"Poise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or degree.] Equality. — N. equality, parity, coextension[obs3], symmetry, balance, poise; evenness, monotony, level. equivalence; equipollence[obs3], equipoise, equilibrium, equiponderance[obs3]; par, quits, a wash; not a pin to choose; distinction without a difference, six of one and half a dozen of the other; tweedle dee ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... told how long he had been dreaming, for he saw nothing. Suddenly his heart leaped. In front of him, at a bend in an avenue, were two women's faces looking at him. One, a young lady in black, with fine irregular features and fair hair, tail, elegant, with carelessness and indifference in the poise of her head, was looking at him with kind, laughing eyes. The other, a girl of fifteen, also in deep mourning, looked as though she were going to burst out into a fit of wild laughter; she was standing a little behind her mother, who, without looking at her, signed to her ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... throat apparently, but although she had dropped her wrap over the back of the seat he had no more than a glimpse of a white neck and a suggestion of sloping shoulders. Rather rare those, nowadays. They reminded him, together with the haughty poise of the head, of the family portraits in the old gallery at home. Being dark himself, he admired fair women, although since they had taken to bobbing their hair they looked as much alike as magazine covers. This woman wore her hair in no particular fashion. It was soft and abundant, brushed ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... beach; the other wild and heartlessly jubilant, as of the sea in the height of a tempest. Oh soul! thou then heardest life and death: as he who stands upon the Corinthian shore hears both the Ionian and the Aegean waves. The life-and-death poise soon passed; and then I found myself slowly ascending, and caught a dim ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... infinitely various school of discipline and ordered skill. He has been made more human by schooling, by growing more self-possessed—less violent, less tumultuous; holding himself in hand, and moving always with a certain poise of spirit; not forever clapping his hand to the hilt of his sword, but preferring, rather, to play with a subtler skill upon the springs of action. This is our conception of the truly human man: a man ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... was some relief to us who were not altogether satisfied with her outlook here. The place she left need not be always desolate. There was a good maiden sister to keep the house, and Eben and the children would be but briefly sorry. They could recover their poise; he with the health of a simple mind, and they as children will. Yet he was truly stunned by the blow; and I hoped, on the day of the funeral, that he did not see what I did. When we went out to get our horse and wagon, I caught my foot in something which at once ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... further having proved vain, Lollie, far from being embarrassed, bowed low again with the poise of one who has recited brilliantly, and took his seat amid the ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... essentially weak, he thought, I need work to do, work to do. It worried him to think that he was, after all, a facile mediocrity, with neither the poise of Maury nor the enthusiasm of Dick. It seemed a tragedy to want nothing—and yet he wanted something, something. He knew in flashes what it was—some path of hope to lead him toward what he thought was an ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... do something for his country politically, it suddenly seemed to me—and what a glorious picture to gaze at!—If I could some day go into Parliament, and have Alathea beside me, to give me inspiration and help me to the best in myself. How her poise would tell in English political society! How her brain and her power of exercising her critical faculties! Apart from the fact that I love every inch of her wisp of a body—What an asset that mind would be to any man!—And I dreamed and dreamed in the firelight—things all filled ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... the moment her poise had fled from her and she knew that he must note the high colour in her cheeks. And the colour had come not in response to his words but in quick answer to his look. A young giant of a man, he stood staring at her like some artless boy who at a bend in the road had ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... lepers run stalls, and heaven alone knows through what channels arrive at that market the daily supplies of fish, fruit, meat, and vegetables. The only happy way to go through the South Seas is with a careless poise, without apprehension, and with a Christian Science-like faith in the resplendent fortune of your own particular star. When you see a woman, afflicted with elephantiasis wringing out cream from cocoanut meat with her naked hands, drink and reflect how good is the cream, forgetting the hands that ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... of self-conscious Bohemianism about him. His face, with its clear brow, firmly moulded chin, and brown moustache, was that of a man who understood himself as well as music. His figure, in its faultless evening dress, had the tranquil poise and force of one who obeys the customs of society in order to be free to give his mind to other things. With slight motions, easy and graceful as if they came without thought and required no effort, his right hand, with the little baton, ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... every yard of earth is vocal with life, and the bush is brave with color. Where the earth shows it is red, as though a wound bled. The mimosas have not yet come to flower, but amid their delicate green—the long thorns, straight or curved like claws, gleam with the flash of silver. Palms poise aloft, brilliant and delicate, and under foot, flowers are abroad. The flame-blossom blazes in scarlet. The sangdieu burns in sullen vermilion. Insects fill the world with the noise of their business—spiders, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... his own level because she wanted to work out her clean life in her own clean way. The thought warmed him. Here was a girl, he reflected, with a piece of steel in her backbone; a girl that would take the world's lashings like a white elm in a storm, to spring resiliently back to stately poise after the turmoil had passed. Trouble would not break her; sorrow would only make her fineness finer. There was a girl to stand up beside ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... travelling—by the clime, and the land, and the name of the land, with all its mighty import; by the glittering freshness of the sward, and the abounding masses of flowers that furnished my sumptuous pathway; by the bracing and fragrant air that seemed to poise me in my saddle, and to lift me along as a planet appointed to ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... reclining in one of the wicker arm-chairs by the fire, turned luxuriously from the girls to watch the flames poise and dance with the music. He was evidently at his ease, yet he seemed a ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... forms, curved spines, and hollow chests. Furthermore, the farm child, lacking the opportunities of the city child for gaining social ease and control, needs the development that comes from physical training to give poise, ease of bearing, and ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... to waver or seem to waver and wobble in his judgment of his characters or in his sympathy with them or for them. Thus he fails to give his readers the proper cue which was his duty both as man and artist to have given. The highest art and the lowest are indeed here at one in demanding moral poise, if we may call it so, that however crudely in the low, and however artistically and refinedly in the high, vice should not only not be set forth as absolutely triumphing, nor virtue as being absolutely, outwardly, and inwardly defeated. It is here the same in the melodrama of the transpontine ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... later he seemed in poise. He had clutched the thin, trailing branches as he fell; and as he sank a number of leaves which his motion had torn off floated out ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... handsome Laureate's aspect at that moment,—his supple, graceful figure alert with life, . . his glowing face flushed by the sun, and touched with that faintly amused look of serene scorn, . . his glorious eyes, brilliant as jewels under their drooping amorous lids, and the regal poise of his splendid shoulders and throat, as he lifted his head a little more haughtily than usual, and glanced indifferently down from his foothold on the edge of the fountain at the upturned, questioning faces of the throng, ... all even to the careless balance and ease of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... will be of that way of thinking, young woman.—Dick, there's a sort of murderous, viperine suggestion in the poise of the head that I don't ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Himalaya I have watched an eagle circling overhead. I have sat on the mountain-side and watched it sail majestically along in graceful curves and circles, and with perfect ease and poise. Far above the earth it would range, and seemingly without exertion glide easily over tracts that we poor men could only enter by prodigious effort. Captivated by its grace of motion, and jealous ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... drawbacks, though they are such as time is almost sure to diminish or eradicate. Notably in his earlier years he lacked judgment, the power of balancing considerations and arriving at conclusions from them which men more gifted with poise would endorse as logical and inevitable. He does not, like spare Cassius, see quite through the deeds of men, as his friendship for Count Phili Eulenburg and the malodorous "Camarilla" go to show, and his choice of Imperial Chancellors, his grand ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... to talk no more about her loss or her fears regarding the missing scenario. If it was gone, it was gone. That was all there was to it. She would no longer worry her friends and disturb her own mental poise by ruminating ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... "natural" school; and all the time it was maintained at the lofty level of classic grace. It would be impossible to overstate the excellence of all that McCullough did and said, in the forum scene—the noble severity of the poise, the grace of the outlines, the terrible intensity of the mood, the heartrending play of the emotions, the overwhelming delirium of the climax. Throughout the subsequent most difficult portraiture of shattered reason the actor never, for an instant, lost his steadfast grasp upon sympathy ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... the influence of novelty and restless vanity. The prejudices of the one are counterbalanced by the paradoxes of the other; and folly, 'putting in one scale a weight of ignorance, in that of pride,' might be said to 'smile delighted with the eternal poise.' A sincere and manly spirit of inquiry is neither blinded by example nor dazzled by sudden flashes of light. Nature is always the same, the storehouse of lasting truth, and teeming with inexhaustible variety; and he who looks at her with steady and well-practised eyes will find enough to employ ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Madonna is Andrea del Sarto's abominable wife, but she looks very sweet and simple in the picture. The folds of Mary's garments are beautifully painted, so is the poise of her head, and all the details of the picture except the figure of the child. There is a line of stiffness there and it lacks the softness of many other pictures of the ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... our quarter lies, And on before the freshening gale, That fills the snow-white lateen sail, Swiftly our light felucca flies. Around, the billows burst and foam; They lift her o'er the sunken rock, They beat her sides with many a shock, And then upon their flowing dome They poise her, like a weathercock! Between us and the western skies The hills of Corsica arise; Eastward, in yonder long, blue line, The summits of the Apennine, And southward, and still far away, Salerno, on its sunny bay. You cannot see it, ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... gasped, and seemed about to yell. But she got back most of her poise. Women have nursed the messily ill and dying, and have tended ghastly wounds during ages of time. So they know the messier side of biology as ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... great deal of wing-flapping before it was clear of the trees; and as I was eagerly watching the spot where it had disappeared, there was one bright flash, and one only, as a humming-bird darted across the sunny clearing, to poise itself first here and then there, before the open flowers of the great creepers, its wings vibrating so rapidly that they were invisible, and the lovely little creature looked more like some great ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... life's busy current. School and athletics kept him occupied so that he had little leisure for thought, and when he was in the house his father and mother smiled on him as affectionately as before, which did much to restore to him his normal poise. Long ago the boys had dropped the motor-car episode from their memories and even Bud Taylor did not refer to it when he and Steve came together to organize the hockey team ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... credulity. The Protestant labors of Frederick Spanheim (Historia Imaginum restituta) and James Basnage (Hist. des Eglises Reformees, tom. ii. l. xxiiii. p. 1339-1385) are cast into the Iconoclast scale. With this mutual aid, and opposite tendency, it is easy for us to poise the balance with philosophic indifference. * Note: Compare Schlosser, Geschichte der Bilder-sturmender Kaiser, Frankfurt am-Main 1812 a book of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... her expressive face. She was dressed in simple black, with exquisite taste, and without an ornament. The thin lace vail which partially covered her face did not so much conceal as heighten her beauty. She would not have entered a drawing room with more self-poise, nor a church with more haughty humility. There was in her manner or face neither shame nor boldness, and when she took her seat in fall view of half the spectators, her eyes were downcast. A murmur of admiration ran through the room. The newspaper reporters made ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... him well, respected him profoundly, and loved him dearly. I have often heard him speak at gatherings of old soldiers and on a variety of occasions; sometimes those of turbulence. I have marveled at his self-poise and reserved power. Never once did I hear him say ill of any man, nor allude to his own sufferings or deeds, nor utter words of bitterness. He took his lot as it came to him, as a man who does the best he can and leaves ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... prowess there; None of them falls behind the other pair; Through the great press, pagans they strike again. Come on afoot a thousand Sarrazens, And on horseback some forty thousand men. But well I know, to approach they never dare; Lances and spears they poise to hurl at them, Arrows, barbs, darts and javelins in the air. With the first flight they've slain our Gualtier; Turpin of Reims has all his shield broken, And cracked his helm; he's wounded in the head, From his hauberk the woven mail they tear, In ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... equal suffrage in Utah for fifty years—1870-1920—with an unavoidable interim of eight years, have demonstrated the sanity and poise of women in the exercise of their franchise. The Mormon women had had long training, for from the founding of their church by Joseph Smith in 1830 they had a vote in its affairs. Although the Territory of Wyoming was the first to give the suffrage to women—in November, 1869—the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... dreaming candle seller? In spite of her shyness and modest ways, she was brave and strong of will, that was evident, and, plain dress or not, she looked the aristocrat every inch of her. Where did she get that unconscious air of quiet poise, that trick of the lifted chin? And how did she learn to use her ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... fully realize. It had put a clear, steady look into her eyes in place of the glassy shine of fever. It was beginning to fill out that hollow in her neck, so that it no longer showed the angular ends of her collar bones. It had put a resilient quality into her walk, firmness into the poise of her head. It had made it physically possible, for instance, for Helen May to trudge out into the wild to hunt nine goats that had strayed from ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... once—likewise her decorum. She clapped her hand over her mouth and fled, uttering sounds. The governess, however, set herself to comfort her heartbroken charge, and presently succeeded in restoring Miss Rennsdale to a semblance of that poise with which a lady receives callers and accepts invitations to dance cotillons. But she continued to sob ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... practically unanimous in praise of the taste and tact with which he acquitted himself. While neither shy nor aggressive, he impressed every one with his brilliance in conversation, his shrewdness in observation, and criticism, and his poise and common sense in his personal relations. One of the best descriptions of him was given by Sir Walter Scott to Lockhart. Scott as a boy of sixteen met Burns at the house of Doctor Adam Ferguson, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... Colleges and universities, established and conducted by the Freedmen's Bureau and Northern churches and societies, sprang up like mushrooms, and the teachers, ignorant, fanatical, without self-poise, proceeded to make all possible mischief. It is irrational, cruel, to hold the Negro, under such strange conditions, responsible for all the ill consequences of bad education, unwise teachers, ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... mustn't imagine she can "vamp" my Kaikobad with impunity. It's a case of any port in a storm, I suppose, for she has to practise on somebody. But I must say she looks well on horseback and can lay claim to a poise that always exacts its toll of respect. She rides hard, though I imagine she would be unwittingly cruel to her mount. Yet she has been more offhanded and friendly, the last two or three times she has dropped ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... a proper part, She gives the feather, I the dart: Then cease for souls averse to sigh, If Nature cross ye, so do I; My weapon there unfeather'd flies, And shakes and shuffles through the skies. But if the mutual charms I find By which she links you, mind to mind, 60 They wing my shafts, I poise the darts, And strike from both, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... obliuion of that which was wont to delighte and contente me? From whence commeth this new alteration, and desire vnaccustomed, for solitarie being alone, is the reste and argumente of my troubles? What diuersities and chaunges be these that in this sorte do poise and weigh my thought? Ah, Adelasia, what happie miserie dost thou finde in this free prison, where pleasure hath no place till the enemies haue disquieted the life, with a Million of painefull aud daungerous trauailes? What is this to ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... of Switzerland and those of the King of Sardinia passes, was abeam, and the excellent calculations of the sagacious Maso became still more apparent. He had foreseen another shift of wind, as the consequence of all this poise and counterpoise, and he was here met by the true breeze of the night. The last current came out of the gorge of the Valais, sullen, strong, and hoarse, bringing him, however, fairly to windward of his port. The Winkelried ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... tenderly and tranquilly that Chris was hardly able to keep back his tears. It seemed that the soul still kept its serene poise in that wasted body, and was independent of it. There was no weakness nor peevishness anywhere. The very room with its rough walls, its cobwebbed roof, its uneven flooring, its dreadful chill and gloom, seemed alive with a ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... case, as Maw's au naturel is disposed to adipose—they make a startling adjunct to the mountain scenery. But, bless her heart, Maw doesn't care! She is on her way and on her vacation, the first in all her life. There rest on her soul the content and poise which her own square and self-respecting mind tells her are due her after forty years of labor, including the Lord's Days thereof. I call Maw's vacation her Lord's Day. It ought to be held a sacred thing ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... admired the height and shoulders of our first military samples. The British soldier approves of a greyhound trimness in the belt zone. He likes to look on carriage and poise. He appreciates a steady eye and stiff jaw. He is attracted by a voice that rings sharp and firm. The British soldier calls such ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... over fallen trunks, wade through ditches, twist through vines, putting out a hand every now and then to feel whether the bunch of leaves at their back is in place. They were certainly no beauties, but there was a charm in their light, soft step, in the swaying of their hips, in the dainty poise of their slim ankles and feet, and the softness and harmony of all their movements. And the light playing on their dark, velvety, shining bodies increased this charm, until one almost forgot the many defects, the dirt, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... lath, giving up all its protective nobleness for pace. With those in whose eyes the perfection of a boat is swift fragility, I have no sympathy. The glory of a boat is, first its steadiness of poise—its assured standing on the clear softness of the abyss; and, after that, so much capacity of progress by oar or sail as shall be consistent with this defiance of the treachery of the sea. And, this being understood, it is very notable ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... stupidity. In his it was not so. His force, by which this work was carried through, lay in a character of penetration. His face expresses it. His very keen and ready eyes, his high lifted brow, his sharp nose, and the few active lines of his cheek and forehead, the poise of his head, the disdain of his firm mouth, all build him back alive for us. His talk, which stammered in its volubility, was incessant and varied; his temper ready; his bodily command of gesture and definition perfect in old age: he was of good ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... describes one he saw perched on a twig, pluming its feathers. At first he was doubtful whether so small an object could be a bird. It was standing over a pool of water. "At first the little creature would poise itself about three feet or so above the water, and then, as quick as thought, dive downwards, so as to dip its miniature head in the placid pool. Then up again it would fly to its original position, as quickly ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... House of Marriage; that all-important relation which may make or mar a life, the Balance is so easily disturbed in its equilibrium. To preserve its harmony, equality must reign, blending love and wisdom. It is the perfect poise of body, mind, and soul, achieved by loving obedience to the higher laws of our being and the true union of intuition ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... mean to say the privilege of sea-bathing from one's own threshold. From the beginning of June till far into September all the canals of Venice are populated by the amphibious boys, who clamor about in the brine, or poise themselves for a leap from the tops of bridges, or show their fine, statuesque figures, bronzed by the ardent sun, against the facades of empty palaces, where they hover among the marble sculptures, and meditate a headlong plunge. It is only the Venetian ladies, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... presence of this stranger who had so strenuously disclaimed all reasonable motives for his visit. He quailed before this man who seemed to be a dangerous crank—for Farr's attire was out of the ordinary and his eyes were flashing and his poise was that of a ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... his poise and the bearers their breath; the men stirred in their seats and the women began to cast frightened looks at each other, and then at the children, some of whom had begun to whimper, when in an instant all were struck again into stone. The young man had ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... gesture of fury that she is aware of being fatally played against. In the meantime the QUEEN is putting her own key into the lock. JOSEPHINE turns with supplication to GWYMPLANE, at length too afflicted by the situation to guard her poise.] ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... Then first one, and shortly after the other, flew out, and commenced sailing in circles, at the height of an hundred feet or so above the water. Nothing could be more graceful than their flight. Now they would poise themselves a moment in the air, then turn their bodies as if on a pivot, and glide off ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... again to war, Casting away their fear. Man leapt on man Valiantly fighting; loud their armour clashed Smitten with swords, with lances, and with darts. Spears plunged into men's flesh: dread Ares drank His fill of blood: struck down fell man on man, As Greek and Trojan fought. In level poise The battle-balance hung. As when young men In hot haste prune a vineyard with the steel, And each keeps pace with each in rivalry, Since all in strength and age be equal-matched; So did the awful scales of battle hang ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... in the set of the shoulders, in the swing of them as the man walked away, in the poise of the head, that had impressed Harriet Burrell as being vaguely familiar. Something of this must have been reflected in the Meadow-Brook Girl's face, judging ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... more directions, and with a more continuous strain, than any other form of society. In Josiah Quincy we have an example of character trained and shaped, under the nearest approach to a pure democracy the world has ever seen, to a firmness, unity, and self-centred poise that recall the finer types of antiquity, in whom the public and private man was so wholly of a piece that they were truly everywhere at home, for the same sincerity of nature that dignified the hearth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... sister Adele, 'this microcosm of Indian official society withdrawn from all the world, and playing at being a municipality on three Himalayan mountaintops. You can't imagine its individuality, its airy, unsubstantial, superior poise. How can I explain to you elderly gentlemen, whose faces express daily electric communications with the Secretary of State, playing tennis violently every single afternoon in striped flannels—writing ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... go to my school? Yes, you go to my school, And we've learned the big lesson—Be strong! And to front the loud noise With a spirit of poise, And drown down the noise with a song. We have spelled the first line in the Primer of Fate; We have spelled it, and dare not to shirk— For its first and its greatest commandment to men Is "Work, and rejoice ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... contemporaries. The painter has caught in this case the essential spirit of the myth. There are few of his pictures also in which he expressed so well the sense of motion. The inclination of the body of Icarus, the poise of the wings, and the gesture of the right hand all contribute admirably ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... was blinking in a kind of befuddled astonishment. "You mean she really is a—" He stopped and brought his tenor voice to a squeaking halt, regained his professional poise, and began again. "I'd rather not discuss the patient in her presence, Mr. Malone," he said. "If you'll just come ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... Dale remained quietly by the door, as though listening. Six feet he stood, muscular in every line of his body, like a well-trained athlete with no single ounce of superfluous fat about him—the grace and ease of power in his poise. His strong, clean-shaven face, as the light fell upon it now, was serious—a mood that became him well—the firm lips closed, the dark, reliant eyes a little narrowed, a frown on the broad forehead, the square ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the countenance and gestures Of Mercy and Justice; which fair sacred sisters, With equal poise doth ever balance even, The unchanging projects of the King of heaven. The one stern of look, the other mild aspecting, The one pleas'd with tears, the other blood affecting; The one bears ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... great audience, for it was real oratory—strong talk, ardent, electric, manly. His eyes flashed, his teeth came together with a snap and he shook both fists under my nose. He has enthusiasm, capacity for righteous wrath, and the spirit of battle. But he doesn't lose poise for ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... the news had spread. A score of officers, young or middle-aged, were crowding about. Ulwin had his hands full introducing the submarine boys. Yet they stood the ordeal well. The habit of command, based on discipline, had given these boys plenty of poise and self-possession. Nor were any attempts made, at that time, to have any good-humored fun with them. Half a dozen officers representing foreign navies were present. These, too, came in for introductions. The foreigners were, mainly, military or naval ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... by her cool, matter-of-fact manner. It bore no trace of insolence, yet conveyed a serene poise and grasp of the situation ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... the luminous eyes grew suddenly cold, while her head assumed its usual haughty poise; the brief spell was over, and each understood ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... 'Arry are going out,' she said at length, with a rather timid smile and a poise of ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... everywhere, The slender graceful spars Poise aloft in the air And at the masthead White, blue, and red, A flag unfolds, the Stripes and Stars. Ah, when the wanderers, lonely, friendless, In foreign harbors shall behold That flag unrolled, 'Twill be as a friendly hand Stretched out from native ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... with remarkable speed, he returned to Oyster Bay, and on October 30th he closed his campaign by addressing sixteen thousand persons in the Madison Square Garden. He spoke with unwonted calm and judicial poise; and so earnestly that the conviction which he felt carried conviction to many who heard him. "I am glad beyond measure," he said, "that I am one of the many who in this fight have stood ready to spend and be spent, pledged to fight, while life lasts, the great fight for ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... rather caused general uneasiness and dislike; LINCOLN left America more beloved than ever by all the peoples of Europe. Palmerston was self-possessed and adroit in reconciling the conflicting factions of the aristocracy; LINCOLN, frank and ingenuous, knew how to poise himself on the ever-moving opinions of the masses. Palmerston was capable of insolence towards the weak, quick to the sense of honor, not ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... for a moment, then turned his face towards the sea, and for another moment stood silent. Lady Florimel glanced up, but Malcolm was unaware of her movement. He lifted his hand, and looked at the half crown gleaming on his palm; then, with a sudden poise of his body, and a sudden fierce action of his arm, he sent the coin, swift with his heart's repudiation, across the sands into the tide. Ere it struck the water he had turned, and, with long stride but low bent head, walked away. A pang shot to Lady Florimel's ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... followed by GEORGE COXEY. UNA is a charming, fashionable girl of twenty with a suave blend of will and poise. GEORGE COXEY is a handsome, well-built, magnetic-looking youth of about twenty-five. He is dressed in the garb of a street-car conductor and carries the cap in his hand. Although somewhat inconvenienced and preoccupied with the novelty of his ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... the light which the soul needs on the nature of man. Wonderfully has Holman Hunt elaborated this truth in his picture "The Light of the World." The ideal humanity never had more beautiful expression than in that great sermon in color. The poise of the figure of Jesus indicates strength and self-control; the thorns on the brow tell their story of sorrow and pain; the hand at the door shows that one man at least is mindful of the welfare of His brother; ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... chance, he might have been a better judge than the man who sends him to gaol. The Tory's job is to restore the balance of things. It isn't only to maintain the level, but to raise it and to keep on raising it.... I believe in the State of Poise, of equitable adjustment, in which every man will be able to move easily to his proper place.... There are so many obstacles now in the way of man finding his place that, even if he has the strength to get over them, he probably won't have the ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... employments, may be resorted to, whenever the inclination of the patient, or their probable beneficial effects may render them desirable. To dispel gloomy images, to break morbid associations, to lead the feelings into their proper current, and to restore the mind to its natural poise, various [Transcriber's note: original reads 'varius'] less active amusements will be provided. Reading, writing, drawing, innocent sports, tending and feeding domestic animals, &c. will be encouraged as they may be found conducive to the recovery of the patients. A large ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... into a strange pent stillness like the poise of earth and sky and beast and bird just before the breaking of a great and lowering storm. The quick clatter of the ducks' wings somehow alarmed me—the staring of the children, their eyes directed past us, sharpened my senses for a new focus. And glancing, I witnessed Daniel ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... daily and hourly training them to instant obedience. A group of privates will snap into "attention" at the word of command with splendid muscular control; the same number of officers would find great difficulty in doing this. Now as the man loses muscular control he loses poise and carriage. His head rolls about in a slack way on his neck, and has a tendency to drop forward; the muscles of the neck and the upper part of the back grow soft from lack of use and control and he begins to become ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... again Until he took the stiffness out of them, And not one but hung limp, not one was left For him to conquer. He learned all there was To learn about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... its centre of peace in a babel of noise; In the changing ways of the world of men it must keep its poise; And over the sorrowing sounds of earth it must hear God's call; And the faith that cannot do all this, that is ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... tried to pooh-pooh away the sentiment, and said to myself: 'Why bother your head about her? She is one of the "refuse;" she will go down into the dark ditch with the rest, baseness to baseness linked.' But when I looked at the modest, happy face, the whole poise of the body—for every fiber of the frame of man or woman partakes of the characteristics of the soul—I could not hold these thoughts steadily in my mind. And I said to myself: 'If she is as pure as she looks I will watch over her. She will need a friend ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... quite different from anything done by other women in her time and place, and it just suited her dignity and serenity. It looked like a coronet, but it was the way she carried her head that gave you the fancy, there was such spirit and pride in the poise of it on the long graceful neck. Her eyes were as clear as mountain pools shaded by rushes, and the strength of the face was softened by the ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... moon, and stars, as profane spectra:—a company of the blind, beseeching those they lead to remain blind also. "The heavens and the lights that rule them are untrue; the laws of creation are treacherous; the poles of the earth are out of poise. But we are true. Light is in us only. Shut your eyes close and fast, and ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... that time. "As a young man," writes William Sharp, "he seems to have had a certain ivory delicacy of coloring ... and he appeared taller than he really was, partly because of his rare grace of movement, and partly from a characteristic high poise of the head when listening intently to music or conversation.... His hair was so beautiful in its heavy sculpturesque waves as to attract frequent notice. Another, and more subtle personal charm, was his voice, then with a rare, flute-like ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... some, are the gracious legacy of inheritance, education, and environment; with others they are the growth of the careful cultivation of years, and carry with them the calm self-poise of the man who has conquered circumstances and established his own position. In such as these there inheres a certain power that impresses itself upon all who come in ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... but the sky is still shining with twilight. The wild cat begins to hiss and squall in the forest, the heron to flap hastily by, the stork on the top of the tavern chimney to poise itself on one leg for sleep. To-whoo! an owl begins to wake up. Hark! the woodcutters are ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... turn and sink, As if we could slide from its outer brink. Ah, it is not the sea; It is not the sea that sinks and shelves, But ourselves that rock and rise With endless and unweary motion, Now touching the very skies, Now sinking into the depths of ocean; Ah! if our souls but poise and swing, Like the compass in its brazen ring, Ever level and ever true To the toil and the task that we have to do, We shall sail securely, and safely reach The fortunate isles, on whose shining beach The sights we see, the sounds we hear, Will be ...
— Silver Links • Various
... perfect equation: if something is added or subtracted, something is subtracted or added, so long as there is life. Judith got her poise again in time, as strong natures do after any death; with some fibres weakened past mending, gray, but calm. If his side of her nature was stunted, she seemed to blossom all the more richly in other ways. ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... gloves. When she pushed back her veil, her vis-a-vis received almost a shock. She was quite as good-looking as he had imagined, but she was far younger—she was indeed little more than a girl. Her eyes were of a deep shade of hazel brown, her eyebrows were delicately marked, her features and poise admirable. Yet her skin was entirely colourless. She was as pale as one whose eyes have been closed in death. Her lips, although in no way highly coloured, were like streaks of scarlet blossom upon a marble image. The contrast between her appearance and that of ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sea abeam you must simply paddle straight ahead. The adjustment is to be accomplished entirely by the poise of the body. You must prevent the capsize of your canoe when clinging to the angle of a wave by leaning to one side. The crucial moment, of course, is that during which the peak of the wave slips under you. In case of a breaking comber, thrust the flat of your ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... for some days, in much inquietude for the Count de Vergennes. He is very seriously ill. Nature seems struggling to decide his disease into a gout. A swelled foot, at present gives us a hope-of this issue. His loss would at all times have been great; but it would be immense during the critical poise of European affairs, existing at this moment. I enclose you a letter from one of the foreign officers, complaining of the non-payment of their interest. It is only one out of many I have received. This ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Admission Day parade for the Native Daughters of the Golden West—stalwart, stunning young giantesses marching with a splendid carriage and a superb poise—they seem like a new race ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... light now poured in, blending its pale effulgence with the blue radiance from the grate. He was a man to be admired. His frame a trifle stouter than when we last saw him, but still supple and firm; the set of the shoulders, the taper of the body to the waist, the keen but passive face, the poise of the whole figure was that of one who, tasting of the goodness of life, had not gormandized thereon. He was called a success, yet in the honesty of his own soul he feared the coin did not ring true. ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... this rare sense of poise, this patient regard for our own happiness and that of others, that enables some sweet spirits to come as a balm for all the bruises that a busy world can put upon us. "There is no joy but calm." Until one has learned to do his work pleasantly and agreeably he has not mastered ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... ever treated with scant courtesy and unbecoming curiosity; the strange machine fares no better. The man or the boy who is not unduly curious, not unduly aggressive, not unduly loquacious, not unduly insistent, who preserves his poise in the presence of an automobile, is quite out of the ordinary,— my little New Haven friend ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... vein of virgin ore, discovering That which avails him nothing: he hath found it, But 'tis not his—but some superior's, who Placed him to dig, but not divide the wealth Which sparkles at his feet; nor dare he lift Nor poise it, but must grovel on, upturning ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron |
