"Line of least resistance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nerve-supply sent to them. When this great nerve-tract becomes atrophic, so that it can no longer transmit the higher physiologic orders, all parts of the sympathetic system must be unbalanced, until a new line, the next line of least resistance is established. And Robinson believes that this is the explanation of the many pathologic manifestations of every viscus at the menopause; that is, "the irritation which arises by trying to pass more nervous impulses over plexuses ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... increase of thickness in the apex of the radicle. Whether or not a radicle, when surrounded by softened earth, is aided in forming a passage for itself by circumnutating, this movement can hardly fail to be of high importance, by guiding the radicle along a line of least resistance, as will be seen in the next chapter when we treat of the sensibility of the tip to contact. If, however, a radicle in its downward growth breaks obliquely into any crevice, or a hole left by a decayed ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... electric field is in a state of tension or strain; and this strain increases along the lines of force with the electromotive force producing it until a limit is reached, when a rent or split occurs in the air along the line of least resistance—which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... the nature of creation, which, as we now know, proceeds by evolution. Evolution finds its way by experiment; and this finding of the way varies according to the stage of development reached, from the blindest groping along the line of least resistance to intellectual speculation, with its practical sequel of hypothesis and experimental verification; or to observation, induction, and deduction; or even into so rapid and intuitive an integration of all these processes ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... Imagination freely, until he is able to make a mental image or picture of the sub-conscious mind doing what is required of it. This process clears away a mental path for the feet of the sub-conscious mind, which it will choose thereafter, as it prefers to follow the line of least resistance. ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... men to move in the line of least resistance. And that any man should ever have put his safety in peril by questioning the authority of those able and ready to confiscate his property and take away his life is very strange. Such a person must belong to one of two types. He must be either a revolutionist—one who would supplant existing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... might reveal disconcerting shallows, but these little voids were but the divine hiatuses of youth. He sometimes wondered just how strong her character was. There were times when she showed a pronounced inclination for the line of least resistance ... but her youth ... her too sheltered bringing up ... those drab cramped years ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... to do this, especially when, as is often the case, that offence has to be given to people whom you love and honour for their works and character and sacrifices. In this world, however, unpleasant things have to be faced, and frequently the line of least resistance leads in the end to the greater trouble. It is even more unpleasant to have to disappoint the hopes, and discourage the desire for service, of some young aspirant whose piety and devotion you admire; but it is better to hold a man back from the very thing he longs ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... line at present was the line of least resistance. It was ten past ten, and Poppy Grace was "on" from ten ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... what appeared to be openings through the wire, but these were nothing less than man-traps which have been found serviceable in case of an enemy attack. In an assault men follow the line of least resistance when they reach the barbed wire. These apparent openings are V-shaped, with the open end toward the enemy. The attacking troops think they see a clear passageway. They rush into the trap, and when it is filled with struggling men, machine guns are turned upon them, and, ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... forces of the political mind, he turned a deaf ear to von Schoen's suasive efforts and kept the ship of state on its course, without swerving. In this way what seemed to the Berlin politicians the line of least resistance was adequately reinforced and a ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... that there is such a diversity of attractions and distractions, of temptation and amusement in the city, that unless a youth is made of unusual stuff he will yield to the persuasion of the moment and follow the line of least resistance. It is hard for the city-bred youth to resist the multiplicity of allurements and pleasures that bid for his attention, to deny himself and turn a deaf ear to the appeals of his associates and tie himself ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... accent. It is also true that there was a tendency to do away with any difficult combination of consonants. We recall in English the current pronunciations, "February," and "Calwell" for Caldwell. The average Roman in the same way was inclined to follow the line of least resistance. Sometimes, as in the two English examples just given, he avoided a difficult combination of consonants by dropping one of them. This method he followed in saying santus for sanctus, and scriserunt for scripserunt, just as in vulgar English one now and then hears "slep" ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... army of young people who become wage earners each year take up the occupations in which they engage as the result of any conscious selection of their own or of their parents. They drift into some job aimlessly and ignorantly, following the line of least resistance, driven or led by the accidents and exigencies of gaining a livelihood. They possess no accurate or comprehensive knowledge of the advantages and disadvantages of different types of wage earning occupations, and frequently take up work for which they are entirely unfitted ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... could be firmly founded on tough, recalcitrant Bulgars or warlike Turks. The Triple Alliance having closed the door to Russia on the West, there was the greater temptation to take the other alternative course—that line of least resistance which led towards Afghanistan and Manchuria. The value of an understanding with France was now clear to all. As we have seen, it guarded Russia's exposed frontier in Poland, and poured into the exchequer ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... hopeless—and Clay suspected that the clubman would prove only a broken reed as a support. The fellow was selfish to the core. He had not, in the telling Western phrase, the guts to go through. He would take the line of least resistance. ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... young advocate's heart bounded with delight at the six-weeks' future companionship of the woman whose unguarded heart had silently drifted toward him "along the line of least resistance." ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage |
