"Variable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... real science where there are indeterminate variables, but every variable is, in finer terms, indeterminate, or irregular, if only to have the appearance of being in Intermediateness is to express regularity unattained. The invariable, or the real and stable, would be nothing at all in Intermediateness—rather as, but in relative terms, an undistorted ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... but an undulation of the sea-bed: its highest ridges do not rise more than the height of a man above the salines on either side;—the salines themselves lie almost level with the level of the flood-tides;—the tides are variable, treacherous, mysterious. But when all around and above these ever-changing shores the twin vastnesses of heaven and sea begin to utter the tremendous revelation of themselves as infinite forces in contention, then indeed this sense of separation from humanity appalls ... Perhaps it was such a ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... to use. BUT WHAT RULE HAVE WE, BY WHICH WE CAN DISTINGUISH THESE OBJECTS? Here we must have recourse to statutes, customs, precedents, analogies, and a hundred other circumstances; some of which are constant and inflexible, some variable and arbitrary. But the ultimate point, in which they all professedly terminate, is the interest and happiness of human society. Where this enters not into consideration, nothing can appear more whimsical, unnatural, and even superstitious, than all or most of the laws of ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... purpose of this book is to stimulate thought and to encourage the average young officer to seek truth for, and in, himself. It is never a good idea to attempt a precise formula about matters which are by nature indefinite and subject to all number of variable factors. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... movement. He made no advance on Hipparchus in regard to the sun, though the lapse of time had largely increased the errors of the elements adopted by the latter. In the case of the moon, however, Ptolemy traced the variable inequality noticed sometimes by Hipparchus at first and last quarter, which vanished when the moon was in apogee or perigee. This he called the evection, and introduced another epicycle to represent it. In his planetary theory he found that the places ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... circumstances of their friends, and demanded ransoms accordingly, from six thousand to six hundred dollars each. He ordered them a berth on deck, at the after part of the vessel, where they had nothing to shelter them from the weather, which at this time was very variable—the days excessively hot, and the nights cold, with heavy rains. The town being plundered of everything valuable, it was set on fire, and reduced to ashes by the morning. The fleet remained here three days, negotiating for the ransom of the prisoners, and plundering the ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... 8. Or, according to Cardwell's reading ([Greek: kineton ou mentoi pan]) "but amongst ourselves there is Just, which is naturally variable, but certainly all Just is not such." The sense of the passage is not affected by the reading. In Bekker's text we must take [Greek: kineton] to mean the same as [Greek: kinoumenon], i.e. "we admit there is no Just which has not been sometimes disallowed, still," ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... expressible by simple lines—therefore expressible by thread—you might then have a series of fern-patterns which would each contain points of distinctive interest and beauty, and of scientific truth, and yet be variable by fancy, with quite as much ease as the meaningless Indian one. Similarly, there is no form of leaf, of flower, or of insect, which might not become suggestive to you, and expressible in terms of manufacture, so as to be interesting, ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... 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 tablets are fewer in number and thinner, their use predominating ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... patches. Indeed, scarcely any two "normally" colored specimens are alike. Typically, the intense rufous color characteristic of the underparts in both S. a. aureogaster and S. a. hypopyrrhus is also present on the costal region and shoulders. Even this distribution of color is highly variable; some specimens (for example No. 23948 KU, from 3 km. E San Andres Tuxtla, Veracruz) show no rufous dorsally and others (for example No. 19307 KU, from 20 km. W Piedras Negras, Veracruz) have the rufous extending over the legs, sides, and almost all of the dorsum from ...
— The Subspecies of the Mexican Red-bellied Squirrel, Sciurus aureogaster • Keith R. Kelson
... The weather was variable, but the barometer did not fluctuate by sudden movements, and they could therefore count on tolerable weather. However, during the first week of April, after a sudden barometrical fall, a renewed rise was marked by ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... develop very slowly or indications of indigestion will be present as the appetite is variable, temperature elevated, breathing labored, the animal avoids walking down hill as it causes pain from the stomach and intestines pressing the lungs against the heart. The symptoms, however, are so slight that they may easily escape the notice of a casual observer. The animal eventually ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... New Barcelona, and Caracas, it was generally believed that the most eastern parts of those coasts were especially exposed to the destructive effects of earthquakes. The inhabitants of Cumana dreaded the valley of Caracas, on account of its damp and variable climate, and its gloomy and misty sky; whilst the inhabitants of the temperate valley regarded Cumana as a town whose inhabitants incessantly inhaled a burning atmosphere, and whose soil was periodically agitated by violent commotions. Unmindful of the overthrow of Riobamba ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... and lady fern the plants are dioecious. The male plants (Fig. 66, J) are very small, often barely visible to the naked eye, and when growing thickly form dense, moss-like patches. They are variable in form, some irregularly shaped, others simple rows of cells, and some have the heart shape of the ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... and foretop-mast staysail-sheets towards the middle of the ship, and haul forward the fore-bowline; this operation is seldom necessary except when the helm has not sufficient government of the ship, as in variable winds ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of his brain a mirror, unclouded, bright, and true of surface; then he will reflect events as they presented themselves to him, neither distorted, discoloured, nor variable. Historians are not writing fancy school essays; what they have to say is before them, and will get itself said somehow, being solid fact; their task is to arrange and put it into words; they have not to consider what to say, but how to say it. The ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... the attraction of gravitation and that of cohesion is, that whereas the former is uniform, the latter is variable; that is, under gravitation the attraction of any one particle to any other is the same, but under cohesion, some sets of particles are more forcibly drawn together than others. For instance, a particle of iron and a particle of cork gravitate equally, ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... swear not by 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]
... Fifth Species of Females were made out of the Sea. These are Women of variable uneven Tempers, sometimes all Storm and Tempest, sometimes all Calm and Sunshine. The Stranger who sees one of these in her Smiles and Smoothness would cry her up for a Miracle of good Humour; but on a sudden her Looks and her Words are changed, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... extent of the whiteness on the tail, and the variation in the colour of the body appear to differ in the specimens from the same place, I have regarded them as belonging to the same species, believing it to be a variable species which has an ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... and 13th (on which day we passed the meridian of Cape Leeuwin) we had variable winds between North-East and North-West: on the 9th the wind blew a heavy gale, in which our jolly-boat was washed away, and obliging us to bear up to the South-East prevented our seeing the land about Cape Chatham, as ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... goes even farther than this in the advocacy of such violations, or abrogations, of the law of veracity, as would undermine the very foundations of social life, and as would render the law against falsehood little more than a variable personal rule for limited and selected applications,—after the fashion of the American humorist who "believed in universal salvation if he could pick his men." Rothe teaches that falsehood is a duty, not only when it is needful in dealing with ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... brotherhood. Science has given us the steamship,—it has destroyed the sailor. The age of discovery is closing with this century. Up to the limits of the ice-fields, every shore is mapped out, every shoal sounded. Not only does Science give the fixed, but she is even transferring to her charts the variable features of the deep,—the sliding current, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... 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 ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... their health in vainly endeavouring to maintain the glory and influence of their country in foreign states. In the campaign of 1814, which was carried on during the continuance of a frost of almost unprecedented intensity, and in so rapid and variable a manner, and with so large bodies of troops, as to prevent the establishment of regular hospitals or of any thing like a regular Commissariat, the French troops, particularly the young conscripts and national guards, suffered dreadfully; and numbers of them ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... In a rather picturesque spot, about 1,300 yards below our encampment and immediately on the river bank, is the most remarkable spring of the place. In an opening on the rock, a white column of scattered water is thrown up, in form, like a jet d'eau, to a variable height of about three feet, and, though it is maintained in a constant supply, its greatest height is attained only at regular intervals, according to the action of the force below. It is accompanied by a subterranean ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... variable events of fortune were bringing to pass these events in different parts of the world, Julian, amid the many plans which he was revolving while in Illyricum, was continually consulting the entrails of victims and watching ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... a separator and set apart the oil at 20, and the water at 21, through the natural effect of their difference in density. This latter is likewise utilized for causing the oil to flow into the vaporizer through 26 and 27, instead of using a graduated cock that receives a variable pressure from the receiver. In this way every cause of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... activities. The pattern, the sheer anatomy, is basic; but it cannot long continue to exist (outside a refrigerator) without accompanying vital rhythms in heart, respiration and digestion. Nor do these perform their parts without the intermittent support of variable but still characteristic activities: dogs not only breathe and digest, they run about, hunt their food, look for mates, bark at cats, and so on. The anatomical pattern, the vital rhythm, and the characteristic acts together express dogginess; ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... of the Misses Stone's domain, far from restoring Rose's composure, seemed to smite her by contrast with an intolerable sense of personal reproach, and to goad her into rebellion. Rose was conscious of her variable spirits—the heritage of her years—getting more and more uncertain, and of being wrought up to a perilously high-strung pitch. She felt as if she were panting for liberty to breathe, to express her discordant mood in some ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... must be adapted to the special tumor, whether it be honey-like or fatty, or pultaceous." The prognosis of goitrous tumors is much better than might be expected, but evidently Aetius saw a number of the functional disturbances and enlargements of the thyroid gland, which are so variable in character as apparently to be quite ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... was unpropitious for the continuation of great wealth based upon rural or small-town land. Many influences conspired to make this land a variable property, while these same influences, or a part of them, fixed upon city land an enhancing and graduating permanency of value. The growth of the shipping trade built up the cities and attracted workers and population generally. ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... of this"—so let us strike the chords to a merrier measure—to a "livelier lilt"—as suits the variable spirit of our Soliloquy. Be it observed, then, that the sole certain way of getting rid of the blue devils, is to drown them in a shower-bath. You would not suppose that we are subject to the blue devils? ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... so cold 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 ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... very remarkable character. The adjoining Alphonsus is another, but somewhat smaller, object of the same type, as are also Albategnius, and Arzachel; and Plato, in a high northern latitude, with its noble many-peaked rampart and its variable steel-grey interior. Grimaldi, near the eastern limb (perhaps the darkest area on the moon), Schickard, nearly as big, on the south- eastern limb, and Bailly, larger than either (still farther south in the same quadrant), although they approach some ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... from the mounds were always carved from a single piece, and consist of a flat curved base, of variable length and width, with the bowl rising from the center of the convex side (Anc. ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas
... from a concourse of favorable incidents, but is an affection of the mind itself. I am frequently guilty of repetitions, but should be infinitely more so, did I repeat the same thing as often as it recurs with pleasure to my mind. When at length my variable mode of life was reduced to a more uniform course, the following was nearly the distribution of time which I adopted: I rose every morning before the sun, and passed through a neighboring orchard into a pleasant path, which, running by a vineyard, led towards Chambery. ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... omission of nothing hereafter important, to add that he seems well bred to the manege—and rode with that ease and air of indolence, which are characteristic of the gentry of the south. His garments were strictly suited to the condition and custom of the country—a variable climate, rough roads, and rude accommodations. They consisted of a dark blue frock, of stuff not so fine as strong, with pantaloons of the same material, all fitting well, happily adjusted to the figure of the wearer, yet sufficiently free for any exercise. He was booted and spurred, and wore besides, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... English or Persian walnut, under northern conditions, has been variable and not very satisfactory. With good scions and good stocks and other favorable conditions, we have sometimes gotten over 90 per cent to grow, but the stand is more often much below this and the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... to what I'm trying to express, we have arithmetic and algebra. Suppose with our arithmetic minds with no slightest inkling of the existence of a variable, we run into an algebra mind? We might mistake it for something far removed from thinking or intelligence. We go on the assumption that anything that doesn't stomp up, give a salute, and solemnly ...
— The Unthinking Destroyer • Roger Phillips
... universal, their connexion with tangible ideas has been learnt at our first entrance into the world; and ever since, almost every moment of our lives, it has been occurring to our thoughts, and fastening and striking deeper on our minds. When we observe that signs are variable, and of human institution; when we remember there was a time they were not connected in our minds with those things they now so readily suggest; but that their signification was learned by the slow steps of experience: this preserves us from confounding ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... Climate: variable, with mostly westerly winds throughout the year, interspersed with periods of calm; nearly all precipitation falls ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... have avoided laying down new rules of construction, preferring to keep a free hand and deal with each case on its merits as a whole. It should be observed that the fulfilment of a contract may create a relation between the parties which, once established, is governed by fixed rules of law not variable by the preceding agreement. Marriage is the most conspicuous example of this, and perhaps the only complete one in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... judgments formed by different classes of Rationalists as to the how much they shall receive of the revelation they might generally admit, a very shifting one—a measure which has no linear unit; it is to employ, as mathematicians say, a variable as if it were a constant quantity; or, rather, it is to attempt to find the value of an unknown ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... sketching her landscapes and market-carts and portraits of friends, in practising her music, and in being from morning till night her own standard of a perfect lady, having always an audience in her own consciousness, with sometimes the not unwelcome addition of a more variable external audience in the numerous visitors of the house. She found time also to read the best novels, and even the second best, and she knew much poetry by heart. Her favorite poem ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... poetic reputation, and to reflect with pain and regret upon the hidden fruits of his best effort. Rossetti—in all love of his memory be it spoken—was after all a frail mortal; of unstable character: of variable purpose: a creature of impulse and whim, and with a plentiful lack of the backbone of volition. With less affection he would not have buried his book; with more strength of will he had not done so; or, having done so, he had never wished to undo what he had done; ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... computation of the time it must have taken to form these coral islands, because we lack the necessary data; but we can form a rough calculation, which leads to very curious and striking results. The computations of the rate at which corals grow are so exceedingly variable, that we must allow the widest possible margin for error; and it is better in this case to make the allowance upon the side of excess. I think that anybody who knows anything about the matter will ...
— Coral and Coral Reefs • Thomas H. Huxley
... vessels were detained in the Chops of the Channel, that I agreed with Bramble that we would return together and halve the pilotage. About eight leagues from the Lizard Point we boarded a small ship which had hoisted the signal, the weather at that time being fine and the wind variable. When we went on board it was but just daylight, and the captain was not yet on deck, but the mate received us. We were surprised to find that she mounted twelve brass guns, remarkably well fitted, and that everything was apparently ready for action, rammers ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... did their neglected work, keeping home pleasant and 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 ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... vaulting, is inspired by Byzantine art, they adapted to this structure, together with a sensibly modified Byzantine garb, an ornamentation, derived from Asiatic, Sclavic and Turanian elements in variable, that is ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... tending to increase and to appear where it is absent," as Dr. Wallace believes, then we ought to find it varying in the direction of greater brightness in some species in a family so numerous and variable as the Dendrocolaptidae, however feeble and in need of a protective colouring these birds may be in a majority of pases. And this in effect we do find. In many of the dark-plumaged species that live in perpetual ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... electricity, whatever may be its source, is identical in its nature. The phenomena in the five kinds or species quoted, differ, not in their character but only in degree; and in that respect vary in proportion to the variable circumstances of quantity and intensity[A] which can at pleasure be made to change in almost any one of the kinds of electricity, as much as it does between one kind ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... eyebrows which cast deep shadows over the eyes; and temples whereon a number of blue veins struggle with an irregular, sparse coating of bristles. Finally, about his whole personality there is something ever variable and intangible. ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... 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 carved his name at high-water mark among ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell
... course, were the first essential, the things without which he was nothing. A strong physical nature, actuated by a keen desire for the feminine, was the next. A mind free of any consideration of the problems or forces of the world and actuated not by greed, but an insatiable love of variable pleasure. His method was always simple. Its principal element was daring, backed, of course, by an intense desire and admiration for the sex. Let him meet with a young woman once and he would approach her with an air of kindly familiarity, not unmixed with pleading, which would result in ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... proximately for the purpose in hand, these forces may best be stated in terms of an environment, partly human, partly non-human, and a human subject with a more or less definite physical and intellectual constitution. Taken in the aggregate or average, this human subject is more or less variable; chiefly, no doubt, under a rule of selective conservation of favorable variations. The selection of favorable variations is perhaps in great measure a selective conservation of ethnic types. In the life history of any community whose population ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... The instrument became, as it were, the organ of sadness, it became eloquent with an inarticulate wo; it was a breast bursting with affliction, a voice broken with sorrow, a soul dissolving with emotions. Then the variable harmonies rose from pensiveness into frenzy, from frenzy into the noise and the shocks of a great battle; they swelled to the din of contending armies, to the storm and vicissitudes of warlike deeds, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... personages with superhuman powers which have no exact analogues among the other Aryan races, and seem to be original products of Caucasian fancy. Among the latter are karts, female ogres with cannibalistic tastes; narts, or giants of protean shapes and variable dispositions; and certain mysterious equestrians who are always described as "hare-riders." These three classes of supernatural beings, karts, narts and hare-riders, are known to the whole body of the Caucasian mountaineers without distinction of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... beforehand and the flour well sifted. Many housekeepers fail in producing good bread, because they guess at the quantity of material to be used, particularly the flour, and with the same quantity of liquid will one time use much more flour that at another, thus making the results exceedingly variable. With this same brand of flour, this same quantity should always be used to produce a given amount of bread. This amount will depend upon the quality of the material used. Good flour will absorb a larger quantity of liquids than that of an inferior quality, ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... can vary only by quanta inversely proportional to wave-length. The mechanical property of the resonators imagined by Planck is therefore precisely that which Wien's theory requires. If we are to suppose atoms of energy, therefore, they must be variable atoms. There are other objections which need not be touched upon here, the whole theory being in a very early stage. To quote ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... from the whale-ship the Rainbow sailed into the cold and variable regions south of Cape Horn. Here they experienced what the men styled "very dirty weather." The skies were seldom blue, and the decks were never dry, while it became necessary to keep the stove burning constantly in the cabin, and ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... neuer heard a passion so confusd, So strange, outragious, and so variable, As the dogge Iew did vtter in the streets; My daughter, O my ducats, O my daughter, Fled with a Christian, O my Christian ducats! Iustice, the law, my ducats, and my daughter; A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats, Of double ducats, stolne from me by my daughter, And ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... more feared and less beloved, than the Jupiter of the Greeks and Romans; he was worshipped accordingly with more bloody sacrifices. But in all Europe, Western Asia and the northwestern coast of Africa, where the earth is uneven and the climate variable, their religion was more gloomy and their gods more ferocious than ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... fifteen minutes' unrelieved monologue. So tak' heed. We're not wanting these changes, and to be up-to-date, and all that. I'm happy as I am, and so's David. He has his hope of the council, and the bribes and them things. And I've my guild and my friends, with their odd clothes and variable accents. That's the life I want, and I won't change ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... given affords us a clear reason for the fact, that it comes to all men naturally, though some refer its rise to a dim notion of God, universal to mankind, and also tends to show, that it is no less inconsistent and variable than other mental hallucinations and emotional impulses, and further that it can only be maintained by hope, hatred, anger, and deceit; since it springs, not from reason, but solely from the more powerful phases of emotion. Furthermore, ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... was Leonardo, the son of Ser Piero da Vinci; and in learning and in the rudiments of letters he would have made great proficience, if he had not been so variable and unstable, for he set himself to learn many things, and then, after having begun them, abandoned them. Thus, in arithmetic, during the few months that he studied it, he made so much progress, that, by continually suggesting doubts and difficulties ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... English law, would have secured the acquittal of so wicked a poisoner as Palmer. He quoted from the famous French lawyer d'Aguesseau: "The corpus delicti is no other thing than the delictum itself; but the proofs of the delictum are infinitely variable according to the nature of things; they may be general or special, principal or accessory, direct or indirect; in a word, they form that general effect (ensemble) which goes to determine the conviction of an honest man." If such a contention as M. Chaussier's were correct, said the Avocat-General, ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... but not always, pistillate flowers are produced several years before the occurrence of catkins. Generally, Persian varieties do not adequately pollinate themselves but exceptions are reported. The problem is one of variable dichogamy. Some varieties shed pollen before pistillate flowers are receptive; others shed pollen when pistillate flowers are no longer receptive. This unfortunate situation probably explains the low yields experienced by some growers. Mr. Stoke lists ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... and the variable spelling of "vice versa" (with or without circumflex) are unchanged. The term "anyrate" is always written as a ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... of enthusiastic amateurs. The great botanist declared that he could see nothing in the beautiful new Cattleya to distinguish it as a species from the one already named, C. labiata, except that most variable of characteristics, colour. Modes of growth and times of flowering do not concern science. The structure of the plants is identical, and to admit C. Mossiae as a sub-species of the same was the utmost concession Lindley would ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... cough is repeated at intervals and soon the patient breathes quickly and laboriously. It must sit up for it can breathe easier sitting. The voice is oftentimes nearly or quite lost, or at least only a hoarse whisper; the face is bluish or perspiring. The spasm lasts for a variable period, but rarely exceeds one-half hour, sometimes only a few minutes. The croupy cough and oppressed breathing may last longer than this, but these too subside after a time, after which the child drops to sleep and usually rests quietly for the rest of the night. There is ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... an unnatural oiliness, variable as to degree. Its most common sites are the regions of the scalp, nose, and forehead. In many instances mild rosacea coexists with ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... weight, coin, or sum of money among the ancients, of variable value among different nations and at different periods; the Attic weight being equal to about 57 lbs. troy, and the money to L243, 15s.; among the Romans the great talent was worth L99, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to those who have no embarrassment about it; the indefinite and vague recompense which it promises, without giving ideas of it, is made to deceive those who make no reflections on the impatient, variable, false, and cruel character which this religion gives of its God. But how can it make any promises on the part of a God whom it represents as a tempter, a seducer—who appears, moreover, to take pleasure in laying the most dangerous snares for his weak creatures? How can it reckon ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... in our national pretensions that could ever have been regarded doubtfully merely through insufficient knowledge. Dr. Johnson, indeed, made it the distinguishing merit of the French, that they "have a book upon every subject." But Dr. Johnson was not only capricious as regards temper and variable humors, but as regards the inequality of his knowledge. Incoherent and unsystematic was Dr. Johnson's information in most cases. Hence his extravagant misappraisement of Knolles, the Turkish historian, which is exposed so severely by Spittler, the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... close of life, when his spirits were exhausted, and "the silly clue of hopes and expectations," as he termed them, was undone, the notice of some persons of rank began to reach him. Shenstone, however, deeply colours the variable state of his own mind—"Recovering from a nervous fever, as I have since discovered by many concurrent symptoms, I seem to anticipate a little of that 'vernal delight' which Milton mentions ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... herself: sent fastidiously on her way, with long gloves covering her arms, a white linen mask tied over her face to screen her complexion from tan, a sunbonnet sewed tightly on her head to keep it secure from the capricious winds of heaven and the more variable gusts of her own wilfulness; or on another picture of her—as a lonely little lass—begging to be taken to court, where she could marvel at her father, an awful judge in his wig and his robe of scarlet and black velvet; or on a third picture of her—as when she was marshalled into church ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... ourselves to be misled by appearances; we must remember that the perceptible results of the working of any principle consist of two factors—the principle itself or the active factor, and the subject-matter on which it acts or the passive factor; and that while the former is invariable, the latter is variable, and that the operation of the same invariable upon different variables must necessarily produce a variety of results. This at once becomes evident if we state it mathematically; for example, a, ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... treatment, however, and, when about half wray down, it strikes a hole and sends me spinning and gyrating through space; and when I finally strike terra firma, it thumps me unmercifully in the ribs ere it lets me up. "Variable" is the word descriptive of the Iowa roads; for seventy-five miles due east of Omaha the prairie rolls like a heavy Atlantic swell, and during a day's journey I pass through a dozen alternate stretches of muddy and dusky road; for ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the axis forms a striking exception to the general construction of interlocking apparatus in this company's machines. Under the beak of this curious device is found an oblong recess, into which fits loosely a carrier or driver, rotating with a differential or variable motion. The space between the carrier and the sides of the recess is sufficient to permit the free passage of the thread in encircling the shuttle, and the differential movement ingeniously releases the contact between the hook and carrier. The skeleton ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... Andrew S. Fuller had not seen them, but asked me to bring him a few. When he saw them he was surprised and at once pronounced them the finest hickories he had ever seen, and named them "Hales' Paper Shell." The hickory is one of the most valuable of North American nuts. It is of a variable nature. I have over twenty old trees on my place, and no two bear nuts of the same shape or size, and although some neighbors planted some nuts from the old tree and produced fruit from them they were only ordinary sized, so that it is necessary to propagate ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... so," answered the professor. "We have risen above the range of the variable winds, and are now feeling the influence of an adverse air current, which, in this latitude, invariably blows from the northward; and if we were to maintain our present altitude, for which, however, there is not the slightest necessity, we should have to struggle against it for ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Gemo at seven A.M.; went on shore again at nine, and stopped all day. Dined and slept on board; rough living here, but no cattle, which is a great thing.—26th. Set sail at eleven A.M.; fair wind; fine day, and very hot.—27th. Rain all night; wind light and variable, and one made but little progress. Cape Bona still close to us this morning. We are only going at three and three-quarter knots per hour. A fine breeze got up at twelve, and at seven we passed Panteleria ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... of the human race, the tension of grief is variable. Honora, closed in her stateroom, eased herself that night by writing a long, if somewhat undecipherable, letter to Chiltern; and was able, the next day, to read the greater portion of a novel. It was only when she arrived ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... lines of four beats, with a very variable number of unaccented syllables, which in reading were probably hurried over rather vaguely. This rhythm may be compared with the “new principle” (as the author calls it in his ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... to paper I will put, Of men's beards strange, and variable cut, In which there's some that take as vain a pride As almost in all other things beside; Some are reap'd most substantial like a brush, Which makes a nat'rel wit known by the bush; And in my time of some men I have heard, Whose wisdom have been only wealth and Beard; Many ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... which have been given for the determination of the great decisive strategic points will apply to all intrenched camps, because they ought only to be placed on such points. The influence of these camps is variable: they may answer equally well as points of departure for an offensive operation, as tetes de ponts to assure the crossing of a large river, as protection for winter quarters, or as a refuge for a ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... for that reason I stated if our rate of travel was the same we would have made that distance. The wind has been variable at different points along the coast, so that our average may have been four miles ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... or at the end. The ascenders and descenders may be drawn so short as hardly to transcend the guide lines of the minuscules, or may grow into [136] flourishes up and down, to the right or to the left, to fill awkward blanks. Indeed so variable are these forms that in ancient examples it is often difficult to recognize an individual letter apart from ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... electro-motive force of two volts. As may be seen, these elements should, in general, all be mounted for tension, as they are in the figure, inasmuch as the mobility of the zincs permits, according to circumstances, of employing a variable number of them without changing anything. Moreover, with zincs amalgamated in a special manner, the attack is imperceptible, and the work in open circuit need scarcely to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... oxen draw home this Maiepoole (this stinckying idoll rather), which is covered all over with flowers and hearbes, bound round aboute with stringes from the top to the bottome, and sometyme painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred men, women, and children, following it with great devotion. And thus beyng reared up, with handkerchiefes and flagges streaming on the toppe, they strewe the ground about, binde greene boughs about it, set up summer haules, ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... my 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
... May, throughout nearly the same space, that the south-west monsoon prevails in during the former season. But the monsoons are subject to great obstructions by land; and in contracted places, such as Malacca Straits, they are changed into variable winds. Their limits are not everywhere the same; nor do they always shift exactly at the same period, but they are generally calculated upon about ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... recently married, and who, with her husband, received the child delightedly. I do not feel at all satisfied with the arrangement, but it was the best I could do. Juliet is good-hearted, over-affectionate, and will be kind to the child; but she is rather simple-minded, frivolous, and variable. Her husband is a kind, sensible man, but he was raised a Roman Catholic. Juliet tells me that he is not much of anything now; but I doubt it, for he insisted on being married by the priest, before the ceremony at St. Mark's; ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... predisposed to this disease. It is possible that the enormously increasing number of children with adenoids and enlarged tonsils, who need operative measures for their removal, may have these conditions aggravated by too much exposure to the inclemency of variable, harsh weather. ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... his appearance undeniably striking and attractive. A physiognomist might, however, have found something to blame as well as to praise in his features. There was an ominous upright line between the dark brows, which surely told of a variable temper; the curl of the laughing lips, and the fall of the heavy moustache only half concealed a curious over-sensitiveness in the lines of the too mobile mouth. It was not the face of a great thinker nor of a great saint, but of a humorous, quick-witted, ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... resistance under light? Thus there are reproduced similar variations in the cell to those vibrations here in this transmitter. The cell is connected with a telephone receiver and batteries over there and there you are. It is very simple. In the ordinary carbon telephone transmitter a variable electrical resistance is produced by pressure, since carbon is not so good a conductor under pressure. Then these variations are transmitted along two wires. This photophone is wireless. Selenium even emits notes under a vibratory beam of light, the pitch depending ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... Sea is remarkably well supplied with lighthouses; and, considering the narrowness of the channel in parts, the strong and variable currents, and the innumerable islands and shoals, the supply does no more than ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... properly nothing else but revolution and mutation, and even nothing else conceivable. Revolution, you answer, means speedier change. Whereupon one has still to ask: How speedy? At what degree of speed; in what particular points of this variable course, which varies in velocity, but can never stop till Time itself stops, does revolution begin and end; cease to be ordinary mutation, and again become such? It is a thing that will depend on definition more ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... continue the display of these inconsistencies. As I have Already intimated, a volume might be filled with passages to show that his criticisms were guided by no sense of duty, and that his opinions were so variable and so liable to be influenced by unworthy considerations as to be really of ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... who refused to 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
... now required all the attention of Paul, for they again became variable, and at last the wind drew directly ahead in a continued current for half an hour. As soon as this change was felt, the sails were trimmed to it, and the boat began to stir ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Connective tissue (Figure XIII) is a general name for a group of tissues of very variable character. It is usually described as consisting typically in the mammals of three chief elements felted together; of comparatively unmodified corpuscles (c.c.), more or less amoeboid, and of fibres which are elongated, altered, and distorted cells. The ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... case is found in the Irish saga of Diarmaid and Grainne. We read Mr. O'Grady's introduction on the position of Eionn Mac Cumhail, the legendary Over-Lord of Ireland, the Agamemnon of the Celts. "Fionn, like many men in power, is variable; he is at times magnanimous, at other times tyrannical and petty. Diarmaid, Oisin, Oscar, and Caoilte Mac Rohain are everywhere the [Greek: kaloi kachotoi] of the Fenians; of them we never hear anything bad." [Footnote: Transactions of ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... at an equal distance between them, and break the windows of each with his sling. What idle fabricators of crazy systems will tell me that climate is the creator of genius? The climate of Austria is more regular and more temperate than ours, which I am inclined to believe is the most variable in the whole universe, subject, as you have perceived, to heavy fogs for two months in winter, and to a stifling heat, concentrated within the hills, for five more. Yet a single man of genius hath never appeared in the whole extent of Austria, an extent of several thousand times greater than our ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... tried or the crowned creatures, there is the difference of the stars in glory among them yet; differences of original gifts, though not of occupying till their Lord come; different dispensations of trial and of trust, of sorrows and support, both in their own inward, variable hearts, and in their positions of exposure or of peace; of the gourd shadow and the smiting sun, of calling at heat of day, or eleventh hour, of the house unroofed by faith, or the clouds opened by revelation; differences in warning, ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... the weather was very variable and unsettled, with constant gales from the north-west round to the south-west, and occasional heavy rain. We had reason to congratulate ourselves on the change of our situation: a delay of a few days would have swept us from the face of the earth. On the 10th, the river began ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... was a 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 ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... shilling appears upon different occasions to have contained five, twelve, twenty, and forty pennies. Among the ancient Saxons, a shilling appears at one time to have contained only five pennies, and it is not improbable that it may have been as variable among them as among their neighbours, the ancient Franks. From the time of Charlemagne among the French, and from that of William the Conqueror among the English, the proportion between the pound, the shilling, and the penny, seems to have been uniformly ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... commodity which the people could offer their civilized customers; and as the reverence for the great burning orb of the sun, master of all the manifestations of nature, was tenfold as great as the veneration for the smaller, weaker, and variable goddess of the night, so was the demand for the metal sacred to the sun ten times as great as for the metal sacred to the moon. This view is confirmed by the fact that the root of the word by which the Celts, the Greeks, and the Romans designated gold was the Sanscrit word karat, which ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... messenger bore back, at my suggestion, a refusal of the offer and a further refusal to consider any more offers that evening. There was indicated a need for calm daylight consideration, and a face-to-face meeting with this variable ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Again, how many good people have become self-righteous and despised those who differed from them because they mistook matters of opinion and expediency as matters of conscience, through failing to recognize the fallible, variable element in their conscience. How foolish we act if we do not keep in mind these distinctions. The infidel who claimed that he was unhappy because he knew too much, and that Christians are happy because they are deluded, and then promulgated his misery-producing doctrine ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... intervals able to remit to him sums of from ten to thirty ducats. But here commenced the precarious existence which the composer was for the future destined to lead. For, not only was the taste of Vienna then, as now, proverbially variable and flippant—not only was concert-giving an uncertain speculation, and teaching an inconstant source of income—but in a man, who, like Mozart, had, from time to time, strong impulses to write for the theatre, it frequently happened that the order and regularity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... this difference, since the sea seems all alike? The cause lies not in a difference of depth: for the tracts that teem with life are variable in this respect,—sometimes only a few fathoms in profundity, and ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... sent by the Committee of Safety to Genoa, with instructions; his young wife and her sister Desiree accompanied him. Perhaps the new, variable impressions of the journey, perhaps her separation from Bonaparte, and her association with other officers less gloomy than the saturnine Napoleon, all this seemed to cool the love of Desiree Clary; she no more answered Napoleon's letters, and, in writing to his brother Joseph, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... distance as to be scarcely visible; but her locality being pronounced "very suspicious," the order was given to bear up for her. The breeze falling, the boats were ordered out, and in a few minutes the barge and the first gig were pulling away in the direction of the stranger. So variable, however, is the weather at this season, that before the boats had rowed a mile from the ship, a thick haze surrounded the ship, and the chase was lost sight of. The rain fell in torrents, and the ship was going seven knots through the water. On the clearing up of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... systems, speech habits of the two peoples. Yet the instinctive cries as such are practically identical for all humanity, just as the human skeleton or nervous system is to all intents and purposes a "fixed," that is, an only slightly and "accidentally" variable, feature of man's organism. ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... large and very sweet. This sort is rarely eaten by any but the most wealthy. The dried Malaga, or Muscatel raisins, which come to this country packed in small boxes, and nicely preserved in bunches, are variable in their quality, but mostly of a rich flavour, when new, juicy, and of ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... have cited to demonstrate that the return from the playlet is a most variable quantity. The small-time pays less than the big-time, and each individual act on both small- and big-time pays a ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... for the royal tombs. The blocks being taken from these stores, and borne by boats to close below the hill, were raised to their required places along gently sloping causeways. The internal arrangement of the pyramids, the lengths of the passages and their heights, were very variable; the pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) rose to 475 feet above the ground, the smallest was not 30 feet high. The difficulty of imagining now what motives determined the Pharaohs to choose such different proportions has led some to think that the mass built was in direct proportion to the time occupied ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... give a true account of these gifts of reason to the benefit and use of men; as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down, with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention; or a shop for profit or sale—and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the relief ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... is obvious, that the most superficial characters are the most variable. Thus colour depends much upon light; thickness of hair upon heat; size upon abundance of food, &c. In wild animals, however, these varieties are greatly limited by the natural habits of the animal, which does not willingly migrate from the places where it finds, in sufficient ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... route; here and there a little sand, loose and flying about. Our road is a splendid carriage-road. Oh, were there but water! But water is the all and everything in The Desert. Encamped on the limitless plain. How variable is Saharan weather: now, at sunset, a tempest rises, and sweeps the bosom of The Desert with "the besom of destruction!" A high wind continued all night. I fancied myself at sea, but preferred the Ocean Desert, its groaning hurricane, its hideous barrenness, to the heaving and ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... is variable, freezing nights and thawing in the day. The soil in this locality is rich, and, where trodden, extremely muddy. We shall miss the clear water of the mountain streams. A large number of ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... J. cordiformis, the Japanese heart nut, is also promising. This nut can be recommended for planting for its own sake as the tree is hardy, a rapid grower, comes into bearing early and bears a fairly good nut. There are no grafted trees, however, so the variable seedlings will ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... is of course true that man inherits nothing more than the capacity of making mental acquirements. But this general capacity is made up of many separate capacities, all of these capacities are variable, and the variations are inherited. Such seems to us to be the unmistakable ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... extent in 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 below zero, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... slightly scaly eruption. Several such areas fusing together may cover a large part of the surface, the ring-like arrangement being sometimes more or less completely lost. The malady is chronic. There may be a variable degree of itching. The cause of the disease, which is of a contagious nature, is a vegetable parasite closely similar to the trichophyton. The treatment is by the parasiticides, being essentially the same, ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... just so wide, and there must be just so many of them, or else it was not safe to proceed. It might be better to throw the setting away and start new, or else to let it stand till noon. Gram knew as soon as she had looked at it. If the omens were favorable, a cup of warm water and a variable quantity of carefully warmed flour were added, and a batter made of about the consistency for fritters. This was set up behind the funnel ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... great basin beyond the "Catoctin belt." The second province is the region drained by smaller streams, chief of which is Goose Creek. In this province the drainage lines head entirely within the "Catoctin belt," and the elevations are variable according to the constitution of the ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... disease have a capricious and variable appetite as regards their ordinary feed but evince a strong desire to lick and eat substances for which healthy cattle show no inclination. Alkaline and saline-tasting substances are especially attractive ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... the country is an arbitrary democracy; having no common law, and no judiciary. Their only laws are made and unmade at the caprice of the legislature, and are as variable as the legislature itself. They pass through the form of sending representatives to the congress at Mexico, but as it takes several months to go and return, and there is very little communication between the capital and this ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... According to the plan of Divine Providence, we find that in all things the movable and variable are moved and regulated by the immovable and invariable; as all corporeal things by immovable spiritual substances, and the inferior bodies by the superior which are invariable in substance. We ourselves also are regulated as regards conclusions, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... definiteness of decision, also some of the horseman's animal darkness. Yet his soul was only the more wavering, vague. He seemed made up of a set of habitual actions and decisions. The vulnerable, variable quick of the man was inaccessible. She knew nothing of it. She could only feel the dark, heavy fixity of his ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... work only upon a variable tendency—an inherent impulse to development. A rock, a hill, a stream, may change, but it is not variable in the biological sense: it can never become anything but a rock, a hill, a stream; but a flower, an egg, a seed, a plant, a baby, can. What I mean to say is that there ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... breadth between the ears are not only cunning and treacherous, but very excitable and irritable. The head of the Fox is remarkable for its extreme width at the region of Fear. He is proverbially crafty and treacherous, always excitable, and so variable in temper that he can never be trusted. He is a very timid thief, exceedingly suspicious, irregular in habits, and frequently driven by hunger ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... regard to forms, colours, flavours, scents, sounds, fabrics, etc., what is agreeable to one being highly objectionable to another. The experience is to common to need illustration; but the conclusion to which we are led is that, in relation to the nervous system of man, every material body has a variable effect. And this clears the ground for a statement of our views in regard to the Crystal and its ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... could. He augmented those elements of his constitution which were (exceptis excipiendis)[164] subject to himself, and the Almighty then augmented his personal qualities, and his vocational status. Otherwise, to throw the matter into the expression of our notation, the variable e was augmented, and c x rose proportionally. The law of the variation, according to our theory, would be thus expressed. The resultant was David the king c e x [c r?] (who had been David the shepherd boy), and from the conditions of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... career. So deep are the sources of this surface-action, that even the size of your companion seems to vary with his freedom of thought. Not only is he larger, when at ease, and his thoughts generous, but everything around him becomes variable with expression. No carpenter's rule, no rod and chain, will measure the dimensions of any house or house-lot: go into the house: if the proprietor is constrained and deferring, 'tis of no importance how large his ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... 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 ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... Helvetius, under the patronage of Louis XIV, succeeded in introducing it into practice in France; and, to the Queen of Charles II., we are indebted for the introduction of that popular beverage, tea, into England. Tobacco has suffered as many variable vicissitudes in its fame and character. It has been successively opposed and commended by physicians, condemned and praised by priests and kings, and proscribed and protected by governments, until, at length, this once insignificant ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... variable quality—I am blessed by fortune, and for me it is a small sum to bestow in return for the heroic act. Would you like to have Mr. Nichols go with you to identify you ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... 13th, 14th, and 15th of June, the barometer slowly fell, without an attempt to rise in the slightest degree, and the weather became variable, hovering between rain and wind or storm. The breeze strengthened considerably, and changed to south-westerly. It was a head-wind for the Dream, and the waves had now increased enormously, and lifted her forward. The sails were all furled, and she had to depend on her screw alone; under half ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... Buy a small variable condenser. Its function is to tune the secondary circuit, which is accomplished simply by turning the knob. Such a condenser could not be made without the use of a good set of tools, and the author strongly advises it be bought instead of made at ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... deep into the snow without meeting with any resistance. This proved clearly enough that the snow had fallen in equable weather; calm must have prevailed or a slight breeze may have blown at the most. Had the weather been variable—calms alternating with storms—snow strata of different density would have formed, a condition which we would immediately have noticed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... in, fixed the law of language, and developed its rule, which was no longer determined on the basis of experience, but made the claim to determine experience. The endings of declension, which hitherto had in part been variable, were now to be once for all fixed; e. g. of the genitive and dative forms hitherto current side by side in the so-called fourth declension (-senatuis- and -senatus-, -senatui-, and -senatu-) Caesar recognized exclusively as valid ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... than recollection, because the mind not only recalls images, but makes new combinations of them, or creates them altogether; attention is the appearance of the will in the intellect; with attention begins the separation of the transient from the variable in perception; memory is the highest form of representation; memory deals with general forms—not mere images of experience, but general types of objects of perception; memory, in this sense, is productive as well as reproductive; ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... and sometimes the boat would feel a wrench, as though with some mighty hand thrust up from the water. Their course was hardly steady for more than a moment or so at a time, and the boats required continual steering. In fact, it seemed to them that never was there a stream so variable and so unaccountable as this they ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... usual cruising ground was not more than six or seven leagues to leeward. But through the delays inseparable from getting a large and encumbered fleet to sea, it was four o'clock before all the ships were under sail; and as night was fast closing in, and the wind becoming variable, the Admiral determined not to attempt the narrow and dangerous passage he had fixed on, but to steer for the open entrance in front of the harbour, the Passage d'Iroise. Accordingly, he altered his own course, and made signal for the fleet to follow; but ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... the one which follows next in order. Inasmuch as philosophers only are able to grasp the eternal and unchangeable, and those who wander in the region of the many and variable are not philosophers, I must ask you which of the two classes should be the rulers of ...
— The Republic • Plato
... than any one else the founder of that branch of his science which treats of variable stars. His methods have been followed by his successors to the present time. It was his policy to make the best use he could of the instruments at his disposal, rather than to invent new ones that might prove of doubtful utility. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... distinct layers of camp refuse; and finally for the depositing of the cave earth over it all. This hypothesis is unreasonable. While the rate of formation of either roof dust or stalagmite is extremely variable, so that it is not safe to predicate a definite antiquity for objects found beneath even a considerable thickness of either, at the same time the small area involved precludes the idea that a number of occupants sufficient to ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... the South Sandwich Islands variable, with mostly westerly winds throughout the year interspersed with periods of calm; nearly all precipitation ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... dear Augusta, 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 ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various |
