"Variable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of our solar system. Like the. planets, they revolve about the sun, traversing with very variable velocities extremely ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... thickest at or near the crown, and tapering regularly to a point. Size very variable, being much affected by soil, season, and cultivation: well-grown specimens measure fifteen inches in length, and three inches in diameter at the crown. Skin smooth, of a reddish-orange color. Flesh comparatively close-grained, succulent, and tender, of a light-reddish vermilion or orange color, ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... tensile test, were comparatively pure manganese steels, low in silicon, only exceptionally up to 0.2 per cent., but generally below 0.1 per cent., and with less than 0.1 per cent. of phosphorus and sulphur. On the other hand, rails with a tendency to break or split are low in carbon, with variable proportions of manganese, but contain much silicon, 0.3 to 0.9 per cent., and often above 0.1 per cent. of phosphorus. Another series of experiments upon rails for the Finland lines made by the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... that your opinion of my meek mama would coincide with mine; her temper is so variable, and, when inflamed, so furious, that I dread our meeting; not but I dare say that I am troublesome enough, but I always endeavor to be as dutiful as possible. She is very strenuous, and so tormenting in her entreaties ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... and colourless, so to speak, in his contemplative moments. His eye then resembled a pane of glass no longer illuminated by the sun. The same was true of his strength, which was purely nervous, and also of his voice. Both were equally mobile and variable. The latter was alternately sweet and harmonious, and then at times painful, incorrect, and rugged. As for his ordinary strength, he was incapable of supporting the fatigue of any games whatever. He seemed obviously feeble ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the nature of things, ill considered and fleeting. It is the product of a momentary gratification or disappointment. In a much greater degree than a judgment based on principle and precedent, such as a critic's ought to be, it is a judgment swayed by that variable thing ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... fractions. He knew that Kwannon was the second planet of the Gettler Beta system, 23,000 miles in circumference, rotating on its axis once in 22.8 Galactic Standard hours and making an orbital circuit around Gettler Beta once in 372.06 axial days, and that Alpha was an M-class pulsating variable with an average period of four hundred days, and that Beta orbited around it in a long elipse every ninety years. He didn't believe there was going to be a Last Hot Time. He was an intellectual, ...
— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper
... revolution of the earth from a recognized zero, one of these planes—that through the zero—may be considered fixed; the other—that through the meridian of the place—being movable, the longitudinal angle is variable. Obviously the variable angle ought to be measured from the fixed plane as zero, and as the motion of the earth by which the equivalent time of the angle is measured is continuous, the longitude ought to be reckoned continuously ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... then, just that the earth yield a hundred fold! Moreover, do we not see the active European, who has gained strength during the winter, who feels the fresh blood of spring boil in his veins, do we not see him abandon his labors during the few days of his variable summer, close his office—where the work is not violent and amounts for many to talking and gesticulating in the shade and beside a lunch-stand,—flee to watering places, sit in the cafes or stroll about? What wonder then ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... the meeting-place of the east and west monsoons, and the moist current is, in consequence, often feeble and variable. The country suffered again from famine in 1861 and 1877, although not so severely as in 1833. In northern Bundelkhand a canal from the Betwa river has been constructed, but is of only very limited use. The peculiarities ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... ascertain the true course made, except when the wind is abaft. When you perceive long streaks of clouds meeting in a point on the horizon, you may be sure that the wind is in that quarter; but this evening the wind was variable; the needle fluctuated; the captain distrusted the erratic movements of the vessel. He steered carefully but resolutely, luffed her up, watched her coming to, prevented her from yawing, and from running into the wind's eye: noted the leeway, the little jerks of the helm: ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... cotyledons rise at night to a variable degree above the horizon, generally about 45o: those on some seedlings between 2 and 5 days old were found to be in continued movement all day long; but the movements were more simple than in the last ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... hand and the conduct on the other are almost always the same, for Stoic, Christian, and Buddhist saints are practically indistinguishable in their lives. The theories which Religion generates, being thus variable, are secondary; and if you wish to grasp her essence, you must look to the feelings and the conduct as being the more constant elements. It is between these two elements that the short circuit exists on which she carries on her principal business, while the ideas ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... to be so variable, But lust* that folk have in dissension? *pleasure For now-a-days a man is held unable* *fit for nothing *But if* he can, by some collusion,** *unless* *fraud, trick Do his neighbour wrong or oppression. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... of 48 yeeres, and then departed this life, as in place afterwards it shall appeere. But for that the contrarietie in writers in such points may sooner be perceiued than reformed, to the satisfieng of mens fansies which are variable, we will leaue euerie man to his libertie to thinke as seemeth him good, noting now and then the diuersitie of such writers, ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed
... fact, been John, one of our coming characters, and was then turned into Robert, another of them. This revolving piece of statuary could not, however, be relied on as a vane, owing to the neighbouring hill, which formed variable currents in the wind. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... (as I find him in an old translation) "is the variable and fickle nature of woman, by whom all mischief in the world (for the most part) do happen and come, as may appear by Marcus Antonius, and by the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the Figure at Sais, whose veil has a new meaning for every beholder, rather than him who brings back a photograph of the uncovered countenance, with its one unvarying granite story for all. There is one glory of the Gazetteer with his fixed facts, and another of the Poet with his variable quantities of fancy. The fixed fact may be unfixed next year, like an almanac, but the hasty sketch of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... stores, pony food, and petrol, carried on five 12 ft. sledges, and our own tent, etc., on a smaller sledge. The object of sending forward such a weight of stores was to save the ponies' legs over the variable sea ice, which was in some places hummocky and in others too slippery to stand on. Also the first thirty miles of Barrier was known to be bad travelling and likely to tire the ponies unnecessarily unless they marched light, so here again it was desirable ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... Napoleon charts, and which are in current use, are Cape Buffon, Cape Lannes, Rivoli Bay, Cape Jaffa, Cape Rabelais, Cape Dombey, Guichen Bay, Cape Bernoulli, Lacepede Bay, and Cape Morard de Galles. Some or other of these names may be found, in some order, on some modern map, but the sequence is variable, and they are not all to be found on any single map with which the author is acquainted; because there are more names than there are natural capes and bays to which they can apply. The remainder of the French names between Lacepede Bay and Cape Jervis, ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... Excepting the loggers and the Northwest Police, men do not work in the open at that temperature back East, nor would they attempt it on the Pacific Slope were the cold continuous. In the western half of British Columbia, however, long periods of severe weather are rare. It is a variable zone, swept now and then by damp, warm breezes, and men tell of sheltered valleys where flowers blow the year round, though very few of those who ramble up and down the Mountain Province ever chance upon them. But there are times when the devastating cold of ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... inferences in this case were perfectly simple ones, drawn from well-known anthropological facts. The human race, as you know, is roughly divided into three groups—the black, the white, and the yellow races. But apart from the variable quality of colour, these races have certain fixed characteristics associated especially with the shape of the skull, of ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... cellular or spongy substance in which the ink is diffused. This has no relation or analogy with bile, as Munro believed; but it is a peculiar secretion, somewhat glutinous, readily miscible with water, and variable in point of shade, according to the species of cephalopode from which it comes; so that, as Dr. Grant remarks, a more intimate acquaintance with this character might be useful in tracing relations among the different species. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... Variable valence. Many elements are able to exert different valences under differing circumstances. Thus we have the compounds Cu{2}O and CuO, CO and CO{2}, FeCl{2} and FeCl{3}. It is not always possible to assign a fixed valence to an element. Nevertheless each element tends to exert some ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... circle had, in the mean time, been disputed with variable success, between Count Tilly and the Swedish General Horn, whom Gustavus had left there with 8,000 men; and the Bishopric of Bamberg, in particular, was at once the prize and the scene of their struggle. Called away to the Rhine by his other projects, ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... shall not lose it; it has been with me in many moods—and my moods are many and very variable, as you know. I can't express it in words; but I feel no more doubt about Edward's well-being, no more inclination to fret or murmur, besides an all-embracing and pervading sense of satisfied content that penetrates ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... larger wall stones, indicating the marked tabular character of the pueblo masons' material. The narrow edges of similar stones are visible in the unplastered portions of the house wall, which also illustrates the relative proportion of chinking stones. This latter, however, is a variable feature. Pl. XV affords a clear illustration of the proportion of these small stones in the old masonry of Payupki; while in Pl. XI, illustrating a portion of the outer wall of the Fire House, the ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... been killed. Do not cover so heavily as to smother the plants, nor so lightly that the wind and rains will dissipate the mulch. Your aim is not to keep the plants from freezing, but from freezing and thawing with every alternation of our variable winters and springs. On ordinarily dry land two or three inches of light material is sufficient. Moreover, the thawing out of the fruit beds or crown, under the direct rays of the sun, injures them, I think. Most of the damage is done in February and March. The good gardener watches his ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... [1609], faire weather, the wind variable betweene east and south; we steered away north northwest. At noone we found our height to bee 39 degrees, 3 minutes. The second, in the morning, close weather, the winde at south in the morning; from twelve ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... of a single leaf may be limited to two or three (strobus, koraiensis, etc.), but in many species it is exceedingly variable and often large (pinaster, sylvestris, etc.). Eighteen or more ducts in a single leaf have been recorded. Such large numbers are peculiar to Pinus. Occasionally a single leaf, possibly the leaves of a single tree, may be without ducts, but ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... the domestic machinery running smoothly. It was astonishing what a peculiar and uncomfortable state of things was produced by the 'resting and reveling' process. The days kept getting longer and longer, the weather was unusually variable and so were tempers; an unsettled feeling possessed everyone, and Satan found plenty of mischief for the idle hands to do. As the height of luxury, Meg put out some of her sewing, and then found time hang so heavily, that she fell to snipping and spoiling her clothes in her attempts ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... is this dead body? Ham. At supper, not where he is eating, but Where he is eaten, a certaine company of politicke wormes [G4] are euen now at him. Father, your fatte King, and your leane Beggar Are but variable seruices, two dishes to one messe: Looke you, a man may fish with that worme That hath eaten of a King, And a Beggar eate that fish, Which that worme hath caught. King What of this? Ham. Nothing ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare
... good deal too dependent on wind and weather to enable us to make any accurate estimate of the time our voyage would occupy, especially as regards those latitudes in which the winds are variable. The estimate for the whole voyage was based on an average speed of four knots, and at this very modest rate, as it may seem, we ought to arrive at the lce Barrier about the middle of January, 1911. As will be seen later, this was realized with remarkable exactness. ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... of interest, not as fluctuating and variable, but steady and persistent. It contains also the elements of ease, pleasure, and needed employment; that is, in learning something that has a proper interest, there is greater ease and pleasure in the acquisition, and occupation with the object satisfies an inner need. ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... Llotta do not even know of the existence of this vehicle. We could not get right of way on the rails, so this gravity car was developed in secrecy. It is provided with variable repulsion energies that can be adjusted to keep it at a fixed distance from the inner surface of the copper shell. Thus it misses cross beams and braces. It is drawn forward by similar energies, or more exactly, by the component ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... pencilled arches. Caroline was in confusion how to distinguish them, and trusted at first solely to the little coral charms which formed Esther's ear-rings, but gradually she perceived that Esther was less plump and more mobile than her sister-her colour was more variable, and she seemed as timid as ever, while Eleanor was developing the sturdy Friar texture. Their aunt had been the means of sending them to a good school, and they had a much more trained and less homely appearance than Jessie at the same age, and seemed able to take their ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of abdominal feet, they are in general distinguished by some sort of peculiarity, and whilst the abdominal feet are reproduced in wearisome uniformity throughout the entire order, the caudal feet are, as is well-known, amongst the most variable ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... explanation of the Star of Bethlehem. But before he had given this to the world, indeed while he was an infant in his cradle, Tycho Brahe had connected the phenomenon with that of one of the great variable ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... leagues, the depths from 12 to 10-1/2 f. From noon this day till seven at night, we made 5-1/2 leagues N. and then anchored in 9-1/2 f. We weighed in the morning of the 5th. having but little wind and that variable, till half an hour after six, when it sprung up fresh at S.W. From four to nine a.m. we made three leagues N.E. 1/2 E. and from nine till noon only half a league N.W. by N. This day at noon we ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... stand at the singing of psalms and anthems were for the most part 'stiff, morose, and saturnine votists.'[1125] In fact, High Churchmen insisted on the one posture, while Low Churchmen generally preferred the other; and so the custom remained very variable, until the High Church reaction of Queen Anne's time succeeded in establishing, in this particular, a rule which was henceforth generally recognised. In 1741, Secker speaks of sitting during the singing as if, though common enough, it were still a ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... criticism; or it was that malignant art which only studies to make the original of the parody, however beautiful, contemptible and ridiculous. Human nature thus enters into the composition of parodies, and their variable character originates in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... settle the difference with them in a less ceremonious manner in the harbour. This effectually stopped their tongues, and we again proceeded on the journey. After two entire days' sailing across the Gulf with variable and gentle breezes, we arrived at our destination, Kurrum, in safety, on the third evening, the 24th March, and at once sent some Government letters to the Akils, ordering their attendance, and to proclaim publicly the nature of ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Man is a Creature that has variable, and disagreeing Inclinations, as having passions very changeable, and oftentimes contradictory one to another, there is not any fix'd Rule, or Measure, whatsoever that can possibly be set to his Actions, which can ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... that he had appeared unnatural to his wife and children, and that while they now ascribed his behavior to the long strain he had been under, their loving and charitable blindness could not last if he often exhibited before them such variable moods and conditions. Therefore he felt that he must overcome the habit before they were together permanently, for to permit them to discover his vile weakness in this time of their great need would be a mortal wound to his pride. All his manhood revolted at the ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... a narrow strip running north towards Seattle. The best informed are planting only in fertile, moist, properly drained soils so situated that air drainage is good. The local soils are much more variable than would be suggested by casual observation. Also, greater attention is being paid to air drainage in that part of the country than in the East. Several years ago there was a sudden drop in temperature from 32 degrees above to 24 degrees ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... discovered land at five of the clock in the morning, being very great and high mountains, the tops of the hills being covered with snow. Here the wind was variable, sometimes north-east, east-north-east, and east by north; but we imagined ourselves to be 16 or 17 leagues off from ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... (Siam type), blood red (Burmah type), or pale (Ceylon), is more pleasing usually than the red of any of the other species. Viewed from the back of the stone (by transmitted light) it is still pleasing. It may be purplish, but is seldom orange red. Also, owing to the dichroism of the ruby the red is variable according to the changing position of the stone. It therefore has a certain life and variety not seen in any of the others except perhaps in red tourmaline, which, however, does not approach ruby in fineness of ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... at every turn with statues of the heathen deities (although they were all but personifications of the various attributes of nature,) would be ridiculous. Setting aside the injury they must sustain from our damp, variable climate, they would be out of keeping with all around; here it is altogether different; the very air of Italy is embued with the spirit of ancient mythology; and though "the fair humanities of old religion," the Nymphs, the Fauns, the Dryads be banished from their ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... occasion, exalted the truth by appealing "to the law and the testimony." He proved baptism to be a positive term as to its signification; that the word BAPTISM, with its derivatives, has a specific and not a variable sense. He likewise established the great truth that all the good of obedience consists in doing what one is commanded to do. He showed that "to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken is better than the fat of rams." Any departure from the command vitiates the ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... father with all my might and strength, but he hath deceived me, and hath changed mine hire and meed ten times, and yet our Lord hath not suffered him to grieve me. When he said the beasts of party color should be mine, then all the ewes brought forth lambs of variable colors. And when he said the contrary they brought forth all white. God hath taken the substance of your father and hath given it to me. And now God hath commanded me to depart, wherefore make you ready and let us depart hence. Then answered Rachel ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... hair is thin and white, his eyes very blue. He is a little deaf, and so is Mrs. Somerville. He asked me what instruments I had, and what I was doing; and when I told him that I was interested in the variable stars, he said I must go to Bonn and ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... can tell how many shades and gradations there are in misfortune, for everything depends upon the character of the individual, upon the force of the imagination, upon the strength of the nerves. If it is impossible to catch these so variable shades, we may at least point out the most striking colors, and the principal attendant incidents. The author has therefore reserved this petty trouble for the last, for it is the only one that is at once comic ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... true explanation; which is, that as these services were compiled when algebra stood much higher in the rank of sciences than it does at present, it is by no means unlikely that these two letters should be used to signify indefinite and variable names, as they are in algebra to represent indefinite or variable numbers, in the same manner as A. B. C. are as signs of known or definite, and X. Y. Z. of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... in, and though I was beginning to get accustomed to the fact that she was a creature of variable moods, I was unprepared for this one. Her hauteur had disappeared; she was apparently in a sweet and gentle frame of mind. Her large dark eyes were soft and gentle, and though her red lips quivered, it was not with anger or disdain as they had done the day before. She ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... The wind was very variable throughout the day. Between 6 and 7 a.m. we were going twelve knots; between 7 and 8 only three; but as we never stop, we manage to make up a ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... altogether consistent in this particular; the same combination is in some words pronounced as two syllables (ni-ais, li-en, pri-ere, pri-ons, jou-et), in others as one (biais, rien, bar-riere, ai-mions, fou-et); and even the same word is sometimes variable (ancien, hier, duel). In general such combinations are monosyllabic if they have developed from a single vowel in the Latin ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... causes,—much more, one should think, may crystals, who can only feel the antagonism, not argue about it. But there is a yet more singular mimicry of our human ways in the varieties of form which appear owing to no antagonistic force; but merely to the variable humor and caprice of the crystals themselves: and I have asked you all to come into the schoolroom to-day, because, of course, this is a part of the crystal mind which must be peculiarly interesting to a feminine audience. ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... the 21st of December the phenomenon appeared partially, and with a variable light, in different parts of the southern sky for several hours. At seven on the following morning it became more brilliant and stationary, describing a well-defined arch, extending from the E.S.E. horizon to that ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... 'definition', and 'additional notes'. It is set up with a comma between each item and a hard return at the end of each definition. This means that this section could easily be cut and pasted into its own text file and imported into a database or spreadsheet as a comma separated variable file (.csv file). Failing that, you could do a search and replace for commas in this section (I have not used any commas in my words, definitions or notes) and replace the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... upon principles that clothe themselves in various garbs to please the different fancies of the different ages, consulting simply the spirit of the times. Such morality is one thing to-day and quite another to-morrow—it is variable as the seasons. It adapts itself to the occasion—to the hour. It is very pliant—it has no conscience, but is always popularity-seeking. The morality of the Christian religion is very different. ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... came, stirring the celadon-green carpet of veld that is spread at the feet of the Magaliesberg Ranges, that were turquoise-blue as the scillas growing in the South Welsh garden that lies before the window where I write, this variable spring day. But it blew with a most insistent note on the dumpy mound where they have rebuilt the ridiculous, glorious village that gave birth to deeds worthy of the Age Heroic, about whose sand-bagged defences nightly patrolled a Sentinel ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... least of the reasons militating against complete success was the short time possible for psychoanalytic treatment. The patient was seen only three weeks. As the time needed for a psychoanalysis is variable depending on the particular patient, it is clear that this would be too short a time to enable a young girl, only recently here from Russia, to understand, or to overcome resistances. That the treatment was as nearly successful as it was is perhaps encouraging ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... if only they could keep their throats perfect and help to drive away the chief enemy of mankind from our coasts. To my father's mind the noisy teachers of revolutionary doctrine were, to speak mildly, a variable mixture of the fool and the scoundrel; the welfare of the nation lay in a strong Government which could maintain order; and I was accustomed to hear him utter the word "Government" in a tone that charged it with awe, and made it part of my ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... and colorless, as long as it does not come in contact with matter. When in apposition with any body, it suffers variable degrees of decomposition, resulting in color, as by reflection, dispersion, refraction, ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness. They have been so tried among the inconstant squalls and currents, so often sailed for islands in the air or lain becalmed with burning heart, that they will risk all for solid ground ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... young things thought it very funny to take their husbands' hats, put their feet in them, and, thus shod, to run a steeplechase across the room. Meantime Madame de la Roche-Jagan felt the General's pulse frequently, and found it variable. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... temperatures. The hybrids had been fertilized in October of the preceding year, but the effect on the extent of freezing damage is not known. The months of November, 1943, through March, 1944, were characterized by extremely variable temperatures. For example, in November a minimum of 15 deg. F. occurred on the 17th, a maximum of 72 deg. on the 19th; in December a maximum of 66 deg. on the 3rd, a minimum of 2 deg. on the 16th; in January ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... he assumes at the time. Don't think me the changeable person, I beseech you, if in one letter I contradict what I wrote in another; nay, if I seem to contradict what I said in the same letter: for he is a perfect camelion; or rather more variable than the camelion; for that, it is said, cannot assume the red and the white; but this man can. And though black seems to be his natural colour, yet has he taken great pains to make me think him nothing ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... after the usual delay, we found porters, who echoed the doubts of the people of Toyama, and went with us protesting. Half an hour after this we came to the Jindogawa, a river of variable importance. It looked to have been once the bed of a mighty glacier that should have swept grandly round from unseen fastnesses among the hills. At the time of our visit, it was, for the most part, a waste of stones through ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... lain in fouler places than this, Nick. Ah! Let us keep touch with the stars!' He kicked open the top of the half-door, and pointed to the clear sky. 'There be the planets you conjure with! What does your wisdom make of that wandering and variable star behind ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... The 14. day we discouered land at fiue of the clocke in the morning, being very great and high mountaines, the tops of the hils being couered with snow. Here the wind was variable, sometimes Northeast, Eastnortheast, and East by North: but we imagined ourselues to be 16. or 17. leagues ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... circle of sunny blue. Then would come the ragged edge of a cloud, brightened throughout with sunshine, passing and changing quickly,—not that the divine smile was not always the same, but continually variable through the medium of earthly influences. The great slanting beam of sunshine was visible all the way down to the pavement, falling upon motes of dust, or a thin smoke of incense imperceptible in the shadow. Insects were playing ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are those having striped petals, and those in which the ground color is darker than the edges or tips of the petals. This class, as a rule, is very variable, and a plant will often have flowers showing but one color. Sometimes half the flower will ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... altars is also there, and the statues of the gods are ranged around! The ear indeed predominates over the eye, because it is more immediately affected, and because the language of music blends more immediately with, and forms a more natural accompaniment to, the variable and indefinite associations of ideas conveyed by words. But where the associations of the imagination are not the principal thing, the individual object is given by Milton with equal force and beauty. The strongest and best proof of this, as a characteristic power of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the polarisation of the sky, we know that not only is the direction of maximum polarisation at right angles to the track of the solar beams, but that at certain angular distances, probably variable ones, from the sun, 'neutral points,' or points of no polarisation, exist, on both sides of which the planes of atmospheric polarisation are at right angles to each other. I have made various observations upon this subject which are reserved for ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... is extremely variable in these steppes, so that Madame de Bourboulon records having experienced in the morning a frost of one degree below zero, and some hours afterwards a heat of thirty degrees above zero (Centigrade). These changes are most numerous and most violent ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... explorer to return, and on October 12th he started for Buenos Ayres in a small vessel. During this journey he had an opportunity of examining the shifting and variable islands of the muddy Parana, on which the jaguar thrives. Arrived at Las Conchas, a revolution had broken out, and Darwin was detained to a certain extent under surveillance; but by the influence of General Rosas' name, he was allowed to pass the sentinels, ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... discover the difference of the earth's diameters; proving its true ratio to be not less variable than as 45 is to 46, and shortest in its pole's axis 174 miles.... likewise a method for fixing an universal standard for weights and measures. By Thomas Williams.[380] ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... be independent of the weather, and need never be kept in the house, however hard it may rain." He told them that, although the weather is frequently much hotter during the summer in Russia than in England, yet that at times it is as rainy, and cold, and variable as at that season of the year at home. Their Bibles, a history of Russia, and a volume of travels in that country were the only books he would let them take, advising them thoroughly to master the contents of the history and travels before they reached Saint Petersburg. He had got, he said, ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... returned Trent, showing by his tone the momentary depression which settled so easily upon his variable moods. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... from the humblest parentage. No such extreme variations are seen in any of the lower orders. Indeed, in one's lifetime one sees but very slight variation in any of the wild or domestic creatures, less in the wild than in the domestic because they are less under the influence of that most variable of animals, man. And man's variations are mainly mental and not physical. The higher we go in the scale of powers, the greater the variation and hence the more rapid the evolution. Probably man's body has not changed radically in ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... these miasma, they would exert a marked action on the animal economy, and cause diseases among the greater number of those who breathe the infected air. But numerous experiments prove that, as a rule, the air contains free ozone, though in very variable proportions; from which we may conclude that no oxidizable miasm—sulphuretted hydrogen, for example—can exist in such an atmosphere, any more than it could exist in air containing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... on variable stars, indeed, were in the same line as those of PIGOTT; FLAUGERGUES and DARQUIER, in France, had perhaps preceded him in minute scrutiny of the sun's surface, etc.; but, even in that department of observation, he at once put an immense distance between himself and others ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... flowers is pollen. Candle-alder (Alnus Rubra)[9] yields the first supply. The time of flowering varies from the 10th of March to the 20th of April. The amount afforded is also variable. Cold, freezing weather frequently destroys a great portion of these flowers after they are out. These staminate flowers are nearly perfected the season previous, and a few warm days in spring will bring them out, even before any leaves appear. When the weather ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... as mentioned above, are the northeast trades. These blow for about nine months of the year. The remainder of the period the winds are variable and chiefly from the south. The Islands are outside the cyclone belt, and severe storms accompanied by thunder and lightning are ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... the same difficulty as is met in gunnery and rifle-shooting. The sights and the object aimed at cannot be in focus together, and a great deal depends on the form of sight. Tycho Brahe invented, and applied to the pointers of his instruments, an aperture-sight of variable area, like the iris diaphragm used now in photography. This enabled him to get the best result with stars of different brightness. The telescope not having been invented, he could not use a telescopic-sight ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... control that gigantic projector. Immense hour and declination circles could be read by optical systems from the operators' seats—circles fully forty feet in diameter, graduated with incredible delicacy and accuracy into decimal fractions of seconds of arc, and each driven by variable-speed motors through gear-trains and connections having no ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... days after this the female is incapable of reproduction. But for some days before her monthly illness she is liable to conception, as for that length of time the male element can survive. This period, therefore, becomes a variable and an undetermined one, and even when known, its observation demands a large ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... but variable, and now coming from the southward, they could only steer a north-westerly course. The mate feared that it might shift to the west; if so, they would have to lower the sail and trust to their oars. Their progress in that case would be very slow, as neither Walter nor Nub had much ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... ever-changing and ever-shifting assumptions of the human mind. For the materialistic theories of to-day are not those of yesterday, nor is there any certainty that they will be those of to-morrow. They are almost as fantastic and variable as the forms of the kaleidoscope, although, as a general rule, they lack the symmetrical arrangements and proportions of ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... as the day before. The thermometer had risen twenty-five degrees during the night—a great change, but not unusual in our variable climate. Phil rather enjoyed this walk, notwithstanding his back was ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... our own country is exceedingly variable. The transitions from heat to cold are very sudden, the range of the mercury is very great. In the North, we have almost the Arctic winters; in the South, almost the peculiarities of the tropics. Of the State ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light, quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... sell and buy at a specified price is made in due legal form, and the papers will be sent to me in London for signature. I hope to get away the week after next at latest,—spite of the weather in England which to-day's letters report as 'atrocious',—and ours, though variable, is in the main very tolerable and sometimes perfect; for all that, I yearn to be at home in poor Warwick Crescent, which must do its best to make me forget my new abode. I forget you don't know Venice. Well then, the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... months of tossing waters and ever-present winds. The Harpoon, shaping her course for Norfolk, in the United States, had made but a poor passage of it. She got into the south-east trades, and all went well till they made St. Paul's Rocks, where they were detained by the doldrums and variable winds. Afterwards she passed into the north-east trades, and then, further north, met a series of westerly gales, that ultimately drove her to the Azores, just as her crew were getting very short of water and provisions. And here Augusta bid farewell to her friend the Yankee skipper; ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... variable cranks, constructed as specified, and applied in the manner shown, to the shaft or axis of the boring machine, as and for the ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... fright, kept as much as possible out of sight. Towards her, Mr. Stillinghast's manner was inconsistent, and variable in the extreme. At one time almost kind, at another, captious and surly. Sometimes he called on her for every thing, and perhaps the next moment threatened to throw whatever he had ordered, at her head. Once he told her, in bitter tones and language, that "but for wishing to make use of her to effect ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... There is one, in particular, dependent on a scientific artifice familiar to students of science, especially of the applications of mathematics to the study of nature. When an effect depends on several variable conditions, some of which change less, or more slowly, than others, we are often able to determine, either by reasoning or by experiment, what would be the law of variation of the effect if its changes depended only on some of the conditions, the remainder ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... time of the events related in the preceding chapters, at the close of a variable day, in which the storm and sunshine seemed to struggle for the ascendency, that a plain-looking, home-made sort of man might have been seen attempting to effect a safe transit of the steamboat levee at New Orleans. This personage was no other ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... grey day (during twilight) with light, variable, westerly breezes. All around hangs a heavy curtain of haze, and, although very light snow is falling, overhead is black and clear with stars shining. As soon as the faint noon light fades away the heavy low haze intensifies the darkness and ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... it the orderly condition which it was losing. May the divine Majesty preserve in him these excellent intentions, and give him strength and grace to execute them; because as the heart of man is so hard to understand, and of itself so variable, and this land is so exposed, it is not strange that we fear some alteration, having seen it in others who also gave excellent examples. But if the governor who has now come to us shall persevere in what he has begun (as I ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... the prerogative may be relaxed or enforced as occasion may require, or regulated according to the necessity arising from particular circumstances; circumstances in themselves variable, and subject to the influence of a thousand accidents, and which, therefore, cannot be always foreseen, or provided against by a law ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... resistance of bottles and of classifying them according to the degree of such resistance. After numerous experiments, it has been found that first class bottles easily support a pressure of twelve atmospheres without distortion, while in those of an inferior quality the resistance is very variable. The champagne wine industry should therefore use the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... believer judges Nature, well aware of the gulf between himself and her, hating with inexpressible depth of indignation and repudiating with profound contempt the sybarite's identification of human and natural law. But also he comes back to her, not to accept in wonder her variable outward form, but to worship in awe before her invariable inner meaning. Sometimes, like so many of the humanists, he rises only to a vague sense of the mystic unity that fills up the interspaces of the world, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... and glazed earthenware; and these we perceive increasingly not as turning points of the whole, but as processes within it, affecting now one region, now another, in a sequence which is clearly geographical and at very variable speed. Bronze, for example, took some thousands of years to permeate the continent of Europe; iron perhaps as many hundreds; platinum a little more than fifty years; and ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable. ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Tide, the regular rise and fall of the ocean which occurs twice in a little over twenty-four hours. 2. Scud, fly hastily. Shrouds, Winding sheets, dresses of the dead. Close'reefed, with sails contracted as much as possible. 3. Fit'ful, irregularly variable. Draper-y, garments. Scans, looks at care-fully. ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... individual labours. Shap'less they seem'd, but endless shape assumed; Elongated like worms, they writhed and shrunk Their tortuous bodies to grotesque dimensions; Compress'd like wedges, radiated like stars, Branching like sea-weed, whirl'd in dazzling rings; Subtle and variable as flickering flames, Sight could not trace their evanescent changes, Nor comprehend their motions, till minute And curious observation caught the clew To this live labyrinth,—where every one, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... leafless scape 4 in. to 4 ft. tall. Calyx of 3 sepals; corolla of 3 rounded, spreading petals. Stamens and pistils numerous, the former yellow in upper flowers; usually absent or imperfect in lower pistillate flowers. Leaves: Exceedingly variable; those under water usually long and grass-like; upper ones sharply arrow-shaped or blunt and broad, spongy ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... entertaining, often brilliant. His voice was pleasant, his manners affable. In stature he was short; in movement, quick and nervous. But in the make-up of the man one essential of true greatness—fixedness of purpose—had been omitted. He lacked the staying qualities. He was "variable and fond of change." "His full nature, like that river of which Alexander broke the strength, spent itself in channels which led to no great name on earth." By a single exploit, at the age of thirty, he ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell
... him: your prattling nurse Into a rapture lets her baby cry While she chats him: the kitchen malkin pins Her richest lockram 'bout her reechy neck, Clamb'ring the walls to eye him: stalls, bulks, windows, Are smother'd up, leads fill'd and ridges hors'd With variable complexions; all agreeing In earnestness to see him: seld-shown flamens Do press among the popular throngs, and puff To win a vulgar station: our veil'd dames Commit the war of white and damask, in Their nicely gawded cheeks, to the wanton spoil Of Phoebus' burning kisses; such ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition] |
