"Gravitate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expert, after leading me on to admit that I had come in order to try to learn the real Boston, turned upon me with ferocious gaiety, thus: "You will not learn the real Boston. You cannot. The real Boston is the old Back Bay folk, who gravitate eternally between Beacon Street and State Street and the Somerset Club, and never go beyond. They confuse New England with the created universe, and it is impossible that you should learn them. Nobody could learn them in less than twenty years' intense ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... bantering glances, had described a circle, and by degrees succeeded in getting a few paces from the prince, behind the group of maids of honor, and nearly within reach of Mademoiselle Aure's voice, she being the planet around which he, as her attendant satellite, seemed constrained to gravitate. As he recovered his self-possession, Raoul fancied he recognized voices on his right hand that were familiar to him, and he perceived De Wardes, De Guiche, and the Chevalier de Lorraine, conversing together. It is true they were talking in tones so low, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not unlikely that the combination of money and the city proved the undoing of the moonshiner, and that he came to his legitimate and logical end among the dives and haunts of his kind, to which he would surely gravitate. ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... oftenest when, to divine what any known person will do in a case stated, we go boldly by his character, his habits, or his interest: for these are great forces, towards which men gravitate through various and ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... for it, but are only bent on perfecting temperament, and whose unconscious motive has been but a fear of not being in sympathy with men whose ardour they admire, but whose love of beauty they do not really share. Such people tend to gravitate to early Italian painting, because of its historical associations, and because it can be categorically studied. They become what is called 'purists,' which means little more than a learned submissiveness. In literature they ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... now is: What part of that exploded Past, the ruins and dust of which still darken all the air, will continually gravitate back to us; be reshaped, transformed, readapted, that so, in new figures, under new conditions, it may enrich and nourish us again? What part of it, not being incombustible, has actually gone to flame and gas in the huge world-conflagration, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... how in cadenced measure they gravitate below, Now linking, then unlinking, in quick, harmonious flow; Of Plato's worlds ideal the semblance here appears, Those worlds that danced in circles to the music of the spheres: So small is every atom, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... defences, to bide her time, and, so far as possible, to consolidate herself. Something like a desire for consolidation would seem to have come over the people; and Tyre, the leading city in all but the earliest times, appears to have been recognised as the centre towards which other states must gravitate, and to have risen to the occasion. If there ever was such a thing as a confederation of all the Phoenician cities, it would seem to have been at this period. Sidon forgot her ancient rivalry, and consented to furnish the Tyrian fleet with mariners.[14193] ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... might almost say: There will be no more events. We shall be happy. The human race will accomplish its law, as the terrestrial globe accomplishes its law; harmony will be re-established between the soul and the star; the soul will gravitate around the truth, as the planet around the light. Friends, the present hour in which I am addressing you, is a gloomy hour; but these are terrible purchases of the future. A revolution is a toll. Oh! the human race will be delivered, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... we be truly the friend of every one; and, as we find the living peace of this principle, and a greater freedom from selfishness,—whether of affection or dislike,—those who truly belong to us will gravitate to our sides, and we shall gravitate to theirs. Each one of us will understand his own relation to the rest,—whether remote or close,—for in that quiet light it will be seen to rest on intelligible law, which only the fog and confusion of ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... and, working up with them the thoughts suggested by them, the author has labored to form of them a compact and easily perused whole. For the ideas selected are essentially related, and, scattered as they may have hitherto been, naturally gravitate round a common centre. No longer drifting apart through the chaos of multitudinous pages, they are now formed into a system of order, a galaxy of which the central sun is—the Divine attributes as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... maturity, cannot thrive without the united care of father and mother. It is the long-continued helplessness of our children that makes the permanent union of a single pair natural to man. The moral sentiments—which, certainly, in a healthy condition of human society also gravitate in the same direction—are nothing more than the outcome of these natural conditions of existence. If a man reached maturity in a single year our moral sentiments would permit, would perhaps imperatively demand, a change of partner after every child; for, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... cleansed his eyes that he might see God's image erect. He knew now that his lot had been cast in the very stronghold of apathy, the home of a lukewarm spirit, which, not containing anything positive to keep it close to the right, let its sullen negativeness gravitate towards the wrong. It will be difficult to make coming generations understand, not the flaming antagonism to humanity, but the more brutal avoidance of it that ruled the political tone in this latitude, from 1836 to 1861. I have thought of the word bitterness, as expressing ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... will endure because it has nothing accidental, and it is substantially united to the eternal word. It is that reason toward which all blest intelligences will finally gravitate. Hence, we see that what already partakes of the celestial life repels reasoning as a cause of imperfection or infirmity. It is thus, by its exclusion of reasons, that the Gospel supremely proves its celestial origin. It is, ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... easy defense, will supply that want. With the possession of such a station by the United States, neither we nor any other American nation need longer apprehend injury or offense from any transatlantic enemy. I agree with our early statesmen that the West Indies naturally gravitate to, and may be expected ultimately to be absorbed by, the continental States, including our own. I agree with them also that it is wise to leave the question of such absorption to this process of natural political gravitation. The islands of St. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... are secured; but whenever he places his interest in anything else than friends, country, family and justice, then these all give way, borne down by the weight of self-interest. For wherever I and mine are placed, thither must every living being gravitate. If in body, that will sway us; if in our own will, that; if in externals, these. If, therefore, I rest my personality in the will, then only shall I be a friend, a son, or a father, such as I ought. For in that case it will be for my interest to preserve the faithful, the modest, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... miserable ghosts driven mad by love of matter. Certainly everything is possible, as Professor Flournoy says, but this theory is somewhat astonishing, for it seems to make the inhabitants of the next world gravitate round our miserable earth, and is like the old astronomical theory that placed our little globe in the centre of the universe. If there be another world, it is hard to believe that its inhabitants spend the greater part of their time in attending to us, some of them to harm ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... literature (as I have just been saying in the Universal Review about Science) there are many mansions and what is intolerable in one is common form in another. It is a case of the division of labour and a man will gravitate towards one class of workers or another according as he is built. There is neither ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... minutes to three, but prohibited at five minutes to three when the breath had passed away. We have gone too far in this direction. We live in an immaterial as well as in a material world. We are planted at the overlap of two spheres, that which is spiritual and that which is physical, and we gravitate so sensibly and so rapidly to the latter as to lose touch with the former, and finally to disbelieve in the ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... party rule; in point of fact, the Democrats are not a party; because they have no principles other than the old Whig- Radical ones, extended in some cases so as to take in a little semi- Socialism which the march of events has forced on them—that is, they gravitate on one side to the Whigs and on the other to the Socialists. Whenever, if ever, they begin to be a power in the elections and get members in the House, the temptation to be members of a real live party which may have the government of the country in its hands, the temptation to what ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... small, round and graceful—he came to be known as "the Little Giant." Douglas was a Democrat and favored slavery. Lincoln was a Whig, and strongly opposed that dark institution. Even in petty discussions in Speed's store, the two men seemed to gravitate to opposite sides. A little later they were rivals for the hand of the ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... representatives of the country,—not such as are chosen blindly and amiss by electors who take a folded ballot from the hand of a local politician, and thrust it into the ballot-box unread, but men who gravitate or are attracted hither by real business, or a native impulse to breathe the intensest atmosphere of the nation's life, or a genuine anxiety to see how this life-and-death struggle is going to deal with us. Nor these only, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the dictates of the spirit. If his spirit cannot react to the finer things, his way will lie among the coarse and bizarre. If he cannot appreciate the glory that is revealed upon the mountain, he will gravitate to the lower levels. If his spirit is not attuned to majestic harmonies, he will drift down to association with his own kind. If he cannot thrill with pleasure at the beauty and fragrance of the lily of the valley, he will seek ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... as sheriff, Billie called at the home of Pauline Roubideau, who was keeping house for her brother. Jack Goodheart was leaving just as Prince stepped upon the porch. It had been two years now since Jack had ceased to gravitate in the direction of Lee Snaith. His eyes and his footsteps for many months had turned often ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... of the Mayor of St.-Germian gets the control of the Republican party, the more obvious it becomes that the Republic must gravitate into Socialism. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... preponderance of Shyuamo in tribal affairs aroused apprehensions on the part of the other strong clans; it also caused the greater number of the weaker clusters to gravitate toward the growing element of power held by the Turquoise people. A schism was slowly and imperceptibly preparing itself among the people of the Rito. That schism was not the work of circumstances, it was being systematically prepared by two crafty ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... and have thrown off planets in contracting. The inference may seem a bold one, but it after all involves no other assumption than that of the continuity of natural phenomena. It is not likely, therefore, that the solar system will forever be left to itself. Stars which strongly gravitate toward each other, while moving through a perennially resisting medium, must in time be drawn together. The collision of our extinct sun with one of the Pleiades, after this manner, would very likely ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... gradually, as the onslaughts of the Danes became less frequent, Irish men of learning tended more and more to become teachers rather than mere students, and to gravitate towards a few great centres of study. The climax of this movement towards organization and the eminence of special places was reached about the middle of the eleventh century (1030-1063), when mention is made of thirty-three ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... upper dorsal regions, and forwards in the lower dorsal and lumbar regions. Therefore with the patient lying on his back, any solution injected that has a greater specific gravity than that of the cerebrospinal fluid which bathes the cord, tends to gravitate towards the sacral and upper dorsal regions; and, conversely, any solution of lower specific gravity than that of the cerebrospinal fluid tends to rise and produce analgesia at a still higher level. In this way the situation of the fluid producing analgesia can be controlled to some extent. It has ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Nothing is brought to it and much is taken away. Around a soft, yielding, unselfish disposition men swarm naturally. They sense this generosity, this non-protective attitude from afar. A girl like Jennie is like a comfortable fire to the average masculine mind; they gravitate to it, seek its sympathy, yearn to possess it. Hence she was annoyed ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... of this tree is? it has received these gifts; the animal has received those of feeling, of memory, of a certain number of ideas. Who has bestowed these gifts? who has given these faculties? He who has made the grass of the fields to grow, and who makes the earth gravitate toward the sun. ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... irresistibly strong. Though made up of many conflicting elements, Republicans, Whigs, Tories, zealous Presbyterians, bigoted Prelatists, it acted for a time as one man, and drew to itself a multitude of those mean and timid politicians who naturally gravitate towards the stronger party. The friends of the government were few and disunited. Hamilton brought but half a heart to the discharge of his duties. He had always been unstable; and he was now discontented. He held indeed the highest place to which a subject could aspire. But he imagined ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the Bounty, and solicit the reader's attention to a plump brown ball which rolls about that vessel's deck, exhibiting a marked tendency to gravitate towards the lee scuppers. This brown ball is Sally, ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne |
