"Toughness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ordered a bureau of the same material, and when it was finished invited his friends to see the new work; amongst others, the Duchess of Buckingham begged a small piece of the precious wood, and it soon became the fashion. On account of its toughness, and peculiarity of grain, it was capable of treatment impossible with oak, and the high polish it took by oil and rubbing (not French polish, a later invention), caused it to come into great request. The term "putting one's knees ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... of a drift of nets, and yet were so nicely jointed, tooth fitting into tooth in all their numerous parts, and the whole so bound together by ligament, that, with all the flexibility, they had also all the toughness and tenacity, of pieces of thread network. Human ingenuity, with the same purposes to effect, that is, the sweeping of shoals of swimming animals into a central receptacle, would probably construct a somewhat similar machine; but it would ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... an attitude apparently relaxed. His face was still white. It could not acquire color in that close cell, but he had never felt stronger. A powerful heart pumped vigorous blood through every artery and vein. His muscles had regained their toughness and flexibility, and above all, the intense desire for freedom had keyed ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 1700's cast-iron guns became the principal artillery afloat and ashore, yet cast bronze was superior in withstanding the stresses of firing. Because of its toughness, less metal was needed in a bronze gun than in a cast-iron one, so in spite of the fact that bronze is about 20 percent heavier than iron, the bronze piece was usually the lighter of the two. For "position" guns in permanent fortifications ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... precautions useful for its preservation are unknown. There are bejucos or Indian canes for walking-sticks, with their branches as much as five and one-half palmos long; they are of better luster and of greater toughness than are those gathered by the Dutch in the islands of the Sonda. I am sure that camphor would be found, if one looked for it, just as good as that of Borney; for the resemblance of Paragua's productions to those of that great island is very marked, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... therefore, specially procured a starling, as I consider this bird the very best for the amateur's purpose, not only on account of the toughness of the skin, but also because, being a medium-sized bird, it presents no difficult points in skinning, and with this bird before me I shall minutely instruct my pupil, pointing out each step that has to be taken and each difficulty that is likely ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... builded In the valley, by the river, In the bosom of the forest; And the forest's life was in it, All its mystery and its magic, All the lightness of the birch-tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews; And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in Autumn, ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... success I owed at first to no skill of my own; until I came to know better; for up to twenty or thirty fights, I struck as nature guided me, no wiser than a father-long-legs in the heat of a lanthorn; but I had conquered, partly through my native strength, and the Exmoor toughness in me, and still more that I could not see when I had gotten my bellyful. But now I was like to have that and more; for my heart was down, to begin with; and then Robert Snell was a bigger boy than I had ever encountered, and as thick in the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... observed in the neighborhood of distilleries (rhommeries) and sugar-refineries. According to age, the color of the creature varies from yellowish to black;— the younger ones often have several different tints; the old ones are uniformly jet-black, and have a carapace of surprising toughness,—difficult to break. If you tread, by accident or design, upon the tail, the poisonous head will instantly curl back and bite the foot through any ordinary thickness of ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... from the crowd. But Jud, lean, loose-jointed and hard of sinew, had the physical toughness of his kind. Almost instantly he was on his feet again, reaching for his hip pocket with a familiar movement. And there was a wild scramble as those in front ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... inches across the breast. The property belonged, as it still does, to the Ashburnham family, who are said to have derived great wealth from the manufacture of guns at their works, which were among the last carried on in Sussex. The Ashburnham iron was distinguished for its toughness, and was said to be equal to the best Spanish or ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... displeased—disappointed as it were—with that dish; the fact is, veal ought to be killed in its very first infancy; they suffer it to grow to too great an age. It becomes a sort of hobbydehoy, and possesses nothing of veal, but its insipidity, or of beef, but its toughness." ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "on account of its flexibility, lightness, and resiliency." It was once much used for carving, and is still in demand for sounding-boards of piano-fortes and panels of carriages, and for various uses for which toughness and flexibility are required. Baskets and cradles are made of the twigs. Its sap affords sugar, and the honey made from its flowers is said to be preferred to any other. Its leaves are in some countries given to cattle, a kind of chocolate ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... biology, bibliology, ethnology, and sockdology—who at once pronounced it ancient Cush and proceeded to translate it; one remarking with a levity which but indifferently became his calling, as I thought, that the exceeding toughness of the yarn no doubt accounted for the difficulty of sawing into it—in which view his collaborator, to my surprise, was inclined ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... easily separates itself into the grosser and the thinner parts: we see this in bleeding; and from the toughness of the red cake may guess how very difficult it will be to dissolve a substance of like firmness in the vessels of the body. That it can thus become thickened within the body, a Pleurisy shews us too evidently: ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... of the air into corn, wheat, cotton and the innumerable other products of the soil; it governs no less the transformation of crude ores into steel and alloys, which, with the cunning born of chemical knowledge, may be given practically any conceivable quality of hardness, elasticity, toughness or strength. And exactly the same thing may be said of the hundreds of national activities that lie between the two extremes of ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... famous for its hardness and durability; the hackea for its toughness; the ducalabali surpassing mahogany; the ebony and letter-wood vying with the choicest woods of the old world; the locust-tree yielding copal; and the hayawa- and olou-trees furnishing a sweet-smelling resin, are all to be met with in the forest betwixt the plantations ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... to 10,000 lbs. weight, true to pattern, sound and solid, of unequaled strength, toughness and durability. An invaluable substitute for forgings or cast-iron requiring three-fold strength. Send ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... noticed a small, but somehow ominous-looking drift at the southern end. It had such a disturbed, lashed-up appearance. The snow was still loose, yet packed just hard enough to have a certain degree of toughness. You could no longer swing your foot through it: had you run into it at any great speed, you would have fallen; but as yet it was not hard enough to carry you. I knew that kind of a drift; it is treacherous. On a later drive one just like it, only built on ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... for the toughness of the handle, at any rate!" cried Peterkin; "my arms are nearly pulled out of the sockets. But see here, our luck is great. There is iron on the blade." He pointed to a piece of hoop-iron as he spoke, which ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... necessarily toughness. I believe in doing one job at a time—and my contract reads veterinary service, not personal problems. The job comes first ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... he might dissect them and learn anatomy, so all disciples of the art of religion need the discipline of intellectual analysis and of knowledge of the facts of the religious experience if they are to be leaders in faith. There is a toughness of fiber needed in religious people that can only come through such mental discipline. But anatomists are not sculptors. Michael Angelo was the genius, the creative artist, not because he understood anatomy, but chiefly because of those as yet indefinable ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... In thus preserving the toughness of Sir Pertinax consistently to the end, Macklin remained true to the tradition of critical, satiric comedy that he had been bred in but that by this time had almost disappeared. Protesting against the refusal of a license for his play, in 1779, Macklin composed a defense of satiric comedy. ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... expense for their food and transportation, and take them back to Tennessee in good order. He accomplished this, putting sick men on his own three horses, and himself marching on foot with the men, who, enthusiastic over his elastic toughness, dubbed him "Old Hickory,"—a title of affection that is familiar to this day. The government afterwards reimbursed him for his outlay in this matter, but his generosity, self-denial, energy, and masterly force added immensely ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... bracket itself; a most important feature in modern as well as ancient architecture. The first idea of a bracket is that of a long stone or piece of timber projecting from the wall, as a, Fig. XXXIX., of which the strength depends on the toughness of the stone or wood, and the stability on the weight of wall above it (unless it be the end of a main beam). But let it be supposed that the structure at a, being of the required projection, is ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... his confidence returned, and in a few weeks he was able to look the situation in the face. The reception of the book had brought home to him the direction in which he was drifting. He saw that a certain toughness and hardness of fibre had been wanting. He saw that he had tried to fill a book up out of his own mind, in a leisurely and trifling mood. He had not attempted to grasp his subjects, but had allowed himself ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 'The Meo will not give his daughter in marriage till he gets a mortar full of silver'; his pugnacity is expressed in, 'The Meo's son begins to avenge his feuds when he is twelve years old'; and his toughness in, 'Never be sure that a Meo is dead till you see ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... front you never see anything, except an occasional tousle-headed young man smoking a pipe; but at the back, where the cooks come out to parley with the tradesmen, there is at certain hours of the day quite a respectable activity. Pointed dialogues about yesterday's eggs and the toughness of Saturday's meat are conducted fortissimo between cheerful youths in the road and satirical young women in print dresses, who come out of their kitchen doors on to little balconies. The whole thing has a pleasing Romeo and Juliet touch. Romeo rattles up in his cart. 'Sixty-four!' ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... remarkably well in the recent fighting. I am not surprised, for I saw them training in England, and was impressed by their toughness—hard-bitten, short, powerfully built men, who ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... moon, he forgot to specify. "The old heathen to beat us all too," he added, "just when it had got us all dodged." Dan took all the credit of the suggestion to himself. Then he looked philosophically on the toughness of the problem: "Anyway," he said, "the missus must have learnt a bit about beginning at the beginning of things. Just think what she'd have missed if any one had known ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... refreshing sounds of the running waters, cascades, and fountains; and that the effect on the mind of these beautiful harmonies may not be disturbed, the wheels of our chariots as well as the horses' hoofs are bound with a peculiar hide which, besides possessing great toughness and durability, has the property of deadening sound. Thus none but the most agreeable sounds reach the ear, whilst the senses are charmed with aromatic odours and the eye is pleased with ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... season Wood.—Green wood cannot be employed in carpentry, as it is very weak; it also warps, cracks, and becomes rotten: wood dried with too great a heat loses its toughness as well as its pliability: it becomes hard and brittle. Green wood is seasoned by washing out the sap, and then drying it thoroughly. The traveller's way of doing this by one rapid operation, is to dig a long trench and make a roaring fire in it; when the ground is burning hot, sweep ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... preferred, though tin, from its toughness when in the leaf, is perhaps the most suitable. Americans are superior to British in filling." ("Plain Advice on Care of the Teeth," Dr. A. Cameron, ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... splendid sheep pasture in search of roots. The only good they do is to dig up the Spaniards for the sake of their delicious white fibres, and the fact of their being able to do this will give a better idea of the toughness of a wild pig's snout than ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... portion of the Merced Canon I found a lonely miner seeking his fortune in a quartz vein on a wild mountain-side planted with this singular tree. He told me that he called it the Hickory Pine, because of the whiteness and toughness of the wood. It is so little known, however, that it can hardly be said to have a common name. Most mountaineers refer to it as "that queer little pine-tree covered all over with burs." In my studies of this species I found a very interesting and significant ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... and is free from the drawbacks just enumerated? Without the slightest hesitation I refer you to the Irish blackthorn, which can be chosen of such convenient size and weight as not to be cumbersome, and which, if carefully selected, possesses all the strength of the oak, plus enormous toughness, and a pliability which makes it a truly charming weapon to ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... Islands, during our stay, consisted partly of cordage of different degrees of thickness, made from a plant peculiar to those islands, the nature of which is such that, we were assured, it is almost indestructible by water and the humidity of the atmosphere; whilst its toughness makes it superior ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... men. Their canoes, we are told, were of birch bark and cedar splints, the ribs being shaped from spruce roots. Covered with the pitch of yellow pine, and light enough to be carried on the shoulders of four men across portages, these canoes yet had toughness equal to any river voyage. They were provisioned with smoked meat and Indian corn. Shoved clear of the beach, they shot out on the blue water to the dip of paddles. Marquette waved his adieu. His Indians, remembering the dangers of ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... said the doctor, with his great coarse laugh. "I rather suspect that you have already got beyond the age when the great medicine could do you good; that speech indicates a great toughness and hardness and bitterness about the heart that does not accumulate in ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Come, be a man: drown thyself! drown cats and blind puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness; I could never better stead thee than now. Put money in thy purse; follow thou the wars; defeat thy favour with an usurped beard; I say, put money in thy purse. It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue her love to the Moor,—put money in thy purse,—nor he his to her: it ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... trench battles, and since I had been taught no other I had to invent rules as I went along. Looking back, it seems a miracle that any of us came out of it. Only the grace of God and the uncommon toughness of the British soldier bluffed the Hun and prevented him pouring through the breach to Abbeville and the sea. We were no better than a mosquito curtain stuck in a doorway to stop the advance of an ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... Bertha; 'of course, one never thinks of such things with grown-up people, especially one whom one has always thought of as a stick, and to whom perhaps ascribed some of its toughness,' she added, smiling; 'but he did come home looking very white and worn-out, and complained of horrible smells. No, dear man, he was far too punctilious to use the word, he only said that he should like to send the Sanitary ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... — N. coherence, adherence, adhesion, adhesiveness; concretion accretion; conglutination, agglutination, agglomeration; aggregation; consolidation, set, cementation; sticking, soldering &c v.; connection; dependence. tenacity, toughness; stickiness &c 352; inseparability, inseparableness; bur, remora. conglomerate, concrete &c (density) 321. V. cohere, adhere, stick, cling, cleave, hold, take hold of, hold fast, close with, clasp, hug; grow together, hang together; twine round &c (join) 43. stick like a leech, stick like ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... tissues differ from one another both in composition and in structure and, on this account, differ in their properties.(3) Their different properties enable them to serve different purposes in the body. Somewhat as glass is adapted by its transparency, hardness, and toughness to the use made of it in windows, the special properties of the tissues adapt them to the kinds of service which they perform. Properties that adapt tissues to their work in the body are called essential properties. The most important of these essential ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... neck. He did not receive all of the wounds at the same time, over half an hour elapsing between the first and the last. Up to receiving the last wound he had declined to leave the firing-line, but by that time he had lost so much blood that he had to be sent to the rear. The man's wiry toughness was as notable ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... keeps walking its way. How singular! At bottom, you will have to grapple closer with the dragon; take it home to you, by real faculty, not by seeming faculty; try whether you are stronger, or it is stronger. Close with it, wrestle it: sheer obstinate toughness of muscle; but much more, what we call toughness of heart, which will mean persistence hopeful and even desperate, unsubduable patience, composed candid openness, clearness of mind: all this shall be 'strength' in wrestling your dragon; ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... disproportionate formation of the cellular tissue as contrasted with the woody framework of the plant. We see marked instances of it in cultivated carrots and turnips, the normal condition of the roots or root-stocks in these plants being one of considerable hardness and toughness, and their form slender, tapering, and more or ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... This toughness of the buffalo is by no means uncommon, but different animals vary much in their tenacity of life. Some fall at once to the first well-directed shot; others die hard. The animal the hunters were now in pursuit of, or rather which was in pursuit of the hunters, seemed to be of the latter ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... creed which it is a sacred duty to believe, experience is but like water dropping upon a rock, which wears it away, indeed, at last, but only in thousands of years. This theory was and is the central idea of the Jewish polity, the obstinate toughness of which has been the perplexity of Gentiles and Christians from the first dawn of its existence; it lingers among ourselves in our Liturgy and in the popular belief; and in spite of the emphatic censure ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... M. AM. SOC. C.E. (by letter).—From its lightness, toughness, flexibility, and the facility with which it can be laid, wood pipe has manifest advantages for use in inaccessible places and where handling is difficult; loss in transportation is almost negligible, it will stand much unequal settlement without ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell
... control they had asserted. Then the battle had gone to him. But from it he had brought another scar—the unease of that old terror when Ross Murdock, fighter, rebel, outlaw by the conventions of his own era, Ross Murdock who considered himself an exceedingly tough individual, that toughness steeled by the training for Time Agent sorties, had come up against a power he did not understand, ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... shoulders. After walking about fifteen miles we camped in a small grove of trees. Here we shivered through an apparently interminable night around an inadequate fire. None of us were experienced bushmen, and we had neglected to gather sufficient fuel. The wind was cold, and I had not then acquired that toughness of fiber and insensibility to extremes of heat and cold which long wanderings and ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... of fast chosen to resolve a chronic illness depends largely on available time, finances, availability of support people, work responsibilities, and mental toughness. If you are one of those fortunate people 'rich' enough to give their health first priority, long water fasting is ideal. If on the other hand you can't afford to stop working, have no one to take care of you and assist with some household chores, and/or you are not mentally ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... discharge. Then in their robes the penitentials Are straight presented with credentials, 820 And in their way attended on By magistrates of ev'ry town; And, all respect and charges paid, They're to their ancient seats convey'd. Now if you'll venture, for my sake, 825 To try the toughness of your back, And suffer (as the rest have done) The laying of a whipping on, (And may you prosper in your suit, As you with equal vigour do't,) 830 I here engage myself to loose ye, And free your heels from Caperdewsie. But since our sex's modesty ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... to every emergency, and those were now at Raf's fingertips. The blast bombs, sealed into their pexilod cases, guaranteed to stop all the attackers that Terran explorers had so far met on and off worlds, a coil of rope hardly thicker than a strand of knitting yarn but of inconceivable toughness and flexibility, an aid kit with endurance drugs and pep pills which could keep a man on his feet and going long after food and water failed. He had put them all in ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... Annealing. Toughness and Elasticity. The Process. Tempering. Tempering Contrasted with Annealing. Materials Used. Gradual Tempering. Fluxing. Uniting Metals. Alloying Method. Welding. Sweating. Welding Compounds. Oxidation. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... declared, an antidote against the malarial poisons breathed out by the foul mud and rotting vegetation that surrounded them. The old sailor had enjoyed marvellously good health throughout the river voyage, and, forgetting his previous travels, and the natural toughness of his constitution, put his happy condition down to his daily pipes of the fragrant Indian weed. But his two companions were too languid for indulgence in smoking. Their heads were giddy, their hearts throbbing, and their ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... of the tropical raindrops. The direct influence of the rain cannot be the cause of this power of resistance, for the leaves, while they were still thin, would simply have been torn to pieces. Their toughness must therefore be referred to selection, which would favour the trees with slightly thicker leaves, though we cannot calculate with any exactness how great the first stages of increase in thickness must have been. Our hypothesis receives further support from the fact ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... dream of. It was not like death at all; it was like a statue carven in ivory by the hand of a Praxiteles. There was nothing of that horrible shrinkage which death seems to effect in a moment. There was none of the wrinkled toughness which seems to be a leading characteristic of most mummies. There was not the shrunken attenuation of a body dried in the sand, as I had seen before in museums. All the pores of the body seemed to have been preserved ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... hardness you want, but toughness. Metals have several properties, which are utilized for various purposes in the arts. Surprising as it may seem, wood has greater resisting power than diamond, and yet the precious stone is ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... also to be employ'd by some Artificers in the tempering of such great Instruments, as are too big to be soon heated sufficiently by the flame of a Candle. And you may easily satisfie your self Pyro: of the differing hardness and toughness, which is ascribed to Steel temper'd at different Colours, if you break but some slender wires of Steel so temper'd, and observe how they differ in brittleness, and if with a file you also make tryal of ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... tenderness or toughness of flesh is determined by the amount of exercise the muscles have undergone. Hence the wing of a bird that chiefly walks, and the leg of a bird that chiefly flies, are ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... formality: but this might be more my fault than hers, for I really could NOT converse. In fact, my attention was almost wholly absorbed in my dinner: not from ravenous appetite, but from distress at the toughness of the beefsteaks, and the numbness of my hands, almost palsied by their five-hours' exposure to the bitter wind. I would gladly have eaten the potatoes and let the meat alone, but having got a large piece of the latter on to my plate, I could not be so impolite as ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... the armed establishment of the United States that when American men lead a personal life which is based on high moral standards, and when their aim is equally high as to physical fitness and toughness, under training conditions they will mature those qualities which are most likely to produce inspired leading and ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... Marcia the finest that ever was; she laughed and laughed again; when he made fun of the conjecturable toughness of the elderly aristocrat, she implored him to stop if he did not want to kill her. Marcia was not in the state in which woman best convinces her enemies of her fitness for empire, though she was ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... when there was a shuffling of feet in the outer room, followed by a knock on the door. The next moment there entered a short, burly young man, around whom there hung, like an aroma, an indescribable air of toughness, partly due, perhaps, to the fact that he wore his hair in a well-oiled fringe almost down to his eyebrows, thus presenting the appearance of having no forehead at all. His eyes were small and set close together. His ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... 'gone,' that is that I've come, must I just back out? No, no, I'll move on. I'm much obliged to you for your offer. I've enough money for the present. I've about my person some forty pounds' worth of British gold, and the same amount, say, of the toughness of the heaven-sent idiot. They'll see me through together! After they're gone I shall lay my head in some English churchyard, beside some ivied tower, beneath an old gnarled ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... the air boats were constructed was either wood or metal. The earlier ones were built of wood—the boards used being exceedingly thin, but the injection of some substance which did not add materially to the weight while it gave leather-like toughness, provided the necessary combination of lightness and strength. When metal was used it was generally an alloy—two white-coloured metals and one red one entering into its composition. The resultant was white-coloured, like aluminium, and even lighter in weight. Over the ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... picked up one of the papers when there came a shuffling of feet in the passage outside, followed by a knock upon the door. The next moment there appeared in the doorway a short, stout young man. There was an indescribable air of toughness about him, partly due to the fact that he wore his hair in a well-oiled fringe almost down to his eyebrows, which gave him the appearance of having no forehead at all. His eyes were small and set ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... if the fancy had not married some one else for money, but had married him for love, he and she would have been happy (which they wouldn't have been), and that she has a tenderness for him still (whereas her toughness is a proverb). Brooding over the fire, with his dried little head in his dried little hands, and his dried little elbows on his dried little knees, Twemlow is melancholy. 'No Adorable to bear me company ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... goat, and reckoned superior to all other leathers. The characteristics of the genuine morocco, sometimes called Turkey morocco, having a pebbled grain, distinguishing it from the smooth morocco, are its toughness and durability, combined with softness and flexibility. It has a very tenacious fibre, and I have never found a real morocco binding broken at the hinges. The old proverb—"there is nothing like leather"—is pregnant with meaning, and especially applies to the best morocco. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... carver, respectfully to turn the classical though insipid bird on its back, and expose the plucked breast from which he was to dispense a delicate slice to each of the honourable company, unless any one should be of so independent a mind as to decline that expensive toughness and prefer the vulgar digestibility ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... will feel anxious to know what our dinner was. We boiled a piece of the flesh of a rhinoceros which was toughness itself, the night before. The meat was our supper, and porridge made of Indian corn-meal and gravy of the meat made a very good dinner next day. When about 150 miles from home we came to a large village. The chief ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... to Harbury; in your turn you will go there, you will have to live your life in this British world of ours and you must learn its language and manners, acquire its reserves and develop the approved toughness and patterning of cuticle. Afterwards if you please you may quarrel with it. But don't when the time comes quarrel with the present conditions of human association and think it is only with Harbury you quarrel. What man has become and may become beneath ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... and petition, sometimes even by force; laudable efforts toward self-education; benevolent and philanthropic movements; reform organizations, and commendable business enterprise both in individuals and associations. These show a toughness of fibre and steadiness of purpose sufficient to make the backbone of ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... answer," said Jurgen heroically, and with some admiration of himself, but still a little dashed by the uncalled-for toughness ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... precipice. There are periods in every career when troubles are so strangely increased that the world seems like an orb let loose to wander widely through space. In these dark hours some endure their pain and trouble through dogged, stoical toughness. Then men imitate the turtle as it draws in its head and neck, saying to misfortune: "Behold the shell, and beat on that." But, God be thanked! victory over trouble has been ordained. In the blackest hour of the storm it is given to the vision faculty to lift man into the realm of tranquillity. ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the crushed form for road building, railway embankments, and concrete, and the prospect is for largely increased demands for such uses in the future. For the purpose of road building, it is necessary to consider a stone's resistance to abrasion, hardness, toughness, cementing value, absorption, and specific gravity. Limestone cements well, but in other qualities it is not desirable for heavy traffic. Shales are soft and clayey, and grind down to a mass which is dry and powdery, and muddy in wet ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... thing we can really be proud of here, besides the toughness of our citizens, is our public library. When people have to stay underground most of the time to avoid being fried and/or frozen to death, they have a lot of time to kill, and reading is one of the cheaper and more harmless and profitable ways of doing it. And ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... all in all, Jan was probably as finely conditioned and developed a hound as any in England when he reached his second birthday, and it is hardly likely that a stronger hound could have been found in all the world. It may be that for hardness and toughness and endurance he might have found his master without much difficulty; for hardship begets hardihood, and Jan had known no hardship as yet. But at the end of his second year he was a very splendid specimen of complete canine development, and, by reason ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... thickness of hair and hide on the back of Kazan's neck, and the toughness of his muscles, saved him from that terrible fate of the vanquished. The wolf's teeth sank deep, but not deep enough to reach the vital spot, and suddenly Kazan put every ounce of strength in his limbs ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... grows largest in Montana and forms the most important tree of the sub-arctic forest of British America. Used largely for floors, joists, doors, sashes, mouldings, and panel work, rapidly superceding Pinus strobus for building purposes. It is very similar to Norway pine, excels it in toughness, is rather less durable and dense, and more liable to warp in seasoning. Northern United States from Maine to Minnesota, also from Montana to ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... quick trains west and the shortest route from Philadelphia to New Orleans. You grow by slow stages into the new attitude; at Malta you are still regretting Europe; after Aden, your mind dwells most on the hire of punkah-wallahs and the proverbial toughness of the dak-bungalow chicken. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... Mr. Tubbs. With a righteous joy, I saw the fabric of Aunt Jane's illusions shaken by the rude blast of reality. Would it be riven quite in twain? I was dubious, for Aunt Jane's illusions have a toughness in striking contrast to the uncertain nature of her ideas in general. Darker and darker disclosures of Mr. Tubbs's perfidy would be required. But judging from his present recklessness, they would be forthcoming. For where was the Tubbs of yesterday—the honey-tongued, the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... the other, by contrast, scarce his proverbial fraction of manhood. At a year or two short of fifty, Mr. Daffy began to be old; he was shoulder-bent, knee-shaky, and had a pallid, wrinkled visage, with watery, pathetic eye. At fifty turned, Mr. Lott showed a vigour and a toughness such as few men of any age could rival. For a score of years the measure of Mr. Lott's robust person had been taken by Mr. Daffy's professional tape, and, without intimacy, there existed kindly relations between the two men. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... you be!—Ah, Michael and Joseph and John—and you too, Leaf! a merry Christmas all! We shall have a rare log-wood fire directly, Reub, to reckon by the toughness of the job I had in cleaving 'em." As he spoke he threw down an armful of logs which fell in the chimney-corner with a rumble, and looked at them with something of the admiring enmity he would have bestowed on living people who had been very obstinate ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... approaches these structures, he will notice many plates of superior iron from the rolling-mills of Baltimore, combining the toughness and strength and other excellences of the best Pennsylvania iron; he will notice, too, immense ribs and beams of iron, and hear the incessant din of hammers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... The toughness of the sheets made them preferable to the softer and more yielding blankets, and the youth decided to use them exclusively. Each, of course, had been put together by deft hands and spinning-wheel, and was of firm, strong texture. Jethro was so familiar with where these were stowed, through his work ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... try a little by poaching in a teaspoon; that is, fill a teaspoon with the mixture, pressing it in form, then drop it into boiling water for three minutes. Open the quenelle and taste it; if it is creamy, light, and well flavored, it is right, but if there is the least toughness, add a little more cream to the mixture. Notice also the seasoning; if more salt is needed, add it carefully, and try again, till you have the quenelle mixture just right, that is to say, creamy, light, very tender, yet keeping its form. At present quenelles ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... inveterate imbiber of alcohol, he was never positively drunk during the whole voyage. The evil spirits seemed to make no impression upon the iron fibres of his stubborn brain and heart. He judged his morality by the toughness of his constitution, and congratulated himself on being a sober man, while he complained of his second mate, and stigmatised him as a drunken, worthless fellow, because one glass of punch made him intoxicated. This is by no means an uncommon ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... rutile. The red coloration which these specimens possess is due to thin films of hematite. The rock is therefore fibrolite schist, and from a lithological standpoint it is very interesting. The fibrolite imparts the toughness to the rock, which, I should judge, would increase its value for the purposes to which the ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... cloak which he wore over it did not reach far enough down his back, it was impossible to view him behind without convulsive laughter. His shoes were made of some description of foreign bark, which had by some chemical process been tanned into toughness, and on his head he wore a turban of linen, made of the same material which furnished his other garments. Altogether, a more ludicrous figure could not be seen, especially if a person happened to stand ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... of weakness and languor, from which it might be supposed that they understood the tonic properties of the plant had not the same decoction been used by the women as a hair wash, and by the ball players to bathe their limbs, under the impression that the toughness of the roots would thus be communicated to the hair or muscles. From this fact and from the name of the plant, which means at once hard, tough, or strong, it is quite probable that its roots are believed to give strength to the patient solely because they themselves are ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... which, with wriggling worm or garish fly, I can any morning whip a savory breakfast; in the winter time the only thing in the valley that defies the ice-king's chloroform. I watched the water twisting black and solemn through the snow, the ragged ice on its edge proof of the toughness of the struggle with the frost, from which it has, after all, crept only half victorious. A bare wild rose-bush on the farther bank was violently agitated, and then there ran from its root a black-headed rat with wings. Such was the general effect. ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... general introduction of hollow backs is probably somewhat as follows: Leather was doubtless first chosen for covering the backs of books because of its toughness and flexibility; because, while protecting the back, it would bend when the book was opened and allow the back to "throw up" (see fig. 1, A). When gold tooling became common, and the backs of books were elaborately decorated, it was found that the creasing of the leather injured the brightness ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... and "Le Mariage de Figaro" (1784), his masterpiece; astonished the world by his conduct of a lawsuit he had, for which "he fought against reporters, parliaments, and principalities, with light banter, clear logic, adroitly, with an inexhaustible toughness of resource, like the skilfullest fencer." He was a zealous supporter of the Revolution, and made sacrifices on its behalf, but narrowly escaped the guillotine; died in distress and poverty. Of the two plays he wrote, Saintsbury ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... majority achieved by the waiters on Presidential providence, through immigrant voters whom the gurgling oratory of the whiskey-barrel is potent to convince, and whose sole notion of jurisprudence is based upon experience of the comparative toughness of Celtic skulls and blackthorn shillalahs. And such arguments were listened to, such advocates commended for patriotism, in a land from whose thirty thousand pulpits God and Christ are preached weekly to hearers who profess belief ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... meat generally furnished to us are, first, that it is too new. A beefsteak, which three or four days of keeping might render practicable, is served up to us palpitating with freshness, with all the toughness of animal muscle yet warm. In the Western country, the traveller, on approaching a hotel, is often saluted by the last shrieks of the chickens which half an hour afterward are presented to him a la spread-eagle for his dinner. The example of the Father of the Faithful, most wholesome to be followed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... therefore a good school for a boy with any toughness of mind or originality; but it tended in the case of normal and unreflective boys to develop a conventional type; good-mannered, sensible, with plenty of savoir faire, but with a wrong set of values. It made boys over-estimate athletics, despise intellectual things, ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... which one may distinguish the various gems from each other is hardness. By hardness is meant the ability to resist scratching. The term "hardness" should not be taken to include toughness, yet it is frequently so understood by the public. Most hard stones are more or less brittle and would shatter if struck a sharp blow. Other hard stones have a pronounced cleavage and split easily in certain directions. True hardness, then, implies merely ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... the people to retain with strong persistence the traditional beliefs and ideas which they obtained from their fathers, and to acquire other traditional beliefs and ideas which they obtain from neighbours. One often wonders at the "amazing toughness" of tradition, and in the psychological conditions which have been indicated will be found ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... The strength, toughness, and extraordinary vitality of these feline human beings, who were known as pirates, has often occasioned astonishment in ordinary people. Their sun-tanned and hairy bodies seemed to be made of something like wire, ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... negligeable.' The prospects of the Church in Italy and Spain do not seem very much better. In fact the only comfort which we can suggest to those who regret the decline of an august institution, is that decadent autocracies have often shown an astonishing toughness. But as head of the universal Church, in any true sense of the word, Rome has finished ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... to some use by English manufacturers, if they could obtain it in large quantity. The tree is abundant on light soils on the southern side of the Lower Amazons, and grows very rapidly. When the rolls are sufficiently well pressed, they are bound round with narrow thongs of remarkable toughness, cut from the bark of the climbing Jacitara palm tree (Desmoncus macracanthus), and are then ready for sale ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... grayish, tough, elastic lump before you, while in the pan below, when the water is carefully poured off, will be pure wheat-starch, the water itself containing all the sugar, dextrine or gum, and mineral matter. This toughness and elasticity of gluten is an important quality; for in bread-making, were it not for the gluten, the carbonic-acid gas formed by the action of yeast on dough would all escape. But, though it works its way out vigorously enough to swell up each cell, the gluten binds it fast, and ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... spoke of just now—a sort of savoir vivre—which became part of the rural labourer's outlook, and instructed him through his days and years. It was hardly reduced to thoughts in his consciousness, but it always swayed him. And it was consistent with—nay, it implied—many strong virtues: toughness to endure long labour, handiness, frugality, habits of early rising. It was consistent too—that must be admitted—with considerable hardness and "coarseness" of feeling; a man might be avaricious, loose, dirty, quarrelsome, and not offend ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... the purpose of a barb, being supplied by a small piece lashed horizontally across the top of the end of the curve. These peculiar wooden hooks are grown; the roots of a tree called ngiia, whose wood is of great toughness, are watched when they protrude from a bank, and trained into the desired shape; specimens of these hooks may be seen in almost any ethnographical museum. To sink the line, coral stones of three or four pounds weight are used, attached by a very thin piece of cinnet or ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... sorrowful pride to remember have had literal fulfillment: "I look back with unmingled pleasure to every link which each ensuing week has added to the chain of our attachment. It shall go hard, I hope, ere anything but Death impairs the toughness of a bond now so firmly riveted." It remained unweakened ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... wrote, "and with unmingled pleasure, to every link which each ensuing week has added to the chain of our attachment. It shall go hard I hope ere anything but death impairs the toughness of a bond now so firmly riveted. That beautiful passage you were so kind and considerate as to send to me has given me the only feeling akin to pleasure, sorrowful pleasure it is, that I have yet had connected with the loss of my dear young friend and companion, ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... heaves and undulates, and is altogether a nasty thing to have happen to one at the end of a gruelling match. But it is the first shot, the drive, which is the real test, for the water and the trees form a mental hazard of unquestionable toughness. ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... from what foreigners think of us ultra-modernized Americans. Wandering journalists, of an ethnological turn of mind, who visit these shores, profess to be struck with the slenderness, the apparent lack of toughness, the dyspeptic look, of the American physique. And from such observations it has been seriously argued that the stalwart English race is suffering inevitable degeneracy in this foreign climate. I have even seen it doubted whether ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the body, giving greater freedom of movement. The shield, in fact, became a fine coat of mail. The Trilobite is an early and imperfect experiment of the class, and the larva of the modern king-crab bears witness that it has not perished without leaving descendants. How later Crustacea increase the toughness of the coat by deposits of lime, and lead on to the crab and lobster, and how one early branch invades the land, develops air-breathing apparatus, and culminates in the spiders and insects, will be considered later. We shall see that ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... was farce. Thorpe was built on the true athletic lines, broad, straight shoulders, narrow flanks, long, clean, smooth muscles. He possessed, besides, that hereditary toughness and bulk which no gymnasium training will ever quite supply. The other man, while powerful and ugly in his rushes, was clumsy and did not use his head. Thorpe planted his hard straight blows at will. In this game he was as manifestly superior as his opponent would ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... terms satisfied the diplomatists both of France and England; they would probably have been less complacent could they have foreseen the day when this hard-won treaty would be torn up by the Power they seemed to be binding hand and foot with sworn obligations of perdurable toughness; least of all would that foresight have been agreeable to Lord Palmerston, Premier of England when the peace was signed, and quite at one with the mass of the people of England in their deep dislike and distrust ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... often combined chromium, increases the strength, springiness and toughness and helps to ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... accommodated with a body so tender and indisposed, as eternally leans and presses upon her; and often in my reading perceive that our masters, in their writings, make examples pass for magnanimity and fortitude of mind, which really are rather toughness of skin and hardness of bones; for I have seen men, women, and children, naturally born of so hard and insensible a constitution of body, that a sound cudgelling has been less to them than a flirt with a finger would have been to me, and that ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... money left in your keeping and swore and swore it wasn't; item, repeatedly exhausted by your toughness eight strong lictors equipped with pliant elm rods. (pause) Have I celebrated my colleague highly enough ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... fill a larger and larger part of the horizon, to seem perhaps the only reality. I don't mean just the love of a man for a woman, but the great throbbing bond of human affection and sympathy; and of all the kinds of affection, there is none that has the strength and toughness that belong to the love of husband and wife. I wish you to marry, Winifred,—I have always wished it,—only let it be to a true man, my dear,—let it be to ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... to do, were generally engaged in looking after their physical comforts by laying in a stock of shell-fish. Oysters were found in abundance all along shore, and of excellent quality; also the large clam known as the QUAHAUG, which when properly cooked and divested of its toughness is capital food; crabs, of delicate flavor and respectable size, were taken in hand-nets in any quantity; and flounders, mullets, and drum-fish were captured with little trouble. Ducks and teal, and other kinds of water fowl, abounded in ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... had now been absent for very many months, and Rhoda's growing fretfulness sprang the conviction in her mind that something closer than letters must soon be coming. She ran downstairs, and along the gravel-path. He was a little man, square-built, and looking as if he had worn to toughness; with an evident Sunday suit on: black, and black gloves, though the day ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... their voyages. The meat is cut into thin slices, boiled in a melon shell, stuck upon skewers, and dried in the sun. Prepared in this manner it will keep for several weeks, but requires a second cooking before being used, on account of its hardness and toughness. The fat which rises to the surface during the boiling is skimmed off and kept in joints of bamboo and turtle bladders, being much prized as food; I have even seen the natives drink it off in its hot fluid state with as much gusto as ever alderman enjoyed his elaborately ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... manuscript he was reminded of a score of schoolboy discussions Benham and he and Prothero had had together. Here was the same old toughness of mind, a kind of intellectual hardihood, that had sometimes shocked his schoolfellows. Benham had been one of those boys who do not originate ideas very freely, but who go out to them with a fierce sincerity. He believed and disbelieved with emphasis. Prothero ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... certain cant word called humbug had lately come into vogue. Will it be believed that the General used it to designate the family of this virtuous country gentleman? He described the eager hospitalities of the father, the pompous flatteries of the mother, and the daughters' looks of admiration; the toughness and security of the mutton, and the abominable taste and odour of the cordial; and we may be sure Mrs. Lambert contrasted Lady Warrington's recent behaviour to poor Harry with her present ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the true power of money,—and no trouble with it, nor any thinking required either. He thought with difficulty and felt vividly; to his blunt brain the problems offered by any ordered scheme of life seemed in their cruel toughness to have been put in his way by the obvious malevolence of men. As a shipowner everyone had conspired to make him a nobody. How could he have been such a fool as to purchase that accursed ship. He had been abominably swindled; there was ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... man's going away that stretched the heart out till the strings grew. The tragedy of sin revealed the toughness and tenderness of love. For that heart never let go of the man whom it borned. Man tried to pull away, poor thing. In his foolish misunderstanding and heady wilfulness he tried to cut loose. If he had known God better he would never have tried that. He'd ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... get anything more ridiculous than that, I should like to know where you can find it. Athletics should not be too severe, however, yet, the boy ought not to have century runs and long halves of football, especially if the heart is still weak. The tissues of the body have not yet gained the toughness that they will gain at a later time. Every commander in the field dreads to have boys of eighteen, nineteen, or twenty sent to him, because, as Napoleon said of his young recruits, "they die off like flies." ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... it fall to her?—unless indeed Sarratt were killed in action. If he survived the war he would make her the best of guides and husbands; she would have children; and her sweetness, her sensitiveness would stiffen under the impact of life to a serviceable toughness. But meanwhile what could she do—poor little Ariadne!—but 'live and be lovely'—sew and knit, and gather sphagnum moss—dreaming half her time, and no doubt crying half the night. What dark circles already round ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... their thoughts had been full of cotillions and girls and the junior prom. The Isthmus had laid hold of them and hardened their muscles and bronzed their faces and given them a toughness of fiber that ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... was little hurt. His skin coat had somewhat protected him and his sinewy body had such toughness that the hurling of it backward for a few feet was not anything involving a fatality. Very surely and suddenly had been thrust upon him now the practical lesson of being or dying, and it was good ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... with cotton, and the cotton has a lining of fine white silk. You at once observe that it is intended to protect some delicate and precious article of jewelry, and that the maker of this box must have been acquainted with the strength of wood, the toughness of leather, the adhesiveness of glue, the softness and elasticity of cotton, the tenacity of silk, and the mode of spinning and weaving it, the form of the jewel to be placed in it, and the danger against ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... splintered the stockade in a score of places, but, thanks to the toughness of the seasoned wood, the bullets that had penetrated had lost most of their strength. Beyond a few scratches from flying splinters, none ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... established tree is more valuable on this account. In some places hickories are quite subject to disease or to the attacks of borers. Like the walnuts, hickories which produce edible nuts are subject to the attacks of boys, but, on account of the toughness of the wood and the roughness of the bark, they are usually quite able to withstand these attacks. Hickories are suitable for use in all landscape work so far as their appearance is concerned. The fact that they are not so used is ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... expedients to arrest fierce wilful human nature in its onward course, and to bring it into subjection. The necessity of some form of religion for the interests of humanity, has been generally acknowledged: but where was the concrete representative of things invisible, which would have the force and the toughness necessary to be a breakwater against the deluge? Three centuries ago the establishment of religion, material, legal, and social, was generally adopted as the best expedient for the purpose, in those countries which separated from the Catholic Church; and for a long time it ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... to preserve you. Now, do you not see how these two sayings go together, and make each other plain. You seamen and fishermen are in continual danger; your lives are in your hands every moment—the belaying of a sheet, the strength of a bit of canvas, the toughness of a deal board, may settle your fate in a moment, and make all the difference between life and death. If they are sound, you may go back to a happy home, and see wife and children coming to meet you when you run on shore at morning from your honest labour; and if ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... that strength pays to weakness. He talks foolishly and yet very finely about his own city that has never deserted him. He wears a flaming and fantastic flower, like a decadent minor poet. As for his bluffness and toughness and appeals to common sense, all that is, of course, simply the first trick of rhetoric. He fronts his audiences with the venerable affectation of ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... brown, the same fryer and a little water would serve to take the toughness out of some strips of dried venison before she broiled them, and the great chief would be the best-fed man in camp until the hunters should return from the valley ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... from gray specks is considered the best. It holds the glue better than any other wood. The weight of a cubic foot of mahogany varies from thirty-five to fifty-three pounds. Its strength is between sixty-seven and ninety-six, stiffness seventy-three to ninety-three, and toughness sixty-one to ninety-nine—oak being considered as one hundred in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... should be long kept out of these desirable possessions, for the present baronet was his grandfather, and had long passed the ordinary limits of old age. The old man had outlived his own immediate natural heir, Ferdinand's father, and now, in spite of an extraordinary toughness of constitution, was showing signs of frailty which increased almost day by day. And apart from his own personal advantages, and the future baronetcy and the estates thereto appertaining, the young man felt that, as the chosen candidate of the constitutional party for that ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... vigorous strength. I cannot remember when I have felt so crisp, so springy, and so gloriously unconscious of lungs." During these intervals of good health he was mentally alert, — a prodigious worker, feeling "an immortal and unconquerable toughness of fibre" in the strings of his heart. There was something more than the cheerfulness that attends the disease to which he was subject. There was an ardor, an exuberance that comes only from "a lordly, large compass of soul." As to his poverty, it must be said that few poets were ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... human nature on the one side, and the infinite variety in the mode of life and pleasure on the other, it is a wonder that the human race has not worn itself out long ago. Human nature appears to possess a peculiar kind of toughness and many- sidedness, since it subdues every thing which approaches it, or which it takes into itself, and, if it cannot assimilate, at least makes it indifferent. In case of any great excess, indeed, it must yield to the elements in spite of all resistance, as ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... sharp and sheen, And they crown themselves with the oak-leaves, and sit, both most and least, And there on the forest venison and the ancient wine they feast; Then they wattle the twigs of the thicket to bear their spoil away, And the toughness of the beech-boughs with the woodbine overlay: With the voice of their merry labour the hall of the oakwood rings, For fair they are and joyous as the first ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... that gives the least possible exertion; with the digestion of an ostrich, and the eye of a pariah dog for any stray morsel of food; with an extraordinary capacity for taking rest in snatches, and recouping himself by a roll whenever you take his saddle off; and of course, from the natural toughness of his constitution, too, he is able to stand the long and gradual strain of being many hours under the saddle every day (and perhaps part of the night, too) in a way that unaccustomed horses cannot do. ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... the water jug. "You mean, kill off the men, take over their families?" This was a cold-bloodedness he found sickening. Although he had always prided himself on his toughness, several times during his training at the project he had been confronted by things which shook his belief in his own ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... the conflict is already opened, and that it is serious. The lobby is the army of the plutocracy. An elective judiciary is a device so much in the interest of plutocracy, that it must be regarded as a striking proof of the toughness of the judicial institution that it has resisted the corruption so much as it has. The caucus, convention, and committee lend themselves most readily to the purposes of interested speculators and jobbers. It is just such machinery as they might have invented if they ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... her legs as a child of a year old. Now you have encouraged her to take to walking, she will be more obstinate than ever, and is sure to tumble down daily, out of doors as well as in. Not even the celebrated Malkinshaw toughness can last out more than a few weeks of that practice. Considering the present shattered condition of my constitution, you couldn't have given her better advice—upon my word of honor, you couldn't have given ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... but I sometimes occupied myself with attempts to analyze the sources of their intimacy. I remember stating to one of my young acquaintances that Vibbard probably had a secret longing to be feminine and ideal, and that Silverthorn felt himself at fault in masculine toughness and hardihood, so that each sought the companionship of the other, hoping to gain some of the qualities which he himself lacked; and my young acquaintance offended me by replying, as if it had all ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... At the Fair I saw some coach and chaise wheels, of the most beautiful make, of hickory, which is as durable as metal-spokes, not thicker than the middle finger, but strong enough for any required weight, and with great flexibility; and from its extreme toughness, calculated for the woodwork of implements. The apartment on the ground-floor was entirely occupied by machines in motion, and each was attended by a person who explained, with the greatest civility and intelligence, the uses of the various parts of the machine, setting it going, or stopping it, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... utterances have had a great deal to do with the 'Politics'' unpopularity. I have got worse handled than any of you by poor and rich. There is one comfort, that length of ears is in the donkey species always compensated by toughness of hide. But it is a pleasing prospect for me (if you knew all that has been said and written about Parson Lot), when I look forward and know that my future explosions are likely to become more and more obnoxious to the old gentlemen, who stuff their ears with cotton, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... stoicism, that energy to resist if not to dare, which formed the backbone of an otherwise somewhat weak, shadowy, and uninspiring character. And now, in the rapid fall of his fortunes, the greatest adventurer of the nineteenth century showed to the full those qualities of toughness and dignified reserve which for twenty years had puzzled and imposed on that lively emotional people. By the side of the downcast braggarts of the Court and the unstrung screamers of the Parisian Press, his mien had something ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... So, at any rate, the matter seemed to these husky young recruits, who were learning to march in the mud and sleep in the rain and chew up carpet-tacks and grind Huns into leber-wurst. They were putting through the job—with a fierce and terrifying gaiety; they exulted in their toughness, they called themselves "grizzlies" and "mountain cats" and what not; they sang wild songs about their irritability, their motto was "Treat 'em rough!" It was a scary atmosphere for a dreamer and utopian; Jimmie Higgins shrank into ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... love, as one loves the softness of fur or the coolness of marble. One of the profound philosophical truths which are almost confined to infants is this love of things, not for their use or origin, but for their own inherent characteristics, the child's love of the toughness of wood, the wetness of water, the magnificent soapiness of soap. So it was with Scott, who had so much of the child in him. Human beings were perhaps the principal characters in his stories, but they were certainly not the only characters. A battle-axe was a person ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... rose, my spirits mounted invincibly. It was the joy of the open road and the care-free heart. Like some hideous nightmare was the memory of the tunnel and the gravel pit. The bright blood in me rejoiced; my muscles tensed with pride in their toughness; I ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... think of that?" said he, giving it two or three switches in the air to try its suppleness and toughness; "don't that look like a whip? Now we'll see ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... unkempt, unshaven, hard-looking lot, with bloodshot eyes, a flicker of the dare-devil in expression, beyond the first youth, hardened into an enduring toughness of fibre—bad men from the Saginaw, in truth, and, unless Orde was mistaken, men just off a drunk, and therefore especially dangerous; men eager to fight at the drop of the hat, or sooner, to be accommodating, and ready ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... strongly recommend that animal food should be hung up in the open air, till its fibres have lost some degree of their toughness; yet, let us be clearly understood also to warn you, that if kept till it loses its natural sweetness, it is as detrimental to health, as it is disagreeable to the smell ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... although sometimes it is allowed to soak in river water for a sufficient length of time to produce the softening. After the fermentation is thus started the jute fibre is separated from the wood, and is of a sufficient flexibility and toughness to be woven into sacking, carpets, curtains, table covers, and ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... Should toughness be desired, without extreme hardness, the steel may be cooled in a bath of lard oil, neatsfoot oil or fish oil. To secure a result between water and oil, it is customary to place a thick layer of oil on top of water. In cooling, the piece will pass through ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... year, and then, in a moment of extreme disgust and ennui, threw up his commission and returned to Europe, trusting, he told me, that after five years' absence, the governor's bowels would yearn towards his youngest-born. In this he was entirely mistaken; he greatly underrated the toughness of paternal viscera. Far from killing the fatted calf on the prodigal's return, the incensed old Hollander refused him the smallest cutlet, and shutting the door in his face, consigned him, with more energy than affection, to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various |
