"Pivot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exception to his position. "Law," he said, "is the pivot on which the whole universe turns; and obedience to law is the gauge by which a nation's strength or weakness is tried. We have had two evils by which our obedience to law has been tested—slavery and the liquor traffic. How have we dealt with them both? We have ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... the cross is the pivot around which all his ceremonies and festivals move. He always dances to the cross, and on certain occasions he attaches strings of beads, ears of corn, and other offerings to it. It is used by the heathen as well as by the Christian Tarahumares. The question ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... air of the fool things they had been thinking about each other. This evening they had talked, straight talk, as between men, chiefly of Dick's future and his fitness for literature. There was no hint of Nan, though each believed she was the pivot on which Dick's fortunes turned. About ten they went up to bed, and again Raven found himself too uneasy to sleep, and again he sat down by the window in the dark. Incredibly, yet as he found he knew it would happen, he saw a figure running up the path. It came almost to the front door, halted a ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... decided that "melancholy is the most legitimate of all poetic tones." Why joy or gladness, like that of the birds, is not equally legitimate, he does not explain. Then, to give artistic piquancy to the whole, he decided that there must be "some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn." He found that "no one had been so universally employed as the refrain." The burden of the poem should be given by the refrain, and it should be a monotone, and should have brevity. Then his ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... The pivot of the foreign policy of Christian III. was his alliance with the German Evangelical princes, as a counterpoise to the persistent hostility of Charles V., who was determined to support the hereditary claims of his nieces, the daughters of Christian II., to the Scandinavian ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... slumbered when I was beyond the limits of his personal influence. When in his presence I was so pervaded by it that whether I went contrary to the dictates of his will or not I moved as if under a pivot; when away my natural elasticity prevailed, and I held the same relation to others that I should have held if I had not known him. This continued till the secret was divined, and then ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... story: my part now was but the part of the sword in the hands of Justice; I might no more hope to make Egypt free and great and sit upon my lawful throne. Khem was lost, and lost was I, Harmachis. In the rush and turmoil of events, the great plot of which I had been the pivot was covered up and forgotten; scarce a memory of it remained. The curtain of dark night was closing in upon the history of my ancient Race; its very Gods were tottering to their fall; I could already, in the spirit, hear the shriek ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... obeyed mechanically, pointing out to her the signs of the Zodiac, those of the planets, and other figures of occult significance engraved on the encircling, golden bands. Showed her how those same bands, turning on a pivot, formed a golden cradle, in which the crystal sphere reposed. He lifted it out from that cradle, moreover, and laid it in the softer cradle of her palm. And of necessity in the doing of all this, their heads—his and hers—were very ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... been discharging that same cargo for the last five months." This was the walk he took his young wife on the morrow of his return. She had been used to the society of lawyers and civil servants, moving in that circle which seems to itself the pivot of the nation, and is in truth only a clique like another; and Fleeming was to her the nameless assistant of a nameless firm of engineers, doing his inglorious business, as she now saw for herself, among unsavoury surroundings. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... life, should as truly deserve to be called a work of art as others had deserved it by doing the same thing in former times and under other circumstances. Supposing him to have accepted—consciously or not is of little importance—the new terms of the problem which makes character the pivot of dramatic action, and consequently the key of dramatic unity, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... be otherwise, because a school built on a model plan (as a general rule, the more scientifically built the school, the more costly it is), with pivot chains, and globes, and maps, and library, and petty text-books for teachers and scholars and pedagogues, is a sort of thing for which it would be necessary to double the taxes in every village. This science demands. The people need money for their work; and the more there ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... but youth," says the professor. "An electrical current passing through a coil of wire makes a magnet of a bar of iron lying within it, but not touching it. So a woman is turned into a love-magnet, by a tingling current of life running round her. I should like to see one of them balanced on a pivot properly adjusted, and watch if she did not turn so as to point north and south, as she would if the love-currents are like those of the earth, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... in faded pews. The minister's gown even was the subject of scrutiny as the years went on. It was an expensive thing to buy, but an oyster supper would do it and leave something over for the organ. Which brings us to the very core and centre of these activities, their pivot, their focus and, in a human sense, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... was the burial-place of a family, and was considered as private property, is evident from the remains of a door at the entrance of several of them, as in the catacomb of S. Priscilla. In one of these, the stone corbel, with the hole for the pivot to work in, remains in its place; the lower stone, with the corresponding hole, has been moved, but is lying on the floor in an adjoining chapel. Another door has been made to slide up and down like a portcullis or a modern sash-window, as we see by the groove ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... always be the central pivot of a whirlpool of excitement? God knows he loved peace even if Fate never permitted him to sample it. He laid the whole thing unconditionally at Brian's door. Let Brian, instead of shirking his usual numismatic responsibilities in some ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... height, and all muscle, his contortions and the frenzied movements of his muscles exceeded all anatomical laws. Many Daughters, her big eyes shining, her red lips parted, followed and matched his every motion. Her entire trunk seemed to revolve on the pivot of her waist, her hips twisting in almost a spiral, and her arms akimbo accentuating and balancing ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... or perhaps rather game, was performed with what was called the quintaine. The quintaine consisted of a stout post set in the ground, and rising about ten or twelve feet above the surface. Across the top was a strong bar, which turned on a pivot made in the top of the post, so that it would go round and round. To one end of this cross-bar there was fixed a square board for a target; to the other end was hung a heavy club. The cross-bar was so poised upon the central pivot that it would move very easily. In playing the game, the competitors, ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... among novelists to introduce their hero in knee pants, their heroine in pinafore and pigtails. Time was when we were rushed up to a stalwart young man of twenty-four, who was presented as the pivot about whom the plot would revolve. Now we are led, protesting, up to a grubby urchin of five and are invited to watch him through twenty years of intimate minutiae. In extreme cases we have been obliged to witness his evolution from swaddling clothes to dresses, from dresses ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... the heroine are made the pivot of each turning point in the plot. When she yields to her lover's entreaties to consummate a hasty marriage; when fear of her father's displeasure induces her to keep their union a secret; when her love of luxurious grandeur at court ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... and doing things." She blandly ignored any suggestion of hidden trouble, or the possibility of it daring to come in the future. Untiring in her preparations for our festivities, the hour of their happening found her so gracious a hostess, naturally she was the pivot around which the ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... atmosphere, but each of these ribs is so arranged that it supports only one flat side and does not form a means of communication between one flat side and the other. Thus R|1| supports one flat side whilst R|2| supports the other. The aluminum shutters are supported by means of pivot P. ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... no smile on his big mouth, no twinkle about the corners of his little eyes. He looked at Mrs. Moon as much as to say, "What is to be done? The boy has been going the wrong way: must we disown him?" The moon neither shook her head nor moved her lips, but turned as on a pivot, and stood with her back to her husband, looking very miserable. Not one of the star-children moved from its place. They shone sickly and small. In a little while they faded out; then the moon paled and paled until ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... whole east began gradually to spring into flame. The sky blazed as ruddily as if a great fire were just beyond the horizon and racing to leap it and sweep across upon the farm. A broad fan of light, roseate at its pivot and radiating in shafts of yellow and red, was rising and paling the stars with its shining edge. Wider and wider it grew, until from north to south, and almost as far up as the zenith, were thrust its shining sticks. Then out of the cold mist ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... had a full, noble voice, like a church-organ; and his notes rose high above the surrounding din. But the remarkable thing about this ballad-singer was one of his arms, which, while singing, he somehow swung vertically round and round in the air, as if it revolved on a pivot. The feat was unnaturally unaccountable; and he performed it with the view of attracting sympathy; since he said that in falling from a frigate's mast-head to the deck, he had met with an injury, which had resulted in making his ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... I belong," I said. "Here in the great Midland metropolis with this room for my pivot, I shall continue my study of the plains and ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... however, which is usually done by a forward, instead of a backward movement of the body, is not unfrequent in all the ports of the Mediterranean, though in no other is there a boat which resembles the gondola in all its properties or uses. The upright position of the gondolier requires that the pivot on which the oar rests should have a corresponding elevation; and there is, consequently, a species of bumkin raised from the side of the boat to the desired height, and which, being formed of a crooked and very irregular knee of wood, has two or three row-locks, one above the other, to ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Meanwhile I suppose I must be her guide and philosopher! I believe that my acquaintance with Senator North has made me feel like a child. He is so much wiser in a minute than I could be in a lifetime; and as I have made him the pivot on which the world revolves, no wonder I feel small ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... of the panelled oaken side of the locker on his left, and to his astonishment the end of the coffer-like affair glided easily up, bringing with it one end of the oaken bottom; while the other end, turning upon a pivot on the middle, went down, laying open a square shaft going at a slope apparently into the thickness ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... stall and wearing a biretta, got up, muttered something, and sat down again, while the three singers continued, with their eyes fixed on the big book of plain song lying open before them on the outstretched wings of an eagle, mounted on a pivot. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... that everything must pivot on my telling Bettie. John was done for, the Hardress woman was done for, and whether or no Jasper had done for himself, there was no danger, now, that anyone would ever know how that infernal Gillian had badgered me into, probably, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... leading a wheel, did not see. "Not so bad," he murmured. "Not 'arf so bad. The pivot-man of the wheel honly marks time, Muster Swayne. Now, Muster Corkran, you say you know the drill? Oblige me by takin' over the command and, reversin' my words step by step, relegate them ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... enlightened landlord on whom Mrs. Duncombe had been able to produce the slightest impression. He had owned a few small tenements in Water Lane, which he was about to rebuild, and which were evidently the pivot of operations. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one terrific dive into a sea that came rushing at her, and which she split into two showers of diamond spray that leapt half as high as her foremast before it came driving aft in a shower that nearly drenched us to the skin, round she swept like a gun upon its pivot, and was full again upon the other tack almost before we could blink our eyelids. The beauty of a fore-and-after is that she practically works herself, all that is needed being three or four hands on ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... the keel boat, therefore, was low, that it might glide under the trees, and the roof and sides were made as nearly bullet-proof as possible. The whole craft was steered by a huge oar mounted on a pivot at the stern.[1] ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... not one Greek lyric devoted to what we should designate love, with perhaps something like an exception in Alcman. In fact, while moderns rarely make a tragedy or comedy, a poem or novel, without some love-concern which is the pivot of the whole, all the great poems and dramas of the ancients revolve on entirely different passions. Love, such as we speak of, was of rather rare occurrence. Women were in such a low position, that it was a condescension to notice them,—there was no chivalrous feeling in regard to them; ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of the charging line met with better success, driving back all in their front, and, wholly disregarding the defeat of the centre, persisted in advancing, each wheeling as on a pivot in the centre, until the enemy's troops were completely enveloped and subjected to a deadly fire on both flanks, as well as from the artillery in front. The flooded stream forbade an advance on our unguarded batteries. ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... ran from Neby Samwil to the east of Beit Iksa, through Lifta, to a point of about 1-1/2 miles west of Jerusalem, whence it was thrown back facing east. Thus, our main line had swung forward, circling on its pivot at Neby Samwil, with its extreme right flank refused. The refused right flank afforded protection against the fire coming from the city. The main directions of our advance, however, now menaced, not so much Jerusalem itself, as the main Nablus road a few miles to the north of the city. ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... Book First as a member of the Council, and an epithet is applied to him which suggests his wisdom. Thus at the start of the Iliad he is designated as the man of thought, of intelligence, of many resources. But in the Second Book he shines with full glory, he is indeed the pivot of the whole Book. On account of a speech made by Agamemnon, their leader, the Greeks start at once for home, they are ready to give up the great enterprise of the restoration of Helen, they act as ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... I ran round and round the stove, crying aloud for help. But my mother and the woman seemed not to know my danger. They sat still, looking quietly upon the devil's chase after me. At last I grew dizzy. My head revolved as on a hidden pivot. My knees became numb, and doubled under my weight like a pair of knife blades without a spring. Beside my mother's chair I fell in a heap. Just as the devil stooped over me with outstretched claws my mother awoke from her quiet indifference, and lifted ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... it. The vertical division is the more important, as the natural balance is on the lateral sides of a central support. It will be found that the actual centre of the canvas is also the actual pivot or centre of the picture, and around such a point the various components group themselves, pulling and hauling and warring in their claim for attention, the satisfactory picture showing as much design of balance on one side of the centre as the other, and the picture complete in balance displaying ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... neatness, but every attention to strength. The shape of these weapons was not, as is generally thought, that of an arrow, but rather like an arrow with one huge barb, the upper part of which curved out from the shaft. The whole of the barb turned on a stout pivot of steel, but was kept in line with the shaft by a tiny wooden peg which passed through barb and shaft, being then cut off smoothly on both sides. The point of the harpoon had at one side a wedge-shaped edge, ground to razor keenness, the other side was ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... other proportions are referable, there is in most minds some one governing influence, from which chiefly,—though, of course, biassed on some occasions by others,—all its various impulses and tendencies will be found to radiate. In Lord Byron, however, this sort of pivot of character was almost wholly wanting. Governed as he was at different moments by totally different passions, and impelled sometimes, as during his short access of parsimony in Italy, by springs of action never before developed in his nature, in him this simple mode of tracing ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... clearly the pivot on which his date will hinge. If we are to accept the conclusions of Mr. Hort this will have occurred in the year 148 A.D.; according to Volkmar it would fall not before 155 A.D., and in the ordinary view as late ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... my dear sisters, that you are of this opinion? Do not you thoroughly understand that if love is absent from marriage it should, on the contrary, be its real pivot? To make one's self lovable is the main thing. Believe my white hairs that it is so, and let me ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... Keeping this idea definitely in mind, if we imagine a line drawn from the northern side of the circumference (N) to the side which lies above the southern half of the axis (S), and from here another line obliquely up to the pivot at the summit, beyond the stars composing the Great Bear (the pole star P), we shall doubtless see that we have in the heaven a triangular figure like that of the musical instrument which the Greeks ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... told myself, in a premonition of things to come, that I should always remember Captain Riggs and the Rev. Luther Meeker and Trego and Rajah, and the very pattern of the parti-coloured cloth on the table, the creak of the pivot-chairs and the picture of the Japanese girl in the mineral-water calendar which swayed on the bulkhead ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... one for holding the hair spring collet, and a pair of tweezers for holding jewels while cleaning, etc., etc. As to lathes, I have found that there is a necessity of about two lathes; one a Swiss, light running lathe for cementing any pivot work, and I prefer these because they run much lighter and easier than those heavier American lathes; and yet if confined to but one lathe, I would use a small sized American lathe, with a good assortment ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... say the unknown seemed as much surprised as I was. Then all at once she began to walk round and round me; and as I didn't want her to get behind me, I kept turning too,—just as if I'd been on a pivot; I believe I was fascinated by those big eyes glaring at me ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... upward movement of the club the body must pivot from the waist alone, and there must be no swaying, not even to the extent of an inch. When the player sways in his drive the stroke he makes is a body stroke pure and simple. The body is trying to do the work the arms should do, and in these circumstances ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... and on same ground executes movement. All except pivot man execute two right obliques. No marking time. Arriving on new line, all take the half step, glance toward marching flank and take full step without command as last man arrives on ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... the charge was not defiant, for the elephants turned simultaneously as upon a pivot and set the example of making for the nearest points of the jungle; and to the charging men it seemed as if they formed part of some immensely extended human hay-making machine, whose glittering spikes were about to sweep off a living crowd which, excited and yelling ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... finished Gertrude's portrait, and he afterwards transferred to canvas the features of many members of that circle of which it may be said that he had become for the time the pivot and the centre. I am afraid it must be confessed that he was a decidedly flattering painter, and that he imparted to his models a romantic grace which seemed easily and cheaply acquired by the payment of a hundred dollars to a young man who made "sitting" so entertaining. For Felix was paid ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... said Brock, "it is the pivot point, sir, and must be retained as our base. At Sandwich we already have earthworks completed. If destroyed by Hull they must be rebuilt, for the batteries there must cover our crossing and cannonade the fort while we advance upon it. I have already sent, ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... hundred years old, a public area under the control of the Crown and one such as would lend itself to the design of a permanent fortification. William, finding it in this condition, erected upon it the great keep which was to be the last of his fortifications along the line of the river, and the pivot ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... "There is a pivot under it; that is quite evident. It may be a copper ball in the stone below, or it may be that a knob of the upper stone projects into a hole in the lower. However, it does not matter how it works. Here is an opening into something. Dias, will you go upstairs and tell your wife and Jose to come down? ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... conceptions of death and the dead, the main feature in the ritual consisting indeed of a simulation of death and subsequent resurrection. It is, therefore, significant that the very same simulation figures prominently in the Fijian ceremony, nay it would seem to be the very pivot on which the whole ritual revolves. Yet there is an obvious and important difference between the drama of death and resurrection as it is enacted in New Guinea and in Fiji; for whereas in New Guinea it is the novices who pretend to die ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... knife for this purpose. When he has accumulated a sufficient number of strips he carries them to the hemp machine (Fig. 27). This consists of a knife which rests on a wooden block. The handle turns on a pivot and the end is drawn upwards by means of a bent twig, or sapling, which acts as a spring. This spring is lowered and the knife blade raised by means of a foot treadle; a strip of hemp is laid on the ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... tributaries of the Ohio, if the trade and allegiance of the people of Kentucky were to be secured to Virginia and to the Union. "The western States," he wrote to Governor Harrison of Virginia, "stand as it were upon a pivot. The touch of a feather would turn them any way." The situation in Kentucky became more acute as intimations reached the people that John Jay was proposing to renounce the free navigation ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... After exposure to an uninterrupted cannonading for eighteen minutes without casualties, a sixty-eight-pound Blakely shell passed through the starboard bulwarks below main rigging, exploded upon the quarter-deck, and wounded three of the crew of the after-pivot gun. With these exceptions, not an officer or a man of the Kearsarge received the slightest injury. The unfortunates were speedily taken below, and so quietly was the action performed, that at the termination of ...
— The Story of the Kearsarge and Alabama • A. K. Browne
... a needle balanced on a pivot to see how many substances he could find which, like amber, on being rubbed affected the needle. In this way he discovered that light substances were attracted by alum, mica, arsenic, sealing-wax, lac sulphur, slags, beryl, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... I don't advance something that the small official mind can take in, I shall never reach the heads of the office. It would be madness to begin by attacking national prejudices, by combating a notion so stupid, and therefore so deep-rooted, as that prisoners have no legal rights. No! the pivot of my assault must be something that a boy can afford to be able to comprehend for eighty pounds a year and a clerk's desk in a Government office. Now, Mr. Hawes has, for many months past, furnished false reports to the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... the province, and the tone being thus determined, I betook myself to ordinary induction, with the view of obtaining some artistic piquancy which might serve me as a key-note in the construction of the poem—some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn. In carefully thinking over all the usual artistic effects—or more properly points, in the theatrical sense—I did not fail to perceive immediately that no one had been so universally employed as that of the refrain. The universality ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... design, having been carefully worked out by Galloway after much experience with the problem, and after building many boats. He finally settled on the design furnished us by Mr. Stone. The flat bottom, sloping up from the centre to either end, placed the boats on a pivot one might say, so that they could be turned very quickly, much more quickly than if they had had a keel. There was a four foot skag or keel under the stern end of the boat, but this was only used when in quiet water; ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... stouter fellows,' said he. 'Let them deploy into double line in front of the town-hall. So, so, smartly there, rear rank!' he shouted, facing his horse towards them. 'Now swing round into position. Keep your ground, left flank, and let the others pivot upon you. So—as hard and as straight as an Andrea Ferrara. I prythee, friend, do not carry your pike as though it were a hoe, though I trust you will do some weeding in the Lord's vineyard with it. And you, sir, your musquetoon ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this is vanishing; such drawing-rooms as Mme. de St. Cyr's are less and less frequent. Yet, though the delightful spell of the last century daily dissipates itself, and we are not now what we were twenty years ago, still Paris is, and will be till the end of time, for a cosmopolitan, the pivot ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... unnecessary attack, submit himself to unnecessary work, and incur the odium of summoning all his friends from their rest? In the midst of the doubts as to the new and old Ministry, when the political needle was vacillating so tremulously on its pivot, pointing now to one set of men as the coming Government and then to another, vague suggestions as to an autumn session might be useful. And they were thrown out in all good faith. Mr. Mildmay, when he spoke on the subject to the Duke, was earnest in thinking ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... advantage in respect of purity over the moral conceptions of the Stoics; the distinction between them is, however, very obvious. The Stoic system made the consciousness of strength of mind the pivot on which all moral dispositions should turn; and although its disciples spoke of duties and even defined them very well, yet they placed the spring and proper determining principle of the will in an elevation ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... second baseman, whose cool head made him a good man at that pivot of the field; he was an able assistant to the right-field, a ready back-stop to the short-stop, and a perfect spider for taking into his web all the wild throws that came slashing from the home plate to cut off those who dared to try ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... attempts to get away, the sufferer lies down flat and refuses to do his duty, the fowler is able to stimulate him without stirring from his hut. A long string sets in motion a little lever working on a pivot. Raised from the ground by this diabolical contrivance, the bird flies, falls down and flies up again at each ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... konsumigxi. "-apple," ananaso. pink : rozkolora; dianto. pioneer : pioniro. pipe : tubo, pipo; (mus.) sxalmo. pistol : pistol'o, -eto. piston : pisxto. pit : kavo, fosajxo, (well) puto; (theatre) partero. pitch : pecxo, bitumo; tono. pitcher : krucxo. pity : kompati. ("a-"), domagxo. pivot : pivoto, akso. placard : afisxo, place : loko; meti. plague : turmenti, inciteti; pesto. plait : plekti, har'ligo, -plektajxo, plan : plano, projekto, skizo. plane : rabot'i, -ilo; ("—tree") platano. planet ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... the rear, dancing around to escape the pony's battery, and got to the side where he could grasp the horn of his saddle, Bingo would wheel in a circle away from him as if he was fastened to a pivot. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... at a desk, covered with papers in chaotic confusion, on a chair which moved on a pivot. His desk was against the wall, and when clients came to him, he turned himself sharp round, sticking out his dirty shoes, throwing himself back till his body was an inclined plane, with his hands thrust into his pockets. In this attitude he would listen to his client's story, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... compass is a small, flat bar of magnetised steel, which, when balanced on a pivot, turns one of its ends persistently towards the north pole—the other, of course, towards the south pole; and it does this in consequence of its being magnetised. A card is fixed above, sometimes below, this bar of steel (which is called the needle), whereon are marked ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... please. For six days I had been oscillating within a pretty complete circumference of alarms. It is small blame to me, I hope, that with my nerve on so nice a pivot, I quivered and swung to this new apprehension like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in a steamer, except for a very short time in a primitive one belonging to Porter's Mosquito fleet, in 1823. The changes in the disposition and handling of the guns had not been radical. They were still arranged "in broadside," along the two sides of the vessel; nor were the pivot guns—which, as their name implies, could be pivoted to one side or the other, according to the position of an enemy—a new idea. In these matters there had been improvement and development, but not revolution. But while the mode of placing and handling was essentially the same, the guns themselves ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... of the braces and the washers in the large hole in the slot, shove it up until the 1/4-in. hole in the crosspiece and the one in the moulding meet, then drive an oak dowel or rod into each end. This is the hinge or pivot that the legs swing on. When the leg is extended the end of the brace rod should spring into the 1/4-in. hole in the moulding and lock the leg in place. Rubber tips should be put on the bottom ends ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 3 • H. H. Windsor
... continued the coxswain, with admirable dignity and self-possession; and the Zephyr, acted upon by this maneuver, came about as though upon a pivot, without going ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... of modern mythologists, of which M. Adalbert Khun is the most prominent representative in Germany, this storm-myth is the pivot on which hinges a universal explanation of all ancient religions whatever. And in particular the fundamental source, origin, and true significance of the traditions we have been reviewing, including the Biblical accounts of the Fall, are all, according to him, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... Inez, also, is her intense egoism and her abundant self-assertion under all circumstances. It often seemed to us as if for her the world revolved, with passing show, around a pivot from which she regarded it as existing only for what it meant for her career. These qualities have led to her statements, and perhaps to the actual feelings, that she was the aggrieved one, and had been badly treated on many ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... State Trials as an epoch in this history, marking a distinct phase in the character of the Repeal Association. The proceedings of that extraordinary inquest are familiar to most men. It is not my intention to refer to them, except as a sort of pivot upon which public sentiment veered. When they were commenced there was untold wealth in the coffers of the Association. There was still a greater store of public purpose in the country. Threats, hot and violent, had been uttered. Pledges had been made which could ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... her course had been changed, so as to bring the wind forward of the beam, which was her best point of sailing, the men were sent to the guns; the first mate placing himself at a long eighteen pounder, which was mounted as a pivot gun aft, a similar weapon being in her bows. All this took but four or five minutes, and shot after shot from the ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... no attempt to throw off the load. It was now far back in his life, as much at least as three years, since he had first assured himself of his desire to make Emily Wharton the companion of his life. From that day she had been the pivot on which his whole existence had moved. She had refused his offers more than once, but had done so with so much tender kindness, that, though he had found himself to be wounded and bruised, he had never abandoned his object. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... travel among the mountain scenery of the wilder coasts of Donegal had touched the chord of these old remembrances. "As to your clambering," he replied, "don't I know what happened of old? Don't I still see the Logan Stone, and you perched on the giddy top, while we, rocking it on its pivot, shrank from all that lay concealed below! Should I ever have blundered on the waterfall of St. Wighton, if you had not piloted the way? And when we got to Land's-end, with the green sea far under us lapping into solitary ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... plenty of hands for working them, if we only have to fight one side at once; but we shouldn't be very strong handed, if we had to work both broadsides. There are four sixteen pounders, four twelves, and the pivot; so that gives three men to a gun, besides officers and idlers. Three men is enough for the twelves, but it makes rather slow work with the sixteens. However, we may hope that we sha'n't have to work both ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... No. 19. p. 307.).—I have seen old-fashioned silver tureens which turned on a pivot attached to the handles, and always concluded that it was to this form that Goldsmith alluded in the line quoted ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... pontoon attached to a cylinder may be fitted with an ordinary wet dock; and then the pontoon, before or after the vessel is upon it, can be slewed round to suit the slips up which the vessel has to be moved, supposing the slips are arranged radially. In this case, the pivot end of the pontoon would be a fixture, so to speak, to ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... close to my eye. The light of this bulb is reflected in a mirror which is moved by the moving needle. When the sound is loudest the two horns are at right angles to the direction whence it comes. So it is only necessary to twist the phonometer about on its pivot until the sound is received most loudly in the horns and the band of light is greatest. I know then that the horns are at right angles to the direction from which the sound proceeds, and that, as I lift my head, I am looking straight toward the source ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... part to give you the man no better than he was. Lichfield at large had pampered him; many women had loved him; and above all, Miss Agatha had spoiled him. After fifteen years of being the pivot about which the economy of a household revolves, after fifteen years of being the inevitable person whose approval must be secured before any domestic alteration, however trivial, may be considered, no mortal man may hope to ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... when she first warned him that their partnership must be dissolved—was a scheme which she could now plainly see must be abandoned as hopeless, in the case of Michael Vanstone's son. The father's habits of speculation had been the pivot on which the whole machinery of her meditated conspiracy had been constructed to turn. No such vantage-ground was discoverable in the doubly sordid character of the son. Noel Vanstone was invulnerable on the very point which had ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... the ring, braced his feet and pulled. The square turned on its pivot with an ease which proved that it was frequently subjected to the same manipulation. As it turned, it ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... him and, when they turned to the right, he followed them, stepping lightly in his white shoes, down one side of Merrion Square. As he walked on slowly, timing his pace to theirs, he watched Corley's head which turned at every moment towards the young woman's face like a big ball revolving on a pivot. He kept the pair in view until he had seen them climbing the stairs of the Donnybrook tram; then he turned about and went back the ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... calculated, if he had heard aright, to benefit the agricultural population. Well, then, what would they do? Protection had been a failure when it reached a prohibitory duty of 80s. a quarter; it had been a failure when it reached the pivot price of 60s.; and it was a failure now when they had got a sliding-scale; for they had admitted the lamentable condition of their tenantry and peasantry. Let them accede, then, to his proposition for a committee, and he would pledge himself to explode the fallacy of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... craftsman at work, the ingenuity with which he plied his handful of tools, the proud patience with which he endured snub after snub, his bland passivity and extraordinary rebound. First of all, he went to Rome, ever the pivot of danger to an Italian diplomat. Molly's portrait, done in his best manner by Dosso of Ferrara, was presented to Duke ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... and the Azimuth of its Collimator, Mr Main has brought together the results of several years, and the following law appears to hold. There is a well-marked annual periodical change in the position of the Transit Circle, the southerly movement of the eastern pivot having its minimum value in September, and its maximum in March, the extreme range being about 14 seconds; and there is a similar change, but of smaller amount, in the position of the Collimator. I cannot ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... it all would be imputed. The rin-z[o][24] found near the large temples,—the cunning invention of a Chinese priest in the sixth century,—soon became popular in Japan. The great wooden book-case turning on a pivot contains 6,771 volumes, that being the number of canonical volumes enumerated ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... much smaller than those just mentioned, trusting mainly to their sweeps for motive power, and each relying for offence on one long pivot gun, a 12- or 18-pounder. In the Chesapeake there was a quite a large number of these small gallies, with a few of the larger kind, and here it was thought that by acting together in flotillas the gun-boats might in fine weather ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... attends upon his guests. Long since he made a vow of chastity,—"to live as our Lord lived on this earth," and Polynesians report with bated breath that he has kept it. On all such points, true to his Catholic training, he is inclined to be even rigid. Lauati, the pivot of Savaii, has recently repudiated his wife and taken a fairer; and when I was last in Malie, Mataafa (with a strange superiority to his own interests) had but just despatched a reprimand. In his immediate circle, in spite ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fashioned, but we like it," said Bullone. "Just a great big tetragon on a central pivot. We can turn any room we want to the sun, the shade or the breeze, but we usually leave the main salon pointing northeast. View of the ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... mover, primum mobile[Lat]; vera causa[Lat]; author &c. (producer) 164; mainspring; agent; leaven; groundwork, foundation &c. (support) 215. spring, fountain, well, font; fountainhead, spring head, wellhead; fons et origo[Lat], genesis; descent &c. (paternity) 166; remote cause; influence. pivot, hinge, turning point, lever, crux, fulcrum; key; proximate cause, causa causans[Lat]; straw that breaks the camel's back. ground; reason, reason why; why and wherefore, rationale, occasion, derivation; final cause &c. (intention) 620; les dessous des cartes[Fr]; undercurrents. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... conversations with the Tano Indian to direct the attention of the Tehuas toward Tyope. She described him as the leading warrior and the most influential man on the Rito, as the pivot around which everything revolved and on whose life much would depend. But she was artful enough not to depict Tyope as a bad man, lest the Tehuas might infer her real purpose. She spoke of him as a man dangerous through his good qualities, and ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... sorrow was expressed in his weary look as he gazed out of the window. I knew that the pivot on which all his emotions turned was the anxiety of uncertainty, and that beyond the bounds of conscious thought an unknown loom was weaving for him a shadowy thread of hope. He saw, he heard nothing, while his vacant eyes followed the balls of smoke. As the train travelled along, I knew ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... matching his military skill against the wary old Marshal's, he was offering incentives to conspiracy. Distrusting the revolution, which was a force behind him, he placed such reliance on its efforts in his front as to make it the pivot of his actions. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, a mast-pivot, 15 inches in length and weighing between seven and eight pounds, which had passed obliquely through the body of a sailor. The specimen is accompanied by a colored picture of the sufferer himself in two positions. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... their accompaniments of rammers and sponges, water buckets, boxes of round, grape, and canister, and tubs of wadding, while the combings of the hatchways were thickly studded with round shot. The tarpawling and lumber forward had disappeared, and there lay long Tom ready levelled, grinning on his pivot. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... (which may be done by setting the centres of the slots true to the lines passing through the axis) and set the pivots as follows: Place the pencil-point G so that it coincides with one of the points as C, and place the pivot E so that it comes directly at the point of intersection of the two slots, and fasten it there. Then turn the arm so that the pencil-point G coincides with one of the points of the minor axis as D, the arm lying parallel to B D, and place the pivot F over the centre of ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose |
