"Flaccid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... white and flaccid, like the unbaked loaves into which I had poked inquiring fingers in my childhood, and there was an unwholesome look of fear in his little bright eyes. The Baron had been badly scared, and lacked the manhood to ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... journeyings to the distant hills and too weary to return. At the spring-hole at Carrizo they found them gathered, the runts and roughs of the range; old cows with importunate calves bunting at their flaccid udders; young heifers, unused to rustling for two; orehannas with no mothers to guide them to the feed; rough steers that had been "busted" and half-crippled by some reckless cowboy—all the unfortunate and incapable ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... six, after I had consumed two cigars and all but fallen asleep. Three years make a difference in most men, but I was not prepared for the change in Lawson. For one thing, he had grown fat. In place of the lean young man I had known, I saw a heavy, flaccid being, who shuffled in his gait, and seemed tired and listless. His sunburn had gone, and his face was as pasty as a city clerk's. He had been walking, and wore shapeless flannel clothes, which hung loose even on his ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... buried treasure replaced by a stone, the poet whose greatest work has perished in the flames, have not a more desolate air. The blood left her countenance, and it became as of marble; her arms fell by her side, as if their muscles had become flaccid; and she leant against a pillar, for her limbs refused to support her. As for me, with a livid face bathed as if in the dews of death, I bent my tottering steps towards the church door. The air seemed to stifle me, the vaulted roof settled on my shoulders, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... never came. And always was the air hot and dry, and the wind, when it blew, was as a breath from the mouth of a volcano. The grass, withered and brown, fell away into dust; the leaves hung limp and flaccid on the trees; the cultivation areas of the selections were parched and dismal; and to add to the tribulation of the selectors, swarms of grasshoppers were abroad, swooping down in clouds, made up of myriads, upon everything that was green or bore the semblance ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... his knuckles into the corners of his eyes, emitting that snore final and querulous of a middle-aged man awakened rudely. With a gesture brusque but flaccid he plucked aside the net and peered around. The bales of cotton cloth, the beads, the brass wire, the bottles of rum, had not been spirited away in the night. So far so good. The faithful servant of his employers was now at liberty to care for his own interests. He regarded ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... flaccid legs just able to move in turn, Melchard was guided to a bench some way down the platform, and seated between two bolstering forms to which ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... tourist's experience. In the difference between this London and that you fully realize the moral and physical magnitude of the season. The earlier London throbbed to bursting with the tide of manifold life, the later London lies gaunt, hollow, flaccid, and as if spent by the mere sense of what it has been through. The change is almost incredible, and the like of it is nowhere to be witnessed with us. It seems a sort of bluff to say that a city which still holds ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... be criticised, perhaps punished. Up to now, therefore, it has been a most successful policy; but the danger is before us. My own feeling would decidedly be that all would be spoiled by a single execution. The great hope after all lies in the knotless, rather flaccid character of the people. These are no Maoris. All the powers that Cedarcrantz let go by disuse the new C. J. is stealthily and boldly taking back again; perhaps some others also. He has shamed the chiefs in Mulinuu into a law against ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his wife came out of the ladies' dressing-room. His aunts were two small, plainly dressed old women. Aunt Julia was an inch or so the taller. Her hair, drawn low over the tops of her ears, was grey; and grey also, with darker shadows, was her large flaccid face. Though she was stout in build and stood erect, her slow eyes and parted lips gave her the appearance of a woman who did not know where she was or where she was going. Aunt Kate was more vivacious. Her face, healthier than her sister's, was all ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... Countess suffered from sleeplessness. Having undressed, she seated herself at the window in a Voltaire armchair, and dismissed her maids. The candles were taken away, and once more the room was left with only one lamp burning in it. The Countess sat there looking quite yellow, mumbling with her flaccid lips and swaying to and fro. Her dull eyes expressed complete vacancy of mind, and, looking at her, one would have thought that the rocking of her body was not a voluntary action of her own, but was produced by the action ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... Roses all their glory yield To crown the Votary of Love and Joy, Misfortune's Victim hails, with many a sigh, Thee, scarlet POPPY of the pathless field, Gaudy, yet wild and lone; no leaf to shield Thy flaccid vest, that, as the gale blows high, Flaps, and alternate folds around thy head.— So stands in the long grass a love-craz'd Maid, Smiling aghast; while stream to every wind Her gairish ribbons, smear'd with ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... wild-eyed, gazing at the most horrible, the most abominable sight: a woman's body, half-dressed, bent in two in the safe, crammed in, like an over-large parcel ... and fair hair hanging down ... and blood ... clots of blood ... and livid flesh, blue in places, decomposing, flaccid. ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... far as the external muscles of this part of the body are concerned. But the more valuable gain will be in the strength of the organs themselves. These organs are partly muscular in character, and they are firm and strong, or soft and flaccid, in accordance with the intelligent consideration that they receive and the amount ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... disease. The lungs were healthy, but slightly congested. On opening the thorax there was a faint spirituous odour discernible. The stomach contained about a pint of completely digested food. The heart was flaccid. The right-heart contained a considerable quantity of dark, fluid blood. There was a tendency to fatty degeneration ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... be described as a succession of short and unwieldy jumps, which, as he was a rather stout gentleman, appeared to indicate some very urgent and pressing need for hurry. His face was bathed in perspiration, and his collar had become flaccid and shapeless from the same cause. It appeared to Tom, as he gazed at those rubicund, though anxious, features, that they should be well known to him. That glossy hat, those speckless gaiters, and the long frock-coat, surely they could belong to none other than the gallant ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dribble Courses down my sweltered form, I am basking like a sybil, Lazy, languorous and warm. I am unambitious, flaccid, Well content to drowse and dream: How I hate life's bitter acid— Leave me here to stew and steam. Underneath this jet so torrid I forget the world's sad wrath: O activity is horrid! Leave me in ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... soft hands and neat finger-nails, the carefully trimmed hair, were sufficient indications of a kind of luxury. The animalism of the man, however, had developed so early in life that it had obliterated all strong markings of character. The flaccid, rather fleshy features were those of the sensual, prodigal young American, who haunts hotels. Clean shaven and well dressed, the fellow would be indistinguishable from the thousands of overfed and overdrunk young business men, to be seen every day in the vulgar luxury of Pullman cars, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... long, or be too profuse. It induces a feeble pulse, cold extremities, weak respiration, general debility, and may occur in opposite states of the system, i.e., in women who have a plethoric and robust habit, or in those of flaccid muscles and bloodless features. When the menstrual discharge is natural, it is so gradual that by mixing with the vaginal secretions it is prevented from coagulating, while in this disease, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... bodily enervation, when, from one end of life to the other, such multitudes never taste the sweet weariness that follows accustomed toil. I seldom saw the new enthusiasm that did not grow as flimsy and flaccid as the proselyte's moistened shirt-collar, with a quarter of an hour's active ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Paresi followed Ives' flaccid, shocked gaze to the bulkhead where there had been the outline of the closed port, and beside it the hole which had held the axle of the manual wheel, and which now was a smooth, seamless curtain ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... flaccid, her hands loose on her lap. She felt incapable of movement, but Charles was speaking to her, telling her to get out and run home quickly. She looked at him. She was holding his friendly hand. What would she have done ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... be the Lord Chamberlain, or Doctor Praetorius at least, walked into the studio, where the perfumer was seated in a very glossy old silk dressing-gown, his fair hair hanging over his white face, his double chin over his flaccid whity-brown shirt-collar, his pea-green slippers on the hob, and on the fire the pot of chocolate which was simmering for his breakfast. A lazier fellow than poor Eglantine it would be hard to find; whereas, on the contrary, Woolsey was always up and brushed, ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... firstly, because she would have nearly two thousand pounds a year on the death of her parents; and, secondly, because she was a capable person with plenty of common-sense. These two adjuncts—namely, money and common-sense—Mrs. Agar wisely looked for in candidates for the flaccid hand ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... thoroughly infirm piece of writing—a second rate magazine story. One concludes at once that the author himself does not believe in it. "The Inheritors" is worse; it becomes, after the first few pages, a flaccid artificiality, a bore. It is impossible to imagine the chief characters of the Conrad gallery in such scenes. Think of Captain MacWhirr reacting to social tradition, Lord Jim immersed in the class war, Lena Hermann seduced by the fashions, Almayer ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... hole in the wall. He made out the flaccid form of Farley, outstretched upon the stone floor in a drunken stupor. The man evidently had been on the verge of unconsciousness when he leered through the hole. The chance was slight that he would ever remember anything of what he had seen ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... I would not bother him any more just now," Saxham interposed, noting the droop of the piteous, flaccid mouth, and feeling the flutter of the uneven pulse. The Mayor's wife broke into helpless sobbing. The Mother-Superior drew her swiftly out of the sick child's hearing and sight. And a shadow fell upon the thin light coverlet, and a ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... all aware, that the outward garments of a domestic deity will be a little scorched; and when this occurs, the man who is the interloper, will generally find a gentle consolation in his position, let its interest be ever so flaccid and unreal, and its troubles in running about, and the like, ever so ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... said, with a kind and even very cordial smile, and heartily shook the flaccid, rheumatic hand that was primly held out to her. And yet in spite of herself, perhaps unknown to herself, there was in her tone and her smile and her vigorous clasp something which meant, "Poor ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... by a visible effort. "Is it ... is it worth while?" she asked, regarding the flaccid, tumbled, wax-like thing, with its bloated, white globe of a skull. Every muscle of it was relaxed and limp, its eyes shut, its tiny jaw hanging. "Wouldn't it be ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... in its flaccid state varies considerably in size, due not only to varying conditions of temperature but also to individual peculiarities. The organ may vary between 2-1/2 inches and 6 inches in length in the flaccid state and between 5 inches and 8 inches in the erected condition. ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... Carlyle's; "general utility" was a favourite of "that old stager the devil."[145] Yet no critic of intellect ever used intellect more vigorously, and no preacher of the rights of the heart ever dealt less in flaccid sentiment. Browning was Paracelsus as well as Aprile, and sharply as he chose to dissever "Knowledge" and "Love," Love was for him never a foe of intellect, but a more gifted comrade who does the same work more effectively, who dives deeper, soars higher, welds more potently ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... appearing at the Opera is applauded; she returns all radiant with joy. Anon the applauses wax fainter, or threaten to cease; she is heavy of heart, the light of her face has fled. Is Sovereignty some poor Montgolfier; which, blown into by the popular wind, grows great and mounts; or sinks flaccid, if the wind be withdrawn? France was long a 'Despotism tempered by Epigrams;' and now, it would seem, the Epigrams have get the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... which women are sent at a great expense to have hired operators stretch and exercise their inactive muscles. They lie for hours to have their feet twigged, their arms flexed, and all the different muscles of the body worked for them, because they are so flaccid and torpid that the powers of life do not go on. Would it not be quite as cheerful, and a less expensive process, if young girls from early life developed the muscles in sweeping, dusting, starching, ironing, and all the multiplied domestic processes which our grandmothers knew of? A woman ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... retentiveness of memory, his accumulated weight of interested prejudice or romantic association have overlaid his other faculties. The cells of his memory are vast, various, full even to bursting with life and motion; his speculative understanding is empty, flaccid, poor, and dead. His mind receives and treasures up every thing brought to it by tradition or custom—it does not project itself beyond this into the world unknown, but mechanically shrinks back as from the edge of a prejudice. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... transforming into something quite different. The brilliant eyes became sleepy, and, from a habit of narrowing the lids over them, possibly to shut out the bright sun, receded more and more beyond the full and flaccid cheeks, and even contracted a Mongolian curve ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... of the leaf and to cure or dry it with the least delay. Hence, the leaves are not exposed to the sun, but are first dried in the air for a short time. They are next exposed to artificial heat, which renders them flaccid and pliable, and prepares them for the third operation of rolling, which twists the yielding leaf as seen in manufactured tea, rolls it up into balls, and squeezes out a considerable portion of its watery juices. It is a singular fact that in the Chinese methods, they endeavor to get rid of ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... quarts of these little figs. When a sufficient quantity is prepared, the leaves of the Etou are well wetted in it, and then laid upon a plantain leaf, where they are turned about till they become more and more flaccid, and then they are gently squeezed, gradually increasing the pressure, but so as not to break them; as the flaccidity increases, and they become spungy, they are supplied with more of the liquor; in about five minutes the colour begins to appear ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... the head forward and upward and by turning the upper lip outward. There may be more or less colicky pain. In the chronic cases there is mental depression; the horse is sluggish and dull. The abdomen gradually becomes small, giving a "tucked up" appearance, or, on the other hand, it becomes flaccid and pendulous. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... enabled truly to enjoy them; he will know that money cannot re-establish a soul worn out with enjoyment; cannot give fresh elasticity to organs enfeebled by excess; cannot give fresh tension to nerves grown flaccid by abuse; cannot invigorate a body enervated by debauchery; cannot corroborate a machine, from thenceforth become incapable of sustaining him, except by the necessity of privations; he will know that the licentiousness ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... also in boys. For example, Breschet, in the year 1820, reported the case of a boy three years of age who exhibited all the signs of puberty. His voice resembled that of a young man of sixteen to eighteen. The length of the flaccid penis was 9.6 cm. (3-3/4 inches), its diameter at the root was 7.2 cm. (2-3/4 inches); the length of the organ when erect was 13.5 cm. (5-1/4 inches). In the presence of girls or women the boy's penis became erect, his whole manner became more vivacious, and his hands were directed towards the ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... were a solvent for lies, what surprises would be in store for us! Nearly everybody who now appears to us to be upright, inflexible, and to hold his chest high, would be disclosed as a flaccid, weak person, presenting in reality a ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... exercise which eventuated in your begetting was indulged in by two whose genes and chromosomes united to produce a male rather than a female child. For think, Weener, if you had been born a woman, with what gusto would you have peddled your flaccid flesh upon the city streets and offered your miserable dogsbody to the reluctant use of undiscriminating customers. You are the paradigmatic whore, Weener, and I weep for the physiological accident which condemns you to sell your servility rather than your vulva. Ah, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... in the envelope at bow and stern and the ascent and descent of the ship was regulated by the quantity of air pumped into these. A most curious device was the utilization of heavy cloth for the propeller blades. Limp and flaccid when at rest, heavy weights in the hem of the cloth caused these blades to stand out stiff and rigid as the result of the centrifugal force created by their rapid revolution. One great military advantage of the Parseval was that she could be quickly deflated in the presence ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... silver-framed portrait and placed it in the flaccid hand. The fingers closed over it. The filmiest wraith of a smile played about the ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... was one of those rare hours in which the deep confessed the amazing numbers of its own living and swarming constellations. Not a fish could leap or dart, not a sinuous thing could turn, but it became an animate torch. Every quick movement was a gleam of green fire. No drifting, flaccid life could pulse so softly along but it betrayed itself in lambent outlines. Each throb of the water became a beam of light, and every ripple that widened over the strand—still whispering, "I have gone ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... conquest. This was his defensive frontier; the western, the offensive wing of his campaign. These leading ideas dictated his preparations, imperfect from paucity of means, but sufficient to meet the limping, flaccid measures of the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... the eyes of this man, decrepit at the age of forty-seven; a faint color flushed his flaccid cold cheeks, his ill-furnished mouth was half open, and on his blackened lips a sort of foam gathered, thick, and as white as chalk. This fury in such a helpless wretch, whose life hung on a thread, and who in a duel would risk nothing while Crevel had everything ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... to know a woman's age, look at her temples and the tip of her nose. Whatever women may achieve with their cosmetics, they can do nothing against those incorruptible witnesses to their experiences. There each year of life has left its stigmata. When a woman's temples are flaccid, seamed, withered in a particular way; when at the tip of her nose you see those minute specks, which look like the imperceptible black smuts which are shed in London by the chimneys in which coal is burnt.... Your servant, ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... of Stockbridge—those reverend forms finishing their long journey at the feet of the poor exiled missionary. When their errand was announced, he burst into tears, overcome by a sense of unworthiness, and in a subsequent letter he confirms his unfitness by reference to his 'flaccid solids and weak and sizy fluids.' But the demand was pressed, and Northampton learns with astonishment the exaltation of her banished pastor. The successful deputation possessed one member of rare interest. This was John Brainerd, who had ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... over and over again on a scratched phonograph record, talking in the voice that is a composite of a dozen voices; a fat man comfortable on a club lounge laying down the law as if he were carefully smearing the shine out of something brilliant with a flaccid heavy finger; a thin sour woman telling children playing together "don't, don't, don't," in the whine of a ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... William and Joe Bullitt, designed to express cordiality, suddenly became flaccid and died. If Mr. Crooper had been a sensitive person he might have perceived the chilling disapproval in their glances, for they had just begun to be most unfavorably impressed with him. The careless loudness—almost the notoriety—with which he had uttered Miss Pratt's name, demanding loosely ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... was lying motionless on the bed. I shook him by the shoulder. It seemed impossible to rouse him, and yet in outward appearance he seemed only lightly asleep. I redoubled my efforts and at length he opened his eyes, and his whole body, which had felt under my hands as limp and flaccid as a pillow, suddenly seemed to tighten up ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... muscles. If it is so, the animal is a hard grazer, a difficult and obstinate feeder—no skillful man will purchase it—such a creature must go to a novice, and even to him at a price so low as to tempt him to become a purchaser. On the other hand, the skin must not be thin, like paper, nor flaccid, nor loose in the hand, nor flabby. This is the opposite extreme, and is indicative of delicateness, bad, flabby flesh, and, possibly, of inaptitude to retain the fat. It must be elastic and velvety, soft and pliable, presenting to the ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... in different keys, their flaccid bodies stiffened into upright eagerness— Gold in ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... at first, came no thought at all merely a dumb sense of unreasoning terror under which his muscles went flaccid, and out of control, so that his body shrank limp and heavy against its backing ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... bottle did not contain aguardiente, but had lately been filled in a tavern near Tres Pinos by an Irishman who sold had American whisky under that pleasing Castilian title. Nevertheless Concho had already nearly emptied the bottle, and it fell back against the saddle as yellow and flaccid as his own cheeks. Thus reinforced Concho turned to look at the valley behind him, from which he had climbed since noon. It was a sterile waste bordered here and there by arable fringes and valdas of meadow land, but in the main, dusty, dry, and forbidding. His eye rested for a moment on ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... afraid, a large, corpulent man, of a loose and heavy build, with a flaccid face and bright little inexpressive eyes like a bird's, sat on a bench within the glow of ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... second place, the question is not simply a question of bulk, but also a question of quality. A soft, flabby flesh makes as good a show as a firm one; but though to the careless eye, a child of full, flaccid tissue may appear the equal of one whose fibres are well toned, a trial of strength will prove the difference. Obesity in adults is often a sign of feebleness. Men lose weight in training. Hence the appearance of these low-fed children is far from conclusive. In the third place, besides size, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... "And in his arms now cherishes, now wipes "The fatal wound, now stays his fleeting breath, "With herbs apply'd; but all his arts are vain; "Incurable the hurt. Just so, when broke, "The violet, poppy, or the lily hang, "Whose dark stems in a water'd garden spring; "Flaccid they instant droop; the weighty head "No longer upright rais'd, but bent to earth. "So bent his dying face; his neck, bereft "Of vigor, heavy on his shoulder laid. "Phoebus exclaim'd;—Fall'st ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... itself from his heart. It was all so wonderful; all so incredible. Long contact with misfortune had sapped the natural resiliency of his character. It had been subjected to so much pressure that it had become flaccid. The pressure removed, it would be some time before the heart could act upon the message of good tidings the brain had conveyed to it. For a long time he remained silent. And Drake respected his silence to the letter. ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... of the bunk. He felt weak and shaky but resentment energized his flaccid muscles. He took a ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... atmosphere. I have found dullness to quicken into sentiment in a thin ether, as water, though not very hot, boils in a receiver partly exhausted; and heads, in appearance empty, have teemed with notions upon rising ground, as the flaccid sides of a football would have swelled ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... very rarely required, and has as yet been performed only for the removal of foreign bodies impacted in the oesophagus, and interfering with respiration and deglutition. To cut upon the flaccid empty oesophagus in the living body would be an extremely difficult and dangerous operation, from the manner in which it lies concealed behind the larynx, and in close contact with the great vessels. When it is distended by a foreign body, and specially if the foreign body has well-marked angles, ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... Cahirciveen, and thence towards Killorglin, is harrowing and startling. The whole potato crop is literally destroyed, while over a very wide surface the oat crop presents an unnatural lilac tinge to the eye; at the same time, in too many instances, the head is found flaccid to the touch, and possessing no substance. The barley crop, too, in many places, exhibits the effect of a powerful blight. In some places, also, where turnips have been grown, they present—as, indeed, has been the case in other parts of the county—a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Next day, however, they visited the Secretary again, and found him more dismal and flaccid ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hate, him vile that was their garland,' they did not transfer their affections without sound reason. Barnave's sensibility was too easily touched. There are many politicians in every epoch whose principles grow slack and flaccid at the approach of the golden sun of royalty. Barnave was one of those who was sent to bring back the fugitive King and Queen from Varennes, and the journey by their side in the coach unstrung his spirit. He became one of the court's clandestine ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... OF THE ABDOMEN.—This is very characteristic of pregnancy. When a lady is not pregnant the abdomen is soft and flaccid; when she is pregnant, and after she has quickened, the abdomen; over the region of the ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... from the table, a movement that presumably indicated a kind of consciousness. He then returned to the subject immediately under observation, pinched its foot again, the frog again "resenting the stimulation." He then thrust a needle down the spinal cord. "The limbs are now flaccid," observed the experimenter; "we may wait as long as we please, but a pinch of the toes will never again cause the limbs of this animal to move." Here is where congratulations can come in for la grenouille. That frog being concluded, the ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... an antique Roman tragedy. But there was not moral force in the protagonist to render that act salutary, not public energy sufficient in his fellow-citizens to accomplish his drama of deliverance. Lorenzo was corrupt. Florence was flaccid. Evil manners had emasculated the hero. In the state the last spark of independence had ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... woman continued staring at her; she was mildly stupid, except for an over-developed curiosity which made her at times sharp beyond belief. Her eyes glittered, red spots came on her flaccid cheeks; she kept opening her mouth to speak, making little abortive motions. Finally she could endure it no ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... discovered the bag sloped upward, and there were signs that their quarry found the ground harder to cover. The second discard lay in open sight—again a leather bag which Nalik'ideyu sniffed and then began to lick eagerly, thrusting her nose into its flaccid interior. ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... can, when adopting the straddling posture of coitus, by the movements of their own vaginal muscles alone, grasp the male organ and cause ejaculation, although the man remains passive. According to Lorion the Annamites, adopting the normal posture of coitus, introduce the penis when flaccid or only half erect, the contraction of the vaginal walls completing the process; the penis is very small in this people. It is recognized by gynaecologists that the condition of vaginismus, in which there is spasmodic contraction of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... that the woman in the doorway had relaxed her frozen immobility and was between Paul and me as we rubbed the thin, icy hands and forced brandy between the flaccid lips. We all three thought her dead or dying, and labored over her with the frightened thankfulness for one another's living presence which always marks that dreadful moment. But even as we fanned and rubbed, and cried out to one another ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... livid, with flat nose, prominent forehead, and long, long lashes; the mouth was half open, with thick lips which were turning blue, between which the widely spaced teeth gleamed white. His neck was slender, flaccid as a wilted stem, and seamed with tiny creases. The jointure of the arms at the shoulder looked feeble. The arms themselves were fragile, and covered with a down similar to the fine plumage which clothes the bodies of newly hatched birds. The whole ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... that the monumental series of works by the Webbs came into existence. Wallas's Life of Francis Place shows his power of reconstructing a popular agitation with a realism which leaves the conventional imaginary version of it punctured and flaccid; and it was by doing the same for the Chartist movement that he left ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... with semiparalysis. A Cetonia-grub, pricked away from the centre on a level with the fore-legs, has her right side flaccid, spread out, incapable of contracting, while the left side swells, wrinkles and contracts. Since the left half no longer receives the symmetrical cooperation of the right half, the grub, instead of curling into the normal volute, closes its spiral on one side ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... in the bank cashier rose out of his panic to destroy him. He wanted to lie down quietly in a faint. But his mind asserted its mastery over the weakling body. In spite of his terror, of his flaccid will, he had to keep the faith. He was guardian of the bank funds. At all costs he must ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... reached the summit it was quite full and swollen, as if fresh air had been blown into it; or what is the same thing, it swelled in proportion as the weight of the column of air which pressed upon it diminished. When again brought down, it became more and more flaccid, and, when it reached the bottom, it resumed its original condition. In the nine chapters of which the treatise consists, he shows that all the phenomena or effects hitherto ascribed to the horror of a vacuum, arise from the weight of the mass of air; ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... had escaped his creditors only by becoming tribune. "Behold him," Cicero said, "as he appeared when consul at a meeting called by the arch-thief Clodius, full of wine, and sleep, and fornication, his hair moist, his eyes heavy, his cheeks flaccid, and declaring, with a voice thick with drink, that he disapproved of putting citizens to death without trial." [8] As to Piso, his best recommendation was a cunning gravity of demeanor, concealing mere vacuity. Piso knew nothing—neither law, nor rhetoric, nor war, nor his fellow-men. "His ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... is set forth in that other word. For most men have not only to work, but to bear; not only to toil, but to sorrow. There are efforts that need to be put forth, which task all our energy, and leave the muscles flaccid and feeble. And many of us have, at one and the same moment, to work and to weep, to toil whilst our hearts are beating like a forge-hammer; to labour whilst memories and thoughts that might enfeeble ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... sap, properly so called, which passes downwards through this cellular tissue, slowly and secretly; and then upwards, through the great vessels of the tree, violently, stretching out the supple twigs of it as yon see a flaccid waterpipe swell and move when the cock is turned to fill it. And the tree becomes literally a fountain, of which the springing streamlets are clothed with new-woven garments of green tissue, and of which the silver spray stays in the sky,—a spray, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... not have to work!" So might one talk Defending long, bedridden ease, Weak yielding ankles, flaccid knees, With, "I ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... meant to say that even with one's refuge in God there is nothing left to struggle with. My point is that whatever there may be to struggle with there is nothing to be afraid of. Freedom from struggle would profit us not at all. On the contrary, it would render us nerveless, flabby, flaccid, and inert. ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... the bookstall. The one, a young man, handsome and well-dressed, he did not know. The other he recognised at once. It seemed to be the same familiarly shabby black coat which he wore, the same many-stained waistcoat, the identical silk hat, ruffled and rain-spotted. The same pads of flesh hung flaccid from his jaws; the red, cracked knuckles of his hands, well remembered, were enormous still. Only the furrows on the face seemed to be ploughed deeper and wider, and a few more stiff hairs curled over the general bushiness ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... This goodly promontory, the earth—particularly that portion of it known as Quicksand—was to him no more than a pestilent congregation of vapours. Overtaken by the megrims, the philosopher may seek relief in soliloquy; my lady find solace in tears; the flaccid Easterner scold at the millinery bills of his women folk. Such recourse was insufficient to the denizens of Quicksand. Calliope, especially, was wont to express his ennui according ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... as it was, was pale green and thin, lacking in warmth and vitality. The vegetation was flaccid and nearly colorless, more like a mushroom growth than anything else; and the inhabitants were ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... a day of queer experiences. He had never before realized with how many miracles mere everyday life is besieged. Here in this small punctilious packet lay a Sesame—a power of transformation beside which the transformation of that rather flaccid face of the noonday into this tense, sinister face of midnight was but as a moving from house to house—a change just as irrevocable and complete, and yet so very normal. Which should it be, that, or—his face lifted itself once ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... a love which, though not turned away by any sin, is witnessed by that death to be rigidly righteous. It is no mere flaccid, flabby laxity of a loose-girt affection, no mere foolish indulgence like that whereby earthly parents spoil their children. God's love is not lazy good-nature, as a great many of us think it to be and so drag it in the mud, but it is rigidly righteous, and therefore Christ died. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Pumblechook, leaning back in his chair, quite flaccid with admiration, "that's the way you know 'em, sir!" (I don't know who Sir was, but he certainly was not I, and there was no third person present); "that's the way you know the noble-minded, sir! Ever forgiving and ever affable. It might," said the servile Pumblechook, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... next morning five of them were found much browned. The plant was a large one, and none of the free leaves, which were asleep and depended vertically, were browned, excepting four very young ones. But three other leaves, though not browned, were in a rather flaccid condition, and retained their nocturnal position during the whole of the following day. In this case it was obvious that the leaves which were exposed horizontally to the zenith suffered most. This same pot was afterwards exposed for 35 - 40 m. on a slightly colder night, ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... members gained in parliamentary power, one section of the Liberal party after another giving them encouragement—in the first place because they were troublesome to a Tory Ministry, in the second because the flaccid thought of modern Liberalism made them welcome any organization, which would save them the trouble of facing the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... secure; compact, solid, dense, compressed; fixed, resolute, constant, unwavering, unshaken, steadfast, stanch, determined, invincible, inflexible, incompliant. Antonyms: flaccid, soft, vacillating, irresolute, lax, yielding, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... deposited his plump body on the extreme edge of a chair. It was easy to see that he was much depressed—his usually rosy cheeks hung flaccid, his mustachios drooped limply, his little black eyes were suffused and needed frequent wiping—a service performed by a hand that ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... movements then become slower and rarer, the pauses longer, by which it is made much more easy to perceive and unravel what the motions really are, and how they are performed. In the pause, as in death, the heart is soft, flaccid, exhausted, lying, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... somewhat savage and sybaritic nature, as I saw at once, was here disporting itself in velvets and silks. The iron hand of power, if it was power, was being most gracefully and agreeably disguised as the more or less flaccid one of pleasure ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... Light that Failed' is an organic whole—a book with a backbone—and stands out boldly among the nerveless, flaccid, invertebrate things that enjoy an expensive but ephemeral existence ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... that great light there are the two lines; the one purest white of righteousness, and the other tinged with a ruddier glow, the line of love. The one adorns and sets off the other. Love without righteousness is flaccid, a mere gush of good-natured sentiment, impotent to confer blessing, powerless to evoke reverence. Righteousness without love is as white as snow, and as cold as ice; repellent, howsoever it may excite the sentiment of awe-struck distance. But we need that the righteousness shall be loving, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... BINDER BE USED?—Medically a binder is not necessary, neither is it objectionable from a medical standpoint. It is supposed to hold the flaccid, empty womb in place. This it does not do and we are of the opinion, that it, in many instances, according to how it is put on, compresses the womb out of place. The binder is certainly appreciated by most patients because ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... ulcerated. They exhaled a breath so fetid in odour that Taillefer loathed having to administer to them such remedies as he had to give; and at one part of the voyage even his stock of drugs was depleted, so great was the demand upon his resources. Their joints became stiff, their muscles flaccid and contracted, and the utter prostration to which they were reduced made him regret that they retained so much of their intellectual faculties as to make them feel keenly the weight of despair.* (* Voyage ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... that Professor Huxley was justified in saying that Spiritualism adds a new terror to death. Fancy the awful depth of flaccid imbecility into which Charles Bradlaugh must have fallen, to indulge in "ohs," and gasp out "glorious," "glorious," and talk of his "subdued" and "bewildered" mind, and bid himself be "a man." It was not thus that he spoke in the flesh. His language was ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... Hymenomycetes, a circumstance which accords well with the fleshy habit and mode of growth. There is some difficulty in ascertaining the exact structure of the species just noticed, as the fruit-bearing cells, or sporophores, are very small, and when the spicules are developed the substance becomes so flaccid that it is difficult to cut a proper slice, even with the sharpest lancet. I have, however, satisfied myself as to the true structure by repeated observations. But should any difficulty arise in verifying it in the species in question, there will be ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke |
