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Level   /lˈɛvəl/   Listen
Level

noun
1.
A position on a scale of intensity or amount or quality.  Synonyms: degree, grade.  "A high level of care is required" , "It is all a matter of degree"
2.
A relative position or degree of value in a graded group.  Synonyms: grade, tier.
3.
A specific identifiable position in a continuum or series or especially in a process.  Synonyms: degree, point, stage.  "At what stage are the social sciences?"
4.
Height above ground.  "The pictures were at the same level"
5.
Indicator that establishes the horizontal when a bubble is centered in a tube of liquid.  Synonym: spirit level.
6.
A flat surface at right angles to a plumb line.  Synonym: horizontal surface.
7.
An abstract place usually conceived as having depth.  Synonyms: layer, stratum.  "A simile has at least two layers of meaning" , "The mind functions on many strata simultaneously"
8.
A structure consisting of a room or set of rooms at a single position along a vertical scale.  Synonyms: floor, storey, story.



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"Level" Quotes from Famous Books



... I expect every one of you to do his level best," said Gif. "Hixley High has been bragging everywhere that it has a superior team this year and is going to walk all over us. I want you to play with vigor from the very start;" and then followed a number of directions concerning plays and signals, to all of which his ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield

... and salt. This should be done about three or four hours before dinner. One hour before serving prepare the dough for pot pie. Pare white potatoes, slice and dry on a napkin, sift 2 cups of flour with 1 teaspoonful of baking-powder, pinch of salt, cut through the sifted flour, 1 level tablespoonful of shortening. Moisten dough with 1 egg and enough milk to make dough stiff enough to handle. (Almost 1 cup of milk, including the egg.) Cut off a small piece of dough, size of a small teacup, roll thin and take up plenty of flour on both sides. Take up all flour possible. Cut this ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... swampy coast belt and the mountains intervenes a zone of very irregular hill country, of which the average height above the sea-level is about one thousand feet, with occasional peaks rising to five or ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... a mightily awkward thing for the good folk of Charleston to behold day after day a black flag with its white skull and crossbones fluttering at the fore of the pirate captain's craft, over across the level stretch of green salt marshes; and it was mightily unpleasant, too, to know that this or that prominent citizen was crowded down with the other prisoners under ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... its position, save three, which occupied a shelf on a level with his shoulder and adjoining the gap, he desisted wearily, for many of the volumes were weighty, and the heat of the room was almost insufferable. He dropped with a sigh upon a silk ottoman ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... found a co-operative colony. The purpose is the establishment of a manufacturing community in which the rule shall be 'eight hours and fair wages,' and the spot chosen is represented as a salubrious table land of 120,000 acres, 2,000 feet above sea level, abounding in iron, timber, and limestone. Here it is intended to set up an iron furnace, a nail factory, and the sash, door, and blind industry, to build 200 houses within 30 days, put up a city hall, public school and engine house at once, and secure incorporation as a city within two weeks. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various

... men to be to their most intimate friend neither more nor less than they are to themselves, but this was true of Dickens; and what kind or quality of nature such intercourse expressed in him, of what strength, tenderness, and delicacy susceptible, of what steady level warmth, of what daily unresting activity of intellect, of what unbroken continuity of kindly impulse through the change and vicissitude of three-and-thirty years, the letters to myself given in these volumes could alone express. Gathered ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... astonishment Sylvie sent her to dress in her best clothes after dinner. The liveliest imagination is never up to the level of the activity which suspicion excites in the mind of an old maid. In this particular case, this particular old maid carried the day against politicians, lawyers, notaries, and all other self-interests. Sylvie determined to consult Vinet, after examining herself into all the suspicious ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... Valley of Voe, and our travellers looked out upon a strange scene. Below them was a vast space, at the bottom of which was a black sea with rolling billows, through which little tongues of flame constantly shot up. Just above them, and almost on a level with their platform, were banks of rolling clouds which constantly shifted position and changed color. The blues and greys were very beautiful, and Dorothy noticed that on the cloud banks sat or reclined fleecy, shadowy forms of beautiful beings who must have been ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... but not unpretentious man of business, still a little perplexed by his stupendous success, and not yet certain of his precise social level, revealed in his unshapely but kindly features the modest rung on which Nature herself would probably have placed him, if the peculiar economic conditions of his Age had not intervened to bring about a different result; while two characteristics alone led one to suspect his ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... climbed upward until, when he had noted from the barograph that they were at a height of nearly six thousand feet, Dick "straightened her out," and let her glide along on a level keel. ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis

... hardly out of my lips before we had rounded the corner above the Convent; and a few yards further on could see across to Sanjowlie. In the center of the level road stood the black and white liveries, the yellow-paneled 'rickshaw and Mrs. Keith-Wessington. I pulled up, looked, rubbed my eyes, and, I believe, must have said something. The next thing I knew was that I was ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... the series developed, however, I perceived that something more than a new short story form was involved; I perceived that the "read-aloud" play has a distinct character and function of its own. In the long run, everything human rises or falls to the level of speech. The culminating point, even of action the most poignant or emotion the most intimate, is where it finds the right word or phrase by which it is translated into the lives of others. Every literary form ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley

... ice from glaciers, and portions of earth, or morasses, removed by columns of water. Earth-motion in Shropshire. Water of wells rising above the level of the ground. St. Alkmond's well near Derby might be raised many yards, so as to serve the town. Well at Sheerness, and at Hartford ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... with his ardent face on a level with hers. He was never more irresistible than when he wanted something, especially a forbidden something, and in the course of his twenty-one years he had never wanted anything so much as he wanted ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... by the fire in Mr. Brotherton's sanctuary, holding his Harper's Weekly in his hand, and glancing idly over the new books carelessly arranged on the level of the eye upon the wide oak mantel, the Judge came to be conscious of the presence of Amos Adams on ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... took them to Vlammertinghe, led through level fields, lying waste and desolate with rank, overgrowing weeds. As they approached that historic village, they saw on every hand the cruel marks of war. On either side of the road were roofless and shattered cottages, grown around with nettles ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... to the level of his head, and again looked penetratingly into his pupil's face. There was a touch of wonder, of pity, perhaps also of some displeasure, expressed in this fixed gaze. It lasted so long that Dino turned a little pale, although he did not flinch beneath it. Finally, the Prior lowered the ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... ages ago, was an inland sea; anyhow it had all the appearance of it, and I was later told geologists thought so too. It is, to say the least, very likely, for Yuma, I heard, is several hundred feet below sea-level. The latitude is 32 1/2 deg. north, a warm latitude in any case, but with desert for hundreds of miles all round, with perhaps as low an elevation as exists on earth, shut in on all sides so that not a breath of air can get at it, what wonder that Yuma and all about there is hot? I have experienced ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money

... our mind is intent on temporal things in order that it may rest in them, it remains immersed therein; but when it is intent on them in relation to the acquisition of beatitude, it is not lowered by them, but raises them to a higher level. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... thinking about that; I've just about given up hope of finding anybody or even a reasonably high level of barbarism," Altamont said. "I was thinking about that cache of microfilmed books that was buried at ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire

... dreamed of the tremendous changes which were to be produced in the world by that convulsion. But it struck me as the beginning of a time, when the lazy quietude of years was about to be broken up, and room made for all who were inclined to exert themselves. Before we had reached the level lawns and trim parterres which showed us the lights of the family festivity, I had settled all the difficulties which might impede the career of less fortunate individuals; time and chance were managed with the adroitness of a projector; and if Bellona had been one of the Nine Muses, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... keen glance spied in the open countenance something that kept her lingering a moment longer. "This is a democratic place," she said in a more sympathetic tone, "every girl finds her own level sooner or later. The basis is not money or social rank of the families at home. It is not brains or clothes or stuff like that. It is simply that the same kind of girls drift together. They're congenial. It seems to be a law. A general law, you understand. Of course," she hesitated for ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... mushrooms with salmon gills grew nearer the warren; the slope towards the nut-tree hedge and spring. Several climates in one field: the wintry ridge over which leaves were always driving in all four seasons of the year; the level sunny plain and fallen cromlech still tall enough for a gnomon and to cast its shadow in the treeless drought; the moist, warm, grassy depression; the lotus-grown slope, ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... the real intelligence of the higher brutes, it has been ably defended by a far more competent observer, Mr. Agassiz, to whose conclusions we yield a general assent, although we cannot quite place the best of dogs "in that respect upon a level with a considerable proportion of poor humanity," nor indulge the hope, or indeed the desire, of a renewed acquaintance with the whole animal kingdom in ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... Schmitz answered the reporter's queries. He had done his level best for San Francisco. As for the charges pending against him, they would soon be disproved. No one had anything on him. All his ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... pebbles, and faced from top to bottom with hewn stone laid in mortar. It had five stages, each receding so as to be smaller than that below it. In general outline it was a rectangular pyramid three hundred feet square at the base, with a level summit of considerable extent, on which were two towers, and two altars where "perpetual fires" were maintained. Here the religious ceremonies were conducted. The ascent was by a circular flight of ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... it between the editorial room, the composing room and the pressroom. He must hold well in hand everybody and every function, having risen, as it were, step-by-step from the ground floor to the roof. He should be level-headed, yet impressionable; sympathetic, yet self-possessed; able quickly to sift, detect and discriminate; of various knowledge, experience and interest; the cackle of the adjacent barnyard the noise of the world to his ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... it sank down deep, below the level of permissible discussion. But it revealed itself presently in an awful external upheaval, utterly unforeseen, and in ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... justice, I think. The whole machinery—I don't mean the wood and iron machinery now—of the cotton trade is so new that it is no wonder if it does not work well in every part all at once. Seventy years ago what was it? And now what is it not? Raw, crude materials came together; men of the same level, as regarded education and station, took suddenly the different positions of masters and men, owing to the motherwit, as regarded opportunities and probabilities, which distinguished some, and made them far-seeing as to what great future lay concealed ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... skimming along over a beautiful bit of road with a thick fir wood upon one side and open fields upon the other. The road was level as a floor, and no turn would be made for fully half a mile. Horses know so well the difference between their own driver's touch and a stranger's hand, and the four whose reins Ruth now held were not dullards. They had been going along at a steady round trot, ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... upon them. But only fancy what supposition that was, for you would have to imagine that there was a chain of mountains a thousand miles or more long, and that the top of every mountain came within 20 fathoms of the surface of the sea, and neither rose above nor sunk beneath that level. That is highly improbable: such a chain of mountains was never known. Then how can you possibly account for the curious circular form of the atolls by any supposition of this kind? I believe there ...
— Coral and Coral Reefs • Thomas H. Huxley

... of the six divisions of Hawaii, is a region rich in folklore. From the crater of Kilauea, which lies on the slope of Mauna Loa about 4,000 feet above sea level, the land slopes gradually to the Puna coast along a line of small volcanic cones, on the east scarcely a mile from the sea. The slope is heavily forested, on the uplands with tall hard-wood trees of ohia, on the coast with groves of pandanus. ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous

... the eye, for the first time since he had discovered the truth about Cold Feet. In spite of herself Jig found that she was drawn to trust the fat man. She let a smile grow, let her glance become as level and as straight as his own. She reined her horse beside his and stretched out ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... the sea-shore again, and on our right is the great plain of Akkar, level as a floor, and covered with fields of Indian corn and cotton. Flocks and herds and Arab camps of black tents are scattered over it. Here is a shepherd-boy playing on his "zimmara" or pipe, made of two reeds tied together and perforated. He plays on it hour after hour and day after day, as ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... having skirted it, we were enabled to resume our course to W.N.W., until the decline of day made me look for water to the south-west. The scrubs were awful, and threatened to surround us; but we succeeded in finding a fine large lagoon, probably filled by the drainage of the almost level country to the north-east. No water-course, not the slightest channel produced by heavy rains, was visible to indicate the flow of waters. Occasionally we met with swampy ground, covered with reeds, and with some standing water of the last rains; the ground was so rotten, that the ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... and well wooded, and, we were told, has a mission upon it, called St. Buenaventura, from which the point is named. In the middle of this crescent, directly opposite the anchoring ground, lie the mission and town of Santa Barbara, on a low, flat plain, but little above the level of the sea, covered with grass, though entirely without trees, and surrounded on three sides by an amphitheatre of mountains, which slant off to the distance of fifteen or twenty miles. The mission stands a little back of the town, and is ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... eighteen), much lower than the present elliptic ones, which date back to the thirteenth century, according to Labaude—or to the fifteenth century, acording to other authorities—when the bridge, having proved too low-pitched, was raised to its present level, and the flood arches over the piles were built. The four subsisting arches were, with the bridge chapel, restored during the last century. The old bridge formed an elbow upstream on the Villeneuve ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... he protested. "I am as obstinate as a mule. Ask Ormsby, or Loring. But the logic of the thing is blankly unanswerable. I can either get down to the dirty level of these highbinders—fight the devil with a brand taken out of his ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... level of the tone in which he uttered those words—the monotone of an emotion long ago burned out, and yet ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... Of course, on level estates there is little difficulty in tempering liquor, but on hilly properties scarcely two pans will require ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... figure 8, on a painted sarcophagus from Milato in Crete, is more crude and savage than many productions of the Australian aboriginals, [Footnote: Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. xvi. p. 174, fig. 50. Grosse. Les Debuts de l'Art, pp. 124-176.] the thing is on the level of Red Indian work. Meanwhile at Vaphio, Enkomi, Knossos, and elsewhere the ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... ideas were too singular not to appear affected and satisfied nobody entirely. He dubbed Jean-Jacques a dull, paltry rascal. Voltaire, on the other hand, he accounted among the divinely-gifted men, though not on the same level as the amiable Helvetius, or Diderot, or the Baron d'Holbach. In his opinion the greatest genius of the century was Boulanger. He also thought highly of the astronomer Lalande and of Dupuis, author of a Memoir on the origin ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... legs were short and vigorous, the colonel's long and no less muscular, and, thanks to his devotion to Walton, which had taken him tramping many miles over hilly trails, as well as across level meadows, the old detective was soon able to overtake the lad, and at a point impossible ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele

... were very tottery, and he had need of support, but once we reached level ground he walked steadily. We paused at Casimir's body, and Jacques said thoughtfully, "He was a cunning rogue; he deceived me to the very end. Poor fellow, I am sorry to see him like this, but he took his risks. He thought to kill me ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx

... solitary prize of 25 lb. weight may largely remunerate an emigrant to California, therefore a whole generation of emigrants will find the average profits of gold-washing, golddigging, etc., beyond those of Russia or of Borneo, is an insanity quite on a level with all the other insanities of the case. But, says the writer in the Times, the fact has justified the speculation; the result is equal to the anticipation; in practice nobody has been disappointed; everybody has succeeded; ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... which consumes so much time, which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be forgone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most. Moreover, property, which has been well compared to snow, —"if it fall level to-day, it will be blown into drifts to-morrow,"—is the surface action of internal machinery, like the index on the face of a clock. Whilst now it is the gymnastics of the understanding, it is hiving in the foresight of the ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... a day when the chill air portended a snowstorm. We rushed out-of-doors to feel the first few tiny flakes descending. Hour by hour the flakes dropped silently, softly from their airy height to the earth, and the country became more and more level. A snowy night closed upon the world, and in the morning one could scarcely recognize a feature of the landscape. All the roads were hidden, not a single landmark was visible, only a waste of snow with ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... caught up the lantern, and we all went up to the level floor of the abutment at the bridge sill. Lem Marks and the clubfoot were ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... in his hand, that more powerful purchasers have been there before him? When he offers the loan, will he not find them offering the province? when he bids with the subsidy, will he not be outbid with the kingdom? Or, if the anticipated conquerors of Europe, raising their sense of dignity to the level of their power, should disdain the traffic of corruption; will not the roaring of the French cannon in the ears of kings make them feel, that, to persist in your ill-omened alliance, is to devote themselves to ruin? will they bargain, in sight of the axe? will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... our speed at the entrance of the tortuous path that leads down into the valley of the ruins. The care required to guide our horses during that difficult descent served for a few minutes longer as a pretext for my silence; but, on reaching the level ground of the valley, I saw that I must speak at any cost, and I was about to begin with some commonplace remark, when Madame de Palme was kind enough ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet

... Quinnipiac Harbor they saw for the first time the two great cliffs, the East and West Rocks, called by the Dutch "the Red Hills," which still stand like guardians, one on each side of the present city of New Haven. On the level plain between them, which is watered by several small streams, they determined to build their town and to place it at the head of the ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton

... upwards of fifty sarcophagi, and there were many more; they are formed of the calcareous stone with which the Zoueit and Moerad mountains are composed. Some of them are sunk to a level with the surface of the ground, which is very rocky; others appear to have been removed from their original position. The largest was ten spans in length, and three and a half in breadth; but the greater part are much smaller, and are not even large enough to contain the corpse of a full grown ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... has been exalted above its just and proper level, and depressed below it, by the slaverers and the vituperaters, solely because they cannot get at it; the former are idolatrous from hope, the latter devilish in despair; and the result we are familiar with, in caricatures portraying ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... the enemy, cut some adrift, and set others on fire. The Spaniards at the southern gate lost heart; they were exposed to a hot fire, which they were unable to return. On one side they saw the water rapidly rising above the level of the dyke on which they stood, on the other they perceived their only means of retreat threatened. They turned, and in desperate haste retreated along the causeway now under water. In their haste many slipped off the road and were ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty

... as it may: in the year 1796, the supposed grave was actually broken into, in the course of digging a vault in its immediate proximity; and not much more than fifty years ago the slab over the grave, having sunk below the level of the pavement, was removed, the surface was levelled, and a fresh stone was laid over the old bed. It is certain, I believe, that the original stone did not bear the name of Shakespeare, any more than its successor: but it is not certain that the four lines appear upon ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby

... an allowance, increasing with its increase, and wholly independent of his earnings. Nominal wages had been actually forced down below the starvation point. The law had demoralized industry by placing the idlest ditcher on a level of comfort with the best ploughman, and threatened to swallow up property in the support of poverty. Tocqueville and his friends had seen the danger from another point of view. The most popular and most formidable of the dogmas of that Socialism, which had infected so deeply the proletariat ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... grew nearer and larger, he estimated the range, judged the deflection of the wind that swept at right angles across the line of fire, and calculated the chances of overshooting marks that were so far below his level. But he did not shoot. Not until they reached the beginning of the passage did he make his presence known. He did not disclose himself, but ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London

... on the Paris and Lyons Railway for the application of electromagnetism to locomotives. The report goes on to say that the apparatus prepared for the purpose was applied to an exceedingly large locomotive, and succeeded perfectly, first on a level, and then on an ascent of thirteen milliemes, the steepest in fact of the line. It was feared that difficulties would arise from the smoothness of the wheels on the rails,—but no inconvenience was ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... market for colored glass at this time. The hired hands protest; and the gondolier, cheated out of his commission, sorrows greatly, but obeys your command to move on. At least he pretends to obey it; but a minute later he brings you up broadside at the water-level doors of a shop dealing in antiques, known appropriately as antichitas, or at a mosaic shop or a curio shop. If ever you do succeed in reaching your destination it is by the exercise of much profanity ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... greyish green, where no flowers are now in bloom, supply a restful groundwork to those brilliant patches of diapered fioriture. These are like praying-carpets spread for devotees upon the pavement of a mosque whose roof is heaven. In the level light the scythes of the mowers flash as we move past. From their bronzed foreheads the men toss masses of dark curls. Their muscular flanks and shoulders sway sideways from firm yet pliant reins. On one hill, fronting the sunset, there stands a herd of some thirty huge grey oxen, feeding and raising ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... work on British Zoology for the production of which he was radically unfitted. It has been severely, but justly, pointed out that wherever Pennant rises superior, either in style or information, to his own dead level of pompous inexactitude, he is almost certainly quoting from a letter of Gilbert White's. Yet no acknowledgment of the Selborne parson is vouchsafed; "even in the account of the harvest-mouse," says Professor Bell, "there is ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... Greenland, constantly saw those visionary cities, and gives some highly curious plates of the appearances they presented. They resembled the real cities seen on the coast of Holland, where towers, and battlements, and spires, "bosomed high in tufted trees," rise on the level horizon, and are seen floating on the surface of the sea. Among the optic deceptions noticed by Captain Scoresby, was one of a very singular nature. His ship had been separated by the ice, from that of his father for some time; and he was looking for her every day, with great anxiety. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... she rejoined, smiling at him level-eyed. "The world has been steadily growing smaller since Shakespeare called ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde

... banks, and the Federal Reserve Board are all cooperating to be of assistance and relief. On the other hand, there are localities and individuals who have had one of their most prosperous years. The general price level is fair, but here again there are exceptions both ways, some items being poor while others are excellent. In spite of a lessened production the farm income for this year will be about the same as last year and much above the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge

... means a clod, or hard unirrigated land. Cuzquini is to break clods of earth, or to level. Montesinos derives the name of the city from the verb "to level," or from the heaps of clods, of earth called cuzco. Cusquic-Raymi ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

... was sunk a little below the level of the lane, so that he seemed to be looking straight down into a pit of yellow light hollowed out of the blackness. Two figures sat knitting at the window on the edge of the pit. His mother and Kate. A third, in the center of the light, leaned her elbows on the table ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... sunset, and Hitty sat with her wan face pressed to the window-pane, hushing her child in his cradle with one of those low, monotoned murmurs that mothers know; but still her husband did not come. The level sun-rays pierced the woods into more vivid splendor, burnished gold fringed the heavy purple clouds in the west, and warm crimson lights turned the purple into more triumphant glory; the sun set, unstained with mist or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... represents the tendency of the extreme elements of the race constantly to seek the middle or mediocre level. For example, the children of superior parents are not likely to be so brilliant as their parents, and the offspring of inferior people are somewhat better than their parents. This "drag of the race" or "pull of ancestors" is no doubt due to the fact that selection has never ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... the lowlands. This ridge is a continuation of the Lebanon range, and extends as far south as the desert. In Upper Galilee the mountains reach an average height of two thousand eight hundred feet above sea level, but in Lower Galilee they are a thousand feet lower. In Samaria and Judaea they reach an altitude of two or three thousand feet. The foot-hills, called the Shefelah, and the Negeb, or "South Country," complete the ridge. The highest peak is Jebel ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes

... men today, force down wages to a lower level and demand more from men before they will marry. And yet we see $25.00 a week stenographers giving up their positions to barter themselves, presumably for life, to $35.00 a week clerks or salesmen, rarely because of the mating ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias

... at Sherman, eight thousand feet above tide. But our preconceived notions of the Rocky Mountains, derived from pictures of Fremont a la Napoleon crossing the Alps, have received a rude shock; we only climb high plains—not a tree, nor a peak, nor a ravine; when at the top we are but on level ground—a brown prairie, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... following day we had crossed the mountains, and were walking along the level upland that leads to the plain of Chaotong. And on Sunday, April 1st, we reached the city. Cedars, held sacred, with shrines in the shelter of their branches, dot the plain; peach-trees and pear-trees were now in full bloom; the harvest was ripening ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... grasses is very striking in its character. In most grasses, especially in erect ones, several roots all of about the same diameter arise in a dense tuft from nearly the same level and from the lower-most nodes of the stems. The roots are all thin and fibrous in the vast majority of these plants, and they are tough and wiry only in a few cases such as in the case of the roots of Pennisetum cenchroides, P. Alopecuros, Ischaemum pilosum ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar

... there to discover and work the mines; and would be of great service in the discovery of them and the pacification of the mountaineers, because of their communication with the latter, as the said province borders on the said Ygolotes. The land contains many settlements and many level plains, while its rice is the best that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various

... natural and supernatural education of mankind, for the passive permission of error in the interest of truth, as also of evil in the interest of good. Since then there will ever be found those who in all good faith and sincerity can adapt themselves to the popular need and supply each level of intelligence with the medicine most suited to its digestion, all we ask is that a variety of standards in controversial writings be freely recognized; that each who feels called to such efforts should put forth his very best with a view to helping those minds ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... the same, to meet her on the old level, and he began at once to talk to her of the subject he had been discussing with her aunt. He said frankly that they both felt she had unjustifiably turned her back upon possibilities which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... wide, smooth lawn, and old-fashioned brick house, weather-stained and moss-mantled, looked singularly peaceful and attractive. Against the sombre mass of tree-foliage, white and purple altheas raised their circular censers, as if to greet the sun that was throwing level beams from the eastern hill-top, and delicate pink, and deep azure, and pearl-pale convolvulus held up their velvet trumpets all beaded with dew, to be drained by the first kiss of the great Day-God. Up and down the comb of the steep roof, beautiful pigeons with necklaces that rivalled the trappings ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... than ever of forming an acquaintance with Lady Matilda, began to give way to symptoms of despondency; and they made their first attack, by urging him, to treat on the same level of familiarity that he himself was treated, Mr. Sandford, to whom he had, till now, ever behaved with the ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... nuns were borne upon it. She found, however, that one hem of the cloak sank below the water, because one of her companions had brought with her, against orders, a brazen vessel from the convent; but on her throwing it away, the sinking hem rose to the level of the rest and bore them safely. St. Enda himself had first crossed to Arran on a large stone which he had ordered his followers to place on the water and which floated before the wind; and he told of another priest who had walked on the sea ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... low, sparkled and burned with the hues of all the gems. Here and there a bird gave a cry; no other sound awoke the silence. I never see the statue of the Roman youth, praying with outstretched arms, and open, empty, level palms, as waiting to receive and hold the blessing of the gods, but that outstretched barren heath rises before me, as if it meant the same thing as the statue—or were, at least, the fit room in the middle space of which to set the praying ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... whom the love of Nature has Imperfectly supplanted the desire And dread necessity of food, your shore, Fair Oakland, is a terror. Over all Your sunny level, from Tamaletown To where the Pestuary's fragrant slime, With dead dogs studded, bears its ailing fleet, Broods the still menace of starvation. Bones Of men and women bleach along the ways And pampered vultures sleep upon the trees. ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... ahead. I raised my head cautiously to the level of the wire-grass. A hundred rods beyond, nine black ducks were grouped near the edge of a circular pool; behind them, from where I stood, there rose from the level waste a humplike mound. I could no longer ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... style," said the American. "Nice rambling ark, two stories high, and no two rooms on the same level. Architect built right out into the country till he got tired, and then turned round and came back. Obliged to have a valet to show you to your room whether you're ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells

... I guess," said Burroughs, laughing. "You're pretty level-headed, young man. By the way, I heard you had some trouble lately with a man called ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland

... had made him different from other people'—singular' d' altri genti. The great happiness of life is, to be neither better nor worse than the general run of those you meet with, you soon find a mortifying level in their difference to what you particularly pique yourself upon. What is the use of being moral in a night-cellar, or wise in Bedlam? 'To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.' So says Shakespear; and the commentators have not ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... lighter deck ran fore and aft, and under this were the stations of the rowers. The bow was strengthened with plates of iron or brass, and beams of oak, to enable it to be used as a ram, and the stem rose above the deck level and was carved into the head of some bird or beast. There was a light mast which could be rigged up when the wind served, and carried a cross-yard and a square sail. Mast and yard were taken down before going ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... slats and the insignificant and frail top rail, and have a solid porch railing (or porch fence) built with broad, top rail. Then place all around porch, resting on iron brackets, rail-flower boxes, the tops of these level with the top of the rail, and paint the boxes the colour of the house trimmings. Filled with running vines and gay flowers, ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood

... a side path. The millet stems were so high that he disappeared within them with a crumpling of dry leaves. The soft ant-hills which it was his daily custom to level off failed to attract his attention. He walked straight on. Parrots flew by, chattering, with their green wings shining in the sun, and huge grasshoppers were jumping in ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

... day found us all three surveying our claim. We put up a tent, but the first thing to do was to build a cabin. Right away we began to level off the ground. The work was pleasant, and conducted in such friendship that the time passed most happily. Indeed, my only worry was about Berna. She had never ceased to be at the forefront of my mind. I schooled myself into the belief ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... ride of nearly two hours. And now we must have been many thousands of feet above the sea level, or even the level of ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... over her knees on a stile close to a river. A MAN with a silver badge stands beside her clutching the worn top plank. THE GIRL'S level brows are drawn together; her eyes see her memories. THE MAN'S eyes see THE GIRL; he has a dark, twisted face. The bright sun shines; the quiet river flows; the cuckoo is calling; the mayflower is in bloom along the hedge that ends in the stile on ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... a-dance and nerves braced and tingling from the sparkling water, we faced each other upon the grassy level, Jessamy and I, stripped to the waist and with muffled fists and I very conscious of the keen eyes that appraised my slender arms, and the muscles of what uncle George ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... checked by the appearance of Cuffe on the forecastle. It was not often the captain visited that part of the ship; but he was considered a privileged person, let him go where he would. At his appearance, all the "old salts" quitted the heel of the spar, tarpaulins came fairly down to a level with the bag-reefs of the shirts, and even Strand stepped into the nettings, leaving the place between the knight-heads clear. To this spot Cuffe ascended with a light, steady step, for he was but six-and-twenty, just touching his hat in ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... he erected, solely for her gratification, the remarkable structure which the Greeks called the "Hanging Garden." A native of a mountainous country, Amyitis disliked the tiresome uniformity of the level alluvium, and pined for the woods and hills of Media. It was to satisfy this longing by the best substitute which circumstances allowed that the celebrated Garden was made. Art strove to emulate nature with a certain measure of success, and the lofty rocks ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson

... be put on that level. It is desirable to have in church something different from what goes on outside, and (as I say in the text) a hymn-tune need not appeal to the lowest understanding on first hearing. The simple free rhythms, too, are perfectly natural; they ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges

... fed! They were ready to be. A pull over such a course means an appetite, but whether these level-headed chaps were made fools of ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... use one's circumstances, whatever they may be, to accomplish one's ambitions? A lady cannot afford to despise her husband. A lady is, first of all, serene. You talk like a Craig rather than like a Severance. If he can taint you this soon how long will it be before you are at his level? How can you hope to bring him up ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... the shelter of English guns to the fatal breach, so often assailed, so gallantly defended, but never so fiercely contested as on this burning afternoon. The ruins of the massive wall that here had been broken down by the French, were used by them as stepping stones to get on a level with the besieged, and so to escape the heavy stones which the latter hurled down; nay, even the dead bodies of the morning's comrades were made into ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell

... path of pale light swept around the elbow of the mountain and the wheezing, puffing monsters reached the head of the grade. The watchers could almost hear the sighs of relief from the two big mountain-climbers as they found the level track beneath them. Their breathing grew easier, quieter as they clanged slowly across the pass a few rods below the camp. The burros, having satisfied their curiosity, went back to supper. The firemen in the cab windows raised their ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour

... beauty, he no longer frequented Domenico's shop, nor did he go elsewhere, but, judging the Medicean gardens to be the best school, spent all his time and faculties in working there." Vasari reports that it was Lorenzo's wish to raise the art of sculpture in Florence to the same level as that of painting; and for this reason he placed Bertoldo, a pupil and follower of Donatello, over his collections, with a special commission to aid and instruct the young men who used them. With the same intention of forming an academy or school of art, Lorenzo ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... against time, which, in the matters at least of perseverance, persistency, hard labour, and determination, beat all the records of bicyclists and horsemen from the beginning of time. Cyclists have frequent down-hills to help and rest them; Dan and his friend had no such aids. It was all either dead level or upstream. Dick Turpin and the rider to Ghent, (we forget his name), only killed their horses. Dan and Francois nearly killed themselves—not only with hard work and no rest, but with profound anxiety, for the wedding hour was rapidly approaching ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... We had traveled through deserts and mountains (with the exception of the Little Colorado Valley, a place which we did not particularly admire) for a long ways. Now there opened before us a sight truly lovely. A fertile looking soil and miles of level plain. In the distance the green cotton wood trees; and, what made the country look more real, was the thrifty little settlement of Phoenix, with its streets planted with shade trees for miles. Strange as it may ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... observed before in my own mind, that a good deal of what is called obscurity in you, arises from a habit of very subtle association; so subtle, that you are probably unconscious of it, ... and the effect of which is to throw together on the same level and in the same light, things of likeness and unlikeness—till the reader grows confused as I did, and takes one for another. I may say however, in a poor justice to myself, that I wrote what I wrote so unfortunately, through reverence for you, and not at all from ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... bracken on the bank near a deep pool. In order to secure a slight feeling of pleasurable expectation while resting, he put on a bait-cast, dropped the worm into the deepest part of the pool, propped up his rod with several stones, and then lay down to watch. The turf happened to be soft and level. As a natural consequence the tired ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... proposed to weaken and destroy all these Prussian institutions in order to change them into a democratic Germany. He was asked to assent to a Constitution in which the Prussian Government would sink to the level of a provincial council, under the guidance of an Imperial Ministry which itself would be dependent on a Parliament in which the Prussian interests would be in a minority. The most important and honourable duties ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... into our sacred books—there seems a substantial agreement among leading scholars that they were erected primarily as parts of temples, but largely for the purpose of astronomical observations, to which the Chaldeans were so devoted, and to which their country, with its level surface and clear atmosphere, was so well adapted. As to the real cause of the ruin of such structures, one of the inscribed cylinders discovered in recent times, speaking of a tower which most of the archaeologists identify ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... of this year (1855) a pro-slavery party came to our house to search for father; not finding him, they departed, taking with them my pony, Prince. I shall never forget the man who stole that pony. He afterwards rose from the low level of a horse thief to the high dignity of a justice of the peace, and I think still lives at Kickapoo. The loss of my faithful pony nearly broke my heart and bankrupted me in business, as I had nothing ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody

... matter that you should be perfectly sane and well-balanced. Now education helps sanity. It shows the proportion of things. An American essayist bids us "keep our eyes on the fixed stars." Education helps us to do this. It helps us to live the life we have to lead on a higher mental and spiritual level ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson

... tremble with the shock. Not a word spoke we; nay, we had scarce courage at times to draw breath, for two hours and more of this fearful passage, with no encouragement from our guides save that one of them did coolly take out a knife and peel an onion as though he had been on a level, broad road; and then, reaching a flat space, we came to a stand again before an ascent that promised to be worse than that we had done. Here we got down, Moll clinging to our hands and looking around her with large, ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... is completed. This indeed is to separate things mutually connected, but at the same time the secular business which, according to the older narrative, is the nearest and most pressing, is reduced to the level of a mere episode in the midst of the sacred. That there is no room for the building of a house and a Philistine war within the three months which offer themselves so conveniently for the interpolation is a ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... the expert tugboat man. A whirl of the wheel to the right, a turn to the left—the craft heeled strongly under the forcing of her powerful rudder to avoid by an arm's-length some timbers fairly flung aside by the wash. The displacement of the rapid running seemed almost to press the water above the level of the deck on either side and about ten feet from the gunwale. As the low marshes and cat-tails flew past, Orde noted with satisfaction that many of the logs, urged one side by the breeze, had found lodgment among the reeds and in the bayous and inlets. One at a time, and painfully, these ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... you are ordinarily observant," laughed Miss Griffin, "just keep your eyes on a level, and you'll be able, in five minutes, to understand why he is so good to you ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock

... stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a low enough level to prevent dangerous anthropogenic ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... excursions; and conversed with apparent openness and candour on the past, the present, and the future. "There is but one people in the world," said he to Colonel Campbell—"the English—the rest are only so many populaces. I tried to raise the French to your level of sentiment, and failing to do so, fell of course. I am now politically dead to Europe. Let me do what I can for Elba.... It must be confessed," said he, having climbed the hill above Ferraio, from whence he could look down on the whole of his territory as on a map—"it ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... than himself? No, no! 'tis quite, and clean out of nature. A good, sousing satire, now, well powdered with personal pepper, and seasoned with the spirit of party, that demolishes a conspicuous character, and sinks him below our own level—there, there, we are pleased; there we chuckle and grin, and toss the half-crowns on the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... Fyodorovna is a splendid woman, highly educated, and you are a man of the highest intellect. Of course, you are not married," Samoylenko went on, glancing round at the adjacent tables, "but that's not your fault; and besides . . . one ought to be above conventional prejudices and rise to the level of modern ideas. I believe in free love myself, yes. . . . But to my thinking, once you have settled together, you ought to go on living together ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... a remote district of a native-ruled state, and the chief settlement bears the same name. At a point on the river about forty miles from the sea, where the first houses come into view, there can be seen rising above the level of the forests the summits of two steep hills very close together, and separated by what looks like a deep fissure, the cleavage of some mighty stroke. As a matter of fact, the valley between is nothing but a narrow ravine; the appearance ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... imposing building outside, with apparently countless rooms, but the thing which immediately struck X. as something uncommon was the fact that the floors of the apartments were level with the ground and not raised as is the case in Singapore and the Peninsula, and he felt feverish as he noticed it. The traveller was allotted a fair sized room opening on to a court yard, with other rooms and other openings to the right and to the left, and in fact all round him, and in ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser



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