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Hardness   Listen
noun
Hardness  n.  
1.
The quality or state of being hard, literally or figuratively. "The habit of authority also had given his manners some peremptory hardness."
2.
(Min.) The cohesion of the particles on the surface of a body, determined by its capacity to scratch another, or be itself scratched; measured among minerals on a scale of which diamond and talc form the extremes.
3.
(Chem.) The peculiar quality exhibited by water which has mineral salts dissolved in it. Such water forms an insoluble compound with soap, and is hence unfit for washing purposes. Note: This quality is caused by the presence of calcium carbonate, causing temporary hardness which can be removed by boiling, or by calcium sulphate, causing permanent hardness which can not be so removed, but may be improved by the addition of sodium carbonate.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hardness" Quotes from Famous Books



... defection of his son. Nor did the rolling years soften the sting of loss. Rather, as, little by little, the mantle of loneliness was drawn closer and closer about him, muffling him at last even from contact with the companions of his relaxation and license, the hardness and the bitterness in him increased, till something of it was surmised even by the jackals that served him. Still, of the processes of that strange nature, no one in the world knew much. His high position, held against all rivals by power of fear, naturally ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... very naturally gravitate toward any one presenting Pollen's appearance of security; his attitude of complacence in the face of feminine authority. But was he complacent? Mrs. Ennis had her doubts. He was very vain; underneath his urbanity there might be an elastic hardness. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... can understand and approach, sends you the sensible world directly, and you confirm the latter and back it up by his divine authority. Berkeley's criticism of 'matter' was consequently absolutely pragmatistic. Matter is known as our sensations of colour, figure, hardness and the like. They are the cash-value of the term. The difference matter makes to us by truly being is that we then get such sensations; by not being, is that we lack them. These sensations then are ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... of a voltmeter needle showed how firmly the substance resisted the claw's touch, thus indicating its hardness or softness. ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton

... with realities Faith dislikes being meddled with Fear of open discussion implies feebleness Genius Good many coarse people in both callings Happy to agree with all their beliefs, if that were possible Hardness in surgeons, just as there is in theologians Hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors Humility is the first of the virtues—for other people I can't afford to pay quite so much as that even for peace I will not die with a lie rattling in my throat ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger

... himself that he thinks; and that which his mind is applied about whilst thinking being the IDEAS that are there, it is past doubt that men have in their minds several ideas,—such as are those expressed by the words whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness, and others: it is in the first place then to be inquired, HOW HE ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... particles of earth cling to their native element, and you more easily detach a small portion than a large. There would be the same difficulty in moving any of the upper elements towards the lower. The smooth and the rough are severally produced by the union of evenness with compactness, and of hardness with inequality. ...
— Timaeus • Plato

... that from the first she knew herself incapable of it. But to take the only other course open to her, to betray her husband and rob him of that, the loss of which might ruin him, this needed not courage only, not devotion only, but a hardness proof against reproaches as well as against punishment. And the Countess was no fanatic. No haze of bigotry glorified the thing she contemplated, or dressed it in colours other than its own. Even while she acknowledged the necessity of the act and its ultimate righteousness, even while ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... September and May, caused by rains in the mountains and the melting snow, and a rise of twelve feet in three or four hours is by no means uncommon. As a source of communication it might be invaluable to the province, but in its present state it is perfectly useless, since the hardness of its waters renders it unfit for irrigation. It has many tributary streams, amongst the most important of which are the Boona, Bregava, Rama, Radopolie, ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... performed, there was nothing whatever in her bearing which showed a disturbed mind: her gray-brown eyes carried in them now as at other times the well-known expression of common-sensed rectitude which never went so far as to touch on hardness. She shook hands with him, and Downe said warmly, 'I wish you could have come sooner: I called on purpose to ask you. You'll ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... not had a happy life," said he, very gently, and the simplicity and kindness of his manner smote upon her stormy countenance, so that it melted and all the ugly hardness and ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... the Kyrkegrim, "of that which is the last result of sin, the worst of deaths, and the beginning of judgment—hardness of heart." ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... the man know about it? If his joints were aching and helpless with the "hardness," he would not think the weather so "glad"; if the "beat of the sea" made every nerve of him quiver with the agony of salt-water cracks, I reckon he would want to go home to his bath and bed; and if the ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... them, on which the man, turning suddenly from mirth to wrath, began to belabor her with his cudgel. Alleyne hastened on, lest he make more mischief, and his heart was heavy as lead within him. Look where he would, he seemed to see nothing but injustice and violence and the hardness of man ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... murdering villains—no, not one of them! Gnaw, little Peter, gnaw hard and fast; and care not if thee wounds me with thee teeth; for, truly, I will forgive thee, even if thee bites me to the bone. Faster, Peter, faster! Does thee boggle at the skin, because of its hardness? Truly, I have seen thee a hungered, Peter, when thee would have cracked it like a marrow-bone! Fast, Peter, fast; and thee shall see me ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... character among the tribe. I have the man in my eye at this moment. It is not long since I paid him a visit to see a great historical composition, which I had been requested to look at. It was the most miserable of all miserable daubs; yet so conspicuously set off with colours and hardness, that the eye could not escape it. It was a most determined eye-sore. The quiet, the modest demeanour of the young man at first deceived me; I ventured to find some trifling fault. The artist was up—still his manner was quiet—somewhat, in truth, contemptuously so; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... will easily mix with Water, to produce by the bare warmth of a hatching Hen, Membrans, Feathers, Tendons, and other parts, that are not dissoluble in Water as that Liquid Substance was: Nor is the Hardness and Brittleness of Salt more difficult for Nature to introduce into such a yielding body as Water, then it is for her to make the Bones of a Chick out of the tender Substance of the Liquors of an Egg. But instead ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... to become of preachers if, after they had threatened destruction upon evil-doers, the Most High went back upon them thus? The later breed of Jonahs may profitably study the after scene, in which God is made to rebuke the frightful selfishness and hardness which, rather than have one's theories belied, would have ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... exported specially from Normandy—a country which sent out many buccaneers, whose phrases still linger in the Norman patois. For powder flask they used a hollow gourd, which was first dried in the sun. When it had dried to a fitting hardness it was covered with cuir-bouilli, or boiled leather, which made it watertight. A pointed stopper secured the mouth, and made a sort of handle to the whole, by which it could be secured to the strap which the hunter ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... perfect wisdom, and infinite goodness of God. The advocates of this doctrine point first to observation and experience, and declare that no person is totally reprobate, that every one is salvable; those most corrupt and abandoned to wickedness, unbelief, and hardness, have yet a spark that may be kindled, a fount that may be made to gush, unto the illumination and purification of the whole being. A stray word, an unknown influence, a breath of the Spirit, is continually ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... great importance to the King of the Peak. He had concluded that Thomas, the man-servant, was not the Earl of Leicester in disguise, and when the Earl of Derby again came forward with his marriage project, Sir George fell back into his old hardness toward Dorothy, and she prepared her armament, offensive and defensive, for instant use if need should arise. I again began my machinations, since I can call my double dealing by no other name. I induced Dorothy to agree to meet the earl and his ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... cover a bulletin on the subject of Almonds, and to find that not one word was said of flavor. It had to be a good cracker; but the marketable qualities did not take into consideration the question of the flavor of the kernel, its hardness or ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various

... substance that involves it. We must not stain our page with any contemporary scandal, to a similar purport, that may have been whispered against the Judge. The Puritan, again, an autocrat in his own household, had worn out three wives, and, merely by the remorseless weight and hardness of his character in the conjugal relation, had sent them, one after another, broken-hearted, to their graves. Here the parallel, in some sort, fails. The Judge had wedded but a single wife, and lost her in ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... artistically wrong. The instinct, if it was only an instinct, that made men fix upon this strange growth of grey and twisted wood, was a true imaginative instinct. One of the strange qualities of this strange Southern tree is its almost startling hardness; accidentally to strike the branch of an olive is like striking rock. With its stony surface, stunted stature, and strange holes and hollows, it is often more like a grotto than a tree. Hence it ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... Harriet the loose gowns felt decidedly comfortable. No time was lost in rolling in their blankets, which had been spread on the ground. For pillows inflated rubber bags were used. No one complained of the hardness of their beds, the little company was too sleepy. Silence soon settled over the camp, and the Meadow-Brook ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge

... as soon as godliness became profitable. Ashley Cooper, a sceptic in religion and a profligate in morals, was among "the loudest bagpipes of the squeaking train." Even amongst the really earnest Puritans prosperity disclosed a pride, a worldliness, a selfish hardness which had been hidden in the hour of persecution. What was yet more significant was the irreligious and sceptical temper of the younger generation which had grown up amidst the storms of the Civil War. The children ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... devout one asks of God that "I completely subdue my disorderly passions, powers, and senses," so "that I may subject my thoughts, measure my words, and direct my work to the greatest perfection," and "that thou mayest soften the hardness of my heart" (pp. 18, 20, and 21 of the Novena of Saint ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera

... toward her as I did, I was compelled to excuse her as best I might by attributing her hardness to an evil system now happily abolished. But the nerves in my lost arm seemed to tingle with a secret satisfaction when I thought of Clem's empty reward for his life-work and remembered that I had helped, though ever ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... worked in earnest, and never did I pass ten minutes of more intense excitement. During this interval we had fairly unearthed an oblong chest of wood, which, from its perfect preservation and wonderful hardness, had plainly been subjected to some mineralizing process—perhaps that of the bichloride of mercury. This box was three feet and a half long, three feet broad, and two and a half feet deep. It was firmly secured by bands of wrought iron, riveted, and forming a kind of trellis-work ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... with a touch of hardness. 'I have been so unhappy, that I can never be as unhappy again. Nothing matters now. All I wish is to save enough money to be able to live quietly in a little cottage ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

... enchanted, however. The eyes that played appraisingly over her pretty caller had a quality of curious hardness, of race hostility, perhaps, the antagonism of the East for the West, the Old for the New. Not all the modernity of clothes, of manners, of language, affected what Arlee felt intensely as the strange, vivid ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... is in the face of Washington; pathetic patience and divine dignity in that of Lincoln; unyielding granite is in John Brown's face, though sympathy hath tempered hardness into softness; intellect is in Newton's; pure imagination is in Keats' and in Milton's; heroic substance is in the face of Cromwell and in that of Luther; pathetic sorrow is found in Dante's eyes; conscience and love shine in the face of Fenelon. Verily, the body is the ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... round, frank eyes narrowed and hardened for a moment. A kind of metallic hardness came into his voice. Cowperwood could see that he was honestly enamoured of his adopted city. Chicago was his most beloved mistress. A moment later the flesh about his eyes crinkled, his mouth softened, and he smiled. "I'll ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... when you so treat your teachers and governors? Think you, for an instant, of the labour, the anxiety, the perpetual self-denial, the patience required by an instructor of childhood, even when the children do their best; but when deceit, hypocrisy, and hardness of heart is also added to the giddiness and thoughtlessness of youth, what must be ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood

... immediately to her practising—somewhat to Mrs. Kennedy's surprise. She practised, too, quite fifteen minutes over her hour—still more to Mrs. Kennedy's surprise. There was, also, a certain unsympathetic hardness in the chords and runs that puzzled the lady not a little; but in the face of their obvious accuracy, and of Genevieve's apparent faithfulness, Mrs. Kennedy did not ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter

... stopped him, and that gentleman spoke very plainly to him of his sin, and God's anger. The boy looked alarmed, but sulky; and I sadly fear he was hardening his young heart against the Lord. Let us pray that we may be kept from hardness of heart, and made tender to keep a conscience void of offence towards God and ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth

... bull beef, never heifer or steer, and often it is rotten, and must be treated chemically before being offered even to prisoners. It used to come on the table in gristly and bony gobbets, after having lain on the kitchen ranges for hours, until it was reduced to a hardness which resisted all but the most efficient and vigorous teeth (which, except with negroes, are rare in prison). I used to compare these "steaks" and other pieces with old blackened boot heels; they were hardly less eatable and nourishing. Often it smelt ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... returns. A young American, the fruit of scant "modelling," who could give her nothing but pocket-money, was a very moderate prize, and if she had been prepared to marry for ambition—there was no such hardness in her face or tone, but then there never is—her mark would be inevitably a "personage" quelconque. I was received at my friend's lodging with the announcement that she had left Homburg with her daughter ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James

... conversation. She is a Frau Major, a major's wife, who spends all her time at the hospital and has acquired there "a peculiar, garrulous cold-bloodedness." She is surfeited with horrors; her endless curiosity gives the impression of hardness and hysterical cruelty. The men are discussing, what is "the finest thing" in the war. According to one of them the finest thing is to find oneself, as this ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland

... a hardness as of grey hill stone upon the minister's face. It was not a pleasant thing to ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... room, where he had me bring the heaps of letters, a few of which he answered personally; for the others he prepared a simple card of acknowledgment. He was for the most part in gentle mood during these days, though he would break out now and then, and rage at the hardness of a fate that had laid an unearned burden of illness on Jean ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... letter as this was like a blow from a bludgeon. The insolence, the contempt, and the hardness of it were such as no self-respecting woman could endure. It put an end to their acquaintance, as Swift undoubtedly intended it should do. He would have been less censurable had he struck Varina with ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... palaces of kings, varied with patches of green bush. Of course, the roofs of these buildings had long since fallen into decay and vanished, but owing to the extreme massiveness of the style of building, and to the hardness and durability of the rock employed, most of the party walls and great columns ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... did but ill express the keen ardour of my feelings. I, in truth, regarded men with an excess both of love and of fear. The mystery of a Person, indeed, is ever divine to him that has a sense for the God-like. Often, notwithstanding, was I blamed, and by half-strangers hated, for my so-called Hardness (Haerte), my Indifferentism towards men; and the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, as my favourite dialect in conversation. Alas, the panoply of Sarcasm was but as a buckram case, wherein I had striven to envelop myself; that so my own poor Person might live safe there, and in all ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... now sought the victorious Norman, and begged the dead body of her son. But William at first answered in his wrath, and in the hardness of his heart, that a man who had been false to his word and his religion should have no other sepulchre than the sand of the shore. He added, with a sneer, "Harold mounted guard on the coast while he was alive; he may continue his guard now he is dead." The taunt was an unintentional eulogy; ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... populous town, if the inhabitants, as is frequently the case, have chosen to abandon it, there shall be a very thick wood, and not a vestige of a post to be seen, unless the wood has been of a species which from its hardness is ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley

... brief moment his fate hung in the balance. For it was plain that the ashes, if unwetted, might ultimately have been blown away by the wind. But what was going to happen when all this mud, baked by the sun into the hardness ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... of denial was essential to the austere economies he practiced in all other directions, and his sister, rather than submit to the hardness of his rebukes, acquiesced with ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... everyone. Indeed, the whole fortnight since the cavalry convoy had started from the Atbara had been a period of great exertion, and the Lancers, officers and men, were glad to eat a hasty meal, and forget the fatigues of the day, the hardness of the ground, and the anticipations of the morrow in deep sleep. The camp was watched by the infantry, whose labours did not end with the daylight. At two o'clock in the morning the clouds broke in rain and storm. Great blue flashes of lightning lit up the wide expanse of sleeping ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... to know whether the colour, the shininess, the degree of hardness and other qualities of the obstacle would influence the decision of a mother obliged to lay her eggs under exceptional conditions. With this object in view, I employed small jars, each baited with a bit of butcher's meat. The respective lids were made of different-coloured paper, of oil-skin, or ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... no cheer to electrify the stomach into easy display of power. We may well marvel that powers so wonderful as the power to think, love, admire, see, hear, and feel are located in structures so fragile as the brain; and we may well marvel at the provision of the turret of flinty hardness to protect it ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... son in the famous Epworth family of ministers, was a man who knew how to endure "hardness as a good soldier of Christ." He was born June 27, 1703, and studied at Charterhouse, London, and at Christ Church, Oxford, becoming a Fellow of Lincoln College. After taking holy orders he went as a missionary to Georgia, U.S., in 1735, and on his return began his remarkable ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... taken prisoners, he was placed in the guard-house with me. He complained of the hardness of the bench on which he was lying. I begged hard for a bed for him, or even a blanket, but could obtain none for him. I took off my coat and placed it under him, and held his head in my lap, in which position he died without a groan or ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... a certain sarcastic hardness. "I don't mean," said he, "that I am going to hack at him with a sword, because neither he nor I properly know how to use swords, and after the wonderful practice that I have seen, I would not want to prove myself a bungler even if the other ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... this weird spot was held to be sacred to the Great Wolf, the totem of their tribe. Here, for more generations than any could count, their wise men had gathered about the mystic birch flame, in grave council of war. Here the tribe had assembled to seek strength of arm, hardness of heart, cunning of brain, for its warriors, in solemn incantations and offerings to the Unknown. Here hostile prisoners had been tortured and burned. Some mishap or omen or shift of superstitious feeling had led to the abandonment of this ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... hungry," she told Luck tranquilly, yet with a hardness in her voice which did not escape him, who knew her so well. ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower

... straightforward condition, and the windmiller no longer hesitated to come in. But he was less disposed to a hard and triumphant self-satisfaction than was common with him when his will ended well. A poor and unsuccessful career had, indeed, something to do with the hardness of his nature, and in this flush of prosperity he felt softened, and resolved inwardly to "let the missus take her time," and come back to her ordinary ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... he got up and pulled Bubbles on to her feet. "We must be going back to the house," he said, speaking with a touch of hardness and decision which was rare in his dealings with ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... campaigned with us under conditions that were, truth to say, usually better but sometimes much worse than the trench situation pictured by the cartoon below. With grit and gumption and good humor those citizen soldiers "endured hardness as ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... misery arose from the absence of light. I had at first suffered from my cramped position, and also from lying upon the hard oak timber; but I got used to these inconveniences. Besides, for the hardness of my bed I soon discovered a remedy. I had observed that the box which stood upon the other side of my biscuit-house contained some sort of stuff that had the feel of woollen goods. On further examination, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... opened at last and the older woman had no time to waste. "Oh, yes, any one can apply," she returned with a kind of hardness. And then she failed to observe that the girl she had been talking with was following ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook

... however, betrayed no hint of hesitation. Rather, the fixity of her gaze and the intensity of her mental concentration threw into high relief the hardness of her personality. She was singularly devoid of that quality which is generally called ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... Hypocrisy, or from another very obvious Cause, namely, the using Words we are accustomed to hear, without so much as thinking of their Meaning. Such Hearts I think may be much more properly compared to the Hardness of Marble, than could that ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding

... night are very clearly cut in their hardness; the sea was like steel, the cliff like ebony. From the height where the child was the bay of Portland appeared almost like a geographical map, pale, in a semicircle of hills. There was something dreamlike in that nocturnal landscape—a wan disc belted by a dark crescent. The moon sometimes has ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... Cumberland, where it occurs as diverging groups of white transparent crystals lining cavities in the Mountain Limestone. [v.03 p.0457] The crystals belong to the monoclinic system and are usually prismatic or blade-shaped in habit. The hardness is 4, and the sp. gr. 3.65. There are perfect cleavages parallel to the prism faces inclined at an angle of 73deg 6', and a less perfect cleavage parallel to the basal plane, the angle between which and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... on a rock, of the hardness of which she complained. She found fault with our cove, the sun was too hot and the wind was too strong. But then she had driven ten miles in a wagonette under Teddy and the twins, so it was no wonder she ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss

... to-day as blue, the clouds as white, the stars as bright, the wind as playful; the animal creation, as ever, rove at will. Man is as smiling and joyous, the earth pursues its endless course, family affairs follow their daily round. The world's hardness is unendurable. Why did not the earth open and swallow ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

... power, again, can only be got by loving human beings. There is nothing so blind as hardness, nothing so weak as violence. I, of course, can only speak from my own experience; and my experience is this: that whensoever in my past life I have been angry and scornful, I have said or done an unwise thing; I have more or less injured my own cause; weakened ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... view that approaches it, is grossly unjust to Hamlet, and turns tragedy into mere pathos. But, on the other side, it is too kind to him. It ignores the hardness and cynicism which were indeed no part of his nature, but yet, in this crisis of his life, are indubitably present and painfully marked. His sternness, itself left out of sight by this theory, is ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... far from luxurious. A thin pallet rested on slats, so thin that he could feel the slats through it, and the covering was insufficient. The latter deficiency he made up by throwing his overcoat over the quilt, and despite the hardness of his bed, he ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger

... suitability of various leathers, the sub-committee came to the conclusion that of the old leathers (15th and 16th century), white pigskin, probably alum 'tanned,' is the most durable, but its excessive hardness and want of flexibility renders this leather unsuitable for most modern work. Old brown calf has lasted fairly well, but loses its flexibility, and becomes stiff and brittle when exposed to light and air. Some of ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell

... public school, and wants enough to learn, she will learn. It is hard, but she was born to hardness—she cannot dodge it. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... suavity of the two square panels and the rhythmic beauty of the frieze, it is not easy to conjecture. But rudely severed from their surroundings, and exposed in isolation, one at each side of the altar, they leave an impression of awkward discomfort on the memory. A certain hardness, peculiar to the Florentine manner, is felt in them. But this quality may have been intended by the sculptors for the sake of contrast with what is eminently graceful, peaceful, and melodious in the other fragments ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... tastes the supreme cup of happiness. The master words of the Christ were, "fight," "watch," "pray"; here is the entrance to the Utopia so long sought by men. The man who has no control over his appetites, passions and temper, and who cannot endure hardness in a service in which he is interested, can never know what genuine joy is. Read the roll call of the heroes in the ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell

... long run by the prostration of French, German, or English industry. One of the first duties of a peace society is to watch this doctrine, and hunt it down wherever they see it, as one of the great promoters of the pride and hardness of heart which make war seem a trifling evil. America can no more gain by French or German ruin than New York can gain by that of Massachusetts. Secondly, there is the mediaeval doctrine that the less commercial intercourse ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... the first and the latter rain; and that it might stretch her branches to the seas and to the floods. The state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in my eyes: I have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart; I have (though in a despised weed) procured the good of all men. If any have been mine enemies, I thought not of them; neither hath the sun almost set upon my displeasure; but I have been as a dove, free from superfluity of maliciousness. Thy creatures have been my books, but thy Scriptures ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... called it, the "North Tartaric Ocean." They soon fell in with ice, on which account on the 13th/3rd they sought protection under Mestni Island (Staten Eiland). Here they found a sort of rock crystal resembling diamonds in all respects except hardness, a disappointing circumstance which was ascribed to the action of cold. Here also were seen images and sacrificial places, but no houses and ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... manner and rectitude of feeling—his temper so even and kindly—his courage so heroic—that he is unquestionably the most amiable and interesting of the dramatis personae, preferable to D'Artagnan, to whom premature worldly wisdom gives a hardness bordering upon egotism. While Aramis is sighing sonnets to his mistress, and Porthos parading on the crown of the causeway in all the glory of gold lace and embroidery, Athos sits tranquilly at home, and says, like Gregory ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... see so clearly. I've worked it out this way, dearest, dear—that in all the world there's just one woman for one man. If he meets and marries her, no matter how hard their life may be, they will be drawn together, not separated, by the hardness; no matter how the world may use them, they will cling together against the world. But when a man marries the wrong woman, he goes through life a half-man, crippled in mind and spirit, because of his mistake. ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey

... distinct mineral substances, the one a hydrous sulphate of lime and the other a carbonate of lime. The former is the alabaster of the present day, the latter is generally the alabaster of the ancients. The two kinds are readily distinguished from each other by their relative hardness. The modern alabaster is so soft as to be readily scratched even by the finger-nail (hardness 1.5 to 2), whilst the stone called alabaster by the ancients is too hard to be scratched in this way (hardness3), ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... "Go back to your saints and seraphs and angels; I'm beaten. I was mad to think that you ever cared—go back!" She turned, stumbling, the sobs tearing at her throat; he had gone several steps before she realized that he was following her—and all the hardness and bitterness and despair fell from ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... flowing over a plain with little inequality of level. The cycle has formed a Peneplain. Subsequently, with fresh elevation, a new cycle is commenced. So much for the simple case, but in fact nearly all cases are modified by unequal elevations due to landslips, by variation in hardness of rock, &c. Hence modification in positions of river courses and the fact of different parts of a single river being in ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... granules has been obtained by sifting. The term does not necessarily mean that the grinding mills have steel burrs. In fact, most firms employ burrs made of cast-iron or of a composition metal known as "burr metal", because of its combined hardness ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... all my power over her affections, and especially over her character. Now we stood in a position in which I could not possibly resort to the same means of reconciliation, for it would have meant my being inconsistent in all my views and actions. And then I found myself confronted by such hardness in the woman whom I had spoilt by my leniency, that it was out of the question to expect her to acknowledge the injustice done to myself. Suffice it to say that the wreck of my married life had contributed not inconsiderably to the ruin of my position in Dresden, and to the careless ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... place, until the law protects these children by effective guardianship. I would specially point out that this mother was not in the least indifferent to her baby. If you had talked to her, probably your sentiment would have burned and glowed about the hardness of her case in being separated from her baby, and you would have said wonderful platitudes about the beauty of a mother's love. And yet the shameful hurt she did to her child can never be undone. Her undisciplined love was the cause ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... considering who wrote it," observed Mr Crossley, laying it down after a fourth perusal. "You see he makes no whining or discontented reference to the hardness of their luck, which young scapegraces are so fond of doing; nor does he make effusive professions of regret or repentance, which hypocrites are so prone to do. I think it bears the stamp of being genuine on the face of it. At least ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... that your poor lad did not inherit some of your hardness of heart, Mr. Goodman," the letter began, "for if he did he would not be upstairs now breakin his and sobbin it out of him at your cruel answer to his natural request that he might go home and see his mother. But he has a heart of gold wherever he got it I don't ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... kindly received, and nourished when no other door was set open to it—here it found friends when almost friendless, yea when despised and contemned abroad—its friends are now increased here as well as elsewhere, and although by reason of our poverty and the hardness of the times, our subscriptions are small compared with what some others may boast, being at present but about L810 lawful money, yet there are here some other privileges which we think very valuable and serviceable to the design, viz. 400 acres of very fertile and good ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... said the dame as Gretel bashfully thrust a stool at them. "There's a lack of chairs as you see, but this one by the fire is at your service, and if you don't mind the hardness, that oak chest is as good a seat as the best. That's right, ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... well as the words which cut the young girl to the heart. She could not tell what it was. She did not dream that it was aimed at herself. She only knew that it sounded harsh and cold, and unkind. Her heart was very tender. Sickness and love had thrown her off her guard against sneers and hardness. It did not once occur to her that the keen-sighted invalid, whose life was bound up in her son's life, had looked into the heart which had never yet syllabled the love which filled it, and hated what she saw. She did not deem ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... eyebrows of the same dark hue, and his unusually black eyes; his nose was slightly aquiline, and his mouth well shaped, though wide; but the firm-set lips and broad nostrils, gave the whole face an expression of coldness and hardness. In fact he had a peculiarly dour and dark look, and it was no wonder that when he walked through his parish the little children left their games in the road, and hurried inside their garden gates ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... with Cedrela toona, and various tropical genera, such as abound near Punkabaree. The heat and hardness of the rocks cause the streams to dry up on these abrupt hills, especially on the eastern slope, and the water is therefore conveyed along the sides of the path, in conduits ingeniously made of bamboo, either split in half, or, what is better, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... on the edge of the timber a large fir that the shingle-maker had felled when he first built his house or shack, but had not used, owing to the hardness of the grain. It lay on the earth, but still connected with its high stump, forming a kind of natural fence. Around it were beds of red phlox, red whortleberry bushes, and ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth

... she said, "what a stupid thing wit seems to me now." And M. Mauperin heard her expressing her gratitude to suffering as a proof of election. She spoke of selfishness and of all the materiality in which robust health wraps us up; of that hardness of heart which is the result of the well-being of the body; and she told him what ease and deliverance come with sickness; how light she felt inwardly and what aspirations it brings with ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... had opportunity for studying the soldier in a new setting, but the study is one that requires time; the average Tommy is an oyster to strangers. He varies to the tune and colour of his surroundings; on the veldt, where hardness is to be endured, he is the "good soldier," the patient, strong man; under fire he is a fierce creature, still obedient to his habit of discipline, but hot for combat; in the town, with money in his pocket, ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young

... germs of good, there must be constant effort and tenacious resolution. So many foes beset the springing of the good seed in our hearts—what with the flying flocks of light-winged fugitive thoughts ever ready to swoop down as soon as the sower's back is turned and snatch it away, what with the hardness of the rock which the roots soon encounter, what with the thick-sown and quick-springing thorns—that if we trust to the natural laws of growth and neglect careful husbandry, we may sow much but we shall gather little. But to inherit the full consequences of that same law working in the growth ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... crucifixion of feeling through which those workers have passed, and by their self-denying endurance of hardness, they too, in no small sense, have been making expiation for the wrongs done the slaves. Their missionary instinct also forms the necessary spiritual complement of the aggressive genius of the Puritan civilization which is now taking possession where its sword had cleared ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 10. October 1888 • Various

... spiders. In the excavation of the tube and retention of the walls, the spider appears to employ a glairy substance, which thoroughly saturates the soil and renders the interior of the tube of almost cement- like hardness. It is then plastered with a thick jet of silk from the spinning glands. This interior finishing process appears to be quite rapid, a burrow being readily lined within a couple ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... we wish it understood that mind, like body, has its accidental or acquired qualities. Vice, virtue, folly, wisdom, malignity and benevolence are not essential to mind, but like the accidents of matter known as roughness or smoothness, softness, hardness, blackness, etc., are merely qualities or attributes of its conduct. Vice is vicious action and virtue is virtuous action. But action arises from will and will from thought. All minds are free agents, being vicious or virtuous from their own choice. There is as much piety, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various

... slavering fool, into the ditch, or sending him, with the drunkard's hiccough, staggering up the street where his family lives. But gambling does not, in that way, expose its victims. The gambler may be eaten up by the gambler's passion, yet only discover it by the greed in his eyes, the hardness of his features, the nervous restlessness, the threadbare coat, and his embarrassed business. Yet he is on the road to hell, and no preacher's voice, or startling warning, or wife's entreaty, can make him stay for a moment ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... hopes deep sunken Like anchors under the ice,— Of souls that wait for Love's sweet freight And the spices of Paradise: Far off their barks are tossing On the billows of unrest, And enter not in, for the hardness and sin That ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... was too young, too inexperienced in love to realise that underneath the sweetness of girlhood, so genuine and so lovable, might lie deep, unconscious cruelty, inherited and instinctive—the cruelty of caste, the hardness of worldly prejudice. A man has to come to middle age, and to suffer much, before he understands that the charms of women, those rare and magical perfections of eyes and teeth and hair, that softness of skin and delicacy of feature, have cost labour and care of many generations, and ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... with, testifies that the desires and inclinations are restrained within certain limits. But what we take for a force which moderates and rules, may it not be rather an obliteration of the faculty of feeling (hardness)? Is it really the moral autonomy, and may it not be rather the preponderance of another affection, and in consequence a voluntary interested effort that restrains the outburst of the present affection? This is what grace alone can put out of doubt in joining itself to dignity. It is grace, I ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... strength and hardness of a contracted metal are what one would expect on molecular principles, the decreased chemical activity at low temperatures is no less natural-seeming, when one reflects how generally chemical phenomena are facilitated by the application of heat. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... Borckman's part. Borckman felt the abysmal urgings of the beast, as a beast, to prove himself master of this four-legged beast. Jerry felt his jowl and jaw clutched still more harshly and hardly, and, with increase of harshness and hardness, he was flung farther down the deck, which, on account of its growing slant due to heavier gusts of wind, had become a steep ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... the matter. There is another according to which everything is without a beginning—beginnings, and endings also, being, but as it were, steps cut in a slope of ice without which we could not climb it. They are for convenience and the hardness of the hearts of men who make an idol of classification, but they do not exist apart from our sense of ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... the words that have grieved thee came not from my heart, but were spoken in the haste of wrath. Many years hast thou angered me by thy coldness, hardness and obstinacy; to-day thou hast wounded me again in my most sacred feelings; this hurried me into an excess of wrath. But now all is right between us. Our natures are so diverse that our innermost feelings will never be one, but at least we can act ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... self-willed most often fall. Iron that hath been tempered by the fire To a surpassing hardness, when it breaks, We often see shattered most thoroughly; And a small bit suffices to subdue The fiery steed. High thoughts beseem not those Who owe subjection to another's will. This maid before ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith

... I'll hear no more! 'Tis my affection, and not reason, speaks: Then, Musgrave, turn the hardness of thy heart, And now at least incline thy ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... a hard and dry, but not unkind voice. In fact, the rigidity of her aspect, the hardness of her voice, and the singular blackness of her costume, seemed to be too monotonously uniform and resolute not to indicate something willful or unhealthy in the woman's condition, as if the whole had been rather superinduced ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... set, so that no one could tell which way he was looking. He was rather sickly-looking, too, and was thought to be very weak. But this I know to be wrong. Eli, ill-formed as he was, was much stronger than most men, nature having endowed his sinews with wondrous hardness and powers of endurance. Eli did no work, but lived by poaching and begging food at the farmhouses. As Betsey's son he was never refused, especially as some believed he ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... and in that utter incapacity of retention which was one of his foibles, making jesting allusions to the secret he had just heard. The brow of the Doctor darkened as this pleasantry went on, and, at last, he angrily accused Lord Byron of hardness of heart. "I never," said he, "met with a person so unfeeling." This sally, though the poet had evidently brought it upon himself, annoyed him most deeply. "Call me cold-hearted—me insensible!" he exclaimed, with ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... person to whom they relate. The two volumes of autobiography tell all that we can seek to know, and the reader who judges them in an equitable spirit will be ready to allow that, when all is said that can be said of her hardness, arbitrariness, and insularity, Harriet Martineau is still a singular and worthy figure among the conspicuous personages of a generation that has now almost vanished. Some will wonder how it was that her literary performances acquired so little of permanent value. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley

... but suspected the possibility of such a thing, he had torn the false pride, like a venomous weed, from his heart, and had been a wiser and a happier man. In his case it was the blindness of the heart that caused its partial hardness; but events were at hand, that should flood it with the clearest light, and melt it to more than ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... neck. Attired to his satisfaction, he placed the box upon the table, propped up a cracked mirror, sat down in front of it, and, with a deft, artist's touch, began to apply stain to his hands, wrists, neck, throat, and face—but the hardness, the grim menace that now grew into the dominant characteristic of his features was not due ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... them to the public. The price of labour, it must be observed, cannot be ascertained very accurately anywhere, different prices being often paid at the same place and for the same sort of labour, not only according to the different abilities of the workman, but according to the easiness or hardness of the masters. Where wages are not regulated by law, all that we can pretend to determine is, what are the most usual; and experience seems to shew that law can never regulate them properly, though it has often pretended to ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith



Words linked to "Hardness" :   severity, difficultness, insensibility, ruggedness, softness, hard, consistence, stiffness, sternness, insensitivity, strictness, soft, insensitiveness, callousness, body, consistency, rigorousness, incompressibility, harshness, callosity, quality, difficulty, inclemency



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