and while the air should fan the unshorn locks of Apollo, [so ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... how a conversation pursued for hours in this vein would affect Archie. He was weak and impulsive, ready to suspect whatever was suggested, jealous of his own rights and honour, and on the whole of that pliant nature which a strong, positive woman like Madame could manipulate like wax. He walked his room all night in a frenzy of jealous love. Sophy lost to him had acquired a sudden charm and value beyond all else in life; he longed for the morning; for Madame's positive opinions ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... in his ears, "To thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven" (as though those keys were fit for him alone, and for nobody else), except he go so to work, as men's consciences may be made pliant, and be subdued to the Word of God, we deny that he doth either open, or shut, or hath the keys at all. And although he taught and instructed the people (as would God he might once truly do, and persuade himself it were at the least some piece of his duty), yet we ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... and again it happened—the stone went plummeting. A third time he tried, and a fourth. He chose the more pliant vines and strove to make them stay, sought a new way to fasten. The ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... thought, of more capacious breast, For empire formed and fit to rule the rest; Whether with particles of heavenly fire The God of nature did his soul inspire, Or earth, but new divided from the sky, And pliant, still retained the ethereal energy. Thus while the mute creation downward bend Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend, Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes Beholds ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Synod pass through his hands, he possesses in reality considerable power. Besides this, he can always influence the individual members by holding out prospects of advancement and decorations, and if this device fails, he can make refractory members retire, and fill up their places with men of more pliant disposition. A Council constituted in this way cannot, of course, display much independence of thought or action, especially in a country like Russia, where no one ventures to oppose ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... duties to think of the fish, or to do more than cast a longing glance at the dark shadows beneath the trees. For on board the heat was terrible, the pitch was oozing out of the seams, and blistering the paint; every piece of tarry cordage was soft and pliant, and very beads stood out upon the strands; while beneath the awnings there was a stuffy suffocating heat that was next ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... clever enough to set by the ears those who overruled him by their united vote. If this girl were made Empress she would be entirely under the influence of her uncle, of whose household she had been a pliant member ever since childhood. Yet what was Mayence to do? Should he object to the nomination, he would at once obliterate the unswerving loyalty of Treves, and if this happened, Treves and Cologne, joining, would outvote him, and his objection would prove futile. He would enrage Treves without ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... advancing, and it was so dark that they could scarce see their hands when held up before their faces. They sat back to back, and thus, in the form of a tripod, began to snooze. Joe's and Henri's seasoned frames would have remained stiff as posts till morning; but Dick's body was young and pliant, so he hadn't been asleep a few seconds when he fell forward into the mud and effectually awakened the others. Joe gave a grunt, and Henri exclaimed, "Hah!" but Dick was too sleepy and miserable to say anything. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... storm. As they worked, there came such an appalling thunderclap that it shook the ground beneath her, and for some minutes she was unable to hear even the droning roar of the rain-laden tornado that came tearing down from the mountains, snapping off the branches of the gum-trees, bending low the pliant boles of the moaning she-oaks, and lifting the waters of the creek ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... workmanship, With hewen stones wrought smoother and more fine Than jet or marble fair from Iceland brought. Over the door directly doth incline A fair percullis of compacture strong, To shut out all that may annoy the state Or health of Microcosm; and within Is spread a long board like a pliant tongue, At which I hourly sit, and trial take Of meats and drinks needful and delectable: Twice every day do I provision make For the sumptuous kitchen of the commonwealth; Which, once well-boil'd, is ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... running feet. And then Jimmie Dale had snatched the revolver from the floor where Markel had dropped it in the scuffle, and was pressing it against Markel's forehead—and Markel, terror-stricken, had collapsed in a flabby, pliant heap. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... be that, utterly exhausted by watching and nursing, first in the hospital, and then by the bedside of her former lover, the power of her constitution was worn out; or, it might be, her gentle, pliant sweetness, but she displayed no outrage or discord even in her delirium. There she lay in the attic-room in which her baby had been born, her watch over him kept, her confession to him made; and now she was stretched on the ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... indicated the precise spot, at a considerable distance from the camp, where he wished it to be. As soon as they clearly understood what his desires were, they went off into the bush and, armed with a small tomahawk lent them by Leslie, proceeded to cut down some forty or fifty young and pliant saplings, the butt-ends of which they sharpened to a point, and then thrust vertically, into the ground in a circle some twelve feet in diameter. They then brought the tops of the saplings all together and bound them; thus producing a skeleton structure exactly shaped like a bee-hive. ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... mind. She lives to bring destruction upon her husband's murderers, and those murderers are her own flesh and blood. Through her appeals to Atli's greed, and through Knefrud's lies in the Niblung court, the visit of her proud brothers to her pliant husband is brought about. The saga makes Atli the arch-plotter, and the motive his desire to possess the gold. This sentence exculpates Gudrun from any wrong intention towards her brothers: "Now the queen wots of their conspiring, and misdoubts her ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... winning, the sweet yet subtile mind which breaks the uniformity of sentiment as the facets of a diamond relieve, by their many-sided fires, the monotony of the stone,—adorable wisdom, the secret of loving hearts, which makes a woman pliant to the artistic hand that gives new life to old, old forms, and refreshes with novel modulations the phrases of love. Love is not only a sentiment, it is an art. Some simple word, a trifling vigilance, a nothing, reveals to a woman the great, the divine artist who shall touch her ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... of Love gave him wings. He was over the fence, she was in his arms, and he was straining the warm, pliant body close to his bursting breast. His lips were on hers. He felt her stiffen and then relax in swift surrender. Her heart, stilled at first, began to beat tumultuously against his breast; her free arm stole about his neck and tightened ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... He stood in a huge chamber circling to a dome far overhead. Before him, on a dais a full thousand feet in diameter, stood—sat—rested, whatever it might be called—another monster, far larger than any he had yet seen, like a mountain of pliant thinking, living metal. And Phobar knew he stood in ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... comprehension swept over Courtland. For the first time in his knowledge of her he suddenly grasped what was, perhaps, the true conception of her character. Looking at her clearly now, he understood the meaning of those pliant graces, so unaffected and yet always controlled by the reasoning of an unbiased intellect; her frank speech and plausible intonations! Before him stood the true-born daughter of a long race of politicians! All that he had heard of their dexterity, tact, and expediency rose ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... common circus-girl; she was a most daring and startling gymnaste, with a beauty and a grace of movement that gave to her audacious performance almost an air of prudery. Watching her wondrous dexterity and pliant strength, both exercised without apparent effort, it seemed the most natural proceeding in the world that she should do those unpardonable things. She had a way of melting from one graceful posture into another like the dissolving figures thrown from ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... sauntering down the street, an upright and pliant form, laden with green boughs. It was Luigi, with whom it had been a holiday, and who, roaming in the woods, had come across a wild stock on whose rude flavor the kindly freak of some wayfarer had grafted that of pulpy wax-heart cherries, tart ruddiness and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... eager suitor; treated him as a son-in-law, carried love messages from him to his daughter, and ended by refusing him her hand, and ordering her to renounce him on pain of being immured in a convent. Neither Frontenac nor his mistress was of a pliant temper. In the neighborhood was the little church of St. Pierre aux Boeufs, which had the privilege of uniting couples without the consent of their parents; and here, on a Wednesday in October, 1648, the lovers were married in presence of a number of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... regrets for the parting moment, Bushie—now mounted on Burl's shoulder, now walking hand in hand with Kumshakah—kept up a lively prattle which never ceased, and to which the others listened with pleased ears. Sometimes, while riding aloft, he would amuse himself by catching at the slender, pliant branches of the trees brought within his reach, which he would draw after him as far as he could bend them, then letting them fly back, leave them swinging to and fro. At length, as if this amusement had suggested it to his mind, the boy struck up a cadence from ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... pliant Nathan Pilley was elected chairman. This gentleman was obsessed by the notion that he possessed in a high degree the two qualities which he considered essential to the harmonious and expeditious conduct of a public meeting, namely, ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... misleading trick of vision in those days? Justin's dark, handsome profile rose before her: the level brows and fine lashes; the well-cut nose and lovable mouth—the Peabody mouth and chin, somewhat too sweet and pliant for strength, perhaps. Then the eyes turned to hers in the old way, just for a fleeting glance, as they had so often done at prayer-meeting, or sociable, or Sunday service. Was it not a man's heart she had seen in them? And oh, if she could only be sure that her own woman's heart had not ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... pliant whalebone, And his arrow a white-pine stick; Such a life as his archery practice Led the cats and each wretched chick! Our tea-sets were bits of dishes That mother had thrown away, With chincapin saucers and acorn-cups; And our dolls slept on moss and hay. With a May-apple ...
— The Nursery, Number 164 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... feeling is remarkable for elevation and sobriety. All that he lacks, is the boldness of imagination, the depth of passion, and the power of thought, that are indispensable to genius of the highest order. Gifted with a sympathetic and a pliant, rather than a creative and self-sustained nature, he was sensitive to every influence. Therefore we find him learning much in his youth from Lionardo, deriving a fresh impulse from Raphael, and endeavouring in his later life, after a ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... the stout assistant who vainly tried to light his passage; he fled with the haste of a robber caught in the act. Blinded by a kind of delirium, he did not even notice the unexpected flexibility of the piece of shagreen, which coiled itself up, pliant as a glove in his excited fingers, till it would go into the pocket of his coat, where he mechanically thrust it. As he rushed out of the door into the street, he ran up against three young ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... but I cannot doubt that Henrietta Maria was his evil star. She had the fire and daring of her father, but none of his care and affection for the people. The daughter of the most beloved of kings had the instincts of a tyrant, and was ever urging her too pliant husband to unpopular measures. She wanted to set that little jewelled shoe of hers on the neck of rebellion, when she should have held out her soft white hand to make friends of her foes. Her beauty and her grace might ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... clinched as though he were restraining some bodily suffering, and he tore the letter in two and stamped it down into the turf under his heel with a gesture as unlike his common serenity of manner as the fiery passion that darkened in his eyes was unlike the habitual softness of his too pliant and too unresentful temper. He crushed the senseless paper again and again down into the grass beneath his heel; his lips shook under the silky abundance of his beard; the natural habit of long usage kept him from all utterance, and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... words which had escaped Mademoiselle de Montpensier had remained in the King's recollection. He said to me: "If you had more patience, and a sweeter and more pliant temper, I would employ you to go and have a little talk with Mademoiselle, in order to induce her to explain what intentions she may have ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... understand you. I have not been pliant enough. It has not proved so easy as some of you hoped to lure me over into your camp.— Yet methinks you have nought to complain of. My daughter Merete's husband is your countryman—further I cannot go. My position is no ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... kneeling on the hearth-rug, with the fire-light playing on her dark face and pliant figure, in its closely-fitting black gown, throwing golden flickers on her hair, and coquetting with the lanterns in her eyes. She rose as Dartmouth approached, and he gave her one of his ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... above all, a readiness of ear and of imitation, which, for purposes of drill, counterbalances any defect of mental training. To learn the drill, one does not want a set of college professors; one wants a squad of eager, active, pliant school-boys; and the more childlike these pupils are the better. There is no trouble about the drill; they will surpass whites in that. As to camp-life, they have little to sacrifice; they are better fed, housed, and clothed than ever in their lives before, and they appear to have few inconvenient ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... preposterousness of Mr. Jones' method is incredible. In the natural order of things, children would be taught a careful 'high standard' articulation as a part of their elemental training, when in their pliant age they are mastering the co-ordinations which are so difficult to acquire later. Then when they have been educated to speak correctly, their variation from that full pronunciation is a natural carelessness, and has the grace of all natural behaviour, and it naturally ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... managed every one surrounding her since infancy, how humble had she now become!—how much more womanly in appearance, and more child-like at heart! She was as wax in Lady Elburne's hands. A hint of that veiled episode, the Beckley campaign, made Rose pliant, as if she had woven for herself a rod of scorpions. The high ground she had taken; the perfect trust in one; the scorn of any judgement, save her own; these had vanished from her. Rose, the tameless heroine who had once put her mother's philosophy in action, was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... nation ponder Horace Greeley's arraignment of the reverend gentlemen who were the chief actors in this farce, and remember that in all ages of the world the priesthood have found their pliant tools and most degraded victims in the women of their respective sects. In all of these meetings there were intelligent, sincere women, so blinded by the sophistry and hypocrisy of Marsh, Chambers, Hewitt, et al., that they gave them their ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... perfection. It grows abundantly from all the branches in long small clusters of twenty to fifty grains, somewhat resembling bunches of currants, but with this difference, that every grain adheres to the common stalk, which occasions the cluster of pepper to be more compact, and it is also less pliant. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... vanquish him that confesseth to be her seruaunt, and whose wil dependeth at her commaundement. And when the whole matter shalbe rightlye iudged, shee that reuealeth imperfection of a Suter, sheweth her opinion and minde to be more pliant to yelde, then indewed with reason to abandone pleasure and to reiect the insolencie of the same, sith Reason's force doth easely vanquish light affections of sensuall partes, whose fancies imprinted wyth ficklenes, do make ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... young; and perfectly unconstrained and companionable you will find them. But here the case is far otherwise. They have acquired so much of Mussulman notions, that they do not allow their women to mix in society. This is the general rule: more pliant to occasion than the law of the Turks, which never yields. And not only here is there a strong feeling on this subject: the same prejudice prevails widely in the Turco-Greek islands. For instance, in Mytilene, on occasion of taking that long excursion which I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... dough, pudding; alumina, argil; cushion, pillow, feather bed, down, padding, wadding; foam. mollification; softening &c v.. V. render soft &c adj.; soften, mollify, mellow, relax, temper; mash, knead, squash. bend, yield, relent, relax, give. plasticize'. Adj. soft, tender, supple; pliant, pliable; flexible, flexile; lithe, lithesome; lissom, limber, plastic; ductile; tractile^, tractable; malleable, extensile, sequacious^, inelastic; aluminous^; remollient^. yielding &c v.; flabby, limp, flimsy. doughy, spongy, penetrable, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... queen: she took him to her arms With greedy pleasure, and devour'd his charms. Unhappy Dido little thought what guest, How dire a god, she drew so near her breast; But he, not mindless of his mother's pray'r, Works in the pliant bosom of the fair, And molds her heart anew, and blots her former care. The dead is to the living love resign'd; And all Aeneas enters ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... sheer evil, without any compensating development of character, is portrayed; where indeed the struggle may even cause decay of character. In Zola's The Dram Shop, for example, the story is the tale of the moral decline, through unfortunate circumstances and vicious surroundings, of the sweet, pliant Gervaise. Instead of developing a resistance to circumstances which would have made them yield a value even in defeat, she lets herself go and is spoiled beneath them. She has no friend to help or ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... works in marble, from which it is not possible to learn painting perfectly, for the reason that stone is ever from its very essence hard, and never has that tender softness that is found in flesh and in things of nature, which are pliant and move in various ways; adding that Andrea would have made those figures much better, and that they would have been more perfect, if he had given them the colour of marble and not such a quantity of colours, because his pictures ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... through Pindar and the lyrical poets into drama history and philosophy, continually fitting itself more and more to become an instrument in the ordinary affairs of life, so it was needful that English lettered discourse should become popular and pliant, a power in the State as well as in the study. The magnitude of the change, from the time when the palm of popularity decorated Sidney's "Arcadia" to that when it adorned Defoe and Bunyan, would impress us even more powerfully ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... with all her pliant sinews inordinately tensed; with her deep eyes wide and terrified, yet voiceless of any outburst or exclamation, and near her, ill at ease, but seeking to treat the affair as an inescapable matter of business, and consequently ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... remained green as grass, and how easily one all too responsive might have turned the young tender instinct, with which the Genius of Humanity has endowed us, forever from its destined course to life-long torture. For we are all, man and woman alike, born with a twofold nature, and the pliant young shoot can so easily be contorted and its rightful growth ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... the construction of these baskets that the bear-grass forms an article of considerable traffic. It grows only near the snowy region of the high mountains; the blade, which is two feet long and about three-eighths of an inch wide, is smooth, strong, and pliant; the young blades particularly, from their not being exposed to the sun and air, have an appearance of great neatness, and are generally preferred. Other bags and baskets, not waterproof, are made of cedar-bark, silk-grass, rushes, flags, and common coarse sedge, for the ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... almost the revenues of the kingdom. The celebrated Parc au Cerf, the scene of almost unparalleled voluptuousness, was reared for her at an expense of twenty millions of dollars. After her charms had faded, she still contrived to retain her political influence over the pliant monarch, until she died, at the age of ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... successful man of the world has studied the temper of the finest sword. He can bend easily, he is flexible, he is pliant, and yet he has not lost the bravery and the power of his weapon. Men of the bar, for instance, have been at the trouble to construct a system of politeness, in which even an offensive self- estimation takes on the garb of humility. The harmony ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... is heaven. In the level light the scythes of the mowers flash as we move past. From their bronzed foreheads the men toss masses of dark curls. Their muscular flanks and shoulders sway sideways from firm yet pliant reins. On one hill, fronting the sunset, there stands a herd of some thirty huge grey oxen, feeding and raising their heads to look at us, with just a flush of crimson on their horns and dewlaps. This is the scale of Mason's and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... vain from me the sailor flies, The quickest ship I can surprise, And turn it as I have a mind, And move it against tide and wind. Nay, bring me here the tallest man, I'll squeeze him to a little span; Or bring a tender child, and pliant, You'll see me stretch him to a giant: Nor shall they in the least complain, Because my ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... the shades, I presently do see The god of love forsake his bow and sit me by; If that I think to write, his Muses pliant be; If so I plain my grief, the wanton boy will cry. If I lament his pride, he doth increase my pain If tears my cheeks attaint, his cheeks are moist with moan If I disclose the wounds the which my heart hath slain, He takes his fascia off, and wipes them dry ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... The Indians of Nueva California were mild and gentle, having nothing in common with their neighbors, the warlike Yumas, and were easily subjected by the early Franciscans. But gentle and pliant as they were, there were always a few, fiercer than the rest, who did not brook calmly the sight of their subjection; and these bolder ones stirred up, from time to time, the other natives to insurrection. Many were the uprisings at the different missions—one of the earliest ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... involved the whole question of the child's future attitude toward life. Shall the child become one who habitually obeys the commands of others, without questioning, without resisting, and so perhaps become a pliant tool in the hands of powerful but unscrupulous men? Or shall he be allowed to go his own way and over-ride the wishes of others, to become, perhaps, a wilful victim of his own whims and moods, presenting a stubborn resistance ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... not thin, and her figure struck me as being one that might revive love when it believed itself exhausted. She perfectly represented the idea conveyed by the word mignonne, for she was one of those pliant little women who allow themselves to be taken up, petted, set down, and taken up again like a kitten. Her small feet, as I heard them on the gravel, made a light sound essentially their own, that harmonized with ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... he can hope is that, by meditating on the advantages which a heron would enjoy, and by pressing the same consideration on his offspring, the time may come in the dim procession of years when the beaks of his descendants will grow long and sharp, their necks pliant, their legs attenuated. ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... or pubescent. Branchlets pliant and tough. Leaves from 4 to 7 cm. long, entire, stout, persistent for several years; stomata dorsal and ventral; resin-ducts external. Conelets short-pedunculate, dark purple during the second season, their scales often tapering to an acute apex. Cones ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... indisputable, however, that it exerted an educational influence. Besides, it possesses the merit of having resuscitated one of the most valuable of Jewish national possessions, the Hebrew language in its purity, which in Russia alone has become a pliant instrument of literary expression. A still greater field was reserved for the Jewish-Russian literature that arose in the "sixties." It was called into being in order to present a vivid and true picture of the social and ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... what a lot of contest and strife is in store for him. The very breath which a literary man respires is hot with hatred, and the youthful proselyte enters that career which seems to him so glittering, even as Dame Pliant's brother in the 'Alchemist' entered town,—not to be fed with luxury, and diet on pleasure, but 'to learn to quarrel and ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Russia was a great horseman, exceedingly fond of horseback riding independent of the chase. He tried in 1800 to breed a satisfactory horse from the English thoroughbred race horse, but went from bad to worse until he resorted to the ever-pliant blood of the Arabian. He sent to Egypt and secured a thoroughbred Arabian stallion, paying $8,000 for him (in our money). This horse he bred to Danish mares, largely of Arabian blood, and created a very stout, short-backed horse, standing from 151/2 to 153/4 and 16 hands high, of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... yet impressionable; sympathetic, yet self-possessed; able quickly to sift, detect and discriminate; of various knowledge, experience and interest; the cackle of the adjacent barnyard the noise of the world to his eager mind and pliant ear. Nothing too small for him to tackle, nothing too great, he should keep to the middle of the road and well in rear of the moving columns; loving his art—for such it is—for art's sake; getting his sufficiency, along with its independence, in the public approval and patronage, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... and confident, reckless of giving offence, ruder in their behaviour, more grasping in their exactions, more domineering, more oppressive. Prudence should perhaps have counselled the Phoenician cities to submit, to be yielding and pliant, to cultivate the arts of the parasite and the flatterer; but the people had still a rough honesty about them. It was against the grain to flatter or submit themselves; constant voyages over wild seas in fragile ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... equalled in severity, and we cannot but hope that they were unjust. From an historical point of view, as a delineation of the manners of his age, his satires are priceless, even like the epigrams of Martial. This uncompromising poet, not pliant and easy like Horace, animadverted like an incorruptible censor on the vices which were undermining the moral health and preparing the way for violence; on the hypocrisy of philosophers and the cruelty of tyrants; on the frivolity of women and the debauchery of men. He discoursed on the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... intellect in it, I should be misleading the reader if I were to say anything of the sort. In height, he was about five feet and a quarter of an inch, in his boots, and he was rather strongly set, with a little tendency to round shoulders:—but his limbs were pliant, and his motions nimble. ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... vicegerent in ecclesiastical affairs, Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell, unlike Wolsey, was hostile to the temporal power of Rome. He made Thomas Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, who was inclined toward Protestant views, but, though sincere in his beliefs, was a man of pliant temper, indisposed to resist the king's will, preferring to bow to a storm, and to wait for it to pass by. By Cranmer the divorce was decreed, but this was after the marriage with Anne Boleyn had taken place. Henry was excommunicated by the Pope. Acts ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher |
