Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Equilibrium   Listen
noun
Equilibrium  n.  (pl. E. equilibriums, L. equilibria)  
1.
Equality of weight or force; an equipoise or a state of rest produced by the mutual counteraction of two or more forces.
2.
A level position; a just poise or balance in respect to an object, so that it remains firm; equipoise; as, to preserve the equilibrium of the body. "Health consists in the equilibrium between those two powers."
3.
A balancing of the mind between motives or reasons, with consequent indecision and doubt.
Equilibrium valve (Steam Engine), a balanced valve. See under Valve.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Equilibrium" Quotes from Famous Books



... allowance for the fact that what is most spirited and beautiful and worthy in modern society comes from that diversity of human pursuits which necessitates the concentration of individual energy into narrow channels. Neither to balance his mind in perfect equilibrium, nor to keep his body in highest condition, is the first duty of man upon earth. The Christian requirement of self-sacrifice often commands him to risk both in service to his neighbor. Besides, as we shall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... perspiration glittered. At first I thought it was the rain which had drenched his cap and gown, but in a moment I saw that the perspiration was the result of terror or anxiety (cf. my lectures on Mental Equilibrium). Monteagle and I in our undergraduate days had been friends; but like many University friendships, ours proved evanescent; our paths ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... Senate than the old Curial families. The aristocracy of blood was blended with the aristocracy of merit. The consulship gave unity of command, the Senate wisdom and the proper strength, preserving a happy equilibrium of forces,—the combination of royalty, aristocracy, and democracy, which, with military virtues and austere manners, made an irresistible force." [Footnote: Durny, Hist. des Romains] This period, the fifth century of the existence ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... its pretensions, what its importance, what its influence upon other branches of knowledge, supposing there be a God, which it would not become me to set about proving? Has it vast dimensions, or does it lie in a nutshell? Will its omission be imperceptible, or will it destroy the equilibrium of the whole system of Knowledge? This is the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... its ancestor more in the interpretation of the phenomena than in the practices themselves. It has naturally had the same therapeutic applications, and its methods are probably legitimate. Hypnotic sleep has had many helpful influences. It is really a change in the equilibrium of the brain and mental faculties and produces great modifications in the memory and in sensibility. Life is indeed a long series of habits to which we are accustomed; hypnotism changes these habits which in a normal condition ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... Tamils and Telagus of Madras, and the so-called Mahrattas of Bombay; but I found it difficult to get my views accepted, because of the theory which prevailed that it was necessary to maintain an equilibrium between the armies of the three Presidencies, and because of the ignorance that was only too universal with respect to the characteristics of the different races, which encouraged the erroneous belief that one Native ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... how vividly that old glutton illustrated the fools who, in their effort to gulp down the sensual pleasures of this world, choke the soul, and nothing but the clap-board of hard experience, well laid on, can dislodge the ham, and restore the equilibrium. ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... producing changes in tribal habitats, since the somewhat gradual introduction of trade placed these deadly weapons in the hands of some tribes, and of whole congeries of tribes, long before others could obtain them. Thus the general state of tribal equilibrium which had before prevailed was rudely disturbed. Tribal warfare, which hitherto had been attended with inconsiderable loss of life and slight territorial changes, was now made terribly destructive, and the territorial possessions of whole groups of tribes were augmented at the expense of those ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... Baron, having regained his equilibrium. "You cannot zee, but he haf a basket tie vidth a cord to hees belt; he fill it vidth shaills, and vhen he make a pull dthey draw it up and empty it. ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins

... is a man on board with enough sense left to run the engine, and the captain—look there!" pointing to a maudlin and dishevelled Canadian wearing a captain's cap, and just then trying to preserve his equilibrium on a wooden settle near the railing. "It would be a blessing if the brute tumbled overboard, and we were well rid of him," said the gentleman savagely in a low tone. Then, seeing my consternation, he added: "I'll see what ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... his heel and left. Colored spheres seemed to dance before his eyes, and he had to summon all his strength to keep his equilibrium. When at last he reached the dugout, he fell on the box of empty tins as if he had been beaten. His hatred changed slowly into a deep, embittered sense of discouragement. He knew perfectly well that he was in the wrong. Not at the bar of his conscience! His conscience told him that the deed the ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko

... The Fly on the ceiling, it is true, occupies the same attitude; but she has her moments of rest: she flies, she walks in a normal posture, she spreads herself flat in the sun. Besides, her acrobatic feats do not cover a long period. The Empusa, on the other hand, maintains her curious equilibrium for ten months on end, without a break. Hanging from the trellis-work, back downwards, she hunts, eats, digests, dozes, casts her skin, undergoes her transformation, mates, lays her eggs and dies. She clambered up there when she was still ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... one of these spaces Abraham resides; his brother Lot is near him: but they cannot long remain in such places. The very condition of a land, the population of which is now increasing, now decreasing, and the productions of which are never kept in equilibrium with the wants, produces unexpectedly a famine; and the stranger suffers alike with the native, whose own support he has rendered difficult by his accidental presence. The two Chaldean brothers move onward to Egypt; and thus is traced out for us the theatre on ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... preserve the same temperature and also the same electrical potential. Any disturbances in electrical equilibrium are much more quickly obliterated than in case of thermal equilibrium, and we therefore see less of electrical phenomena than of thermal. In thunder storms we see such disturbances, and with delicate instruments we ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... section of its components or for each of its organs there is available only a given quantity of formative materials. Now suppose that the distribution of these materials has not been made in such a way as to ensure an exact equilibrium between all the parts concerned, one organ will get more than its share, another less. My law of the compensation of organs is founded on these principles" (i., Lecon 16, p. 12). "The atrophy of one organ turns to the profit of another; and the reason why ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... were going to give a party, and the boy was invited. It was the first social recognition he had ever received, and it disturbed his equilibrium. It also made him feel that he ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... any man's equilibrium to fall head over heels in love with a girl inside of ten minutes? I merely ask ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers

... sister had entirely recovered her equilibrium, and being the guest of the officers, who were extremely courteous to her, she did not lament so loudly the calamity that saved them a long life of banishment on the beach of Indian River. By the first opportunity they were sent back to St. Augustine, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... surrender. In fact he endeavored to close his ears. He had received a cold douche and a hot one in the course of the past hour, and he felt that his equilibrium was satisfactorily established. He had forgotten to warn Madame Zattiany of the step at the front of the box, down which so many novices had stumbled, but she had taken it and settled herself with the nonchalance of custom. Odd. Once more something ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... were heavy, while the woman was almost destitute of a chin—a marked ape-like characteristic. The tibia was shorter than in any known race and stouter than in most. Its curious feature was the articulation with the femur, which was such that to maintain the equilibrium the head and body must have been thrown forward, as is the ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... indeed marvelously near the point of equilibrium: the moment when Spirit enters conquered matter, and stands there enthroned. In Pheidias himself I cannot but think we should have found that moment as we find it in Aeschylus. But you see, it is when that has ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... was so sudden and unexpected that he reeled back to the wall, and did not recover his equilibrium in time to prevent my dealing a second blow, which I did with my whole force. The point unfortunately struck the cuirass, near the neck, and glancing aside it inflicted but a flesh wound, tearing the skin ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... see how crime is begotten of innocence; and instead of thinking of the wretched creature, we think of the Creator who has so ordained it, and at whose central position in the moral universe there can be neither good nor evil, but an equilibrium of forces which become one or the other, and may become either when the equilibrium is disturbed. Good and evil, mutually exclusive qualities in the world of appearance, are, in the world of ideas, complementary conceptions, different aspects of one and the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... their piroques, formed of the trunks of trees hollowed out, and so narrow, small, and shallow, that they would constantly be overturning, if there were not on one side five or six sticks, each about a foot long, fastened by a cross-bar to preserve the equilibrium. In spite of this, however, one of these boats is very easily upset, unless a person steps in very cautiously. When, on one occasion, I proceeded in a piroque to the ship, the good-hearted captain was horror-struck, and, in his concern for my safety, even reprimanded ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... in a first experiment, ought to be rendered as few as possible. But of all this the practical iron men are much better judges than we theorists. You hesitate between the catenary and portion of a circle. I have lately received from Italy a treatise on the equilibrium of arches, by the Abbe Mascheroni. It appears to be a very scientifical work. I have not yet had time to engage in it; but I find that the conclusions of his demonstrations are, that every part of the catenary is in perfect equilibrium. It is a great point, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... with many laughing apologies, and, by the time Mrs. Raymond had recovered her equilibrium, the younger girl had lost her expression of astonishment and was looking as bright and eager as ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... Hennessey, one after the other, and then "wash them out"—such was her phraseology—with a magnum of Perrier Jouet; a proceeding which, while it heightened her complexion and gave a sparkle to her poor flustered eye, was not conducive to the preservation of equilibrium in the lower limbs. There resulted those periodical "nervous breakdowns" which necessitated seclusion and sometimes medical treatment. The collapses had become distressingly frequent with the last year or two. One of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... three reasons for intervention in exterior foreign wars,—viz.: 1, by virtue of a treaty which binds to aid; 2, to maintain the political equilibrium; 3, to avoid certain evil consequences of the war already commenced, or to secure certain advantages from the war not to be ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... want to be turned, but came round quickly, almost on a pivot, very much disturbing my equilibrium again; but by gripping tightly with my legs I managed to hold on, and ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn

... discovers only two factors in the reign of William III that are worthy of mention: the maintenance of the equilibrium between Parliament and the Crown, and the maintenance of the European equilibrium by means of the struggle against Louis XIV. Under the Hanoverian dynasty, public opinion suddenly "veered in another direction," ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... gravitation of peculiar circumstances and events, has been constituted a separate political factor, a new and vast theater for the development of the human race, which will serve as a counterpoise to the great civilizations of the other hemisphere, and so maintain the equilibrium of the world. ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace, or only for a new balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... Honours, with Pomps, Triumphs, and many Weights of the like Nature, in one of them, and seeing a little glittering Weight lie by me, I threw it accidentally into the other Scale, when, to my great Surprize, it proved so exact a Counterpoise, that it kept the Ballance in an Equilibrium. This little glittering Weight was inscribed upon the Edges of it with the Word Vanity. I found there were several other Weights which were equally Heavy, and exact Counterpoises to one another; a few of them I tried, as Avarice and Poverty, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... the bottle contained no more electricity than before, but that as much was taken from one side as thrown on the other; and that to discharge it nothing was necessary but to produce a communication between the two sides by which the equilibrium might be restored, and that then no signs of electricity would remain. He afterwards demonstrated by experiments that the electricity did not reside in the coating as had been supposed, but in the pores of the glass itself. After the phial was ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... nervous in my old age, and a small matter jars my equilibrium; but I'm sure a basket of heads handed in as I was seated at the table would startle me a little at first, and I ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... a passing emotion; with Christ, a settled principle of action—the perfect balance and equilibrium of the soul, out of which comes all that is ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... the inclined plane is illustrated by what are called "tropisms," obligatory movements which the animal makes, adjusting its whole body so that physiological equilibrium results in relation to gravity, pressure, currents, moisture, heat, light, electricity, and surfaces of contact. A moth is flying past a candle; the eye next the light is more illumined than the other; a physiological ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... as if she were an infant, Thorndyke sprang toward the stairway leading to his chambers, but the roof had sunken till it was steep and slippery. One instant he was toppling over backward, the next, by a mighty effort, he had recovered his equilibrium, and finally managed to reach a safer place. As he hurried on another pillar went down. The roof sagged lower, and an avalanche of mortar and tiling slid into the court below. Yells, groans, and cries ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... repeal of the laws prohibiting the African Slave Trade, because I believe it to be the true Union movement. * * * I believe that by re-opening this Trade and giving us Negroes to populate the Territories, the equilibrium of the two Sections will ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... right to withdraw himself from the battle and to shirk his duties, while watching other people fighting to maintain the social equilibrium and seeking to achieve the position to which their talents and their attainments render them worthy ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke

... persons thoroughly convinced of their own unassailable mental equilibrium, when their convictions encounter ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... solemn "beards" of the Cafe de Seville attached themselves to international questions, to the great problem of European equilibrium. One of the most profound of these diplomats—who probably had nothing to buy suspenders with, for his shirt always hung out between his waistcoat and trousers—was persuaded that an indemnity of two million francs ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... saw my stick fly out of the rack above my head across the carriage. The door leading to the corridor jumped off its hinges. Then shattered glass fell in showers, and I saw an old lady beneath an arm-chair and a table. The shape of the carriage altered. And then, after an enormous crash, equilibrium was established amid the cries of human anguish. I had clung to the arms of my seat and was unhurt, but there were four wounded in the carriage. My eye-glasses were still sticking on my nose. Saying to myself that I must keep calm, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... was generally known by the Rockabie boys—Dumpus, trotted down the slope in a wonderful way, for how he managed to keep his balance over the rough cobbles and on the storm-worn granite stones of the pier was a marvel of equilibrium. But keep upright he did, solely by being always in motion; and he was not long in elbowing his way through the crowd of boys, many of whom overtopped him, and planting himself at the top of the pier steps, where from old experience he ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... concerning him even down to our days. He shows that the Utopian, though benevolent project, ascribed to Henry, of establishing an everlasting peace by revising the map of Europe and constituting a political equilibrium between the several European powers, never in fact existed in the king's mind, nor even in Sully's, whom he equally divests of much unfounded glory and fictitious greatness. No doubt, but for his fickleness and inconsistency, Henry ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... the patient was labouring under great excitement of the brain. The physician said that he had expected that effect, but that on the following day the remedy would act less on the brain, and diffuse its beneficial action through the whole of the system, which required to be invigorated by a proper equilibrium in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... the occasion of a public holiday, which meant that the bulk of the population was imbibing a great deal more than was compatible with the laws of equilibrium. Some amusement was caused by the panic of The O'Donoghue's supporters at the votes I was getting, and presently they brought up in cars one poor man in an advanced stage of consumption, and another unable to walk from ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... stood in unstable equilibrium, anon stooping to his finger-tips, then straining doubtfully forward with struggling arms from a too backward poise: for not only did the trousers lie a twisted emptiness far below his feet, but the feet themselves were lost in Young's boots, so he stood like Scaramouch, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... the sense that, till their next meeting, he must maintain a strictly noncommittal attitude; that, in short, his share in the game consisted for the present in looking on. Selden knew, however, that he could not long keep such violences in equilibrium; and he promised to meet Dorset, the next morning, at an hotel in Monte Carlo. Meanwhile he counted not a little on the reaction of weakness and self-distrust that, in such natures, follows on every unwonted expenditure of ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... his circulation has slipped an eccentric or his stomach got out of its natural orbit, I submit, in all seriousness that he might be physically incapacitated for telling the truth by an insidious attack on his veracity by the dreadful falsehood fungi, and that the best way to restore his moral equilibrium—to remove him from the category of chronic ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... too full of contrasts, freezing one moment and thawing the next, and while outside one is turned to ice, indoors one is consumed with heat; it is upsetting to the equilibrium." ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn

... for any time in a state of equilibrium, where the desire to live and that to depart just balance each other. If one has a house, which he has lived and always means to live in, he pleases himself with the thought of all the conveniences it offers him, and thinks little of its wants and imperfections. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... Proviso. This particular measure failed, but the war ended, and New Mexico and California were added to the Union as unorganized Territories. Meanwhile the admission of Wisconsin in 1848 had once more restored the equilibrium between the free and the slave States, there being now fifteen ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... parachute, where the weight of the car, of the attaching cords, and the wrigglings of the aeronaut, is in equilibrium with the expansion—the parachute, which seems to have no other aim but to moderate the shock in falling—the parachute even has been found capable of being directed, and aeronauts who have practised it, take care not to forget it. ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne

... fact, becoming less and less tenable. Each molecule of the gutter bore away a molecule of heat radiating from Gringoire's loins, and the equilibrium between the temperature of his body and the temperature of the brook, began to be established in ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... ride through the cane-fields, he retired to the library. The decanter had been replenished with brandy, and his late resolutions did not deter him from freely imbibing of its contents. The equilibrium was restored. His mind, stimulated by the fumes of the liquor, resumed its usual buoyancy. He paced the room, and drank frequent draughts of ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... it upon herself to re-establish the great Hegelian law of equilibrium for the benefit of her sex. Separated from the Aryan world by the formidable precautions of Neptune, she draws the youngest and bravest to her. Her body is condescending, while her spirit is inexorable. She takes what these bold young men can ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... a shifting of the investment and speculative equilibrium, and things began coming to us spontaneously. The Angus Falls railway extension was won only by strenuous endeavor. Captain Tolliver's interviews with General Lattimore, in which he was so ruthlessly "turned down," he always regarded as a sort of creative ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... descended by this time, made bold to say that he thought the diversion an odd one and rather dangerous. The gentleman took this in good part, and owned it might seem so, but added that a distinguished phrenologist had examined his head, and told him he had equilibrium so large ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... will amount to nothing unless you pray soon enough. Wait until you are fascinated and the equilibrium of your soul is disturbed by a magnetic and exquisite presence, and then you will answer your own prayers, and you will mistake your own infatuation for ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... begins to exhibit the ravages of time, is somewhat embonpoint, with 48dark hair and fine eyes, but rather of the keen order of countenance than the agreeable; and report says, that the Signior composer, amid his plurality of wives, never found a more difficult task to preserve the equilibrium ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... sufficient to overturn it. Even when moving at a slow pace, the least inequality of the ground shook it terribly, and when driven at full speed it was only by a miracle of skill that the occupants could maintain their equilibrium. At such times the charioteer would stand astride of the front panels, keeping his right foot only inside the vehicle, and planting the other firmly on the pole, so as to lessen the jolting, and to secure a wider base on which to balance himself. To carry all this into practice long education ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... come for refreshments, Madam President!" she said urbanely, and the meeting was nervously adjourned. Under the animation thus induced an approximate equilibrium was restored. The ladies gulped down chicken salad, many of them using forks with black thread tied about them to show they were borrowed from Mrs. Eubanks. They drank lemonade from a fine glass pitcher that had come as a gratuitous mark of esteem from the tea merchant patronized by ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... the principal check that the public had upon the crown." And he urged "the members of that House, as the guardians of the constitution, to stand forward and preserve it from ruin, to maintain that equilibrium between the three branches of the Legislature, and that independence without which the constitution could no longer exist," and with this view to resolve "that to report any opinion, or pretended opinion, of his Majesty upon any bill or ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... that dislike has increased steadily. Several other people have come very near breaking their necks by losing their balance on that treacherous surface, and I confess that I myself am compelled to exercise the art of a Blondin in order to maintain my equilibrium in ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... hydrogen and carbon, brought to the state of an oxyd by means of a certain proportion of oxygen; and these three elements are combined in such a way that a very slight force is sufficient to destroy the equilibrium of their connection." ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... for though he had seemed to some of the officers, to Archer and his family, especially to Lilian, far the more accomplished and attractive of the two, the entrance of that disturbing rattler on the scene had destroyed the equilibrium of affairs. Willett had had no experience with the venomous little reptile, Harris had had much, and Harris's utter sang froid, and cool, commanding words had averted what might have been a tragedy. One start, one sudden move of the girl at that critical moment might well have ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... question, the vital pressing question in her case, was how she would use this freedom. Should it slip into the hardness of the new woman, on the one hand, or, on the other, allow itself to be fettered to the dulness of every-day decorum, her opportunity would be lost; but if she could hold the delicate equilibrium where she stood,—self-poised, and yet swaying to the influences which must work on every soul for its highest development, plastic yet firm,—then he believed, firmly believed, that there might lie in ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... behold are the feeble remnants of the pristine plasticity and an exhausted force.[XII-2] This force of variation or origination of forms has acted rhythmically or intermittently, because each movement was the result of the rupture of an equilibrium, the liberation of a force which till then was retained in a potential state by some opposing force or obstacle, overcoming which it passes to a new equilibrium and so on Hence alternations of dynamic activity and static repose, of origination of species ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... longer exist a profession of literature, and all but the whole of every library will be destroyed, leaving only the few books which are universally recognized as national treasures. Thus, and thus only, can mental and physical equilibrium ever be brought about. ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... am absolutely ignorant of the game," replied the old man, with as gracious a smile as was possible, while he tried to recover his equilibrium. ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... also wish to be happy and peaceful. They desire a condition of peace which, by a wise partition of force, by a just equilibrium, may hereafter preserve their people from the innumerable calamities which have for twenty ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... between Italy and her allies soon was disturbed by their attitude toward Serbia, resulting from the successes of that country and Greece in the Balkan wars. For the sake of maintaining the equilibrium between Italy and Austria, the former sympathized with Serbia's aspirations for a port on the Adriatic. In August, 1913—this incident was not revealed until the Premier of Italy told it to the Chamber of Deputies on December 5, 1914—Austria ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... weight of power it would give to Russia, on account of the number of Greeks in the Turkish dominions who would naturally join the Russians, I refused to consent to it, especially as Alexander wanted to get Constantinople, which I would not allow, as it would destroy the equilibrium ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... morbid excitability of the nervous, and a debility of the muscular, system, which make all exertion irksome and wearisome. The only mode of preserving the health of these systems, is, to keep up in them an equilibrium of action. For this purpose, occupations must be sought, which exercise the muscles, and interest the mind; and thus the equal action of both kinds of nerves is secured. This shows why exercise is so ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... a style which they themselves were enriching daily. But Don Perosi's idea deserves our appreciation, and one must praise his endeavour to create a universal style. It would be a good thing for music if eclecticism, thus understood, could bring back some of the equilibrium that has been lost since Wagner's death; it would be a benefit to the human spirit, which might then find in the unity of art a powerful means of bringing about the unity of mind. Our aim should be to efface the differences ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... for judging the utilisation of an ingested albumin lies in the persistence of the corporal weight, allied to the ascertained fact of a stable equilibrium in the total azotized balance-sheet which is provided by the comparison of the "Ingesta" with the "Excreta." From this point of view there exists the closest similitude between the albumins of animal and those of vegetable origin; both, in fact, are capable ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... generally the time allowed after ignition before it is advisable to weigh. Bodies allowed to cool in the air after they have been ignited will absorb moisture, and hot bodies placed in the balance-pan will disturb the equilibrium and show false results. Compounds that absorb moisture must be weighed quickly; they should, therefore, be weighed in covered vessels. Such compounds are detected by their continually-increasing weight. They should be ignited and weighed again ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... the organ and exponent of the Greek national mind," remarks Gomperz, "understood by the hygiene of the soul the avoidance of all extremes, the equilibrium of the powers, the harmonious development of aptitudes, none of which is allowed to starve or paralyse the others." Gomperz points out that this individual morality corresponded to the characteristics of the Greek ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... got up, pushed her chair back with a jerk, and finished, "I'm going out on the terrace. When I think of your back-veldters, and your back-veldt policy of suppressing all individualism and all advance, I need the company of a few worlds and solar systems to regain my equilibrium. No, don't expostulate," as he rose in his eagerness to confront her. "I seldom argue. It is not worth while. I merely 'express an opinion,' having the good fortune to belong to a race in which women are permitted such an indulgence," and she threw a laughing ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... slaughter of five hundred thousand men of the newly idolatrous and rebellious ten tribes, God's high displeasure and indignation against that idolatry and rebellion fully appeared; the remainder were thereby seriously cautioned not to persist in them, and a kind of balance or equilibrium was made between the ten and the two tribes for the time to come; while otherwise the perpetually idolatrous and rebellious ten tribes would naturally have been too powerful for the two tribes, which were pretty frequently ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... disastrous results. The air in contact with the higher mountain slopes would rapidly discharge its water, which would run down the mountain sides in torrents. This condensation on every side of the mountains would leave a partial vacuum which would set up currents from every direction to restore the equilibrium, thus bringing in more super-saturated air to suffer condensation and add its supply of water, again increasing the in-draught of more air. The result would be that winds would be constantly blowing toward ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... Triscoe; but to have Mrs. Adding and Kenby launched upon us is too much. Of course I like Kenby, and if the widow alone were concerned I would give him my blessing: a wife more or a widow less is not going to disturb the equilibrium of the universe; but—" He stopped, and then he went on: "Men and women are well enough. They complement each other very agreeably, and they have very good times together. But why should they get in love?—It is sure to make them uncomfortable to themselves and annoying ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... composite force it remains in equilibrium because the thrust is equal from both sides; and if one of the segments weighs more than the other the stability is lost, because the greater pressure will outweigh the ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... into her pocket,—let it slide again, but it did not completely regain its former place. Caught by some accident, it hung half out, swaying over the edge of the pocket, as the fat midwife rolled backwards and forwards in her drunken efforts at equilibrium. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... and constant connection between the phenomena of the aurora borealis and terrestrial magnetism led Humboldt to class under the head of Magnetic Storms all disturbances in the equilibrium of the earth's magnetic forces. The presence of such storms is indicated by the oscillations of the magnetized needle, the disturbance of the currents upon the telegraph-wires, and the appearance of the aurora, of which these oscillations and disturbances ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... the dogeship brought with it a certain measure of equilibrium and security, it left the political framework in almost every other respect untouched. The work of reform and consolidation had merely commenced. The first stone only had been laid of a great and enduring ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... are helpless, and that learn to walk with difficulty. Accordingly, and in consequence of its connection with the cerebrum, subcortical center and the spinal cord, the cerebellum is a station of the muscular and of the chief nervous system, by means of both of which qualities we keep our equilibrium. The more massive cerebellum with woman, together with the comparative shortness and tenderness of her bones, explains her comparative quickness and easiness of motion, her quicker and higher co-ordination of the muscles for their functions, and her knack ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... are the true political laws (mere abstract truisms, as they are held, and accordingly overlooked, by working statesmen) by which the social world is kept in cohesion, just as the physical world is kept in equilibrium by the attracting and repelling ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... school in the morning, my equilibrium restored, and, bubbling over with excitement to tell the boys what had happened, I received another shock—before I could ejaculate a word of my experiences, I was told—told with a roar and shout that almost broke the drum of my ears, that "the auld laird deil" was dead! His body had ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... Evan and her; for this girl's was no calm, easy-going nature, but one with depths of passionate reserve and terrible possibilities of suffering or enjoying. She had been calm all her life until now, because these powers and susceptibilities had been in an absolute poise; an equilibrium that nothing had shaken. Now the depths were stirred, and at times she was in a storm of impatient pain; but there came revulsions of hope and quiet lulls, when the sun almost shone again under the clearance made by faith and hope. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... not refrain from a mental calculation of how enormously such a situation advanced his fortune. There was to be no restriction now, he could annihilate and absorb at will. He had grown so powerful that his mental equilibrium was unbalanced upon the question of accretion. He wanted more, he must have more, and now, by the aid of Selwyn, he would have more. He was so exultant that he gave some expression to his thoughts, and Selwyn, cynical ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... present life? A reciprocal relation between body and mind appears in all mental phenomena. A certain proportion in this relation is called mental health. A deviation from it is termed disease. This proportion is by no means an equilibrium, but the perfect adaptation of the body, without injury to its integrity, to the purposes of the mind. And if this be so, all the arguments of materialism fall ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... Union in the spirit and for the purposes for which it was established, an equilibrium between the States, as grouped in sections, was essential. When the Territory of Missouri constitutionally applied for admission as a State into the Union, the struggle between State rights and that sectional aggrandizement which was seeking to ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... producing "that widely concluding unbelief which," as her sister in greatness has said, "we call knowledge of the world, but which is really disappointment in you and in me." George Sand was one to whom scepticism was intolerable. Pessimistic doctrines were fatal to her mind's equilibrium, and private experience and outward intellectual influences were driving her to distrust all objects of her previous worship, human and divine. The moment was one when the most fundamental social and religious principles were ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas

... supreme problem of science, and at the same time the most urgent practical question of the day, is how to secure initiative to those who are born for rule. Anything which serves to impress ordinary minds with a sense of social equilibrium to give them an object lesson in the substitution of leadership for anarchy—must be of immense value. Here was a community falling into wreck, cut loose from the orderly system of things, old duties and obligations forgotten, only hungry rights insisted ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... actions. To the reserved English mind, always on the defensive, they seem to give themselves away continually; but he who understands sees it to be all part of that perpetual interplay of opposites which makes up the French character and secures for it in effect a curious vibrating equilibrium. "Intensely alive" is the chief impression one has of the French. They balance between head and heart at top speed in a sort of electric and eternal see-saw. It is this perpetual quick change which gives them, it seems to me, their special grip on actuality; they never fly into the ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... vacuum which exerts this pressure, but the atmosphere, which, like a head of water, presses on everything immerged beneath it. A head of water, however, would not press down a piston, if the water were admitted on both of its sides; for an equilibrium would then be established, just as in the case of a balance which retains its equilibrium when an equal weight is added to each scale; but take the weight out of one scale, or empty the water from one side of the ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... really enough. Professor Dane had been annoyed, and he needed to express himself further—by means of the joke, which was his art—in order to regain some measure of his equilibrium and self-respect. ...
— This is Klon Calling • Walt Sheldon

... her own loss of youth and beauty and attractiveness, it fell into soil where such germs ripen as in a hot-bed. In a less noble nature than Hetty's there would have grown up side by side with this pain a hatred of Rachel, or, at least, an antagonism towards her. In the fine equilibrium of Hetty's moral nature, such a thing was impossible. She felt from that day a new interest in Rachel. She looked at her, often scrutinizingly, and thought: "Ah, if she were but well, what a sweet young wife she might make! I wish ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous

... opposite effect; the white portions of the impression appearing of a dull, leaden hue, while those which should be black, or dark, appear quite light. This being the case, I conclude there must be a point between the two extremes where light and dark objects will be in photogenic equilibrium. The great object, therefore, is to maintain, as nearly as possible, a perfect balance between the two elements entering into union to form the sensitive coating of the plate, in order that the lights and shades be truly and faithfully represented, and that all objects, whether light ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey

... which no one joined more heartily than the brother himself. The storm of merriment, however, had hardly passed, when the Bishop, in one of those indescribably solemn tones for which he was distinguished, said, "Brethren, I always find it difficult to maintain the proper spiritual equilibrium without a good deal of prayer." Then, turning to the offending brother, he added, "Brother, will you lead us in prayer?" The entire company instantly fell upon their knees. But the poor brother! What could he do? Pray ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... hardest, and where we are dealing with two backward peoples. To make here in human education that ever necessary combination of the permanent and the contingent—of the ideal and the practical in workable equilibrium—has been there, as it ever must be in every age and place, a matter of infinite ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... life's active period, there is an equilibrium between the body's waste and repair: one equals the other. The machine, when properly managed, then holds its own. A French physiologist fixes the close of this period for the ideal man of the future at eighty, ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke

... conversing with apparent interest with a fraternity brother, was nevertheless filled with a growing dismay. Now and then he glanced back and glared down the aisle at the elegant sprawling youth and wondered how it was that a being as insignificant as that could so upset his equilibrium. But the assured drawl of the stranger as he spoke of Leslie and called her a "speedy kid" had made him boil with rage. He carried the mood back to college with him, and sat gloomily at the table thinking the whole incident over, while the banter ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... potted camellias; they fix red apples to the points of the sticks, and twist sprigs of thyme, sage, and laurel all about them; they bedeck the whole with ribbons and streamers; they place the trophy upon the stretcher with the "infidel," whose duty it is to maintain its equilibrium and preserve it from harm; and, at length, they move away from the garden in good order ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... incipient stage: A new doctrine arises, the older representatives of the science oppose it partly because of keener insight and greater experience, partly also from indolence, not wishing to allow themselves to be drawn out of their accustomed equilibrium; among the younger generation there arises a growing sentiment in favor ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... was bitter cold and drove in his face fiercely. He rejoiced at the cruelty of the wind, and when it hustled pedestrians before it, lashing them, twisting their clothes, and threatening their equilibrium, he felt amused. He was pleased at the chill in his bones and at the hunger that tortured him. At least, at first he thought it was hunger till he remembered that he had just eaten. The hours passed confusedly. He had no consciousness of time. ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie

... grasp at a rope, and just saved himself from falling overboard, for a vigorous snatch made by a large fish at his bait had been quite sufficient to disturb his equilibrium, his activity alone saving him from a terrible ducking, ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... insisted on dining on boiled mutton, although his physicians warned him that it would disagree with him. The emperor's brain resented the liberty taken with its colleague, the stomach; the monarch's equilibrium was overturned, the battle lost, and a new ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... have no such class at the North. We can have no such class. The very collision of interests, the rivalries of trade, the thousand-and-one social relations, all neutralize each other, are checks and counterchecks, which, like the particles in a vessel of water, always tend toward the level of an equilibrium. Two men meet in their lodge as Odd-Fellows, but they are opponents on "town-meeting day." Two partners in business are, one the most bitter of Calvinists, and the other the most progressive of Universalists. Dr. A. and the Rev. Mr. B. pull asunder the men whom 'Change unites. But with the Southerner ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... of quantity or degree.] Equality. — N. equality, parity, coextension[obs3], symmetry, balance, poise; evenness, monotony, level. equivalence; equipollence[obs3], equipoise, equilibrium, equiponderance[obs3]; par, quits, a wash; not a pin to choose; distinction without a difference, six of one and half a dozen of the other; tweedle dee and tweedle dum[Lat]; identity &c. 13; similarity ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... barometer the mercury begins to rise occasionally before the conclusion of gale, sometimes even at its commencement, as the equilibrium of the atmosphere begins to be restored. Although the mercury falls lowest before high winds, it frequently sinks considerably before heavy rain only. The barometer falls, but not always, on the approach of thunder and lightning, or ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy

... upon underground water may locally tend toward a state of equilibrium in which there is little movement. In such a case the water is substantially ponded, and moves only ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... rich, and you may go there every day and find afresh some lurking pictorial nook. It is a treasury of bits, as the painters say; and there are usually three or four of the fraternity with their easels set up in uncertain equilibrium on the undulating floor. It is not easy to catch the real complexion of St. Mark's, and these laudable attempts at portraiture are apt to look either lurid or livid. But if you cannot paint the old loose-looking marble slabs, the great panels of basalt and jasper, the crucifixes of which the lonely ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... weighs out a commodity does not hear his scales raise their voice and say: "'Tis a false weight that reigns." A strange order of things surely, that has for its base supreme disorder, the negation of all law! equilibrium resting on iniquity! ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... with human things as it is with the great icebergs which drift southward out of the frozen seas. They swim two-thirds under water, and one-third above; and so long as the equilibrium is sustained, you would think that they were as stable as the rocks. But the sea-water is warmer than the air. Hundreds of fathoms down, the tepid current washes the base of the berg. Silently in those far deeps the centre of gravity is changed; and then, in a moment, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... every day more precious. All this new dignity and worth that now enveloped her, these self-satisfactions of a Euterpe and a Beatrice, depended on his survival, would increase, even if he maintained just that strange equilibrium between life and death, but would die the instant he died. So for Lilla he took on such importance that everything else in life turned insignificant: old ardors were all consumed in this new ardor at once conquering and maternal, vainglorious ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... waited—simply for what Robert would do; for his faith in Robert was unbounded, and he had no other hope on earth. But Shargar was not miserable. In that wretched hovel, his bare feet clasping the clay floor in constant search of a wavering equilibrium, with pitch darkness around him, and incapable of the simplest philosophical or religious reflection, he yet found life good. For it had interest. Nay, more, it had hope. I doubt, however, whether there is any interest at all ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... is a privation. Now it must be noted that privation is sometimes essential to the species, whereas sometimes it is not, but supervenes in a thing already possessed of its proper species: thus privation of the due equilibrium of the humors is essential to the species of sickness, while darkness is not essential to a diaphanous body, but supervenes in it. Since, therefore, when we assign the cause of a thing, we intend to assign the cause of that thing as existing ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... Why all this feminine fuss? Self-consciously he dropped his tail, imploringly he looked up at the man. The man understood. He poked the dog with his foot, and Dan started back with a mock snarl. Embarrassment vanished, equilibrium was established, they were placed at once on that footing of good-fellowship so necessary in the highest relations of man and man ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux

... strong lashing of its swimming legs. She caught her lip till it bled between her teeth and clung tight and steady, knowing her danger but seeking to add no ounce of difficulty to the battle for strength and equilibrium of the animal under her. And they had won through ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... The equilibrium of conversation was restored, and the three, sitting down on a long, flat stone, a boulder which had dropped millions of years before out of an iceberg as it sailed slowly over the glacial ocean which then ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... by the end of November I was cured. Insomnia, feelings of oppression, gloomy thoughts, disappeared as though by magic, and I am now well and strong and full of courage. With physical health I have recovered my mental equilibrium, and but for the ineffaceable wound caused by my child's loss, I could say that I am perfectly happy. Why did I not meet you before? My child would have known a cheerful and courageous mother. Thank you again and ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue

... be objected that if a man does not act from freedom of the will, what would he do if he were in a state of equilibrium, like the ass of Buridanus? Would he not perish from hunger and thirst? and if this be granted, do we not seem to conceive him as a statue of a man or as an ass? If I deny that he would thus perish, he will consequently determine ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... of looking on the characters and capabilities of men as the result of their organism. A hot and impulsive temper was checked by the reflection that it was beneath the dignity of human nature to allow a rush of blood to the organs of "combativeness" and "destructiveness" to upset one's mental equilibrium. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... once became evident that he was about to sit down to a very substantial repast, for which he was not at all sorry, as the long journey had given him a most excellent appetite. Moreover, he had by this time recovered the equilibrium which had been so seriously disturbed by his first sight of Senorita Isolda, and had again found the use of his tongue; it was therefore a very gay and happy quintette that arranged itself around ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... indulge the pleasing persuasion that the great body of our citizens will cordially concur in honest and disinterested efforts which have for their object to preserve the General and State Governments in their constitutional form and equilibrium; to maintain peace abroad, and order and obedience to the laws at home; to establish principles and practices of administration favorable to the security of liberty and property, and to reduce expenses to what is necessary for the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Thomas Jefferson • Thomas Jefferson

... I interpret the story, the lover seems at first to be in a condition of unstable equilibrium, but finally concludes to cleave to the flowers of the soil, the lehua and the ilima (verse 15), the palai and the maile (verse 17), the meaning of which ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... will vary from ten to fifteen degrees. It is obviously desirable that there should be as little difference as possible in the temperature of the air on the ground, among the lower parts of the plants, and in the upper regions of the house. The nearer we can approach an equilibrium, the better success will attend our efforts. Nurserymen generally, and sometimes other cultivators, understand this, and they build their plant houses with roofs of low pitch, affording scarcely room to stand upright ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward

... to supply, which it was able to supply, and, in fact, was supplying: the thing which not only justified capitalism, but showed it to be an absolutely necessary stage in the development of a denser population. This was the enrichment of the peoples, the rapid, and even anticipatory restoration of equilibrium between the growing population and the indispensable increase in the means of production; in other words, general well-being. The unbroken progress of America, and the almost unbroken progress of ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... a woman in Paris who at twenty-four, the time of her death, weighed 486 pounds. Not being able to mount any conveyance or carriage in the city, she walked from place to place, finding difficulty not in progression, but in keeping her equilibrium. Roger Byrne, who lived in Rosenalis, Queen's County, Ireland, died of excessive fatness at the age of fifty-four, weighing 52 stone. Percy and Laurent speak of a young German of twenty who weighed ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... skin, forces the blood from the capillary vessels over which the pencil passes, and where, when the reaction takes place, an unusual quantity of blood gathers and becomes plainly visible through the cuticle. Gradually, as an equilibrium of the circulation is restored, the ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... the fact that in these ventricles of the right and left sides of the brain a watery fluid, effused from the blood, called serum, exists, which also extends downward along the spinal cord, and which has to do with the pressure and equilibrium of the various parts. When there is a strong pressure of blood to the brain on account of its unusual activity, especially in the activity of the emotions, the serum of the ventricles and also in the substance ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various

... savior of the world." The poets still assured him that there was no deity in heaven who would not think it an honor to concede to him his prerogatives; that if he did not place himself well in the centre of Olympus, the equilibrium of the universe would be destroyed. Victims were slain along his path, and altars raised for him—for this wretch, whom an honest slave could not but despise and loathe—as though he was too great for mere human honors. Nay, more, he found adorers ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... South Carolina has the right to demand her thirty-fourth part of them in severalty, is one that by the North cannot be entertained. It is this idea which has produced that other more mischievous one—that an equilibrium must be maintained between the free and the slave States; in other words, between freedom and slavery. Where did this idea creep into the Constitution? It never has found, and it never will find, favor with ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... flavour, a touch of repudiation, was in the air. In such countries as Italy, Greece, the Alps, the Netherlands, and Great Britain, the two forces of the old order, the aristocrat and the common man, were in a state of unstable equilibrium through the whole period of history. A slight change[22] in the details of the conflict for existence could tilt the balance. A weapon a little better adapted to one class than the other, or a slight widening of the educational gap, worked out into historically imposing ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... received us with much kindness, raised us immediately from our knees, and demanded our business. I was greatly embarrassed at first, but the frank and cordial manner of the sovereign soon restored me to my equilibrium, and I spoke freely in behalf of my dear father. The king heard me through very patiently, with apparent interest, and said, "Signorina, I am inclined to believe you have spoken the truth; and as your father has always been a good loyal subject, I shall, for your sake, forgive him this ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson

... secretly negotiating for the partition of the King of Spain's dominions, not—with the emperor, who still hoped to obtain from Charles II. a will in favor of his second son, the Archduke Charles, but with England and Holland, deeply interested as they were in maintaining the equilibrium between the two kingly houses which divided Europe. William III. considered himself certain to obtain the acceptance by the emperor of the conditions subscribed by his allies. On the 13th and 15th of May, 1700, after long hesitation ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... strength—he with the oar, whilst I used the flat butt of my rifle. We had succeeded in bringing her to a sort of equilibrium, and were in hopes of being able to force her toward the bank, when all at once we heard a heavy object strike against the stern. At the same moment, the bow rose up into the air, and a number of the burning pine-knots fell back into ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... a pulley. It has a weight at one end and a monkey at the other. There is the same length of rope on either side and equilibrium is maintained. The rope weighs four ounces per foot. The age of the monkey and the age of the monkey's mother together total four years. The weight of the monkey is as many pounds as the monkey's mother is years old. The monkey's mother was twice as ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... had recovered her equilibrium, and, as she sat comfortably holding Dotty, she smiled, with a ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells

... Butterfield gave a good-natured laugh, and said, "I admit the inconveniences of the weather; but are you not aware that there has been a drought for three years in the country, and great suffering in the land for lack of rain? We need all this wet weather to make an equilibrium. What is discomfort to you is the wealth of the land. Besides that, I find that if I cannot get sunshine in the open air I can carry it in the crown of my hat. He who has a warm coat, and a full stove, and a comfortable house, ought not to ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... our free modern society in which the means of production are owned by a few being necessarily in unstable equilibrium, it is tending to reach a condition of stable equilibrium by the establishment of compulsory labour legally enforcible upon those who do not own the means of production for the advantage of those ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... gentes are not constant in a phratry indefinitely, as appears from the composition of the phratries in the remaining Iroquois tribes. Transfers of particular gentes from one phratry to the other must have occurred when the equilibrium in their respective numbers was disturbed. It is important to know the simple manner in which this organization springs up, and the facility with which it is managed as a part of the social system of ancient society. With the ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... connected to the bottom of the chamber by means of iron trellis-work. The floats are placed so deeply that, in their highest position, their upper edges are always submerged; they are, moreover, of such size that by means of their upward impulsion the chamber is held in equilibrium. Irrespective of the small differences of pressure which arise from the varying immersion of the framework, the lock will in all positions be in equilibrium. Since a vessel which enters the lock displaces a volume of water whose weight is equal to the weight of the vessel, a constant equilibrium ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various

... "Down with the Austrian!" The queen was alone in the cart. Her hands were tied behind her. She could not sit down. She could not support herself against the jolting of the cart upon the rough pavement. The car started. The queen was thrown from her equilibrium. She fell this way and that way. Her bonnet was crowded over her eyes. Her gray locks floated in the damp morning air. Her coarse dress, disarranged, excited derision. As she was violently pitched to and fro, notwithstanding her desperate endeavors to retain the ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... in early days were called buggies. The first one George remembers was the go cart. It had two wheels and was without a top. Only two people could ride in a go cart. The equilibrium was kept by buckling the harness over and under the horse's belly. The strap which ran under the belly was called the belly girt. There was a side strap which ran along the horse's side and the belly girt was fastened to this. Loops were put to vantage points on the side strap and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... never exist in a state of civilisation without the woman of the world. The man of the world has his own department, his own metier; but She it is who keeps up the general equilibrium. She is a calm, quiet, lady-like person, not obtrusive, and not easily put out of the way. You do not know by external observation that she is in the room; you feel it instinctively. The atmosphere ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various

... Fischer, and, despite their quarrel, rendered this spinster some service. Achille Rivet worshiped Louis Philippe, who was to him the "noble representative of the class out of which he constructed his dynasty." He loved the Poles less, at the time they were preventing European equilibrium. He was willing to aid Cousin Betty in the revenge against Wenceslas, which she once contemplated, as a result of her jealousy. [Cousin Betty. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... over waste may be during the early life of an active organism, there must be reached, if the organism lives long enough, a point at which the surplus assimilation is brought to nothing—a point at which expenditure balances nutrition, a state of moving equilibrium. Obviously, this antagonism between assimilation and expenditure must be a leading cause of the contrast in size between allied organisms that are in many ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... party, might deliver the army over to La Fayette, and the Assembly to the Feuillants.[20] Petion, friend of Robespierre and Brissot, at the same time closely allied to the Jacobins and with Madame Roland, kept his popularity in equilibrium for fear of losing half of it if he decided positively for one side or the other. He tried next day to effect a general reconciliation. "On both sides," he said, with a tremulous voice, "I see my friends." There was an apparent truce; but Guadet and Brissot ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... give effect and influence to the practical laws: in such a case we should be bound to obey our conceptions, which, although objectively insufficient, do, according to the standard of reason, preponderate over and are superior to any claims that may be advanced from any other quarter. The equilibrium of doubt would in this case be destroyed by a practical addition; indeed, Reason would be compelled to condemn herself, if she refused to comply with the demands of the judgement, no superior to which we ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... is now receiving an admirable and beautifully adequate physical basis in the researches of distinguished physiologists in various lands concerning the parts played by the ductless glands of the body, in sensitive equilibrium with each other, pouring out into the system stimulating and inhibiting hormones, which not only confer on the man's or woman's body those specific sexual characters which we admire but at the same ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis



Words linked to "Equilibrium" :   acid-base balance, punctuated equilibrium, equilibrium law, isostasy, balance, symmetry, dynamic balance, thermodynamics of equilibrium, equilibrium constant, conformation, poise, proprioception, chemical equilibrium, thermal equilibrium, vestibular sense, Nash equilibrium, balance of power, structure, construction, reaction, counterbalance, labyrinthine sense, law of chemical equilibrium, sense of equilibrium, state of affairs, chemical reaction, equilibrate, proportion, theory of punctuated equilibrium, sense of balance, equilibrize, situation, disequilibrium, acid-base equilibrium, homeostasis



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com