"Balance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... equal enthusiasm. Mathematics now absorbed his mind, and the father was obliged to yield to the bent of his genius, which seemed to disdain the regular professions by which social position was most surely effected. He wrote about this time an essay on the Hydrostatic Balance, which introduced him to Guido Ubaldo, a famous mathematician, who induced him to investigate the subject of the centre of gravity in solid bodies. His treatise on this subject secured an introduction to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who perceived his merits, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... sombre, a bit Calvinistic and severe—try a statuette by Pope, or a classical piece out of Heine. Too much white and gold for every-day purposes—then the Reverend Laurence Sterne will oblige. Urban tone may be corrected by Hardy, and Lowell will give you urbanity. And, however well you match and balance them, remember there is a time for ideals, and a time when they are ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... attempted to embody political sentiment in "A Tale—The Political Balance; or, The Fate of Britain and America Compared." This juvenile has long since disappeared, but it was advertised by its printer, Francis Bailey, in seventeen hundred and ninety-two, together with "The History of the Little Boy found under a Haycock," and several other books for children. One ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... and he thinks this quite right; but the moment he is shown a properly subdivided superimposition, in which the upper shafts diminish in size and multiply in number, so that the lower pillars would balance them safely even without cement, he exclaims that it is "against law," as if he had never seen ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... bold strokes against a person the King so much loved, but Pontchartrain knew the weak side of the King; he knew how to balance the, father against the master, to bring forward the admiral and set aside the son. In this manner the Secretary of State was able to put obstacles in the way of the Comte de Toulouse that threw him almost into despair, and the Count could do little to defend himself. It was a well-known fact ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... observance of the vow of mendicancy.[24] That Brahmana who, disregarding wrath and joy, and especially deceitfulness, always employs his time in the study of the Vedas, is a renouncer in the observance of the vow of mendicancy.[25] The four different modes of life were at one time weighed in the balance. The wise have said, O king, that when domesticity was placed on one scale, it required the three others to be placed on the other for balancing it. Beholding the result of this examination by scales, O Partha, and seeing further, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... waited the signal for the race. Some delay, however, occurred in taking our seats with suitable dignity. The carriage was very small, and my companion very large, so that I was fain to be content with a seat upon the edge, with a very good chance of losing my balance, had not her Majesty, to obviate the danger, encircled my waist with her stout and powerful arm, and thus secured me on my seat; our position, and the contrast presented by our figures, had no doubt ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... with his pole as he worked. At last he stood upright on the side of the keel, reached over and fixed his hook upon one of the rowlocks; then holding on firmly by the pole and pressing his feet against the keel, he hung right away, his body now forming so heavy a balance-weight that upon the men making a simultaneous effort to draw the boat over, she came down more and more. Then with a sudden lurch the resistance against them was overcome, and she came right over to an even keel, plunging Dance into the water, ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... To balance this, I now had a prospect of further artistic and material successes from a contract concluded with General Lwoff, the manager of the Moscow theatre. I was to give three concerts in the Grand Theatre, of which I was to have half ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... gulf or sea of Basora, being the only port of Persia on the Indian sea, and lies at a great distance from Batavia, this direction is not so much sought after as others; and besides, the heat at this place is greater than in any part of the world, and the air is excessively unwholesome. To balance these inconveniences, the director at Gambroon has an opportunity of making a vast fortune in a short time, so that in general, in four or five years, he has no farther occasion to concern himself in commerce. There are several other European nations settled here besides the Dutch, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... pardon, young sir, we're not doin much. The tide here runs four knots agin us—dead, an the wind can't take us more'n six, which leaves a balance to our favor of two knots an hour, an that is our present rate of progression. You see, at that rate we won't gain more'n four or five miles before the turn o' tide. After that, we'll go faster without any wind than we ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... would not support the trade for one moment, if he could avoid it. He could not hold a balance with gold in one scale, and blood in ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... this decision, when her whole future hung in the balance, one of her most intimate lady-friends ventured to remind the queen of the disgraceful and malicious reports that had once been put in circulation with regard to her relation to Napoleon, and suggested that she ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... out o' m' han', Sir." "Did n' go to, Sir." "Did n' dew't o' purpose, Sir." And so on,—always the best of reasons for the most outrageous of behavior. The master weighed himself at the grocer's on a platform balance, some ten days after he began keeping the school. At the end of a week he weighed himself again. He had lost two pounds. At the end of another week he had lost five. He made a little calculation, based on these data, from which he learned that in a certain ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... accept the view that all Art to some extent, and Greek tragedy in a very special degree, moves in its course of development from Religion to Entertainment, from a Service to a Performance, the Agamemnon seems to stand at a critical point where the balance of the two elements is near perfection. The drama has come fully to life, but the religion has not yet faded to a formality. The Agamemnon is not, like Aeschylus' Suppliant Women, a statue half-hewn out of the rock. It is a real play, showing clash of character and situation, ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... Brookes enraged to the last degree that gentlemen should presume to think of anything but making his fortune. He complained to Charles that there was 17,000 pounds owing to the house, which is a most impudent lie; and even if it were true he would have no reason to complain of the balance, as he has 15,000 belonging to the proprietors of the Bank in his hands, for which he pays no interest, though he receives at least 5 per cent, for all money owing ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... before I do," said Davy to Logan. "Will you please hand him this check for fifty which completes my obligations to him and tell him that I am having the cattle remaining on the ranch appraised. If the appraisal warrants, I will pay the balance of his bill and send ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... States do manifest such a strong inclination, not only to extend and enlarge their possessions in the West, but also to people them, will not your Majesty look well to British interests in those regions, and adopt timely precautionary measures to maintain a balance of power in that quarter which, in the opinion of your memorialists, is destined at no very distant period to participate largely in the China ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... thing to another, I learned what temptations came in to mislead or overcome his judgment; how he found himself fatally led into obliquities which he could not but deplore. Misled by passion, over-persuaded by entreaties, or compelled for reputation's sake, he has many times held the balance with an unsteady hand. How sad the condition of him who is in authority! Not only are the miseries of power imposed upon him, but its vices also, which, not content with ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... try to remember just how long—it had been a good while. He had at length accumulated, "on the most conservative estimate" (he framed the phrase in his mind, following the habit of his Boards)—he had no need to look now at the page before him: the seven figures that formed the balance, as he thought of them, suddenly appeared before him in facsimile. He had been gazing at them so steadily that now even when he shut his eyes he could see them clearly. It gave him a little glow about his heart;—it was quite convenient: he could always ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... names were from time to time solemnly cursed at S. Paul's on account of past treasons, so that they counted for open enemies, became useful to him as spies. If the decision lay between services received and suspicious conduct, the latter easily weighed down the balance, to the ruin of the victim. William Stanley, who had played the most important part in the battle which decided the fate of the crown, and was regarded as almost the first man in the realm after the King, had at ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... ardent passion for Mademoiselle de la Tour—so ardent and bewildering as not only to blind him to the great disparity of age between himself and her—which he might have thought the much greater disparity of fortune in his favour would balance and reconcile—but to the very important fact, that Hector Bertrand, a young menuisier (carpenter), who had recently commenced business on his own account, and whom he so frequently met at the charming modiste's shop, was her accepted, affianced ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... father. Now though the old king rarely condescended to make light of his misfortune, yet, happening on this occasion to be in a particularly good humour, as the barges approached each other, he caught up the princess to throw her into the chancellor's barge. He lost his balance, however, and, dropping into the bottom of the barge, lost his hold of his daughter; not, however, before imparting to her the downward tendency of his own person, though in a somewhat different direction, for, as the ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... New books were placed in her hands, in which he required her to keep systematically and legibly all her accounts; she drew and signed her own checks, and semi-annually furnished for his inspection a neat balance-sheet. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... lie awake at night and fret and fume, to think Of bank officials on a spree with what he's toiled to get. He is not driven by his woe quite to the verge of drink By wondering if his balance in the ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... examples of powers which have fallen by neglect of these principles. "A state begins to decline when it permits the immoderate aggrandizement of a rival, and a secondary power may become the arbiter of nations if it throw its weight into the balance at the ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... started, but in that fatal movement lost his balance and plunged downward. But before the water closed above his head he had had a cruel glimpse of help near him; of a flashing light—of the black hull of a tug not many yards away—of moving figures—the sensation ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... Harry; lean on me a bit to balance yourself," urged Ned. "Make sure this time, and get it in your ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... was husky. Truth to tell, he was rather beside himself. He had played for a high stake and had nearly won. Even now the issue hung on a word, a mere whiff of volition: and if he knew exactly how much depended on that swing of the balance he might have been startled into a more earnest plea, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... have thrown it all away in the balance. If these things were known, I would be ruined." He spoke ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... see that his and Mrs. Baxendale's investments were all right. He liked a pleasant object for a walk, so at least once a week he made a point of fetching his passbook from the bank. One day Freddy Catchpole met him just as he was coming out, and he said he was awfully upset about his quarter's balance, which had never been so low before. Freddy told him he had never had a balance at the end of a quarter in his life, and Baxendale replied that, at all events, that saved him ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... distressed but furious. Made a bound at Buttons, who calmly, and without any apparent effort, met him with a terrific upper cut, which made the Italian's gigantic frame tremble like a ship under the stroke of a big wave. He tottered, and swung his arms, trying to regain his balance, when another annihilator most cleanly administered by Buttons laid him low. A great tumult rose among the foreigners. Beppo lay panting with no determination to come to the scratch. At the expiration of usual time, opponent not appearing. Buttons was proclaimed victor. Beppo very much ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... us, of whom, so truly have we loved and even honoured them, it seems almost like an outrage upon their memory to bring ourselves to think that there was just so much of evil in them and just so little good, as would suffice to turn the balance against them and thus fix, at the moment of their death, ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... awful fear in her soft eyes as she saw her little ones with her archenemy between them, his hands resting on their innocent necks. Her body swayed away, every muscle tense for the jump; but her feet seemed rooted to the spot. Slowly she swayed back to her balance, her eyes holding mine; then away again as the danger scent poured into her nose. But still the feet stayed. She could not move; could not believe. Then, as I waited quietly and tried to make my eyes say all sorts of friendly things, the harsh, throaty K-a-a-a-h! k-a-a-a-h! the danger ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... are in some measure those of a seer. His immense show of philosophical apparatus, his prodigality of logical balance-wheels and escapements, resemble the superfluous clock-work of the "automaton" which plays its game as the gentleman concealed inside shall judge expedient. It is of course impossible to probe the Two Absolutes, or the wonderful marriage which takes place ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... wants. Every sacrifice must be made that can possibly give returning health and strength to the future lord of Bereford Castle. No bitter repinings now possessed the heroic woman. Her whole being was thrown into the scale to balance the opposing weight which crushed her husband's almost lifeless existence. The voice of one who repeatedly made the halls of parliament ring with deafening applause was now with an effort heard by those ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... Merchants trading to the East Indies were received by Mr. Hastings and paid to the Sub-Treasurer." We find here, "Dinagepore peshcush, four lacs of rupees, cabooleat": that is, an agreement to pay four lacs of rupees, of which three were received and one remained in balance at the time this account was made out. All that we can learn from this account, after all our researches, after all the Court of Directors could do to squeeze it out of him, is, that he received from Dinagepore, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... necessary and convincing—yet they were details, subordinate, closely related, not irrelevant nor disproportionate. This instinct for a definite plan first is the essence of the classical spirit; exuberance is rigorously repressed, symmetry and balance are the first, last and only aim. To some judges Sophocles is like a Greek temple, splendid but a little chilly; they miss the soaring ambition of Aeschylus or the more direct emotional appeal of Euripides. Yet it is a cardinal error to imagine that Sophocles ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... in philosophy, but better in music and letters, he could speak, like others of his day, Greek as well as his native Latin. His aim was to be an "artist," but if the want of balance which too often goes with what is called the "artistic temperament" ever manifested itself in its worst form, it was in Nero. Apart from his passion for music and verse, he developed an early mania for horse-racing, and when he was ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... shake a single leaf of the ivy on the towers of Nightmare Abbey; and some months afterwards he received a letter from his bookseller, informing him that only seven copies had been sold, and concluding with a polite request for the balance. ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... the caller said, much pleased with this reception. "I'll be sending the balance of my little debt to you as soon as the wife has her ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... subjects proper for the one, and not [proper] for the other."—Kames. "A just weight and [a just] balance are the Lord's."—Prov., xvi, 11. True ellipses of the adjective alone, are but ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... every direction. Just behind the eyes are the openings of the ears; but they are very small,—not big enough to put in the tip of your little finger. Just astern of the mouth are the swimming paws; not that the whale makes much use of them, for it works itself on by its flukes, but they serve to balance the body, and assist the ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... Indians are all no more feared, so lightly do we skim these horrible lands; as the gull, who wings safely through the hurricane and past the shark. Yet we should not be forgetful of these hardships of the past; and to keep the balance true, since I have complained of the trifling discomforts of my journey, perhaps more than was enough, let me add an original document. It was not written by Homer, but by a boy of eleven, long since dead, and is dated only twenty years ago. I shall punctuate, to make things clearer, ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the mass, I fulfill the general law, I execute the great moral that Nature preaches. For myself I claim the individual exception; I claim it for the wise—satisfied that my individual actions are nothing in the great balance of good and evil; satisfied that the product of my knowledge can give greater blessings to the mass than my desires can operate evil on the few (for the first can extend to remotest regions and humanize nations yet unborn), ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... up at me, with a droll, puzzled expression, and said, "Patchessa tu adovo?" (Do you believe in that?) With a wink, I answered, "Why not? I, too, tell fortunes myself." Anch io sono pittore. It seemed to satisfy him, for he replied, with a nod-wink, and proceeded to pour forth the balance of his thoughts, if he had any, into the music ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... little, and not under 22d. So away home to dinner, and after dinner to my closett, where I spent the whole afternoon till late at evening of all my accounts publique and private, and to my great satisfaction I do find that I do bring my accounts to a very near balance, notwithstanding all the hurries and troubles I have been put to by the late fire, that I have not been able to even my accounts since July last before; and I bless God I do find that I am worth more than ever I yet was, which is L6,200, for which ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... twinkling stars; some geography by trudging the neighbouring streets and hills; some chronology by learning the hours, the days and the months; some history by a chat on local events; some geometry by measuring things for himself; some statics by trying to balance his top; some mechanics by building his little toy-house; some dialectics by asking questions; some economics by observing his mother's skill as a housekeeper; and some music and poetry by singing psalms and hymns. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... fool!" came from Foley, dropping his paddle and standing up in the skiff, which now had nothing to guide it but Hildey's exhausted arm. The skiff was rocking violently. Foley attempted to balance himself as he raised his pistol to shoot. In a flash the frail craft was caught in the conflicting currents, it careened and capsized, and the two men were battling for life in ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... occupy themselves one day with the collective account of antiquity and make up its balance-sheet. If we have this, antiquity will be overcome. All the shortcomings which now vex us have their roots in antiquity, so that we cannot continue to treat this account with the mildness which has ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of the war were struggling to rest, but the men whose minds were unhinged and thrown off their balance by the possession of large sums flowing from transactions, a little irregular, perhaps, but which the necessities of Government permitted, were endeavoring, by any means, to open up new fountains ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... early spring,—the balmy spring of North Carolina, when the air is in that ideal balance between heat and cold where one wishes it could always remain,—my wife and I were seated on the front piazza, she wearily but conscientiously ploughing through a missionary report, while I followed the impossible career of the blonde heroine of a rudimentary novel. I had thrown the ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... lists were prepared, the countess duly acknowledged her champion, and the combatants commenced the onset. Gontran rode so fiercely at his antagonist, and hit him on the shield with such impetuosity, that he lost his own balance and rolled to the ground. The young count, as Gontran fell, passed his lance through his body, and then dismounting, cut off his head, which, Brantome says, "he presented to the king, who received it most graciously, and was very joyful, as much so as if any one had made him a present ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... strain on Tom Yorkfield's powers of restraint. In his right hand he held a useful oak cudgel, with his left he made a grab at the loose collar of Laurence's canary-coloured silk shirt. Laurence was not a fighting man; the fear of physical violence threw him off his balance as completely as overmastering indignation had thrown Tom off his, and thus it came to pass that Clover Fairy was regaled with the unprecedented sight of a human being scudding and squawking across ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... called upon to bear their share of the loss. As we have seen, it amounted in two decades to 5,623 [sic]. Most of this deficit, 4,042, is chargeable to the churches south of Fourteenth Street, where Protestants of all denominations fail to hold their own. The balance, 1,837, came from other churches south ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... government should be divided among different competitors for the regency, the parliaments and people will find it still more easy to acquire and ascertain the liberty at which they aspire, because they will have the balance of power in their hands, and be able to make either scale preponderate. I could say a great deal more upon this subject; and I have some remarks to make relating to the methods which might be taken in the case of a fresh rupture with France, for making a vigorous impression ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... way clearer than we do now. Mr. Stone wants to help us somewhat, and he has told us to send the bill for house-painting to him. We shall be compelled to go to the expense of a new cooking range, and I have enough balance at the Record office to pay for that. I am hoping that we shall be able to move into the new quarters by May 1. The children are well. Pinny comes home next Monday for a fortnight's vacation, and we shall be glad to see him. I had a letter from Carter, alias ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... trough every third day with fresh water, was so careless as to let a huge frog (not perceiving it) slip out of his pail. The frog lay concealed till I was put into my boat, but then, seeing a resting-place, climbed up and made it lean so much on one side that I was forced to balance it with all my weight on the other to prevent overturning. When the frog was got in, it hopped at once half the length of the boat, and then over my head, backwards and forwards, daubing my face and clothes with its odious slime. The largeness ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... moment, Fate hung in the balance, then Grandmother said, generously: "Go on, Rosemary, and get all the fresh air you want. You've ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... moment she too saw a dark hulk nosing through the vapor. It moved slowly, seeming to balance at each step as if travel was a painful act. But it bore steadily to the ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton
... Does a handful of love-songs really outweigh the smile of a pretty girl, or a hardly-written romance compensate the author for months of lost adventure? We have only one life to live, and we spend the greater part of it writing the history of dead hours. Our lives lack balance because we find it hard to discover a mean between the triolet we wrote last I night and the big book we are going to start tomorrow, and also because living only with our heads we tend to become top-heavy. We justify our present ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... look into it, the balance is perfectly adjusted, even here. God has made His world much better than you and I could make it. Everything reaps its own harvest; every act has its own reward. And before you covet the enjoyment which another possesses, you must first ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... Justice are now fix'd there upon their true Balance, and the Course of Trade is nearly confined to its ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... rage stamped out his fear. He cursed them aloud venomously and incoherently, then loosed his hold and stepped out upon the plank. Three steps he took before he lost his balance and went tumbling into the green ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... long ages toward his primitive day. His mind combated his sense of sight and the hearing that seemed useless; and his mind did not win all the victory. Something fatal was here, hanging in the balance, as the red haze hung along the vast walls of that crater ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... Mrs. Allen better. Mrs. Brockbolst Livingston dead. Mrs. Van Ness has this day a son. Thus, you see, the rotation is preserved, and the balance kept up. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... thoughts very busy. On a sudden the ice split on the starboard hand with a noise louder than the explosion of a twenty-four pounder. The schooner swayed to a level keel with so sharp a rise that I lost my balance and staggered. I recovered myself, trembling and greatly agitated by the noise and the movement coming together, without the least hint having been given me, and grasping a backstay, waited, not knowing what was to happen next. Unless it be the heave of an earthquake, I can imagine ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... temples did a certain amount of banking business. By this we mean that they held money on deposit against the call of the depositor. Whether they charged for safekeeping or remunerated themselves by investing the bulk of their capital, reserving a balance to meet calls, does not yet appear. But the relatively large proportion of loans, where the god is said to be owner of the money, points to investment as the source of a considerable income. Here a careful distinction must be made ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... had drunken; he asked him, "An thou wert denied the issuing forth of the draught from thy body, with what wouldst thou buy its issue?" Answered Al-Rashid, "With the whole of my reign;" and Ibn al-Sammak said, "O Commander of the Faithful, verily, a realm that weighteth not in the balance against a draught of water or a voiding of urine is not worth the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... heard Tacius—a portly gentleman in a ball dress and a yellow wig, who after squeaking five-sixths of a love song in a timid falsetto which might pass for a woman's voice, roared out the balance like a bull. ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... likewise frozen in tableau. And the colonists in front of him. A balance in number, with himself in between, a still picture ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... balance nor run. She stood for a moment on the oscillating span, then threw up her hands, and with a scream she plunged into ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... trumpery presents from Orley Farm were very well while he was struggling for bare bread, but now, now that he had turned the corner,—now that by his divine art and mystery of law he had managed to become master of that beautiful result of British perseverance, a balance at his banker's, he could afford to indulge his natural antipathy to a lady who had endeavoured in early life to divert from him the little fortune which had ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... haltingly, as though he were weighing this damning statement against all that had formerly been good; he was unwilling to pronounce a verdict on the bare face value of such an accusation without throwing into the balance, not only Jeb's character since boyhood, but the affectionate memory of ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... gloved hand slipped from the lever and he hit it again, harder than he intended, so that he found himself being wafted upward with a speed which did not agree with a stomach, even one long accustomed to space flight. And he almost lost his balance when it came to a stop ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... colored people, each white man, with his musket upraised, threatening instant death if they did not stop their shrieks. Among the prisoners was a respectable old colored minister. They had found a few parcels of shot in his house, which his wife had for years used to balance her scales. For this they were going to shoot him on Court House Green. What a spectacle was that for a civilized country! A rabble, staggering under intoxication, assuming to be the ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory, which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the omniscient God held the balance of battle in His Almighty hand and that human slavery was swept forever from American soil, and the American Union was saved from the wreck ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... important case in an over-crowded courtroom. He had been speaking for three hours, when a boy, seated on a beam above the heads of the audience, overcome by the heat and the serjeant's monotonous tones, fell asleep, and, losing his balance, tumbled down on the people below. The incident was made the subject of a charge against the serjeant at the mess, and he was duly sentenced to pay a fine of two dozen of wine, which he did ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... wise, nay, just, To strike with men a balance: to forgive, If not forget, their evil for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... gently, very quietly, like a rescuer pushing out a ladder to the man on the ice, 'The deceased asked you to get it to clean your straw hat for you for Brighton.' And then like a trap being sprung he snapped and threw Sabre clean off the balance he was getting. 'Then it was obtained for the purpose of ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... figure, and figure, and figure, multiply and subtract, contort his face and nervously frisk his fingers through his curly black hair. It was all to no purpose, however he could not twist the plaguy figures into a favorable balance. In fact the balance, despite all his diplomacy, would get on the wrong page. At length, having exhausted patience and found language to adapt himself to circumstances, with great blandness of manner he would beg the ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... the thought from her indignantly, but it refused to be banished. She even catalogued her attractions, comparing them with the other girl's. The balance was in her favour; but in the end she felt ashamed of herself. Why should she do this? ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... stirring his face from the spot; stands upon one leg, and extends the other in a perpendicular line half a yard above his head; and extends his body from a table with his head a foot below his heels, having nothing to balance his body but his feet; with several other postures too tedious ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... anywhere else, with his mouth alone, but with his whole body; he articulates with every limb, and talks from head to foot with a thousand voices. Why this holoplexia on sacred occasions alone? Why call in the aid of paralysis to piety? Is it a rule of oratory to balance the style against the subject, and to handle the most sublime truths in the dullest language and the driest manner? Is sin to be taken from men, as Eve was from Adam, by casting them into a deep slumber? Or from what possible perversion ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... that one-half of the moneys collected from the sale of hunters' licenses, and on account of fines for infringement of the State game laws, should be paid to the counties in which collected, and the balance go to ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... that what I called a floor the sailors called a 'deck'; a kitchen they called a 'galley'; a pot, a 'copper'; a pulley was a 'block'; a post was a 'stancheon'; to fall down was to 'heel over'; to climb up was to 'go aloft'; and to walk straight, and keep one's balance when the ship was pitching over the waves, was to 'get your sea legs on.' I found out, too, that everything behind you was 'abaft,' and everything ahead was 'forwards,' or for'ad as the sailors say; that a large rope was a 'hawser,' ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... actuated and motived in its diligence by the lie that material good is better than spiritual good, that it is better to be a rich man and a successful merchant than to be a poor and humble and honest student; that it is better to have a balance at your bankers than to have great and pure and virginal thoughts in a clean heart; that a man has done better for himself when he has made a fortune than when he has God in his heart. And so we need, and God knows it was never more ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... might be, to issue some definite pronouncement in connection with it. Therefore, as soon as Earle clearly realised the attitude of the people toward him, and realised also that one or more important, perhaps vital, issues hung in the balance awaiting his pronouncement, he assumed what he deemed to be the correct oracular pose, in accordance with which he now bade Zorah set forth his statement, or propound his questions, ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... knees with tearful gratitude, we got up again and ran—ran as fast as we could, I suspect; for now the whole fore-part of the ship bulged through the water directly above our heads, and might lose its balance any moment. If we had only brought ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... now it is my turn! With this in my hand, all things are possible! He must have been mad to put his hand to such a paper—but, after all, it does not astonish me. He is always doing mad things; he has no balance, no self-control. Ten years ago, with an imprudent telegram, he almost plunged his country into war with England—and at a moment, too, when it was wholly unprepared! Two years ago, a wild speech of his brought Germany to the brink of revolution. Last year, he nearly ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... against the South: nearly nine to four. The actual numbers did not greatly differ: thirty-two thousand Federals to thirty-five thousand Confederates. (And in killed and wounded the Federals lost many more than the Confederates. It was the thirteen thousand captured Confederates that redressed the balance.) But, since Sherman had twice as many in his total as the Confederates had in theirs, the odds in relative loss were nine to four in his favor. The balance of loss from disease was also heavily against the Confederates, who as usual suffered from dearth of medical stores. The losses ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... on efficiency producers. Later I shall start reducing costs by studying machines, handling material economically and producing power at lowest cost; keeping the product moving, making environment count on the balance-sheet and protecting against accident and fire." This was as far as Jimmy had ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... as if you had already seen my passport to perdition signed and sealed. You, at least, have done your whole duty,—have set all the articles of orthodoxy, well-flavored and garnished, before me; and, if I am finally lost, my spiritual starvation can never be charged against you in the last balance-sheet. I am not ignorant of the Bible, nor altogether unacquainted with the divers creeds that spring from its pages as thick, as formidable, as ferocious, as the harvest from the dragon's teeth; and, thanking you for all you have taught ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... persons available. {17} These you must divide into twenty boards, as at present, with sixty persons to each board; and each of these boards you must divide into five sections of twelve persons each, taking care in every case to associate with the richest man the poorest men,[n] to maintain the balance. Such is the arrangement of persons which I recommend, and my reason you will know when you have heard the nature of the entire system. {18} I pass to the distribution of the ships. You must provide a total complement of 300 ships, forming twenty divisions of fifteen ships ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... each with a load of meat, they informed me that they had killed Elk about 2 miles off, I directed 3 men to go with the hunters and help them pack the meat to the place they were makeing Salt, and return to the fort with Serjt. Gass, the balance of the party took the load of the 3 men, after crossing the 2d Creek frasure informed me that he had lost his big knife, here we Dined, I put frasurs load on my guide who is yet with me, and Sent him back in Serch of his knife with directions to join the other men who were out packing meat & ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... was too small to hould me. Begad, I cud ha' hiked the sun out av the sky for a live coal to my pipe, so magnificent I was. But I tuk recruities at squad-drill instid, an' began wid general battalion advance whin I shud ha' been balance-steppin' them. Eyah! that day! ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... torrents of blood have watered the red-hot chains, and still the fetters are not broken; nay—it is our lot to have borne its burning heat—it is our lot to grasp with iron hand the wheels of its crushing car. Destiny—no; Providence—is holding the balance of decision; the tongue is wavering yet; one slight weight more into the one, or into the other scale, will again decide the fate ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... the long file of deserving dead, all that his ancestors, his father and himself had created or preserved of any stable value; each piece of gold that remained in the hereditary purse represented the balance of a lifetime, the enduring labor of some one belonging to his line, while among these gold pieces, he himself had provided his share.—For, personal services counted, even among the upper nobility; and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... her ear, adding his word concerning the "unjust possessors" who were to be driven "forth of this land," and overcome by sickness, sadness, and loneliness, this lady, who had done her best to hold the balance even and to refrain from bloodshed, though she had little credit for it, seems to have lost courage. She saw from her altitude on the castle rock the great fire in Leith, which probably looked at first like the beginning of its destruction, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... beyond the base of society,—are, in truth, those on which it would most become us to be silent. Others may tell you differently, especially those who are under the influence of the "trading humanities," a class that is singularly addicted to philanthropy or vituperation, as the balance-sheet happens to show ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Borrowdale was often as loud as wind need be, and many a walk in the clouds in the mountains did I take; but all would not do, till one day I dined out at the house of a neighbouring clergyman, and some how or other drank so much wine, that I found some effort and dexterity requisite to balance myself on the hither edge of sobriety. The next day my verse-making faculties returned to me, and I proceeded successfully, till my poem grew so long, and in Wordsworth's opinion so impressive, that he rejected it from his volume, as disproportionate both in size and merit, and as discordant in ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... of the meal, Pierre de Morlaix, who had tarried in the forest, entered, looking as pale as a ghost and very excited in manner, as if some extraordinary event had upset the balance of his mind. It was not without a very apparent effort that, remembering the composure of demeanour exacted by the feudal system from all pages, he repressed his excitement and took ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... thou preserve her laws—— Thou fight her battles! thou—I tell thee, boy, The hand which serves its country should be pure. Ambition, selfish love, vain lust of power Ravage thy head and heart! and would'st thou hold The judgment balance with a hand still red With royal blood? Would'st thou dare speak a penance On guilt, thyself so guilty? Canst thou hope Castile will trust her to thee? God forbid! Mad is that nation, mad past thought of cure, Past chains and dungeons, whips, spare food, and fasting, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... my most serious trouble, as it prevents me really from doing any more work, and causes a large want of balance, and liability to fall down. Even moving about the room after books, etc., dressing and undressing, make me want to ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... with an inconceivable rapidity, in less time than it takes to draw breath. He never recognized me. I saw his glare of incredulous awe change, suddenly, to horror and despair. He had felt himself losing his balance. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... inability to "add to or diminish the quantity of matter in the world," is a truth which "neither is nor can be derived from experience; for the experiments which we make to verify it presuppose its truth.... When men began to use the balance in chemical analysis, they did not prove by trial, but took for granted, as self-evident, that the weight of the whole must be found in the aggregate weight of the elements."(89) True, it is assumed; but, I apprehend, no otherwise than as all experimental inquiry assumes provisionally ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... if he be near, as near he is. I tell you, Mr. Mellot, this conviction has become so intense during the last week, that—that I believe I should not be thrown off my balance if he entered at this moment.... I feel him so near me, sir, that—that I could swear, did I not know how the weak brain imitates expected sounds, that I ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... attack in some degree failed, owing to the several divisions of boats missing each other in the dark; some French vessels were taken, but they could not be brought off; and the French chose to consider this result as a victory, on their part, of consequence enough to balance the loss at Aboukir;—though it amounted at best to ascertaining, that although their vessels could not keep the sea, they might, in some comparative degree of safety, lie under close cover of their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... me, however, just now these things can be remedied without disturbing the balance of an even break for both teams more violently than was the ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... of this state of mind is, I think, that it is on the whole too much bother to form a correct judgment; and it is so much easier to let things slide, and to take the good the gods provide you, than to carefully hold the scales until the balance is steady. But can anybody doubt that this abdication of the seat of judgment by large numbers of people is most hurtful to mankind? Does anyone believe that there would be so many bad books, bad pictures, and bad buildings in the world if people were more justly critical? Bad things ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... kings quarrelled more and more, and I weighed them both in my balance, for I would know which was the most favourable to me. In the end I found that both feared me, but that Umhlangana would certainly put me to death if he gained the upper hand, whereas this was not yet in the mind of Dingaan. So I pressed down the balance of Umhlangana ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... nobler, devolves upon boys who are still in the act of being born! If, however, they would permit a graded course of study to be prescribed, in order that studious boys might ripen their minds by diligent reading; balance their judgment by precepts of wisdom, correct their compositions with an unsparing pen, hear at length what they ought to imitate, and be convinced that nothing can be sublime when it is designed to catch ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... so hard blown that only the fiercest gusts raise the drifting particles—it is interesting to note the balance of nature whereby one evil is eliminated by the excess ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... hardship, and death were to be the missionary's portion. He who set sail for the country of the Hurons left behind him the world and all its prizes. True, he acted under orders,— obedient, like a soldier, to the word of command: but the astute Society of Jesus knew its members, weighed each in the balance, gave each his fitting task; and when the word was passed to embark for New France, it was but the response to a secret longing of the fervent heart. The letters of these priests, departing for the scene of their ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... him the family rose and stood for a moment speechless. Billy sat down on the floor in that prompt manner which is peculiar to young children when they lose their balance; simultaneously with the shock of being seated the word "faither" burst from his lips. Mrs Gaff uttered a suppressed cry, and ran into the wet man's arms. Tottie and the Bu'ster each ran at a leg, and hugging it violently, ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... ever known. He had no passages of despair. He had been in prison, he would be in prison again. He had spasms of the most absolute ferocity. On one occasion I thought that I should be his next victim, and for a moment my fate hung, I think, in the balance. But he changed his mind. He had a real liking for me, I think. When he could get it, he drank a kind of furniture polish, the only substitute in these days for vodka. This was an absolutely killing drink, and I tried ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... objection to the Categorical Imperative?" (They talked as though the fate of empires were in the balance.) ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... way, it is a great advantage. For instance, the rafts have to come down, but they never have to go back again; and so they have the whole advantage of the current in bringing them down, without any disadvantage to balance it. ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... replied. "I'm like so many other girls in this age. Don't give us up. We want you. We need your conservatism to balance and steady. We need our new freedom guided and directed. We're the new generation, Tom. We're the new spirit. There are hundreds—thousands—of us. Don't give us up." I seemed to see Ruth's army suddenly swarming about her as she spoke, and Ruth, starry-eyed and victorious, ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... was. I gazed at the bright point, with my eyes close to it, and tilted upward till they strained to see. At the same time I relaxed all the will of me and gave myself to the swaying dizziness that always eventually came to me. And when I felt myself sway out of balance backward, I closed my eyes and permitted myself to fall supine and unconscious ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... and the shield, and bound them to the bench and the oar. These measures he carried in the assembly, against the opposition, as Stesimbrotus relates, of Miltiades; and whether or no he hereby injured the purity and true balance of government, may be a question for philosophers, but that the deliverance of Greece came at that time from the sea, and that these galleys restored Athens again after it was destroyed, were others wanting, Xerxes himself would be sufficient evidence, who, though his land-forces ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough |
