"Least resistance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... period of hotel second-story work, and then a career as a professional palmist, jumping from town to town. For, like other professional palmists, every time he worked the Heart Line too strongly he immediately moved along the Line of Least Resistance. Though Etienne did not confide this to us, we surmised that he had moved out into the dusk about twenty minutes ahead of a constable, and had thus encountered the snow. In his most sacred blue language he dilated upon the subject ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... men being in the boat they only waited for me, of which the master at arms informed Christian, who then said: "Come, captain Bligh, your officers and men are now in the boat and you must go with them; if you attempt to make the least resistance you will instantly be put to death" and, without further ceremony, with a tribe of armed ruffians about me, I was forced over the side where they untied my hands. Being in the boat we were veered astern by a rope. A few pieces of pork were thrown to us, and some clothes, ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... readiness to compromise and to follow the line of least resistance in dealing with the co-operatives. From 1906 onward there had been an enormous growth of co-operatives in Russia. They were of various kinds and animated by varied degrees of social consciousness. They did not differ materially from the co-operatives ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... pressure upon the middle must be greater then towards the sides. Hence the Ball having a stronger pressure against that side of it which respects the middle of the superficies, then against that which respects the approximate side, must necessarily move towards that part, from whence it finds least resistance, and so be accelerated, as the resistance decrease. Hence the more the water is raised under that part of its way it is passing above the middle, the faster it is moved: And therefore you will find it to move faster in E then in D, and in D then in C. Neither could I find the floating substance ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... with you, Eustace. I give him into your charge. If he struggles, or offers the least resistance, stab him to ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... of temperament. As the man said when his friends asked him how he made his famous cocktail, "It depends on my mood." The truth is that each man in selecting his outfit generally follows the lines of least resistance. With one, the pleasure he derives from his morning bath outweighs the fact that for the rest of the day he must carry a rubber bathtub. Another man is hearty, tough, and inured to an out-of-door life. He can sleep on a pile of coal or standing on his head, ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... than she felt prepared to risk, even for a chance of winning the one man in all the world:—the man who could at least belong to no other woman, she assured herself with a throb of satisfaction. Thus there seemed no choice left but to go blindly forward along the line of least resistance. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... to do things when they ought to be done and in the order in which you ought to do them. Habits like this are "paths" along which the mind "moves," paths of least resistance to those qualities of promptness, energy, persistence, accuracy, self-control, and so ...
— The Trained Memory • Warren Hilton
... be firmly founded on tough, recalcitrant Bulgars or warlike Turks. The Triple Alliance having closed the door to Russia on the West, there was the greater temptation to take the other alternative course—that line of least resistance which led towards Afghanistan and Manchuria. The value of an understanding with France was now clear to all. As we have seen, it guarded Russia's exposed frontier in Poland, and poured into the exchequer treasures which speedily ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... would be a constant elevation of the deposit year by year in proportion to the annual excess of deposition over the melting or evaporation of the material. But no sooner does the deposit attain any considerable thickness than it begins to move in the directions of least resistance, in accordance with laws which the students of glaciers are just beginning to discern. In small part this motion is accomplished by avalanches or snow slides, phenomena which are in a way important, and therefore merit description. Immediately after a heavy snowfall, in ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... of the operations of which stronger impulses are the prompters, and constrains them to follow its lead, not by its own strength, but because in the play of antagonistic forces, the path it points out is (in scientific phraseology) the direction of least resistance. Personal interests and feelings, in the social state, can only obtain the maximum of satisfaction by means of co-operation, and the necessary condition of co-operation is a common belief. All human society, consequently, ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... more even than from his imaginative strength, it arose from his whole-hearted sincerity, always looking reality straight in the face, always refusing compromise, never hesitating to follow where reason led. Compromise and temporise and choose the line of least resistance, as we habitually do, there still remains in most people a fibre that vibrates to that iron sincerity. And so it was that, from the first, Tolstoy brought with him a disturbing and incalculable magic—an upheaving force, like leaven stirring in the dough, or like a sword ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... the doctrine is indefensible—it follows the line of least resistance, and sacrifices the spirit to the flesh. Materially, it is fraught with grave danger to the home and to our national existence. It is proposed to disseminate a knowledge of contraceptive methods throughout the overcrowded homes of the ill-fed, ill-clad poor. ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... such times the thought of holding the slim, warm, ineffably feminine body in his arms was most distracting. He rather feared for himself. If such a thing were to happen,—and it might happen if the impulse seized him at the psychological moment of least resistance,—the result in all probability would be disastrous. She would turn on him like an injured animal and rend him! Alas, for that leveller called reason! It ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... unfortunately, succumbed to the specious plea put forward in an evil hour many years ago by a distinguished Hindu, afterwards a Judge of the Bombay High Court, Mr. K.T. Telang, who was himself unquestionably an enlightened social reformer, that the "line of least resistance" was to press for political concessions from England where they had "friends amongst the garrison," instead of fighting an uphill battle for social reforms against the dead-weight of popular ignorance and prejudice amongst their own people. That many members of the Congress ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... insidious appeal to the centrifugal forces of the political mind, he turned a deaf ear to von Schoen's suasive efforts and kept the ship of state on its course, without swerving. In this way what seemed to the Berlin politicians the line of least resistance was adequately reinforced and a formidable, because ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... person in the neighbourhood was interested in Arthur Wemyss's new home which he had built on the bank of Plover Creek, a small stream that dawdled aimlessly across the prairie from Lang's Lake to the Souris River. Plover Creek followed the line of least resistance all the way along, not seeming to care how often it changed its direction, but zigzagging and even turning around and doubling on itself sometimes. Its little dimpled banks, treeless save for clumps of silver willow, gave a pleasing variety to the ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... what appeared to be openings through the wire, but these were nothing less than man-traps which have been found serviceable in case of an enemy attack. In an assault men follow the line of least resistance when they reach the barbed wire. These apparent openings are V-shaped, with the open end toward the enemy. The attacking troops think they see a clear passageway. They rush into the trap, and when it is filled with struggling men, machine guns are turned upon them, and, ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... and send their shot whizzing across his bows, the sailor, in his fixed resolve to evade the gang at any cost, resorted first of all to the most simple and sailorly expedient imaginable. He "let go all" and made a run for it. That way lay the line of least resistance, and, with luck on ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... was a capital oversight of the professional men in the seventeenth century; because in every light he was a fine subject for murder, except, indeed, that he was lean and skinny; for I can prove that he had money, and (what is very funny,) he had no right to make the least resistance; for, according to himself, irresistible power creates the very highest species of right, so that it is rebellion of the blackest die to refuse to be murdered, when a competent force appears to murder you. However, gentlemen, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the horse is not a noble, intelligent animal with a vast comprehension of human talk and sympathy for human woe. For the Great Goer pulled up so suddenly that I nearly went on without him in the line of the least resistance. Then he stood still and went to nibbling grass as placidly as though he had not been doing racing time for three miles, and I should have gone on forever believing in his wondrous wit had I not turned and realised that he was standing in his own ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... pillars were found even in Thrace, and his empire extended from the Ganges to the Danube. In his expeditions, some nations bravely defended their liberties, and others yielded them up without making the least resistance. This disparity was denoted by him in hieroglyphical figures, on the monuments erected to perpetuate the remembrance of his victories, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... arterioles, the carotid gland, forming a sponge-like plug in this vessel.] is a spongy mass of matter, the carotid gland inserted upon the carotid. Hence the pulmonary arteries yawn nearest for the blood, and, being short, wide vessels, present the least resistance to the first rush of blood— mainly venous blood for the right auricle. As they fill up, the back resistance in them becomes equal, and then greater, than the resistance at A, and the rush of blood, ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... Wolves realized that they were in a trap, and that if they made the least resistance they would ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... order'd out, that he might return on board in the same manner as he came, without a Guard; and upon his refusing to return other way, all the Crew were by Arm'd force taken out of the Boat (though they gave no provocation nor made the least resistance) and hurried to Prison, where they remained until the next day. Mr. Hicks was then put into one of their Boats, and brought on board under the Custody of a Guard. Immediately upon my hearing of ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... of sinners to the Divine Love, but it rested with Him to decide whether He would be that instrument or no, and the course He chose was not that of {170} mechanical necessity, nor was the decision to which He came a following in the line of least resistance. In accepting the pain and shame of the Cross, Jesus worked His Father's will; but that will was not imposed upon Him from without, but freely responded to from within. As the author of the Theologia Germanica has it, a man should strive "to be to the Eternal Goodness ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... mould-board of least resistance;' and the inventor had gone into a very profound mathematical demonstration, to prove that it deserved ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... he now answered by selecting the valley of the Danube as his line of approach, and Ratisbon as his headquarters. He had before him the most difficult task he had so far undertaken. The concentration and sustenance of his troops must be made along the line of very least resistance. Davout had four divisions—one each in Magdeburg, Hanover, Stettin, and Bayreuth; he was also in command of the Poles and Saxons. Bernadotte had two divisions distributed in Hamburg, Bremen, and Luebeck; Oudinot had one ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... drama. He is master and umpire of his circumstances, so that when two or more lines of action, or a line of action and a line of inaction, appear equally efficacious, he can select the one which appears to be of least resistance. But subsequent to that point of time, he is no longer the arbiter of his own situation, but rather the puppet of circumstances. There are no more divergent roads; if he desires to leave the one he has chosen, he must break blindly through a hedge of moral ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... children," answered the Bishop, "has yielded in his weak spot. Ill-treatment has deformed their souls in those portions that offered the least resistance. Let us straighten them out with a thousand precautions, for fear of increasing the evil instead of diminishing it. Mildness, clemency, and forbearance are the only means which should ever be employed for the improvement of men, heretics of ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... organisms; yet these seldom give rise to trouble. Again, if for any reason a deep portion of a track becomes infected and suppurates, there is no tendency for the spread of infection along the line of wounded tissue, but rather for the development of a local abscess, pointing in the ordinary direction of least resistance, irrespective of the course originally taken by ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... effort, while 29, nearly a third of the whole, were secured simply by an act of the Illinois Legislature in giving the electoral vote to women. Is it not good political tactics to proceed along the lines of least resistance and bring our energies to bear upon Legislatures for the measure most potent and at the same time ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... Miss Kindermann, she recognises the possibility of transmission of thought in certain cases (e.g. when Lola is tired or is unwilling to "work" any more). According to her it would be a question of a line of least resistance, along which the "work" of the animal becomes more easy. Hence arises the necessity, as she maintains, for the investigator to be very careful of the danger of falsified results and to abstain with this object from any intentional thought. But these are the very conditions ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... that there is no efficient military force on the Mexican side to cooperate with our own. So long as this shall continue to be the case the number and activity of our troops will rather increase than diminish the evil, as the Indians will naturally turn toward that country where they encounter the least resistance. Yet these troops are necessary to subdue them and to compel them to make and observe treaties. Until this shall have been done neither country will enjoy any security from ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... of dissensions among the students, and the very small class graduated in two places because neither faction would go to the other place. In all these agitations Mr. Edwards took no part. He simply devoted himself to his studies and followed the line of least resistance so far as taking sides in a senseless controversy was concerned. After graduation he remained at Yale two years for post-graduate work, mostly in theology, and then accepted an invitation to preach for the leading Presbyterian church in New York City; but after eight months ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... Meanwhile, however, with every year that elapses the forces at present in equilibrium are changing in magnitude—the pressure of populations which have to be fed is rising, and an explosion along the line of least resistance is, sooner ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... health, Mrs. Eddy gives joy, hope, worldly success; and even superior minds, seeing these practical results of Christian Science, move in the line of least resistance and are quite willing to accept the book, not troubled at all about its medieval reasoning. In Ungania is a very great merchant who, not content with having the biggest store in the Kingdom, aspires to the biggest University. The fact that the higher criticism ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... the right and angled up the bench that flanked the bottoms, the wagon tilting perilously in the ascent, then struck out westward across a rolling country that showed not even a wagon track. The big cook unerringly picked the route of least resistance to the point from which the first circle would be launched, striking every wash and coulee at a place where a crossing ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... to have the people's interest really at heart could not be an active partner in the worst of these monopolies. The unscrupulous, the men bent upon the stock-watering game and their own immediate enrichment, would crowd the honest men to the wall. Every line of least resistance is with the get-rich-quick type of manager. To hold his power and to corrupt us politically; to appropriate continuous unearned increment through overcapitalization, he must work not for the public good, but largely against it. ...
— The Conflict between Private Monopoly and Good Citizenship • John Graham Brooks
... sophisticated by literature, what produces all these treatises and poems and scriptures of one sort or another is the struggle of Life to become divinely conscious of itself instead of blindly stumbling hither and thither in the line of least resistance. Hence there is a driving towards truth in all books on matters where the writer, though exceptionally gifted is normally constituted, and has no private axe to grind. Copernicus had no motive for misleading his fellowmen as to the place of ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... to do with it. That is a great day when a man comes into his own, no matter how paltry the pittance may be the gods have given him—when he comes to know just how far he can go, and where lies his path of least resistance. That I know. I am tremendously sure of myself now, and, like your good business men, I go about my affairs and dispose of my life with its few energies in a cautious, ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... opposite one, so as gradually to shift its channel; by clipper-shaped islands, sharp at the bows looking up stream, sharp too at the stern, looking down,—their shape solving the navigator's problem of least resistance, as a certain young artist had pointed out; by slumbering villages; by outlying farm-houses; between cornfields where the young plants were springing up in little thready fountains; in the midst of stumps where the forest had just been felled; ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... judiciality, and believed that he was doing so. But the fervor which Plonny had imparted to it, and the respect which he had for Plonny's knowledge of practical conditions, stood by him, unconsciously guiding his thoughts along the line of least resistance.... Though nobody dared admit it publicly, the party was facing a great crisis; and it was in his hand to save or to wreck it. All eyes were anxiously on the Post, which wielded the decisive power. The people had risen with the unreasonable demand that progress be checked ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... was incapable of making the least resistance when held by such a vigorous hand and he received two or three shakings. Suddenly the Baron stopped, and struck his forehead with a gesture common to persons who feel that their reason has given way under a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... these days seem to prefer notoriety to fame, because it runs along the line of least resistance. A man has to climb for fame, but he can get notoriety by an easy tumble. And others forget the one essential necessary to success, of personal effort, and, assuming there is a royal road to learning, are ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... in my veins, and I would have rushed in then and there, have ended the long strife, and have dug revenge for this outrage from his heart, but that I saw Alixe did not move, nor make the least resistance. This struck me with horror, till, all at once, he let her go, and I saw her face. It was very white and still, smooth and cold as marble. She seemed five years older ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... up a mercantile and a war navy, with advocating the historical maritime philosophy of Captain Mahan, and with repeating on every occasion the famous note of warning: 'Unsere Zukunft ist auf dem Wasser.' Biding her time, and following the line of least resistance, Germany for the last twenty years therefore extended steadily towards the south and towards the east. Towards the south she saw two decaying empires, Austria-Hungary and Turkey, which seemed to be a natural prey for her political and commercial ambitions: two conglomerates of hostile ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... that the Indians discovered him at his own house with his gun, and pursued him to father's, where they shot him as I have related. They first secured my father, and then rushed into the house, and without the least resistance made prisoners of my mother, Robert, Matthew, Betsey, the woman and her three children, and myself, and ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... first wave, Suma struggled frantically to regain her foothold and finding this impossible followed the path of least resistance and struck out boldly with the current until the water drained from her eyes and she could discern the bank which had been her objective. By varying her course slightly toward that side nearest the land she made fair progress ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... perhaps but none the less instinctively, gravitating towards the line of least resistance, or towards what they imagine to be the line of least resistance. This, peradventure, accounts to some extent for the singular attraction which operations in the Near East, or Palestine, or anywhere other than on the Western Front, always seemed to present ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... that we do not limit ourselves to the particular description of rudder set forth, the essential being that the rudder shall be vertical and shall be so moved as to present its resisting surface on that side of the machine which offers the least resistance to the atmosphere, so as to counteract the tendency of the machine to turn around a vertical axis when the two sides thereof offer different ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... foreboding of the difficulties which were to meet him in the world at large. He was not one of the men fitted for easy success. The successful man is, I take it, the man with an eye for the line of least resistance. He has an instinct, that is, for the applying his strength in the direction in which it will tell most. And he has the faculty of so falling in with other men's modes of thinking and feeling that they may spontaneously, if ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... construction he must have the patience and the energy to maintain the normal, receptive mind with which he is naturally endowed. Unfortunately with that endowment commonly comes another—namely, a tendency to avoid the irk or constant struggle by taking the line of least resistance; by adopting an opinion and upholding it in the face of all reason; and only a man of exceptional patience, courage and ability can keep himself free from the prejudices and fixed opinions which not only bring him a delusive ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... what manner of woman he had found here in this lodging house. It was the face of a woman who never intentionally does any evil and yet rarely gets a chance to do any good—a weak, indecisive, commonplace face; and every line in it was a line of least resistance. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... day we tried the sails and it didn't take me very long to learn how to steer the device. The wind had changed again and this time blew up the canal. We took the line of least resistance, and went skimming up the ice lane like birds for several miles before we realized how far we were getting away from home. As we rounded a bend in the canal, much to my astonishment, I saw just before us the bridge at Raven Hill, eight miles from our town. We started to go ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... past answering; almost, not quite. But weakness was her "cue," as well as the line of least resistance. Having now an incentive to let herself go rather than "brace up" as O'Reilly urged, she enjoyed collapsing. Yet something within was on guard, and knew that ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to slang, which offers the line of least resistance to the Cosmic Law, we find that the cue has been given over and over again to those who are interiorly awake to receive it. "You are not in on this," has been said to one who was left out of some supposedly desirable thing; or "you are ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... important: I give it to the reader in the words of Sir John Moore:—'The French cavalry from Burgos, in small detachments, are over-running the province of Leon; raising contributions; to which the inhabitants submit without the least resistance.' Now here it cannot be meant that no efforts at resistance were made by individuals or small parties; because this would not only contradict the universal laws of human nature,—but would also be at utter variance with Sir J.M.'s repeated complaints that ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the matter?" she exclaimed, with terror in her looks. "Good Heavens! are you ill? I conjure you, sit down; sit in this chair." She almost forced me into one; I was in no condition to offer the least resistance. I recognized but too truly the sensations that supervened. I was lying back in the chair in which I sat, without the power, by this time, of uttering a syllable, of closing my eyelids, of moving my eyes, of stirring a muscle. ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... turned these facts over in my mind, endeavouring to hit upon some theory which could reconcile them all, and to find that line of least resistance which my poor friend had declared to be the starting-point of every investigation. I confess that I made little progress. In the evening I strolled across the Park, and found myself about six o'clock at the Oxford Street end of Park Lane. A group ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... witness for him, his case would be hopeless—and Clay suspected that the clubman would prove only a broken reed as a support. The fellow was selfish to the core. He had not, in the telling Western phrase, the guts to go through. He would take the line of least resistance. ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... and make her his wife as Ataulfus had done Placidia her mother. Though, it seems, the Hun disdained her, he made this appeal his excuse. Within a year of the death of Theodosius and Placidia he decided that the way of least resistance lay westward. If he were successful he could make his own terms, and, among his spoil, if he cared, should be ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... the officers were out of the ship, Christian said, 'Come, Captain Bligh, your officers and men are now in the boat, and you must go with them; if you make the least resistance you will ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... of a burning Broadway store, one night, when the back-draught blew out the whole front without warning. It is simply an explosion of gases generated by the heat, which must have vent, and go upon the line of least resistance, up, or down, or in a circle—it does not much matter, so that they go. It swept shutters, windows, and all, across Broadway, in this instance, like so much chaff, littering the street with heavy rolls of cloth. The crash was like a fearful ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... rovings are unwound. This receding is the essential motion of the mule, for thus the cotton receives its final drawing. The spindles, meanwhile, are revolving rapidly, spinning the yarn. The twist goes first to the thin places where the least resistance is offered. Then, as the carriage carrying the whirling spindles continues to back away, the thicker parts of the thread, being comparatively untwisted are pulled down to the average diameter and are twisted in turn. The carriage ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous
... she like not, garlic and a crucifix, and so seal up the door of the tomb. She is young as UnDead, and will heed. Moreover, these are only to prevent her coming out. They may not prevail on her wanting to get in, for then the UnDead is desperate, and must find the line of least resistance, whatsoever it may be. I shall be at hand all the night from sunset till after sunrise, and if there be aught that may be learned I shall learn it. For Miss Lucy or from her, I have no fear, but that other to ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... Peter's case would be a serious offence in his future master's. The lesson had been well learned, for throughout the course of his life the colonel had never shirked responsibility, but had made the performance of duty his criterion of conduct. To him the line of least resistance had always seemed the refuge of the coward and the weakling. With the twenty years preceding his return to Clarendon, this story has nothing to do; but upon the quiet background of his business career he had lived an active ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... elevate it into a vision of what is, and alone is, behind the observed facts. They fail to see that the more blind, the more accidental, so to speak, the process of differentiation may be; the more it is shown that the struggle for existence drives the wheels of progress along the {37} lines of least resistance by the most commonplace of mechanical necessities, in the same proportion must a law be posited behind all this process, a reason in nature which gathers up the beginning and the ending. The protoplasmic cell which the ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... force? The Universal Life-Principle, for "the Spirit is Life." In the language of modern science this "seeking" on the part of "the Father" is the expansive pressure of the Universal Life-Principle seeking the line of least resistance, along which to flow into the fullest manifestation of individualised Life. It is a tendency which will take manifested form according to the degree in which it meets ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... all the lines of least resistance," continued the detective, unresentful of the other's aggravating manner. "They led me against a wall of silence. Now I'm going to discharge my ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... long words and stilted phrases, while in conversation one's thoughts seek expression through lines of least resistance—familiar words and short sentences. But in writing, these same thoughts go stumbling over long words ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... helping a wounded trooper. In his lifetime his duties brought him in touch with employers of labour in the Pretoria Labour District and with Natives from all over South Africa. A non-believer in the South African policy of least resistance, he was without doubt the ablest native administrator in the Transvaal Civil Service, and as such the vacancy caused by his death will be very hard to fill. He was an expert on Native matters, and no commission ever sat without his being summoned ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... against him all the chiefs of the army, that it was within an ace of being broken; and the Czar, with every one left to him, of being made prisoner. The latter was in no condition to make even the least resistance. The Grand Vizier had only to will it, in order to execute it on the spot. In addition to the glory of leading captive to Constantinople the Czar, his Court, and his troops, there would have been his ransom, which must have cost not a little. But if he had ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... science teaches them, indicates the path by which some, at least, of these modifications will be reached. In the coming contest over the great question of psychological evolution, common intelligence will follow Science along the line of least resistance; and that line will doubtless be the study of heredity, since the phenomena to be considered, however in themselves uninterpretable, are familiar to general experience, and afford partial answers to countless old enigmas. It is thus quite possible to imagine a coming form of Western religion ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... following the line of least resistance. The real thief is, of course, well away—out of Polktown, and probably in some big city where the coins can be disposed of ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... gearing. Easily ninety-nine per cent of all our troubles through life are due to inevitable wear and tear, scarcity of food-fuel, of water, of rest, and external accidents—injuries and infectious diseases. Still, it occasionally happens that these little defects may furnish the point of least resistance at which external stresses and strains will cause the machine to break down. They are often the things which prevent us from living and "going to pieces all at once, all at once and nothing fust, just as bubbles do when they bust," like the immortal ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... himself into doubtful situations. The three important factors, school, newspaper, and theater, have reached an extraordinary degree of power. People apperceive, think, and feel as these three teach them, and finally it becomes second nature to follow this line of least resistance, and to seek intellectual conformity. We know well enough what consequences this has in law, and each one of us can tell how witnesses present us stories which we believe to rest on their own insight but which show themselves finally to depend upon the opinion of some other element. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the advantages which lubricate the lines of least resistance, and stimulated by that clarion phrase in his unfailing campaign document, his copy of Beaconsfield: "I have begun many things many times and have finally succeeded," Dennis presented himself, about ten o'clock, at one of the well-known ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... his leisure moments, dwelt in a delectable realm from which she was excluded. She was still acutely conscious of his force, but what she now felt was its lack of direction—save for the portion that drove the Chippering Mills. The rest of it, like the river, flowed away on the line of least resistance to the sea. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sometimes desired to make traction on an irregularly shaped foreign body, and yet to allow the object to turn into the line of least resistance while traction is being made. This can be accomplished by the use of the rotation forceps (Fig. 20), which have for blades two pointed hooks that meet at their points and do not overlap. Rotation forceps made on the model of the laryngeal grasping forceps, but having opposing points at the end of ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... settlement in the land of Goshen,—which is the Egyptian province lying at the end of the ancient caravan road, which Abraham travelled, leading from Palestine to the banks of the Nile, and which had been the trade route, or path of least resistance, between Asia and Africa, probably for ages before the earliest of human traditions,—they prospered exceedingly. But at length they fell into a species of bondage which lasted several centuries, during which ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... pleasures as to speak of our being nourished to-day by to-morrow's dinner. The 'future pleasure' does not exist; the anticipated pleasure acts by making the present action pleasant; and we then move (as it is said) along the line of least resistance. Certain conduct is intrinsically pleasurable or painful, and the future pleasure only acts through the present foretaste. When, however, we regard the pleasure as future and as somehow a separable thing, we can ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... in verse; you will note two volumes of poems in my list. Finding at fifteen that the schools within my reach did not meet my requirements, I went to work and began educating myself along lines of least resistance. My occupations were various: worked in printing offices, learned shorthand, became stenographer in a law office; was in newspaper work for twelve years; at thirty was auditor and treasurer of a coal-mining corporation ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... man. It was habit, I guess. It was just the line of least resistance. It was the quickest way out of a box—I didn't think, and bang!—first thing I knew I'd gone and done it! I'm a good deal older than you, Harrie, I'm twenty-one. I was a pretty bad kid until Prof. and Mrs. Brewster ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... me four years in a medical school in the East. Why I chose medicine I hardly know. Possibly the career of a surgeon attracted the adventurous element in me. Perhaps, coming of a family of doctors, I merely followed the line of least resistance. It may be, indirectly but inevitably, that I might be on the yacht Ella on that terrible night of August 12, more than a ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... do this, especially when, as is often the case, that offence has to be given to people whom you love and honour for their works and character and sacrifices. In this world, however, unpleasant things have to be faced, and frequently the line of least resistance leads in the end to the greater trouble. It is even more unpleasant to have to disappoint the hopes, and discourage the desire for service, of some young aspirant whose piety and devotion you admire; but it is better to hold a man back from the very thing ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... their chief. "See," said one, "he needed only the time necessary for the journey. That man must be a god."—"He is a devil rather," said the Austrians, whose stupefaction was indescribable. They had reached a point when many allowed the arms to be taken out of their hands without making the least resistance, or without even attempting to fly, so deep was their conviction that the Emperor and his guard were not men, and that sooner or later they must fall into the power of these ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... necessary to elaborate their romance, if it was such, from this point. Gradually, hastened by the awful propinquity in a third-rate boarding-house, Haldane really came to believe—as along the line of least resistance—in his personal incapacity and his loneliness; gradually Ida Locke began to realize that, for the first time, this Love she had read of and dreamed of doubtfully had become a reality for her. She was not a little amazed and gratified at its plain ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... apparatus and by firing the inflammable air generated with a due portion of common air under a piston.' This is an exact forecast of the engine used to-day in all flying machines. He has some good remarks on the shape that offers least resistance to the air in passing through it, that is, on the doctrine of the streamline. He knew that the shape of the hinder part of a solid body which travels through the air is of as much importance as the shape of the fore-part in diminishing resistance. He does not seem to have known ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... carved lintels and windows of stained glass. The Hewishes invested money in these new ventures. In Galway a Hewish of Roscarna was somebody: there the family was taken for granted and, following the way of least resistance, the Hewishes settled down into the state ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... unpopular, it was becoming a nuisance. Line of least resistance, you understand. Now everybody's quite civil again. ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... man (to satisfy ghosts, get rain, or thwart disease). They may be used to buy a wife, or to buy a step in the secret society of the men, or to pay a fine or penalty to the chief. The differentiation of goods starts emotion on the line of least resistance, and the predominant goods are the ones of widest demand. Often the predominant ware has a gain from taboo, probably on account of relation to the dead.[296] A thing which is rare and hard to get may become intragroup money. In Fiji the teeth of ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... incidental policy in any field of education,—whether in arithmetic, or spelling, or reading; whether in developing the power of reasoning or the memory, or the art of study,—is to throw wide open the doors that lead to the lines of least resistance, to lax methods, to easy honors, to weakened mental fiber, and to scamped work. Just as the pernicious doctrine of the subconscious is the first and last refuge of the psycho-faker, so incidental learning is the first and last refuge of soft pedagogy. And I mean by incidental learning, ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... he said, "to feed canals"; and instead of ending in the Irwell, he carried the duke's canal by an aqueduct across that river to Manchester itself. What Brindley had discovered was in fact the water-road, a means of carrying heavy goods with the least resistance, and therefore the least cost, from the point of production to the point of sale; and England at once seized on his discovery to free itself from the bondage in which it had been held. From the year 1767, when Brindley completed his enterprise, ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... of Alice that, even in this moment of triumph, she did not gloat over her victory—for victory it was. Had she planned it, events could not have transpired to better purpose. The combination of circumstances had forced her father along the line of least resistance into the very path she would had chosen for him, and she felt in her ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... attention are various. There is the use of the eyes, as before shown. Then there is the spoken word, the performer telling the onlookers to observe some certain object or action, and the effect is to cause them to watch it, as they are told. They follow the line of least resistance. The combined effect upon the spectator of the spoken word and the ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... to crown the convict with a certain halo of romance, which his behavior in jail did nothing to dispel. That, of course, was exemplary, since Stingaree had never been a fool; but it was something more and rarer. Not content simply to follow the line of least resistance, he exhibited from the first a spirit and a philosophy unique indeed beneath the broad arrow. And so far from decreasing with the years of his captivity, these attractive qualities won him friend after friend among the officials, and privilege upon privilege at their ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... terminal portion and at the back and sides of the wall—there is a triangular space in front of the rectum containing fatty areolar tissue, which space is often the location of a pus cavity. Pus, like all fluids, follows the path of least resistance. The progress of imprisoned pus may take weeks, months and years before an abnormal communication between the abscess and the external portion of the body is completed. The imprisoned contents of the abscess cavity and the pus canal or fistula often give rise ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... steps Richard took unwillingly under the other's soft compulsion; then, having given the matter thought—he was always one to take the line of least resistance—he assured himself that his sentryship was entirely superfluous; the matter of Blake's affair was an entire secret, shared only by those who had a hand in it. Blake was quite safe from all surprises; ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... which she has become an adept. Altogether, Inez must be thought of as one who is trying to satisfy certain wishes and ambitions which are too much for her resources. Towards the goal to which her nature urges her she follows the path of least resistance. Being the personality that she is, the social world offers her stimulation which ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... original promoters looked mainly toward a South Sea passage, gold mines, fisheries, Indian trade, and the production of silk, wine and naval stores. But from the first they were on the alert for unexpected opportunities to be exploited. The following of the line of least resistance led before long to the dominance of tobacco culture, then of the plantation system, and eventually of negro slavery. At the outset, however, these developments were utterly unforeseen. In short, Virginia was launched ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... found in the teachings of Christ. Lao Tzu harped upon a doctrine of Inaction, by virtue of which all things were to be accomplished,—a perpetual accommodation of self to one's surroundings, with the minimum of effort, all progress being spontaneous and in the line of least resistance. Such a system was naturally far better fitted for the study, where in fact it has always remained, than for ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... for his work. His study will show him how astonishing is the light that has shone upon those men whom he has thought of as wholly in darkness. It will thus show him the true way of approach, and enable him to follow the lines of least resistance. It will also reveal to him what is the essential character of the divine message which he himself bears. He will separate that peculiar and spiritual truth which is the Word of Life, and will bring it as glad tidings of great joy. Surely no man can study these ethnic faiths, no matter ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... slide easily through life: Namely, to believe everything, or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking. The majority take the line of least resistance, preferring to have their thinking done for them; they accept ready-made individual, private doctrines as their own and follow them more or less blindly. Every generation looks upon its own creeds as true and permanent ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... scourged poor criminals to death at this pillar. They resembled wild beasts or demons, and appeared to be half drunk. They struck our Lord with their fists, and dragged him by the cords with which he was pinioned, although he followed them without offering the least resistance, and, finally, they barbarously knocked him down against the pillar. This pillar, placed in the centre of the court, stood alone, and did not serve to sustain any part of the building; it was not very high, for a tall man could ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... at present was the line of least resistance. It was ten past ten, and Poppy Grace was "on" from ten fifteen ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... earn your leisure only by forethought. Make no move until you know it follows the line of greatest economy. To putter is to wallow in endless desolation. If you cannot move directly and swiftly and certainly along the line of least resistance in everything you do, take a guide with you; you are not of the woods people. You will never enjoy doing for yourself, for your days will ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... The line of least resistance has changed in some measure, and the energy which formerly found a vent in predatory activity, now in part takes the direction of some ostensibly useful end. Ostensibly purposeless leisure has come to be deprecated, especially among that large portion of the ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... the coming young advocate's heart bounded with delight at the six-weeks' future companionship of the woman whose unguarded heart had silently drifted toward him "along the line of least resistance." ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... she is as much frightened of us as we are of her, and, mind you this, mankind has declared war against Nature and we will win. She does not understand yet that her geologic periods won't do any longer, and that while she is pattering along the line of least resistance we are going to travel fast and far until we find her, and then, being a female, she is bound to give in when ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... impulses differ in every member of the class,—take infinite variety from individual sensitiveness to environment: the line of least resistance for one being that of greatest resistance for another;—no two courses of true nomadism can ever be wholly the same. Diversified of necessity both impulse and direction, even as human nature is diversified. Never since ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... inclined to believe that he sometimes wrote, as he would no doubt preach, in a prophetic, rapturous, spontaneous fashion, hardly steering his train of thought by his intellect, but letting it go along lines of least resistance and in a rhythmic flood of words; his central ideas of course all the time holding the predominant place in his utterance. He is essentially a mystic both in experience and in the ground and basis of his conception of ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... do business you had better go where business is being done. Trade follows the lines of least resistance. The wholesale dealer saw the value of honesty as a business asset, long before the retailer made ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard |
