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Reflex   Listen
noun
Reflex  n.  
1.
Reflection; the light reflected from an illuminated surface to one in shade. "Yon gray is not the morning's eye, 'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow." "On the depths of death there swims The reflex of a human face."
2.
(Physiol.) An involuntary movement produced by reflex action.
Patellar reflex. See Knee jerk, under Knee.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Reflex" Quotes from Famous Books



... Trains must be caught, I suppose. I'm glad you're settled here, Lilias. I feel as if a sort of reflex of old Beechcroft were ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... in a monograph on musical therapeutics, expresses the opinion that musical sounds received by the auditory nerve, produce reflex action upon the sympathetic system, stimulating or depressing the vaso-motor nerves, and thus influencing the bodily nutrition. He maintains, without fear of contradiction, that certain mental conditions are benefited by suitable musical harmonies. Muscle-fatigue is overcome ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... talk. But let your cheerful sense, grave or gay, be as good an offering to your friends as you know how to make. Your next special occasion—for which you might have "saved" all these things—will lose nothing of value. It may rather gain fourfold, by the reflex inspiration that replenishes every unselfish outpouring of the nobler ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... reaching out of her right hand Marylin could have deflected that perfect aim. In fact, her arm sprang toward just that reflex act, then stayed itself with the jerk of one solid body avoiding ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... nationality. He set up a military sovereignty in the land, and this demanded that the citizens should be soldiers, live in the camp, and devote themselves solely to the art of war. It is likely he perceived the imperfections of the system, anticipated its reflex effect upon the character and manners of the Spartans, and foreknew its weakness and the consequent perils of the people when it should inevitably be put to stress and strain by the aspirations of the subject classes after freedom and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... which succeeds the autumnal close, called the "Indian Summer,"—a reflex, as it were, of the early portion of the year—strikes a stranger in America as peculiarly ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... than merely well. For the mosquito, after all, when properly fed, goes to bed like a gentleman and leaves you alone, whereas that insatiable and petty curiousness of the fly condemns you to a never-ending succession of anguished reflex movements. What a malediction are those flies; how repulsive in life and in death: not to be touched by human hands! Their every gesture is an obscenity, a calamity. Fascinated by the ultra-horrible, I have watched them for hours on end, and one of the most cherished ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... finger, and immediately the sucking instinct takes place; let a bright light shine into the open eye, and the iris at once contracts; plunge the little one into cold water or let it be subject to any bodily discomfort and at once the crying reflex takes place. The simple, direct responses to stimuli such as sneezing, coughing, wrinkling, crying, response to tickling, etc., are termed reflexes. The more complex responses which are purposeful and are designed to aid or protect the organism, such as sucking, ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... Elizabeth greeted him with formal courtesy. Though her manner had the repose necessary to conceal her sweet agitation, an observant person might have noticed a deference, a kind of meekness, that was new in her demeanor towards men. Peyton, whose mien (though not his feeling) was a reflex of her own, was relieved at this appearance of indifference, and hoped it would continue. His mind being on this, the stately curtsey and profuse smirks of Miss Sally were quite ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens

... individual, we learn as follows: 'Even while the cerebral hemispheres are entire, and in full possession of their powers, the brain gives rise to actions which are as completely reflex as ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... brimful of interest; and, despite this reflex result of the English long-blunder with Ireland (how our sins come home to roost), the Great Republic casts its beams across the whole world and I was never so proud to be an American democrat, as I see it light this hemisphere in a ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... so markedly illustrates this characteristic as the prince of neo-Hebraic poetry, Yehuda Halevi, in whose poems the principle of Jewish national poesy attained its completest expression. They are the idealized reflex of the soul of the Jewish people, its poetic emotions, its "making for righteousness," its patriotic love of race, its capacity for martyrdom. Whatever true and beautiful element had developed in Jewish soul life, since the day when Judah's ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... and sat down. The boy stood in the doorway, staring at his reflex self in the mirror. The captain ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... that obtained in the neighborhood, but they kept open house for all who liked to come, and whom they themselves liked well enough to ask in the first instance. And here (as in some other matters) this curious pair discovered a reflex identity of taste, rare enough in the happiest of conventional couples, but a gratuitous irony in the makers of a merely nominal marriage. Their mutual feelings towards each other were a quantity unknown to either; but about a ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... are now satisfied that the apparition is but a reflex of yourself; and, in uttering your secret feelings to him, you make this phantom the dark symbolic mirror for reflecting to the daylight what else must be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... of neurone groups seems to vary in two respects—as to modifiability and as to power to hold modifications. The neurone groups controlling the reflex and physiological operations are least easily modified, while those controlling the higher mental processes are most easily modified. The neurone groups controlling the instincts hold a middle place. So far as permanence goes, connections between sensorimotor neurone groups seem to hold modifications ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... gathered him to herself again and was satisfied for a moment. But as time went on, she began to realize more and more that he did not alter, that he was something dark, alien to herself. She had thought him just the bright reflex of herself. As the weeks and months went by she realized that he was a dark opposite to her, that ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... Orator implies, that it is only after our physical and political needs are supplied, and when we are "free from necessary duties and cares," that we are in a condition for "desiring to see, to hear, and to learn." Nor does he contemplate in the least degree the reflex or subsequent action of Knowledge, when acquired, upon those material goods which we set out by securing before we seek it; on the contrary, he expressly denies its bearing upon social life altogether, strange as such a procedure is to those who live after the rise of the Baconian philosophy, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... Reflex action of the brain and secondary automatism! It must be so—Haeckel, thou reasonest well. But when the "old Injun" and my High- Dutch ancestor are upon me, I reason not at all, and then I see visions and dream dreams, and it always comes true, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... contradictory elements; while the more philosophical spirit of the Teutonic nations, and their genius for meditation and reflection, could not be so easily satisfied. The character of the Teutonic world of spirits is the reflex of this struggle. The foggy veil which covers their forms, the mysterious riddles in which their existence is wrapped, the anxious pensiveness which forms a part of their character, all are the ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... reactionaries flashed with sinister pleasure when they saw Kaid. This outward display of Orientalism could only be a reflex of the mind. It was the outer symbol of Kaid's return to the spirit of the old days, before the influence of the Inglesi came upon him. Every corrupt and intriguing mind had a palpitation ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... not wide apart. Of course I did not REMARK these lineaments at the time: I was too horrified for that. I noted them afterwards, when the form returned on my inward sight with a vividness too intense to admit of my doubting the accuracy of the reflex. But the most awful of the features were the eyes. These were alive, yet ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... without effect, during his natural life, to transform himself into a sailor. The destroyer was his victor; the inner man was but a reflex of the outer. He pulled an old cloth cap over his face, which was immersed in a massive black beard, bordering two red, swollen cheeks; and with his begrimed hands he rubbed lustily his inflamed eyes—once brown, large, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... day was hot and the windows were up, and I looked down on the ant-working industry in the street. How different from the view that lay out of my window in the old log house; but I was resolved to draw no long bow of astonishment, for in a man's surprise is a reflex ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... affirmation of any quality without having, at the same time, the correlative consciousness of its negation. Now the one consciousness is a positive, the other consciousness is a negative notion; and as all language is the reflex of thought, the positive and negative notions are expressed by positive and negative names. Thus it is with the Infinite.[338] Now let us carefully scrutinize the above deliverance. We are told that "relatives are known only in and through each other;" that is, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... feet, and he would involuntarily stoop to pick her up, straighten her dress, and soothe her woe. There was no hearty pleasure in his service even now. Nobody was certain that he felt any pleasure at all. His helpfulness was not spontaneous; it seemed a kind of reflex action, a survival of some former state of mind or heart; for he did his favours in a dream, nor heard any thanks: yet the elixir was ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the door with a force that cracked the wooden hurricane bolt across and opened a three-inch slit between leading edge and lintel. Jeff had a glimpse of slanted red eyes and white-fanged snout before reflex sent him headlong to ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee

... (Hybrid Tea).—A gloriously-finished globular slightly imbricated cupped bloom with velvety black scarlet cerise shell-shaped petals, whose reflex is solid pure orangey maroon without veining. An excellent bloom, ideal shape, brilliant and non-fading colour with heavy musk rose odour. Erect growth and flower-stalk. Foliage wax and leathery and not too large. A very floriferous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various

... VON HARTMANN, Attention is either spontaneous or reflex. The voluntary fixing our mind upon, or choosing an idea, image, or subject, is spontaneous attention, but when the idea for some reason impresses itself upon us then we have enforced, or reflex attention. ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland

... evermore—neglected and undone. It is not thus a father treats his son, And those whose folly credits it, degrade God's love and fatherhood, that never fade, By lies as base as devils ever spun. Man's love is but a pale reflex of God's, And God is love, and never will condemn Beyond remission—though He school with rods— His children, but will one day comfort them. Dives will have his drink at last, and stand Among the faithful ones at God's ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... the singing of old folk tunes, as taught in the elementary schools, are of great value. There is a grace and poetry of movement about some of the children thus taught, which is engaging in the extreme. Nor can this be without its reflex action upon the mind of the child. When taught to move easily and to express fluently in pose and gesture, the child will have acquired some tendency towards a corresponding facility of expression in other ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... organs. These affections are, so to speak, a kind of physical ideas, which are retained in the central organs, constituting what might be called physical memory, and may be combined in a manner which answers to association and imagination, or may give rise to muscular contractions, in those "reflex actions" which are the mechanical ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... remarkable: she might have been in a trance, her eyes open, yet unseeing. Nothing in the picture moved but Old Pretty's tail and Tess's pink hands, the latter so gently as to be a rhythmic pulsation only, as if they were obeying a reflex stimulus, like ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... Kalkbrenner a splendid fish which he had selected for his table. The artist was the counterpart of the man. He considered every success as by right his due, and recognised merit only in those who were formed on his method or at least acknowledged its superiority. His artistic style was a chastened reflex of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... to the office several persons were waiting to see him. But as he went downstairs he halted on the, landing, his hand going to his forehead, a reflex movement significant of a final attempt to achieve the hitherto unattainable feat of imagining her as his wife. If he might only speak to her again—now, this morning! And yet he knew that he needed no confirmation. The reality was there, in the background; and though refusing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... His anger, there lies a contradiction; for he himself fronts and defies the outrage. There is no depth of despair which this good cannot illumine with joyous light, for the despair is itself the reflex of ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... long night came to an end at last—and at twenty minutes before six I opened the gate at the Sloman cottage. It was so late in September that the morning was a little hazy and uncertain. And yet the air was warm and soft—a perfect reflex, I thought, of Bessie last night—an electric softness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... uncanny and weird in its light lying upon earth's white shroud rent here and there by long, dark shadows across the trail. There was an indefinable mystery in the atmosphere. Micmac John, accustomed as he was to the wilderness, felt an uneasiness in his soul, the reflex perhaps of the previous night's awakening, that he could not quite throw off—a sense of impending danger—of a calamity about to happen. The trees became mighty men ready to strike at him as he approached and behind every bush crouched a waiting enemy. His guilty conscience ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace

... legal."(201) Ans. 1. Be it so; he cannot hereupon infer, that the Apostle doth only condemn the observation of Judaical days, for he seeth nothing of observing days with opinion of necessity, but simply and absolutely he condemneth the observing of days, and his reasons reflex on our holidays, as well as the Jewish. 2. Their opinion of necessity he either refers to the institution which these days once had from God, or else to the use which, at that time, they had for God's worship ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... if we look back at the greatest civilisations of antiquity, we shall find, it is said, that what gave them vigour and intensity were purely human interests: and though religion may certainly have had some reflex action on life, this action was either merely ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... soon as the custom of individual ownership begins to gain consistency, the point of view taken in making the invidious comparison on which private property rests will begin to change. Indeed, the one change is but the reflex of the other. The initial phase of ownership, the phase of acquisition by naive seizure and conversion, begins to pass into the subsequent stage of an incipient organization of industry on the basis of private ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... some relation between the contraction of this muscle and the secretion of tears. Can you tell me what this relation is? Does the orbicularis press against, and so directly stimulate, the lachrymal gland? As a slight blow on the eye causes, by reflex action, a copious effusion of tears, can the slight spasmodic contraction of the orbicularis act like a blow? This seems hardly possible. Does the same nerve which runs to the orbicularis send off fibrils to the lachrymal glands; and if so, when the order goes for the muscle ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... needful to notice some supplementary causes of force in expression, that have not yet been mentioned. These are not, properly speaking, additional causes; but rather secondary ones, originating from those already specified reflex results of them. In the first place, then, we may remark that mental excitement spontaneously prompts the use of those forms of speech which have been pointed out as the most effective. "Out with ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer

... hand whipped for the gun. It came cleanly out. There was no flap to his holster, and the sight had been filed away to give more oiled and perfect freedom to the draw. Years of patient practice had taught his muscles to reflex in this one motion with a speed that baffled the eye. Fast as light that draw seemed to those who watched, and the draw of Terry Hollis appeared to hang in midair. His hand wavered, then clutched suddenly, and they saw a flash of metal, ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... bottom, he had too little sympathy with his fellows to find in their mistakes, or sins, or sufferings, the wherewithal to bring out of us our most generous tears. Those he wept once or twice himself when writing were drawn from him by a reflex self-pity that is easily evoked. In genuine pathos, Hugo is vastly ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... man was once perfect but has now lost his perfection, then mortals have never beheld in man the reflex image of God. The lost image is no image. The 259:18 true likeness cannot be lost in divine reflection. Understanding this, Jesus said: "Be ye there- fore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... species of probability to correct and regulate the first, and fix its just standard and proportion. As demonstration is subject to the controul of probability, so is probability liable to a new correction by a reflex act of the mind, wherein the nature of our understanding, and our reasoning from the first probability ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... relations with the environment, even though its coordination and sensation are not accomplished by any special parts that would deserve the name of elementary nervous organs. Its many activities are simple responses to stimuli that reach it from without, and its reactions to such stimuli are called reflex processes. Should the light become too strong, it will slowly crawl to a shady place; should the water in which it lives become warmer, it responds by displaying greater activity. It exhibits, in a word, the property of irritability—that is, simply the power of receiving and reacting ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... situation. We believe readily when it is agreeable to do so, and all pilgrims have ever sought to heighten the attractions of the objects of their interest. It adds to their own enjoyment of them, and, after all, is it not a reflex compliment to ourselves? If "there is but one such pig in the world," have not I ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... mean—when horrid thrills coursed through me. The uncanny thing began to wriggle and rattle with old-time vigour. I do not like to think of that simian inheritance. But, fortified by Nimrod's assurance that it was 'purely reflex neuro-ganglionic movement,' I hardened my heart and captured his ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson

... wonder, then, that I like this man, whose face is the reflex of his nature, whose heart is essentially all goodness, whose aims are so high, that I break out impetuously sometimes: "But your family, Doctor, they would like to see you, oh! so much. Let me tempt you to come home with me. I promise to carry you every ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... vigorous, and more prompt, than that action which forms only the return. Now the soul which is in this profound and strong action, being turned towards its God, does not perceive this action, because it is direct, and not reflex; so that persons in this condition, not knowing how rightly to describe it, say that they have no action. But they are mistaken; they were never more active. It would be better to say they do not distinguish any action, than that they ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon

... leads inevitably back to the assumption of some rudimentary moral consciousness without which the development of a moral sense would be an impossibility. The history of mankind, moreover, shows that conscience, so far from being merely the reflex of the prevailing customs and institutions of a particular age, has frequently {76} closed its special character by reacting upon and protesting against the recognised traditions of society. The individual conscience has often been in advance of its times; ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... the moon is gazing down Upon her lovely reflex in the wave, (What time she, sitting in the zenith, makes A silver silence over stirless woods), Then, where its echoes start at sudden bells, And where its waters gleam with flying lights, The haven lies, in all its beauty clad, More lovely even than the golden lakes The poet ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... was a favorite axiom with him and the very tone in which he pronounced the words was a reflex of his character ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... starving for your pains. The key to the business is of course the belly; difficult as it is to keep that in view in the zone of three miraculous meals a day in which we were brought up. Civilisation has become reflex with us; you might think that hunger was the name of the best sauce; but hunger to the cold solitary under a bush of a rainy night is the name of something quite different. I defend civilisation for the thing it is, for the thing it has COME to be, the standpoint of a real old Tory. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... his legs, may by the skillful physician be brought to a few words or steps before he himself is aware of it by completely turning his attention to something else and producing the stimulus toward the movement in a reflex-like way. Still more successful is the effort to resolve the inhibited action into its component parts and to show to the patient who cannot perform the action as a whole that he can go through the parts of it after all. As soon as he has ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... ribbons of seaweed: dim all along the shore, where the white of the breaking wavelet melted into the yellow sand; and dim in his own heart, where the manner and words of the lady had half hidden her starry reflex with a ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... may also be used between an adjective or a participle and the noun to which the adjective or participle relates; as, "It does not appear that brutes have the least reflex sense of actions AS distinguished from events; or that will and design, which constitute the very nature of actions AS such, are at all an object of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... kind. The little cions I grafted into the tree were soon lost in the overgrowth, and yet all the branches that came from them carried the genius of one single variety and of none other. And I often speculated whether there were any reflex action of these many varieties on the root, demanding a certain kind of service ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... the reins gathered in his hand, staring at her, his face stiffened in a reflex of the cold passion of hers. Upon her last word, he called to the horse with an oath as if it had been the beast that offended him, turned the sleigh and drove off. Tenney, breathless, was now on the scene. His thin lips curled and drew back, the snarl ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... around and caught Boyd's wrist in a grip tight enough to bring a reflex backward jerk from the boy. "That's no way to make up for Sheldon's death-runnin' away from home to fight. Don't give me any nonsense about goin' to kill Yankees because they killed him! When a man goes to war ... well, he takes his ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... whatever. It will be sufficient to see the man who is thinking of a figure while he himself is counting. As soon as the dangerous digit is reached, the man will give some unintentional sign. Perhaps his breathing will become a degree deeper, or stop for a moment, his eyelids may make a reflex movement, his fingers may contract a bit. This remains entirely unnoticed by any one in the audience, but the professional mind-reader has heightened his sensibility so much that none of these involuntary signs escapes ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... dawn,—the "soft, guileless consolations" of our cigars, as Aeschylus says of certain other incense, the cool, fragrant breezes, gentle as remembered kisses upon the brow, the tremulous tenderness of the star-beams, the listening hush of midnight, having swayed us to a mood of pensiveness which found a reflex in our conversation. From the warning glare of sunlight the heart shuts close its secrets; but hours like these beguile from its inmost depths those subtile emotions, and vague, dreamy, delicious thoughts, which, like plants, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... which he built himself was his hobby, and in the refinement and catholicity of taste it shows, there is so just a reflex of his characteristics that an account of it is indispensable to any book which claims to ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys

... incurred through the deranged state of the liver. My zeal was great, and my application was unintermitting; but spirits radically vitiated, chiefly through the direct mechanical depression caused by one important organ deranged; and, secondly, by a reflex effect of depression through my own thoughts, in estimating my prospects; together with the aggravation of my case, by the inevitable exile from my own mountain home,—all this reduced the value of my exertions in a deplorable way. It was rare indeed that I could satisfy my own judgment, even tolerably, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... a reflex way, as the one great danger which overshadowed Europe for generations, and against which the Byzantine empire proved the capital bulwark, Mahometanism may rank as one of the Byzantine aspects or counterforces. And if there is any popular error applying to the history of that great convulsion, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... but the chief seat of their production. At this time the Roman religious conceptions were identified with those of Greece, and the Greek gods received the Latin names by which we now know them. The influence of the Greeks upon Rome was very marked, but the reflex influence of the material civilization of Italy upon Greek art was altogether bad, and thus the splendor of classical art went ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... Love burns Desire is Love's pure flame; It is the reflex of our earthly frame, That takes its meaning from the nobler part, And but translates the language ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... it pure or impure, issue the principles and maxims that govern society. Law itself is but the reflex of homes. The tiniest bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private life afterwards issue forth to the world, and become its public opinion; for nations are gathered out of nurseries, and they who hold the leading-strings of children ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... the reflex influence of preaching! It may have different effects on different natures. Its effect on mine has been marked enough. I'm thoroughly surfeited. I don't want to hear another sermon while I am here, and I don't mean to. They are all sermons. The subject may be scientific, ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy

... acts which were first done only with effort and by a conscious will, become automatic. The will ceases to concern itself. By what is called reflex action, memory is developed in the spinal cord and the muscular centers (sec. 273). There is thus a great saving of actual brain work, and one important cause of ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... born in the same way as he was born. This goddess, invented for the occasion, was never fully alive, and remained, like Nephthys, a theological entity rather than a real person. The texts describe her as the pale reflex of her husband. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... to the bosoms and business of men.' The pathos in LEAR is indeed more dreadful and overpowering: but it is less natural, and less of every day's occurrence. We have not the same degree of sympathy with the passions described in MACBETH. The interest in HAMLET is more remote and reflex. That of OTHELLO is at once equally ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... henceforth the agitations of peace will be more impassioned for the coming generation than the agitations of war for the last. But that sympathy, almost morbid, which England feels with the condition of social man, other nations echo by a reflex sympathy with England; not always by a friendly sympathy. Like the [Greek: aerobatentes] and funambuli of ancient days, equally when keeping the difficult line of advance, or when losing it, England is regarded with a searching gaze that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... opened on this occasion with a brilliant pageant. While military force was arrayed to overawe the republican Puritans of the east, it was thought to dazzle the aristocratical descendants of the cavaliers by the reflex of regal splendor. Lord Botetourt, one of the king's lords of the bedchamber, had recently come out as governor of the province. Junius described him as "a cringing, bowing, fawning, sword-bearing courtier." Horace Walpole predicted that ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... Shakespeare's stage armies has sometimes found its reflex in the limited means of country theatres of more modern date. The ambition of strolling managers is apt to be far in advance of their appliances; they are rarely stayed by the difficulties of representation, or troubled with doubts as to the adequacy of their troupe, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... carnivorous animals to approach their prey unperceived. Two other explanations have, however, been suggested. One is, that the prevalent white of the arctic regions has a direct effect in producing the white colour in animals, either by some photographic or chemical action on the skin or by a reflex action through vision. The other is, that the white colour is chiefly beneficial as a means of checking radiation and so preserving animal heat during the severity of an arctic winter. The first is part of the general theory that colour is the effect of coloured light on the objects—a ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... an operator can preserve teeth for fifteen dollars with tin, which would cost fifty dollars with gold, ought he not to do so? Upon examination of the cavities from which oxidized plugs have been removed, these oxids will be found to have had a reflex effect upon the dentin; the walls and floors will be discolored and thoroughly indurated, and to a great degree devoid of sensitiveness, although they were sensitive when filled. Tin is valuable in case of youth, nervousness, impatience, high ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler

... regarding the physical universe as a unit, recognizing the notes of intelligence of a deep coercive and comprehensive plan involved throughout, feeling that our human intelligence was the reflex or microcosmic representation of the planning, upholding mind, that if so, no conceivable limitation could be placed upon its expansion and conquests, that further it would be incomprehensible that the colonizing (so to speak) of the ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... group the industrial phenomena accordingly as they served more fully and directly to satisfy human wants, or as they affected quantitatively or qualitatively the standard of consumption, and to consider the reflex actions of changed consumption upon modes of industrial activity. Or again, considering Industry to consist essentially of organised productive human effort, those factors most closely related to changes in nature, conditions, and intensity of work might form the centre of scientific ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... I'll stand up for my rights!" He looked around at the line of gun-fighters, but their set lips did not answer his smile. Only in their eyes, those subtle mirrors of the mind, did he read the passing reflex of their scorn. "You're scared, you coward," went on Rimrock scathingly as McBain looked warily about. "Come out, if you're a man, and prove your title, or by grab, I'll come ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... voyage, his nerves were unstrung, inducing the frame of mind in which people see ghosts. Yes, that was it; he had been seeing ghosts. It was not a living thing, this renewed yearning for a sight of her. It was only the reflex of something past. It could be explained psychologically. It was the sort of evanescent sentiment inspired by old songs, or by the scent of faded flowers, reviving old joys tenderly, perhaps poignantly, but fleetingly, insubstantially, and only as the wraiths of what they were. Yes, that was ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King

... 'nd calm— You bet yer life he never did no human bein' harm! A certain hearty manner 'nd a fullness uv the vest Betokened that his sperrits 'nd his victuals wuz the best; His face was so benevolent, his smile so sweet 'nd kind, That they seemed to be the reflex uv an honest, healthy mind, And God had set upon his head a crown uv silver hair In promise of the golden crown He meaneth him to wear; So, uv us boys that met him out 'n Denver there wuz none But fell in love with Dana uv ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... the more than Stygian night Descends with slow and owl-like flight, Silent as Death (who comes—we know— Unheard, unknown of all below;) Above that dark and desolate wave, The reflex of the eternal grave— Gigantic birds with flaming eyes Sweep upward, onward through the skies, Or stalk, without a wish to fly, Where the reposing lilies lie; While, stirring neither twig nor grass, Among the trees, in silence, pass Titanic animals ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... the face of heaven—a piece of cut-glass or a pair of paste buckles with more brilliance and effect, than a thousand dew-drops glittering in the sun. He would be more delighted with a patent lamp, than with "the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow," that fills the skies with its soft silent lustre, that trembles through the cottage window, and cheers the watchful mariner on the lonely wave. In short, he was the poet of personality and of polished life. That which was nearest to him, was the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... to Him that was ridiculous. One of the ancients said, "The utmost that a man can do is to attribute to the being he worships his imperfections and impurities, magnified to infinity, it may be, and then become worse by their reflex action upon his own nature." This was verified in the ancient mythical religion, without ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880

... where everybody was crowded around the underhatch of the boat, which was now the side door. Abe shoved through, and I shoved in after him. Newsman's conditioned reflex; get to where the story is. I even caught myself saying, "Press," as I ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper

... newer life of the Renaissance. And this brings us to the question: What was Giorgione's relation to that great awakening of the human spirit which we call the Renaissance? Mr. Berenson answers the question thus: "His pictures are the perfect reflex of the Renaissance at its height."[141] If this be taken to mean that Giorgione anticipated the aspirations and ideals of the riper Renaissance, I think we may acquiesce in the phrase; but that the onward movement of this ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... he then? Flower-wreathed chalices Tinted with rosy dyes, bright elegance Of shape and garniture, but brimming up Draughts bitter to the taste and nauseous. He gazed upon their beauty, which his soul In thought had dower'd with purity and truth, As from the inward reflex of itself; But, gazing, all his visions pass'd away, And cold reality rose death-like up To mow the aureate blossoms from ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... for literary attainments; billiards, shooting, and hunting, would not come in amiss, for he must not be considered a useless being by men; not that women are much influenced by the opinion of men in their choice of favourites, but the reflex action of the heart, although not so marked as that of the stomach, exists and must be kept in view, besides a man who would succeed with women, must succeed with men; the real Lovelace is loved by all. Like gravitation, love draws all things. Our young man would ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... his head and handed him to Mamma, and set Mamma on the floor. That was reflex; the thinking part of his brain knew he didn't need to clear for action when arguing with the electronic image of a man ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... medical superintendent and myself joined him. At this time the condition of the patient was as follows: The face presented the appearance known as facies hippocratica: the eyeballs were prominent, the corneae glassy, the pupils widely dilated, not acting to light, and there was no reflex action of the conjunctivae; the lips were livid, the tongue tumefied, but pallid, the skin ashy pale, the cutaneous tissues apparently devoid of elasticity. There was an oblique depressed mark on the neck, more evident on the left side; the small veins and capillaries of the surface of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... life—the fullest exponent of our notions, wants, wishes, and aspirations. Not a hope, nor fear, nor prejudice—not a particle of our blind trustfulness, or of our as blind unbelief, that would not find its reflex in the broadsheet. R. N. F. had arrived at the same conclusion, only in a more limited sense. The advertisement columns were all to him. What cared he for foreign wars, or the state of the Funds? as little did he find interest in railway ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... one idea with another is clearly apparent in the animal mind, and may be attributed to its excellent memory and powers of attention. In everyday-life this becomes apparent as the reflex of their experiences, the impressions of which, having once impinged on their sensibility have left their mark, so to speak, and this experience thus practically acquired, shows itself at times as the shrewdest ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann

... conquerors of the Goidels, and that Druidism then passed over into Gaul about 200 B.C.[1004] But it is hardly likely that, even if the Druids were accepted as priests by conquering Gauls in Britain, they should have affected the Gauls of Gaul who were outside the reflex influence of the conquered Goidels, and should have there obtained that power which they possessed. Goidels and Gauls were allied by race and language and religion, and it would be strange if they did not both possess a similar priesthood. Moreover, the Goidels had been ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... greatest pieces of work ever undertaken by man—greatest, not only because of the mechanical difficulties overcome, but because of the influence for good that the ship, when completed, had upon the natives of the Southern Seas, as well as its reflex influence in exciting admiration, emulation, and ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne

... words of its political leaders and giving him to understand that in Germany there was no one who was not concerned about the future of South America, predicting for all its divisions most glorious prosperity—a reflex of the Empire, always, provided, of course, that ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Philippine Assembly had ceased to exist. But it was impossible for the mother country, which had spontaneously given the Filipinos a taste of political equality, again to yoke them to the old tutelage without demur. Alternate political progress and retrogression in the Peninsula cast their reflex on this Colony, but the first sparks of liberty had been gratuitously struck which neither reaction in the Peninsula nor persecution in the Colony itself could totally extinguish. No Filipino, at that period, dreamed of absolute independence, but ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... "ideas" about the phenomenon. The "ideas" are reflexes of the phenomenon, reflected in our midst as in a mirror; the reflexes may be distorted, as in a convex or concave mirror, but they suggest an ideal reflex valid in infinity. It is of the utmost importance to realize that the words which are used to express the ideas and the ideals are THE MATERIALIZATION of the ideas and ideal; it is only by words that we are enabled to give to other human beings an exact or nearly exact impression ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... children are so imitative that they quickly copy the outward manifestations of a feeling, and the inner state tends to follow. This is further a reason for leading them into acts of loving service, that love and kindred gracious feelings may gain strength through the reflex influence of the ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux

... being good in a world that can neither comprehend goodness nor admire it? On the whole, the notary was much better satisfied with himself than with human nature around him, although, if he had only known it, he himself had grown to be the reflex—the image as in a mirror—of what he thought other men were; it is always so. There was just this much truth in him at the bottom of his scorn and grumbling—he flattered himself that if he could see undoubted virtue he could admire it; and ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... handicraft, reference to which I have hitherto made. But my convictions are so pronounced that I cannot forbear the reiteration. For while it is ennobling to the individual, giving independence of character and more financial ability, the reflex influence is so helpful in giving the race a higher status in the industrial activities of a commonwealth. Ignorance of such activities compel our people mostly to engage in the lower and less remunerative pursuits. I could not find the men he ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... carries with it no small degree of sea drift. The influx of the lower column flowing up stream, after it passes the dead point, is allowed time and opportunity for the sediment to deposit. The principle of the reflex current is somewhat that of an eddy, not only produced by the conflict of two opposing bodies of water, but also is much influenced in the under currents by the multitude of estuaries presented by the irregular sea ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the hero—not of this story, perhaps, but the real hero—was much the handsomer of the two. It is always so in romances; and romances—good ones, that is—are the reflex of life. Such a combination of manly beauty with unshakable courage and reckless audacity was not often seen as Lacy exhibited. Sempland was homely. Lacy had French and Irish blood in him, and he showed it. Sempland was a mixture of sturdy ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... Sonnet 42 the poet certainly declares that his Ideal Man is simply his Objective Self.[009] For, as Mr. Heraud beautifully and lucidly remarks, "the Many, how multitudinous soever, are yet properly but the reflex of the One, and the sum of both is the Universe." And herein, according to Mr. Heraud, we find the key ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... I soon found on the very doorway of this church, where the ripples of the outspread ocean, and grotesque imaginations of the monsters of its deeps, fixed, as it might seem, for ever in stone, gave a distorted reflex, from the little mirror of the artist's mind, of that mighty water, so awful, so significant to the human eye, which yet lies in the hollow of the Father's palm, like the handful that the weary traveller lifts from the brook by the way. ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald



Words linked to "Reflex" :   involuntary, fart, eructation, electrical shock, myosis, oscitancy, tremble, blinking, yawn, gag reflex, conditioned reflex, goose bump, stretch reflex, micturition reflex, hiccup, vomiting, puking, regurgitation, plantar reflex, sneeze, electric shock, pupillary reflex, reflex response, goose pimple, flatus, rectal reflex, light reflex, wind, reflex camera, defecation reflex, sneezing, reaction, nictation, startle reflex, pharyngeal reflex, farting, instinctive reflex, inborn reflex, singultus, Babinski sign, vomit, reflex action, knee-jerk reflex, belch, reflex angle, disgorgement, Babinski reflex, flush, unconditioned reflex, suckling reflex, innate reflex, gulping, start, reflexive, burping, eye blink, acquired reflex, nictitation, reflex epilepsy, blush, Moro reflex, automatic, miosis, physiology, hiccough, knee jerk, wink, breaking wind, patellar reflex, reflex arc, horripilation, conditional reflex, belching, jump, shock, myotactic reflex, sternutation, yawning



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