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Reaction   Listen
noun
Reaction  n.  
1.
Any action in resisting other action or force; counter tendency; movement in a contrary direction; reverse action.
2.
(Chem.) The mutual or reciprocal action of chemical agents upon each other, or the action upon such chemical agents of some form of energy, as heat, light, or electricity, resulting in a chemical change in one or more of these agents, with the production of new compounds or the manifestation of distinctive characters. See Blowpipe reaction, Flame reaction, under Blowpipe, and Flame.
3.
(Med.) An action induced by vital resistance to some other action; depression or exhaustion of vital force consequent on overexertion or overstimulation; heightened activity and overaction succeeding depression or shock.
4.
(Mech.) The force which a body subjected to the action of a force from another body exerts upon the latter body in the opposite direction. "Reaction is always equal and opposite to action, that is to say, the actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal and in opposite directions."
5.
(Politics) Backward tendency or movement after revolution, reform, or great progress in any direction. "The new king had, at the very moment at which his fame and fortune reached the highest point, predicted the coming reaction."
6.
(Psycophysics) A regular or characteristic response to a stimulation of the nerves.
7.
An action by a person or people in response to an event. The reaction may be primarily mental (" a reaction of surprise") but is usually manifested by some activity.
Reaction time (Physiol.), in nerve physiology, the interval between the application of a stimulus to an end organ of sense and the reaction or resulting movement; called also physiological time.
Reaction wheel (Mech.), a water wheel driven by the reaction of water, usually one in which the water, entering it centrally, escapes at its periphery in a direction opposed to that of its motion by orifices at right angles, or inclined, to its radii.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Reaction" Quotes from Famous Books



... that there must be a reaction, but he could not bring himself to fear or to warn, or do anything but enjoy the happiest day of his three ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... couldn't have been anything else," said Billie, trembling a little with the reaction. "We heard it coming down the road, heard it pass the house, and go on. It simply ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler

... law-making that began with the moral movements—the prohibition movement, the anti-slavery movement, and the women's rights movement—of the second quarter of the nineteenth century, lasted down until the Civil War. After that there was a conservative reaction, followed by a new radical wave in reconstruction times, which ended with another conservative reaction at the time of the first election of President Cleveland. Since then, new moral or social movements, mainly those concerned with the desire to benefit labor and repress the trusts, with ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... that there was a strong party in favor of placing the Duke of Orleans upon the throne. The king was awaiting his trial in the Temple. The monarchy was virtually overthrown, and a republic was established. The Republicans were in great fear of a reaction, which might re-establish the throne in favor of the Orleans family. It was, therefore, proposed in the Assembly that the Duke of Orleans and his sons should be banished from France. But it could not be denied that the Duke of Orleans ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... was still going on, and Paul was called as a witness. His story went far towards disturbing the implicit confidence in Bucholz's innocence, and caused a reaction of feeling in the minds of many, which, while it did not confirm them in a belief in his guilt, at least made them doubtful of his ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... are rubbed between two glass plates, the grains will be seen under the microscope to be fissured, and if then wetted and filtered, the filtrate will be a perfectly clear liquid showing a strong starch reaction with iodine. Since no solution is obtained from uninjured grains, even after soaking for weeks in water, Brukner concludes that the outer layers of the starch grains form a membrane protecting the interior soluble layers from the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... the calumnies of his enemies, and dissipated them in such manner as doubtless to create a reaction in his own favor, Xenophon made use of the opportunity to denounce the growing disorders in the army; which he depicted as such, that if no corrective were applied, disgrace and contempt must fall upon all. As he paused ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... not far distant when the builders of homes in our American cities will be compelled to leave room for a garden, in order to meet the requirements of the people In the mad rush for wealth we have overlooked the natural state, but we see a healthy reaction setting in. With the improvements in steam and electricity, the revolutionizing of transportation, the cutting of the arbitrary telephone charges, it is becoming possible to live at a distance from our business. May we not expect in the near future to see one portion ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... something else must be tried, but most cures were very long, very costly. He would propose in the first instance giving two injections a week; later on three or even four. There might be a certain amount of reaction. ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... just at this moment. He says, "One is inspired with a sort of admiration that unlocks the heart, while gazing at such delicacy and child-like sweetness as is expressed in the face of that child." He points his cane coldly at Annette. "It causes a sort of reaction in one's sense of right, socially and politically, when we see it mixed up with niggers and black ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... phosphorus an inch long, with water sufficient to half cover it. At the same time, for the sake of comparison, I placed a similar quantity of phosphorus and water in another balloon full of pure atmospheric air. After some minutes, the reaction of ozone in the latter was most evidently manifested, while no trace of it was yet apparent in the former, which still gave off an odour of putrefaction. This, however, disappeared completely at the end of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various

... ratified, there cannot be a doubt that the young Octavius would have been pointed out to the vengeance of the patriots, and included in the scheme of the conspirators, as a fellow- victim with his nominal father; and would have been cut off too suddenly to benefit by that reaction of popular feeling which saved the partisans of the Dictator, by separating the conspirators, and obliging them, without loss of time, to look to their own safety. It was by this fortunate accident that the young heir and adopted ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... influence upon the estimate in which women as a whole are held that emanates from that most debasing of our evil institutions, prostitution.... The third great cause is the inertia in the growth of democracy which has come as a reaction following the aggressive movements that with possibly ill-advised haste enfranchised the foreigner, the negro and the Indian. Perilous conditions, seeming to follow from the introduction into the body politic ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... some kind, will make a man cheerful; but sitting at home, brooding and thinking, or doing little, will bring gloom. The reaction of this feeling is wonderful. It arises from a sense of duty done, and it also enables us to do ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson

... their waists. They had their arms free, to carry burdens, their feet free to march, but they could not use them to flee. Thus they were going to travel hundreds of miles under an overseer's lash. Placed apart, overcome by the reaction which followed the first moments of their struggle against the negroes, they no longer made a movement. Why had they not been able to follow Hercules in his flight? And, meanwhile, what could they hope for the fugitive? Strong ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... the benefit, just as his masters did during slavery. Thus slavery became a foe to true Christian manliness, self-respect, and faith in one's self and others. It took 200 years to force these traits into the Negro's being. It was destructive of all that is uplifting to his soul. There is now a reaction going on. Unless the forces of the Christian schools and churches are applied with energy, the work of construction will not soon overcome that ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 9, September, 1896 • Various

... dame came and fetched me to partake of their early supper, the grasp of his great hand, and the harvest-moon of his benevolent face, which was needed to light up the rotundity of the globe beneath it, produced such a reaction in me, that, for a moment, I could hardly believe that there was a Fairy Land; and that all I had passed through since I left home, had not been the wandering dream of a diseased imagination, operating on a too mobile frame, ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... least Greek of them all, the Magna Mater, and having found this to go forth to take to themselves more like unto her, in a word, to crave the sensational cults of the Orient. And the philosophy which Greece gave Rome was no better than the mythology. It is not strange that human thought experienced a reaction after a century which contained both Plato and Aristotle, but it is a pity that Rome should have learned her philosophy from a period of doubt and scepticism, an age in which the lesser masters, who ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter

... on a safe journey back to health. Then a thing, which would have been amusing if it had not been so deeply human, happened. She and John Sibley went out of the house together into the moonlit night, and the reaction seized them both at the same moment. She gave a gulp and burst into tears, and he, though as tall as Crozier, also broke down, and they sat on the stump of a tree together, her hand in his, and cried ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... night we encamped in the shelter of the mountains; the chiah, which grew in abundance around us, enabled us to kindle fires, and a salutary reaction took place in the spirits of the troops. According to a common practice of mine, I invited to supper the man whose life I had saved by frightening him into exertion. After swallowing a glass of warm wine, well sugared, and spiced with tincture of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various

... well-meaning, but unreasoning men, who were confident of the success of their party, brought to acquiesce in a proposition utterly false in its base, but the whole conservative element in society was placed in a position from which it would be thrown by defeat into a most dangerous reaction. Thus consciously or unconsciously all parties were using every effort in their power to prepare the popular mind for the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... upon a stronger and more systematic principle of contrast than any other of Shakespeare's plays. It moves upon the verge of an abyss, and is a constant struggle between life and death. The action is desperate and the reaction is dreadful. It is a huddling together of fierce extremes, a war of opposite natures which of them shall destroy the other. There is nothing but what has a violent end or violent beginnings. The lights and shades are laid ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... and by herself, alone at Chetwynde, her sufferings would have been great, it is true, but they would never have arisen to the proportions which they now assumed. They would never have reduced her to this anguish of soul which, in its reaction upon the body, thus deprived her of all strength and hope. That moment when she had decided against vengeance, and in favor of pity, had borne for her a fearful fruit. It was the point at which all her love was let loose ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... exposed. Controlling an impulse to close in I reloaded, taking great care in wrapping the greased patch about the bullet. I believed I had done for him, but to make sure I sent another pellet through the exposed foot. It twitched, as a dead limb will, but without muscular reaction. Reloading, and circling warily to avoid being taken by surprise by any companion, I reached the beech. My first shot had caught him through the base of ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... what I dreamed about. I had no thoughts; within, all was silence; I had received such a violent blow, and yet one that was so prolonged in its effects, that I remained a purely passive being and there seemed to be no reaction. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... letters that would be written from one man to another, but rather (to speak without irreverence) such as the human heart might address to its Creator, you will find them full of interest and encouragement. All sorts and conditions of men and women are here shown, in their varied reaction to the great acid that for these three years past has been biting into the life of the world. The priest, the actor, the profiteer, the society-woman, even the conscientious objector, are all touched lightly, ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various

... been made to shorten by artificial means the time necessary for their natural production. Some of these methods depend upon obtaining the most favorable conditions for acceleration of the enzyme action; others, upon the effects of micro-organisms; and still others, upon direct chemical reaction or physical alteration of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... felt it to be a lame one, and she was far from satisfied. But what, under the circumstances, would have been a better arrangement? The persistent question contained in itself its own answer. Only the prospect was blank—blank. The excitement of the contest was over now; the reaction had set in. She ventured to look forward; and, seeing for the first time what was before her, the long, dark, dreary level of a hopelessly uncongenial existence, reaching from here to eternity, as it seemed from ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... peace of that beautiful September morning. "Come, so much the better," thought I. "We have engaged them. We shall have a good time." My men had already begun to joke and to be more alert and abrupt in their movements. It was a kind of joyous reaction which always affects troopers when they begin to hear the guns and look forward to a good hard ride in which they, like the rest of us, are always certain of getting the best ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont

... frame of reference the compass points of the postwar era we've relied upon to understand ourselves. And that was our world until now. The events of the year just ended, the Revolution of '89, have been a chain reaction, changes so striking that it marks the beginning of a new era in the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... In the reaction that followed the feverish excitement of that day, Tennessee's Partner was not forgotten. A secret investigation had cleared him of any complicity in Tennessee's guilt, and left only a suspicion of his general sanity. Sandy ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte

... original and primitive. By habit and custom it exerts a strain on every individual within its range; therefore it rises to a societal force to which great classes of societal phenomena are due. Its earliest stages, its course, and laws may be studied; also its influence on individuals and their reaction on it. It is our present purpose so to study it. We have to recognize it as one of the chief forces by which a society is made to be what it is. Out of the unconscious experiment which every repetition of the ways includes, there issues pleasure or pain, and then, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... belching forth of vapours, ashes, and lava, are its activities, in as strict a sense as are warmth and the movements and products of respiration the activities of an animal. The phenomena of the seasons, of the trade-winds, of the Gulf Stream, are as much the results of the reaction between these inner activities and outward forces, as are the budding of the leaves in spring, and their falling in autumn the effects of the interaction between the organisation of a plant and the solar light and heat. And, as the study of the activities of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... respects from those of 1919 and 1920. In the earlier half year, January excepted, every reader reported a low average of current fiction, so low as to excite apprehension lest the art of the short story was rapidly declining. The latter six months, however, marked a reaction, with a higher percentage of values in November and December. Explanation of the low level lies in the financial depression which forced a number of editors to buy fewer stories, to buy cheaply, or to search their vaults for remnant of purchases made in happier days. Improvement ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... subjects who had become converts. The patient way in which the Christians bore their sufferings induced many others to inquire into the truth of their doctrines, and ultimately to embrace them. At last a reaction took place; the queen began to discover the ill effects of the restrictive system she had been endeavouring to establish, and once more showed an inclination to renew her intercourse with civilised nations. Friendly ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... observations on the conversion of iron into steel, in which there is but a single reference to phlogiston, but unfortunately this single reference spoils the general argument and the correct and evident interpretation of the reaction. It reads as follows: ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith

... a monkey climbing our family tree," said Nan, with a rash irrelevance she hoped might shock him into the reaction of a wholesome disapproval, "than all those stiffs she used to hold ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... ago, when she had suggested that Ned Tremayne, who was then at Torres Vedras with Colonel Fletcher, was the very man to fill the vacant place of military secretary to the adjutant, if he would accept it. In the reaction of self-contempt, and in a curious surge of pride almost as perverse as his humility, O'Moy had adopted her suggestion, and thereafter—in the past-three months, that is to say—the unreasonable devil of O'Moy's jealousy had slept, ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... recalled what a tremendous impression and reaction the Garfield order caused when it was published throughout the country. Many about the President were greatly worried and afraid of the disastrous effect of it upon the country. Cabinet officers rushed in upon him ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... living, it is the hardest problem for a mother to solve, how to supply this most important need of her daughter. Mental and moral influences are as real active agents in hygienic life as material ones. The reaction from asceticism, which despised the body and made it only a hindrance, or, at best, a slave to the soul, is in danger of going so far as to forget the rightful supremacy and control of the mental powers. A high purpose is often ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... noticeable thing how much fear increases love. I mean—for the aphorism requires explanation—how much we love in proportion to our fear of losing (or even to our fear of injury done to) the beloved object. 'Tis an instance of the reaction of the feelings: the love produces the fear, and the fear reproduces the love. This is one reason, among many, why women love so much more tenderly and anxiously than we do; and it is also one reason among many why frequent absences are, in all stages of love, the most keen exciters of the passion. ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... nurse, into the wisest, best, and most helpful guide, through those same dark roads of sickness and death, but the training for this was all to come. No wonder that in her inexperience she should soon cease to dwell on her father's bent figure and drawn, white face. A reaction was over her, and she must yield ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... undergone variation enough to enable us to judge, from many points of view, how far he was the splendid pamphleteer of a faction, and how far he was a contributor to the universal stock of enduring wisdom. Opinion is slowly, but without reaction, settling down to the verdict that Burke is one of the abiding names in our history, not because he either saved Europe or destroyed the Whig party; but because he added to the permanent considerations of wise political thought, and to the maxims of wise practice ...
— Burke • John Morley

... expired. He paused, as if weary, fixing upon Jasper his arrogant eyes, over which secret disenchantment, the unavoidable shadow of all passion, seemed to pass like a saddening cloud. "On the very top," he repeated, rousing himself in fierce reaction to snatch his laced cap off his head with a horizontal, derisive flourish towards the gangway. "And now you may go ashore to the courts, ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... much trouble they take to avoid attracting attention. There are still one or two window-dressers who lower the whole tone of the street by adhering to the gaudy-overcrowded style; but the majority, in a violent reaction from that, seem to have rushed to the wildest extremes of the simple-unobtrusive. They are delightful, I think, those reverent little windows with the chaste curtains and floors of polished walnut, in the middle of which reposes delicately ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various

... Shirling, Manual Training High School, all of whom read both manuscript and proofs, have been incorporated. Considerable material for the Practical Work, including the respiration experiment (page 101) and the reaction time experiment (page 323), were contributed by Dr. Scott. Professor Nowlin's suggestions on subject-matter and methods of presentation deserve special mention. To these and many others the author makes ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... deep disorder in the post-Periclean Greek spirit, and who can still find in the later paintings of Titian, when all that makes Titian visible and admirable is deducted, a something, just a little je ne sais quoi, which proves these later Titians to have originated in the Catholic reaction. If the theory of art as the outcome of momentary conditions be limited to such particularities, I am quite willing to accept it; only, such particularities do not constitute the large, important and really valuable characteristics of art, and it matters very ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... of a sunny opening and a stormy end, as one finds in turning the leaves of the volume which contains the beautiful epigram 'Nympha Caledoniae' in one part, the 'Detectio Mariae Reginae' in another; and this contrast is, no doubt, a faithful parallel of the reaction in the popular mind. This reaction seems to have been general, and not limited to the Protestant party; for the conditions under which it became almost a part of the creed of the Church of Rome to believe in her innocence ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... not long, though! Such reaction, such a hubbub in a trice! 'Rogue and rascal! Who'd have thought it? What's to be expected next, When His Majesty's Commission serves a sharper as pretext For.... But where's the need of wasting time now? Nought ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... I fear, been arrested by the sans culottes," Marie said mournfully as she burst into tears, feeling, now that the strain was over, the natural reaction after her efforts to be calm. For her mother's sake she had held up to the last, and had tried to make the parting as easy ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty

... pair of roses as Kitty wore in her cheeks that night, nor the girl herself in such a gale. Tom gave me a triumphant glance across the table, as if to say, See how the medicine works! It was either the beginning of the cure, or else it was a feverish reaction. ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... her on a sofa, and opened the window; for, by a natural reaction, she was beginning to feel rather faint. He gave his housekeeper strict orders to take care of her, then snatching ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... two hours Fritz sat against his tree, tightly but not painfully bound. Then from the reaction after his exciting adventure he sank into slumber. How long he slept he knew not, but he was at last awakened by a rough shake. Hands were untying his ropes. He was lifted to his feet, dazed, confused in mind, and weary of body. Rubbing his eyes, he looked and saw that he was again in the midst ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... female is one wholly different. The choice before her, as her ancient fields of domestic labour slip from her, is not generally or often at the present day the choice between finding new fields of labour, or death; but one far more serious in its ultimate reaction on humanity as a whole—it is the choice between finding new forms of labour or sinking slowly into a condition of more or less complete and passive sex-parasitism! (It is not without profound interest to note the varying phenomena of sex-parasitism as they present themselves in the animal ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... prospectus, they will at once see what a solid foundation I have for this new venture, which must inevitably fly upwards by leaps and bounds as soon as the shares are placed upon the market. Of course, when the truth comes out, there will be a reaction, but my clients may trust me to be on the look-out for that, and, after floating with all their investments to the top of the tide, to get out of the concern with enormous profits before the bubble eventually bursts. It is by a command of information of this ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various

... his whole manner changed as he stood for a few moments striving for utterance yet unable to speak. But at last the words came, hoarsely and with a violent effort, as in the reaction from his fit of indignation he almost murmured, "What have I done? What ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... emperor had openly espoused the Pagan party, according to Ambrose and Augustin. See Le Beau, v. 40. Beugnot (Histoire de la Destruction du Paganisme) is more full, and perhaps somewhat fanciful, on this remarkable reaction in favor of Paganism, but compare ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... the most piteous entreaties to his cruel parent, but always unavailingly. He had not the spirit to show resentment, even if the elementary principles would have permitted it. The reaction of his life had come. This first great sorrow had completely overwhelmed him, and, like most young persons in the agony of a primal disappointment, he believed that the world had now no charms for him, and that in future his existence would be little better than a long sad bore. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... too, this reaction was strongly felt. The revolution of 1848 had not been accomplished without an outburst from socialism or communism, which raised its red flag in the streets of Paris and was put down only after days of bloody battle ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... and lower. There was not a scrap of furniture in the place, or salient piece of wood to catch fire, and so as the spirit burned out, and the blazing straw settled down into some blackened sparkling ash, Hilary's spirits rose, and with the reaction as he clung there by the window ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... had now reached that point at which extremes are supposed to meet, and a reaction began ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... dejectedly, his lips working in a sort of spasmodic silence. Dodge eyed him with a curious, new-born commiseration. The boy's self-abasement, his misery, his flouting of his own weakness were not altogether the result of maudlin reaction. He presented a combination of manliness and effectiveness that perplexed and irritated Simeon Dodge. He did not want to feel sorry for him and yet he could not help doing so. George's broad shoulders ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... was illustrating terminal velocity. He jumped out of the open third story window, horrifying the class, until they learned he'd rigged a canvas life net on the floor below. Or the time he let a mouse loose among the female students to illustrate chain reaction. Or the afternoon he played boogie-woogie ...
— This is Klon Calling • Walt Sheldon

... expression both of face and gesture and movement is given in the series where a pailful of cold water is unexpectedly poured over the back of a bather seated in a sitz bath—astonishment, dismay, anger, eagerness to escape, and the reaction to shock are all clearly shown. Darwin's studies on "the expression of the emotions" would have been greatly assisted by such analysis, and the subject might even now be developed by the use of serial instantaneous records obtained ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... cool, and snapped my glasses into their case, though the reaction made me want to shout. Archie turned to me with a nervous smile and a quivering mouth. 'I think we have won ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... raptures over the old house mossed over with history and tradition, which would be his future home. Noting the eagerness of his interest, her heart gave a sudden bound, hope took her by the hand, and she dreamed dreams. There might come a reaction and improvement. At times the intuition of an invalid was the voice of nature, crying out for that which she needed. Warner's longing for this change might be the precursor of his cure. Who could read ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... street the baby stopped crying. The words Rosalind had come from Chicago to say to her mother were said and she felt relieved and almost happy. The silence between the two women went on and on. Rosalind's mind wandered away. Presently there would be some sort of reaction from her mother. She would be condemned. Perhaps her mother would say nothing until her father came home and would then tell him. She would be condemned as a wicked woman, ordered to leave the house. It ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson

... said Robert quickly. He was eager to escape from the room, not alone for the sake of air, but because the place choked him. After a period of excitement and mental intoxication the reaction had come. The colors were growing dimmer, the perfume in the air turned to poison, and he ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... some uncertainty, but of no great importance to ascertain whether the Angle subjects of the insulted but forgiveful princess were from Britain or from Hanover—islanders already in a state of reaction against their continental fatherland, or simply Angles of the Elbe. The accounts of Procopius respecting both countries are eminently obscure and contradictory. It is only certain that as early as the ninth century there were continental ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... consequence from the persistence of force and the primary qualities of matter.[20] That this must be so is evident if we consider that, were it not so, force could not be permanent nor matter constant. For instance, if action and reaction were not invariably equal and opposite, force would not be invariably persistent, seeing that in no case can the formula fail, unless some one or other of the forces concerned, or parts of them, disappear. And as with a simple law of this kind, so with every ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... statesman—he has a strong cabinet in his vestry. Men who, having made big ventures in the business world, are not averse to an occasional venture in matters not directly in their line. He has enough reaction among them to keep ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... towards the luckless James in his English subjects was no more plainly manifested than in the London citizens. Elizabeth, with all her follies and her faults, had been the idol of London, as her father before her. Now a reaction had set in, and no scorn could be too great for her undignified and presumptuous successor. This contempt was well shown by the dry reply of the Lord Mayor some few years later, when the King, in a rage at being refused a loan he desired of the citizens, threatened to remove his Court and all ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... tangled emotions and thoughts of the inner life, before any action took place, was more pleasurable to the writer, and easier, than any description of their final result in act. This was borne to a wearisome extreme in fiction, and in these last days a comfortable reaction from it has arisen. In poetry it did not last so long. Morris carried us out of it. But long before it began, long before its entrance into the arts, Browning, who on another side of his genius delighted in the representation ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... music an example of choruses piled up like so many Ossas on Pelions in such majestic strength, and hurled in open defiance at a public whose ears were itching for Italian love-lays and English ballads. In these twenty-eight colossal choruses we perceive at once a reaction against and a triumph over the tastes of the age. The wonder is, not that the 'Israel' was unpopular, but that it should have been tolerated; but Handel, while he appears to have been for years driven by the public, had been, in reality, driving them. His earliest oratorio, 'Il Trionfo del Tempo' ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... conceivable; but since we are compelled in this case to assume that there was a series of successive explosions, steam would hardly answer the purpose; it would be more reasonable to suppose that the cause of the explosion was some kind of chemical reaction, or something affecting the atoms composing the exploding body. Here Dr Gustav Le Bon comes to our aid with a most startling suggestion, based on his theory of the dissipation of intra-atomic energy. It will be best to quote him at some length ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... instance—way down in the bottom of that serene heart of hers had she been frightened? In the ensuing desperate struggle for life had she struggled just one little tiny bit harder because Stanton was in that life? Now, in the dreadful, unstrung reaction of the adventure, did her whole nature waken and yearn and cry out for that one heart in all the world that belonged to her? Plainly, by her silence in the matter, she did not intend to share anything as intimate even ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... Montaigne in all his century." It appears, therefore, that the sixteenth century, instead of being, as we had supposed, one in which the Reformation had brought with it a revival of religious earnestness and a reaction against religious formalism, and in which on the battle-field, in the dungeon and at the stake, as well as through voluntary exile and the relinquishment of property, thousands in every country testified to the fervor and sincerity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... of dread caused by the discovery there came a reaction, and Rob exclaimed eagerly, "Some wild beasts have been fighting;" and then as his companion shook his head, the boy uttered a forced laugh, and, to carry off the ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... example of the blindness which reaction against excess of ascetic doctrine bred in the eighteenth century, that Diderot should have failed to see that such sophisms as these are wholly destructive of that order and domestic piety, to whose beauty he was always so keenly alive. It is curious, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... things, and, of course, I could not look on without having my own heart touched. It was my privilege to spend many delightful weeks in watching the progress of minds earnestly seeking the way of life and early consecrating themselves to their Saviour." [1] But after a while a severe reaction set in and in the course of the summer she became careless in her religious habits, shrank from the Lord's table as a "place of absolute torture," and while spending a fortnight in Boston in the fall, entirely omitted ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... passionate reaction against destiny. It's a queer thing, when you think of it, for a girl to be brought up face to face with the wreck of a tragic passion, to grow up in the house with love's ashes and to see what were lovers ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... and apparently frivolous life of the Italian peninsula, there has ever been a resolute, clear, earnest patriotism, fed in the scholar by memories of past glory, in the peasant by intense local attachment, and kindled from time to time in all by the reaction of gross wrongs and moral privations. Sometimes in conversation, oftener in secret musing, now in the eloquent outburst of the composer, and now in the adjuration of the poet or the vow of the revolutionist, this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... be a reaction, probably during, or immediately after, tea-time, for these two women were sincerely fond of one another. The irritating fact that Edith was eighteen years younger than her guest made Eglantine feel sometimes a desire to guide, even to direct her, and if she had the disadvantage ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson

... have been necessary or unnecessary, a blunder or a crime, but it was the logical result of a bitter war; it was the cruel policy of a conquering power. Those who supported it were able men, who deemed it the wisest thing to do; who dreaded a reaction, who feared for themselves, and sought by this means to perpetuate their sway. As one of the acts of revolution, it must be judged by the revolution itself. The point is, not whether it was wrong ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... and reaction. The lad's look must have warned Miss Heth that all this went rather far. In fact, she began a sort of retraction, a hurried little soothing away of her impolitic and fairly conclusive remarks. But Dalhousie interrupted ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... came about is hard to explain in detail. The school was designed to produce docile and contented members of the social order; in him it bred up a savage and relentless critic of that order. The result may be ascribed partly, no doubt, to the natural reaction of an ardent, liberty-loving temperament against a system of rigid discipline and petty espionage. The eleves—French was the official language of the school—were not supposed to read dangerous books, and their rooms were often searched for contraband literature. But they easily found ways to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... and, above all, do not alter your style of play in consequence. Nothing pays like your own best and steadiest game and a stolid indifference to all the brilliant things that your opponent is doing. It is unlikely that he will keep on doing them all through the game, and when the reaction comes you will speedily make up the leeway. There are many ups and downs in a game of golf; and when the players are at all evenly matched, and neither has lost his head, early differences have a way of regulating themselves before ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... saw a glimmer of light, and drawing nearer I discovered an opening to the upper world through which, with great exertions, we dragged ourselves back to the sweet air of heaven. The delight of the reaction was exquisite like that of escaping from paradise ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... rifle in the dark and lay down. Within five minutes the swinging of the punka and the squeaking of the rope resumed, but regularly this time; Mahommed Gunga had apparently unearthed a man who understood the business. Reaction, the intermittent coolth, as the mat fan swung above his face, the steady, evenly timed squeak and movement—not least, the calm of well-asserted dignity—all joined to have one way, and Chota-Cunnigan-bahadur slept, to dream of fire-eyed tigers dancing on tombstones laid on the roof ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... are the result of responses to stimuli they may be modified by attention either to the stimuli or to the reaction that attends the stimulation. Four ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion

... here and ask, "Are you of opinion that it is possible to abolish warfare?" Unfortunately, we can cherish no such pleasing hope. I do emphatically believe that in time men will come to see the wild folly of engaging in sanguinary struggles; but the growth of their wisdom will be slow. Action and reaction are equal; the fighting instinct has been impressed on our nature by hereditary transmission for countless generations, and we cannot hope suddenly to make man a peaceful animal any more than we can hope to breed setters ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... two the men stood staring at each other over the great treasure which they had unearthed in that dread place, shaking with the reaction of their first excitement, and scarcely able ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... As a reaction from the season of gloom and industrial strife that had just passed away the agencies that purvey and stage-manage sensations laid themselves out to do their level best on this momentous occasion. Men ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... accidental possession of such a toy; or whether the tendency of the mind dictated the selection of it; or, lastly, whether the nature of the pastime, corresponding with the taste which chose it, may not have had each their action and reaction, and contributed between them to the formation of a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various

... made a break at last in the barriers surrounding the ancient demesne—not, indeed, by direct assault, as Fontainebleau and its neighborhood were not in the line of the Prussian march, but by one of those little eddies of reaction by which great movements affect distant currents ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... an odd feeling of regret. She almost wished she had answered Gilbert differently. Of course, he had insulted her terribly, but still—! Altogether, Anne rather thought it would be a relief to sit down and have a good cry. She was really quite unstrung, for the reaction from her fright and cramped ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... brought the usual reaction, and the commerce of the embryo city lagged, but gradually improved under the stimulus of increasing emigration to the West. In 1816 it had reached such a point that a bank was deemed necessary to the proper transaction ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... in several other States. I think the petition helped a good deal the healthy reaction which, owing largely to the efforts of humane societies and Natural History Associations and especially of some very accomplished ladies, has arrested the destruction of these beautiful ornaments of our woods and fields and gardens, "our fellow pilgrims on the journey ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace. Luckily the religion of peace is ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... sudden reaction, and the sight of the brand-new silk and velvet garments Lionel sent down for them, almost killed them with joy. "'Tis my Lionel's voice I hear!" cried Dame Ursula as they were being drawn up ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... William came up and reviewed the troops, pitching his tent on a neighbouring eminence.[541] The army comprised a strange medley of nationalities. More than half were foreigners; and on these William placed his principal reliance, for at any moment a reaction might take place in favour of the lawful King. The Williamite army was well supplied, well trained, admirably commanded, accustomed to war, and amounted to between forty and fifty thousand. The Jacobite force only consisted of ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... herself the reaction came soon and severely. On the evening before Rosie's funeral, Heliet found her seated by the little bier in the hall, gazing dreamily on the face of her lost darling, with dry eyes and strained expression. She sat down beside her. Clarice took no notice. Heliet scarcely knew how to ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... certain theories, then she must find a way to reconcile life to the inscrutable designs of nature. The theory that continual strife was the very life of plants, birds, beasts, and men seemed verified by every reaction of the present; but if these things were fixed materialistic rules of the existence of animated forms upon the earth, what then was God, what was the driving force in Kurt Dorn that made war-duty some kind of murder which overthrew his mind, what was the love in her heart of all living ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... policy just as did any considerable body of thought, whether French political thought of the eighteenth century, or German religious thought of the sixteenth century, even at a time when the means of producing that reaction, the book, literature, the newspaper, rapid communication, were so immeasurably more primitive and rudimentary than ours. What we think and say and do affects not merely ourselves, but that whole body politic of Christendom of which we are an ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell

... were closely knit together by hopes and fears in common. When sorrow fell upon one household the little community all mourned. But if the wires brought glad words that all at the front were unharmed, there would come a period of happy reaction; the little society would be wildly gay, especially if one or more young heroes from the front had come home with a slight wound,—just enough to make a demigod ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux

... Mrs. Wilkinson, her child lay in a sound sleep; for, with the appearance of the edges of two teeth through her red and swollen gums, the feverish excitement of her system yielded to a healthy reaction. ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur

... in meditation ever since breakfast-time. As for Agatha, she had been so tired with her excursion the previous day that she had done nothing but sleep, and had scarcely opened her lips to her husband or to any one. Now, on this rainy day, she felt the reaction of her high spirits—was dull, dreamy; wished her husband would come and talk to her, and "make a baby" of her. She could not think why he stood at that odious window, pondering, counting rain-drops apparently, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... necessarily last indefinitely, though it may continue for years. As soon as some check has been put upon the rising tide of feeling, and a reaction is evident, those who before had been silent begin to voice their reactionary feeling, while those who shortly before had been in the ascendant begin to take their turn of silent dissent. Thus the waves are accentuated, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... birthday, removed from her own custody and placed under the control of a Trust. She sorrowed rather because she had dragged poor Harold, against his better judgment, into a most horrible scrape, and moreover because, when the reaction had fairly set in, when the exaltation had fizzled away and the young-lady portion of her had crept timorously back to its wonted lodging, she could only see herself as a plain fool, unjustified, undeniable, without a shadow ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... jovial. To lunch alone with a young lady who opened champagne with a dexterity that bespoke considerable practice must be very wicked, he felt certain, and he was shocked to realise that he didn't care if it was. His years of repression were beginning to find their outlet in a natural reaction. ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells

... be readily imagined that the tycoons, by their arrogant assumption to the imperial dignity, made for themselves many enemies amongst the powerful daimios. The disaffected united to form a party of reaction which, in the end, overthrew the tycoon, restored the mikado to his ancient splendour, and gave Japan to the world. In 1853, an American squadron, under Commodore Perry, came to Yokohama, and demanded a trade treaty with ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... results of the reaction.] The results of this reactionary legislation are partly summed up by Appian, when he attributes to it a dearth of citizens, soldiers, and revenue. To our eyes its effects are clearer still. Slave labour and slave-discontent, ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... either as a reaction from the light thrown, or lighter thought upon her overwrought nature, or possibly from some subtle, potent influence emanating from the censer burning near her, Sarthia lapsed into ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner

... invisible spirit might avenge the insult offered to its impassive, deserted companion. But absence has no such commanding power. If the mind has been enthralled by the influence of personal fascination, there is generally a sudden reaction. The judgment, liberated from captivity, exerts its newly recovered strength, and becomes more arbitrary and uncompromising for ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... thus that the whole government of the heavens is that of the Lord. Now as the relation which heaven bears to hell, and that which hell bears to heaven, is such as exists between two opposites, which mutually act against each other, and the result of whose action and reaction is a state of equilibrium, in which all things may subsist, therefore, in order that all and everything should be maintained in equilibrium, it is necessary that he who governs the one should also govern ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... reaction of the ardour and excitement that had so long possessed him. The victory had been gained—he had been obliged to leave James to work in his own cause, and would be no longer wanted in the same manner by his cousin. The sense of loneliness, and of ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge



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