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Equilibrium   /ˌikwəlˈɪbriəm/   Listen
Equilibrium

noun
(pl. E. equilibriums, L. equilibria)
1.
A stable situation in which forces cancel one another.
2.
A chemical reaction and its reverse proceed at equal rates.  Synonym: chemical equilibrium.
3.
Equality of distribution.  Synonyms: balance, counterbalance, equipoise.
4.
A sensory system located in structures of the inner ear that registers the orientation of the head.  Synonyms: labyrinthine sense, sense of balance, sense of equilibrium, vestibular sense.



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"Equilibrium" Quotes from Famous Books



... these storms overtook the vessel of the State in Scotland, returning after every period of calm, after every recovery of authority, as wild, as tumultuous, as destructive as ever. Again and again they were overcome, the power of resistance restored, the equilibrium regained, only to fall once more into the raging of the elements. Each successive king, with perhaps one exception, had seized the helm as soon as his hand was fit for the strain, or even before it was strong enough for that office, and had gallantly brought the ship round and re-established ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... the air with his long arms extended ahead of him in the direction of another favorable limb of a tree, and grasped it with his hands. After swinging for a moment, he drew himself up on the branch, and proceeded to walk up to a greater height, using his hands to assist in keeping his equilibrium. This was a fair specimen of the performance of every member ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... brought under the power of one of those influences which have been proved to exist, but which have hitherto been inexplicable, which are called suggestions. In any case, my mental state bordered on madness, and twenty-four hours of Paris sufficed to restore me to my equilibrium. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... perhaps than the scientists, have illustrated and held by the great law of alternation, of ebb and flow, of turn and return, in nature. An equilibrium, or, what is the same thing, a straight line, Nature abhors more than she does a vacuum. If the moisture of the air were uniform, or the heat uniform, that is, in equilibrio, how could it rain? what would turn the scale? But these ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... penetrating eye, that the poem was not a pursuit of the former subjects; it had arisen spontaneously at various times, by looking at the same general theme of dulness (which, in Pope's sense, includes all aberrations of the intellect, nay, even any defective equilibrium amongst the faculties) under a different angle of observation, and from a different centre. In this closing book, not only bad authors, as in the other three, but all abuses of science or antiquarian knowledge, or connoisseurship in the arts, are attacked. ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... to curse. He began to feel like staying to bless. He was quite genial and pleasant, greeting Mrs. Ingham-Baker as an old friend, and thereby distinctly upsetting that lady's mental equilibrium. She had endeavoured to prevent this meeting, because she thought it was not fair to Fitz. She noted the approval with which Mrs. Harrington's keen eyes rested on the young sailor, and endeavoured somewhat obviously ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... in the choice of partners. We instinctively seek in the object of our desires the qualities which we do not possess ourselves. This is a most admirable arrangement of Providence, as it establishes an equilibrium and prevents people from tending to extremes; for it is known that unions of dwarfs are fruitful of dwarfs, that giants proceed from the embrace of giants, and that offspring of parents alike irritable, alike passive, alike bashful, etc., inherit the prominent qualities of both to such ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... asked Phonny. In order to see Beechnut while he asked this question, Phonny had to twist his head round in a very unusual position, and look out under his arm. It was obvious that in doing this he was in imminent danger of falling, so unstable was the equilibrium in which he ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott

... as the captain saw the Chancellor was no longer sinking, he set to work to take down all the sails — yards and all — and the top-gallants, in the hope that by removing everything that could compromise the equilibrium of the ship he might diminish the chance of her ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... other hand, when you have been reading a restful book, full of good thought, you establish an equilibrium, a relaxed state of nerves and particularly you have switched the current or direction of your day's thoughts. That change spells rest, and you retire and go to ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... will decrease mortality, while at the same time, at least for a long period, permitting more leisure. These conditions tend to equalize themselves throughout the world and in time the contest between humanitarian instincts and economic pressure will reach a world-wide equilibrium through the operation of natural law. What will happen then I do not know. Neither can ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams

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

... idolatrous and rebellious ten tribes, God's high displeasure and indignation against that idolatry and rebellion fully appeared; the remainder were thereby seriously cautioned not to persist in them, and a kind of balance or equilibrium was made between the ten and the two tribes for the time to come; while otherwise the perpetually idolatrous and rebellious ten tribes would naturally have been too powerful for the two tribes, which were pretty frequently free both from such idolatry and rebellion; nor ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... from its ancestor more in the interpretation of the phenomena than in the practices themselves. It has naturally had the same therapeutic applications, and its methods are probably legitimate. Hypnotic sleep has had many helpful influences. It is really a change in the equilibrium of the brain and mental faculties and produces great modifications in the memory and in sensibility. Life is indeed a long series of habits to which we are accustomed; hypnotism changes these habits which in a normal condition we do not try to modify, and on ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... greatest experimental researches of the last few years. They have constructed a radiator closely resembling the theoretically integral radiator which a closed isothermal vessel would be, and with only a very small opening, which allows us to collect from outside the radiations which are in equilibrium with the interior. This vessel is formed of a hollow carbon cylinder, heated by a current of high intensity; the radiations are studied by means of a bolometer, the disposition of which varies with the nature ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... Company H of the Third South Carolina Regiment of Infantry, are confident that he possesses all the quality essential to this work. He was a splendid soldier—brave in battle, clear-headed always, and of that equilibrium of temperament that during camp life, amid the toil of the march, and in battle the necessity for discipline was recognized and enforced with justice and impartiality. He was and is a patriot. His pen is graceful, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

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

... due form. It was not a common beverage among midshipmen, certainly in those days, but Tom had learned to make it well of a Spanish seaman on board the Orpheus. We finished our repast with more than one glass of grog apiece, but not sufficient, I am happy to say, to risk the equilibrium of either our minds or bodies. While we were discussing the seaman's favourite beverage, O'Driscoll indulged me, and by necessity my ship's company, with some of his choicest songs, trolled forth in a full, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

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

... the faces of the shadowy men who had borne him hither were fully revealed, and as he sat and shivered in his thin little dress he eyed them, first one for a long time, and then another, and he shivered throughout with a fear more chilly than the cold. Perhaps it was well for the equilibrium of his reason that fear so acute could not continue. He presently began to cough, and when he sought to reply to a question he could only wheeze. An infantile captive wields certain coercions to fair treatment ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... unruly, and precarious in its action, however, the imagination requires the most careful guidance, and the assistance of the reason. Students are taught to idealise and invent, as well as to analyse and reason, but without disturbing the equilibrium of the faculties by acquiring a pronounced habit of one or the other. It is better, they say, to be reasonable than a reasoner; to be imaginative than a dreamer; and to have discernment ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... put my foot on the jar; it was crushed to atoms, and the seeds and syrup flew in every direction! The obstacle beneath my feet made me stagger; I grasped the folds of a window-curtain in the hope of saving myself, but my equilibrium was too far gone—down came the curtain—over I went, head first, against a flower-stand, on which were a nondescript array of flowerpots, a canary bird in a cage, and a big ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask

... morning. Meanwhile, I and others who chanced to occupy the same room would be safely and soundly asleep. On the circuit, in this way, he studied Euclid until he could with ease demonstrate all the propositions in the six books. How he could maintain his equilibrium or concentrate his thoughts on an abstract mathematical problem, while Davis, Logan, Swett, Edwards and I, so industriously and volubly filled the air with our interminable snoring, was a problem none of, us—could ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... act, are the strongest terms of condemnation. It is this view which Christianity gives of moral evil: the teaching of Christ was the recall of man to nature, not an infusion of something new into Humanity. Christ came to call out all the principles and powers of human nature, to restore the natural equilibrium of all our faculties; not to call us back to our own individual selfish nature, but to human nature as it is in God's ideal—the perfect type which is to be realised in us. Christianity is the regeneration of our whole nature, not the destruction of ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... of revolution. "Le principe de l'inegalite naturelle et essentielle dans les destinees humaines conduit inevitablement au fanatisme revolutionnaire ou au fanatisme religieux." The principles of compensation and equilibrium are found also in the physical universe, the product of matter and force, whose cause is God. Force, naturally expansive and operating on the homogeneous atoms which constitute elemental matter, is subject to the law ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... while it keeps within its own boundaries, and is seen from experience not to be influenced by ambition, no one will be led, out of fear for himself, to make war upon it, more particularly when its laws and constitution forbid its extension. And were it possible to maintain things in this equilibrium, I veritably believe that herein would be found the true form of political life, and the true tranquility of a republic. But all human affairs being in movement, and incapable of remaining as they are, they must either rise or fall; and to many conclusions to which ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... went by before Pattison's mind recovered spring and equilibrium, and the unstrung nerves were restored to energy. Fishing, the open air, solitude, scenery, slowly repaired the moral ravages of the college election. The fly rod 'was precisely the resource of which my wounded nature stood in need.' ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley

... that the discovery of his somewhat undignified position by these two evil-doers would not at this moment be quite opportune, so he endeavored to maintain his equilibrium at the cost of supreme discomfort, and the loud cracking of the branch on ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... and, falling upright into the current, kept its equilibrium, that is, it did not fall to any side, but swept slowly downward as upright as when on the tree, and suggested that some giant as big as the Statue of Liberty was walking beneath, with an enormous torch held above his head to ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... one minute of eleven, when the observers finding the barometer cease the upward motion, and finding that the machine oscillated round a position of equilibrium by noticing the bearing of the sun, they found the epoch favorable for another series of observations. The barometer there indicated that the balloon had attained the enormous height of 19,700 feet. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... mirror was in the form of a wheel. In the middle was the looking-glass; around it were seven circular pieces, on which were the Seven Virtues, carved and joined of ivory and black bone. The whole mirror, together with the Virtues, was placed in equilibrium, so that when the wheel turned, all the Virtues moved, and they had weights at their feet which kept them upright. Possessing some acquaintance with the Latin tongue, he put a legend in Latin round his looking-glass, to this effect-"Whithersoever ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... that a certain sort of "good works" have large value in this process of emancipation. But quiescence rather than character is the thing emphasized. Noble thoughts and aspirations are as fatal as are the basest to immediate deliverance—they all disturb that equilibrium of the soul which ushers it into its final rest. "The confinement of fetters is the same whether the chain is of ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... of substances united by very weak affinities, so that they are always ready to separate from each other and form new unions under the influence of stronger affinities, is said to be in a state of unstable equilibrium. It is the function of vegetable life to create these unstable combinations by means of the force derived from the sun; and the combinations, when formed, of course hold the force which formed them in reserve, ready to make itself manifest whenever it is released. Animals receive these ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... crossed by a little bridge, the caravan now entered one of those narrow, zigzag roads among the firs where the mules, one by one, follow with their fantastic sabots all the sinuosities of the ravines, and our tourists had their attention fully occupied in keeping their equilibrium by the help of many an "Outre!.. Boufre!.. gently, gently!.." with ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet

... to keep their theological differences to themselves. The fracas, etc. etc." The Daily News started, "Nothing could be more inimical to the cause of true religion than, etc. etc." The Times began with something about Celtic disturbances of the equilibrium of Empire, and the Daily Express distinguished itself splendidly by omitting altogether so controversial a matter and ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... desperately, that she could not face the crowded tea-tent, where doubtless she would again meet her enemy, Lady Martin; and she wanted no tea; she only wanted to be alone for a few moments, away from prying eyes, unkind tongues, that she might regain the equilibrium ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... category of benefactors, and are pronounced to be noxious, inasmuch as they live mostly upon the smaller birds. If the arrangements of nature were left wholly undisturbed, the result would be a wholesome equilibrium of destruction. The birds would kill so many insects that the insects could not kill too many plants. One class is a match for the other. A certain insect was found to lay two thousand eggs, but ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... force which is wasted by the perplexed man who takes up every argument on one side and then on the other, and weighs them until the two sides hang in equipoise, with no prepondering motive to enable him to decide. He is in stable equilibrium, and so does not move at all of his own volition, but moves very easily at ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... cry. Either it frightened Calico or inspired him, for he shot right ahead of Glenn's horse. Then he lost the smooth, wonderful action. He seemed hurtling through space at the expense of tremendous muscular action. Carley could feel it. She lost her equilibrium. She seemed rushing through a blurred green and black aisle of the forest with a gale in her face. Then, with a sharp jolt, a break, Calico plunged to the sand. Carley felt herself propelled forward out of the saddle into the air, and down to ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... I have already explained. This substance is a true vegetable oxyd, with two bases, composed of hydrogen and carbon, brought to the state of an oxyd by means of a certain proportion of oxygen; and these three elements are combined in such a way that a very slight force is sufficient to destroy the equilibrium of their connection." ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... and polite that Caroline believed that it was an act of magnanimous forgiveness for the ill luck that she and her boys had brought them. At last the Colonel had the threatened fit of the gout, which restored his equilibrium, and brought him back to his usual condition of kindly, if somewhat ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... instead, she felt for the first time in her life the thrill which all women, however strong, have when they yield to the dominant personality of a man. She tried to fight back the overpowering, undefinable surge; she succeeded partially. All she could now ask was time to think to recover her equilibrium. She put out her hand involuntarily and touched ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

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

... efficiency. The physical efficiency of the worker cannot be maintained at its highest standard when the period allotted to rest is too short to allow the body to rebuild its tissues and dispose of the toxic products of fatigue. All activity must be balanced by rest. If this equilibrium between expenditure and income is disturbed, exhaustion ensues. If long continued, it results in permanent impairment of health. The organism poisoned by its own toxic products is incapable of productive effort and the output will steadily diminish as the fatigue increases. The present long working ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various

... Shocked by the big shadow on the narrow ledge, the horses stirred doubtfully. The driver leapt to the earth to hold their heads, and they became ungovernable. One horse reared up to his full height—the titanic and terrifying height of a horse when he becomes a biped. It was just enough to alter the equilibrium; the whole coach heeled over like a ship and crashed through the fringe of bushes over the cliff. Muscari threw an arm round Ethel, who clung to him, and shouted aloud. It was for such ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... load carried between the two lower joints next the piers on either side is directly carried by the abutments. The sum of the two upward vertical reactions must clearly be equal to the sum of the loads. The lines in the diagram represent the directions of a series of forces which must all be in equilibrium; these lines may, for an object to be explained in the next paragraph, be conveniently named by the letters in the spaces which they separate instead of by the method usually employed in geometry. Thus we shall call the first inclined line on the left hand the line AG, the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... face. Take THAT, and see how you like it!" says Leander laughing merrily, and giving him a sounding slap on one cheek which almost knocks the poor devil over, and is instantly followed by an equally hearty one on the other, to restore his equilibrium. ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

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

... with modern philosophy, stepping backward beyond the Renascence to the middle ages and reviving Christian philosophy, as expounded by "the angelic doctor," St. Thomas Aquinas, in Catholic schools. Then the dogmas being in this wise sheltered, he adroitly maintains himself in equilibrium by giving securities to every power, striving to utilise every opportunity. He displays extraordinary activity, reconciles the Holy See with Germany, draws nearer to Russia, contents Switzerland, asks the friendship of Great Britain, and writes ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... the cold, and the cold by the warm. And Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas are the attributes of the soul, and it is said by the learned that their presence in due proportions indicates health (of the mind). But if any of the three preponderates, some remedy is enjoined (to restore the equilibrium). Happiness is overcome by sorrow, and sorrow by pleasure. Some people while afflicted by sorrow, desire to recall (past) happiness, while others, while in the enjoyment of happiness, desire to recall past sorrow. But thou, O son of Kunti, dost neither desire to recall thy sorrows ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... angered that he double-faulted for deuce, and Johnson won the game. Johnson pulled even at 5-all, before Pearson recovered his equilibrium, and finally won the set at 17-15. Truly Pearson's lapse at Johnson's marvellous get was a ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D

... weaker forms, those alone survive which adopt a parasitic life, those which in adult life move the least will survive and reproduce; there will result the survival of the least muscular and nervous. This degeneration will continue until the species has sunken into equilibrium, so to speak, with its surroundings. Here natural selection works for degeneration. Sessile animals have had a similar history. But these parasitic and sessile forms had already been hopelessly distanced in the race ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... patron of Western Germany. Two months later a secret treaty between France and Russia admitted the new Czar, Alexander, to a share in the reorganisation of the Empire. The Governments of Paris and St. Petersburg pledged themselves to united action for the purpose of maintaining an equilibrium between Austria and Prussia; and the Czar further stipulated for the advancement of his own relatives, the Sovereigns of Bavaria, Baden, and Wuertemberg. The relationship of these petty princes to the Russian family enabled Bonaparte to present to the Czar, as a graceful concession, the very measure ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... to fleeting aristocratic splendor, but simply to the luxury of rapid motion. But Lord Altamont was firm in resisting this petition at that time. The remote consequence was, that by way of redressing the violated equilibrium to our feelings, we subscribed throughout Wales to extort six horses from the astonished innkeepers, most of whom declined the requisition, and would furnish only four, on the plea that the leaders ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

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

... varying moods of different speakers, and yet the while with coolest self-possession. Now and then a slight smile, flickering over her countenance, as lightning plays on the surface of a cloud, marked the inward process whereby she was harmonizing in equilibrium opposing thoughts. And, as occasion offered, a felicitous quotation, pungent apothegm, or symbolic epithet, dropped unawares in undertone, showed how swiftly scattered rays were brought in her ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... dealing with the interval between the war and the establishment of the Protectorate, a time that shaded off from the dark shadows of internecine struggle towards the high light of steady peace and security. By 1653 the equilibrium of England had been restored. Cromwell's government was beginning to run smoothly. The courts were in full swing. None of those conditions to which we have attributed the spread of the witch alarms of the Civil Wars ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... to overcome, Tom. You must be sure your muffler will stand the strain. Otherwise she is going to blow out a gasket some day, when you least expect it. Then the sudden resumption of pressure outside the cylinders is going to cause a change in the equilibrium, and you may turn turtle in ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton

... give it to me," the captain said. As the two men approached, Gervaise seized one in each hand, dashed them against each other, and hurled them on the deck. But the exertion upset his equilibrium, and after making a vain effort to recover it, he fell heavily across them. The captain stooped over him, and, before he could recover himself, snatched the chain from ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... in here; nor did I express one word of thanks to you! The talisman of 'Recorded Name' is ready long ago. I meant to have sent it over the day before yesterday, but the unforeseen visit of the Empress to perform meritorious deeds upset my equilibrium, and made me quite forget it. But it's still placed before the gods, and if you will wait ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... was entirely without the gifts of a regent. He was a lover of order, economy, justice, and pure morals, but through lack of mental and physical strength his good qualities were misdirected. His father's tragic fate had a sinister effect upon his mind, the equilibrium of which was also shaken by the outrages of the revolutionists in France. Of a morbid sensibility, and without inclination to confide in any one, his religious mysticism led him into a state close to insanity. He imagined ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... the poignancy of his emotions became blunted by familiarity, and mere weariness forced him to accept himself on a reduced level. A sort of new equilibrium was established within him, but it was primarily based on indifference. Nothing really mattered. Effort was useless. Things merely happened. No one could help what happened. And in this fatalism, so utterly foreign to his ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... of Commons, although a hero at the bar, the imperiousness, the audacious scorn, and the intellectual supremacy of Pitt disturbed his equanimity and exposed the weak places in his armor. In Pitt's commanding presence he lost his equilibrium. His individuality seemed off its centre; he felt ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... it is unreachable, being placed in the interior of the bobbin. Kravogl solved this difficulty by constructing a hollow core into which he poured melted lead. This heavy piece, mounted upon rollers, assumed a position of equilibrium that resulted from its weight, from friction, and from magnetic attraction. But for a current of given intensity this position, once reached, did not vary, and so necessitated a simple adjustment of the rubbers. Under such circumstances, with a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various

... if it couldn't capsize and had made signs to an Indian boy to go out in it with him. Before they were fairly afloat all the pickaninnies belonging to the camp had piled into the craft. From the smallest squab to the biggest boy, the Indian children danced about in the canoe without disturbing its equilibrium. The boy in the stern, standing on the extreme point of the craft, set his pole on the coral bottom and threw his weight back upon it until his whole body stood out almost parallel with the water behind ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock

... services organized by foreign groups, and it would become necessary to prohibit its own members from attending the synagogues of foreign settlers. Then as to communal taxes: these were fixed annually on the basis of the population, and the arrival of newcomers seriously disturbed the equilibrium, led to fresh exactions by the Government, which it was by no means certain the new settlers could or would pay, and which, therefore, fell on the shoulders of ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... themselves, these infantile observances do not necessarily harm family life, the support of the state; for a man can believe a considerable deal of nonsense, and yet go about his daily work in a natural and cheerful manner. But when the body is despised and tormented the mind loses its equilibrium, and when that happens nonsense may assume a sinister shape. We have seen it in England, where, during the ascetic movement of Puritanism, more witches were burnt than in the whole ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... beyond his Pillars the ships shall soon go forth to find another hemisphere, for although the earth is as round as a wheel, yet the water at any given point is a plane, and inasmuch as all things tend to a common centre so that by a divine mystery the earth is suspended in equilibrium among the stars, just so there is an antipodal world with cities and castles unknown to men of olden time, and the sun in hastening westwards descends to shine upon those peoples who are awaiting him ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... the title when I am dead and gone—God help me!—So I would have you keep an equilibrium. If once you get the name of being a fine speaker, you may have any thing: and, to be sure, you have naturally a great deal of elocution; a tongue that would delude an angel, as the women say—to their sorrow, some of them, poor creatures!—A leading man ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... widest sense of the term. In each of us a saturation point is soon reached in all these things; the impetus of our purely intellectual zeal expires, and unless the topic is associated with some urgent personal need that keeps our wits constantly whetted about it, we settle into an equilibrium, and live on what we learned when our interest was fresh and instinctive, ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... sleep and a partial bath did much to restore tired nature's equilibrium; and, although her head still felt absurdly light, Mrs. Hastings enjoyed the really excellent breakfast provided for her, wondering how such delicacies ever got to Chloride Hill. Breakfast over, and no news of Jack, the time began to drag wearily. She was more than half inclined to ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... only as one of the plants least considered in a large, well-kept garden, or as a polished walking stick, as the legs of a fancy table of uncertain equilibrium or as a tobacco box ably worked by Chinese or Japanese fingers, in the free forest becomes a colossal inhabitant. Its canes, at first tender and supple, grow to such a size, and so strong as to be used ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

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

... a still more intimate view. Nick was embarrassed: he scarcely knew what he was there for from the moment he could give his good old friend no conscious satisfaction. The doctors, the nurses, the servants, Mrs. Lendon, and above all the settled equilibrium of the square thick house, where an immutable order appeared to slant through the polished windows and tinkle in the quieter bells, all these things represented best the kind of supreme solace to which the master ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... at one end of a room and seen Grandma Keeler approaching from the other, when it seemed as though she was not making any progress at all, but merely going through with an odd sort of balancing process in order to maintain her equilibrium. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... use. He could set a broken bone with fair success, but never practiced surgery in any form. In addition to all this, the medicine-man possessed much personal magnetism and authority, and in his treatment often sought to reestablish the equilibrium of the patient through mental or spiritual influences—a sort of ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... progress, in which agitation, when it has been rife as it was before the first Reform Bill, has died down on redress of grievances, almost as soon as it has arisen has no conception of the relative, and indeed absolute, unstable state of equilibrium in the affairs ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... his preponderance of forces in striking a decisive blow. This appeared the more desirable, since it was known that Montgomery was returning from the reduction of Bearn, bringing with him six or seven thousand veterans—an addition to the Huguenot army that would nearly restore the equilibrium. ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... whole, a large areometer with constant weight and variable volume that is plunged into a cylindrical vessel 0.5 m. in depth and 0.3 m. in diameter, filled with water. The instrument itself consists of three parts: (1) A lower receptacle in which is placed a weight to assure the equilibrium; (2) a central float into which is put a kilogramme of very clean and very dry potatoes; and (3) a rod graduated for density and feculometric richness. The deeper the apparatus sinks, the more valuable is the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various

... regarding atmospheric pressure conducted him gradually to the examination of the general laws of the equilibrium of fluids. {45b} It had been already determined that the pressure of a fluid on its base is as the product of the base multiplied by the height of the fluid, and that all fluids press equally on all sides of the vessels enclosing them. But it still remained to determine exactly ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... what peace means, an equilibrium between forces. It is the natural law,—God's way of keeping peace. And any plan for World Peace that is builded not upon this law is nothing. Justice must stand with an upraised sword. When two states quarrel she must admonish them, and let them know that should they overthrow ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... games; and in due course they went to bed. That is, they followed a customary routine, feeling it was safer. To do anything unusual just then might attract attention to their infinite Discovery and so disturb its delicate equilibrium. Its balance was precarious. Once an Authority got wind of anything, the Extra Day might change its course and sail into another port. Aunt Emily, even from a distance...! In any case, they behaved with this intuitive sagacity ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... a long five minutes to sufficiently recover his equilibrium for action. All he could do was to stare at that grotesque, gargoyle-like creature as it writhed in leisurely ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... one man to teach another to fly. Those few men who had risen from the ground in aeroplanes, notably the Wright brothers, were held to be endowed by nature in some very peculiar way; to be men who possessed some remarkable and hitherto unexplained sense of equilibrium. That these men would be able to take other men—ordinary members of the human race—and teach them in their turn to navigate the air, was a suggestion that was ridiculed. But Wilbur Wright, after a series of brilliant flights, began actually to instruct his ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White

... this elemental, dynamic character of his work,—its escape from indoor, artificial standards, its aspiration after the "amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of the earth, and the equilibrium also." ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... been shown, that man is held up seemingly from above. Man comes into stable equilibrium only when the body is supported from the summit of the ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry

... be perfectly crazy," she affirmed with a lingering intonation that seemed to imply a certain joy in the prospective disturbance of her parent's equilibrium. "He wants me to marry a preacher at Saxby Center who's almost as old as pop, and has three grown children. I thought maybe you could pretend to take me out for a little ride in your car, and pick up Abijah and give us a lift. My things are all packed and ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

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

... passes freely around a column, v (Fig. 2), upon which is placed in equilibrium a rod that terminates in a weight, P. The corrugations of the funnel carry letters indicating the four cardinal points, and the funnel itself is capable of revolving in such a way that the marked indications shall always correspond to the real position of the cardinal points. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

... alight from the hack. Hampered by my belongings, I stumbled on the handle of my axe, which persistently trailed between my limbs, and was thrown headlong between the wheels, while many of my dislodged parcels descended on me, retarding my efforts to regain my equilibrium. ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... Koupriane and Gounsovski both employed a man they knew to be a revolutionary and the friend of revolutionaries. Nihilism, on its side, considered this man of the police force as one of its own agents. In his turn, this man, in order to maintain his perilous equilibrium, had to do work for both the police and the revolutionaries, and accept whatever either gave him to do as it came, because it was necessary he should give them assurances of his fidelity. Only imbeciles, like Gapone, let themselves be hanged or ended by being executed, like ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux

... himself with the pole, and intrepidly confronting the danger he could not avoid. Not a cry escaped, nor did his self-possession desert him. As the vexed and whirling water raised up the one side or the other of his frail bark, he would incline his body in this or that direction to preserve the equilibrium, now standing upright and now cowering close to the surface of the uncertain footing. And now the block approached the throat, where the torrent ran the swiftest and was most turbulent. The child ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... struck a belt of rough ice, and in the dark we all stumbled and I went down a whack, that nearly knocked me out. This was not noticed fortunately, and still we hung on to the end of their sledge while I turned hot and cold and sick and went through the various symptoms before I got my equilibrium back, which I fortunately did while legging it at full speed. They started to go ahead soon after that though, and we could not hold our own, although we were close to the cape. I had the same thing happen again after another fall but we stuck ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... This is the opposite of the floating-test. The man[43] stands in one scale and is placed in equilibrium with a weight of stone in the other scale. He then gets out and prays, and gets in again. If the balance sinks, he is guilty; if it rises, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... of the sun's rays. The higher we rose, the greater the tilt became. The face of the slope was completely buried in snow except where the aretes stuck through, for the face was well wrinkled. The angle soon grew unpleasant to visage, and certainly looked to have exceeded the limit of stable equilibrium. In mid-ascent, as we were winding cautiously up, a porter slipped. He stopped himself, however, and was helped on to his feet again by his fellow behind. The bad bit was preface to a worse effect round the corner, for on turning the arete, we came upon a snow slope like a gigantic ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... although seen from outside, it appears as a stable, unvarying shape. Nowhere in nature may the supremacy of form over matter be so vividly observed as in the cumulus cloud. And the forms of the cumuli themselves tell us in manifold metamorphoses of a state of equilibrium between expansive and contractive tendencies ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... weakness are really real, and are due to increased levels of toxins circulating in the blood and from unavoidably low blood sugar which is a natural consequence of the cessation of eating. The blood sugar does reestablish a new equilibrium in the second and third week of the fast and then, the dizziness may cease, but still, it is important to expect dizziness at ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... forced his way into the dusky chamber, where he could just perceive a motionless undefined form. But stiff as a statue Malcolm kept his stand, and the door was immovable. Mr Crathie gave a second and angrier push, but the youth's corporeal as well as his mental equilibrium was hard to upset, and his enemy ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... faces of the two men rather overcame them at first, made the doctor lose his equilibrium a little, and increased Caravan's giddiness, from which he had suffered since dinner. He walked as if he were in a dream; his thoughts were paralyzed, although he felt no great grief, for he was in a state ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... vessel's heeling over; but, by dint of clutching hold of their father, which they did with much joking and merriment and silvery laughter, each taking an arm on either side, they managed to preserve their equilibrium, keeping pace in ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... of loneliness we experienced! I felt restless and unhappy: I was pursued by the imploring face of Eugenio and haunted by the eyes of Celestino. It was long ere our household recovered its old equilibrium. Letters full of gratitude came from the Morteras. They were re-established in their old home; Eugenio had resumed his studies; Virginia was not so well; Celestino was dying. Soon after I received a letter in Eugenio's handwriting informing me that the trinket he enclosed would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... correspondingly the smallest fragments shew the biconcave form in the dry specimen; for they too contain the specific protoplasm of the disc "which possesses the inherent tendency to assume the typical biconcave form in a state of equilibrium." ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... Each of these companies ended its financial year solvent by selling great holdings of shares to one or other of its sisters, and paying a dividend out of the proceeds. I sat at the table and agreed. That was our method of equilibrium at the iridescent climax of ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... which is woefully likely to degenerate into following the lower nature, which ought not to be followed, but covered and kept under hatches—such a life is sure to be a topsy-turvy life, which, being based upon the narrowest point, must, by the laws of equilibrium, topple over sooner or later. If you would have your lives established, they must be ordered. You must bring your brains to bear upon them, and you must bring more than brain, you must bring to bear on ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

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

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

... where you landed, yes, they are, but we rule the northern sphere of action. Our forces actually form a soft equilibrium that keeps fate's pendulum from straying from its neutral position, so that a military action previously would not have been predictable, with either side being capable of winning. Under such conditions war is avoided, but now you have arrived. The Zards, as well as ourselves, have been expecting ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn

... in land is absurd," he murmured. "The one inconvenience that your plan would have," he added, "would be that people from poverty-stricken holes would pour into the perfect towns and upset the equilibrium." ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... often short, that money for the little luxuries of life, which is more necessary than any other in Paris, and which is known as pocket-money. Occasionally, however, that force majeure, the Unforeseen, would suddenly arrive in the midst of this regular existence and disarrange its equilibrium ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt

... coaching on your time thrusts, but you gave me plenty to do as it was," Anthony admitted. "More than that, you've presented me with a chance to recover my equilibrium. I was hot inside before. Now ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond

... trust himself to speak. Buck, patting him on the shoulder, went on into the card room and closed the kitchen door behind him, drawing the aisle curtains shut, too, so that no one would go back until Slip had recovered his equilibrium. ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears

... calculations, a man did not reach his perfect development until after completing his first century; and, in order to do this, he took the most minute care of himself. He studied the Chinese people, celebrated for their longevity, and he sought for the best methods of maintaining what he called the equilibrium of vital forces. When any event contradicted his theories, he found no trouble in turning ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... now very difficult. The whole day, passed together, had shaken them into an accustomed, tenacious herd. It seemed that if even one were to go away from the company, a certain attained equilibrium would be disturbed and could not be restored afterwards. And so they dallied and stamped upon the sidewalk, near the exit of the tavern's underground vault, interfering with the progress of the infrequent passers-by. They discussed ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... every muscle, urging the dogs with voice and whip, we guided the sledges. On several occasions the dogs gave it up, standing still in their tracks, and we had to hold the sledges with the strength of our bones and muscles to prevent them from sliding backwards. When we had regained our equilibrium the dogs were again started, and in this way we gained ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson

... the minstrels were transforming themselves with paints and curly wigs into Africans, and laughing at each other's jests. As it was a warm evening, and the windows were open, the hilarity of the boys in the street added to the general din. Under such circumstances it was difficult to preserve my equilibrium. I felt like laughing at my own comical predicament, and I decided to make my address a medley of anecdotes and stories, like a string of beads, held together by a fine thread of argument and illustration. The moment the hand of the clock pointed at eight o'clock the band struck up, thus announcing ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... time when the great O'Connell, with his monster meetings, forced our government to listen to Catholic Emancipation to the time when the great Parnell, with his obstruction, forced it to listen to Home Rule, our staggering equilibrium has been maintained by blows from without. In the later nineteenth century the better sort of special treatment began on the whole to increase. Gladstone, an idealistic though inconsistent Liberal, rather belatedly realized that the freedom he loved in ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

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

... the War and the peace, have drawn themselves aside. Italy has no alliance and cannot have any. No Italian politician could pledge his country, and Parliament only desires that Italy follow a democratic, peaceful policy, maintaining herself in Europe as a force for equilibrium and life. ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti

... extensive means of influence, which were retained by the local sovereignties, furnished them with weapons for aggression which were not easily to be resisted, and that it behoved all those who were anxious for the happiness of their country, to guard the equilibrium established in the constitution, by preserving unimpaired, all the legitimate powers of the union. These were more confirmed in their sentiments, by observing the temper already discovered in the legislatures ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

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

... privilege, as it appears she did, and we were willing to accept, it was purely an American question with which England or any other foreign power had no right to interfere, or claim to be consulted, no more than we could claim to be consulted when the Holy Alliance sought to establish the equilibrium of Europe. We were not consulted then, and in matters purely continental we have no occasion to consult them; and if England, or any other foreign power, should attempt to interfere, the sympathies of the rest of the civilized world would be ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various

... its expectancy. For that reason men of every nation were moved to desire a transformed society. But perhaps that quality of expectancy was the quality of youth. For the first time in history, in the early twentieth century, age was giving place to youth in the political equilibrium of the generations. Now—I dare not speak too plainly. The young men of the western world are already, since August 1914, noticeably fewer. Death may have made no difference to them. It has made an immense difference to the future. It means that ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... the horizon. "Tout Pekin brule," muttered a French sailor to me as I passed back to my post, and his careless remark made me think that this was the Commune and Sansculottism intermixed—the ends of two centuries tumbled together—because we foreigners had upset the equilibrium of the Far East with our importunities and our covetousness of the ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... had the upper hand, and another while towards a pure democracy, when the people had the better, found in this establishment of the senate a central weight, like ballast in a ship, which always kept things in a just equilibrium; the twenty-eight always adhering to the kings so far as to resist democracy, and, on the other hand, supporting the people against the establishment of absolute monarchy. As for the determinate number of twenty-eight, Aristotle states, that it so fell out because ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... in one place, will only pass for 6 bars, will in others fluctuate to 10; hence the trader must form an average standard, to reduce his assortment to an equilibrium. ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

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

... fact our full rhyme; next is Saj'a mutarraf (the affluent), when the periods, hemistichs or couplets end in words whose terminal letters correspond, although differing in measure and number; and thirdly, Saj'a muwazanah (equilibrium) is applied to the balance which affects words corresponding in measure but differing ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... it, and, in the process, not merely destroying it, but changing it so as to make it available for plant-food. It is through the agency of bacteria that the air, which is being continually overloaded with carbonic acid from the lungs of animals, is reduced and taken up by plants so that an equilibrium is maintained. Otherwise, the atmosphere would be more and more vitiated with carbonic acid and organic vapors, and every one would die as if shut up in an air-tight room. But, because of bacteria, neither is the surface of the earth overloaded with waste organic matter nor do streams, however ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... turn aside an avalanche. The carronade stumbled. The gunner, taking advantage of this critical opportunity, plunged his iron bar between the spokes of one of the hind wheels. The cannon stopped. It leaned forward. The man, using the bar as a lever, held it in equilibrium. The heavy mass was overthrown, with the crash of a falling bell, and the man, rushing with all his might, dripping with perspiration, passed the slipnoose around the bronze ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... swung violently to the other direction, adopting the comfortable position that the normal powers of the government were perfectly adequate to any emergency that could possibly arise, and citing the war just "happily terminated" in proof. But once again the principle of equilibrium asserted itself. Five months after Milligan, the same Bench held unanimously in Mississippi v. Johnson[49] that the President is not accountable to any court save that of impeachment either for the nonperformance of his constitutional ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... consequently the tide of price turns back. In mining for metals each pound is produced actually at a different cost. In case of an oversupply of base metals the price will fall until it has reached a point where a portion of the production is no longer profitable, and the equilibrium is established through decline in output. However, in the backward swing, due to lingering overproduction, prices usually fall lower than the cost of producing even a much-diminished supply. There is at this point what we may call the "basic" price, that at which production is insufficient ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover

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

... one must have entirely overcome the severe ordeal of sea-sickness, and then with the high health that generally follows the departure of this disagreeable visitant, life on the ocean is not without a beauty and variety of its own. In a fortnight one becomes sufficiently versed in the laws of equilibrium to maintain his place in his hammock from a sudden lurching of the ship in a squall or night of tempest, or so skilfully to balance himself and his plate at table, that neither shall be thrown to the right or left. By degrees, too, ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... There is no call for wonder that he should have reacted violently against these fettering restrictions. There is no need to speculate on the reasons why he has failed to feel the extraordinary delicacy of the problem of the equilibrium between the opposing forces, which have a cramping socialism on the one side and an exuberant anarchy on the other. His choice was swift and he exerted his strength unhesitatingly against the chains which had ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... bergs, the water is beset with "pancake ice." That is the young ice when it first begins to cake upon the surface. Innocent enough it seems, but it is sadly clogging to the ships. It sticks about their sides like treacle on a fly's wing; collecting unequally, it destroys all equilibrium, and impedes the efforts of the steersman. Rocks split on the Greenland coast with loud explosions, and more icebergs fall. Icebergs we soon shall take our leave of; they are only found where there is a coast on which glaciers can form; ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt

... restores the proper equilibrium; the brush-hook and axe cut away the rank unwholesome growth which thrives best in abnormal conditions. Sun, air, and purifying frosts mellow and sweeten the damp, heavy malarious ground, as the plowshare lifts it out of its low estate. A swamp, ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... difference of constitution soon arises in different parts of the area, which is wanting in the limited numbers of pure bred domestic animals. From a consideration of these varied facts we conclude that an occasional disturbance of the organic equilibrium is what is essential to keep up the vigour and fertility of any organism, and that this disturbance may be equally well produced either by a cross between individuals of somewhat different constitutions, or by occasional slight ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... radiant with happiness and good-humor. No unpleasant word or look is seen or heard during our family repast. Perhaps an awkward boy upsets his cup of coffee, but the quaint remark, "accidents will happen in the best regulated families," spoken with a native courtesy, rarely seen, restores his equilibrium; and thus peacefully, (in the main), day after day passes along, although many little perplexities and cares arise, such as every family are subject to, especially where there are sons just entering the dangerous and ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless

... perfect rest, suddenly began to move towards its centre of gravity. A body, or a system of particles, can remain at rest only under one of two conditions. Either it must be acted on by no force at all, or all the forces by which it is acted on must be in perfect equilibrium. If matter existed under the first of these conditions, whence did the force suddenly emanate? Force cannot be self-originated any more than matter. But if the other alternative be adopted, how ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... brake the back wheels skidded and brought up against the curb. Clay, hanging on by one hand, was flung hard to the sidewalk. The cab teetered, regained its equilibrium, gathered impetus with a ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine

... monogamy, which has undeniable primitive uses, ceases to exist. The laws of chemical affinity teach this by analogy. When the mutual impartations which result from the conjunction of positive and negative have blended in a state of equilibrium, there is consequent repulsion, and the law of harmonies ordains new combinations. You see where ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... only just above suicide mark," would be not the presence but the absence of these great world evils. If this world presented a dead-level of comfortable selfishness that on the whole answered fairly well all round, an economy of petty self-interests in stable equilibrium, a world generally wrong, but working out no evil in particular to set it right, a society in which every man was for himself, and not the devil, as at present, but God for us all—then indeed we might despair. But who can ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... trepidations of so great a city, presents a certain element of danger. From this point of view, I cannot but regret the perfect stillness of my house among the deserts; but, on the other hand, I have succeeded in proving that the singularly unstable equilibrium of the elixir, at the moment of projection, is due rather to the impurity than to the nature of the ingredients; and as all are now of an equal and exquisite nicety, I have little fear for the result. In a week then from to-day, my dear Asenath, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... between the two lies in the fact that all young emperors stand on a peak so lofty that, do they look below, vertigo rises, while from above delirium comes. There is nothing astonishing in that. It would be astonishing were it otherwise. What does astonish is the equilibrium which the kaiser, in spite of his words, his threats and actions, has managed to maintain. Regarded as a firebrand and a menace to the peace of Europe, with the exception of two big blunders—an invitation to King Humbert to promenade with him through Strasburg, and the message which ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... on what the pious Clough Endian might reasonably regard as a fair picture. But this set contained some sharp fellows—provided outlet for a considerable amount of energy of a raw and roving sort, and, no doubt, did more to maintain the mental equilibrium of the small factory-town than any enthusiast on the other side would for a moment have allowed. The excitement which followed in the train of a man like Mr. Dyson roused, of course, an answering hubbub among the Timminsites. The whole of Jerry's ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... romantic period of the history of South Africa, that period during which fortunes were made and lost in a few days; when new lands were discovered and conquered with a facility and a recklessness that reminded one of the Middle Ages. The war established an equilibrium which but for it would have taken years to be reached. It sealed the past and heralded the dawn of a new day when civilisation was to assert itself, to brush away many abuses, much cruelty and more injustice. The race hatred which the personality ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill

... upon them the duty of shedding their blood for an idea begin by declaring to them: There is no hope of any future for you. Faith in immortality—the lesson transmitted to you by all past humanity—is a falsehood; a breath of air, or trifling want of equilibrium in the animal functions, destroys you wholly and forever. There is even no certainty that the results of your labors will endure; there is no Providential law or design, consequently no possible theory of the future; you are but building ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

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

... she had been a part of the light and darkness of his soul. To Corinna, remembering his reserve, his dignity, his moderation in thought and feeling, there was a shock in the discovery that the perfect balance, the equilibrium of his temperament, had been overthrown. Certainly in their serene and sentimental association she had stumbled on no hidden fires, no reddening embers of that earlier passion. Yet she understood that even in her girlhood, even in the April freshness of her beauty, she had never touched the depths ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... that the water collecting in the depressed curve should confine the steam, rising from the reservoir in the other curve until the pressure is sufficient to cause an eruption. His theory of action being that the water in the reservoir remains in equilibrium at a certain level, and the constant heat fills the space above with vapor, which heats the water held in the downward bend of the tube, and that also evolves vapor which fills the balance of the tube to the vent. When the combined pressure of this vapor and water are overcome by the expansion ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... letter threw Moronval into a terrible fit of rage, which rage shook the equilibrium of the academy as a violent tornado might ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... gentleman, with considerable penetration and power; has a good theological faculty; is cool, genial, and lucid in language; and, although he can shout a little when very warm, he never loses either the thread of his argument or his personal equilibrium. There are 120 members at this place of worship; the average attendance at the different services is 250; and ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... absolutely necessary to produce an equilibrium between revenue and expenditure in Ireland, as in every other country in the world. Whatever the temporary strain upon Ireland, whatever the sacrifices involved, the thing must be done, and done now or never. Great Britain's ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages explained by the hours. Of the universal mind each individual man is one more incarnation. All its properties consist in him. Each new fact in his private experience flashes a light on what ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the gods, a race of beings far more powerful, not only than short-lived man, but even than the confused army of demons, of those beings who enjoyed the control of not a few of the mysterious agencies whose apparent conflict and final accord are the causes of the life, movement, and equilibrium of the world. ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... of the same general type as had been used by Hadley. It was equipped with six rocket motors, four discharging to the bow and two to the stern. Any one of them, Carpenter said, was ample for motive power. Equilibrium was maintained by means of a heavy gyroscope which would prevent any turning of the axis of its rotation. The entire flyer shell could be revolved about the axis so that oblique motion with our bow and stern ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... affair revolves upon the studs, K, until the chain becomes taut. The apparatus then ceases to rise; but the water, ever continuing to rise, finally reaches the apex, b, of the smaller siphon, and, through it, enters the air chamber and fills it. The equilibrium being thus broken, the siphon descends to the bottom, becomes primed, and empties the reservoir. When the level of the water, in descending, is at the height of the small siphon, a b c, this latter, which is also primed, empties the chamber, F, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various

... remained stationary eight and a half minutes As it was drawn back, a wind from the east bore it against a tuft of very tall trees in a neighbouring garden, where it got entangled, without, however, losing its equilibrium. The gas was renewed by Roziers, and the balloon again rising, extricated itself from among the branches, and soared majestically into the air, followed by the acclamations of the public. This second ascent ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion

... evoked by stimulus manifests itself in nerve fibres by E.M. changes, and as far as our present knowledge goes by these only. The conception of such an excitable living tissue as nerve implies that of a molecular state which is in stable equilibrium. This equilibrium can be readily upset by an external agency, the stimulus, but the term "stable" expresses the fact that a change in any direction must be succeeded by one of opposite character, this being the return of ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose

... had, by this time, retired to their cabin; the former secretly felicitating herself on the prospect of soon quitting a vessel that had commenced its voyage under such sinister circumstances as to have deranged the equilibrium of even her well-governed and highly-disciplined mind. Gertrude was left in ignorance of the change. To her uninstructed eye, all appeared the same on the wilderness of the ocean; Wilder having it in his power to alter the direction of his ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper



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



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