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Mobility   /moʊbˈɪləti/  /moʊbˈɪlɪti/   Listen
Mobility

noun
1.
The quality of moving freely.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Mobility" Quotes from Famous Books



... your porters' outfits and what trade goods you may need are quite sufficient. You will have all you want, and not too much. If you take care of yourself, you ought to keep in good health. Your small outfit permits greater mobility than does that of the English cousin, infinitely less nuisance and expense. Furthermore, you feel that once more you are "next to things," instead of "being led about Africa like a dog on ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... flood, the fire—seemed to have laid hold on man, on the social and moral world, dissolving or disintegrating opinion, first principles, faith, establishing amorphism, so to call it, there also. All along indeed the genius, the good gifts of Greece to the world had had much to do with the mobility of its temperament. Only, when Plato came into potent contact with his countrymen (Pericles, Phidias, Socrates being now gone) in politics, in literature and art, in men's characters, the defect naturally incident to that fine quality had come to have unchecked sway. From the lifeless background ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... her rather swiftly and searchingly. His eyes were not large, but they were bright, and held none of the languor so often seen in the eyes of his countrymen. His face was expressive through its mobility rather than through its contours. The features were small and refined, not noble, but unmistakably aristocratic. The nose was sensitive, with wide nostrils. A long and straight moustache, turning slightly grey, did not hide ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... enables him to produce effects, of which animals are not capable. The variety, observable in the organs of individuals of the human species suffices to explain the differences in what is called their intellectual faculties. More or less delicacy in these organs, warmth in the blood, mobility in the fluids, flexibility or stiffness in the fibres and nerves, must necessarily produce the infinite diversity, which we observe in the minds of men. It is by exercise, habit and education, that the mind is unfolded and becomes superior to that of others. ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach

... she upheld her few auxiliaries, mainly Prussia and Hanover, in their desperate strife. Her power was everywhere that her ships could reach, and there was none to dispute the sea to her. Where she would she went, and with her went her guns and her troops. By this mobility her forces were multiplied, those of her enemies distracted. Ruler of the seas, she everywhere obstructed its highways. The enemies' fleets could not join; no great fleet could get out, or if it did, it was only to meet ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... those days, and not merely veneered with purple by exhilarating victuals and drinks, though the latter were not at all despised by him. His face was indeed rather pale than otherwise, for he had just come from the mill. It was capable of immense changes of expression: mobility was its essence, a roll of flesh forming a buttress to his nose on each side, and a deep ravine lying between his lower lip and the tumulus represented by his chin. These fleshy lumps moved stealthily, as if of their own accord, whenever ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... out of the past not altogether as a distinct figure, but as an appreciative voice, a long regard of fixed, abstracted eyes, and a mobility of mouth somewhat too small and delicately lined for a man's, though with an unexpectedly firm close of the lower lip now and then; enough to do away with any inference of indecision. Nevertheless, something nebulous, preoccupied, vague, in his bearing and regard, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... cosmopolites, understand why I have confined myself to painting here only a fragment of it. That world, indeed, does not exist, it can have neither defined customs nor a general character. It is composed of exceptions and of singularities. We are so naturally creatures of custom, our continual mobility has such a need of gravitating around one fixed axis, that motives of a personal order alone can determine us upon an habitual and voluntary exile from our native land. It is so, now in the case of an artist, a person ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... sign peace without the sanction of the other partners. Let us suppose that the rival armies have fought each other to a standstill; let us suppose that France is exhausted; let us further suppose that the German troops, by their mobility and their tactical skill, are able to hold the Russians in the eastern sphere of war. We can suppose all these things, but what we cannot imagine even for a moment is that Great Britain—to confine ourselves only to our ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney

... universal Soul, impressing movement on everything that seems to move of itself, giving life to the plants and trees, directing by a regular and settled plan the organization and development of their germs, imparting constant mobility to the running waters and maintaining their eternal motion, impelling the winds and changing their direction or stilling them, calming and arousing the ocean, unchaining the storms, pouring out the fires of volcanoes, or with earthquakes shaking the roots of huge mountains and the foundations of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... centuries the chief task of American mankind has been to go up westward against the land and to possess it. Our wars, our independence, our state building, our political democracy, our plasticity with respect to immigration, our mobility of thought, our ardor of initiative, our mildness and our prosperity, all are but incidents or products of this ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... man of five-and-twenty or thereabouts, this advocate. He has a cleanshaven face of rare mobility, a mouth of remarkable decision and sweetness, and eyes of black fire. The most noticeable thing about him is his voice, which is not easily to be characterised. You know the sub-acid flavour in a generous Burgundy—so nicely proportioned that it does but give the wine a grip on the tongue and ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray

... the man whom he had hated above all others in the world, or, rather, the only man whom he hated, for his was not a bad heart. Impressionable to excess like a true child of the faubourgs, he had the Parisian's strange mobility of feeling. If his anger was kindled by a trifle, the merest nothing usually sufficed to extinguish it. But matters were different respecting this handsome viscount! "God! how I hate him!" he hissed through his set teeth. "God! how I ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... insufficient and unsupported, was sent across the Channel to almost certain and complete annihilation; secondly, that masses of reserves urgently needed on the Continent had to be kept in these islands to counter the risks of invasion; thirdly, that the mobility of our Navy had to be sacrificed to the same necessity of domestic defence (hence the disaster to Admiral Cradock); and, finally, that Belgium and North-East France had to be abandoned to the enemy—to be recovered later, if possible, at the cost of tens of ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw

... favourable for the aggregation of the energy, the crust, heated both from beneath and from above, assumes properties more akin to those of its earlier stages of development, the secular heat-loss being restored in the radioactive supplies. These causes of local mobility have been in operation, shifting somewhat from place to place, and defined geographically by the continental masses undergoing denudation, since ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... The mobility of the water around the earth causes it to be very sensitive to the varying attraction of the sun and moon, due to the alterations from time to time in the relative positions of the three bodies. ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams

... here designated polarity; for instance, the power termed magnetism (not meaning that there is necessarily an actual tangible magnet in the case) has two poles, the negative, answering to attraction, rest, carbon, &c., and the positive, answering to repulsion, mobility, azote, &c.; and as the magnetic needle which points to the north necessarily indicates thereby the south, so the power disposing to rest has necessarily a counteracting influence disposing to mobility, between which lies the point of indifference. Now this quality, to which Mr. Coleridge gives ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... being dependent upon these peculiarities. If I remember rightly, it is on these principles that the Duke of Argyll has explained the flight of birds, in which, however, there are of course some specialities depending on the more perfect organisation of the wing, its greater mobility and flexibility, its capacity for enlargement and contraction, and the peculiar construction and arrangement of the feathers. These, however, are matters of detail; and there are no doubt many and important differences of detail in the mode of flight of the different ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... gravitation can sensibly displace the poles of the earth's axis relatively to the surface of the terrestrial spheroid. The sea, far from being an obstacle to the invariable rotation of the earth upon its axis, would, on the contrary, reduce the axis to a permanent condition in consequence of the mobility of the waters and the resistance ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... their time, as they are still mainly in a pastoral stage, living on the produce of their herds, and eating more meat than bread. They fight and undergo hardships and willingly sacrifice their lives for their country and for liberty. They wear little defensive armour, and depend mainly on their mobility; they are not much good at a close engagement, but generally victors in a running fight, relying more on their ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little

... Gradually Jews were admitted to the bar and other professions. Full citizenship and rights, including the right to sit in Parliament, were granted in 1858—only seven years before Trollope began writing Nina Balatka. By this time wealthy Jewish families were growing in number. This upward mobility and increasing economic and political power no doubt made the British upper classes envious and ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... his maker is called the law of nature. For as God, when he created matter, and endued it with a principle of mobility, established certain rules for the perpetual direction of that motion; so, when he created man, and endued him with freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that freewill is in some degree regulated ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... garrisoned those and held them until they were put out of them. Once in their forts there was no further egress by the doors, and for purpose of entry and sortie they used the skylights and the roofs. On the roofs they had plenty of cover, and this cover conferred on them a mobility which was their chief asset, and which alone enabled them to protract the rebellion beyond ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens

... to Shee, Lawrence, Newton, Maclise, Mulvany, and Richmond, and to the sculptors Ternerani, Chantrey, Kirk, and Moore. On one occasion of his sitting, he says,—"Having nothing in my round potato face but what painters cannot catch,—mobility of character,—the consequence is, that a portrait of me can be only one or other of two disagreeable things,—caput mortuum, or a caricature." Richmond's portrait was taken in 1843. Moore says of it,—"The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... group (3) probably were extirpated or decimated in other tributaries of the Wakarusa. After normal flow recommenced in 1956, fishes re-entered the previously uninhabitable streams or stream-segments. The rate of redispersal by various species probably depended upon their innate mobility, and upon their tolerance of the muddy ...
— Fishes of the Wakarusa River in Kansas • James E. Deacon

... contexture of small muscles and nerves so very supple, that it winds and turns like a serpent, with unconceivable mobility and pliantness. It performs in the mouth the same office which either the fingers or the bow of a master of music perform on a musical instrument: for sometimes it strikes the teeth, sometimes the roof of the mouth. There is a pipe that goes into the inside of the ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon

... not be mistaken. There was no longer any question of a simple meteor, of which that luminous line had neither the colour nor the mobility, nor of a volcano in eruption. Barbicane did not hesitate ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... pronounced opposition of the electrons is attended by a feeling of considerable unpleasantness. The blood, which is an efficient conductor of electro-magnetic force, becomes involved through its ready mobility. The affected part becomes filled with blood. It swells and becomes inflamed;—quickened metabolism and greater warmth are produced by the increase in blood contents and by the more rapid vibrations of the electrons. If the inflammatory process progresses ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... money. From shells to gold the ethics of social relations has clung to money. There is more pure plutocracy in Melanesia than in New York. The differentiation of men by wealth is greatly aided by money, because money adds immensely to the mobility of wealth and lets all forces reach their full effect in transactions. The social effect of debt is best seen in barbarous societies which have money. Debt and war together made slavery.[363] It is, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... left wing; Ankara strongly opposed establishment of an autonomous Kurdish region; an overhaul of the Turkish Land Forces Command (TLFC) taking place under the "Force 2014" program is to produce 20-30% smaller, more highly trained forces characterized by greater mobility and firepower and capable of joint and combined operations; the TLFC has taken on increasing international peacekeeping responsibilities, and took charge of a NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) command in Afghanistan in April 2007; the Turkish ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the genius of a Napoleon have been," remarked Lieutenant Fosdick in turn, "if aeroplanes had been in common use as far back as Waterloo? You may remember that the secret of his great success in battle was the mobility of his troops. He would divide his army and hurl a part of it so as to strike the enemy unexpectedly on the flank, timing his own frontal attack so as to complete the confusion. Well, if the enemy had known what was coming they ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler

... mingling of tenderness and admiration in the glance she bent upon him. He was a goodly youth to look at, tall and strongly knit in figure, upright as a young spruce fir, with a keen, dark-skinned face, square in outline and with a peculiar mobility of expression. The eyes were black and sparkling, and the thick, short, curling hair was sombre as the raven's wing. There was no lack of intellect in the face, but the chief characteristic was its ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... religious belief as it is illiberal and intolerant in matters of social conduct." In a recent pamphlet[68] an Anglo-Indian civilian gives his evidence clearly, if too baldly, of the fixity of practice and the mobility of belief. "The educated Hindu," he writes, "has largely lost his belief in the old myths about the gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon, and has learned to smile at many of the superstitions of his uneducated countrymen. But Hinduism as ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... stated, for example, that Birmingham, Alabama, lost 38,000 negroes. Yet within a period of three months the negro population had assumed its usual proportions again.[11] Prior to the present migration of negroes, there was somewhat greater mobility on the part of the white than on the part of the negro population. As ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... paper in his hand; and I was able at my ease to watch, on his youthful features, that extraordinary mobility of expression which baffles all observers and constitutes his great strength and his chief safeguard. By what signs can one hope to identify a face which changes at pleasure, even without the help of make-up, and whose every transient expression seems to be the final, definite expression?... ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... to devise any bridge-equipage which shall overcome all serious objections. All that should be expected is to reduce the faults to a practical minimum, while meeting the general wants of the service in a satisfactory manner. The lack of mobility in any bridge-train which can be pronounced always trustworthy may, perhaps, compel the adoption, in addition to the bateau-train, of a light equipage for use in quick movements. This will, however, create complication, which is nearly as objectionable here as in the calibre of guns. Thus it is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... an unsteady movement of Hugo's body on his crutches. He swallowed hard, moistening dry lips; and the mobility of feature that could change the mask into the illumination of varied emotions spoke horror and ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... calls it, and that when each person, at some future day, will give their different statements of him, they will be so contradictory, that all will be doubted,—an idea that gratifies him exceedingly! The mobility of his nature is extraordinary, and makes him inconsistent in his actions as well as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various

... compared with this. The tourist's scenery moves indeed, but only like Wordsworth's maiden, with earth's diurnal course; it is made as fast as its own graves. And for its changes it depends upon the mobility of the skies. The mere green flushing of its own sap makes only the least of its varieties; for the greater it must wait upon the visits of the light. Spring and autumn are inconsiderable events in a landscape compared with the shadows ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell

... told their own tale sadly to friends of former days. Her dress had become loose through the wasting of her figure; but she had not cared to alter it. The old restlessness in her movements, the old mobility in her expression, appeared no more. Her face passively maintained its haggard composure, its changeless unnatural calm. Mr. Pendril might have softened his hard sentence on her, if he had seen her now; and Mrs. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... remaining eye had the power of two; and above it, and in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear, which was forever unfurling itself, like an old flag; and then that bud of a tail, about one inch long, if it could in any sense be said to be long, being as broad as long—the mobility, the instantaneousness of that bud were very funny and surprising, and its expressive twinklings and winkings, the intercommunications between the eye, the ear, and it, were ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... twisted position of the body to the right is incompatible with ease, no discomfort will arise from looking more or less straight to the front, because the muscles which regulate the direction of the neck and eyes are gifted with great mobility, and their respective periods of contraction and relaxation are comparatively short, when we are looking to the front. Even when walking at ease, the direction of the shoulders, which alters at every step, in no way affects that of our line of sight; ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... become tangled, thanks to the autumn winds, and the gallop to which he had pushed Cloud;—his person assumed its habitual attitude of wild grace; his eye no longer restless and troubled, had recovered its expression of dreamy mobility, and his lips were wreathed with the odd Indian smile, which just allowed the ends of the white teeth to thread them;—Verty was ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... listened to this story with downcast eyes. Courage seemed to fail her; she drew a long, quiet sigh. Her face was of the kind that expresses much sweetness in irregular features. Her look was very honest and gentle, with pathetic meanings for whoso had the eye to catch them; a peculiar mobility of the lips somehow made one think that she had often to exert herself to keep down tears. She spoke in a subdued voice, always briefly, and with a certain natural refinement in the use of uncultured ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... more delicately drawn, and the contour more refined; the broad open forehead, the brows firmly arched, without an approach to heaviness, the thin chiselled nostril and perfect mouth, cast in the softest feminine mould, reminded you of the First Napoleon. Quick mobility of expression would have been inharmonious there. With all its purity of outline, the face was not severe or coldly statuesque—only superbly serene, not lightly to be ruffled by any sudden revulsion of feeling; a face, of which you never realized the perfect glory till the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... her beauty was of the somewhat hard and angular type which is so often seen in English women of her race: the nose and chin too prominent and too firmly shaped; the well-opened gray eyes full of spirit and dignity, but wanting in tenderness and mobility of expression. Her manner had all the charm which fine breeding can confer—exquisitely polite, easily cordial; showing that perfect yet unobtrusive confidence in herself which (in England) seems to be the natural outgrowth of pre-eminent social rank. ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... fifteen years—I saw not one homely face or ungraceful form. In my own land the voice of flattery had whispered in my ear praises of face and figure, but I felt ill-formed and uncouth beside the perfect symmetry and grace of these lovely beings. Their chief beauty appeared in a mobility of expression. It was the divine fire of Thought that illumined every feature, which, while gazing upon the Aphrodite of Praxitiles, we must think was all that the matchless marble lacked. Emotion passed over their features like ripples over a stream. Their ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... power absolutely essential to the constructor of a delicately-woven and well-finished nest; the length and fineness of the beak, which has to be used like a needle in building the best textile nests; the length and mobility of the neck, which is needful for the same purpose; the possession of a salivary secretion like that used in the nests of many of the swifts and swallows, as well as that of the song-thrush—peculiarities ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... have very naturally inferred, that it is endowed with no efficacy, and that it is impossible for it of itself to communicate motion, or produce any of those effects, which we ascribe to it. As the essence of matter consists in extension, and as extension implies not actual motion, but only mobility; they conclude, that the energy, which produces the motion, cannot lie ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... against the rail as motionless as a statue. Her face had lost all its mobility and her cheeks were dead white as if all the blood in her body had flowed back into her heart and had remained there. Her very lips had lost their colour. Lingard caught hold of her ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... him and left the Metropolitan Hotel, which was his home. He was a young man, not more than thirty, and his face was a striking one. It was clean cut and clean shaven. It might have been the face of an actor or the face of a statesman. An actor's face has a certain mobility of expression resulting from the habit of assuming characters differing widely. Rowell's face, when you came to look at it closely, showed that it had been accustomed to repress expression rather than to show emotion of any kind. A casual look at Pony Rowell made you think his face would tell ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr

... Rigidly Fixed.—In a perfectly normal condition there is considerable mobility to the uterus; in other words, it is not fixed firmly by the ligaments already mentioned. It is rather simply suspended, or hung in the pelvic cavity, by these broad ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham

... management of horses which comes instinctively to the English groom, to the Irish farmer's son, or to the field labourer. The defect of a want of efficient cavalry is with the Japanese largely compensated for by the extreme mobility of their infantry. They appear to do everything at the double. All their soldiers seem to be perpetually kept in the best of hard training. If they have not horses at home, they have plenty of rickshaw men, who consider thirty to thirty-five miles ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... forces, his artillery and stores unbeknown to our watching infantry and their questioning staff. The screen of a retreating enemy is not easily caught up and pierced by an advanced guard not superior to it in strength and inferior in mobility. On the Somme in 1917 and from the Lys salient in 1918 the Germans retired from wide to narrower divisional fronts (giving themselves greater 'depth' in the process), which fact, coupled with destruction of bridges and roads, prevented us from forcing an issue with ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose

... rate, that it is something independent of climate and locality, and not at all endemic. Otherwise it might be true that the restless and inquisitive climate of the Atlantic coast, which wears the ordinary Yankee to leanness, and "establishes a raw" upon the nervous system, does soften to acuteness, mobility, and racy corrugation in the breast of its natural ally, the Doctor. For autocratic tempers are bland towards each other, and murderous characteristics can mutually impart something homologous to the refining interchange ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... families seems to indicate that this is not true. The main branch of the family retains its position over centuries. But some of the branch families, created often by the less able family members, show a tendency towards downward social mobility. ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... words requires on the part of the subject, in the first place, a certain alertness in order that he may grasp quickly and clearly the meaning of each word, and, in the second place, a prompt shifting of the mind from one reaction to the next. When such mental mobility is lacking the subject is liable to react not by a response adjusted to the stimulus word, but either by repeating a previous stimulus or reaction, or by giving a word associated to ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent

... bosom of God; such were the fundamental teachings of Gnosticism. The genius of the Orient, with its contemplations, irradiations, and intuitions, dictated its doctrines. Its language corresponded to its origin. Full of imagery, it had all the magnificence, the inconsistencies, and the mobility of the figurative style. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... much pleasure they get out of it are governed by the time on their hands, the availability of their chosen recreation, and whether it is good of its kind. A would-be hunter who cannot escape from the District of Columbia is out of luck unless his mobility improves. An Alexandria water-skier can divert himself on the metropolitan estuary during the summer months, but under ordinary conditions at present it is something less than what is known as a "quality experience," as is fishing there or ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... of travel, following Crownwall's directions, the procession arrived at the copse in which he had concealed his small transportation machine. The machine, for spatial mobility, was equipped with the heavy and grossly inefficient anti-gravity field generator developed by Kowalsky. It occupied ten times the space of the temporal translation and coordination selection systems combined, but it had the great advantage of being almost undetectable in use. It emitted ...
— Upstarts • L. J. Stecher

... inexperienced and passionate natures, but are fond of a quiet and peaceful life themselves. Virtue comes easy to them, they are placid of temperament, but a constant desire to command, to attract, and to please gives them mobility and brilliance. They have an iron will, and a good deal of their fascination is due to this will. It is difficult for a man to hold his ground when the mysterious sparks of tenderness begin to kindle, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... sees the mingling of childish simplicity with that thoughtful, wise, spiritual look into life, which met one in Dolly's serious hazel orbs; not often that sweetness and character speak so early in the lines of the lips; utterly childish in their soft, free mobility, and yet revealing continually a trait of thoughtfulness or of strength, along with the happy play of an unqualified tender disposition. "You are lovely! you are lovely!" was Mrs. Eberstein's inner cry; and she had to guard herself that the thought did not come ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... contemporaries for not having learned long ago what the modern Voltaire had to offer them. "Even his excellences are wonderfully uniform," he says: "simple naturalness, transparent clearness, vivacious mobility, seductive charm. Warmth and emphasis are also not wanting where they are needed, and Voltaire's innermost nature always revolted against stiltedness and affectation; while, on the other hand, if at times wantonness or passion descend to an unpleasantly low level, the fault does ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... perhaps at Albany. Then he would hold the colony of New York from Staten Island to the Canadian frontier. Howe found that he could send ships up the Hudson, and the American army had to stand on the banks almost helpless against the mobility of sea power. Washington's left wing rested on the Hudson and he held both banks but neither at Peekskill nor, as yet, farther up at West Point, could his forts prevent the passage of ships. It was a different matter for the British to advance on land. But the ships went up and ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong

... retreating German army had passed. Everywhere they could see marks of this flight, for such it really was, despite the order with which the retrograde movement had been conducted. In places the roadside was glutted with cast-off articles, such as had better be disposed of if haste and mobility ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow

... have been a treasure on the stage; for he is still, though his first youth is past, remarkably good-looking and striking; with black, sparkling eyes of intense expression; a fine ruddy complexion; a countenance of wondrous mobility; a good figure; and action full of fire and grace; he has handsome hands, which he uses with infinite effect; and, on the whole, he is the best actor of the kind I ever saw. I could now quite understand what a troubadour or jongleur might ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... times; with always the same result. I should have liked to examine the mechanism of that figure of such malignant mobility; but it was not possible without such tools as could not easily be had. It might be necessary to cut into a whole section of the rock. Some day I hope to go back, properly equipped, ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... ready-made plasm—on the living non-movers, on each other, or on particles of dead organic matter. Now, inorganic food is generally diffused in the waters, so that the vegetal feeders have no incentive to develop mobility. On the other hand, the power to move in search of their food, which is not equally diffused, becomes a most important advantage to the feeders on other organisms. They therefore develop various means ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... making of motion pictures, I should reply the insecurity of the tripod in the making of outdoor scenes. Exteriors require the greatest amount of attention from the cameraman because of the varying light and shade and the mobility of the camera itself and its liability to accident. The location chosen by the expert may be all that is desired, and there may be a whole lot of trained performers, but you can't get a trained camera. The tripod must be nursed like a contrary child. ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... in Natal, a position which we had occupied for two months—and could therefore, have fortified to perfection—and whose strategic importance should have been known in its smallest details. I think our generals, who had a sufficient force at their disposal, of which the mobility has become world-famed, should have been able to prevent such a fiasco as our occupation of the splendid line of defence in the Biggarsbergen turned ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen

... too, was communicative; he did not often laugh aloud; his enjoyment found vent in a low, rich chuckle, which, with the lighting up of his eyes, was wholly and immediately irresistible. The large head, the strong, rather boyish face, with its singular mobility and often sweetness of expression, the bright, vital eyes, set wide apart, the abundant (though not long), dark hair tinged with grey, the white skin, the sensitive mouth, rather large and full-lipped, the strong ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman

... control reduced vitality and killed the interest of life. The phase may not last, stronger counsels may prevail again. In a few years it may be hoped that this school of "impressionism" in conduct will be out of vogue, but for the moment it would seem as if its weakness and mobility, and restlessness were rather admired. It has created a kind of automobilism—if the word may be allowed—of mind and manners, an inclination to be perpetually "on the move," too much pressed for time to do anything at all, permanently unsettled, in fact to be unsettled is its habitual condition ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... little Mr. Ridgett was fully susceptible to Mavis' varied charms. He liked her complexion—so unusually white; he liked her hair—such a lot of it; he liked the mobility of her lips, the fineness and straightness of her nose; and he also greatly liked the broad black ribbon that was tied round her slender neck. The simple decoration seemed curiously in harmony with something childlike pertaining to its wearer. He did not attempt ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... and the slight color and delicate mobility of her face returned. "To end, dandy boy?" she repeated lazily. "You didn't think of marrying ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... carriage is in motion the iron supports are turned up, and lie along the respective sides of the carrier, where each rests in a small clip. The great object of this stretcher carriage has been to obtain mobility, strength, and lightness combined with efficiency and a ready and easy means of transport for sick and wounded, no matter where a patient has to be transported from. The loaded stretcher and wheeled carriage can be readily handled by one man on good roads, and by two men in rough country. ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... much interested in politics, and many of Balzac's political ideas are set forth in his letters to her when he was a candidate for the post of deputy. She reproached him for a mobility of ideas, an inconstancy of resolution, and feared that the influence of the Duchesse de Castries had not been good for him. To this last accusation, he replied that she was unjust, and that he would never be sold to a party for ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... organism by the imposition of excessive labor upon a young animal at a too early period of his life. The bones which enter into the formation of the cannon are three in number, one large and two smaller, which, during the youth of the animal, are more or less articulated, with a limited amount of mobility, but which become in maturity firmly joined by a rigid union and ossification of their interarticular surface. If the immature animal is compelled, then, to perform exacting tasks beyond his strength, the inevitable result will follow in ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... him which drove the nobler souls of his day to monastery or hermitage. Vexed as he was by sickness and constant pain, his temper took no touch of asceticism. His rare geniality, a peculiar elasticity and mobility of nature, gave colour and charm to his life. A sunny frankness and openness of spirit breathes in the pleasant chat of his books, and what he was in his books he showed himself in his daily converse. ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... been reset on either side of his head like those of a bird. It grieved him to think of the inconvenience this transformation might occasion him, and he attempted to cock up his head, hen-like, to test the mobility of his neck. Then an immense despair stole over him,—tears gathered in the tear-ducts, his heart melted, and he collided with a tree. This shocked him into comprehension; he stifled the violent tenderness in ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... ma petite drole!" said the lady,—who, with the mobility of her nation, had already recovered some of the saucy mocking grace that was habitual to her, as she began teasing Mary with a thousand little childish motions. "Indeed, mimi, you must keep me hid up here, or may-be the wolf will find ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... action of the 16th September, the 2nd Brigade had been unable to move. Transport—the life and soul of an army—is an even more vital factor here than in less undeveloped countries. The mobility of a brigade depends entirely on its pack animals. On the 14th many mules were killed. On the 16th the field hospitals were filled with wounded. It now became impossible for the camp to move, because the wounded could not be carried. It was impossible to leave them behind, because, deducting ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... showing the transparent pink of their delicate lining. This nose is an admirable continuation of the forehead, with which it blends in a most delicious line. It is perfectly white from its spring to its tip, and the tip is endowed with a sort of mobility which does marvels if Camille is indignant, or angry, or rebellious. There, above all, as Talma once remarked, is seen depicted the anger or the irony of great minds. The immobility of the human nostril indicates a certain narrowness ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... consider briefly in the first instance the different question of its apportionment between places. This was hardly necessary in the case of capital, because the possibilities of foreign investment are very numerous and easy: the mobility of capital is thus sufficiently strong (once again it is only marginal adjustment that is necessary) to establish over at least a large part of the world something near to a uniform rate of interest. But this is ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... troops. Hannibal's sole superiority lay in his cavalry, which was posted on the wings with the infantry occupying the space between. Hannibal's center was weak and gave way before the Romans, who fought this time massed in solid columns. The arrangement was a poor one, for it destroyed the mobility of the legions. The Roman soldiers, having pierced the enemy's lines, now found themselves exposed on both flanks to the African infantry and taken in the rear by Hannibal's splendid cavalry. The battle ended in a hideous butchery. One of the consuls died fighting bravely to the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... it alone, for muscles are attached to it which also serve for its support. It is of practical importance to remember that the larynx is free to a very considerable extent, otherwise it would go ill with the voice-producer in the vigorous use of the voice, not to mention the advantages of mobility as well as pliability in the movements of the ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... optical propagation to transmission of waves in an ordinary solid medium have failed; and though the idea of regions of intrinsic strain, as for example in unannealed glass, is familiar in physics, yet on account of the absence of mobility of the strain no attempt had been made to employ them to illustrate the electric fields of atomic charges. The idea of Maccullagh's aether, and its property of purely rotational elasticity which had been expounded objectively by ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... secured a community school to teach, near Houston. She was now eighteen, her face was interesting, some of the features were fine. Her bluish-gray eyes could be particularly appealing; there was much mobility of expression; a wealth of slightly curling, light- chestnut hair was always stylishly arranged; in fact, her whole make- up caused the young fellows to speak of her as the "cityfied school- marm." Then came the merchant's son ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... systems for the common element which must form the basis of the new right, let us cast a rapid glance at the changes which, at the various periods of history, property has undergone. The political forms of nations are the expression of their beliefs. The mobility of these forms, their modification and their destruction, are solemn experiences which show us the value of ideas, and gradually eliminate from the infinite variety of customs the absolute, eternal, and immutable truth. Now, we shall see that every political institution ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... named Subbi-luliuma, the successor of Hattusil I, who established a strong Hittite empire which endured for about two centuries. His capital was at Boghaz-Koei. Sweeping through Cappadocia, at the head of a finely organized army, remarkable for its mobility, he attacked the buffer states which owed allegiance to Mitanni and Egypt. City after city fell before him, until at length he invaded Mitanni; but it is uncertain whether or not Tushratta met him in battle. Large numbers of the Mitannians were, ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... of a proud military leader when his incapacity was so apparent, will be a matter of wonder for the historian. The inconsistency that would follow the great Napoleon in modelling an army and neglect his example in giving it mobility, with eminent propriety leaves the record of its exploits to depend upon the pen of a scion of the unmilitary House ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong

... Third, the hard-working small farmers lacked the time and money to serve in public office. Virginia had a long tradition of voluntary service in local government and only a small per diem allowance for attending the House of Burgesses. Finally, social mobility was fairly fluid in a fast-growing society, and the standard of living among the lower classes had improved visibly in pre-Revolutionary Virginia. The independent farmers and small slaveholders saw no reason to oust or destroy the power of the larger planters. They wanted ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... this is that, the larger and more developed the brain, and the thinner, in relation to it, the spine and nerves, the greater is the intellect; and not the intellect alone, but at the same time the mobility and pliancy of all the limbs; because the brain controls them more immediately and resolutely; so that everything hangs more upon a single thread, every movement of which gives a ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer

... editor must be a colossal, composite figure, one to whom no man of whatever age, race or color, is a stranger; one whose mobility of character and elasticity of temperament expands or contracts as occasion demands, without deflecting in the least from the law of perfect harmony. He must know how to smile encouragement, frown disapproval, ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... a curious illustration at once of the mobility and the isolation of the French mind, that, while it assimilates elements within its sphere which in other nations are kept comparatively apart, it rejects the process in regard to foreign material. Thus, in no other capital are politics and literature so interwoven with society; the love-affairs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... The theater can picture only how the real occurrences might follow one another; the photoplay can overcome the interval of the future as well as the interval of the past and slip the day twenty years hence between this minute and the next. In short, it can act as our imagination acts. It has the mobility of our ideas which are not controlled by the physical necessity of outer events but by the psychological laws for the association of ideas. In our mind past and future become intertwined with the present. The photoplay obeys the laws of the mind rather than those ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... of these is that there are no "differences of inborn gifts," which would lead to a limitation of the flow of labor into the upper grades, and thus lead to a separation of grades. A second important assumption is that of complete mobility of labor—no obstacles of habit, expense or ignorance to retard the flow of labor from place to place, or from industry to industry. A third assumption is the absence of combination among the workers. A fourth is that of equality of opportunity among the ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis

... the hostile camp. It was now possible to touch and study paganism almost (fere) without danger. Boccaccio, however, did not hold this liberal view consistently. The ground of his apostasy lay partly in the mobility of his character, partly in the still powerful and widespread prejudice that classical pursuits were unbecoming in a theologian. To these reasons must be added the warning given him in the name of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... brown eyes, too, were far more restless than they had ever been since the Antoine was wrecked, and their owner returned with Carmen to the Manor Cartier. But the new restlessness of the eyes was different from the old. That was a mobility impelled by an active, inquisitive soul, trying to observe what was going on in the world, and to make sure that its possessor was being seen by the world. This activity was that of a mind essentially concerned to find how many ways it could ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... been wrong: and now only God can save us or help us—while Bragg commands. He begs that Gen. Lee be sent there, while the Army of Virginia remains on the defensive, to prosecute offensive measures against Rosecrans. He says Bragg's army has neither organization nor mobility; and B. cannot remedy the evil. He cannot adopt or adhere to any course, and he invokes the government to interpose speedily. This letter is on file in ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... wearied out and bewildered. I find Smith, of Jordan Hill, has a much worse opinion of R. Chambers's book than even I have. Chambers has piqued me a little ('Ancient Sea Margins, 1848.' The words quoted by my father should be "the mobility of the land was an ascendant idea."); he says I 'propound' and 'profess my belief' that Glen Roy is marine, and that the idea was accepted because the 'mobility of the land was the ascendant idea of the day.' He adds some very faint UPPER ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... that whilst the Emperor's troops made war on the maxim that an army must support itself upon the country it traverses, thereby achieving a greater mobility, since it was thus permitted to travel comparatively light, the British law was that all things requisitioned must be paid for. Wellington maintained this law in spite of all difficulties at all times with an unrelaxing ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... side, we see the true poetic temperament, with all its capacities for keenest delight and sharpest agony, with its tremulous mobility, its openness to every impression, its gaze of child-like wonder, and eager welcome to whatsoever things are lovely, its simplicity and self-forgetfulness, its yearnings "after worlds half realized," its hunger for love, its pity, and its tears. He was made ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... must also be able to turn our heads so that our ears may discover in which direction a sound is reaching us. In fashioning a fulcral joint for the head, then, two different objects had to be secured: free mobility for the head, and a safe transit for the medullary part of the brain stem. How well these objects have been attained is known to all of us, for we can move our heads in the freest manner and suffer no damage whatsoever. Indeed, so strong and perfect ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... a shake of the hand with Lord de Winter, and then returned to Milady. Her countenance, with surprising mobility, had recovered its gracious expression; but some little red spots on her handkerchief indicated that she had bitten her lips till the blood came. Those lips were magnificent; they might be said to ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... not exist. And to be sure, if the horse by adding so much to the mobility of man gave him the means of menacing and charging with swiftness, it permitted him to escape with like rapidity when his menace did not shake the enemy. Man by using the horse, pursuant to his natural inclination and sane reasoning, could do as much damage as possible while risking ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq

... in Nature the effects of the solar rays are very compounded. Healthy vegetation depends upon the presence of the solar beams or of light, and while the heat gives fluidity and mobility to the vegetable juices, chemical effects are likewise occasioned, oxygen is separated from them, and inflammable compounds are formed. Plants deprived of light become white and contain an excess of saccharine ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... with the easy decomposition of that albuminous substance, and imagined that the phenomenon occurred in the following manner: "The albuminous substance on its way to decomposition possesses the power of communicating to certain other bodies that same state of mobility by which its own atoms are already affected; and through its contact with other bodies it imparts to them the power of decomposing or of entering into other combinations." Here Liebig failed to perceive that the ferment, in its capacity of a living organism, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... Wilmshurst. "I heard the major say that field artillery was more of a drag than a benefit to the Boers in the South African War. It destroyed their mobility to a great extent, and not until we had captured most of the guns did the Boer start proper guerilla tactics—and you know how long ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman

... only on the present or previous plus or minus of the sensorial power of association, but also on the introduction of other kinds of sensorial power, as in Class IV. 1. 1. D; or the increased production of it in the brain, or the greater mobility of one part of a ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... noted at this point that the captive balloons or kite balloons have proved of the greatest value for observations in this war. Lacking of course the mobility of the swiftly moving airplanes, they have the advantage over the latter of being at all times in direct communication by telephone with the ground and being able to carry quite heavy scientific instruments for the more accurate mapping out of such territory as comes within their sphere ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... cancelling the rapture of the lover, and the certainty of death. This is a favourite path of contemplation with him, and he pursues it with a gloomy sedateness of acquiescence, which is more affecting than if he raved and foamed against the inevitable. But he has the mobility of the poetic nature, and the sad ground-tone is often drowned in the ecstasy of lighter notes. All at once the "bare ruined choirs" are covered with the glad light-green of spring. His genius combined the excellencies of many masters. His "Golden Targe" and "The Thistle and the Rose" ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... those six or eight hours, through the battle area. Our several encounters were all characterized by the Star-Streak's extreme flexibility, her speed, mobility, and Molo's reckless skill. We came through unscathed. There is a certain advantage for the man who seems not to care for his own life. But there was an encounter, the last one as it chanced, just before we emerged downward out of the fog and found ourselves ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings

... narrative to get breath, and he wiped his moist brow. And now his face began to lose its cragginess. It changed, it softened, it rippled and wrinkled, and all that strange mobility focused and shone ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... sort of destructive competition frees us from many set notions. We are too closely tied to old methods and single, one-way uses. We need more mobility. We have been using certain things just one way, we have been sending certain goods through only one channel—and when that use is slack, or that channel is stopped, business stops, too, and all the sorry consequences of "depression" set in. Take corn, for example. There are millions upon millions ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford

... current of his life shows convincingly that incessant toil and exposure was [were] a sound hygienic policy in his case. Naturally his physical constitution was a case of coil springs, compacted till they quivered with their own mobility; nervous disease had added its irritability, and mental energy electrified them. It was doing or dying, with him. And it was not a tyrant selfishness, a wild ambition, that ruled his life, but a rare concurrence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... owe him a charming hour at one of our literary anniversaries, and he has often spoken noble words; but he holds up a remark of my friend the "Autocrat,"—which I grieve to say he twice misquotes, by omitting the very word which gives it its significance,—the word fluid, intended to typify the mobility of the restricted will,—holds it up, I say, as if it attacked the reality of the self-determining principle, instead of illustrating its limitations by an image. Now I will not explain any farther, still less defend, and least of all attack, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... of the world seven equally eternal qualities, source-spirits or nature-forms, are distinguished in the divine nature. First comes desire as the contractile, tart quality or pain, from which proceed hardness and heat; next comes mobility as the expansive, sweet quality, as this shows itself in water. As the nature of the first was to bind and the second was fluid, so they both are combined in the bitter quality or the pain of anxiety, the principle of sensibility. ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... that mobility which characterised them, the crew of the Forward cried out—"Three cheers for ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... quick and active. It flashes its way into a subject with the rapidity of lightning; seizes upon remote conclusions with a sudden bound, and its deductions are almost intuitive. The English intellect is less rapid, but more persevering; less sudden, but more sure in its deductions. The quickness and mobility of the French enable them to find enjoyment in the multiplicity of sensations. They speak and act more from immediate impressions than from reflection and meditation. They are therefore more social and communicative; ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... Next to the apes and monkeys, I regard bears as the most demonstrative of all wild animals. The average bear is proficient in the art of expression. The position of his ears, the pose of his head and neck, the mobility of his lips and his walking or his resting attitudes all ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... 307. The mobility of masses of water, seeming to be a sign of life, naturally procured them a definite place among sacred things. Any spring, pond, lake, or river with which a tribe was brought into intimate relations was regarded as a ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... golden like a crescent moon. Her large prominent eyes, her short tip-tilted nose with dilated nostrils, and her thick ruddy lips, when regarded apart from one another, would have looked ugly; viewed, however, all together, amidst the delightful roundness and vivacious mobility of her countenance, they formed an ensemble of strange, surprising beauty. When Miette laughed, throwing back her head and gently resting it on her right shoulder, she resembled an old-time Bacchante, her throat distending with sonorous gaiety, her cheeks round ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... lie Thou 'rt ever summoned by no silent bed With flow'r-wreaths fragrant and with Syrian oil, By mattress, bolsters, here, there, everywhere Deep-dinted, and by quaking, shaking couch 10 All crepitation and mobility. Explain! none whoredoms (no!) shall close my lips. Why? such outfuttered flank thou ne'er wouldst show Had not some fulsome work by thee been wrought. Then what thou holdest, boon or bane be pleased 15 Disclose! ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... the paralysis from the motor apparatus, and give the palm of the hand of our imaginary man perfect freedom to move, so as to be able to glide in all directions over the bodies with which it is in contact. Then with the consciousness of that mobility, the notion of space of three dimensions—which is "Raum" or "room" to move with perfect freedom—is at once given. But the notion that the tactile surface itself moves, cannot be given by touch alone, which is competent to testify ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... his own house; what he shall eat; what he shall wear. And this Congress! We, A and B, elect C to say what the rest of the alphabet shall do, under penalty of tar and feathers, burned ricks, or—don't talk to me, sir, of a Congress. 'T is but an attempt of the mobility to override the nobility of this land, sir. Once again the plates rattled on the table from the squire's fist, and it became evident that if Miss Meredith had a ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... but it seems to depend on the condition of the tissue. It appears as if the molecular sluggishness of tissue were in these cases only gradually removed under stimulation, and the increased effects were due to increased molecular mobility. Whatever be the explanation, I have sometimes observed the same staircase ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose

... dissatisfied at the manner in which Bruce had hazarded all the fortunes of Scotland on a pitched battle, thereby throwing away the great advantage which their superior mobility and knowledge of the country gave to the Scots. He had disarmed like the rest, and was sitting by a fire chatting with William Orr and Andrew Macpherson, who, as they had been his lieutenants in the band of lads he had raised seven years before, now occupied the same position among ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... what you are, or what by study you may become, but how few obstacles you present to the getting of yourself up as somebody else, that settles the question of your fitness for the stage. Smoothness of face, mobility of feature, compass of voice—these things, but the toys of other trades, are ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell

... that is, she had strong common-sense; yet through her sober personality there ran like a streak of light some hint of fairy lightness, derived probably from her Celtic origin. Now, as Rogers watched her, he caught a flash of that raciness and swift mobility, that fluid, protean elasticity of temperament which belonged to the fairy kingdom. The humour and pathos in her had been smothered by too much care. She accepted old age before her time. He saw her, under other conditions, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... been said that those who are much with cows, and have an affection for them, appear to catch something of their expression—to look like cows; just as persons of sympathetic or responsive nature, and great mobility of face, grow to be like those they live and are in sympathy with. The cowman who looks like a cow may be more bovine than his fellows in his heavier motions and slower apprehensions, but he also exhibits some of the better qualities—the repose and ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... Cabinet Minister. He advises that there should be a compromise, that the ownership of land in Yugoslavia should not be strictly individualist nor strictly communist, but that while preserving the spirit of the zadruga (ownership by the community) there should also be the mobility of individual ownership. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... source of his paleness. His features were well marked though delicate, and had a notable look of distinction. He was above the middle height, and slenderly built; had a wide forehead, and a small, pale mustache on an otherwise smooth face. His mouth was the least interesting feature; it had great mobility, but when at rest, little shape and no attraction. For this, however, his smile ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... the fixed Ocean of the Earth, its undulating and vast waves, as we see them from the tops of "the earth o'er gazing mountains," the elevations which testify to antique mobility, and the sublimity of its mightier mountain-tops, clad in eternal snows. Third, there is the Ocean of Waters, less mobile than air, less fixed than earth, but liable, in its movements, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... Through extra mobility of their necks they could really lie in a straight line, one sleeping on the side and the other on the back. There is a report a of two girls joined at their vertices, who survived their birth. With the exception ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... large mirror opposite, which reflected in full light the features of Calderon and herself. It was then—her natural bloom having faded into a paleness scarcely less statue-like than that which characterised the cheek of Calderon himself, and all the sweet play and mobility of feature that belong to first youth being replaced by a rigid and marble stillness of expression—it was then that a remarkable resemblance between these two persons became visible and startling. That resemblance struck alike, and in the ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... supposed to be condensed, while a partial vacuum might be supposed to follow the bob. As a matter of fact, we have nothing of the kind. The air particles in front of the bob retreat so rapidly, and those behind it close so rapidly in, that no sound-pulse is formed. The mobility of hydrogen, moreover, being far greater than that of air, a prompter action is essential to the formation of sonorous waves in hydrogen than in air. It is to this rapid power of readjustment, this refusal, so to speak, to allow its atoms to be crowded together or to be drawn apart, that Professor ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... determined by acids [Bechamp, Annalen, 100, 365]. The recent researches of Lobry de Bruyn [Rec. Trav. Chim. 14, 156] upon the action of alkaline hydrates in aqueous solution on the hexoses have established the important fact of the resulting mobility of the CO group, and the interchangeable relationships of typical aldoses and ketoses. It was, therefore, not improbable that profound hydrolytic changes should occur in the cellulose molecule when kept for prolonged periods ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross

... of mobility. In a hanging-drop specimen some form of movement can practically always be observed, and its character must be carefully determined by noting the relative ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... Hill. That, in itself, would be a move of considerable value. If they could lessen the distance between the shore and the ship, each yard thus gained would help the prisoners and impose a stronger barrier against the Alaculofs, who would probably be daunted when they found that the vessel's mobility ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... voices, one soft and candid, veiled with soft candour, the other veiled with easy mobility, running quickly. Ursula sat quite tense, shocked out of her studies, lost. She listened all the time to the sound of the voices, scarcely heeding ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... was shaded by masses of rich chestnut hair; the mouth,—but who could describe that mouth? Even in repose, some arch thought seemed ever at play among its changeful curves; and when she spoke or laughed, its wonderful mobility and sweetness of expression threw a perfect witchery over her face. She was quite short, and, if the truth must be told, a little too stout in figure; but this was in a great measure redeemed by a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... life sweep us away. We shall have a holdfast and a mooring. And although, like some light-ship anchored in the Channel, we may heave up and down with the waves, we shall keep in the same place, and be steadfast in the midst of mobility, and wholesomely mobile although anchored in the one spot where there is safety. As the issue of faith, of this throwing the responsibility for ourselves upon God, there will be quietness of heart, and continuance and persistence in righteousness, and steadfastness of purpose and continuity ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... varied greatly since its first invention, and its attributions have increased, so the structure of human nature has undoubtedly varied since man first appeared upon the earth; but as in each steam-engine at each moment there must be a limit of mobility, a unity of function and a clear determination of parts and tensions, so in human nature, as found at any time in any man, there is a definite scope by virtue of which alone he can have a reliable memory, a recognisable character, a faculty ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... have been hard for the expert in physiognomy to decipher Raisky's characteristics, inclinations and character from his face because of its extraordinary mobility. Still less could his mental physiognomy be defined. He had moments when, to use his own expression, he embraced the whole world, so that many people declared that there was no kinder, more amiable man in existence. Others, ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... Englishman, who listened, amazed by this mobility of mind, he led him back to the others who awaited them. They in the meantime ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... With the usual mobility of the French mind, the pessimists of yesterday began to shout for the approaching victory. Already Moreau discounted the calming down of passions and the return to common sense. The reconciliation of the nations and the triumph of Clerambault's ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... it. "Animation," the physiognomist would have said. "Vitality, mobility." "Health," might have thought the ordinary observer, mistaking the bluish shadows under the drooped eyelids and about the mouth and nostrils for ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... with him I could see in a glance that though he might be a recluse and an antiquary he had a lively and gentle heart; for if his face was yellow and his pupils sere there was a wonderfully shy and sympathetic mobility about ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease

... weapons of emergency. Machine guns must be considered as weapons of emergency. Their effectiveness combined with their mobility renders them of great value at critical, though infrequent, periods of an ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... cattle vast distances had its origin with the Texans. Bred to the calling, they were masters of the craft. In the hands of an adept outfit of a dozen men, a trail herd of three thousand beeves had all the mobility of a brigade of cavalry. The crack of a whip was unheard on the trail. A whispered order, followed by a signal to the men, and the herd turned, grazed to its contentment, fell into column formation, and took up its march—a ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams

... Michu, his white face injected with blood and compressed like a Calmuck's; his ruddy, crisp hair; his beard cut in the shape of a fan; the noble forehead which surmounts and overhangs his sunburnt, sarcastic features; his ears well detached, and possessing a sort of mobility, like those of a wild animal; his mouth half open, and revealing a set of fine but uneven teeth; his thick and glossy whiskers; his hair, close in front, long on the sides and behind, with its wild, ruddy hue throwing into relief ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... a body after it has become entirely solidified, owing to the usual conception that the particles are then rigidly fixed. However, this rigidity is only comparative. The molecules in the solid state have not the large mobility they possess as a liquid, but even so, they are still moving in circumscribed orbits, and have the power, under proper conditions, to rearrange their position or internal configuration. In general, such rearrangement is accompanied by a sudden change in some physical property and in the total ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin

... never having been trained to make special movements, would lose all mobility among themselves, would become united, and would only preserve the power of bending or of ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... as a voltaic arc, and, consequently, as representing an extensible conductor traversed by a current flowing in a definite direction. Such a conductor is consequently susceptible of being influenced by all the external reactions that can be exerted upon a current; only, by reason of its mobility, the conductor may possibly give way to the action exerted upon the current traversing it, and undergo deformations that are in relation with the laws of Ampre. It is in this manner that I have explained the different forms that the aureola of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... grab-and-keep. It has been equally kind to their chief executives, organizers and managers who rank second or third in the chain of command. These individuals come from widely different backgrounds. The social mobility of a bourgeois society gives them opportunity to climb high on the ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... Kings of Persia were making preparations to war against his Countrie. All men ought to say so: Being beaten with ambition, with avarice, with rashnesse, and with superstition, and having such other enemies unto life within him. Wherefore shall I study and take care about the mobility and variation of the world? When hee is once taught what is fit to make him better and wiser, he shall be entertained with Logicke, naturall Philosophy, Geometry, and Rhetoricke, then having setled his judgement, looke what science he doth most addict ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... can easily see, from pictures, not intended to be caricatures, what were the chief features of the foreigner as viewed by the Chinaman. Red hair and blue eyes, almost without exception; short and extremely tight clothes; a quick walk and a mobility of body, involving ungraceful positions either sitting or standing; and with an additional feature which the artist could not portray—an unintelligible language resembling the twittering of birds. Small wonder ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... engagement of rights with lefts. The assumption of gravity acutely bothered Lee Randon: they had no business, he thought, to be already such social animals. Their training in set forms, mechanical gestures and ideas, was too soon hardening their mobility and instinctive independence. Yes, they were a caricature of what they were to become. He hadn't more sympathy with what he had resolved to encourage, applaud, but less. The task of making any headway against that schooling was ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... tittle of the rule would he yield, which perhaps was natural, inasmuch as, however we might have managed alone, our companions the baskets never could have boarded the train without offical help. The intrinsic merits of the baggage failed, alas, to affect its mobility. Then ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... dignified; it was singularly fascinating, not only by reason of its beauty, which was undeniable, but owing to the calm, almost superhuman power that lay in the gaze of the velvety eyes. There was no keenness of expression, no quickness of glance, and no seeking after effect by mobility of lash or lid. When he raised his eyes, the lower lid was elevated simultaneously, which peculiarity, concealing the white around the pupil, imparted an uncomfortable sense of inscrutability. There was no expression beyond a vague sense of velvety depth, ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... I, and only I. I dream God bows his head and grants me this supreme Pure look of your last dead face, whence now is gone The mobility, the panther's gambolling, And all your being is given to me, so ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... greatest of frontiersmen who declared: "I believe this Government can not endure permanently half slave and half free. It will become all of one thing or all of the other." Nothing works for nationalism like intercourse within the nation. Mobility of population is death to localism, and the western frontier worked irresistibly in unsettling population. The effect reached back from the frontier and affected profoundly the Atlantic coast ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... this point, so fundamental in his thought, Bergson turns to music. "Let us listen," he says, "to a melody, letting ourselves be swayed by it; do we not have the clear perception of a movement which is not attached to any mobility—of a change devoid of anything which changes? The change is self-sufficient, it is the thing itself. It avails nothing to say that it takes time, for it is indivisible; if the melody were to stop sooner, ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... with an interest as eager as it was frank. What the grey-blue eyes saw was probably some glorified version of Stonor's straight, firm features, a little blunt, which lacked that semblance of animation given by colour, and seemed to scorn to make up for it by any mobility of expression. The grey eyes, set somewhat too prominently, were heavy when not interested, and the claim to good looks which nobody had dreamed of denying seemed to rest mainly upon the lower part of his face. The lips, over-full, perhaps, were firmly moulded, ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins



Words linked to "Mobility" :   restlessness, manoeuvrability, locomotion, motility, movability, mobile, movableness, motive power, maneuverability, manipulability, motivity, immobility, quality



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