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Quiescence

noun
1.
A state of quiet (but possibly temporary) inaction.  Synonyms: dormancy, quiescency.
2.
Quiet and inactive restfulness.  Synonyms: dormancy, quiescency, sleeping.






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"Quiescence" Quotes from Famous Books



... science has scarcely touched more than the fringe of the probabilities associated with the minute fungi that constitute our zymotic diseases. But the bacilli have no more settled down into their final quiescence than have men; like ourselves, they are adapting themselves to new conditions and acquiring new powers. The plagues of the Middle Ages, for instance, seem to have been begotten of a strange bacillus engendered under conditions that sanitary science, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... pretended slumber, I threw out my arms, and began to toss and turn, and mutter in my sleep, putting on all the contortions which generally convulse the countenance of persons while writhing under the influence of some terrible dream. A state of perfect quiescence might have aroused suspicion; the noise I made completely lulled ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... in these months; but he backed independent Liberalism whenever he saw a chance, as, for instance, by subscribing to forward the candidature of Mr. Burt, who had then been selected by the Morpeth miners to represent them. There was, however, a further reason for this quiescence. Lady Dilke at the close of the season was seriously ill, and it was late in autumn before she could be taken abroad to Monaco. Here, under the associations of the place, Dilke wrote his very successful political fantasy, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... tithe payer came to settle his dues with gold and silver instead of with blood; here the little barons and baronesses romped and rioted with childish glee; and here the barons grew fat and gross and soggy with laziness and prosperity, and here they died in stupid quiescence. On the other side of that grim, staunch old door they simply went to the other extreme in every particular. There they killed their captives, butchered their enemies, and sometimes died with the daggers of ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... idle, I dug in the garden, I gathered fruit, I helped them indoors, and everywhere happiness followed me. It was not in any given thing, it was all in myself, and could never leave me for a single instant."[79] This was a true garden of Eden, with the serpent in temporary quiescence, and we may count the man rare since the fall who has found such happiness in such conditions, and not less blessed than he is rare. The fact that he was one of this chosen company was among the foremost of the circumstances ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... with his fists, to the ground. In another minute it was all over; with men grasping each of his limbs, and two or three more piled upon his prostrate body, poor Harry was soon overcome and reduced to a condition of comparative quiescence, after which it was not a very difficult matter to enwrap his body with so many turns of a thin, tough, raw-hide rope that further movement ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... which may not become the seat of its ravages. The majority of other infectious diseases leave their victim after a time; this makes its home within the body and may manifest its malignity after almost a lifetime of quiescence. In its contribution to the sum total of suffering which disease has occasioned the human race, it is probably that with one exception, syphilis stnds ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... next morning there awoke with Mrs. Armine a woman who for a time had lain in a quiescence almost like that of death, a woman who years ago had risked ruin for a passion more physical than ideal, who, when ruin actually overtook her, had let the ugly side of her nature run free with a loose rein, defiant ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... such spots as this that he had been used to find his glory. On such occasions he had shone with peculiar light, making envious the hearts of many who watched the brilliance of his career as they stood around in dull quiescence. But now no one in those rooms had been more dull, more silent, or less courted than he; and yet he was established there as the son-in-law of that noble house. "Rather slow work; isn't it?" Gazebee had said to him, having, after many efforts, ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... straitened household. Grace, too, was doing her duty vigorously, and no longer vexed her mother's soul by her drooping looks of uncomplaining discontent,—that silent protest of many, that is so irritating to the home-rule. True, it might be only the quiescence of despair, but at least she veiled it decently under a show of Spartan cheerfulness. The fox of bitterness might gnaw, but she drew the mantle of her pride closer round her. She might suffer and pine, like a caged lark in her ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... had fallen rapidly, and clouds rolled up from the north-west in ragged grey banks which scudded ominously over a cold steely blue sky. For some days the sea had been moderately calm, but it was mid-winter and quiescence of the elements could not be expected to last. Slowly the face of the Atlantic grew lined with white. It began with a moaning wind which soon developed into a stiff gale, accompanied by heavy storms of sleet ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... of some umbrageous beech, or the solemn gloom of some pine-grove, the brooding spirit of the summer would day after day find her when the sun was on the height of his great bridge, and fill her with the sense of that repose in which alone she herself can work. Then would such a quiescence pervade Hester's spirit, such a sweet spiritual sleep creep over her, that nothing seemed required of her but to live; mere existence was conscious well-being. But the feeling never lasted long. All at once would ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... her bed on this particular May morning, stretching out her long figure, and then letting it sink luxuriously back into relaxed quiescence with a conscious joy in prolonging those last ten minutes when sleep is slowly, softly, one after another, withdrawing her ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... tangled bush on the lower side. As the doomed men approached the murderers sprang out, and each thrusting a revolver close to their faces, called on them "to hold up their hands." This is an old bushranger challenge, and is meant to ensure perfect quiescence on the part of the victim. The travellers mechanically complied, and in this way were instantly separated, led to different spots, and ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... whether satisfied love has any [Greek: telos]. For Hindus the world is endless repetition not a progress towards an end. Creation has rarely the sense which it bears for Europeans. An infinite number of times the universe has collapsed in flaming or watery ruin, aeons of quiescence follow the collapse and then the Deity (he has done it an infinite number of times) emits again from himself worlds and souls of the same old kind. But though, as I have said before, all varieties of theological opinion may be found in India, he is usually represented ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... feet above the level of the present lake. We are justified too in imagining his end a cataclysm. Volcanic upbuildings are often spasmodic and slow, a series of impulses separated by centuries of quiescence, but their climaxes often are sudden and excessively violent. It seems more probable that Mazama collapsed during violent eruption. Perhaps like a stroke of lightning at the moment of triumph, death came at the supreme climax ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... instincts in Joan also developed about this season. They leaped from comparative quiescence into activity; they may indeed be recorded as having arisen within her after a manner not less sudden than had the new faith itself, which was exhibited to you as blossoming with an abruptness almost violent, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... arranging the papers. The young lawyer paused for a moment in amazement on seeing in the dim light the strange client who awaited him. Colonel Chabert was as absolutely immovable as one of the wax figures in Curtius' collection to which Godeschal had proposed to treat his fellow-clerks. This quiescence would not have been a subject for astonishment if it had not completed the supernatural aspect of the man's whole person. The old soldier was dry and lean. His forehead, intentionally hidden under a smoothly combed wig, gave him ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac

... human interest and the silence intensified the serene splendours of the forest and great Fall on such a day as this, when growth and change had reached a standstill and when the cool brooding of the air recalled the moments before dawn or the remote and unnatural quiescence that marks an eclipse. To walk near the forest would mean to encounter huge mounds of snow hiding the levelled logs and boulders, stalactites of ponderous icicles depending from the tree trunks where the openings faced ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... Complete quiescence marked the deportment of Mr Fisher during these days. He did not attempt to repeat his last effort. The coffee came to the study unmixed with alien drugs. Sam, like lightning, did not strike twice in ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... which this task is attempted, the hopelessness of such an achievement was less obvious than it is now. The Bourbons had been restored. The Revolution lay in a deep slumber that many persons excusably took for the quiescence of extinction. Legitimacy and the spiritual system that was its ally in the face of the Revolution, though mostly its rival or foe when they were left alone together, seemed to be restored to the fulness of their power. Fifty years have elapsed since then, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley

... need is synthetic, that some synthetic idea and belief is needed to harmonize one's life, to give a law by which motive may be tried against motive and an effectual peace of mind achieved. I want an active peace and not a quiescence, and I do not want to suppress and expel any motive at all. But to many people the effort takes the form of attempts to cut off some part of oneself as it were, to repudiate altogether some straining or distressing or disappointing factor in the scheme ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... invigoration of change of room, admired and was grateful for Winifred's work, and looked so fair and bright, so tranquil and so contented, that her sister and husband could not help pausing to contemplate her as an absolutely new creature in a state of quiescence. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... astonishing that no objection was raised by the British or by the American delegates to the subsequent transformation of this innocent clause into something very different, first by the insertion of the words "en justice," and later by the substitution of "droits et actions" for "reclamations." The quiescence of the delegates is the more surprising, as, at the first meeting of the sub-committee, General de Gundel, in the plainest language, foreshadowed what was aimed at ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland

... with a breathless sense of high adventure, skimming the ice in time with his rhythmic movements, mesmerized into an enchanted quiescence. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell

... suffering, deliberation, inaction, passion,[A] repose, suspension. endurance, inactivity, quiescence, rest, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... the aid of paralysis to piety? Is sin to be taken from men, as Eve was from Adam, by casting them into a deep slumber? Or from what possible perversion of common sense are we all to look like field preachers in Zembla, holy lumps of ice, numbed into quiescence and ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... day in Prairie Land has all the characteristics of music. That is not so paradoxical as it seems. The effect of some music is to produce a divine quiescence of the senses, a suspension of motion and aggressive life; to reduce existence to mere pulsation. It was this kind of feeling which pervaded that region of sentient being when Shiel Crozier told his story. The sounds that sprinkled the general stillness were in themselves sleepy notes of the pervasive ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... case he, Nubar, would at once resign his position, and retire into obscurity. He would be ruined; but the loss of life and bloodshed which would certainly follow so rash an attempt should not be on his head." I smoked my pipe, or rather his, and drank his coffee, with oriental quiescence but British firmness. Every now and again, through three or four visits, I renewed the expression of my opinion that the transit could easily be made in twenty-four hours. At last he gave way,—and astonished me by the cordiality of his greeting. There was no longer any question of bloodshed ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope

... announced that tranquillity prevailed in Ireland; but yet that country was not in a state of quiescence. Agitation was still at work: societies and combinations were being formed, and the angry passions of the multitude lashed almost into fury. At this time the authorities were enforcing the payment of tithe; and this excited the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... in her chair, and closed her eyes. From the moment they had fallen upon Mrs. Ford, she had felt a certain quiescence. And now it was a relief to have responsibility denied her. Like most weak persons, she was glad to step out of the current of life, now that it had begun to quicken into action. In emergencies, such persons are tacitly counted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... it had soothed her and that in spite of her efforts to keep awake she had fallen fitfully asleep again. He let the book drop, and sat still, studying his mother's strong, lined face in its setting of gray hair. There was something in her temporary quiescence and helplessness that touched him; and it was clear to him that in these last few months she had aged considerably. As he watched, a melancholy softness—as of one who sees deeper than usual into the human spectacle—invaded ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... were only of the spirit. She must find some sphere in which she could create for herself a new activity, for to sit in idleness was to invite dread assaults. The task of her life was an inward one, but her nature was not adapted to quiescence, and something must replace the task which had come to an end by her mother's death. Already she had shaped plans, and she dared not allow needless time to ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... the holly hock plate and charged mother with the crime. Then the Tono Sama killed her. He wanted her for his concubine; and so came to hate her and easily took the tale. It was not her fault. She said this—then went away."—"Whither?" Sampei's tone was so abrupt and harsh to startle the child into quiescence. He pointed to the house altar on its stand—"Mother just went away; into the Butsudan.... And she hasn't come back—to Bo[u]chan." He ended in a wail and childish weeping. Ah! The hands now grasping at Sampei were of ice. Slowly ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... appearing sensible of the Babel which would sometimes almost deafen its promoter, papa; and yet her interference was all-powerful, as now when Harry and Mary were sparring over the salt, with one gentle "Mary!" and one reproving glance, they were reduced to quiescence. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... of the Orinoco know as well as did the great nobles at the court of Montezuma that the smoke of tobacco is an excellent narcotic; and they use it not only to procure their afternoon nap, but also to put themselves into that state of quiescence, which they call dreaming with the eyes open, or day-dreaming. The use of tobacco appears to me to be now very rare in the missions; and in New Spain, to the great regret of the revenue-officers, the natives, who are almost all descended from the lowest class of the Aztec ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... a little himself at this quiescence—at the slight impression he seemed to make on his son, whom he had fully intended to rouse to remonstrance about it—at the tender way in which the young wife ministered to her sister, and at the great change for the worse that he soon began to ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... presence is causing. The germ of syphilis is no exception to this rule. Its entry into the body is followed by a period in which there is no external sign of its presence to warn the infected person of what is coming. This period of quiescence between the moment of infection with syphilis and the appearance of the first signs of the disease in the form of the chancre may vary from a week to six weeks or even two months or more, with an average of about two or ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... satisfied that the conflicts of party in the colony would ere long assume a new character. I perceived that the hostility to the proprietary interests, which was supposed to actuate certain classes of persons who had much influence with the peasantry, was on the decline. Should a state of quiescence prove incompatible with the maintenance of their hold on their flocks, analogy led me to anticipate that the Established Church would, in all probability, become an object ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... the course of human history has flowed in an unbroken stream along quiet reaches of slow change and through periods of rapid change and revolution, so with the course of geologic history. Periods of quiescence, in which revolutionary forces are perhaps gathering head, alternate with periods of comparatively rapid change in physical geography and in organisms, when new and higher forms appear which serve to draw the boundary line of new epochs. Nevertheless, geological history is a continuous progress; ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... moments occasioned by the operation have passed away, remains at rest until it is touched; and then the leg, or its whole body may be thrown into sudden action, which suddenly subsides again." (How does this quiescence when it no longer feels anything show that the "leg or whole body" had not perceived something which made it feel when it was not quiescent?)—"Again we find that such movements may be performed not only when the brain has been removed, the spinal cord remaining entire, but also when the spinal ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... is made up out of the gravitations towards the several particles of which the body of the sun is composed; and in receding from the sun decreases accurately in the duplicate proportion of the distances as far as the orb of Saturn, as evidently appears from the quiescence of the aphelions of the planets; nay, and even to the remotest aphelions of the comets, if those aphelions are also quiescent. But hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... in our anchorage at Atuona; different indeed from the dead inertia and quiescence of the sister-island, Nuka-hiva. Sails were seen steering from its mouth; now it would be a whale-boat manned with native rowdies, and heavy with copra for sale; now perhaps a single canoe come after commodities to buy. The anchorage was besides frequented by fishers; not only the lone ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the marbles, she regarded without seeing a chaste, youthful Canova, and beyond, painted on boards and set against satin, a Botticelli face, spiritual, sphinx-like. Her brows were slightly drawn; she breathed deeply now, as if there were something in the place, its quiescence, the immobility of the lovely but ghost-like semblance of faces with which it was peopled that oppressed her. She seemed to be thinking, or questioning herself, when suddenly her attention was attracted again by a sound of a different kind, or was it only fancy? ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... disposed to tell who was there; and in actual fact I could not have explained what was the matter. Accordingly I left all these inquisitive people unsatisfied, and busied myself solely with my fallen antagonist. Quitting him at last in a state of quiescence, I knocked over a person who had been attacking me in the rear, and then blundered into a passage, which I suppose to have been the front-hall, just as a light glimmered up in the rooms behind me. It gives one a very odd sensation to tread on a prostrate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... his condition was one which only admits of short snatches of uneasy slumber. From head to foot, he was sick and ill and sore, and could find no comfort anywhere. To lie where he was, trying by absolute quiescence to soothe the agony of his brows and to remember that as long as he lay there he would be safe from attack by the outer world, was all the solace within his reach. Lady Carbury sent the page up to him, and to the page he was awake. The boy brought him ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... more said between Isa and her mother on the subject, and for two days the matter remained as it then stood. Madame Heine had been deeply grieved at hearing those last words which her daughter had spoken. To her also that state of quiescence which Isa had so long affected seemed to be the proper state at which a maiden's heart should stand till after her marriage vows had been pronounced. She had watched her Isa, and had approved of everything,—of everything till this last avowal had been made. But now, though she ...
— The House of Heine Brothers, in Munich • Anthony Trollope

... there is quiescence in the air the tendency of his sterilized infusions to produce organisms was increased. The conclusion from all these experiments is to show the importance of laying out the general plan of dwellings in a town so that currents of air shall be able to flow ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... lord lieutenant of the county by one Whig minister, and had received the Garter from another. But these things were matters of course to a Duke of Omnium, He was born to be a lord lieutenant and a Knight of the Garter. But not the less on account of his apathy, or rather quiescence, was it thought that Gatherum Castle was a fitting place in which politicians might express to each other their present hopes and future aims, and concoct together little plots in a half-serious and half-mocking ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... length of 0.9 inches. It may, of course, have the power of sinking itself much lower than I have seen it do. When it is in this state, the apparatus with which it fills the float remains behind the peduncle in a state of perfect quiescence. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... same note at little intervals; it was not so monotonous as you would think, or, at least, not disagreeable; and it seemed to breathe a wonderful contentment with what is, such as we love to fancy in the attitude of trees, or the quiescence of a pool. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... impassive was Tom Towers' face, as this innocent little proposition was made! Had Bold addressed himself to the doorposts in Mount Olympus, they would have shown as much outward sign of assent or dissent. His quiescence was quite admirable; his discretion certainly ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... such a sensation as I enjoyed to-night—actually feel a heated human heart throbbing and turning and struggling in my grasp; know its pants, its spasms, its convulsions, and its final senseless quiescence. At half-past one o'clock Mr. Sloane got out of his chair, went to his secretary, opened a private drawer, and took out a folded paper. "This is my will," he said, "made some seven weeks ago. If you will stay with ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... thundered past upon the snow, roused the old wives dozing over their knitting by their fires of spent oak-bark; and according to her temper would be the remark with which each startled dame turned again to her former busy quiescence:—"Some mischeef o' the loons!" "Some ploy o' the laddies!" "Some deevilry o' thae ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... however, her hands extended on the arms of the chair in charming restfulness, her head inclined, looked at the dying embers in the grate. Her thoughtful mood had flown. Nothing of it remained on her face, a little saddened, nor in her languid body, more desirable than ever in the quiescence of her mind. She kept for a while a profound immobility, which added to her personal attraction the charm of things ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... profound and real that Divine peace is, it is to be enjoyed in the midst of warfare. Quiet is not quiescence. God's peace is not torpor. The man that has it has still to wage continual conflict, and day by day to brace himself anew for the fight. The highest energy of action is the result of the deepest calm of heart; just ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... those that truly love has never been tried. 'If any two creatures grew into one', etc. (vv. 626-631). Love at its highest is not yet known to us, but the passionate eyes of the Duchess tell us it will not be a life of quiescence. Giving herself out freely for the good of all she can never be alone again,—'We are beside thee in all thy ways'. The great company of those who need her, the gypsy band of all human claims. Death to such a life is but ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... the horse plunged and reared a good deal, and seemed inclined to go through the performance of the day before over again; but Dick patted and stroked him into quiescence, and having done so, urged him into a gallop over the plains, causing the dog to gambol round in order that he might get accustomed to him. This tried his nerves a good deal, and no wonder, for if he took Crusoe for ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... dark lane leading up to the second or inner gate. She turned away; after all, these things were of no account to her. That was one of her agonies; she to whom all things had mattered, the much occupied, the ruler, the indefatigable administrator—she was forced into lethargic quiescence. Every hour was empty for her. She turned away listlessly. The afternoon was drawing to a close. It would be a white world to-morrow, she reflected, for those swollen clouds could not hold ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... is prompted in connection with this division of the earth's story into periods of relative prosperity and quiescence, separated by periods of disturbance. There was—on the most modest estimate—a stretch of some fifteen million years between the Cambrian and the Permian upheavals. On the same chronological scale the interval between the Permian and Cretaceous ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... discomfort and suffering not indeed by reason of cruelty on the part of the beloved lady, but through superabundant ardour engendered in the soul by ill-bridled desire; the which, as it allowed me no reasonable period of quiescence, frequently occasioned me an inordinate distress. In which distress so much relief was afforded me by the delectable discourse of a friend and his commendable consolations, that I entertain a very solid conviction ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... abolished; Carthage had been blotted out; there was an English army within the walls of Boston; there was an English fleet in the Charles River. Who could doubt that the cowardly farmers whom Sandwich derided, and their leaders, the voluble lawyers whom Sandwich despised, would be cowed now into quiescence, only thankful that things were no worse? The best and wisest in England were among those who did doubt, but they were like Benedict in the play—nobody marked them, or at least nobody responsible for any control over the conduct ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... deter him from taking his part, even when for a moment the fountain of youthfulness gushed forth, and impelled him to find rest in activity. So the impulse would pass away, and he would relapse into his former quiescence. But this partial isolation ministered to the growth of a love of Nature which, although its roots were coeval with his being, might not have so soon appeared above ground, but for this lack of human companionship. Thus the boy became one of Nature's favourites, and ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... there had been periods of quiescence, devoted to consolidation, and here and there to snatches of uneasy slumber. Angus M'Lachlan, fairly in his element, had trailed his enormous length in and out of the back-yards and brick-heaps of the village, ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... await the unhappy child. The aim of his teachers is to leave nothing to his nature, nothing to his spontaneous life, nothing to his free activity; to repress all his natural impulses; to drill his energies into complete quiescence; to keep his whole being in a state of sustained and painful tension. And in order that we may see a meaning and a rational purpose in this regime of oppressive interference, we must assume that its ultimate aim is to turn the child into an animated puppet, who, having ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... some message as to the afternoon's arrangements. Honor answered at haphazard, standing so as to intercept the view, but aware that the long-drawn sobs would be set down to the account of her own tyranny, and nevertheless resolving the more on enforcing the quiescence, the need of which was so evident; but the creature was volatile as well as sensitive, and by the time the door was shut, stood with heaving breast and undried tears, eagerly demanding whether her cousins ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... lovely idea of sleep, of tranquil rest after a just life, whilst awaiting the celestial reward, which imparted such intense peacefulness, such infinite charm, to the black, subterranean city. Everything there spoke of calm and silent night; everything there slumbered in rapturous quiescence, patient until the far-off awakening. What could be more touching than those terra-cotta tiles, those marble slabs, which bore not even a name—nothing but the words In Pace—at peace. Ah! to be at peace—life's work at last accomplished; ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... with hands like these should keep them devoutly folded like a virgin martyr—that a man with so intent and startling an expression of face should sit patiently on his seat and contemplate people with an unwinking stare, like a god, or a god's statue. His quiescence seemed ironical and treacherous, it fitted so poorly with ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... Out of this quiescence, however, a pang from the past one morning suddenly waked him, and almost without consciousness of a volition, he found himself at the soutar's door. Maggie opened it with the baby in her arms, with whom she had just ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald

... before, shutting them off from the mountain slope, the volcano had been for days perfectly quiet—there had been no explosions, no subterranean rumblings or shocks, everything pointed to the fact that the eruption was at an end, and the mountain settling down into a state of quiescence. ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... Spencer expressly held to it in his "First Principles," expressing it in many ways akin to this: "Evolution must come to a close in complete equilibrium or rest;" and again, "It is not inferable from the general progress towards equilibrium, that a state of universal quiescence or death will be reached; but that if a process of reasoning ends in that conclusion, a further process of reasoning points to renewals of activity and life;" and again, "Rhythm in the totality of changes—alternate eras ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... calmness, peace, quietude, stay, cessation, peacefulness, recreation, stillness, ease, quiescence, repose, stop, intermission, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... one great convulsion was Shasta given birth. The crags of the summit and the sections exposed by the glaciers down the sides display enough of its internal framework to prove that comparatively long periods of quiescence intervened between many distinct eruptions, during which the cooling lavas ceased to flow, and became permanent additions to the bulk of the growing mountain. With alternate haste and deliberation ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... [Absence of change.] Permanence. — N. stability &c. 150; quiescence &c. 265; obstinacy &c. 606. permanence, persistence, endurance; durability; standing, status quo; maintenance, preservation, conservation; conservation; law of the Medes and Persians; standing dish. V. let alone, let be, let it be; persist, remain, stay, tarry, rest; stet [copy ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... in Buddhi-theosophic schools, There are rules, By observing which, when mundane labor irks One can simulate quiescence By a timely evanescence From his Active Mortal ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... terminus of the sense-awareness is something for mind, but nothing for thought. The sense-perception of some lower forms of life may be conjectured to approximate to this character habitually. Also occasionally our own sense-perception in moments when thought-activity has been lulled to quiescence is not far off the ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... make free with his host, and entered his chamber without ceremony. Aramis was asleep or feigned to be so. A large book lay open upon his night-desk, a wax-light was still burning in its silver sconce. This was more than enough to prove to D'Artagnan the quiescence of the prelate's night, and the good intentions of his waking. The musketeer did to the bishop precisely as the bishop had done to Porthos—he tapped him on the shoulder. Evidently Aramis pretended to sleep; for, instead of waking suddenly, he who slept so lightly required a repetition ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... great tribunal among us, a distinctly spiritual court of the highest dignity, cannot fail to be memorable. It is too early to forecast what its results may be. There may be before it an active and eventful career, or it may fall back into disuse and quiescence. It has jealous and suspicious rivals in the civil courts, never well disposed to the claim of ecclesiastical power or purely spiritual authority; and though its jurisdiction is not likely to be strained at present, it is easy to conceive ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... quiescence; and true art walks with her hand in hand; her sister—from whom heaven ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven

... news went forth that, after a brief illness, according to the way of his race, the hereditary Grand-duke was deceased. In momentary regret, bethinking them of the lad's taste for splendour, those to whom the arrangement of such matters belonged (the grandfather now sinking deeper into bare quiescence) backed by the popular wish, determined to give him a funeral with even more than grand-ducal measure of lugubrious magnificence. The place of his repose was marked out for him as officiously as if it had been the delimitation of a kingdom, in the ducal burial vault, through ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... at and practised. Nor can it be said that between works on the one side and calmness and so on on the other, there is an absolute antagonism; for the two have different spheres of application. Activity of the organs of action is the proper thing in the case of works enjoined; quiescence in the case of works not enjoined and such as have no definite purpose. Nor also can it be objected that in the case of works implying the activity of organs, calmness of mind and so on are impossible, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... of change.] Permanence — N. stability &c 150; quiescence &c 265; obstinacy &c 606. permanence, persistence, endurance; durability; standing, status quo; maintenance, preservation, conservation; conservation; law of the Medes and Persians; standing dish. V. let alone, let be, let it be; persist, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... aim of Yoga is to reduce the soul to tranquillity and quiescence, by abstracting the mind from all things earthly, and thus leading to cessation from action; for action is said to lead to new fruit, which must be eaten by the soul; and for this purpose new births are necessary, which delay ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... in America thus to be overawed. Matters, in truth, grew worse and worse daily in that country. The minds of the Americans had been chafed to such a degree by their original grievances, and the measures which had been adopted to enforce their quiescence, that they became every day more and more disaffected toward the English government. How full fraught the country was with rebellion became manifest on the arrival of the newly-formed American board of commissioners, at ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... better with herself. I am old, and not given to many amusements. Then came a man with a better income and with fewer years; and she did not hesitate for a moment. When she took me aside and told me that she had changed her mind, it was her quiescence and indifference that disturbed me most. There was nothing of her new lover; but simply that she did not love me. I did not stoop for a moment to a prayer. I took her at her word, and left her. Within a week she was acknowledged to be ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope

... and Cellardyke, and Crail, where Primate Sharpe was once a humble and innocent country minister: on to the heel of the land, to Fife Ness, overlooked by a sea-wood of matted elders and the quaint old mansion of Balcomie, itself overlooking but the breach or the quiescence of the deep - the Carr Rock beacon rising close in front, and as night draws in, the star of the Inchcape reef springing up on the one hand, and the star of the May Island on the other, and farther off yet a third and a greater on the craggy foreland of St. Abb's. And but a little way round the ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... began to stir in his mind; even as in the spring, away in far depths of beginning, the sap gives its first upward throb in the tree, and the first bud, as yet invisible, begins to jerk itself forward to break from the cerements of ante-natal quiescence, and become a growing leaf, so a something in Hector that was his very life and soul began to yield to unseen creative impulse, and throb with a dim, divine consciousness. The second evening after thus recognizing its presence he hurried up the stair ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald

... and the gentle weather,—after a quarter-hour of anything but thankful tranquillity, a quarter-hour of unaccountable excitement and exaltation, during which his jumble of impressions and sensations settled themselves, from ebullition, into some sort of quiescence, he began to grow restlessly aware that, so far from having had enough, he had had just a sufficient taste to make him hunger keenly for more and more. It was ridiculous, but he couldn't help it. And as there seemed ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland

... doctor gone, Frowenfeld seated himself to record his usual observations of the weather; but his mind was elsewhere—here, there, yonder. There are understandings that expand, not imperceptibly hour by hour, but as certain flowers do, by little explosive ruptures, with periods of quiescence between. After this night of experiences it was natural that Frowenfeld should find the circumference of his perceptions consciously enlarged. The daylight shone, not into his shop alone, but into his heart as well. The face of Aurora, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... I now see the confusion of idea. Motion is the action of mind—not of thinking. The unparticled matter, or God, in quiescence, is (as nearly as we can conceive it) what men call mind. And the power of self-movement (equivalent in effect to human volition) is, in the unparticled matter, the result of its unity and omniprevalence; how I know not, and now clearly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... if hatred of one's race, By those who deem themselves superior-born, Be worse than that quiescence in disgrace, Which only merits—and should only—scorn. Oh, let me see the Negro night and morn, Pressing and fighting in, for place and power! All earth is place—all time th' auspicious hour, While heaven leans forth to look, oh, will he ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... Palaeozoic period, and remained so through the interval required for the organic changes which resulted in the fauna and flora of the Secondary period. The records of this interval are buried beneath the ocean which covers three-fourths of the globe. Now it appears highly probable that a long period of quiescence or stability in the physical conditions of a district would be most favourable to the existence of organic life in the greatest abundance, both as regards individuals and also as to variety of species and generic group, just as ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... knee. Such act is evidence of a child's most wonderful hero-worship. Quite content was Rol, and more than content when Sweyn paused a minute to joke, and pat his head and pull his curls. Quiet he remained, as long as quiescence is possible to limbs young as his. Sweyn forgot he was near, hardly noticed when his leg was gently released, and never saw the stealthy abstraction ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman

... out very soon. The higher part of love may and often does survive in such cases, and the passionate impulses may surge up after long quiescence as fierce and dangerous as ever. But it is rarely indeed that two unsatisfied lovers who have parted by the will of the one or of both can meet again without the consciousness that the experimental separation has chilled feelings ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... Pancaratra seems to have some connection with late Buddhism. Though it lays little stress on the worship of goddesses, yet all the Vyuhas and Avataras are provided with Saktis, like the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of tantric Buddhism, and in the period of quiescence which follows on the dissolution of the Universe Vishnu is described under the name of Sunya or the void. It attaches great importance to the Cakra, the wheel or discus which denotes Vishnu's will to be,[484] to evolve and maintain the universe, and it may have contributed ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... prospering,—not thro' his presence; Songs may inspirit us,—not from his lyre; Deeds will be done,—while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire. Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels, ...
— English Satires • Various

... much of mental and social civilization to Europe, that her quiescence at this epoch can scarcely supply a substantial theme for rhetorical lamentations. Marino and Guido Reni prove that the richer veins of Renaissance art and poetry had been worked out. The lives of Aldus the younger and Muretus show that humanism was well-nigh ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... darkness allotted in the course of the year to every region of the earth is the same, though distributed at various times and in different portions; so, perhaps, to each individual of the human species, nature has ordained the same quantity of wakefulness and sleep; though divided by some into a total quiescence and vigorous exertion of their faculties, and, blended by others in a kind of twilight of existence, in a state between dreaming and reasoning, in which they either think without ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... poured from the crater and swept rapidly down the mountain side, leaving ruin along their paths. Resina, Granasello and Torre del Greco, three villages that had grown up during the period of quiescence, were more or less overwhelmed by the molten lava. Great torrents of hot water also poured out, adding to the work of desolation. It was estimated that eighteen thousand of the ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... actor, and the splendid music of the opera; the cunning feats of the village conjuror, and the lascivious pantomime of the city ballet-dancers; the disgusting varieties of bull-fights, and the celebrated feats of pugilism; the locomotive zeal of the great pedestrians, and the perfect quiescence of the "pillar saints." ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various



Words linked to "Quiescence" :   ease, dormant, sleeping, inaction, vegetation, inactiveness, estivation, relaxation, slumber, repose, hibernation, aestivation, rest, inactivity, quiescent, inactive



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