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Reflex   Listen
verb
Reflex  v. t.  
1.
To reflect. (Obs.)
2.
To bend back; to turn back.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Reflex" Quotes from Famous Books



... old friends by reserve forces unsuspected. Sterling integrity of character and high moral motives illuminate Dr. Eggleston's fiction, and assure its place in the literature of America which is to stand as a worthy reflex of the best thoughts of this age."—New ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... he had jumped convulsively. Grant was puzzled that he was not aware what had happened. Some sort of reflex? But reflex from what? Tingling coursed its way up his left leg and he rubbed ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll

... reflex with the exclusionists: that substances not "truly meteoritic" did not fall from the sky, but were picked up by "truly meteoritic" things, of course only on their surfaces, by impact with ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... look upon her. "Did it ever occur to you that the words of your 'guides' were, in reality, but a reflex of the wishes of Pratt ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... possessed of considerable firmness, and be extremely anxious for a cure, so as to give full and intelligent co-operation. 2. That for some days or weeks prior to the operation the mouth and palate should have been trained to open widely and to bear manipulation, without reflex action being excited. Professor Billroth of Vienna,[120] and Mr. Thomas Smith[121] of London, have had cases which prove the possibility of performing this operation in childhood, under chloroform, with the assistance, in the English cases, of a suitable gag, invented by Mr. Smith. The ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... inevitable under capitalist individualism—it is evident that they will have immense material and moral advantages, notwithstanding the a priori objections of the present individualism which can not see or which forgets the profound reflex effects of a change of the social environment ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... same time he was never insistent. His manner was always affable, never impatient, never reproving; even when he might justly have given reproof. This gentleness in his manner, which, was only the reflex of the charity in his heart, soon won over his people, who now looked forward to his visits and considered themselves highly ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous

... pressed into the bushes. The headlights seemed to spread a fan far to either side, showing the full width of the drive and its borders, and about half the height of the over-arching trees. There was a figure in uniform sitting beside the chauffeur, whom I saw dimly in the reflex glow, but the body of the ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... nothing; now little by little it is all revealed. I have been often told of wondrous caverns whereon the halls of Ablamore were built. It must be these. No one descends here ever; and the king only has the keys. I knew the sea flooded the lowest vaults; and it is probably the reflex of the sea which thus illumines us.... They thought to bury us in night. They came down here with torches and flambeaus and saw the darkness only, while the light came out to meet us, seeing we had none.... It brightens without ceasing.... I am sure the ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck

... her tremulous Domes; Her gardens frequent with the stately Palm, Her Pagods hung with music of sweet bells: Her obelisks of ranged Chrysolite, Minarets and towers? Lo! how he passeth by, And gulphs himself in sands, as not enduring To carry through the world those waves, which bore The reflex of my City in their depths. Oh City! Oh latest Throne! where I was rais'd To be a mystery of loveliness Unto all eyes, the time is well nigh come When I must render up this glorious home To keen Discovery: ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... itself evident in two ways—consciously and unconsciously. The conscious manifestations of mind are volitional, while the unconscious, "vegetative," reflex operations of ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... group of muscles over whose action it presides; and when the muscles receive this wave of nervous influence they contract. This kind of response to stimuli is purely mechanical, or non-mental, and is ordinarily termed reflex action. The whole of the spinal cord and lower part of the brain are made up of nerve-centres of reflex action; and, in the result, we have a wonderfully perfect machine in the animal body considered as a whole. For while the various sensory surfaces are severally adapted to ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes

... himself into a Stoical rather than Epicurean severity of Attitude, sat down to contemplate the mechanical drama of the Universe which he was part Actor in; himself and all about him (as in his own sublime description of the Roman Theater) discolored with the lurid reflex of the Curtain suspended between the Spectator and the Sun. Omar, more desperate, or more careless of any so complicated System as resulted in nothing but hopeless Necessity, flung his own Genius and Learning with a bitter or humorous jest into the general Ruin which their insufficient glimpses ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam

... reflex nervous action and may be primary when the irritation exists in the lungs or air passages, or secondary when caused by irritation of the stomach, intestines, or other parts having nervous communications with the respiratory ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... the nervous system arises, like the other systems, from a division of labor. It does not create the function, it only brings it to a higher degree of intensity and precision by giving it the double form of reflex and voluntary activity. To accomplish a true reflex movement, a whole mechanism is necessary, set up in the spinal cord or the medulla. To choose voluntarily between several definite courses of action, cerebral ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... 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 property (in slaves); the horde develops into a more or less self-sufficing ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... thys courte." The tone of discipline, to conclude from the poems of Hugh Rhodes, was undoubtedly high; and, whatever difficulties he may have encountered in training the boys to his own high standards, his "Book of Nurture" must always possess considerable value as a reflex of the moral and social ideals of a Master of the Children ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... point of view which would be more within my range of understanding than Hegel? I can't understand free will as independent of our physical being and I don't see how will can be something different from a kind of complicated reflex. I am afraid there is no help for it. I will have to inform myself somehow. Anyway my head always seems clearer over here. I wish I could be so in America. You would not believe how waked up I can get. I believe it is in the air. There is something both stimulating and relaxing in the moral ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff

... Spaniards, and the irresolution of the Duke of Savoy. I believe he concluded to let things take their course, and cause his own removal. But he, at least, was honest. He was not casting his eyes about, to see on which side lay his own interest. His countenance is a true reflex of his soul—and what he says, ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... 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 ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell

... a slave, is only a slight reflex of the stupendous fraud practised by his master. And its indulgence has far more logic in its favor, than the ablest plea ever written for slave holding, under ever such peculiar circumstances. The attempt to prove Mr. Bibb in the lie, is a signal failure, ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb

... culture 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

... quiet. The cream had soured. There was nothing that she could give him except water. All the eggs that were left she had put in the knapsack that Ashton was carrying down to her brother. The baby now showed the full reflex of his mother's long hours of anxiety and fear. He fretted and cried and would ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... a sworn jury, are ruled only by public opinion. John Palmer's day was also the day of Thomas Fyshe Palmer,[405] and the governments, in their prosecutions for sedition, knew that these would have a reflex action upon the minds of all who ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... the astonished shepherds, then it was, as if waiting a given signal, the multitudinous heavenly host stood forth and sang the good tidings of great joy which ultimately shall be to all people. Their song was but the reflex of what had been announced. There sweet singers told in words of praise of God's beneficent purpose ultimately to bless all the families of the earth. It was a song of glory from heaven, and the hills of Judea echoed the message of peace and good will toward men. And throughout ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford

... wars, all discords cease, And, rounded to perpetual peace, The bounteous years shall come and go Unvexed; and all humanity, Nursed to a loftier type, shall grow Like to that image undefiled, That fair reflex of Deity, Who, first, beneath the morning skies And glowing palms of paradise, A God-like man, awoke and smiled!" * * * * Like some weird strain of music, spent In one full chord, the sweet voice ceased; A faint white glow smote ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... indifference. Spring cheers not, nor winter heightens our gloom, Autumn hath foregone its moralities, they are hey-pass re-pass [as] in a show-box. Yet as far as last year occurs back, for they scarce shew a reflex now, they make no memory as heretofore—'twas sufficiently gloomy. Let the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... who, never having had a love affair of her own, felt a keen interest in those of others, and as she occupied a place in Southton akin to the "personal mention" column of a modern society newspaper, it may be said her remark was a sufficient reflex of public opinion. ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... for scenes like this, I might believe it possible," he answered slowly. "As it is, I do not! The exquisite beauty of the earth denies it! I pin my faith to a great analogy. The natural world is a reflex of the spiritual, and in the natural world there is no annihilation. Nothing can ever die. Nor can our souls ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... education. If the shoemaker's wife's response to the prophet's grand poem about the care of God over His creatures, took the form of acknowledgment for the rain that found out the holes in the people's shoes, it was the more genuine and true, for in itself it afforded proof that it was not a mere reflex of the words of the prophet, but sprung from the experience and recognition of the shoemaker's wife. Nor was there anything necessarily selfish in it, for if there are holes in people's shoes, the sooner they are ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... facing prejudice. There was no need to keep talking, and no use in it. Still, some reflex made him ...
— The Planet with No Nightmare • Jim Harmon

... have been struck with the brilliancy of our own conversation and the profundity of our own thoughts, when we shared them with one, with whom we were in sympathy at the time. The brilliancy was not ours; it was the reflex action which was the result of the communion. That is why the effect of different people upon us is different, one making us creep into our shell and making us unable almost to utter a word; another through some strange magnetism enlarging the bounds of our whole being and ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black

... face was still radiant with the reflex of royalty, he was holding forth one day to a listening group at Sir Joshua Reynolds', who were anxious to hear every particular of this memorable conversation. Among other questions, the king had asked him whether he was writing anything. His ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... heart but some peripheral or visceral nerve. The impulse passes thence to the medulla, and so reaching the sensory centres starts a feeling of pain that radiates into the chest or down the arm. There are three main varieties:—(1) the reflex, (2) the vaso-motor, (3) the toxic. The reflex is by far the most common, and is generally due to irritation from one of the abdominal organs. An attack of pseudo-angina may be agonizing, the pain radiating through the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... of thankfulness, the direct reflex of his first impotent rage, threatened to sweep up and drown the fires of his wrath. Already he wanted to slump down into a chair and rest weary body and wearier, relieved brain; he wanted a minute or two in which to realize that she was there—that his unfulfilled ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans

... 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 Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... 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

... 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 ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... thy bright crown Is no mere crown of majesty; For with the reflex of His own Resplendent thorns Christ ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various

... ovaries for a supposed reflex disease) swept the whole country during the eighties and threatened the unsexing of the entire female population. The ovaries had the reputation of causing all the trouble that the flesh of woman was heir to. Oophorectomy was the entering wedge, since then everything ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... movement, as I see it, is a purely emotional reflex of the situation in Russia. The cardinal vice of the movement is that it started as a wing, i.e., as a schismatic and disintegrating movement. Proceeding on the arbitrary assumption that they were the Left, the ingenuous leaders of the movement had to discover a Right, ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... heat. But, Nature, why repin'st thou at this thought? Why should I think upon a father's debt To her that thought not on a daughter's due? But still, methinks, if I should see her die, And therewithal reflex her dying eyes Upon mine eyes, that sight would slit my heart: Not much unlike the cockatrice, that slays The object of his foul infections, O, what a conflict doth my mind endure! Now fight my thoughts against my passions: Now strive my passions against my thoughts: Now ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... response to any stimulus from the outer world is the reflex act. Theoretically a reflex act is dependent upon the interaction of a sensory surface, a sensory nerve cell, a motor nerve cell and a muscle, i. e., a receptive apparatus and a motor apparatus in such close union that the will ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... doctor say, the other day, that a man's chief lesson was to pull his brain down into his spinal cord; that is to say, to make his activities not so much the result of conscious thought and volition, as of unconscious, reflex action; to stop thinking and willing, and simply do what one has to do. May there not be a hint here of the ultimate relation of the individual to the social organism; the relation of our literature to our national ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... Countries: (as Apples, Peares, Cheries, Filberds, red and white Plummes, Damsons, and Bulles,) for we meddle not with Apricockes nor Peaches, nor scarcely with Quinces, which will not like in our cold parts, vnlesse they be helped with some reflex of Sunne, or other like meanes, nor with bushes, bearing berries, as Barberies, Goose-berries, or Grosers, Raspe-berries, and such like, though the Barbery be wholesome, and the tree may be made great: doe require (as all other trees doe) a blacke, fat, mellow, cleane and well tempered soyle, ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson

... the Laconians into an ideal 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... general anesthetic. Cocaine should not be used on children under ten years of age because of its extreme toxicity. To these two postulates always in mind, a third one, applicable to both general and local anesthesia, is to be added—total abolition of the cough-reflex should be for short periods only. General anesthesia is never used in the Bronchoscopic Clinic for endoscopic procedures. The choice for each operator must, however, be a matter for individual decision, ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... that, in due time, I should be the legal property of their bright-eyed and beloved boy, Tommy. I was struck with the appearance, especially, of my new mistress. Her face was lighted with the kindliest emotions; and the reflex influence of her countenance, as well as the tenderness with which she seemed to regard me, while asking me sundry little questions, greatly delighted me, and lit up, to my fancy, the pathway of my future. ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... remodeled. The "Communism," for instance, that the race is now heading toward, is, materially, a different article from the "Communism" it once left behind. We move in an upward spiral. No doubt moral concepts are the reflex of material possibilities. But, for one thing, moral concepts are in themselves a powerful force, often hard to distinguish in their effect from material ones; and, for another, these material possibilities unfold material facts, secrets of Nature, that go to enrich ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... public pianist. He had success, but not with the great public. The critics called him cold, objective, a pianist made, not born. But musicians and those with cultured musical palates discerned a certain acid quality in his playing. His gloomy visage, the reflex of a disordered soul, caused Baudelaire to declare that he had added one more shiver to his extensive psychical collection. In Paris the Countess X.—charming, titled soubrette—said, "Have you heard Racah play the piano? He is a damned soul out ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... lamentations had not only been natural, they had been expected of her. But now she was brought face to face with a grief she must hide from every eye. If a child is punished, and yet forbidden to weep, what a tumult of reproach and anguish and resentment is in the small pathetic face! Maggie's face was the reflex of a soul in just such a position. She blamed Allan, and she excused him in the same moment. The cry in her heart was "why didna he tell me? Why didna he tell me before it was o'er late? He kent weel a woman be to ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr

... came to his feet quickly. In automatic reflex, he began to come to the salute but then caught himself. He said ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... 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 ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... made a lasting impression on King George III. The alliance of France with the Americans created a sort of reflex patriotism which the Government did what it could to foster. British Imperialism flamed forth as an ideal, one whose purposes must be to crush the French. The most remarkable episode was the return of the Earl of Chatham, much broken and in precarious ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... I know are so constituted that they suspect the existence of a snake under every blade of grass. It is not a happy disposition either for the person who is possessed with this idiosyncrasy, or in its reflex action upon others. True charity thinketh no evil. It is far better to be over sanguine in our charitable estimate of other men's motives, even if we do sometimes ultimately find that our estimate was ...
— Churchwardens' Manual - their duties, powers, rights, and privilages • George Henry

... the sympathy of the people with his policy. Even at Koenigsberg, the seat of government, public opinion demanded the measures he had desired. Prussia was not only strong once more, but was ardent to redeem its disgrace. The reflex influence of the popular movements in Prussia and Austria upon one another had intensified both, until the more advanced leaders in the two countries cared little whether the process of German regeneration was begun under Hohenzollern or Hapsburg leadership. Into this surcharged ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... this little volume are a reflex of the great religious stirring of the nation. They describe in a gracious and pathetic way the various abysmal needs of this tragic time, and they indicate how many human souls are finding comfort and healing and strength. They are finding peace as of old, through the assurance that "earth has ...
— The Comrade In White • W. H. Leathem

... Thus, in many persons, a slight stimulation of the nape of the neck, of the scalp, &c., has an erogenic effect. In all cases alike, the stimulus is conducted along the sensory nerves to the erection centre, and it is the stimulation of this centre which by reflex action leads to distension of the penis with blood and its consequent erection. The physical stimulus leading to erection may also result from some pathological process, such as inflammation of the penis or of the urethra. Finally, certain internal physiological processes ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... little circle of even the most incompetent judges, who are always telling them that they are great geniuses. For it is natural to conclude that the opinion of the people whom you commonly see is a fair reflex of the opinion of all the world; and it is wonderful how highly even a very able man will estimate the value of the opinion of even a very stupid man, provided the stupid man entertains and frequently expresses an immensely high opinion of the ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... honest, so like a woman, that he could not but regard the channel through which anything reached him, as of the nature of that which came to him through it; how could that serve to transmit which was not one in spirit with the thing transmitted? To his eyes, therefore, Jermyn sat in the reflex glory of Shelley, and of every other radiant spirit of which he had widened his knowledge. How could Cosmo for instance regard him as a common man through whom came to him first that thrilling trumpet-cry, full of the glorious despair of a ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... imperfect success, from the miserable thwartings I 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 exertion ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... has attended these be attributed. But it is little less than certain, that it is on account of the want of that resolute heroic Christian spirit which Covenanting calls forth and embraces, that our missionaries are not even now diffused over all the earth, and our nation is not, by a reflex hallowed influence, throughout all its extent, as the ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... 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

... that Benito sneezed. He had felt the approach of that betraying reflex for some minutes, but had stifled it. Those who have tried this under similar circumstances know the futility of such attempts; know the accumulated fury of sound with which at length bursts forth the ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... heart is a condition composed of rags, hunger and unhappiness. She has no sympathy or time for a sanitary and contented friend," said Mrs. Sproul with a decided tartness that was only a reflex of the deep affection she bore the mistress of the Little House, which had existed ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... apt to be complex and intricate; but the purer and simpler the thought is, the greater is its force. Perhaps the prayers that one prays for those whom one loves send the strongest ripple of all. If it happens that two of these ripples of personal emotion are closely similar, a reflex action takes place; and thus is explained the phenomenon which often takes place, the sudden sense of a friend's personality, if that friend, in absence, writes one a letter, or bends his mind intently upon one. It also explains the way ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson

... sent for perusal, and who, in returning them, did not hesitate to say that she did Not share his young American correspondent's admiration for the author of Pelham. She had met him frequently in London society, and regarded his manners as affected and himself as a reflex of his own conceited model of a gentleman—a style which Thackeray perhaps did not too grossly caricature when he made Chawls Yellowplush announce, from his own lips, his sounding name and title to a distinguished London drawing-room ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... his heart suddenly swell. No one had ever spoken to him like this. The newspapers had been complimentary for a day and had accepted the verdict of circumstances the next. His wife had simply been the reflex of other people's opinion and ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... order has gone on unfolding through the geologic ages, mounting from form to form, or from order to order, becoming more and more complex, passing from the emphasis of size of body, to the emphasis of size of brain, and finally from instinct and reflex activities to free volition, and the reason and consciousness of man; while the purely physical and chemical forces remain where they began. There has been endless change among them, endless shifting of the balance ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... brilliant, there was something 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 ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace

... contrary Opinion; and that I can make it appear, Bossu goes too far in fixing Fable as the Essential Fund and Soul of the principal Action in an Epic Poem. To begin with Rapin, who has this Passage, sur la Poetique, Reflex. 5. La Poesie Heroique, &c. "Heroique Poesie, according to Aristotle, is a Picture or Imitation of an Heroic Action; and the Qualities of the Action are, That it ought to be (among others) true, or at least, ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley

... 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 ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... looked, courtly and free from vulgar emotion. Thus we were set at liberty from Dublin. Parliaments and installations and masked balls, with all other secondary splendors in celebration of primary splendors, reflex glories that reverberated the original glories, at length had ceased to shine upon the Irish metropolis. The 'season,' as it is called in great cities, was over—unfortunately, the last season that was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... outside. The clerk insinuated a card through the space between the door and door-jamb, and Mr. Bommaney took it from his fingers without revealing himself. He had some difficulty in making out its inscription, for his eyes were newly tearful, and, whilst he peered at it, a reflex of his late emotions brought a sniffling sob again. He was freshly ashamed ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... time a Northern king of the V[a]icya caste, Cil[a]ditya (in whose reign the Chinese pilgrim, Hiouen Thsang, visited India), made Syrian Christians welcome to his court (639 A.D.).[92] The date of the annual Krishna festival, which is a reflex of Christmastide, is variously fixed by the Pur[a]nas as coming in July ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... implied the contrary. You have said, you know, that, even if you granted men to be in possession of 'spiritual and moral truth,' there might still be large space for a divinely constructed book from the reflex operation of the intellect, the imagination, and so forth, upon the products of the spiritual faculty; both directly, and also indirectly, inasmuch as external influences modify ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct, or in the reflex way. Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard and absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... "spirit," was dependent on bodily organisation. "When the babe is born it shows no sign of mind. For a brief space hunger and repletion, cold and warmth are its only sensations. Slowly the specialised senses begin to function; still more slowly muscular movements, at first aimless and reflex, become co-ordinated and consciously directed. There is no sign here of an intelligent spirit controlling a mechanism; there is every sign of a learning and developing intelligence, developing pari passu with the organism of which it is a function. ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... darkness cannot be present at the same time, for in nature one of the first rules we find is that no two objects can occupy the same place at the same time. No matter how much one is given to the worry habit, he experiences reflex moments when he does not worry. Some of our pessimistic friends who are given to the worry habit say it is impossible for them not to worry. You are thinking of what you are reading, and if your mind is interested ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter

... mellow'd reflex of a winter moon; A clear stream flowing with a muddy one, Till in its onward current it absorbs With swifter movement and in purer light The vexed eddies of its wayward brother: A leaning and upbearing parasite, Clothing the stem, which ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... Testament betrays both Egyptian and Babylonian influences; the social hygiene is a reflex of regulations the origin of which may be traced in the Pyramid Texts and in the papyri. The regulations in the Pentateuch codes revert in part to primitive times, in part represent advanced views of hygiene. There are doubts if the Pentateuch code really goes back to the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... fellow, no,' exclaimed Fielding energetically. 'For Heaven's sake, don't take me for a reflex of Mrs. Willoughby!' ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... the red reflex of the glare cast from the battlefields of Europe, the invisible manacles that have been cunningly laid upon our freedom have become shamefully apparent. They rattle in ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... frown severe, Extends for those who wrong us;—to revere With soul, or grateful, or resign'd, the train Of mercies, and of trials, is to gain A quiet Conscience, best of blessings here!— Calm Conscience is a land-encircled bay, On whose smooth surface Tempests never blow; Which shall the reflex of our life display Unstain'd by crime, tho' gloom'd with transient woe; While the bright hopes of Heaven's eternal day Upon the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... made up of individuals, it is clear that were each to improve himself, the result would be the improvement of the whole. Social advancement is the consequence of individual advancement. The whole cannot be pure, unless the individuals composing it are pure. Society at large is but the reflex of individual conditions. All this is but the repetition of a truism, but truisms have often to be repeated to ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... 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 may ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... thought is its physical exercise. It learns certain thoughts—to go through certain exercises. These become a habit, and in time the muscle becomes stiff and incapable of learning any new movements—also incapable of leaving off the old. The religion of an old person is merely so much reflex nervous action. It is beyond the reach of reason. The individual's mind can affect it as little as it can teach the other muscles of his body ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... the first time, my soul lifted itself, as a sick man lifts himself upon his elbows, in his painful bed. Now, flashing straight back upon the outburst of my defiance and despair, like the reflex action of a strong muscle, there came into my mind, if not into my heart, these impulsive ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... made her more susceptible than usual to fresh impressions, and drew Alan at the same time every day into closer union with her. For was not the young life now quickening within her half his and half hers, and did it not seem to make the father by reflex nearer and dearer to her? Surely the child that was nurtured, unborn, on those marble colonnades and those placid Saint Catherines must draw in with each pulse of its antenatal nutriment some tincture of beauty, of freedom, of culture! So ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... contain small faecal accumulations extending over weeks, months, or even years. Their presence produces symptoms varying all the way from a little catarrhal irritation up to the most diverse, and in some instances serious, reflex disturbances. When the loculi only are filled, the main channel of the colon is undisturbed. The most common parts of the colon to become enlarged are the sigmoid flexure and the caecum (see diagram in beginning of book), but accumulations may occur in any part of the colon. The ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... What part does he take in circulating the blood, in keeping up the rhythm of his heart? What control has he over growth? What man by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature? What part voluntarily does man take in secretion, in digestion, in the reflex actions? In point of fact is he not after all the veriest automaton, every organ of his body given him, every function arranged for him, brain and nerve, thought and sensation, will and conscience, all provided for him ready ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... from and stands upon such a pedestal of lower physical organisms and spiritual structures, that no atmosphere will comfort or nourish his life, less divine than that offered by other souls; nowhere but in other lives can he breathe. Only by the reflex of other lives can he ripen his specialty, develop the idea of himself, the individuality that distinguishes him from every other. Were all men alike, each would still have an individuality, secured by his personal consciousness, ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... with his hands behind his back. Then, after all, the one thing of this world which his eye regarded as desirable was within his reach. He had then been right in supposing that that face which had once looked up to his so full of love had been a true reflex of the girl's heart,—that it had indicated to him love which was not changeable. It was true that Clara, having accepted a suitor at her mother's order, might now be allowed to come back to him! As he thought of this, he wondered at the endurance ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... her strange, intaken cry, as, on the reflex, she started, turned and fled, scudding with an unthinkable swift beating of her white feet and fraying of her white garments, towards the church. Like a hound the young man was after her, leaping the steps and swinging past her father, his supple haunches working like those ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... his dealings with men; for what is the use of 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 ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... have a way of making themselves felt by a reflex action on the inner nature," and with this axiom in view we feel that cultivation of the Delsartean Art of Expression becomes a vital part of our education to the end that all our emotions and all our tones may become "the outward ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... society would never have been anything but a perfectly legal and harmless association. Of course it is always possible to suggest what might have been; but in this case it is far more probable that if Parliament had been so reformed as to be a fair reflex of the opinion of the country, it would immediately have passed a resolution declaring Ireland a Republic and forming an alliance with France; for whatever objects were stated in public, the real guiding spirits of the United Irish Society from the ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... man crossed suddenly, and in the frank blue eyes of the Breton peasant, Sir Adrian read a reflex of his ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... at home and assisting his father in his farms and factorships, young Earlston was already one of Rutherford's most intimate correspondents. In a kind of reflex way we see what kind of head and heart and character young Earlston must already have had from the letters that Rutherford wrote to him. If we are to judge of the character and attainments and intelligence ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte

... ignore first of all the ecstatic quality of the higher social life, which is indeed the essential quality of the social spirit of war. Instead of saying that this intensity of feeling is merely a reflex of an instinctive reaction, we should say that it is the expression of, and in part the satisfaction of, desires that are fulfilled in the social experience of war. The intense social life is craved, not as an instinctive reaction, but as a complex state expressing explicit ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... 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 they were opposites, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... brief period 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 beautiful, and quite ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... his brain shows him the inadvisability of yielding to them, he refrains from yielding. This truth may be physiologically expressed by saying that the isolated individual possesses the capacity of dominating his reflex actions, while a crowd is ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... possible selfish motive for this most unexpected munificence. When we ascertain the true state of the case, then we can take things as they air. Until we have arrived at the necessary knowledge, it becomes us to withhold all severe judgments. A generous deed has its reflex influence; and it may be that some good may come to Mr. Belcher from this, and help to mold his character to nobler issues. I sincerely hope it may, and that we shall realize dividends that will add permanently to our somewhat restricted ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... The reflex act of the mind, which these new philosophers put forward as the solution of all human pursuits, rarely presents itself but to the speculative enquirer in his closet. The savage never dreams of it. The active man, engaged in the busy scenes of life, thinks little, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... spirit, it would not have mattered. I would have forgiven her, loved her, cherished her just the same. It was a question, not of reason, not of human pity, not of quixotism; not of any argument or sentiment for which I could be responsible. I was helpless, obeying a reflex ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... time being no further interested in the proceedings, was openly watching the mask-like face. It was as though a suspicious mind, aroused by the vigorous and unsustained charges, had, as a reflex, determined to probe the motives to their devious sources. Too subtle to display the uneasiness he felt at this surveillance, Josef appeared the personification of ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... new dawn is arising upon us in the prospect, that 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... frequently wounded in addition to the cornea and iris. In dislocation of the lens into the anterior chamber as the result of a blow, the lens appears like a large drop of oil lying at the back of the cornea, the margin exhibiting a brilliant yellow reflex. Partial dislocations of the lens as the result of severe ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... not know of art, it does not touch their lives at all: the few thousands of cultivated people whom Fate, not always as kind to them as she looks, has placed above the material necessity for this hard struggle, are nevertheless bound by it in spirit: the reflex of the grinding trouble of those who toil to live that they may live to toil weighs upon them also, and forbids them to look upon art as a matter of importance: they know it but as a toy, not as a serious help to life: as they know it, it can no more lift the burden from the conscience ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... looking through the reasons for it as through window-glass, Sharlee smothered a laugh, and bowed. Mr. Queed bowed, but did not laugh or even smile. He drew up a chair at his usual place and sat down. As by an involuntary reflex, his left hand dropped toward his coat-pocket, whence the top edges of a book could be described protruding. Mrs. Paynter moved vaguely toward the door. As for her business woman, she made at once ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... guild,—a most instructive history of a woman fairly normal except for the results of repressed sexual emotion, and with strong moral tendencies,—various episodes are narrated well illustrating the way in which sexual excitement becomes unpleasant or even painful when it takes place as a physical reflex which the emotions and intellect are all the time struggling against.[247] It is quite probable, however, that there is a physiological, as well as a psychic, factor in this phenomenon, and Sollier, in his elaborate study of the nature and genesis ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... attempted 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, and earnest—now ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... 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 to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... theme of a poem is to be regarded as a prism, upon which the colorless white light of infinite existence falls and is broken up into glowing, beautiful, and intelligible hues. In its second sense, the term Spectric relates to the reflex vibrations of physical sight, and suggests the luminous appearance which is seen after exposure of the eye to intense light, and, by analogy, the after-colors of the poet's initial vision. In its third sense, Spectric connotes the overtones, adumbrations, or spectres which ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke

... 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, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... his head. "I'd love to have some coffee, but I'll leave the alcohol alone. I'd just have the luck to be finishing a drink when our friend, the Nipe, popped in on us. And when I do meet him, I'm going to need every microsecond of reflex speed I ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... literature of the English-speaking race. I had often before said in the "Athenaeum," and in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" and elsewhere, that all true poetry—perhaps all true literature—must be a faithful reflex either of the life of man or of the life ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... with their conception of the divine and the poet. For our own part, we set out from precisely the opposite conviction—namely, that the religious and moral spirit of Young's poetry is low and false, and we think it of some importance to show that the "Night Thoughts" are the reflex of the mind in which the higher human sympathies were inactive. This judgment is entirely opposed to our youthful predilections and enthusiasm. The sweet garden-breath of early enjoyment lingers about many a page of the "Night Thoughts," and even of the "Last Day," giving an extrinsic charm ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... was working, and understood all the means by which the ends he had so long desired were to be attained. For to the ancient scientist the tasks he was then performing were the merest routine, to be performed in reflex fashion, and he devoted most of his attention to transferring from his own brain to that of his young assistant as much of his stupendous knowledge as the smaller brain of the Terrestrial was capable of absorbing. More and more rapidly as the work progressed the mighty flood of knowledge ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... religious views which he held in common with his brethren were dishonouring of God, and therefore could not be elevating to the creature. But when she saw these and other like facts, they gave her no shock—they left the reflex of the man in her mind still unspotted, unimpaired. How could this be? Simply because they left unaltered the conviction that this man believed in God, and that the desire of his own heart brought him into some real, however undefinable, relation to him who was yet ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... increase in Great Britain be proportionally smaller, this need not cause surprise, in view of that vast development of energy in the Established Church which is really due to the reflex action of Methodism itself; that Church, with all the old advantages of wealth and prestige and connexion with the universities and grammar schools which she possessed in the days of her comparative supine-ness, with her clergy roll of 23,000, ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... pride, and the affecting thought of Bovary vaguely contributed to his pleasure by a kind of egotistic reflex upon himself. Then the presence of the doctor transported him. He displayed his erudition, cited pell-mell cantharides, upas, the ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... diaper to that of death. The diaper is in truth chiefly responsible for proctitis, and proctitis is in turn chiefly responsible for chronic constipation, chronic diarrhea, auto-infection; and hence for mal-assimilation, mal-nutrition, anemia; and for a thousand and one reflex functional derangements of the system as well. The inflamed surface of the intestinal canal (proctitis) inhibits the passage of feces. Absorbent glands begin to act on the retained sewage, and the whole system becomes more or less infected with poisonous bacteria. Various ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... patients to any idea that they may be "psychotic" or "psychoneurotic" (words that, in their opinion, refer to "imaginary symptoms," or to symptoms that they could abolish if they would but "buck up" and exert their "wills") undoubtedly exert a reflex influence upon practitioners who put the "soft pedal" on the psychobiological reactions and "pull out the stop" that amplifies the significance ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... with extraordinary and unexpected speed for her weight and age she ran away with a terrific shriek and yell. This woman never have I seen or heard of since, and but for her presence I could have explained the incident: called it, say, subjection of the mental powers to the domination of physical reflex action, and the man's presence could have been termed a ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... from infection of a wound by a specific micro-organism, the bacillus tetani, and characterised by increased reflex excitability, hypertonus, and spasm of one or ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... brought to it by the organs of sense; hence, nervous ganglia, being composed of that material, may be considered as registering apparatus. They also introduce the element of time into the action of the nervous mechanism. An impression, which without them might have forthwith ended in reflex action, is delayed, and with this duration come all those important effects arising through the interaction of many impressions, old ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... certain cases.[218] A little later he raises the question, "But how are competing interests to be assessed?" and answers: "Full responsibility for the choice cannot be given to the courts. Courts are not representative bodies. They are not designed to be a good reflex of a democratic society. Their judgment is best informed, and therefore most dependable, within narrow limits. Their essential quality is detachment, founded on independence. History teaches that the independence of the judiciary is jeopardized when courts become embroiled in the passions of the ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... was resplendent in her general complexion, the rose blushed upon her cheek, the dark hue of the violet sparkled in her eyes, her ringlets curled more closely than do the clusters of the ivy—her face, therefore, was a reflex of the meadows." ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck



Words linked to "Reflex" :   miosis, physiology, innate reflex, start, mydriasis, pharyngeal reflex, accommodation reflex, micturition reflex, electrical shock, blinking, fart, acquired reflex, conditioned reflex, puking, yawning, reflexive, startle reflex, Babinski reflex, hiccough, belch, Babinski, sternutation, tremble, reflex angle, gag reflex, belching, involuntary, jump, wink, burping, conditional reflex, myosis, goose skin, knee-jerk reflex, burp, shock, Babinski sign, nictation, reflex epilepsy, gulping, light reflex, automatic, sneeze, vomiting, shiver, disgorgement, breaking wind, reflex action, stretch reflex, eye blink, myotactic reflex, instinctive reflex, regurgitation, goose pimple, oscitance, eructation, winking, Moro reflex, reflex response, inborn reflex, rooting reflex, singultus, unconditioned reflex, startle, oscitancy, farting, patellar reflex, suckling reflex, emesis, knee jerk, reaction, rectal reflex, plantar reflex, electric shock, wind, reflex camera, goosebump, physiological reaction, flatus, horripilation, reflex arc, gulp, blink



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