"Adaptable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... While besieging the Greeks with indifferent success, he learned of the death of his wife and his eldest son from plague, and incontinently returned to Tirnovo, giving up the war and restoring his daughter to her lonely husband. This adaptable monarch died a natural death in 1241, and the three rulers of his family who succeeded him, whose reigns filled the period 1241-58, managed to undo all the constructive work of their immediate predecessors. Province after province was lost and ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... is undoubtedly the most plastic part of the living world, the most adaptable, the most educable. Of all animals, it is man in whom heredity counts for least, and conscious building forces for most. Consider that his infancy is longest, his instincts least fixed, his brain most unfinished at birth, his powers ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the corner of his eye quite approvingly at times. He was a widower—a good little man, devoted to his three charming children. They took an immense fancy to me, and I really think I could have got on with him. I am very adaptable, as you know. But it was not to be. He got out of his depth one morning, and unfortunately there was no one within distance but myself who could swim. I knew what the result would be. You remember Labiche's comedy, Les Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon? ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... with an accent so quaint and sprightly as to give point to her otherwise perhaps somewhat commonplace observations. She was fond of reading; she could play a little; she was an excellent housewife, and generally a very good-natured and quite presentable little person. She was Parisian and adaptable. To meet her, you would never have suspected her origin; you would have found it hard to believe that she had been the wife of a drunken tailor, who used to beat her. One January night, four or five years before, Pair had surprised this gentleman publicly pummelling her in the Rue Gay-Lussac. ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... come an entirely novel strategic use of aircraft in war, and with it too, which is perhaps the more permanently important, will come the development of aircraft of the sort that will be readily adaptable to the purposes of peace ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... Hans Marais, now become inseparable comrades, cleared and levelled the ground under a mimosa-bush, and, spreading their kaross thereon, lay down to sleep. George Dally, being an adaptable man, looked at the old campaigners for a few minutes, and then imitated their example. Little Jerry Goldboy, being naturally a nervous creature, and having his imagination filled with snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, etcetera, would fain have slept ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... surmise that she will organize games—guessing games—in which she will ask me to name a river in Asia beginning with a Z; on my failure to do so she will put a hot plate down my neck as a forfeit, and the children will clap their hands. These games, my dear young friend, involve the use of a more adaptable intellect than mine, and I cannot consent to be ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... supplied one of the pulpits here, that of my own church. The Rev. Mr. Simpson was afflicted with a convenient and adaptable indisposition which would not allow him to preach, and I was deputed to fill his place. I knew what a trial it would be, and had carefully written out my sermon, but I am afraid I did not adhere very strictly to the manuscript. ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... costly both in the plate-making and in the printing. While it gives a rich and uniform impression on the letter paper, and is highly valuable for reproducing pictures and ornate designs, it is adaptable only for special purposes and is not generally regarded as suitable for commercial work. A photogravure plate costs from seventy-five cents to one dollar and twenty-five cents a square inch, or about ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... by no means the last or most crucial stage of our twentieth-century Revolution has now been completed; the old Constitution, which was perhaps the most adaptable and convenient system of government that the world has ever known, is definitely at an end; the powers of an ancient Assembly have been truncated with a violence that in any other land would have spelled barricades and bloodshed long ago; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... Diane proved readily adaptable to the wild life about her, no less did Philip. At night he smoked comfortably by his camp fire, unwound the hullabaloo upon request or lent it to Sho-caw. He rode hard and fearlessly with the warriors, hunted ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... the League undertake to interchange full and frank information as to the scale of their armaments, their military, naval and air programmes and the condition of such of their industries as are adaptable to warlike purposes. ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... town-bred soldier of the eastern states was a thoughtful citizen who was determined to do his duty, but he had far less natural aptitude for war than his enemy from the Carolinas or his comrade from Illinois or Kansas. At the same time the more varied conditions of urban life made him more adaptable to changes of climate and of occupation than the "Southron." Irish brigades served on both sides and shot each other to pieces as at Fredericksburg. They had the reputation of being excellent soldiers. The German divisions, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... "has sent us some magnificent men. In truth, it's amazing to take count of the Western men among us in all the professions. They are notable, perhaps I should say, less for deliberate niceties of style than for a certain rough directness, but so adaptable is the American character that one frequently does ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... third? But what a strange, strange wife for Roger, of all men! I suppose she is the first thoroughly unconventional person he was ever closely connected with—in one way you would seem more natural with her—I suppose because you are more adaptable than Roger. With him, everybody must adapt. Will she! Voila l'affaire! I should say that the young woman would be likely to have great influence over other people's lives, herself. If she and Roger ever clash—! Ah, well, advienne ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... that the mechanical motor which shall be found to be most universally adaptable, that is to say, most pliant in accommodating itself to the various lines and to the varying work of the traffic, will be the form of motor which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... story was sketched in the first chapter of this book, widely different though caterpillar and butterfly may appear at a superficial glance. And the survey of variety in form, food, and habit of insect larvae given in Chapter VI enforces surely the conclusion that the larva is eminently plastic, adaptable, capable of changing so as to suit the most diverse surroundings. In a most suggestive recent discussion on the transformation of insects P. Deegener (1909) has claimed that the larva must be regarded ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... military marine—the only arm by which the power of this Confederacy can be estimated or felt by foreign nations, and the only standing military force which can never be dangerous to our own liberties at home. A permanent naval peace establishment, therefore, adapted to our present condition, and adaptable to that gigantic growth with which the nation is advancing in its career, is among the subjects which have already occupied the foresight of the last Congress, and which will deserve your serious deliberations. Our Navy, commenced at an early period of our present political organization upon a scale ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... goes to prove that a method, to be elastic and adaptable, should be based on a knowledge of the physiology of the voice-producing organs, for such a method naturally adapts itself to physical differences in different individuals. Without doubt Mme. Marchesi's method was admirably adapted to ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... is therefore necessary as well as natural in dealing with intolerant trees. But it does not follow that the selection system, although natural to tolerant species, is the only one adaptable to them. While the one class demands light, the other does not demand shade. It is merely capable of enduring it. Indeed, except for the greater susceptibility of some species to extreme heat and dryness when ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... character psychologically in their short-stories; Kipling has used the short-story as a vehicle for the conveyance of specific knowledge; Stevenson has gathered most, if not all, of the literary possibilities adaptable to short-story use, and has ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... were so diligent under instruction, so adaptable, and so clever in hiding our deficiencies, that when we made the journey to Crescent Beach, in the wake of our small wagon-load of household goods, my father had very little occasion to admonish us ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... of course not!" Quimby responded sympathetically and understandingly, as Nattie hesitated for a word that would express her meaning. "They never are very adaptable—old maids, you know!" ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... lifetime in that direction. See here!" He took a neat little leather case out of a drawer, and opening it he exhibited a number of shining instruments. "This is a first-class, up-to-date burgling kit, with nickel-plated jemmy, diamond-tipped glass-cutter, adaptable keys, and every modern improvement which the march of civilization demands. Here, too, is my dark lantern. Everything is in order. Have you a ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... be forgotten that the Slav immigrants, and especially their descendants, are impressionable and adaptable; that forces are at work which have already done much for them, and will do more. The results of the public school are sure though slow. The full-grown individual must be brought under the influence of a yet more powerful ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... like a rosebud within its calyx—the distraction upon her brow somehow adding to the charm of her face—and Ben thought her the most wonderful girl he had ever known, so outwardly at ease and in command was she. "Could any one," he thought, "be more swiftly adaptable?" ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... it, with the advantage of having compared the painting with others in the Royal Academy. The landscape recalls that glimpse of halcyon country of which we caught sight in The Infant Academy—its trees, its glowing sky, are equally adaptable to both subjects. The picture was exhibited at the British Institution in 1843, and was then the property of Sir James Cockburn, Bart., whose ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... Lammerton had arrived among us with a Beaux Arts moustache and letters of introduction to Mrs. Durrett and others. We found him the most adaptable, the most accommodating of young men, always ready to donate his talents and his services to private theatricals, tableaux, and fancy-dress balls, to take a place at a table at the last moment. One of his most appealing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... cannot guide him merely by the laws of what can or cannot be. The limits of the possible and the impossible are alike unknown to him, so they can be extended or contracted around him at your will. Without a murmur he is restrained, urged on, held back, by the hands of necessity alone; he is made adaptable and teachable by the mere force of things, without any chance for vice to spring up in him; for passions do not arise so long as ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... worthy project indeed. As for the company itself there could be no question that it was a good one. No one expected acting in grand opera, no one expected that the performers would be physically adaptable to their parts. The voice! The voice was all. Even Agnes admitted that it was a splendid thing to be a patron of the fine arts; but Bobby, in his profound new wisdom and his thorough conversion to strictly commercial standards, said ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... with the ready talent, the adaptable talent, and the facility of this accomplished journalist, and as their acquaintance improved he was let into many of the secrets of success in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... life. The kind manufactured for hotels and restaurants and of sufficient capacity, is more expensive, but will outwear two outfits of the cheaper type and is really more economical in the long run. In the buying do not omit that most adaptable and convenient of all cooking utensils for camp—a wash boiler. Get one that is copper-lined and made of ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... loathsome things possess. And drink is peculiarly fitted to bring out this perverse quality—drink that blurs all the conventionalities, even those built up into moral ideas by centuries and ages of unbroken custom. The human animal, for all its pretenses of inflexibility, is almost infinitely adaptable—that is why it has risen in several million years of evolution from about the humblest rank in the mammalian family to overlordship of the universe. Still, it is doubtful if, without drink to help her, a girl of Susan's ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... note that, despite their many resemblances, the two series can be connected only in their far distant beginnings. The pecoran stock became vastly more expanded and diversified than did the camel line and was evidently more plastic and adaptable, spreading eventually over all the continents except Australia, and forming to-day one of the dominant types of mammals, while the camels are on the decline and not far from extinction. The Pecora successively ramified into the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... proud of the episode, and as for the Frenchmen, they did not mind. The French have always been very adaptable in ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... to recommend it where conditions are favorable. Like all other alternative methods of mining, it requires the most careful study in the light of the special conditions involved. In many mines it can be used for some stopes where not adaptable generally. It often solves the problem of blind ore-bodies, for they can by this means be frequently worked with an opening underneath only. Thus the cost of driving a roadway overhead is avoided, which ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... marks and low-water marks in the mud, and the broken causeway, and the broken bank, and the broken stakes and piles leaning forward as if they were vain of their personal appearance and looking for their reflection in the water, will melt into any train of fancy. Equally adaptable to any purpose or to none, are the posturing sheep and kine upon the marshes, the gulls that wheel and dip around me, the crows (well out of gunshot) going home from the rich harvest-fields, the heron that has been out a-fishing and looks as melancholy, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... liquor he had drunk brought the colour to his lips. They were now hot and red, and his eyes had a singular feverish brilliancy, in keeping with the hectic flush on his cheek. He had dismissed the subject of his illness almost immediately, and Christine's adaptable nature had instantly responded ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... reasoning powers to bear on Allis, but failed signally in his object. He was unaccustomed to being balked, but the girl's firm determination was more than a match for his adaptable sophistry. He had made no headway, was quite beaten, when Dixon's opportune return prevented absolute discomfiture. Crane left shortly, saying to Allis as he bade them good night: "I'm sorry you look upon the matter in this light. My ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... family. I was never in the county till my husband brought me here." Mrs. Charmond did not care to pursue this line of investigation. Whatever mysterious merit might attach to family antiquity, it was one which, though she herself could claim it, her adaptable, wandering weltburgerliche nature had grown tired of caring about—a peculiarity that made her a contrast to her neighbors. "It is of rather more importance to know what the man is himself than what his family is," she said, "if he is going to practise ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... social, and suffering would ensue, where all before was fixed and determinate. So also if the strangers introduced new and improved methods of agriculture, and food became abundant, it would then at once strike the most far-seeing and readily adaptable members of the community, both male and female, that there was no necessity for the destruction of their offspring; old men and women would begin seriously to object to being hastened to death when they realised that starvation ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... a very convenient word with a meaning easily adaptable to all sorts of explanations; but if there were no bounds and no end to this explaining by suggestion, we might as well rub out from our suggested slate of life, with a suggested sponge, the whole beautiful world of clear and eternal realities. No, the Christ of Lucia and my mother was ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... Bompain, but the unfortunate fellow knows nothing of Paris; he has been, as it were, bewildered ever since his arrival. You will tell me that you also come straight from the country, but that does not matter. Well brought up as you are, a southerner, alert and adaptable, you will quickly pick up the routine of the Boulevard. For the rest, I myself undertake your education from that point of view. In a few weeks you will find yourself, I answer for it, as much at home in ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... nature is very adaptable—you interest yourself in their pursuits, and so deceive them into a false estimate of your worth. Your education—speak not of it; it ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... at once, and spending the night in it, but the men-folk assuring me that I would be "bound to hear them coming," I turned in, sure only of one thing, that death may come to the bush-folk in any form but ennui. Yet so adaptable are we bush-folk to circumstances that most of that ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... notes, are to be taken will be determined by many factors, such as the nature of individual courses, the wishes of instructors, personal tastes and habits. Nevertheless, there are certain principles and practices which are adaptable to nearly all conditions, and it is these that we have discussed. Remember, note-taking is one of the habits you are to form in college. See that the habit is started rightly. Adopt a good plan at the start and ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... is fairly easy of achievement, for the bamboo is at the same time tough and pliable, and bamboo bridges, in spite of their flimsy appearance, can carry great weights, and can be run up in no time, and kindly Nature furnishes in Bengal an endless supply of this adaptable building material. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... agglomeration of jurymen which is called humanity was as sharp as a razor; yet a razor is not a generally convenient instrument, and Physician's plain bright scalpel, though far less keen, was adaptable to far wider purposes. Bar knew all about the gullibility and knavery of people; but Physician could have given him a better insight into their tendernesses and affections, in one week of his rounds, than Westminster Hall and all the circuits put together, in threescore ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... main picturesque asset of the building, it must be admitted that the unromantic front portion was highly convenient, and had been most readily adaptable for a school. The large light rooms of the ground floor made excellent classrooms, and the upper story was so lavishly provided with windows that it had been possible, by means of wooden partitions, to turn the great bedrooms into ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... idea! I believe she was right, too. That will make you adaptable. Miss Glynn, let me tell you something, just enough to begin on, about myself—as a case. I'm tired to death of everything that has gone before; I do not fit in anywhere. I believe I'm quite a different person from what every one else believes; I've never had a chance to know myself; I've been ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... what it is by a process very different from that of most writers careful of form. Read Chateaubriand, Gautier, even Baudelaire, and you will find that the aim of these writers has been to construct a style which shall be adaptable to every occasion, but without structural change; the cadence is always the same. The most exquisite word-painting of Gautier can be translated rhythm for rhythm into English, without difficulty; once you have mastered the tune, you have merely to go on; every verse will be the same. But Flaubert ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... daughter's spirits were mysteriously supported, for after the first shock and disturbance of our arrival we found them cheerful people; indeed, Miss Hope was quite a merry soul. But then she had never known any other life, and human nature is very adaptable. Further, if I may say so, she had grown up a lady in the true sense of the word. After all, why should she not, seeing that her mother, the Bible and Nature had been her only associates and sources of information, if we except the poor slaves who ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... is known to every schoolboy. "Ahn" became the palladium of English philological education. If it no longer retains its ubiquity, it is because something even less adaptable to the object in ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... bit by remaining steadfastly cheerful. Never before, sartorially speaking, had he cut so splendid a figure as now when such numbers of young white gentlemen of his acquaintance were putting aside civilian garb to put on khaki. Jeff had one of those adaptable figures. The garments to which he fell heir might never have fitted their original owner, but always they would fit Jeff. Gorgeous in slightly worn but carefully refurbished raiment, he figured in the wartime activities of the colored population and in ostensibly helpful capacities figured ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... experiences. She gained, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, a conception of her own self which was imposed upon her neither by her traditions—she has none; nor by the instructions of her parents—they never gave her any; nor even by her own nature—for it is characteristic of these easily "adaptable" minds that their first instincts are chaotic and undetermined. They are like a blank check, which the will undertakes to fill out. But whatever the will writes upon it, is written in letters that will never be effaced. Action, action, always action,—this is the remorseless but ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... improved she is! That's like all the Americans—they're so adaptable,'—Miss Manisty would think, as she watched her nephew in the evenings teasing, sparring, or arguing with Lucy Foster—she so adorably young and fresh, the new and graceful lines of the coiffure that Eleanor had forced upon her, defining the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... attained as much by training as by breeding, though the breeding is given the credit. Our men are highly specialized, and once outside the walls of Berlin they will find things so different that this very specialization will prove a handicap. The mongrel peoples are more adaptable. Our workmen and soldiers are large in physique, but dwarfed of intellect. The enemy will beat us in open war, and, even if we should be victorious in war, we could not rule them. Either we solve this food business or we all ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... English Wardens of the Marches, proposed to take advantage of James's 1542 roving propensities and arrange to have him captured and brought prisoner to England; a scheme which Henry apparently approved, but fortunately for his own credit referred to his Council, whose consciences were less adaptable. In October, the English indulged in a week's invasion of Scotland, and the Scottish King would have responded in kind but that his ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... customs. The life seemed to me easier, the customs simpler and less expensive than in England. There was not the same feverish thirst after wealth as with us; there was more calm appreciation of nature, of music, of social enjoyment.' In their home on the Neckar, the Howitts, most adaptable of couples, found new pleasures and new amusements with each season of the year. In the spring and summer they explored the surrounding country, wandered through the deep valleys and woods, where the grass was purple ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... not get permission to visit M.'s cavalry division that I might observe the French peasantry. I went to give lectures to the men. I did that, faithfully exerting myself to the uttermost, but I did it very badly. I suppose I am not adaptable. Certainly the conditions under which I lectured destroyed any faint chance of my succeeding, ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... greatest. From this sense it gets knowledge, unattainable by birds which cannot employ their feet as hands. The elephant is the most sagacious of quadrupeds—its tactual range and skill, and the consequent multiplication of experiences, which it owes to its wonderfully adaptable trunk, being the basis of its sagacity. Feline animals, for a similar cause, are more sagacious than hoofed animals,—atonement being to some extent made in the case of the horse, by the possession of sensitive ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... adventurous spirit: he left Snitterfield, his birthplace, as a young man, for the neighbouring town of Stratford, where he set up in business for himself. Aubrey says he was a butcher; he certainly dealt in meat, skins, and leather, as well as in corn, wool, and malt—an adaptable, quick man, who turned his hand to anything—a Jack-of-all-trades. He appears to have been successful at first, for in 1556, five years after coming to Stratford, he purchased two freehold tenements, one with a garden in Henley Street, and the other in Greenhill ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... initiative of Mr. Freke." And that poor Simonds, who had amply demonstrated his inability to survive, his utter lack of adaptation to his environment, by not being able to be friendly with the great A. and P., went—where all the inefficient, non-adaptable human refuse goes—to ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... to purchase books at prices within your reach; as low as 10 cents for paper covered books, to $5.00 for books bound in cloth or leather, adaptable for gift and presentation purposes, to suit the tastes of the ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... and upon his arrival at Flagstaff he informed me that he could ride. I predicted he would be in the wagon before noon of the second day out. He offered to bet on it. I told him I disapproved of betting. He seemed to me to be daring, adaptable, self-willed; and I was divided between pride and anxiety as to the outcome of this ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... on which all good art is built. At the height of that movement line drawing went out of fashion, and charcoal, and an awful thing called a stump, took the place of the point in the schools. Charcoal is a beautiful medium in a dexterous hand, but is more adaptable to mass than to line drawing. The less said about the stump the better, although I believe it still lingers on in ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... writer has described Melbourne, as Glasgow with the sky of Alexandria; and certainly the beautiful climate of Australia, so Italian in its brightness, must have a great effect on the nature of such an adaptable race as the Anglo-Saxon. In spite of the dismal prognostications of Marcus Clarke regarding the future Australian, whom he describes as being "a tall, coarse, strong-jawed, greedy, pushing, talented man, excelling ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... beautiful work is fast disappearing; visitors have discovered how adaptable it is to home decoration, and the dealers in Cairo eagerly buy up all that can be obtained to be converted into those many articles of Arab furniture with which we are ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... United States on the matter, suggesting to Minister Rush, June 20, 1818, a mutual but strictly limited Right of Search.[27] Rush was ordered to give him assurances of the solicitude of the United States to suppress the traffic, but to state that the concessions asked for appeared of a character not adaptable to our institutions. Negotiations were then transferred to Washington; and the new British minister, Mr. Stratford Canning, approached Adams with full instructions ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... addressing, winning over the person in question by striking his particular note and showing that side of his character with which he could best please him. Endowed with the capacity of mystifying and dazzling those around him, exceedingly keen-sighted, adaptable but in reality empty, he knew how to set people thinking and to fascinate others by his lively, unprejudiced and often paradoxical, but entertaining conversation. He was now colder, now more confidential; he knew how to assume ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... clamour for the moon and yet be guided by others into the mundane paths of practical common sense. There was at the moment an abnormal dislocation between public opinion and actual possibilities. The harsh amalgam of democratic politics and war seemed to demand an adaptable Premier; he was ex-officio and par excellence the pivotal man, and circumstances required a liberal amount of lubrication and elasticity to ease the friction and ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... must know the French language and sympathise with the French temperament. Give the French buyer a ghost of a chance and he will meet you more than half way. Unlike the stolid Englishman he is plastic, adaptable and imaginative. Understanding is a large part ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... to which we may add light pockets. His heart soon became somewhat heavier when he discovered that his captain was a tyrant, whose chief joy appeared to consist in making other people miserable. Bill Bowls's nature, however was adaptable, so that although his spirits were a little subdued, they were not crushed. He was wont to console himself, and his comrades, with the remark that this state of things couldn't last for ever, that the voyage would come to an end some time or other, and that men should ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... question of support. One man would like to be in touch with a daily train service, as he feels it necessary to keep in touch with the world by means of the daily newspaper. A number are engaged who want to be married. Here's Mr. Brown, too fat. No move in him. Here's McKay—good man, earnest, but not adaptable, like Finlayson; won't do. Here's Garton—fine fellow, would do well, but hardly strong enough. So what are you to do? I have gone over the whole list of available men and I cannot ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... comforted by the thought that the Boy Scout isn't one of them. If, in the next generation, Britain continues to exist as a nation and not as a depot for the training of waiters in the Berlin restaurants, then indeed we shall have something to rely on in these adaptable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... at and elegantly dressed, with an open mind upon whatever topic is discussed, adaptable, available, rich and good-humoured, the American woman as I know her is the last word in worldiness and fashion. In my own country she is not only a popular, but a privileged person, and having started by being what is called ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... beauty was purely subjective. He could look at the far snows, the bluish gleam of the glaciers, the restful green of the valley floor, with a new quality of appreciation. He could even—so resilient and adaptable a thing is the human mind—see himself engaged upon material enterprises, years passing, his boy growing up, life assuming a fullness, a proportion, an orderly progression that two hours earlier would have seemed to him only a ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... well supplied with boats, only two of which—the two longboats—were thus far loaded. The gigs, although they were of course of much smaller capacity than the longboats, and having fixed thwarts were not so adaptable for the purpose of temporarily receiving cargo, were nevertheless capable of being made very good use of, and in the afternoon they were brought alongside and loaded one after another, until all four of the ship's own gigs were as deep in the water as it was prudent to put them, when they also ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... to external influences, more easily adaptable to the conditions of life and to change with them—Jewish women throughout Europe assume the physical and moral customs, often exaggerating them, of the country in which they live,—without losing the shadow ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... no luggage with her, save an adaptable suitcase which, she declared "held everything." This she quickly packed and locked, ready for her journey. Then she stepped to the window and waved her hand towards the near hill and ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... she had simply no time to stay inside the house and be proper. Still, the gentle influence told, imperceptibly softening and toning her character, and giving her a standard by which to adapt herself; and Norah was nothing if not adaptable. Then, six months previously, the old man they all loved had quietly faded out of life; and after he had gone his widow could no longer remain in the place where he had died. She pined slowly, until ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... to Mother Russia. I am personally inclined to think that the Serbs will let the chance slip through their fingers. Serbs and Russians, though they like one another, do not seem to be able to work together very well. The Serbs are a smaller people, more intense and less adaptable than the Russians. The difference between the two races as one sees and hears them on the streets of Belgrade is very remarkable. The soft pervasive accents of Russian speech are pregnant with a great race-consciousness and a feeling ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... dozen extinct intelligent races could testify to our fighting ability, as could others not-quite-extinct. Man ruled this section of the galaxy, and someday if he didn't kill himself off in the process he'd rule all of it. He wasn't the smartest race but he was the hungriest, the fiercest, the most adaptable, and the most unrelenting. Qualities which, by the way, were exactly the ones needed to conquer ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... the description of the husky dog as the "scourge" of Labrador, and would insist that any such wholesale condemnation is a boomerang that returns upon the head of the Labradorian who uses it. For, as the dog is one of the most adaptable of all domestic animals, and is, to an amazing extent, what his master makes him, to bring a railing accusation against the whole race of dogs is in reality to accuse those who breed ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... multitude of people everywhere became an evident social danger, and the government was obliged to resort to such devices as simple decorative work in wood and stone, the manufacture of hand-woven textiles, fruit-growing, flower-growing, and landscape gardening on a grand scale to keep the less adaptable out of mischief, and of paying wages to the younger adults for attendance at schools that would equip them to use the new atomic machinery.... So quite insensibly the council drifted into a complete reorganisation of urban ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... religious or social propaganda. And it seemed to me that the novel was capable of holding and shaping real experience of any kind, as it affects the lives of men and women. It is the most elastic, the most adaptable of forms. No one has a right to set limits to its range. There is only one final test. Does it interest?—does it appeal? Personally, I should add another. Does it make in the long run for beauty? Beauty ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is even more obvious, and for this reason that, looked at aright, it is the faculty of maintaining the general health of the soul, spite of local morbid conditions—a faculty which is strongest in the simpler and more adaptable mind of the child. ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... Families that move into the city gradually have a smaller number of children in each generation until shortly the family is wiped out. The population of the city must constantly be replenished from the country. But the English sparrow is more adaptable than are the people. He has made himself at home in the heart of the biggest city. The Wall Street canyon is not deep enough, nor contracted enough, nor free enough of food to blot out the life of the English sparrow. At the heart of the deepest gully ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... thought they were genuine Yankees. The difference was especially noticeable in their speech. There was none of that heavy-tongued enunciation which characterizes even the best-educated colored people of the South. It is remarkable, after all, what an adaptable creature the Negro is. I have seen the black West Indian gentleman in London, and he is in speech and manners a perfect Englishman. I have seen natives of Haiti and Martinique in Paris, and they are more Frenchy than a Frenchman. I have no doubt that the Negro ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... observant person, or, as he himself said, 'took a powerful sight of notice'. He saluted all his regular passers-by every day, as he sat on his stool backed up by the lamp-post; and on the adaptable character of these salutes he greatly plumed himself. Thus, to the rector, he addressed a bow, compounded of lay deference, and a slight touch of the shady preliminary meditation at church; to the doctor, a confidential bow, as to a gentleman whose ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... easily go one step further and imagine that, since the tar contains a number of volatile hydrocarbons, it might be made more adaptable for impregnation by paper by distilling it, as by this process the fluid would lose its tendency to evaporate and the percentage of resinous substances increase. Singular to say, there was a prejudice against the employment of distilled tar, entertained ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... have asked myself whether the Church does not intend to suggest that the whole story falls outside the domain of history, and is to be held as the one great epos, or myth, common to all mankind; adaptable by each nation according to its own several needs; translatable, so to speak, into the facts of each individual nation, as the written word is translatable into its language, but appertaining to the ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... play games, have recitations, and amuse themselves in different ways until five o'clock; when a curtain which would be put across a portion of the room would be raised, and tableaux vivants, in which Maggie, Kathleen, and both the Tristram girls, who were all adaptable for this purpose, were to take special parts. The tableaux were under the management of Janet Burns, who was exceedingly clever, and had studied the scenes—which she took from different episodes in Scott's novels—with ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... "They are so adaptable," she continued. "It does not seem to matter into what nation they marry, they seem to assimilate and fit into their places. When this little thing is a duchess, you will see she will fulfil the position to a tee. Berty will be very ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... be said to be the dramatic climax in the story of rubber. It celebrated the hour when the science of invention turned a raw product—which had tantalized by its promise and wrought ruin by its treachery—into a manufacture adaptable to a thousand uses, adding to man's ease and health and to the locomotion, construction, and communication of ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... Philadelphia comprise one of the distinctive and most admired types of its Colonial architecture. Those with pebble-dashed walls which seek to simulate no other building material or form of construction possess the added charm of frank sincerity. Fire-proof in character, pleasing in appearance, and readily adaptable to varied home requirements, they point the way wherever rubble stone incapable of forming an attractive wall is cheaply available. Many modern dwellings in the Colonial spirit are being built ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... with the colony officers, civil and military, and that of Montcalm with the officers from France. The principal exception was the Chevalier de Levis. This brave and able commander had an easy and adaptable nature, which made him a sort of connecting link between the two parties. "One should be on good terms with everybody," was a maxim which he sometimes expressed, and on which he shaped his conduct with notable success. The Intendant Bigot also, an adroit and accomplished ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Vanderpoop," and other pet names; and with his sea-booted feet cocked up on the table would even invent histories about silk pajamas and specially imported neckwear, to the "friend's" discredit. Harvey was a very adaptable person, with a keen eye and ear for every ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... brush and thickets, they slid like a couple of youngsters on a lark. Pan found the gateway between bluff and slope even more adaptable to his purposes than it had appeared from a distance. The whole lay of the land was miraculously advantageous to the drive ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... which is well known in plain needlework, is very useful also in embroidery, besides being an important stitch in needlepoint lace. Owing to its construction it is well suited for the covering of raw edges, but it is also adaptable to a variety of other purposes, such as are open or close fillings of leaves and flowers, cut work, and ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... taught effective writers that certain definite themes are peculiarly adaptable to two-act form and they follow them. But success comes to them not because they stick to certain themes only—they win because they vary these fundamental themes as much as they can and still remain within the limits of ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... strange how the cat family resembled human beings, for it was the young cats, Puffy and Pinkie and Fitz and Corbett, who got used to the automobiles first, and ceased to run at their approach. Youth is ever progressive and adaptable, while poor old Mitnick crouched in the fork of a high pine, and glared with her yellow eyes and waved her great tail in furious revolt at those puffing, snorting monsters which she never could abide anyway,—and she was glad ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... they could be induced not to say most of the things they did say when in her presence, he felt that his house, of all houses in America, should be offered them as a refuge whenever they were in need of one. But his mother was not, he feared, very adaptable. In her house—it was legally his, but it never felt as if it were—people adapted themselves to her. He doubted whether the twins could or would. Their leading characteristic, he had observed, was candour. They had no savoir faire. They seemed incapable of anything but naturalness, ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... ordering the course of society. But after the turmoil of the fourth century had subsided, when governments began again to approach more nearly to peace and consequently to justice, and public life once more to be attractive to decent men, both philosophies showed themselves adaptable to the needs of prosperity as well as adversity. Many kings and great Roman governors professed Stoicism. It held before them the ideal of universal Brotherhood, and of duty to the 'Great Society of Gods and Men'; it enabled them to ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... seemed suddenly a thing of forms and sham And I don't want to be forgiven At my age one expects no more than one gets! Avoided discussion on matters where he might hurt others Conquests leading to defeats, defeats to conquests Could not as yet disagree with suavity Cunning, the astute, the adaptable, will ever rule in times of peace Daddy's a darling; but I don't always believe what he believes Depressing to think that I would go on living after death Difficult for a good man to see the evil round him Efforts to eliminate instinct ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... suffer perhaps more severely than any others. The Society of Jews will, moreover, busy itself from the outset with their training as artisans. Their love of gain will be encouraged in a healthy manner. Jews are of a thrifty and adaptable disposition, and are qualified for any means of earning a living, and it will therefore suffice to make small trading unremunerative, to cause even present peddlers to give it up altogether. This could be brought ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... matters, but Piers' interest remained keen. It seemed that all his vitality had reawakened at the coming of this slow-speaking man who had looked so long upon the wide spaces of the earth that his vision seemed scarcely adaptable to lesser things. There was that in his personality that caught Piers' fancy irresistibly. Perhaps it was his utter calmness, his unvarying, rock-like strength. Perhaps it was just the good fellowship that looked out of the steady eyes and sounded in every tone of the leisurely voice. Whatever the ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... in adopting a standard, namely, the tension between a very highly defined standard that is very interchangeable but does not work for everyone because something is lacking, and a standard that is less defined, more open, more adaptable, but less interchangeable. Contending that the way in which people use SGML is not sufficiently defined, BESSER wondered 1) if people resist the TEI because they think it is too defined in certain things they do not fit ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... you," said the colonel, who was adaptable, and who saw at once that Jarvis was a man of high character. "It's cool on the river and that coffee will ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... laws rule the kingdom of Art, and whose government seems a trifle erratic to those who live outside the charmed circle. Students of {33} music, painting, sculpture, and the drama have a code of Etiquette that may be called adaptable; but it does not follow that because a man is an artist he must therefore be deficient in courtesy to women; nor is it yet inevitable that when a girl develops a talent for drawing she should violate ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... is well known. At the end of a pleasant evening when there had been music—in which James himself was the first connoisseur in Scotland, inventing, some say, the national lilt, the rapidly rising and falling strain which is so full of pathos yet so adaptable to mirth—"and other honest solaces of grete pleasance and disport," the sound of trampling feet and angry voices broke upon the conventual stillness outside and the cheerful talk of the friendly group within. The King was taken at a disadvantage, apparently without even a gentleman of his Court ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... fact of his short service in a distant part of the fur country, left him free from prejudice, gave him an open mind, and permitted him to serve as a young man when he was yet plastic and adaptable—all this ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... became evident that public and private interests in the railroads were so divergent, it still was not easy to determine how the public was to be safeguarded. At first, some general conditions such as maximum rates were inserted in the laws and charters; but these were not adaptable to changing conditions and, for lack of administrative agents, could not be enforced. Some early efforts at state ownership were disastrous. The old law of common carriers gave to individual shippers an uncertain ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... were only on I'd take the risk," she thought; but the lights were not on and it was necessary to pass into the dark interior and into a darker bath-room—a room which is notoriously adaptable for murder—before she could ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... "Mankind is inherently an adaptable animal. If we are to colonize the planets of the Solar System, we must meet the conditions on those planets as best ...
— The Man Who Hated Mars • Gordon Randall Garrett
... only by the metrical repose that stamps the caste of Vere de Vere. Given a few months in New York or Paris, and Mindanao's future Sultana would bloom like a rose in manners and millinery, for, despite her reserve, she is adaptable and what ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... my dear, a man's heart is an adaptable commodity! He 'gives it,' as you say, many times over in the course of his life. He is far more likely to love a wife whose money brings him ease and comfort, than one for whose pretty face ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a class, Uncle Laurence, and fortunately I am not in bondage to luxurious ease," Bessie said. "But I will not be perverse. Changes come without seeking, and I am of an adaptable disposition. The other day I was supposed to be a great heiress—to-day I have no more than a ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... often seen wives of American statesmen and ministers, fresh from the far West, beginning their career in Washington, quite bewildered by the novelty of everything and utterly ignorant of all questions of etiquette—only he said the American women were far more adaptable than either French or English—or than any others in the world, in fact. He also said that day, and I have heard him repeat it once or twice since, that he had never met ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... it extremely easy for the American manufacturer to turn it out either as a left-handed or a right-handed car, and so adapt it either to the Continental or to the British rule of the road. No English cars were so adaptable. We British suffered much from our insular rule of the road, just as we suffered much from our insular weights and measures. But we took a perverse pride in such disadvantages. The irruption of American cars into England was a recent phenomenon, it was another triumph ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... extraordinarily quick," he was saying, "the most adaptable people since the ancient Greeks, whom they resemble in some ways. But they are more superficial. The intellect races on ahead, but the heart lingers ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... unrelated, we distrust the man; if they are too inflexibly on one track we find him arid, stubborn, or eccentric. In the repertory of characters, meager for the isolated and the self-sufficient, highly varied for the adaptable, there is a whole range of selves, from that one at the top which we should wish God to see, to those at the bottom that we ourselves do not dare to see. There may be octaves for the family,—father, Jehovah, tyrant,—husband, proprietor, male,—lover, lecher,—for the occupation,—employer, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... between punishments and offences,' gives twelve rules. The punishment, he urges, must outweigh the profit of the offence; it must be such as to make a man prefer a less offence to a greater—simple theft, for example, to violent robbery; it must be such that the punishment must be adaptable to the varying sensibility of the offender; it must be greater in 'value' as it falls short of certainty; and, when the offence indicates a habit, it must outweigh not only the profit of the particular offence, but of the undetected offences. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... each section preserves its native dress, customs and religious habits. After spending some time at Singapore he moved from place to place, but finally decided upon making Ternate his head-quarters, as he discovered a comfortable bungalow, not too large, and adaptable in every way as a place in which to collect and prepare his specimens between the many excursions to other parts of the Archipelago. The name is now indelibly associated with that particular visit which ended ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... has subsided, when the honeymoon of marriage, or of a free union, has passed. Then only is it possible to see if what remains is true love, indifference, hatred or a mixture of these three sentiments, capable or not of becoming more or less adaptable and tolerable. This is why sudden amours are always dangerous, and why only long and profound mutual acquaintance before marriage can lead to a happy and ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... the unwelcome and anguished present, the future that was nothing but a series of blank pages which he had yet to turn in God only knew what bitterness and sorrow. That was the way he gloomily put it to himself. He had still to learn what an adaptable, resilient organism man is. This, his first tentative brush with life, with the realities of pain and passion, had left him exceedingly cast down, more than a little inclined ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of the Airedales and their friends he found himself suddenly pitchforked. In spite of the oddity of the situation, and of occasional anxiety when he considered the possibility of Mr. Poodle finding him out, he was very happy. This was not quite what he had expected, but he was always adaptable. Miss Airedale was an enchanting companion. In the privacy of his bedroom he measured himself for a pair of riding breeches and wrote to his tailor in town to have them made as soon as possible. He served the little chapel assiduously, though he ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... talented—he is always a character of striking power and intensity. The ancient type of Greek does not appear in modern fiction. If he did, it would be as a subtle reasoner, perfect critic, polished man of the world, full of the intellectual and social graces, ever adaptable to circumstance, choosing his idea and never letting the idea govern him. And, in the matter of loves and hates, it was rather his maxim that one should neither hate nor love over-much, since he might some day come to hate the person he ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... and crossing which had proved so successful for the Spanish cultivators in the West Indies, the initial efforts were rewarding. The new plant (Nicotiana tabacum) proved easily naturalized and adaptable ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... naturally be drawn to a man complementary to her in character—not "opposite," as is so often said. Opposition implies antagonism, which would be the ruin of home life. The term complementary implies similarity in the main elements of character with adaptable differences. Good qualities, such as strength and delicacy, may complement each other, but not evil and good qualities, such as brutality and tenderness. As Scott says in the quotation at the head of this chapter, a tender wife may suit the taste of a churlish husband, but only by not long ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... well-paid soi-disant champions of the principle defined as the "perfection of justice," who revel in a display of forensic erudition, which, however, only illustrates to the unedified lay mind how speech is adaptable to veil inward conviction, and how a mass of rhetoric can be employed to justify the breach ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... adjustment. Each bit of capital, like each workman, becomes, as it were, a specialist. It may take the shape of an instrument which is capable of performing only its one service, like the loom, which is capable of doing nothing except weaving; but even if the tool is somewhat adaptable, like a hammer which can be used in several trades, it is, as it were, stationed in one trade and held, by economic influences, at that one point in the system. The house carpenter keeps his hammer though the cabinet maker could use it. Each bit of capital helps to create a particular ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... you go for some time, little Nora. Your brother is a dear fellow; your uncle and I admire him immensely, and he is quite well educated and so adaptable; and I am sure you would be the same, my dear, when you have had the many chances which will be offered to you here. You must look upon me as your real aunt, dear, and tell me anything that you wish. Don't be shy of me, my love; I can quite ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade |
