"Pivot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sword in the hands of Justice; I might no more hope to make Egypt free and great and sit upon my lawful throne. Khem was lost, and lost was I, Harmachis. In the rush and turmoil of events, the great plot of which I had been the pivot was covered up and forgotten; scarce a memory of it remained. The curtain of dark night was closing in upon the history of my ancient Race; its very Gods were tottering to their fall; I could already, in the spirit, hear the shriek of the Roman eagles as they flapped their wings ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... her yearly excess of from one million and a half to two million births over deaths, with the development of her industries and the formation of important commercial centres, progressed very rapidly and was about to become the pivot of European politics. ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... a naturally balanced circle which mathematicians call the Horizon. Keeping this idea definitely in mind, if we imagine a line drawn from the northern side of the circumference (N) to the side which lies above the southern half of the axis (S), and from here another line obliquely up to the pivot at the summit, beyond the stars composing the Great Bear (the pole star P), we shall doubtless see that we have in the heaven a triangular figure like that of the musical instrument which ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... actuates cat's-eye shutter, which controls amount of light admitted to right half of instrument. Its shaft carries index-hand over dial. H, FIELD-HOLDER: retains sample and standard white in same plane, and isolates them. Is hinged upon lower edge, and secured by pivot clamp. M, MIRROR: permits observation of the isolated halves of the holder, bearing standard white and the color to be measured. Should be clean and free from dust on both sides of central partition. ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... of the ears and eyes running down into the heart is constantly being sounded out in the old Book. A famous bit in Isaiah puts it very clearly, and becomes a sort of pivot passage of all others of this sort. That fine-grained, intense-spirited young Hebrew was caught in the temple one day by a sight of God. That wondrous sight held him with unyielding grip through all the after years. With the sight came the voice, and ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... out of the old china tureen. It was her consecrated hour—the single hour of her toiling day that she dedicated to personal happiness; and because it was her hour, her life had gradually centred about it as if it were the divine point of her universe—the pivot upon which her whole world revolved. Nothing harsh, nothing sordid, nothing sad, ever touched the sacred precincts of her ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... formality and vice to conspire with each other! Jeremiah scorns the people's trust in the Temple as utterly as he had scorned their trust (it is the same word) in the Baals or in Egypt and Assyria. The change in the pivot of their false confidence is to be marked. So much at least had Deuteronomy effected—shifting their trust from foreign gods and states to something founded by their own God, yet leaving it material, and unable to restrain them from bringing ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... both of the springs and the scenery of these mountains. And so, with the rise and dip of the seasons, the European element waxes as the English wanes, in a kind of solstitial see-saw. And the smiling landlord stands upon the pivot. ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... in no condition to issue orders of any kind, the reason being as follows: when preparations for the advance were made, Dr. Gray, who understood perhaps more fully than any one else except O'Neil the gravity of the issue and the slender pivot upon which the outcome balanced, had taken his place in the vanguard of the attacking party instead of in the background, as befitted his calling. The first rush had carried him well into the fray, but once there he had shown his good judgment ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... of the brown dust, and where huge vessels have been discharging that same cargo for the last five months.' This was the walk he took his young wife on the morrow of his return. She had been used to the society of lawyers and civil servants, moving in that circle which seems to itself the pivot of the nation and is in truth only a clique like another; and Fleeming was to her the nameless assistant of a nameless firm of engineers, doing his inglorious business, as she now saw for herself, among unsavoury surroundings. But ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the rear, dancing around to escape the pony's battery, and got to the side where he could grasp the horn of his saddle, Bingo would wheel in a circle away from him as if he was fastened to a pivot. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... not true, my dear sisters, that you are of this opinion? Do not you thoroughly understand that if love is absent from marriage it should, on the contrary, be its real pivot? To make one's self lovable is the main thing. Believe my white hairs that it is so, and let me give ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... of his little eyes. He looked at Mrs. Moon as much as to say, "What is to be done? The boy has been going the wrong way: must we disown him?" The moon neither shook her head nor moved her lips, but turned as on a pivot, and stood with her back to her husband, looking very miserable. Not one of the star-children moved from its place. They shone sickly and small. In a little while they faded out; then the moon paled and paled until she too vanished without ever turning her face to her husband; ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... controls every movement of the most complex family life, and wonders are daily accomplished by the presence of a woman who seems little more than a spirit. The New England wife-mother was the one little jeweled pivot on which all the wheel work of ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... remaining ice took place: we made gentle and very cautious moves towards Barrow's Strait; and, at last, on August 11th, the ice, as if heartily tired of us, shot us out into Barrow's Strait, by turning itself fairly round on a pivot. We were at sea because we could not help it, and the navigable season was proclaimed to ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... an electro-magnet, a a the armature, wound as a Gramme ring, and fixed to a frame with four arms, which can turn freely upon a pivot midway between the poles. The cross arms of the frame are attached at 1, 2, 3, 4, Fig. 2. Between the magnets and the armature is placed the distributor, d d, where it occupies an annular space open above and below. Both the magnets and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... the dignity of unconsciousness and let recognition of any change in the situation come from those who had caused the change. After all, it was rather absurd to propose making a purely personal question the pivot on which his relations with 'Every Other Week' turned. He took a hint from March's position and decided that he did not know Dryfoos in these relations; he knew only Fulkerson, who had certainly had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... passage in the Christian Scriptures: 'Those who obey not God, and believe not the Gospel of his Son, shall be punished with everlasting destruction.' This is the pivot upon which all religions turn:—they all assume that it is in our power to believe or not to believe; whereas the mind can only believe that which it thinks true. A human being can only be supposed accountable for those actions which ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... bridge has a transverse slot (H) in one edge, to receive therein the pivot pin of the swinging magnet. In order to hold the pivot pin in place, cut out an H-shaped piece of sheet brass (I), which, when laid on the bridge, has its ends bent around the latter, as shown at J, and the crossbar of the H-shaped piece then will prevent ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... had a sensation of moving sidewise out of her own person; and then she saw the chief Pontiac standing on the edge of the cliff. Jenieve knew his back, and the feathers in his hair which the wind did not move. His head turned on a pivot, sweeping the horizon from St. Ignace, where the white man first set foot, to Round Island, where the shameful fires burned. His hard, set features were silver color rather than copper, as she saw his profile against the sky. His arms were folded in his blanket. Jenieve was as ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the Scavenger's Daughter. Think of a pair of shears with handles, not only where they now are, but at the points as well, and just above the pivot that unites the blades, a circle of iron. In the upper handles the hands would be placed; in the lower, the feet; and through the iron ring, at the centre, the head of the victim would be forced. In this condition, he would be thrown prone upon ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... little below that of an express train. Corners the chauffeur negotiated in racing fashion, so that at times two wheels thrashed the empty air; and once or twice the big car swung round as upon a pivot only to recover again in response to the skilled ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... play. And this quarrel about the censorship is one on which he feels so strongly that in a book embodying any sort of sympathy it would be much better to leave out Mrs. Warren than to leave out Mr. Redford. The veto was the pivot of so very personal a movement by the dramatist, of so very positive an assertion of his own attitude towards things, that it is only just and necessary to state what were the two essential parties to the dispute; the play and the ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... "The Pivot City is a sobriquet invented by the citizens to symbolize it as the point on which the fortunes of the colony would culminate and revolve. They also invented several other original terms—a phraseology christened by the Melbourne press ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... most interesting of it centers in and radiates from certain personalities whom I had the good fortune to meet and to know as well as their days and mine would permit, it has seemed to me that the surest way of vivifying any account of the work itself is to make its pivot the central figure of the story. So I will begin with ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... life; he mentions his wife once, and almost apologizes for doing so; really, could a gentleman—a duke—dwell upon such matters, and preserve his self-respect? But, to us, it is precisely such matters that form the pivot of a personality—the index of a soul. A man's feelings are his very self, and it is around them that all that is noblest and profoundest in our literature seems naturally to centre. A great novelist is one ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... be done by setting the centres of the slots true to the lines passing through the axis) and set the pivots as follows: Place the pencil-point G so that it coincides with one of the points as C, and place the pivot E so that it comes directly at the point of intersection of the two slots, and fasten it there. Then turn the arm so that the pencil-point G coincides with one of the points of the minor axis as D, the arm lying parallel to B D, and place the pivot F ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... mile, and at length they came to one of the drawbridges. This drawbridge led over a passage way which formed a communication from one basin of the dock to another. It was a very long and slender bridge of iron, made to turn on a pivot at one end. There was some machinery connected with ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... contrary, I make no doubt, but that, as she recovers from the dejection into which this last scurvy villany (which none but wretches of her own sex could have been guilty of) has thrown her, returning love will re-enter her time-pacified mind: her thoughts will then turn once more on the conjugal pivot: of course she will have livelier notions in her head; and these will make her perform all her circumvolutions with ease and pleasure; though not with so high a degree of either, as if the dear proud rogue could have exalted herself above the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... Eglamore, my playmate Tebaldeo was fastened to a cross, like that (pointing to the shrine). I know that his arms and legs were each broken in two places with an iron bar. I know that this cross was then set upon a pivot, so that it turned slowly. I know that my dear Tebaldeo died very slowly in the sunlit marketplace, while the cross turned, and turned, and turned. I know this was a public holiday; the shopkeepers took holiday to watch him ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... Saviol Prokofitch. To be set up, for instance, on the parade in the open space. And as for expense,—the expense would be trifling: a stone column (indicates the size of each thing by gestures), a copper disc, round like this, and a pivot, an upright pivot (shows, gesticulating) of the simplest description. I will put it all up and carve the figures on the face myself too. And, your worship, when you are pleased to take a walk, or any other people are out walking, you will go up to it, and see at once what o'clock ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky
... guide and philosopher! I believe that my acquaintance with Senator North has made me feel like a child. He is so much wiser in a minute than I could be in a lifetime; and as I have made him the pivot on which the world revolves, no wonder ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... back, port. Give way!" continued the coxswains; and the effect of this evolution was to turn the boats as on a pivot. "Oars!" and the crew ceased pulling, with their oars all on a ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... Theatre, leaves nothing to be desired. It consists of an apparatus of copper ribbons, leading from a Voltaic battery placed beneath the stage, attached to the conductor's desk, and terminating in a movable stick fastened at one end on a pivot before a board at a certain distance from the orchestral conductor. To this latter's desk is affixed a key of copper, something like the ivory key of a pianoforte; it is elastic, and provided on the interior side with a protuberance ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... lad seems to be the pivot on which the whole thing turns. Curious, isn't it? I wish the responsibility hadn't been laid on my shoulders. Just now I can't tell what I ought ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... the Mary came with a force I was unable to resist; with a strong effort I gulped down my disappointment, and gave up my darling project of making a cruise in the Paul Jones. Our fortunes in this life our destinies seem sometimes balanced on a pivot which a breath will turn. Had I accomplished my intention and embarked on a cruise, how different my fate, in all likelihood, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... come to mean the beginning and end of everything—the pivot upon which her whole existence hung. So that if Michael shut her out of his life for ever, that existence would no longer hold either value or significance. From her point of view, then, the primary object of any kind of self-discipline ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... to consider fairly a question like this in the hour when vital personal interests pivot on the decision, as it is in a season of rest and safety; yet, if in a time of extremest peril the unvarying duty of truthfulness shines clearly through an atmosphere of sore temptation, that light may be accepted as diviner because of its very power to penetrate clouds and to dispel darkness. ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... sigh, she dismissed the matter from her mind until such time as opportunity served. Meanwhile she must put in an appearance at Mrs. John Day's house. Mrs. John Day was the social pivot of Rocky Springs, and, to disobey her summons, Helen knew would be to risk a displeasure which would find reflection in every woman ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... prestige was not merely the outcome of public changes; it was an intensely personal matter, too. Victoria was the Queen of England, the Empress of India, the quintessential pivot round which the whole magnificent machine was revolving—but how much more besides! For one thing, she was of a great age—an almost indispensable qualification for popularity in England. She had given proof of one of the most admired characteristics ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... do the same with the store-rooms, and managed so well that he succeeded in laying in provisions enough for two years. There was abundance of money at his command, and enough remained to buy a cannon, on a pivot carriage, which he mounted on the forecastle. There was no knowing what might happen, and it is always well to be able to send a good round bullet flying ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... connected to the fly wheel governor, by which it may be turned forward or back as the load requires. The three points of lead, or admission and exhaust and compression, are fixed and independent of the changes and cut off. The motion of the main eccentric is given to a rocker arm, the pivot of which is at the bottom, and from the upper end the valve rod transfers the motion to the valve without reversing the motion, as is done sometimes in the slide valve to overcome the effects of the angularity of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... an hour. As soon as her course had been changed, so as to bring the wind forward of the beam, which was her best point of sailing, the men were sent to the guns; the first mate placing himself at a long eighteen pounder, which was mounted as a pivot gun aft, a similar weapon being in her bows. All this took but four or five minutes, and shot after shot from the sloop ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... the river. A fortunate passage carried them in safety to Rio Janeiro, and on the 29th of March 1839, they were sailing from the Cape of Good Hope. A six weeks' passage brought them to Java Head, and on the 1st of June they reached that "pivot of the liberal system in the Archipelago," the island of Singapore. It was not until the 27th of July that Mr Brooke quitted Singapore. Five days afterwards, the Royalist was anchored off the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... the change were not effected when the plough was swung round, the furrow would be made opposite. Next he leans heavily on the handles, still standing on the same spot; this lifts the plough, so that it turns easily as if on a pivot. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... and buried the poop. Kit felt the steamer lift and turn, as if on a pivot at the middle of her length. The after-deck was full of water, but the bows were high and going round, and he was conscious of a curious shiver that ran through the straining hull as she shook herself free from the sand. She crawled forward, stopped, ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... on shore, though he evidently showed no great devotion to the deed. They said he watched everything, aye, every bush, with the most scrutinizing gaze: his head appeared to turn upon a pivot, so constantly was it in motion, with all that restless watchfulness for which the savage is ever remarkable. The heat to-day either exceeded an average, or else perhaps, as an invalid, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... griffin's head, which, like the ribbon, was also bright scarlet. While these changes were being effected, others of the crew removed the boat that lay on the deck, bottom up between the masts, and uncovered a long brass pivot-gun, of the largest caliber, which shone in the saffron light of morning like a mass of burnished gold. This gun was kept scrupulously clean and neat in all its arrangements; the rammers, sponges, screws, and other apparatus belonging to it were neatly arranged beside it, and four or five of its ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... sailed, she bore little resemblance to our war vessels of to-day, so clumsily fashioned was she, being made of wood, with only one covered deck, and the open forecastle and quarter-deck above it, and had but two tiers of guns—the largest frigates carried sixty guns, besides a large pivot gun at the bow, and were noted for their speed, though in comparison to modern warships they were as a ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... great, three brilliant phases have marked its progress. In 1543 the bold and firm hand of Copernicus overthrew the greater part of the venerable scaffolding which had propped the illusions and the pride of many generations. The earth ceased to be the centre, the pivot, of celestial movements. Henceforward it ranged itself modestly among the other planets, its relative importance as one member of the solar system reduced almost to that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... indeed forced the turgid river to run within the narrow channels hewn by established custom, but, released from the bondage of convention, the soul of Elisabeth Durward was that of sheer primitive woman, and the pivot of all her actions her love for her mate and for the man-child ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... diagonally so as to give it two similar cutting edges. This tool is perhaps more generally useful than any of the others. The manner of using it is shown in Fig. 23; it is placed on the tool rest and dexterously moved on the rest as a pivot, causing the point to travel in a circular path along the metal in the lathe. Of course only a small distance is traveled over before the tool is moved along on the rest. After a little experience it will be found that by exercising care a good job in plain turning ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... as the reader skilful in the antique language of the drama must at once perceive, turned on the same pivot as in the old minstrel tales of the Drinking Horn of King Arthur, and the Mantle made Amiss. But the audience were neither learned nor critical enough to challenge its want of originality. The potent relic was, after such grimace and buffoonery ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... beauty-worship in metaphysical love, the adoration of woman; thanks to Plato, it has for all time become the inalienable property of the human mind. The striving to rise above all individualism was another ideal which a later period revived. But the pivot round which the emotions revolved was the love for a beloved individual, the modern, European, fundamental motive, as opposed to the antique Platonic cult of ideas. Thus Plato, too, was a citizen of the old world, at whose threshold stood universal ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... dock is impossible. Accordingly turntable sheds have been adopted. The shed is mounted upon a double turn-table, there being two circular tracks the one near the centre of the shed and the other towards its extremities. The shed is mounted upon a centre pivot and wheels engaged with these inner and outer tracks. In this manner the shed may be swung round to the most favourable point of the ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... after until quite giddy, when a broken leg occasionally occurs.... Vicious cocks 'roll' when challenging to fight or when wooing the hen. The cock will suddenly bump down on to his knees (the ankle-joint), open his wings, and then swing them alternately backward and forward, as if on a pivot.... While rolling, every feather over the whole body is on end, and the plumes are open, like a large white fan. At such a time the bird sees very imperfectly, if at all; in fact, he seems so preoccupied that, if pursued, one may often approach unnoticed. Just before rolling, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... enunciating in the most violent and untenable form and the most offensive language the proposition that all slave-holding is sin and every slave-holder a criminal, and making the whole attack on slavery to turn on this weak pivot and fail if this failed. The argument of this sort of abolitionist was: If there can be found anywhere a good man holding a bond-servant unselfishly, kindly, and for good reason justifiably, then the system of American slavery is right.[277:1] It is not strange that men in ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... moving body circulating regularly around another, describes an ellipse. Science has proved this incontestably. The satellites describe ellipses around the planets, the planets around the Sun, the Sun himself describes an ellipse around the unknown star that serves as a pivot for our whole solar system. How can our Baltimore Gun Club Projectile then escape the ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... driven desperate by his vain attempts to get away, the sufferer lies down flat and refuses to do his duty, the fowler is able to stimulate him without stirring from his hut. A long string sets in motion a little lever working on a pivot. Raised from the ground by this diabolical contrivance, the bird flies, falls down and flies up again at each ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... lieutenant had an opportunity to examine the prize, as she would be if he succeeded in getting her out of the bay. She was certainly a fine little steamer, and, with the heavy gun mounted on a pivot, she would have been capable of doing a great deal of mischief among the unprotected merchant ships ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... at her with a filmy Gaze and smile faintly, as if partly remembering and then say: "Don't forget to follow through. Keep the head down—tight with the left—no hunching—pivot on the hips. For a Cuppy Lie, take the Nib. If running up with the Jigger, drop her dead. The full St. Andrews should not be thrown into a Putt. Never up, never in. Lift the flag. Take a pickout from Casual ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... Acts the pivot on which all else rests and turns is the unhindered presence of the ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... substantially built little craft of one hundred and thirty-four tons register, as tight as a bottle, well found, and armed with six long six-pounders in her batteries, with a long nine-pounder mounted on a pivot on her forecastle, ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... then the earth will be overwhelmed by a deluge. Another legend tells us that when the gods and demons took Mount Mandara for a churning-stick and churned the ocean to make ambrosia, the god Vishnu took on the form of a tortoise and lay at the bottom of the sea, as a pivot for the whirling mountain to rest upon. But these versions of the myth are not primitive. In the original conception the world is itself a gigantic tortoise swimming in a boundless ocean; the flat surface of the earth is the lower plate ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... one cry to suddenly lose the pivot upon which his emotions are swung. At any rate, Mrs. Morris cried. She said that she cried all night, first because it seemed so spooky to see him whose remains she had so recently buried on faith, waiving recognition in the debris, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... arrangement had also its rules: on the left, was the town to which the palace, temple, or whatever occupied the middle, belonged; on the right, the open country, landscape, mountains, sea-coast, &c. The side-scenes were composed of triangles which turned on a pivot beneath; and in this manner the change of scene was effected. According to an observation on Virgil, by Servius, the change of scene was partly produced by revolving, and partly by withdrawing. The former applies ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... at a desk, covered with papers in chaotic confusion, on a chair which moved on a pivot. His desk was against the wall, and when clients came to him, he turned himself sharp round, sticking out his dirty shoes, throwing himself back till his body was an inclined plane, with his hands thrust ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... pagans, like the moderns, were only miserable about everything—they were quite jolly about everything else. I concede that the Christians of the Middle Ages were only at peace about everything—they were at war about everything else. But if the question turn on the primary pivot of the cosmos, then there was more cosmic contentment in the narrow and bloody streets of Florence than in the theatre of Athens or the open garden of Epicurus. Giotto lived in a gloomier town than Euripides, but he lived in ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... Fierce summers, beating on their swollen brows. O, such a battle! had we heard of serfs Driven to like hot conflict with the soil, Armies had march'd and navies swiftly sail'd To burst their gyves. But here's the little point— The polish'd di'mond pivot on which spins The wheel of Difference—they OWN'D the rugged soil, And fought for love—dear love of wealth and pow'r, And honest ease and fair esteem of men; One's blood heats at it!" "Yet you said such ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... even this is vanishing; such drawing-rooms as Mme. de St. Cyr's are less and less frequent. Yet, though the delightful spell of the last century daily dissipates itself, and we are not now what we were twenty years ago, still Paris is, and will be till the end of time, for a cosmopolitan, the pivot on which ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... over stone; and though he could see nothing with his eyes, mentally he knew that one of the great time-bleached and weathered blocks of granite that helped to form the cyclopean face of the kopje wall had begun to turn as on a pivot. ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... had, and did have, a lower and immediate meaning, were only realised in the whole sweep and significance in Himself. So He presents Himself before His acquaintances in the little synagogue at Nazareth, and before the whole world to all time, as the centre-point and pivot on which the history of the world, so to speak, revolves; all that was before converging to Him, all that was after flowing down from Him. 'They that went before, and they that followed after, cried, Hosanna! blessed be He that cometh in the name of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... there, the whole east began gradually to spring into flame. The sky blazed as ruddily as if a great fire were just beyond the horizon and racing to leap it and sweep across upon the farm. A broad fan of light, roseate at its pivot and radiating in shafts of yellow and red, was rising and paling the stars with its shining edge. Wider and wider it grew, until from north to south, and almost as far up as the zenith, were thrust its shining sticks. Then out of the cold mist floating over the distant ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... society reposes; that fundamental institution is Slavery.... Our European ancestry, those men from whom we are descended and whose blood runs with little admixture in our veins, took slavery for granted, made of it the economic pivot upon which the production of wealth should turn, and never doubted but that it was normal ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... President, that the South Carolina doctrine is the Republican doctrine of '98,—that it was promulgated by the fathers of the faith,—that it was maintained by Virginia and Kentucky in the worst of times,—that it constituted the very pivot on which the political revolution of that day turned,—that it embraces the very principles, the triumph of which, at that time, saved the Constitution "at its last gasp," and which New England statesmen were not unwilling to adopt when they believed themselves to be the victims of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... between her and this new nation. Such treaties are not everlasting, nor can they be made to last even for ages. Those who word them seem to think that powers and dynasties will never pass away. But they do pass away, and the balance of power will not keep itself fixed forever on the same pivot. The time may come— that it may not come soon we will all desire—but the time may come when the name and prestige of what we call British North America will be as serviceable to Great Britain as those of Great Britain are now serviceable to ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... than is man in proportion to the vast systems of the Universe, in which he represents an ultra-microscopic atom less ten thousand times than the tiniest of the "gay motes that people the sunbeams." Yet, with colossal audacity, this thinking atom regards himself as the anthropocentric pivot around which revolve the eternal purposes of the Universe. Knowing not whence he came, why he is here, or whither he is going, man feels himself of supreme importance, and certainly is of interest—to himself. Let us hope that he has indeed a potency ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... with a firm and bold hand, the greater part of the antique and venerable scaffolding with which the illusions of the senses and the pride of successive generations had filled the universe. The earth ceased to be the centre, the pivot of the celestial movements; it henceforward modestly ranged itself among the planets; its material importance, amid the totality of the bodies of which our solar system is composed, found itself reduced almost to that of a ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... lands at the late exhibition at Berlin, nothing of the kind could be found. What is known to whalers as a toggle-harpoon is a modification of the lily-iron, but so greatly changed by the addition of a pivot by which the head of the harpoon is fastened to the shank that it can hardly be regarded as the same weapon. The lily-iron is, in principle, exactly what a whaleman would describe by the word "toggle." It consists of a two-pointed piece of metal, having in the center, at ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... seated quite at his ease; and having slung his glass to one of the shrouds, in a way to admit of its being turned as on a pivot, he had every opportunity for observing accurately, and at his leisure. The first thing Jack did, was to examine the channel very closely, in order to make sure that no boats were in it, after which he turned the glass with ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... must be made to produce that effect? He decided that "melancholy is the most legitimate of all poetic tones." Why joy or gladness, like that of the birds, is not equally legitimate, he does not explain. Then, to give artistic piquancy to the whole, he decided that there must be "some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn." He found that "no one had been so universally employed as the refrain." The burden of the poem should be given by the refrain, and it should be a monotone, and should have brevity. Then ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... certainly up with the danger, and the vessel was slowly drawing ahead; but every moment its broadside was set nearer to the rock, which was now within fifty feet of them. The fore-chains were past the point, though little hope remained of clearing it abaft. A ship turns on her centre of gravity as on a pivot, the two ends inclining in opposite directions; and Captain Truck hoped that as the bows were past the danger, it might be possible to throw the after-part of the vessel up to the wind, by keeping away, and thus ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... rvolts; mais tous, jusqu' l'interprte, qui ne leur avait jamais fait de mal, furent impitoyablement massacrs. Le lieutenant mourut avec gloire. Il s'tait retir l'arrire, auprs d'un de ces petits canons qui tournent sur un pivot, et que l'on charge de mitraille. De la main gauche, il dirigea la pice, et, de la droite, arm d'un sabre, il se dfendit si bien qu'il attira autour de lui une foule de noirs. Alors, pressant la dtente du canon, il fit au milieu de cette masse serre une large rue pave ...
— Quatre contes de Prosper Mrime • F. C. L. Van Steenderen
... for a time sadly embarrassed, but soon becomes sufficiently accustomed to the restraint to move about slowly. It prevents his wandering; and his being easily carried off at night by lurking Indians. When a horse that is "foot free" is tied to one thus secured, the latter forms, as it were, a pivot, round which the other runs and curvets, in case of alarm. The encampment of which we are speaking presented a striking scene. The various mess-fires were surrounded by picturesque groups, standing, sitting, and reclining; some busied in cooking, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... a cultus, so also it has a clergy, who are the pivot of his entire social and political system. Their nature and office will be best shown by describing his ideal of political society in its normal state, with the various classes of ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... before him. These would have given to his body and to his mind just what both needed, for the trials and temptations of the day; and they would have saved him, at least for the day, perhaps for life; for the pivot upon which the whole of a man's future destiny turns is often ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... below, he saw, had now almost gained the central passage. Their countless faces turned towards him, and they shouted. The white facade opposite was densely stippled with red. All these wonderful things concerned him, turned upon him as a pivot. These were the guards of the Council attempting to ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... Gridley," Hugh signalled to his familiar. Like a response, a thin breeze tickled the roots of his hair. He swung around with the pivot of a definite purpose. With an economy of movement that would have contented an efficiency expert he set a straight fiddle-backed chair squarely in front of Uncle Hugh's girl and settled himself in it with his back to his ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... The points of support on the strategic front are called pivots of operations, and are practical temporary bases, but quite different from pivots of maneuver. For example, in 1796 Verona was an excellent pivot of operations for all Napoleon's enterprises about Mantua for eight months. In 1813 ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... held that the Christian precept of morality has no advantage in respect of purity over the moral conceptions of the Stoics; the distinction between them is, however, very obvious. The Stoic system made the consciousness of strength of mind the pivot on which all moral dispositions should turn; and although its disciples spoke of duties and even defined them very well, yet they placed the spring and proper determining principle of the will in an elevation of the mind above the lower springs of the senses, which owe their power only to ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... could not really talk, because of the glassy ravel of women's excited, cold laughter and running voices. They waited, uneasy, suspended, rather bored. But Gerald remained as if genial and happy, unaware that he was waiting or unoccupied, knowing himself the very pivot of ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... her steel prow, cast in the workshop of R. Hawthorn, of Newcastle, shone in the sun and gave a peculiar look to the brig, though otherwise she had nothing particularly warlike about her. However, a 16-pounder cannon was installed on the forecastle; it was mounted on a pivot, so that it might easily be turned in any direction; but neither the cannon nor the stern, steel-clad as they ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... chain was a rather odd charm which Mr. Bangs had possessed for many years. "Twiddling" it was a habit of his. In fact, he had twiddled it so much that the pivot upon which it had hung broke and Martha had insisted upon his sending the charm to Boston for repairs. It had ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... ponderous blocks little strips of steel, colored like mortar, dropping them to the stone floor, where they rang out. When she had flung away the last one, she stepped back and set her frail shoulder to the wall; instantly a mass of stone swung silently on an unseen pivot, a yellow light streamed out, and there was a tiny chamber, illuminated by a lamp, and a man just rising from ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... our journeying all Europe turned on a Burgundian pivot, and the Fates were busy in that land. It was the stage of the world, on which the strong, the great, and the enterprising of mankind were playing; and I hoped that Max, who was strong and enterprising, would find his part in this Burgundian drama. I was willing to risk ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... fatigue, or perhaps the deepening shades of night rendered his nervous system sensitive to the slightest impression; for at the least sound of the wind through the leaves of the trees, at the least grating of the weathercock as it turned on its pivot, he stopped his work and ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... terrified glances round the victim's room, at the spot where the corpse had lain, at the floor stripped of its blood-stained carpet and especially at the walls, those solid walls through which the criminal had passed. They felt to make sure that the marble chimney-piece did not swing on a pivot, that there was no secret spring in the mouldings of the mirrors. They pictured yawning cavities, tunnels communicating with the ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... on the Suvla front, or old Achi Baba at Helles—and the trick's done. From the top of either of 'em we shall look down upon the Narrows, and blow their forts to glory. Up'll go the Navy, and there y'are!" It would be over by Christmas, they believed; for Christmas was always the pivot ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... inform your cousin of. Your mother was different, Leon. Dame! I could never pass her door after your father died but she would stop my wagon and ask me for just five minutes' counsel. But you young ones are all alike: the world has got a new pivot, it seems, for this generation, and it will move round more easily when we graybeards are all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... weather, that pivot of our day-to-day existence. On the weather depends our work and leisure, our comparative risks and comparative safety. Last thing at night, first thing in the morning, and throughout the day we search the sky for a sign. And I cannot deny that on occasions a sea of low clouds, making impossible ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... themselves out at full length and spinning round and round like a wagon wheel upon its nave. They revolve with great rapidity, using their humped shoulders as a pivot, and their legs as levers. They sometimes continue this motion for half-an-hour at a time. No doubt they do this, as has been said, to scratch themselves; for, notwithstanding their thick hides and hair, they are much annoyed by insect-parasites. They do ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... cupboards were lying all manner of telegraphic apparatus, lenses, crucibles, and pieces of his own inventions. A perfect tangle of telegraph wires coming from all parts of the Union were focussed at one end of the room. An ash-covered forge, a cabinet organ, a rusty stove with an old pivot chair, a bench well stained with oils and acids, completed the equipment of this curious den, into which the sunlight filtered through the chemical jars and fell in coloured ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... in a stall and wearing a biretta, got up, muttered something, and sat down again, while the three singers continued, with their eyes fixed on the big book of plain song lying open before them on the outstretched wings of an eagle, mounted on a pivot. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... figure above, there being upon the card a circle divided into 360 degrees. Divide the circle by two diametrical lines; one representing the north and south, as indicated by EF, the other the east and west, as indicated by GH. Then observe the magnetic needle turning on its pivot upon the card, and you will see how much it deviates from the fixed meridian line upon the card, and how many degrees it varies to the northeast ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... second baseman, whose cool head made him a good man at that pivot of the field; he was an able assistant to the right-field, a ready back-stop to the short-stop, and a perfect spider for taking into his web all the wild throws that came slashing from the home plate to cut off those who dared to ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes |
