"Susceptibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as a man of like passions with ourselves? Physically, mentally, and morally he differs from us only in degree, not in kind. He has essentially the same hopes and fears, the same joys and sorrows, the same susceptibility to pain and the same capacity for happiness. Are we not told that God "hath made of one blood all nations of men''? We complacently imagine that we are superior to the Chinese. But discussing the question as to what constitutes superiority and inferiority of race, Benjamin Kidd ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... young women mistake a habit for a grand passion. And they forget, while they are studying man, that he is studying woman, and testing her susceptibility to flattery and her readiness to believe in ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... popular indoor sport. Carelessness about the eating and the care of the bowel functions may have started a vicious chain of things leading through irritability and fatigue into neurasthenia. We say human beings are all the same, but the range of individual susceptibility to trouble is such that a difficulty not important to most people will raise havoc with others who are in most ways ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... the primitive instincts are strong. The wish to subdue the female is one of them, and in small things he will exert his authority to make her feel his power, while she knows that on a question of real importance she has a good chance of getting her own way by working on his greater susceptibility. Perhaps an illustration will show what I mean. I was listening to the band and a girl and her fiance came up to occupy two seats near me. The girl sank into one seat, but for some reason the man ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... been disarmed, and in process of time became a Quaker. This was the natural ending for many, the heart of Anne Hutchinson's doctrine being really a belief in the "Inward Light," a doctrine which seems to have outraged every Puritan susceptibility for fully a hundred years, and until the reaction began, which has made individual judgment the only creed common to the people of New England. It was reasonable enough, however, that Massachusetts should dread a colony of such uneasy spirits, planted at her very doors, enfranchised ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... these and others are subject to criticism on the basis that they are not necessarily adequate in other food factors and may therefore not be fair bases for testing the antiscorbutic powers of the unknown combined with them. Abels has recently shown that scurvy increases susceptibility to infections and believes that the scurvy hemorrhages are brought about by the toxic effects of infection. It is therefore desirable in testing for antiscorbutic power that the basal diet be itself as complete as possible in all factors except the ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy
... pictures like the above that galleries, in Rome or elsewhere, are made up, but of productions immeasurably below them, and requiring to be appreciated by a very different frame of mind. Few amateurs are endowed with a tender susceptibility to the sentiment of a picture; they are not won from an evil life, nor anywise morally improved by it. The love of art, therefore, differs widely in its influence from the love of nature; whereas, if art had not strayed away from its legitimate ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... susceptibility, my companions caught all the melancholy associations of the scene, yet these could but imperfectly overcome the gayety of girlish spirits. Their emotions came and went with quick vicissitude, and sometimes combined to ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dwelt on those two beautiful sisters. Those two beautiful sisters appealed to me more than anything else in the Gazette's obituary. Surely—Simon Fuge had obviously been a man whose emotional susceptibility and virile impulsiveness must have opened the door for him to multifarious amours—but surely he had not made himself indispensable to both sisters simultaneously. Surely even he had not so far forgotten that Ham Lake was in the middle ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... God." His father was the Reverend Aaron Burr, President of Princeton College. He was a graduate of Princeton, and, like Hamilton, always had the ability to focus his mind on the subject in hand, and wring from it its very core. Burr's reputation as to his susceptibility to women's charms is the world's common—very common—property. He was unhappily married; his wife died before he was thirty; he was a man of ardent nature and stalked through the world a conquering Don Juan. A historian, ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... mind and warm heart, cheated of objects on which to expend the vigor of the one, or the fervor of the other. The energies of her character, finding no legitimate outlet, beat back upon herself, wearing away by continued friction the fine perception of beauty and susceptibility of true enjoyment. The vine that finds no support for its upward growth, grovels on the earth and covers it with rank, unshapely leaves. The mountain stream, turned back from its course, becomes a dark and stagnant pool. Even if the rank and long-neglected vine is made to twine round some ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... "if it does not appear too formidable to your susceptibility, we will venture to meet the young ladies. Get your hat, Rosalie," he added, as his sister moved away; "we need ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... called the "literary taint." They both avoided the circles where it spread deepest, in their nervous terror of the social process, of "getting to know the right people." They confessed that, in the beginning, they had fought shy even of each other, lest one of them should develop a hideous susceptibility and impart the taint. There were points at which they both might have touched the aristocracy of journalism; but they had had no dealings with its proletariat or its demi-monde. Below these infernal circles they had discerned the fringe ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... the same extreme susceptibility to the moods of nature. He loved her first for herself, and then with a sense of those inherited primitive associations with her scenes and hid influences which still play upon us to-day; and nothing could be surer than the wilder ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... effort to soar; if we rise from the ground it is because some unusually strong or deep burst of feeling makes us for the moment better than ourselves. In Mr. Gladstone the capacity for feeling was at all times so strong, the susceptibility of the imagination so keen, that he soared without effort. His vision seemed to take in the whole landscape. The points actually in question might be small, but the principles involved were to him far-reaching. The contests of ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... the secret of happiness consists in keeping alive our susceptibilities by frugal indulgences, rather than by seeking a multitude of pleasures, that pall in exact proportion to their abundance. The stillness and darkness of a quiet night produce this enlivening effect upon our minds. Our susceptibility is then awakened to such a degree, that slight sounds and feeble sparks of light convey to our souls an amount of pleasure which we seldom experience in the daytime from sights and sounds of the most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... always seeking money, it is not always seeking power, nor office, nor any other MATERIAL advantage. In ALL cases it seeks a SPIRITUAL contentment, let the MEANS be what they may. Its desires are determined by the man's temperament—and it is lord over that. Temperament, Conscience, Susceptibility, Spiritual Appetite, are, in fact, the same thing. Have you ever heard of a person who cared nothing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... however but a temporary feeling. My mind had always been active, and I was probably indebted to the sufferings I had endured, and the exquisite and increased susceptibility they produced, for new energies. I soon felt the desire of some additional and vigorous pursuit. In this state of mind, I met by accident, in a neglected corner of the house of one of my neighbours, with a general dictionary of four ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... influence of such views, it is a great joy to think that we shall not always be so callous as we are now. Deep down in our souls there is a susceptibility to tenderness that we do not generally suspect. Sometimes, from no cause that we can see, there breaks on our hearts a ripple of peace like a breath of perfume from some far off land of flowers, or a snatch of melody from ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... been suppressed in the Chinese for scores of generations. Only has remained to him industry, and in this has he found the supreme expression of his being. On the other hand, his susceptibility to new ideas has been well demonstrated wherever he has escaped beyond the restrictions imposed upon him by his government. So far as the business man is concerned he has grasped far more clearly the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... this trip of six weeks, to leave without speaking of it, and to return to his chamber at Dux. Enchanted at seeing us again, he agreeably related to us all the misfortunes which had tried him and to which his susceptibility gave the name of humiliations. 'I am proud,' he said, 'because I am nothing'. . . . Eight days after his return, what new troubles! Everyone had been served strawberries before him, and none remained ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... made to separate class from class, and population was not large enough to make the battle of life almost hopeless in the lowest section of the community. If there was less refinement than among ourselves, there was far less of nervous susceptibility, and the country was free from the half-educated class of men and women who know enough to make them dissatisfied, without attaining to the larger knowledge which yields wisdom and content. To say that the age was better than our own would be to deny a thousand signs ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... the time (to repeat Hamlet's phrase) is such that thoughtful men—and of such the Club is exclusively composed: men of great heart, men of nice susceptibility—are continually oppressed by the fumbling, hasty, and insignificant manner in which human contacts are accomplished. Let us even say, masculine contacts: for the first task of any philosopher being to simplify ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... appear to have been always susceptible, but his was the lightly-stirred susceptibility which is an affair of the senses rather than of the soul. "There is in truth," says Rochefoucauld, "only one kind of love; but there are a thousand different copies of it." Horace, so far at least as we can judge from his poetry, was no stranger ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... regular course we have just described, although these are, in a strictly logical sense, the necessary stages of intellectual evolution. Historically they are often jostled and confounded together by the lively susceptibility and alacrity of the imagination of primitive man, and it is precisely this characteristic which makes these marvellous ages so fertile in fanciful creations, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... all that the Holy of Holies suffered from these heartless beings; for the sight affected me so excessively that I became really ill, and I felt as if I could not survive it. We ought, indeed, to be ashamed of that weakness and susceptibility which renders us unable to listen composedly to the descriptions, or speak without repugnance, of those sufferings which our Lord endured so calmly and patiently for our salvation. The horror we feel is as great as that of a murderer who is forced ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... times taken the standpoint that the masses of people are of crude susceptibility and clumsy intelligence, "sordid in their pursuits and sunk in drudgery; and religion provides the only means of proclaiming and making them feel the high import of life." (Schopenhauer.) Thus the theist is led to the conclusion that the ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... accomplishments, and her pure and dignified mind, combined, it must be confessed, with the flattering admiration of his genius, entirely captivated the philosophical antagonist of marriage. It is not surprising that Marmion Herbert, scarcely of age, and with a heart of extreme susceptibility, resolved, after a struggle, to be the first exception to his system, and, as he faintly flattered himself, the last victim of prejudice. He wooed and won ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... possible," said Dupin. "The present peculiar condition of affairs at court, and especially of those intrigues in which D—— is known to be involved, would render the instant availability of the document, its susceptibility of being produced at a moment's notice, a point of nearly equal ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... hardly necessary to resort to the blind, or to savages, or to the deaf and dumb, in order to prove man's susceptibility in this respect. We may be reminded of the same fact by observing with what accuracy the merchant tailor can distinguish, by feeling, the quality of his goods; how quick a painter, an engraver, or a printer, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... flower in the germ, as it expands to the sun, will have certain colours and a certain fragrance, and no other;—all which, indeed, though not very new or profound, is very important. But it is not so dear that it will give us any help on the present occasion. We have an original susceptibility of music, of beauty, of religion, it is said. Granted; but as the actual development of this susceptibility exhibits all the diversities between Handel's notions of harmony and those of an American Indian—between Raphael's notions of beauty and those of a ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... man, impressionable and emotional, and not without imagination of his own. Her humor, and the healthy common-sense philosophy that flowered from it, were the girl's only protection from her own emotionalism and susceptibility. Even in the larger world of the capital there was no girl as pretty as Phil, Charles assured himself; she was not only agreeable to look at, but she piqued him by her indifference to his advances. His usual cajoleries only provoked retorts that left him blinking, not ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... to outward appearance, a timid man, if not a fool. The sensibilities of the young fellow, preserved pure, were not worn by contact without; he remained so chaste, so scrupulous, that he was keenly offended by actions and maxims to which the world attached no consequence. Ashamed of this susceptibility, he forced himself to conceal it under a false hardihood; but he suffered in secret, all the while scoffing with others ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... himself there are penetrated by the warmth of implicit confidence, which can be replaced for the child by nothing else. In this sacred circle the tenderest emotions of the heart are developed by the personal interest of all its members in what happens to any one, and thus the foundation is laid of a susceptibility to all ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... extreme negative pole of susceptibility we find persons who believe firmly that other persons have psychic power over them, and who are consequently more or less afraid of such persons and of their influence. This belief and fear operates in the direction of making such persons peculiarly sensitive and impressionable ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... could not possibly have been affected, and both painted them with much the same extraordinary charm. At his best, Morland is not much inferior to Chardin, and but for his unfortunate wildness and his susceptibility to the temptations of strong drink, he might easily have excelled the other. The feeling exhibited in two such different subjects as Lord Glenconner's Boys Robbing an Orchard, and The Interior of a Stable, in the National Gallery, ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... blessed with the advantages of a religious education, and recurs to his own years of juvenile susceptibility, cannot forget the strong impressions he received by these means; and must have had frequent occasion to remark the tenaciousness with which they have lingered in his memory, and sprung up amidst his recollections at every subsequent period. In ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... little doubt of the deleterious effect occasioned both to public and private morals by this deliberate exaltation of mental susceptibility on the part of the early Victorian. In many cases we can detect the evidences of incipient paresis. The undue access of emotion frequently assumed a pathological character. The sight of a daisy, of a withered leaf or an upturned sod, seemed to ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... goes forward. MRS. FULLERTON is a rather tall woman, with dark hair and a quick eye. He, one of those clean-shaven naval men of good presence who have retired from the sea, but not from their susceptibility. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fever, which occurred in single cases; and was always ready to correct those over-hasty surgeons who, with fire and violent remedies, did irremediable injury to their patients. Michael Savonarola, professor in Ferrara (1462), reasoning on the susceptibility of the human frame to the influence of pestilential infection, as the cause of such various modifications of disease, expresses himself as a modern physician would on this point; and an adoption of the principle of contagion was the foundation of his definition of the plague. No less worthy of ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... although the quantity may not fall off, the child seems unsatisfied; and there is a third class with whom a profusion of milk is supplied, and the child thrives exceedingly, but the mother gets flabby, weak, nervous, pale and exhausted. In the last case, the mother is simply goaded on by susceptibility of her nervous system, or by inordinate activity of the breasts to yield an amount of milk which her digestive powers are not equal to providing for. The treatment of such cases should be simply repressive. The mother should separate herself somewhat more from the child, and ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... four years which Byron spent at Harrow, while we can clearly trace the development of the sensibilities of his character, and an increased tension of his susceptibility, by which impressions became more acute and delicate, it seems impossible not to perceive by the records which he has himself left of his feelings, that something morbid was induced upon them. Had he not afterwards so magnificently ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... right, the little girl played about and took very little notice of her. But corn-harvest went by, the autumn drew on, and the mother, the later months of her pregnancy beginning, was strange and detached, Brangwen began to knit his brows, the old, unhealthy uneasiness, the unskinned susceptibility came on the child again. If she went to the fields with her father, then, instead of playing about ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... story of my conversion. Providence sent me into the world with an excellent nature, with a true heart, with a remarkable susceptibility to the influence of estimable sentiments. My parents neglected my education, and left me in the world, destitute of everything but youth, beauty, and a lively temperament. I tried hard to be virtuous; I vowed, before I was out of my teens, and when I happened ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins
... line 21—36). There is every reason to believe that susceptibility to beauty can be gained through proper training ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... disobeyed. Neither could modesty dictate the injunction. Nothing he had said called for such rigour, and manolas, the grisettes of Madrid, are not usually—be it said without calumny—of such extreme susceptibility. Real terror, apprehension of a danger unknown to Andres, was indicated by the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... answer, nor did he resume his singing. Then I recalled that for the past few days he had not shown his former susceptibility to the maid's charms; he had, indeed, exhibited towards her a kind of disapproving shyness. I had not ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... shan't talk of it, darling," cried Charlotte, pursing up her mouth for a kiss in a manner which might have been distraction to a masculine mind of average susceptibility. "You shan't talk of anything or think of anything the least, least, least bit unpleasant; and you shall have my gold pencil-case," added Miss Halliday, wrenching that trinket suddenly from the ribbon by which it hung at her side. Perhaps there was just the least touch of Georgy's ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the very principle of their weakness, derive a certain susceptibility, delicacy and taste which render them, in those particulars, much superior to men of stronger and more consistent ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... AEgean Sea, under the happy influences of a serene and beautiful heaven, amid the most varied and lovely scenery in nature, by a people of manly vigor and exquisite mental and physical organization—of the keenest susceptibility to beauty of sound as well as of form, of the most vivid and creative imagination, combined with a childlike impulsiveness and simplicity—this Ionian language, so sprung and so nurtured, attained a descriptive force, a copiousness and harmony, which made it the most admirable ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... susceptibility to mere words; he who juggled in words, and often quite insincerely when it suited his purpose. But "that rejuvenated old dame," and "that old Zattiany woman" crawled like reeking vapors across some fair landscape a man had ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... developed flair for character study, guessed them from the first. Susceptibility to musical intoxication was a thing which he understood, a thing to which he himself was more or less subject. He knew the danger and the value of it. Without some such susceptibility, he believed, artistic ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... by an old physician always to use an umbrella to obstruct his view of the heavens, and in this way his journeys were made tranquil. Beard knew an old woman who had suffered all her life from astrophobia. Her grandmother had presented the same susceptibility and the same fears. Sometimes she could tell the approach of a storm by her nervous symptoms. Caligula, Augustus, Henry III, and other celebrated personages, were overcome with ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Roman nobles, and made them feel it a satisfaction to submit their ideas to her, and hear her discuss them. The Duke di Bracciano was not mentally up to her mark, nevertheless in the first season which followed their union, a season of complaisant affection, when susceptibility was held in check by a more spontaneous admiration, he felt himself flattered by the homage she received, and which wore the semblance of an eulogium upon his choice and good taste. But, eventually, too mediocre, or too much kept ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... because he had no particular love for the world and no great susceptibility to its temptations; but what had drawn Daniel Gray from the open sea into this quiet little backwater of a Shaker Settlement? After an adventurous early life, in which, as if youth-intoxicated, he had plunged from danger to danger, experience to experience, he suddenly ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in the first moment of his defeat,—before he had had time to recover his (bad) temper, to arm himself for more fiery assaults to be followed by fresh overthrows,—declared that, in spite of the susceptibility of his friends, he himself was well satisfied with a criticism which "assigned to him nearly all the merit to which he could pretend," and in which, "for the first time in his literary life, he had seen himself discussed, appreciated, and valued ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... adequate in theory, are to justify their existence in the practical everyday handling of the problem of criminology, we must not fail to take into full account the very obvious natural phenomenon that human beings vary within very wide limits in their susceptibility to correction or reformation, that some individuals because of their psychological make-up, either qualitative or quantitative, are absolutely and permanently incorrigible and present a problem which can be dealt with in only one effective way—namely, ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... and almost devotional application to his great picture had considerably shattered his nerves, and he felt his natural susceptibility so much increased, that, although it was now summer, the horrible idea which had so long haunted him soon returned; and a cloud spread itself over his imagination, which all the hurricanes that vex the ocean could not have blown away. To dissipate this unaccountable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various
... would have liked to fight out his battle that day. Should he go on spending his days and nights in a slowly increasing torment? The longer he fought the less chance he had of victory. Victory! There could be none. What victory could be won over a strange ineradicable susceptibility to the sweetness, charm, mystery of a woman? He plodded the fragrant fields with bent head, in despair. Loneliness hurt him as much as anything. And a new pang, the fiercest and most insupportable, had been added to his miseries. Jealousy! Thought of the father of Mel Iden's child haunted ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... Iskander, seemed to recall to the young prince the classic heroes over whom he was so often musing, while the enthusiasm and fancy of Nicaeus, and all that apparent weakness of will, and those quick vicissitudes of emotion, to which men of a fine susceptibility are subject, equally engaged the sympathy of the more vigorous and constant and experienced ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... variation, belonging to the same large class as all other biological variations, occurring, for the most part, in the first place spontaneously, but strongly tending to be inherited. It thus resembles congenital cataract, deaf-mutism, the susceptibility ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... preparing food, go of errands, and, in short, be a serving class. They suppose that the same sovereign God which distributes instincts, and wisdom, variously, to animals, and gifts of understanding to men, will, in the same sovereign way, create men and women with such degrees of capacity and susceptibility as will lead inevitably to their being superiors and inferiors, and that this will be, as it is now where love and kindness reign, the source of the greatest happiness to ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... deeply engraven on our memory the people are whom we knew during the first twelve years of our life, and how indelibly imprinted are also the events of that time, and most of the things that we then experienced, heard, or learnt, the idea of basing education on this susceptibility and tenacity of the youthful mind will seem natural; in that the mind receives its impressions according to a strict method and a regular system. But because the years of youth that are assigned to man are only few, and the capacity ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... of the Indians here at the present writing is very favorable, sickness is abating and their spirits are reviving. I think I have fully settled the fact of the Indians capability and susceptibility to arive at a good state of military disipline. You would be surprised to see our Regt. move. They accomplish the feat of regular time step equal to any white soldier, they form in line with dispatch and with great precission; and what is more they now ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... report was to be credited, there were very few among the enchanting spirits before yet with whom that happiness which springs from virtuous pure affection was to be anticipated. If was no place to moralize, but, to you who know my buoyancy of spirit, and susceptibility of mind, I must confess, the reflection produced a momentary pang of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... to her position only increased his susceptibility to her charms. It seemed to him very probable that she had but a moderate income; perhaps she was not free from anxieties on that score. But such a woman would of course marry again, and marry well. The thought grew troublesome, and presently accounted for ebullitions of wrath, ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... who are endowed with a coarse organization. Sensitive people are chronic martyrs. Their nerves are so many toes, that their neighbors and friends are perpetually treading on. Not only are the pangs of such more acute, but the occasions of injury are infinitely multiplied by super-susceptibility. Talk of the happy hours of childhood! Ask nine persons out of ten, who are of susceptible organization, at what period in life their sufferings were most intense and unremitting, and if they be gifted with good memories, their reply ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... instrument, if it were only in tune, never failed to give him the liveliest pleasure. The king of Sardinia was believed to have the best performers in Europe; less than that was enough to quicken the musical susceptibility which is perhaps an invariable element in the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... mountains of Switzerland, had no conception of such an idiosyncrasy as that of M. de Maurepas, a man who saw in an outspoken expression of feeling only an opportunity of discovering the vulnerable point. As soon as he knew M. Necker's susceptibility he flattered himself that, by irritating it, he would drive him to give in his resignation." [onsiderations sur la ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... lives, Elizabeth de Latour, Cornelius de Latour, aged so many years, days, hours. Yes! the cold pavement under one's feet had once been molten lava. Surely the resources of sorrow were large in things! The fact must be duly marked and provided for, with due estimate of his own susceptibility thereto, in his scheme of life. Might he pass through the world, unriven by sorrows such as those! And already it was as if he stept softly over the earth, not to outrage its ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... person who suffered from too delicate a susceptibility. The shame of his present position did not affect him deeply. Indeed, he was one of those men who have no sense of shame before certain persons; and Guy Oscard was one of those. The position was not in itself one to be proud of, but the half-breed accepted it with wonderful equanimity, ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... the test of the pyrometer, it is found that they are far from dilating in the same proportion. Different metals expand in different degrees, and other kinds of solid bodies vary still more in this respect. But this different susceptibility of dilatation is still more remarkable in fluids than in solid bodies, as I shall show you. I have here two glass tubes, terminated at one end by large bulbs. We shall fill the bulbs, the one with spirit of wine, the other with water. I have coloured both liquids, in order ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... editions, the circle of those who appreciated Lyly, Sidney, and Nash must have been for the most part confined to the Court. And this accounts for the brevity of their popularity and for its intensity while it lasted; a phenomenon which is not seen in the drama, and which is due to the susceptibility of Court life to sudden changes of fashion. Drama was the natural form of literature in an age when most people were illiterate and yet when all were eager for literary entertainment. Drama was therefore the main current of artistic production, the prose novel ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... Garibaldian companion has impregnated me with an unreasonable amount of anti-French susceptibility, for certainly he abuses our dear allies with a zeal and a gusto that does one's heart good to listen to; and I do feel like that honest Bull, commemorated by Mathews, that "I hate prejudice—I ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... the increased mobility of society, resulting from the greater like-mindedness and consciousness of kind incident to our modern communities of interests and systems of communication, and from our greater susceptibility to rational rather than traditional appeals, a reform can be wrought more easily and the people can adjust themselves to the change far more readily than ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... leisure. Evidently, Priscilla found but scanty requital for her love. Hollingsworth was likewise a great favorite with her. For several minutes together sometimes, while my auditory nerves retained the susceptibility of delicate health, I used to hear a low, pleasant murmur ascending from the room below; and at last ascertained it to be Priscilla's voice, babbling like a little brook to Hollingsworth. She talked more largely and freely with him than with Zenobia, towards whom, indeed, her feelings seemed ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of Vandamme's division, and, consequently, the ruin of 1813. "Souvenirs", by Pasquier, Etienne-Dennis, duc, chancelier de France. Librarie Plon, Paris 1893, (narrative of Daru, an eye-witness.)—This susceptibility of the nerves and stomach is hereditary with him and shows itself in early youth. "One day, at Brienne, obliged to drop on his knees, as a punishment, on the sill of the refectory, he is seized with sudden ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the sight of God's beautiful universe—a rapture of love awakened by a morning in spring, by the blue infinity of the sky, by the eternal loneliness and sublimity of the sea. Or, in some moment of susceptibility, the smiles of dear home faces, the tender trill of a voice, a surge of solemn music, may have power over the young heart to change its entire future. And again, it is some vivid experience of temptation and suffering that shapes the great hereafter. For the Divinity that maketh and loveth ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... time that the poor bishop of Parma came back, deeply mortified at his reception by the generalissimo of the French army. The susceptibility of this envoy might compromise the grave interests which his highness had to discuss with France. His highness judged that Alberoni was the man to be humiliated by nothing, and he sent the abbe to finish the negotiation which the bishop had left unfinished. M. de Vendome, who had ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... suction; live circuit, live rail, live wire. capability, capacity; quid valeant humeri quid ferre recusent [obs3][Latin]; faculty, quality, attribute, endowment, virtue, gift, property, qualification, susceptibility. V. be powerful &c. adj.; gain power &c. n. belong to, pertain to; lie in one's power, be in one's power; can, be able. give power, confer power, exercise power &c. n.; empower, enable, invest; indue[obs3], endue; endow, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... happened. Was it mere nervous reaction after such a strain of will and passion, or was it the sudden emergence of something in the sister which was also common to the brother—a certain tragic susceptibility, the capacity for a wild melancholy? For, in an instant, while she was thinking vaguely of Madame Cervin and her money affairs, despair seized her—shuddering, measureless despair—rushing in upon her, and sweeping away everything else before ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to say that Libault told me himself that the hypnotic is only one particular psychical state, increasing susceptibility to suggestion. ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... religion is such a blessing in the ordinary trials of life, what a soothing balm it is in graver sorrows! From these, woman is by no means exempt; on the contrary, as her susceptibility is great, afflictions press on her with peculiar heaviness. There is sometimes a stillness in her grief which argues only its intensity, and it is this rankling wound which piety alone can heal. Nothing, perhaps, is more affecting than woman's chastened sorrow. Her ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... acting on this grand principle, they draw flesh white, leaves white, ground white, everything white in the light, and everything black in the shade—and think themselves wise. But, the longer I live, the more ground I see to hold in high honor a certain sort of childishness or innocent susceptibility. Generally speaking, I find that when we first look at a subject, we get a glimpse of some of the greatest truths about it: as we look longer, our vanity, and false reasoning, and half-knowledge, lead us into various wrong opinions; but as we look longer still, we gradually return to ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... more. But such is the difference between barbarism and tyranny on the one side, and civilization and freedom on the other: that which was death in the former, is but court disgrace in the latter. George IV. was not cruel—he had even a certain susceptibility; the spectacle of human suffering revolted him: but suffering to affect him must have been present to his sense. Was Henry VIII. gratuitously cruel? That does not appear. He took no pleasure for itself in shedding blood, and avoided being ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... gratification—unreflected on, unrepented of—which being often repeated make, in the end, a large sum of human life; but the heart incessantly demands a genuine and enduring happiness, and is incessantly denied. It is a poverty which even helps to keep alive the susceptibility it tortures; for the man who has never loved, or been the object of affection, whose heart has been fed only by an untaught imagination, feels a passion—feels a regret—it may be far more than commensurate with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... a general as well as a special good taste, but they are distinguishable only as genus and species. There is, it may be alleged, a native as well as an acquired taste. This may also be conceded. There is in some persons a greater innate susceptibility of deriving pleasure from the works of Nature and of Art than is discoverable in others. Still we cannot imagine any one gifted with reason and sensibility to be entirely destitute of it. It is an element of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his back to the north, Mrs. Martin," she said; "there, in a somewhat reclining posture; that will increase his susceptibility to psychic influence. There is no doubt that the magnetism of the earth has a polar distribution. It is quite probable also that the odylic emanation of the terrestrial magnet has also a polar arrangement. Does the little fellow ever turn round ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... one may choose one's friends!" she had finally stated; and her husband allowed the subject to drop, not displeased at her repugnance to the doctor whom he marked dangerous to feminine susceptibility and an unknown quantity. ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... his inferiority, his spirit harassed by his education, if that brutalization of which we spoke above can be called education, in that exchange of usages and sentiments among different nations, the Filipino, to whom remain only his susceptibility and his poetical imagination, allows himself to be guided by his fancy and his self-love. It is sufficient that the foreigner praise to him the imported merchandise and run down the native product for ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... three or four but a myriad of separate and distinct sounds, appreciable in exact proportion to the cultivation of the ear? The uncultivated ear perceives but the three or four primitive or fundamental notes of the chord, while, to the nicer perception, the more delicate susceptibility of the ear trained by long study and practice to analyze all musical sounds, come harmonic above harmonic, sounds of melody above, beneath, and beyond the few prime motors which act as the nucleus to the gush of tiny harmony which fills the ear—sounds clear and distinct, yet blending in perfect ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... minister and the consul-general at Paris, and the various consuls in France under the supervision of the latter, with great kindness as well as with prudence and tact. Their course has received the commendation of the German Government, and has wounded no susceptibility ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... a long-established habit, the Wellands had left the previous week for St. Augustine, where, out of regard for the supposed susceptibility of Mr. Welland's bronchial tubes, they always spent the latter part of the winter. Mr. Welland was a mild and silent man, with no opinions but with many habits. With these habits none might interfere; and one of them demanded that his wife and daughter ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... he was an author, and retaining him in it by a literary tenure, must have seemed very novel to the gentlemen of the Essex district in those days, as it would seem now. But Hawthorne had the sense of superiority, the silent, suppressed pride, the susceptibility of a solitary nature; and whatever might be the public side of the matter, of which he was no very good judge, privately he felt aggrieved and outraged; that irritability toward the general public ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... the season of flowers; a dirty, shrivelled old Irishwoman, full of benedictions and beggary, who, all through the summer, sold "posies" to the passers-by. We school-girls were good customers to her. We were all more or less sentimental, more or less homesick, and had more or less of that susceptibility to the influence of scents which may, some day, be the basis of a new school of medicine. One girl had cultivated pinks and Roses de Meaux in her own garden "at home," and Bridget was soon wise enough to discover that a nosegay composed of these materials was an irresistible ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... in refraining from any suggestion, even a jocular suggestion, that he, George, ought also to be in uniform. Lucas was always tactful. Be damned to his tact! And the too eager excuses made by Lois in his behalf also grated on his susceptibility. He had no need of excuses. The woman was taciturn by nature, and yet she was constantly saying too much! And did any of the three of them—Lois, Laurencine, and Lucas—really appreciate the war? They did not. They could ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... presentiment, or was her skin, virginally pure from profane looks, so delicately magnetic in its susceptibility that it could feel the rays of a passionate eye though that eye was invisible?—Nyssia hesitated to strip herself of that tunic, the last rampart of her modesty. Twice or thrice her shoulders, her bosom, ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... expenditures by reducing subsidies, privatizing state industries, and laying off civil servants. Prospects for foreign trade and investment in the 1990s remain poor, however, because of the small size of the economy, its technological backwardness, its remoteness, and susceptibility to natural disaster. The international community provides funding for 70% of Nepal's developmental budget and for 30% of total budgetary expenditures. The government, realizing that attempts to reverse three years of liberalization ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... chair, and on either old knee he had held a sob-wracked, grief-torn, motherless girl, the one herself almost old enough to be a mother. And again he had cried. Some doctors may lose through oft-recurrence visualized their susceptibility to suffering; but Dr. DeLancey was not of them. And when he stumbled on stiffened legs out of the darkened parlor and into the incongruous mellow radiance of the spring sunshine, his eyes were still wet, and he ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... is true, from the greater susceptibility of their imaginations, have more frequently fallen into the ever ready snare. But the fate of the poets in matrimony has but justified the caution of the philosophers. While the latter have given warning to genius by keeping free of the yoke, the others ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... "Silly charlatanry!" he muttered, irritated by his own susceptibility to its sinister suggestion.... "I'd like to know how they manage it, though; the light itself's comprehensible enough, but their control of it.... If there were enough wind, ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... Augustus William, was born in Hanover, September 5th, 1767. In his early childhood, he evinced a genuine susceptibility for all that was good and noble; and this early promise of a generous and virtuous disposition was carefully nurtured by the religious instruction of his mother, an amiable and highly-gifted woman. Of this parent's pious and judicious teaching, Augustus William had to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... six poor wretches convicted of plotting the assassination of Queen Elizabeth were dragged to Tyburn, "hanged but for a moment, taken down while the susceptibility of agony was unimpaired and cut in pieces afterwards with due precautions for the protraction of the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... had gone blundering on until at last he found himself at the mercy of the widow. The others had given him up in scorn. She would not give him up. He was bound fast. He felt the bond. In the midst of this his susceptibility drove him on further, and, instead of trying to get out of his difficulties, he had madly thrust ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... American Man must be found, first, social largeness and susceptibility,—whatsoever, in the breadth of a flexile and sympathetic nature, may contribute to the keeping of the Golden Rule. But the broadest good-feeling will not alone suffice. The great pledge of peace, fellowship, and profitable co-working among such a population as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... throughout the weeks that followed, Rachael mused somewhat sadly upon the extraordinary susceptibility of the human male. Magsie's methods were those of a high-school belle. She pouted, she dimpled, she dispensed babyish slaps, she lapsed into rather poorly imitated baby talk. She was sometimes mysterious and tragic, according to her own lights, her voice deep, her eyes sombre; at other times ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... coming out of the station together. Densher didn't at all mind now that, he himself of necessity refusing a seat on the deep black cushions beside the guest of the palace, he had Milly's three emissaries for spectators; and this susceptibility, he also knew, it was something to have left behind. All he did was to smile down vaguely from the steps—they could see him, the donkeys, as shut out as they would. "I don't," he said with a ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... slack and flaccid at the approach of the golden sun of royalty. Barnave was one of those who was sent to bring back the fugitive King and Queen from Varennes, and the journey by their side in the coach unstrung his spirit. He became one of the court's clandestine advisers. Men of this weak susceptibility of imagination are not fit for times of revolution. To be on the side of the court was to betray the cause of the nation. We cannot take too much pains to realise that the voluntary conversion of Lewis the Sixteenth to a popular constitution ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... very claims to admiration into prejudices against him. Irascible, envious—bad enough, but not the worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold, repellant cynicism, his passions vented themselves in sneers. There seemed to him no moral susceptibility; and, what was more remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honor. He had, to a morbid excess, that, desire to rise which is vulgarly called ambition, but no wish for the esteem or the love of his species; only the hard wish to succeed-not ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... approach of their courage and virtue. For the present distress, however, of those who are predisposed to suffer from the tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy remedies. To remove your residence a couple of miles, or at most four, will commonly relieve the most extreme susceptibility. For, the advantages which fashion values are plants which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. Out of this precinct, they go for nothing; are of no use in the farm, in the forest, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... unlike his usual hilarious manner that all looked at one another in anxiety, and spoke of his unusual susceptibility to fatigue and care; while the squire, looking at the rich jewel in his hand, declared within disappointment in his tone, that he would rather have had a mere flint stone so he had heard ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Thoreau's susceptibility to natural sounds was probably greater than that of many practical musicians. True, this appeal is mainly through the sensational element which Herbert Spencer thinks the predominant beauty of music. Thoreau seems able to weave from this source some perfect transcendental symphonies. ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... shall refute every suspicion that I am conniving at, or even apologizing for Henry's errors. And though I know the poor fellow's feelings were too keen for his peace, and though, in my own exquisite susceptibility of kindness, I could find motives to mitigate his fault, I will leave his conduct to the mercy of candid people. I will now end my perhaps tedious visit, lamenting that my corps was not raised when Dr. Beaumont's library was destroyed by that infuriate rabble. I extremely regret the ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... never understand this reasoning, grounded on a complete misapprehension of St. Paul's image of the potter, Rom. ix., or rather I do fully understand the absurdity of it. The susceptibility of pain and pleasure, of good and evil, constitutes a right in every creature endowed therewith in relation to every rational and moral being,—a' fortiori', therefore, to the Supreme Reason, to the absolutely good Being. ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... irresistible. Many of the Croatian peasants are fine, strapping fellows, and very handsome women are observed in the villages - women with great, dreamy eyes, and faces with an expression of languor that bespeaks their owners to be gentleness personified. Igali shows evidence of more susceptibility to female charms than I should naturally have given him credit for, and shows a decided inclination to linger in these beauty-blessed villages longer than is necessary, and as one dark-eyed damsel after another gathers around us, I ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens |
