"Centre of gravity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... edition. Philadelphia, 1869, page 732. I have no access to an earlier edition.), but he had himself probably arrived at it independently. Modern physical research tends to confirm it. The earth's centre of gravity, as pointed out by Pratt from the existence of the Pacific Ocean, does not coincide with its centre of figure, and it has been conjectured that the Pacific Ocean dates its origin from the separation of the moon ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... way along, lifting its earthenware container behind it in a slanting position. It makes one think of Diogenes, dragging his house, a terra-cotta tub, about with him. The thing is rather unwieldy, because of the weight, and is liable to heel over, owing to the excessive height of the centre of gravity. It makes progress all the same, tilting like a busby rakishly cocked over one ear. One of our Land-snails, the Bulimus, whose shell is continued into a turret, moves almost in the same fashion, tumbling repeatedly as ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... of observational astronomy at that time. We say still that the orbits of the planets are ellipses, because, for all ordinary purposes, that is a sufficiently near approximation to the truth; but, as a matter of fact, the centre of gravity of a planet describes neither an ellipse or any other simple curve, but an immensely complicated undulating line. It may fairly be doubted whether any generalisation, or hypothesis, based upon physical data is absolutely ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... nature of a cushion between two impacting bodies, namely, the striking weight and the base of the machine. It is important that the mass of this base be sufficiently great that its relative velocity to that of the common centre of gravity of itself and the ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... small trap-door, opening upon the leads, that Flora, who followed him, found herself in a dim twilight, and expected every moment the panting mountain, which had come between her and the sky, would lose the centre of gravity, and suffocate her ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... requisite; and such knowledge not being usually possessed, grave mechanical mistakes are frequently made. Take an instance. For the stability of a figure it is needful that the perpendicular from the centre of gravity—"the line of direction," as it is called—should fall within the base of support; and hence it happens, that when a man assumes the attitude known as "standing at ease," in which one leg is straightened and the other ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... the laws. The Provincial Parliaments followed the Parliament of Paris. After this the King had no alternative but to try the experiment of calling the States-General. They met on May 4, 1789, and instantly an administrative system, which no longer rested upon a social centre of gravity, crumbled, carrying the judiciary with it. At first the three estates sat separately. If this usage had continued, the Clergy and the Nobles combined would have annulled every measure voted by the Commons. For six weeks the Commons waited. ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... promptly obeyed the order, at the instant when the vessel, having rolled over as far as her centre of gravity would permit her to go in the trough of the sea, was poised as it were on a balance, waiting for the recoil of the wave that was to throw her down on the weather roll. The close-reefed foresail flew out from the brails, and began ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... her unwieldy body, that one might well have apprehended her downfall. But, no such thing. She maintained the equilibrium; for, renowned as she had been all her life at producing havoc among plates, and cups, and bowls, she was never known to be thrown off her own centre of gravity. Another hearty shake of the hand followed, and the major quitted the table. As was usual on all great and joyous occasions in the family, when the emotions reached the kitchen, that evening was remarkable for a "smash," in which half the ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... in and an unlimited admiration of himself form the centre of gravity upon which the other qualities of Kalkbrenner's character balance themselves. He prided himself on being the pattern of a fine gentleman, and took upon him to teach even his oldest friends how to conduct themselves in society and at table. In his gait he was dignified, in his ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... not perceive, ignorant fellow, the causes of your fall, and that it proceeds from your having deviated from the fixed point which we call the centre of gravity? ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... of the terral vortex passes through the centre of gravity of the earth and moon, and is continually circulating over the earth's surface in both hemispheres, in a spiral,—its latitude and longitude, at any ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... wind was keen the women were in light attire, and the flowered waistcoats of the men had a pleasing vividness of pattern. Each of the gentler ones clung to the arm of her partner so tightly as to have with him one step, rise, swing, gait, almost one centre of gravity. In the buxom bride Fitzpiers recognized no other than Suke Damson, who in her light gown looked a giantess; the small husband beside her he saw to ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... without friction to a common end; or when, reverting to the economic sphere, we contemplate the exquisite adjustment that prevails between the mutual interest of labour and capital—an adjustment broken only now and again by an occasional disturbance, just to show that the centre of gravity is changing; when we observe the World Trust quietly, without a creak or a groan, annihilating the individual producer; or when, to take the sublime example which has already been quoted, we perceive a single individual, in the pursuit of his own Good, positively co-operating with revolutionists ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... things, financial means and so forth, will be added. But there are thousands who drive for the financial and other incidental ends, and as a matter of fact miss the Kingdom entirely. To find the personal centre of gravity in the world is to master life, to fail to find it is to ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... prizes for the best solutions given of them. This they did in June 1658. A programme was published making the offer of prizes of forty and twenty pistoles, for the best determination of the area and the centre of gravity of any segment of the cycloid, and the dimensions and centres of gravity of solids and half and quarter solids which the same curve would generate by revolving round an abscissa and an ordinate. The programme was put forth in the name of Amos Dettonville, ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... the person from the waist to considerably below the knee, are required by the female figure, if only to veil certain inherent defects,—if those peculiarities may be called defects, which adapt it to its proper functions and do not diminish its sexual attractiveness. Woman's figure having its centre of gravity low, its breadth at the hip great, and, from the smallness of her feet, its base narrow, her natural movement in a costume which does not conceal the action of the hip and knee-joints is unavoidably awkward, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... which affords security and comfort to the rider and freedom from injury to the horse. The lady should sit (not lean) forward in the saddle, so as to get a good grip of the crutches; and should bring her seat well under her ("sit well into the saddle"), in order to bring the centre of gravity of her body well back, as regards her base of support, and thus to increase her stability, which will depend almost entirely on her power to resist forward propulsion, when the horse suddenly stops or swerves to the left. Her hold of the reins will in any ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... pacification, which appears to me truly significant. After the repeal of the Stamp Act, "the colonies fell," says this assembly, "into their ancient state of UNSUSPECTING CONFIDENCE IN THE MOTHER COUNTRY." This unsuspecting confidence is the true centre of gravity amongst mankind, about which all the parts are at rest. It is this UNSUSPECTING CONFIDENCE that removes all difficulties, and reconciles all the contradictions which occur in the complexity of all ancient, puzzled, political establishments. Happy are the rulers which have ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... sight. The 720 deputies of the Legislative Assembly were new and generally obscure names. Nobles, clergy, conservatives did not reappear, and their place was taken by the Feuillants, who, in the former Assembly, would have belonged to the Left. The centre of gravity shifted far in the revolutionary direction. The Constitution was made. The discussion of principles was over, and the dispute was not for doctrines but for power. The speakers have not the same originality or force; they are not inventors in political science; they are not the ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Kiev, from Kiev to Vladimir, from Vladimir to Moscow. This phenomenon was the consequence of the immense area of the national territory, and the want of consistency in the elements of the national life. From the beginning to the end of an evolution which lasted centuries the centre of gravity of the disjointed, scattered, and floating forces of ancient Russia perpetually changed its place. Thus the creation of St. Petersburg was nothing but the working out of a problem in dynamics. The struggle with Sweden, the conquest of the Baltic provinces, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... harmony in order to give homogeneity to their antiphonal choruses. Even to-day these tonal centres are still used; for they are elemental, like the primitive colors of the spectroscope. But modulation, in the modern sense of a free shifting of the centre of gravity to any one of the twelve semitones of our chromatic scale, was not developed and accepted until after the acoustical reforms of Rameau, and the system of tuning keyed instruments embodied in that work called the Well-tempered Clavichord ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... the time it is charged, or bored out after it is charged? How do cases charged with composition impart motion to wheels, and other pieces of fireworks? What is understood by the rocket principle? What is the rocket stick and its use? Is the centre of gravity fixed, or is it shifting in the flight of rockets? How are rockets discharged? What is the head of a rocket? What is usually put in the head? Are all rockets furnished with a head? What is understood by the furniture of a rocket? How are the serpents, stars, fire-rain, etc., forming the furniture ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... true that 'he prophesies of times that are far off'? Yes! and No! Yes! it is true, and it is the great glory of Christianity that it shifts the centre of gravity, so to speak, from this poor, transient, contemptible present, and sets it away out yonder in an august and infinite future. It brings to us not only knowledge of the future, but certitude, and takes the conception of another ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... it alone by the law of his nature. His virtues are the result of knowledge; his faults, the necessary consequence of the want of it. A boy desires to draw. He knows nothing about it: he draws men like trees or houses, with their centre of gravity anywhere. He makes mistakes because he knows no better. We do not blame him. Till he is better taught, he cannot help it. But his instruction begins. He arrives at straight lines; then at solids; then at curves. He learns ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... in the middle of the second century, was correct, James and Peter and John and their followers could not be saved; neither could Paul, if he carried into practice his views as to the indifference of eating meats offered to idols. Or, to put the matter another way, the centre of gravity of orthodoxy, which is at the extreme right of the series in the nineteenth century, was at the extreme left, just before the middle of the first century, when the "sect of the Nazarenes" constituted the whole church founded ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... melted away at its base by contact with warmer waters, had risen little by little; its centre of gravity had become displaced, and its equilibrium could only be re-established by a sudden capsize, which had lifted up the part that had been underneath above the sea-level. The Halbrane, caught in this movement, was hoisted as ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... experience in Ireland, to be a defect in the industrial character of Roman Catholics which, however caused, seems to me to have been intensified by their religion. The reliance of that religion on authority, its repression of individuality, and its complete shifting of what I may call the moral centre of gravity to a future existence—to mention no other characteristics—appear to me calculated, unless supplemented by other influences, to check the growth of the qualities of initiative and self-reliance, especially ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... had to be taken into consideration from the beginning. Its repercussion on the Irak undertaking was obvious. On that account I had already settled in my conversations in Constantinople during May that, if the centre of gravity of operations were transferred to the Sinai Front, command should be given me there too. The news now to hand—reinforcement of the British troops in Egypt, taking over of command by Allenby, the demands of the British Press daily becoming louder—makes the preparation of a British attack ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... two hundred and thirty thousand times as far from us as the sun. Seen from it, if the sun were even large enough to fill the whole orbit of the earth, or one hundred and eighty million miles in diameter, he would be a mere point. With its companion, it revolves round their common centre of gravity in eighty-one years, and hence it would seem that their conjoint mass is less than ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... very birth of European commerce, has been the salvation of Europe, and in providing for it Antwerp acted as the safety-valve of the sixteenth century system as London has done since. The importance of the change of the centre of gravity and exchange from Venice to Antwerp, therefore, lies in this fact. Under the old system of overland and limited trade, Venice could only provide for such puny exchange and flow as the mediaeval system of Europe demanded; she would have been unable ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... Prussia, or that the three most important countries of the globe would, by the end of the century, be those that chiefly belonged to the conquests of the Reformation. So that in Religion, as in so many things, the product of these centuries has favoured the new elements; and the centre of gravity, moving from the Mediterranean nations to the Oceanic, from the Latin to the Teuton, has also passed from the Catholic ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... classification are increased, as in Egypt, by the fact that every important town had its local deities, deities who were its own peculiar gods. In the course of so many centuries and so many successive displacements of the political centre of gravity, the order of precedence of the Mesopotamian gods was often changed. The dominant city promoted its own gods over the heads of their fellows and modified for a time which might be long or short, the comparative importance of the Chaldaean divinities. Sin, the moon god, headed the list during ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... crossed on his breast, his head a little to one side, as if in deep contemplation, as he gazed earnestly into the fire, and his chair tilted on its hind legs so as to balance with such nicety that a feather's weight additional outside its centre of gravity would have upset it. He had divested himself of his coat—a practice that prevailed among the young gentlemen when at home, as being free- and-easy as well as convenient. The doctor, a tall, broad-shouldered man, with red hair and whiskers, paced ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Chalk drew a nice long slim body to hold the Engine and the tanks, etc., with room for the Pilot's and Passenger's seats, and placed it exactly in the middle of the Biplane. And he was careful to make its position such that the Centre of Gravity was a little in advance of the Centre of Lift, so that when the Engine was not running and there was consequently no Thrust, the Aeroplane should be "nose-heavy" just to the right degree, and so take up a natural glide to Earth—and this was to ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... impalpable (no, not impalpable), pachydermatous, and the extraordinary accuracy with which they succeeded in balancing trees or parts of trees, branches, logs, beams, planks, ... etc., ... with their trunks (the beams carefully supported at their centre of gravity, the logs carefully supported at their centre of gravity, the elephants without a smile at their centre of gravity) ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... structure are the wings of insects to the varied conditions by which they are surrounded, and which we are forced to believe stand in the relation of cause to effect. Again, why should the wings always appear on the thorax and on the upper instead of the under side? As this is the seat of the centre of gravity, it is evident that cosmical laws as well as the more immediate laws of biology determine the position and nature of ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... five minutes would often be spent by the two in endeavouring to overcome the rigid principles of that well-balanced plaything. But always the dead weight at its heart frustrated their attempts. Martha played the most inconsiderate pranks with its centre of gravity, but quite in vain. When a little French boy from the etage above was allowed to come and play with Martha, she proceeded to experiment upon his centre of gravity in the same way, and seemed much surprised when Jean Paul Auguste not ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... disappeared made it more difficult for her to extricate herself. Ned remembered that life and death, sickness and health, success and failure, are merely questions of balance. A nation is successful when its forces are at balance, and nations rise and fall because the centre of gravity shifts. A single Spaniard is as good as a single German, but the centre of gravity is in ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... how to climb a wall. Should he abandon her? Jean Valjean did not once think of that. It was impossible to carry her. A man's whole strength is required to successfully carry out these singular ascents. The least burden would disturb his centre of gravity and pull him downwards. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... an environment where all the romantic values are reversed. Where does the real life of most American men lie? In some woman's drawing-room or in their offices? The answer's obvious, isn't it? The emotional centre of gravity's not the same in the two hemispheres. In the effete societies it's love, in our new one it's business. In America the real crime passionnel is a 'big steal'—there's more excitement in ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... bent also. He was on the point of asking—in a low voice, that the clerk might not overhear—for an explanation of Miss Gabriel's gossip. But at this juncture a client entered, and the Commandant escaped. He went up the hill with a new centre of gravity: so different is a load in the pocket from a load ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... My centre of gravity is displaced. I have forgotten the trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Struggle for life is the law of existence but but human philirenists, notably the tsar and the king of England, have invented arbitration. (He taps his brow) But in here ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce |
