"Gravitate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... House, or the State Department. Everybody may be seen there. It is the meeting-place of the true representatives of the country,—not such as are chosen blindly and amiss by electors who take a folded ballot from the hand of a local politician, and thrust it into the ballot-box unread, but men who gravitate or are attracted hither by real business, or a native impulse to breathe the intensest atmosphere of the nation's life, or a genuine anxiety to see how this life-and-death struggle is going to deal with us. Nor these only, but all manner of loafers. Never, in any other spot, was there such a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... round and graceful—he came to be known as "the Little Giant." Douglas was a Democrat and favored slavery. Lincoln was a Whig, and strongly opposed that dark institution. Even in petty discussions in Speed's store, the two men seemed to gravitate to opposite sides. A little later they were rivals for the hand of the ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... the yoke of Babylon might be thrown off and Hebrew autonomy re-established. The infatuated monarch did not see that, do what he would, his country had no more than a choice of masters, that by the laws of political attraction Judaea must gravitate to one or other of the two great states between which it had the misfortune of lying. Hoping to free his country, he sent ambassadors to Uaphris, who were to conclude a treaty and demand the assistance of a powerful contingent, composed of both foot and horse. Uaphris received the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... vain he struggled; he tried to step backwards, and instead went forwards, he tried to turn his head away, but those glowing eyes held and drew him as a magnet draws a needle. And as the needle rolls across the table ever more quickly towards the magnet, so did the unwilling Godfrey gravitate towards Madame Riennes. And now, oh! now her stout arm was about his neck, and now—he was impressing a fervent embrace ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... judgment and taste, as it was that of Stanton to be swayed by feeling and passion. All the higher faculties of his mind gave their voice for this woman with increasing emphasis. His heart undoubtedly would slowly and surely gravitate in the same direction. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... have been so long trained in the filthy ruts of vice that they run there automatically, and naturally gravitate downward—such a one must exercise especial care to secure the most ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... in omni humaniorum literarum genere eruditum, omniumque scientiarum comprehensione felicissimum, scriptis suis, ad popularium mores formandos summ verborum eleganti ac sententiarum gravitate compositis, ita olim inclaruisse, ut dignus videretur cui ab Academi su eximia quaedam laudis praemia deferentur [deferrentur] quique [in] venerabilem Magistrorum Ordinem summ ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... their pleasure was also quickened with the bright prospect of several millions of English money for their manufacturing interest. Then after their visit to Europe might follow the long looked-for residence in delightful New York. Already rich Americans, famous authors and artists gravitate as naturally to this new world metropolis, as the world's elite to ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... hold as of no account the exercise of individual choice and the development of individual potentialities which are the very lifeblood of the existing order of society; if all these things hold no value for us, then we shall gravitate to Socialism as surely as a river will find its way to the sea. Socialism—granted its practicability, and its practicability can never be disproved except by trial, by long and repeated trial—holds out the promise of great ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... such a poem after the heat of the day, after his ripe experience, after success had come to him; it is the lesson we expect one to learn on reaching his age, and learning how futile is the fret and urge of life, how infinitely better is the attitude of trust that what is our own will gravitate to us in obedience to eternal laws. But I there learned that he had written the poem when a young man, life all before him, his prospects in a dubious and chaotic condition, his aspirations seeming likely to ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... hypothesis: either the attraction of the moon would draw it to herself, and the travelers thus attain their end; or that the projectile, held in one immutable orbit, would gravitate around the lunar ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... circles a retinue of planetary worlds, it is obvious that a much more complicated arrangement must exist among the orbs which enter into the formation of such a system than is found among those which gravitate ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... interested in politics—Americans enter into politics as Englishmen enter into cricket—and Washington being the vibrant centre of that intense political concern, the most acute brains of the American news world naturally gravitate to the Capital. The National Press Club at Washington is a club of experts. Its membership is made up of men whose keen intelligence, brilliance in craft and devotion to their calling has lifted them to the top of the tree in their own ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... was going on. Hermione Roddice was thinking only of Birkin. He stood near her. She seemed to gravitate physically towards him. She wanted to stand touching him. She could hardly be sure he was near her, if she did not touch him. Yet she stood ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... return to the works was approaching, and we all rose. Somehow, Gertrude and Garretson seemed naturally to gravitate toward the ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... She had seen in the corners of his mouth an inexplicable hidden imp of laughter as he gravely listened, cup in hand, to the remarks of the beautiful Mrs. William Winterton Perth about the inevitable promiscuity of democracy, and he continually displayed a tendency to gravitate into the background, away from the center of the stage where their deference for his name, fortune, and personality would have placed him. Sylvia's impression of him was far from being one of social brilliance, but rather of an almost wilful negligence. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... desires it has multiplied them ten thousand fold. Every city in the land has its own Mrs. Anstruthers Leason or Mrs. Corporation, to form the local constellation, towards which the active-minded women of a certain type will always strive or gravitate, as you choose to put it. This being so, the American husband, one might suppose, would sigh for an absolute monarchy, where there is but one fixed social firmament, admission to which is determined by a despot's edict. Then the great middle class could rest content, knowing ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... the traffic of thought, passing and repassing, crossing and recrossing, went on unaffected by outward things. A modern poet has confessed that his muse loves the pavement—a bold confession, but most certainly true. Why does talent gravitate to cities? Because there it works its best—because friction necessarily produces brilliancy. Nature is a great deceiver; she draws us on to admire her insinuating charms, and in the contemplation of them we lose ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... speedily under the influence of party rule; in point of fact, the Democrats are not a party; because they have no principles other than the old Whig- Radical ones, extended in some cases so as to take in a little semi- Socialism which the march of events has forced on them—that is, they gravitate on one side to the Whigs and on the other to the Socialists. Whenever, if ever, they begin to be a power in the elections and get members in the House, the temptation to be members of a real live party which may have the government of the country in its hands, the temptation ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... one way out of her troubles,—that to which Alphonse Daudet's and Andre Theuriet's people gravitate as needles to their pole. She walked one dark midnight upon the jetty alone. Nobody saw the end; but the next Sunday, three weeks to a day from the one when the two had countermarched in matrimonial procession, Mademoiselle Clothilde was laid ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... every consideration in life, emotional and other, to a dollar-and-cents basis. Sentiment, ambition, common judgment of right and wrong, all gravitate to the same level. You have a single standard of measurement that you apply to all alike, which alike condemns or justifies. Summer and Winter, morning, noon, and night—it's the same. Your little yardstick is always in evidence, ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... the first use to which writing is put and through which the writer is trained. For this, abundant material is indispensable, as much as clinical material for a medical school. As the medical schools gravitate to cities, and the rural institutions flicker out one by one, so in the end the effectively trained reporter will gravitate to a large city. Towns of under 20,000 population furnish a very tame sort of reporting, and those who get ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... producing group. The equalizing process may take place even though men do not actually abandon one occupation and enter another; for there exists, in the generation of young men not yet committed to any occupation, a disposable fund of labor which will gravitate naturally to the occupations that pay the largest wages. It is not necessary that blacksmiths should ever become shoemakers, or vice versa, but only that the children of both classes of artisans should be free to enter the trade that is ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... in getting a few paces from the prince, behind the group of maids of honor, and nearly within reach of Mademoiselle Aure's voice, she being the planet around which he, as her attendant satellite, seemed constrained to gravitate. As he recovered his self-possession, Raoul fancied he recognized voices on his right hand that were familiar to him, and he perceived De Wardes, De Guiche, and the Chevalier de Lorraine, conversing together. It is true they ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... inclinations and strong in the fundamentals of character, is never difficult to analyze, counsel, train, or place. If given an opportunity to gain knowledge, and freedom in the exercise of choice, he will almost surely gravitate into his natural line of work. He is not the real problem of the vocational expert. But the vast majority of children are average, or even mediocre. They show little inclination toward any study or any work. They have weaknesses of character that will inevitably handicap them, no matter what vocation ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... quoties uter utro fit prior; aufert Pacuvius docti famam senis, Actius alti: Dicitur Alfrani toga convenisse Menandro; Plautus ad exemplar siculi properare Epicharmi, Vincere Coecilius gravitate, Terentius arte Hos ediscit, et hos areto stipata theatro Spectat Roma potens: habet nos numeratque poetas Ad nostrum ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... has he training nor interest to study any subject but the law. The profounder and more important matters affecting life and conduct are a sealed book which he could not open if he would. Very soon under our political system the expert business would gravitate into the hands of politicians, the last group that should handle any scientific problem. I am free to confess the difficulties of the present system, but some other way may be even worse. It must always be remembered that this country is governed by ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... world can give to you is to first surround, own, and live in these things in mind, or what is falsely called imagination. All so-called imaginings are realities and forces of unseen element. Live in mind in a palace and gradually palatial surroundings will gravitate to you. But so living is not pining, or longing, or complainingly wishing. It is when you are 'down in the world,' calmly and persistently seeing yourself as up. It is when you are now compelled ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... whenever one organization turns over a grave case to the succeeding organization, the stretcher goes with the case, and an empty one is received in return. The number at any one point is thus maintained at a constant figure, and there is a general tendency for battered and infected stretchers to gravitate toward the south of France, and for new stretchers to ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... conviction that "what now characterizes the exceptionally high may be expected eventually to characterize all. For that which the highest human nature is capable of is within the reach of human nature at large." "We gravitate towards the ideal," she writes, "and this gravitation is infinite, as is the ideal itself." And her place remains among those few great intelligences who can be said to have given humanity an appreciable impulse in ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... boy. He had crawled into the sphere, meddled with the studs, shut the Cavorite windows, and gone up. It was highly improbable he had screwed the manhole stopper, and, even if he had, the chances were a thousand to one against his getting back. It was fairly evident that he would gravitate with my bales to somewhere near the middle of the sphere and remain there, and so cease to be a legitimate terrestrial interest, however remarkable he might seem to the inhabitants of some remote quarter of space. ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... the empire together. It is unnecessary to expatiate on the contrast between the prospect of such a career and that which is all that a small local service could offer. It would soon be seen towards which the enterprising and the energetic would instinctively gravitate. ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... chance either for the Emperor or the Empress Regent. As for Henri V., he is, in sporting phraseology, a dark horse. Among politicians, the general opinion is that a moderate Republic will be tried for a short time, and that then we shall gravitate into a Constitutional Monarchy. ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... drifted apart from the rest without need of spoken suggestion; and now, under cover of Honor's music, which produced a tendency to gravitate towards the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... he would gravitate almost to the extreme of servility in his efforts to exact additional largess from the powers in control, to expend upon this senile attempt to augment the ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... condition, it just occurs to me, which seems to correspond roughly with the 'Hypnoidal' state); that, after a period which is usually shorter than the average life-time here, they pass to some further state of existence; that people of similar thoughts, tastes and feelings, gravitate together; that married couples do not necessarily reunite, but that the love of man and woman continues and is freed of elements which with us often militate against its perfect realization; that ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pillar of the sun. Loose but the bond an instant, and it flies in wild, tangential flight, to shatter other worlds. The very bondage that we curse, and seek, in fretful mood, to break and burst, may keep us to the orbit that is traced, by overruling wisdom, for our good. We gravitate towards duty, though we sweep with errant course along the outer marge of the bare area of its tightened cord. Let but the wise restraint be rudely broke, and through life's peopled space we heedless rush, trampling o'er hearts, and whirling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... percipi. Non sum sapiens; itaque visis cedo nec possum resistere. Sapientis autem hanc censet Arcesilas vim esse maximam, Zenoni adsentiens, cavere ne capiatur, ne fallatur videre. Nihil est enim ab ea cogitatione, quam habemus de gravitate sapientis, errore, levitate, temeritate diiunctius. Quid igitur loquar de firmitate sapientis? quem quidem nihil opinari tu quoque, Luculle, concedis. Quod quoniam a te probatur—ut praepostere tecum agam, mox referam me ad ordinem—haec ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... every human being occupy a common platform of political rights, and all will irresistibly gravitate exactly to their proper place and sphere, without discord, and with none but the most beneficial results. In this way human energy and capacity will be fully economized and expended for the highest interest of all humanity; ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... variations, calculate the Problem of Three gravitating Bodies, ought to hold her peace here, and say only: In this National Convention there are Seven Hundred and Forty-nine very singular Bodies, that gravitate and do much else;—who, probably in an amazing manner, will ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... German Jews gravitate to Polish and Russian; and French Jews mostly stay in France. Ici on ne parle pas Francais, is the only lingual certainty in the London Ghetto, which ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... with the Spirit and Word of Christian Science gravitate naturally toward Truth. Therefore the mind to which this Science was revealed must have risen to the altitude which perceived a light beyond ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... Maha-Yug, the "Great Age" or Cycle of Manu's calculation, which itself revolves between two eternities—the "Pralayas" or Nights of Brahma. As, in the objective world of matter, or the system of effects, the minor constellations and planets gravitate each and all around the sun, so in the world of the subjective, or the system of causes, these innumerable cycles all gravitate between that which the finite intellect of the ordinary mortal regards as eternity, and the still finite, but ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... homines, proinde ac sentire videntur pondus inesse animo quod se gravitate fatiget, e quibus id fiat causis quoque noscere et unde tanta mali tamquam moles in pectore constet, haut ita vitam agerent, ut nunc plerumque videmus quid sibi quisque velit nescire et quaerere semper commutare locum quasi onus ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Something like a desire for consolidation would seem to have come over the people; and Tyre, the leading city in all but the earliest times, appears to have been recognised as the centre towards which other states must gravitate, and to have risen to the occasion. If there ever was such a thing as a confederation of all the Phoenician cities, it would seem to have been at this period. Sidon forgot her ancient rivalry, and consented to furnish the Tyrian fleet with mariners.[14193] Arvad ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Obs. Viror. operae pretium est videre quantopere placeant omnibus, et doctis joco, et indoctis serio, qui dum ridemus, putant rideri stylum tantum, quem illi non defendunt, sed gravitate sententiarum dicunt compensatum, et latere sub rudi vagina pulcherrimum gladium. Utinam fuisset inditus libello alius titulus! Profecto intra centum annos homines studio stupidi non sensissent ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... latter is variable; that is, under gravitation the attraction of any one particle to any other is the same, but under cohesion, some sets of particles are more forcibly drawn together than others. For instance, a particle of iron and a particle of cork gravitate equally, but particles of iron and particles of cork among themselves do not cohere equally. And it is just because those of the former cohere more than those of the latter, that a piece of iron feels harder and weighs heavier than a piece ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... about sport, finance, business, animals, crops, or how things are made. Theirs is also a difficult type of conversation to join in, being also above one's head. Male men as a rule, like female women, and vice versa; they do not converse, but each supplies the other with something they lack, so they gravitate together and make happy marriages. In between these is the No-Man's Land, filled with mental neutrals of both sexes. They talk about all the other things, such as books, jokes, politics, love (as ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... careful about doing anything of the kind. We know, of course, very little about the conditions of the unborn. But I think it highly probable that, like labour, as described by the political economists, they form throughout the universe a single mobile body, with a tendency to gravitate wherever the access is freest and the conditions most favourable. And I should be very much afraid of attracting what we may call, perhaps, the unemployed of the universe in undue proportions to this planet, ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... aeternus genitalia corpora mundus Continet; ex illis duo sunt onerosa, suoque Pondere in inferius, tellus atque unda, feruntur, Et totidem gravitate carent, nulloque premente Alta petunt, ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... small rental which they pay is in excess of the accommodation they receive. The results are inevitable,—loss of self-respect, degradation of intelligence, failure of physical health, and premature death. Even the highest-minded philosopher, placed in such a situation, would gradually gravitate towards brutality. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... this, nothing can withhold our own from us; not though the two halves of the One Being are separated by all the barriers which the sense-conscious race of men have erected between themselves and the bliss of Heaven. Says Emerson: "What is thine, will gravitate to thee." We need not therefore go about apprehensively fearful lest we lose that which belongs to us; in so doing we are apt to keep our eyes glued to the earth, thus forgetting that it is from the higher realms of ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... have their roots in history. To the protracted sway of Sweden and Finland's continuous relations through her intermediary with Western Europe, the circumstance is to be ascribed that the thinking spirits among the Finns gravitate—in matters of culture—not to Russia but to the West, and in particular to Sweden, with whom Finland is linked by bonds of language—through her highest social class—and of religion, laws, and literature. For that reason the views, ideas, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... planets gravitate towards Jupiter; the circumsaturnal towards Saturn; the circumsolar towards the sun; and by the forces of their gravity are drawn off from rectilinear motions, and retained ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... sees the good beyond the evil, The serial life beyond the eclipsing death,— That tracks the spirit through eternities, Backward and forward, and in every germ Beholds its past, its present, and its future, At every stage beholds it gravitate Where it belongs, and thence new-born emerge Into new life and opportunity, An outcast never from the assiduous Mercy, Providing for His teeming universe, Divinely perfect not because complete, But because incomplete, ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... friend of all, shall we be truly the friend of every one; and, as we find the living peace of this principle, and a greater freedom from selfishness,—whether of affection or dislike,—those who truly belong to us will gravitate to our sides, and we shall gravitate to theirs. Each one of us will understand his own relation to the rest,—whether remote or close,—for in that quiet light it will be seen to rest on intelligible law, which only the fog ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... have tried to behave like a father to her but she doesn't seem to notice it," Jerry returned humorously. "You see they all gravitate straight to Marjorie. There's something about her that inspires confidence in the ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... motion. It corresponds likewise to the tendency ever present in the mind of man, to compare the infinitely small with the infinitely great. The atom may be regarded as a sort of solar system in which electrons in considerable numbers gravitate round the sun formed by the positive ion. It may happen that certain of these electrons are no longer retained in their orbit by the electric attraction of the rest of the atom, and may be projected from it like a small planet or comet ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... that they were productive of the earthly end toward which the sublime doctrines of Christianity pointed; and the other believed that scientific social organization alone would act so powerfully as a stimulant and teacher to humanity, that mankind and human nature would gravitate to their own sublime places at once if an organization was presented suitable to their needs. They were Albert Brisbane ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... follow a car to some distant roadhouse, or go to the outlying summer pavilions where popular dances were given. More than once, late at night, he was an unseen and unbidden guest at one of the gay bathing parties. Strange and startling incidents seemed to gravitate toward Lane. He might have been predestined for this accumulation of facts. How vain it seethed for wild young men and women to think they hid their tracks! Some trails could ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... discoverable by dulness on percussion, and, as might be expected, by the absence of the respiratory murmur at that locality which the fluid occupies. Fluid, when effused into the pleural sac, will of course gravitate; and its position will vary according to the position of the patient. The sitting or standing posture will therefore suit best for the examination of the thorax in reference to the presence ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... college-degreed or self-educated to an equivalent level. The self-taught hacker is often considered (at least by other hackers) to be better-motivated, and may be more respected, than his school-shaped counterpart. Academic areas from which people often gravitate into hackerdom include (besides the obvious computer science and electrical engineering) ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... leading it into its place with thicker or thinner lead, in the same careful spirit. But I do not think so. I fancy the truth to be that the whole business should be opened up to all, and afterwards each should gravitate to his place by natural fitness. For the cartoonist once having the whole craft requires more constant practice in drawing to keep himself a good cartoonist than he would get if he also did all the other work of each window; quantity being in ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... be generated by the impacts of the incoming materials; and as the attraction toward the center of the mass became strong, additional heat would be generated in the contraction process. The denser materials have been able, on the whole, to gravitate to the center of the structure, and the lighter elements have been able, on the whole, to rise to and float upon the surface very much as the lighter impurities in an iron furnace find their way to the surface and form the slag upon the ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... judged by it; the saint, the hypocrite, the brawler, the weak brother. These people do each other good; or they all join together to do the hypocrite good, with heavy and repeated blows. But once break the bond of doctrine which alone holds these people together and each will gravitate to his own kind outside the group. The hypocrites will all get together and call each other saints; the saints will get lost in a desert and call themselves weak brethren; the weak brethren will get weaker and weaker in a general atmosphere of imbecility; and the brawler ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... that the combination of money and the city proved the undoing of the moonshiner, and that he came to his legitimate and logical end among the dives and haunts of his kind, to which he would surely gravitate. ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... party. That he would gravitate there sooner or later was inevitable, for the laboratory in the garden was a Kaaba to which all such spirits made at least one pilgrimage. He had just set musical London on fire with his barbaric playing, and already those ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... This child, Mary Rochefort, quite alone in the world, largely untrained, adrift, imperiously demanding from an imperious husband something to which she had not as yet found the key, might 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 ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... it be possible that several from among the Republicans, honest leaders, gravitate towards Lincoln, and already begin to agitate for Lincoln's re-election? If it is so—if the people submit to such an imposition—O, then, genius of history, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... Worlds gravitate in the midst of their own elements. The yellow or yolk of an egg remains in the middle of the albumen without moving on either side, and is lighter or heavier or equal to this albumen; and if it is lighter it ought to rise above all the ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... to be with him, of course; but when they came to him they came together, and one of the things he sought for them was that they should like to be together. That was surely a lesson that they learned of him; for as soon as he had gone they began to gravitate together. Every day they met, sometimes in the temple courts, sometimes in their own homes, for praise and prayer; every evening they partook together, in little groups, of a simple meal, in memory of him. ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... she remained silent for a long time. Hitherto, in her existence, sorrow and suffering had appeared like some other wonderful things occurring in nature, such as the forces holding atoms together or compelling bodies to gravitate. One knew of such things, of course, yet one was unconscious of them. Now they were assuming an importance she had never realized before. Her head bent low, as if she were being chastened by ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... learning the meaning of the sudden silences, the too obvious changes of the course of conversation, that seemed to occur when he drew near. He had not, as yet, formulated these things to himself, but, on this turbulent afternoon, it was possibly some livelier apprehension of them that made him gravitate towards Barty Mangan, as towards a fellow pariah, and induced him to seek with him the far asylum of the schoolroom. There, save for the schoolroom cat, they were alone, and they sat for some minutes in grateful silence, looking out, across misty stretches ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... way; as long as I can hang on to this job. Great men always gravitate to the metropolis. And I gravitated here just as Uncle Harmon B. was looking round for somebody who could give him an inside tip on the Eubaw mine deal—you know the Driscolls are pretty deep in Eubaw. I happened to go out there after our little unpleasantness at Apex, and it was just ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... among and kept deliciously cool and wet-looking. There was a quite intoxicating hot-house perfume of warm damp moss and massed flowers and it was the kind of corner any young man would feel it necessary to gravitate towards with a partner. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... dissimili argumento." Besides, the disposition of the subject was the very art attributed by the critics of those days to Terence, and which Horace mentions in the very same line with the gravity of Caecilius, distinguishing them as the several characteristics of each writer, "Vincere Caecilius gravitate, Terentius arte."] ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... "The things which are really for thee gravitate to thee." One is tempted to add the World's Congress ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... most assuredly will not be myself. For I have a natural alacrity in losing my seat, and gravitate so determinately to the ground, that (like a Roman of old) I ride without stirrups, by way of holding myself in constant readiness for projection; upon the least hint, anticipating my horse's wishes on that point, and ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... to give up these escapades. They knock me up for a week afterwards. And really it is a pity, just as I have got over my horror of public speaking, and find it very amusing. But I suppose I should gravitate into a bore as old fellows do, and so it is as well I am kept out ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... cheerful temper. He assured me, he never had felt one moment of what is called low spirits, or uneasiness, without a real cause. He had a great many good stories, which he told uncommonly well, and he was remarkable for 'humour, incolumi gravitate', as Lord Monboddo used to characterize it. His age, his office, and his character, had long given him an acknowledged claim to great attention, in whatever company he was; and he could ill brook any diminution of it. He was as sanguine a Whig and Presbyterian, as Dr Johnson was a Tory and Church ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... lowest grade of porter is the grade from which railway employees in the traffic departments gravitate to higher ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... secured; but whenever he places his interest in anything else than friends, country, family and justice, then these all give way, borne down by the weight of self-interest. For wherever I and mine are placed, thither must every living being gravitate. If in body, that will sway us; if in our own will, that; if in externals, these. If, therefore, I rest my personality in the will, then only shall I be a friend, a son, or a father, such as I ought. For in that case it will be for my interest to preserve the faithful, the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... of law to his mind he is overflowed with a reliance so universal that it sweeps away all cherished hopes and the most stable projects of mortal condition in its flood. He believes that he cannot escape from his good. The things that are really for thee gravitate to thee. You are running to seek your friend. Let your feet run, but your mind need not. If you do not find him, will you not acquiesce that it is best you should not find him? for there is a power, which, as it is in you, is in him also, and could therefore very well bring you together, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... characterization is to stand, it should be amended to read, his "enlightened selfishness." He has a good eye for his own interests. Roosevelt disliked him for it, because when governor and again when candidate for president, he refused to gravitate into the Roosevelt solar system, taking up his orbit like the rest of them about the Colonel. But think what happened to that system when the great sun of ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... know how to commence operations in Seville. He was entirely friendless, even the British Consul being unapproachable on account of his religious beliefs. However, he soon gathered round him some of those curious characters who seemed always to gravitate towards him, no matter where he might be, or with what occupied. Surely the Scriptures never had such a curious assortment of missionaries as Borrow employed? At Seville there was the gigantic Greek, Dionysius of Cephalonia; the "aged professor of music, who, with much stiffness ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... SAMUELEM JOHNSON, in omni humaniorum literarum genere eruditum, omniumque scientiarum comprehensione felicissimum, scriptis suis, ad popularium mores formandos summa verborum elegantia ac sententiarum gravitate compositis, ita olim inclaruisse, ut dignus videretur cui ab Academia sua eximia quaedam laudis praemia deferentur [deferrentur] quique [in] venerabilem Magistrorum Ordinem ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... scene, restored as it were to human intercourse, and encouraged by the kindness of our host, whose name was Evelyn, our pulses began to grow temperate; and our imaginations to relax and gravitate toward common sense. We took the refreshment that was brought us, and conversed during the meal with Mr. Evelyn: partly on the incidents of the night, and partly in answering a few questions; which he put with a feeling that denoted a desire rather to afford us aid than to gratify his ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... think we sort of gravitate toward them automatically. On a hunch that we haven't even recognized, ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... me into the artificial brook. Another great Bostonian expert, after leading me on to admit that I had come in order to try to learn the real Boston, turned upon me with ferocious gaiety, thus: "You will not learn the real Boston. You cannot. The real Boston is the old Back Bay folk, who gravitate eternally between Beacon Street and State Street and the Somerset Club, and never go beyond. They confuse New England with the created universe, and it is impossible that you should learn them. Nobody could learn them in less than twenty years' intense ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... is food for admiration, even the atmosphere that envelops it and those innumerable and endless legions of cherubin that gravitate around the Virgin and the Word of God. The aureole that encircles the divine group shows nothing at first but dazzling and golden light; then, as it recedes from the centre, this light gradually pales and insensibly merges from the most intense gold into the purest blue, and is filled ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... Ten years ago there were a good many thousands of highly respectable mediocrities living on this side of the river, but now I am told that the glory has departed from the very best of its localities, and given them up to various degrees of squalor. Vice, poverty, and misery seem to gravitate naturally southward in London. I don't know why, but they do. Well, here is the door ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... contribute to racial harmony. Although candidates were supposed to attend the NROTC school of their choice, black candidates were restricted to institutions that would accept them. If a black school was added to the program, all black candidates would very likely gravitate toward it. Several black spokesmen, including Nelson, took this attitude and urged instead a campaign to increase the number of Negroes at the various integrated schools in the NROTC system.[9-46] Whatever ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... he returned to Jerusalem. It was as natural for the highest rabbinical talent to gravitate in those times to Jerusalem as it is for the highest literary and commercial talent to gravitate in our day to the metropolis. He arrived in the capital of Judaism very soon after the death of Jesus; and we can easily imagine the representations of that event ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... the afternoon glided along, to just naturally gravitate toward the kind of pleasure that ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... the worse for me," retorted the Colonel. And as men gravitate toward their leading grievance, he went off at a tangent, "What do you think my feelings must be, to see my son, my only son, spooning the daughter of my only enemy; of a knave who got on my land on pretense of farming it, but instead of ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... manufacturing in the more densely peopled areas and an excess of agriculture in the more sparsely settled ones. With this qualification it may be said that there is a standard apportionment of labor and capital among the producing groups, and that these agents gravitate powerfully and even rapidly toward it. If there were a certain amount of labor and capital at A, a certain amount at B, and so throughout the system, this standard shape would be attained, and the elements would not move, except as a very slow movement would be caused by changes ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... subservient to the digestive powers. If the contractility of their muscular fibres is destroyed or impaired, the tone of the digestive apparatus will be diminished, as in indigestion and costiveness. This is frequently attended by a displacement of those organs, as they generally gravitate towards the lower portion of the abdominal cavity, when the sustaining muscles lose their tone ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... know," he repeated presently. "One couldn't make a gift of a damaged thing. Oh, yes, you're to have him, Hantee. Things of Kala Khan's quality gravitate to you—I was thinking of the dog, ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... dynasty of Tokugawa shoguns, lay in Hideyori, the son and heir of Taiko Sama. He was born in 1592, and was therefore at this time, 1614, in his twenty-third year. As long as he lived he would be naturally and inevitably the centre to which all the disaffected elements of the country would gravitate. The failure of Ieyasu to support the cause of his old master's son would always prove a source of weakness to him, especially in a country where fidelity to parents and superiors was held in such high esteem. He determined, therefore, to bring to a conclusion these threatening troubles ...
— Japan • David Murray
... it is modified by local habits and social aptitudes. The foundation of government (those who have read that book will recollect) is laid in a provision for our wants and in a conformity to our duties: it is to purvey for the one, it is to enforce the other. These doctrines do of themselves gravitate to a middle point, or to some point near a middle. They suppose, indeed, a certain portion of liberty to be essential to all good government; but they infer that this liberty is to be blended into the government, to harmonize with its forms and its rules, and to be made subordinate ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... thrive without the united care of father and mother. It is the long-continued helplessness of our children that makes the permanent union of a single pair natural to man. The moral sentiments—which, certainly, in a healthy condition of human society also gravitate in the same direction—are nothing more than the outcome of these natural conditions of existence. If a man reached maturity in a single year our moral sentiments would permit, would perhaps imperatively demand, a change of partner after every child; for, without exception, we hold that ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka |
