Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Quiescent   /kwaɪˈɛsənt/   Listen
Quiescent

adjective
1.
Not active or activated.
2.
Marked by a state of tranquil repose.
3.
Being quiet or still or inactive.
4.
(pathology) causing no symptoms.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Quiescent" Quotes from Famous Books



... returned to Waldron he found him outside of the wood, at the base of the long incline which rose into the rebel position. About the slope were scattered prostrate forms, most numerous near the bottom, some crawling slowly rearward, some quiescent. Under the brow of the ridge, decimated and broken into a mere skirmish line sheltered in knots and, singly, behind rocks and knolls and bushes, lay the Fourteenth Regiment, keeping up a steady, slow fire. From the edge above, smokily dim against a pure, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... her outer skin almost bulged with tightly packed bars of uranium and equipped to meet any emergency of which the combined efforts of the mightiest intellects of Norlamin could foresee even the slightest possibility, Skylark Three lay quiescent. Quiescent, but surcharged with power, she seemed to Seaton's tense mind to share his own eagerness to be off; seemed to be motionlessly straining at her neutral controls in a futile endeavor to leave ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... held back from his companion. An interval of twenty-four hours must pass before the second interview with Tozer, during which, as the latter was given to understand, the negotiation would be left wholly with him. Hank and Jack were to remain quiescent, at least until after the next meeting. But the cowman nursed a very different determination. He intended to employ all the time and the utmost ability he possessed in defeating the atrocious plot of the miscreants. It will be seen that the easiest plan ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... cent, of acid, which Professor Gazzeri considered far too little to repay the expense of extracting it. From the last lagoon it is conveyed into reservoirs, whence again, after having remained quiescent a few hours, for what purpose is not stated, it passes into the evaporating pans. "Here the hot vapor concentrates the strength of the acid by passing under shallow leaden vessels from the boiling fountains above, which it quits at a heat of 80 degrees Reaumur, and is discharged at ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... But if K. thinks the British will directly benefit—I fear he is out of his reckoning: it would be fatal to my relations with Gouraud, now so happy, were he even to suspect that I had any sort of lien on his guns. Unless I want to stir up jealous feelings, now entirely quiescent, I cannot use this cable as a lever to get French guns across into our area. Gouraud's plans for his big attack are now quite complete. A million pities we cannot attack simultaneously. That we should ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... rendering of The Poems of Francois Villon, was about to issue a Translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and one Nights. Burton, who was an enthusiastic admirer of the Villon and who, moreover, had not relinquished his own scheme, though it had lain so long quiescent, wrote at once to The Athenaeum a letter which appeared on 26th November 1881. He said: "Many years ago, in collaboration with my old and lamented friend, Dr. F. Steinhauser, of the Bombay Army, I began to translate the whole [342] of The Thousand Nights and a Night. The book, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... swelled in the stem, one thought of the beauty of spring, when the hedges would be full of hawthorn, and the banks of cowslips, when cherry-blossom would fill the orchards, and the young lambs and calves lie about in the low, green meadows, and the sky would be great and vigorous above the quiescent earth. On the same day, a week later, Anne was in the dairy in the evening, packing her butter for the following day's market. The day just withdrawing had been golden from beginning to end. The sun had risen without mist and ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone

... carrying on hostilities. It is assuredly no term of the contract that the State in question shall sit in judgment upon its co-contractors and forcibly intervene in rebus inter alios actis. Its hands are absolutely free. It may remain a quiescent spectator of evil, or, if strong enough and indignant with the wrongdoing, may endeavour to abate the mischief by remonstrance, and, in the last resort, by taking sides against the offender. Let us hope that at the present crisis the United ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland

... imagination is active, we watch him fascinated; we feel suspense, horror, awe; in which are latent, also, admiration and sympathy. But so soon as it is quiescent these feelings vanish. He is no longer 'infirm of purpose': he becomes domineering, even brutal, or he becomes a cool pitiless hypocrite. He is generally said to be a very bad actor, but this is not wholly true. Whenever ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... towards the west with a much more rapid movement, which comes to an end between one and two o'clock in the afternoon. Then, more slowly, it returns in an easterly direction until about nine at night, when it becomes once more nearly quiescent. Happily, the amount of this change is so small that the navigator need not trouble himself with it. The entire range of movement rarely amounts ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... me to think that there may be some grain of truth in all this, though I am not unmindful of the inevitable conclusion, that my own parabola will some day take its downward course, and I shall sit, quiescent, while the younger men around will demand stormily why I cannot see the grandeur, the profundity, of their newer gods. There lies the tragedy. Those gods, quite possibly, will be greater than mine—must be, if my belief in man be worth anything. ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... Virginia never before had been quiescent so long. The Army of the Potomac was not such a tremendous distance away, but it seemed that neither side was willing to attack, and as the autumn advanced and began to merge into winter the minds of all turned toward ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the trees of the forest and whirls the leaves about like ocean spray, then the oak is stirred to wild action; tosses its gnarled limbs in the air, and moves the very earth on which it stands. So the heroes on Deal beach are sluggish and quiescent while the sun shines and the butterflies are abroad; but let the storm burst upon the sea; let the waves hiss and thunder on that steep pebbly shore; let the breakers gleam on the horizon just over the fatal Goodwin Sands, or let the night descend in horrid blackness, and shroud beach and ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... still stronger objections to this theory of government in the terms in which it is usually stated. The power in society which has any tendency to convert itself into political power is not power quiescent, power merely passive, but active power; in other words, power actually exerted; that is to say, a very small portion of all the power in existence. Politically speaking, a great part of all power consists in will. How is it possible, ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... can produce more effect by one caning than twenty floggings. Observe, you flog upon a part for the most part quiescent; but you cane upon all parts, from the head to the heels. Now, when once the first sting of the birch is over, then a dull sensation comes over the part, and the pain after that is nothing; whereas a good sound caning leaves sores and ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... the same time, so kind and gracious. She was dressed in white, very plain and simple, her shining black hair piled high on her head, her kind, good eyes watching every one and everything to see that all were pleased. She, too, was happy to-night, but happy also in a strange, subdued, quiescent way, and I felt, as I always did about her, that her soul was still asleep and untouched, and that much of her reliance and independence came from that. Uncle Ivan was in his smart clothes, his round face very red and he wore his air of rather ladylike but ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... prerogative might in some princes have been esteemed the result of profound combinations,—the triumph of political sagacity; in Henry it was the pure effect of accident: but the advantages which he derived from the quiescent state of the public mind were not on this account the less real or the less important, nor did he suffer them to go unimproved. On one hand, no considerable opposition was made to his assumption of the supremacy; on the other, the spoil of the monasteries was not intercepted ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... mother was stricken down by the fierce throes of jealousy and pain that rent her soul; but as time went on and she knew that she was not supplanted, she grew quiescent. But she owned to herself that she never could have sent Ruth away if it had not been to separate her from her father ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... yourself, is so infectious as prolonged laughter, and the Padre felt himself forced to join it. When one of them got a little better, a relapse ensued by reason of infection from the others, and it was not till exhaustion set in, that this triple volcano became quiescent again. ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... 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 cord has been itself cut across, so as to be divided into two or more portions, each of them completely isolated from each other, and from ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... frightened face buried in its deep collar, while she struggled uselessly against those hard arms which tried not to hurt her. Her lips continued to rebel, long after her eyes had closed—long after body and brain were quiescent. ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... the harbour was, and is, beautiful, and I can remember thrilling with natural excitement as we opened up cove after cove, while the Ariadne—stately as ever, but curiously quiescent now, with her trimly furled and lifeless sails—was towed slowly to her anchorage. The different bays—Watson's, Mossman's, Neutral, and the rest—had not so many villas then as now. Manly was there, in little; but ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... herself of the incubus of a dual government, by the exclusion of the Italian element, and to carry to its completion that Reformation which three centuries ago she left unfinished. The time approaches when men must take their choice between quiescent, immobile faith and ever-advancing Science—faith, with its mediaeval consolations, Science, which is incessantly scattering its material blessings in the pathway of life, elevating the lot of man in this world, and unifying the human race. Its triumphs are ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... in his own eyes." The social state depicted in the Book of Judges reflects this revolt. The result of the same repudiation of authority is seen in modern society where what is right in one's own eyes is the whole Law and Gospel. Are we to remain quiescent, or are we to make the attempt to generate ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... was not pleasant, and it attacked everyone in the boat. The American might be right, they thought, and the serpent remain startled and quiescent down in the depths of the muddy water, but still they felt the possibility of that terrible head darting out at a victim, and a low sigh of relief rose again and again as the distance from where the serpent ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... changed position. It still remained quiescent. Then the current was further altered, and the time and space co-ordinates set into new combinations. This change of the current was a progressive change. Controlled and carefully calculated by what intricate theoretic principles and practical mechanisms ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings

... usually one of the best types of a chronic disease and may last for many years. The chronic form is characterized by periods of slow or rapid advance when conditions arise in the body favorable for the growth of the bacilli, and periods when the disease is checked and quiescent, the defensive forces of the body having gained the upper hand. Often the intervention of some other disease so weakens the defences of the body that the bacilli again find their opportunity. Thus typhoid fever, ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... breeding season which disappears when breeding is over, so that the male becomes very similar to the female. In the North American fresh-water crayfishes of the genus Cambarus there are two forms of males, one of which has testes in functional activity, while in the other these organs are small and quiescent: the one form changes into the other when the testes pass from the one condition to ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... sketches of Elia reflect the stamp and impress of the writer's own character, whereas in all those of Addison the personal peculiarities of the delineator (though known to the reader from the beginning through the account of the club) are nearly quiescent. Now and then they are recalled into a momentary notice, but they do not act, or at all modify his pictures of Sir Roger or Will Wimble. They are slightly and amiably eccentric; but the Spectator himself, in describing them, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... by a new idea, start off on a tour that might have been dictated by telegram. He does not sail and circle like his friend and comrade, never being distracted by soaring pretensions, but goes straight to his object. His flight is a regular succession of short flaps, with quiescent intervals between the series. The flaps are usually four, sometimes five or six. I am sure he counts them. You have seen a pursy gentleman in black hurrying along the street and tapping his boot with a cane, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... contradictions, see the abysmal Vacuum as a Plenum of fruition. As Oken says, "The ideal zero is absolute unity; not a singularity, as the number one, but an indivisibility, a numberlessness, a homogeneity, a translucency, a pure identity. It is neither great nor small, quiescent nor moved; but it is, and it is not, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... open resentment, Alice's indifference,—all told him that in their eyes he was only the pariah, beneath their contempt, suffered to remain there until he saw fit to rid them of his presence. Yet he could not leave them thus. Somewhere within him a something, until now quiescent, demanded recognition and insisted upon expression. Why had it waited until now! It was a changed John Covington who spoke from that doorway, when at last silence became unendurable. The hard lines in the face had softened, and the previously insistent voice now betrayed realization of the ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... concerned; if, on this vessel, which belongs to them, it permanently installs a foreign crew, which assumes and exercises all command, then the owner of the vessel, reduced to the humble condition of a mere subject and quiescent taxpayer, will no longer feel concerned. Since the intruders exercise all authority, let them have all the trouble; the working of the ship concerns them and not him; he looks on as a spectator, without any idea of lending ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... revolved about it in an immense mystical wheel, misty-white, glistening, and touched with prismatic colour. Floating fire and wheel were visible only to the stars, and the wakeful eyes of giant scaly monsters lying quiescent in the black waters below; but they were very beautiful nevertheless. The modest earwig was old on the earth even then; he dates back to the time, immeasurably remote, when scorpions possessed the earth, and taught him to frighten his ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... inscrutable. There was some strange preliminary process by which the main races of men were formed; they began to exist very early, and except by intermixture no new ones have been formed since. It was a process singularly active in early ages, and singularly quiescent in later ages. Such differences as exist between the Aryan, the Turanian, the negro, the red man, and the Australian, are differences greater—altogether than any causes now active are capable ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... rested. It finds itself in a new world, wherein all is unknown. Every system of opinion is but the effect of habit. The mind has as great difficulty to disengage itself from its custom of thinking, and reflect on new ideas, as the body has to remain quiescent after it has long been accustomed to exercise. Should you, for instance, propose to your friend to leave off snuff, as a practice neither healthful nor agreeable in company, he will not probably listen to you, or if he should, it will be with extreme pain ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... diverse puru@sas, to serve the enjoyment of pleasures and sufferance of pain through experiences, and finally leading them to absolute freedom or mukti. A return of this manifold world into the quiescent state (pralaya) of prak@rti takes place when the karmas of all puru@sas collectively require that there should be such a temporary cessation of all experience. At such a moment the gu@na compounds are gradually ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... not hear that from you. I will not indeed. I have endeavoured to do my duty by you, and I do not deserve it. I am endeavouring to do my duty now, and you must know that it would ill become me to remain quiescent while you are in such a state. The world around you is observing you, and knows that you are not doing your work. All I want of you is that you should arouse yourself, and ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... shock. I picked it up and held it. It gleamed brightly, with a light of its own; it was round; it made a faint droning sound; I turned it over, and it spoke to me. It said in a friendly, feminine whisper: Warning, this portatron attuned only to Bailey's Beam percepts. Remain quiescent until the ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl

... great Wolfhound warmed to his work, with a fire of zeal which mere hunger itself could not have lit within him. He was fighting now as never before since his fangs met in his first kill in far-away Sussex. He was fighting for the life of the Master, love of whom, long quiescent in him, welled up in him now; a warm tide of new blood which gave strength to his gaunt limbs and weight to his emaciated frame, such as they had never known when he fought, full fed, with Lupus, or with Tasman, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... lamb lying quietly on its side. The ewe stood by, staring down at it with a sort of quiescent curiosity from her brown, stupid, white-lashed eyes. When I went over to her I saw the lamb was dying; its lips moved incessantly, its little body kept rising and falling with its laboured breath, now and then it made a violent effort to get up, but always ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... With sociable promptness I lighted one of my own. The little enclosed veranda testified to a wave of fresh activity. The north light streamed in upon two or three fresh canvases, the place seemed full of enthusiasm, and you could see its source, at present quiescent under the influence ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... a little from the attitude of quiescent capacity in which she had hitherto sat to hear me, her ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... Johnson, a young English buck, with him. He was highly entertained with this fancy. Giving an account of the afternoon which we passed at Anock, he said, 'I, being a BUCK, had miss in to make tea.' He was rather quiescent tonight, and went early to bed. I was in a cordial humour, and promoted a cheerful glass. The punch was excellent. Honest Mr M'Queen observed that I was in high glee, 'my governour being gone to bed'. Yet in reality my heart ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... food. In each case something similar in appearance, but useless or hurtful, is contrasted with the thing asked by the child. The round loaves of the East are not unlike rounded, wave-washed stones, water-serpents are fishlike, and the oval body of a quiescent scorpion is similar to an egg. Fathers do not play tricks with their hungry children. Though we are all sinful, parental love survives, and makes a father wise enough to know what will nourish and what ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... 27th. Britannic Majesty, reduced to that frightful pinch, has at last given way. Treaty of Neutrality for Hanover; engagement again to stick one's puissant Pragmatic sword into its scabbard, to be perfectly quiescent and contemplative in these French-Bavarian Anti-Austrian undertakings, and digest one's indignation as one can. For our Paladin of the Pragmatic what a posture! This is the first of Three Attempts by our puissant little Paladin to draw sword;—not till the third could he get his sword ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... chance to escape from the toils of Wall street without loss. But he needed a profit to rehabilitate his ventures in other directions—his investments in the enterprises of his own state, which had now for some months appeared quiescent, if not languishing, from a speculative point of view. Everything pointed, it was said, to a further advance as soon as Congress adjourned. So he had waited, and now, although the session was over, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... voice trembled ominously: this strange continued silence was beginning to rouse some apprehension. As she uttered the last word—'gratitude'—Mrs Mildmay, hitherto entirely quiescent till her husband thought well to speak, could no longer restrain herself. She leant forward and caught Lady Myrtle's ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... that does not always think. Me oft has fancy ludicrous and wild Soothed with a waking dream of houses, towers, Trees, churches, and strange visages expressed In the red cinders, while with poring eye I gazed, myself creating what I saw. Nor less amused have I quiescent watched The sooty films that play upon the bars Pendulous, and foreboding in the view Of superstition, prophesying still, Though still deceived, some stranger's near approach. 'Tis thus the understanding takes repose In indolent vacuity of thought, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... felt it to know nothing of him from week to week, she had been tacitly satisfied that she was in his thoughts as he was in hers; and this had been enough for the time. What an awakening from this quiescent ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... words of pity, of understanding, of promise, she achieved. But her father suddenly dropped beside her, with an abandon reminiscent of the enfant gate of his Paris days, and drew her hands to his lips, kissing their soft, quiescent palms.... She drew one away and placed it upon his dark head from which the ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... feelings within his heart. Were they not being driven onwards by the current of time, onwards towards the spacious sea of action? Abruptly his heart was invaded by a longing for largeness, a longing that was essential in his nature, but that sometimes lay quiescent, for largeness of view, such as the Bedouin has upon the desert that he loves and he belongs to; largeness of emotion, largeness of action. Largeness was manliness—largeness of thinking and largeness of living. Not the drawing-room of the world, but the desert ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... Persons holding civil situations, and officers of militia who took any part in the agitation, were dismissed; and by a vigilant repressive policy the government gradually brought the Canadas into a more quiescent state. A reaction at last set in, and general expressions of loyalty prevailed where opinions in favour of an independent confederation of the British American provinces had been boldly announced. The ministry by which the indemnity bill was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Cologne-Ostend-Dover, and every moment being infinitely valuable Fritzing wanted to go that way, but Priscilla was determined to try whether turbines are really as steady as she had heard they were. The turbine was so steady that no one could have told it was doing anything but being quiescent on solid earth; but that was because, as Fritzing explained, there was a dead calm, and in dead calms—briefly, he explained the conduct of boats in dead calms with much patience, and Priscilla remarked when he had done that they might then, after ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... Deity active or quiescent before the creation; and if quiescent during a previous eternity, what necessity of His nature moved Him at last to create a world; or was it a mere ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... have immediate use for it. Of what I get from the past, prehistoric and historic, perhaps the most subtle distillation is the fact that so far is the life-principle from balking at need, need is essential to its activity. Where there is no need it seems to be quiescent; where there is something to be met, contended with, and overcome, it is furiously 'on the job.' That life-principle is my principle. It is the seed from which I spring. It is my blood, my breath, ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... of the whole, and the person who supplied the money; and our theatrical disturbances are found to have {p.207} formed one link of the chain. So, I have no doubt, Messrs. Stooks, Burk, etc., would have found out a new way of paying old debts. The people are perfectly quiescent upon this grand occasion, and seem to interest themselves very little in the fate of their soi-disant friends. The Edinburgh volunteers make a respectable and formidable appearance already. They are exercised four hours almost every day, with all the rigor of military discipline. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... as though he were right. The whole great pool of humanity which comprised Capellette was still, quiescent, stagnant. Was there nothing to arouse it, no ripple in ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... she match- making or match-marring; or was she negligently omitting the duties of a mother on so important an occasion? She was certainly neither match-making nor match-marring; but it was from no negligence that she was thus quiescent. She knew, or thought she knew, that the two young men were fit to be husbands to her daughters, and she felt that if the wish for such an alliance should spring up between either pair, there was no reason why she should interfere ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... still have House of Lords. Shall be reminded of their existence by-and-by. For the nonce, they are courteously quiescent, the world forgetting, by the world forgot. Just a little flare-up to-night. Ireland, of course; CAMPERDOWN wanting to know what about the Evicted Tenants Commission? Are the Government going to legislate upon it, or will they forbear? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various

... in this quiescent state A little cloud arose Portentous of our certain fate— As everybody knows; Our pastor took it in his head His ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... a weird and most extraordinary electric display." In the Gulf of Oman, he saw a bank of apparently quiescent phosphorescence: but, when within twenty yards of it, "shafts of brilliant light came sweeping across the ship's bows at a prodigious speed, which might be put down as anything between 60 and 200 miles an hour." "These light bars were about 20 feet apart and most ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... She became now strangely quiescent; her energy, her individuality, her strength of will seemed, for the time, entirely to have gone. She surrendered herself to Grace and Paul and Katherine and they did ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... too many would have turned from in disgust. I will not strip these men, thought Ahab, of all hopes of cash —aye, cash. They may scorn cash now; but let some months go by, and no perspective promise of it to them, and then this same quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would soon cashier Ahab. Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probable, and perhaps somewhat prematurely revealed ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... regulated flower-pots. But dozing must not be confounded with legitimate sleep, though frequently tending to the same purpose; it may be termed an embryo slumber, that entertaineth the body with the most quiescent gentleness, acting on our senses as a sort of mental warm bath; till, finally, the "material man" himself ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various

... plans promised to give assured success, he fell into disgrace at the capital, and his career was summarily ended by the executioner. The greatest compliment to his ability was that Noorhachu remained quiescent as long as he was on the frontier, but as soon as he was removed he at once resumed his ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... acted before she could speak. The laughter across the patio had stopped at Perris' speech; plainly Hervey must not remain quiescent. He dropped his big hand ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... a poor transitory life in the best enjoyments. We flutter about here and there, with all our vanities about us, like painted butterflies, for a gay, but a very short season, till at last we lay ourselves down in a quiescent state, and turn into vile worms: And who knows in what form, or to what condition ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... were at hand. The Papal Legate had effected between Earl Hubert and the Bishop of Winchester a reconciliation which resembled a quiescent volcano; but Hubert was put into a position of sore peril by his royal brother-in-law of Scotland, who coolly sent an embassy to King Henry, demanding as his right that the three northernmost counties of England should be peaceably resigned to him. After putting ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... eager for his encounter with Tom Lorrigan. For that matter, no sheriff had ever been eager to encounter a Lorrigan. The Lorrigan family had always been counted a hazard in the office of the sheriff, though of a truth the present generation had remained quiescent so far and the law had not heretofore reached its ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... less adapted. The metres, our feet, were called "Arkan," the stakes and stays of the tent; the syllables were "Usul" or roots divided into three kinds: the first or "Sabab" (the tent-rope) is composed of two letters, a vowelled and a quiescent consonant as "Lam."[FN437] The "Watad" or tent peg of three letters is of two varieties; the Majmu', or united, a foot in which the two first consonants are moved by vowels and the last is jazmated or made quiescent by apocope as "Lakad"; and the Mafruk, or disunited, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... La Vendee remained quiescent, after they had expelled the invaders; the Republicans, more alarmed than ever, were making the most tremendous efforts to stamp ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty

... change in the sleepers. And in Jellico's cabin even Queex appeared to be influenced by the plight of its master, for instead of greeting Dane with its normal aspect of rage, the Hoobat stayed quiescent on the floor of its cage, its top claws hooked about two of the wires, its protruding eyes staring out into the room with what seemed closed to a malignant intelligence. It did not even spit as Dane passed under its abode to pour thin ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... the beauty to live in, the little daintinesses and prettinesses of Nature to point out; the morning, sun-decked and dewy, the wide happiness of noon, the shadows of the great rocks where we rested, and the flash of the green and silver river tumbling outside in the sunshine; quiescent evening and the old age of the day, sunset and the remembrance of the day's glory, the pathos of looking ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... day the allied armies remained quiescent. It was useless to attempt to occupy the burning town, and the troops might have been injured by the explosions which took place from time to time ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty

... network, merely fused portions of the anchorages. The third took only the boom itself; the fourth took only the dangling miles of wire. At the sixth trial nothing—apparently—happened; whereupon the wire was drawn in and a two-hundred-pound mass of steel was lowered until it was in firm and quiescent contact with the solid rock ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith

... dignities. When I have recognized in the every-day name of His Very Worthy High Eminence of some cabalistic association, the inconspicuous individual whose trifling indebtedness to me for value received remains in a quiescent state and is likely long to continue so, I confess to having experienced a thrill of pleasure. I have smiled to think how grand his magnificent titular appendages sounded in his own ears and what a feeble tintinnabulation they ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... peculiarly happy, the features being finely formed, though strong, and never for an instant seeming overcharged, like the Italian faces, nor coarse and unfeminine under whatever impulse; on the contrary, it is so thoroughly harmonized when quiescent, and so expressive when impassioned, that most people think her more beautiful than she is; so great, too, is the flexibility of her countenance, that the rapid transitions of passion are given with a variety and effect that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various

... described from a certain point of view,—in a fixed and quiescent attitude. But the donkey should be taken in the very act of this characteristic motion. You put out your hand in the gentlest manner to pat any one of them you meet, and he will instinctively turn away his head for fear ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... Hebrew, of Menahem ben Saruk and Dunash ben Labrat,[91] and Rashi availed himself of them frequently, and not always uncritically. Thus, like them, he distinguishes triliteral, biliteral, and even uniliteral roots; but contrary to them, he maintains that contracted and quiescent verbs are triliteral and not biliteral. Unfortunately, he could have no knowledge of the more important works of Hayyoudj, "father of grammarians," and of Ibn Djanah, who carried the study of Hebrew to a perfection surpassed ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... Europa lay beneath them; a rugged, cratered, and torn topography of mighty ranges of volcanic mountains. Most of the craters were cold and lifeless; but here and there a plume of smoke and steam betrayed the presence of vast, quiescent forces. Straight down one of those gigantic lifeless shafts the fleet of space craft dropped—straight down a full two miles before the landing signal was given. At the bottom of the shaft a section of the rocky wall swung aside, revealing the yawning black mouth of a horizontal ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... ranks-and-file,—acknowledging their aims impracticable, or thankful that they were never put into practice. The fiercest reformers grow calm, and are faire to put up with things as they are: the loudest Radical orators become dumb, quiescent placemen: the most fervent Liberals when out of power, become humdrum Conservatives or downright tyrants or despots in office. Look at the Thiers, look at Guizot, in opposition and in place! Look at the Whigs appealing to the country, and the Whigs in power! ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... golden and gleaming mass,—with unexpected consideration having escaped the ministrations of the winch,—is passed from one pair of fishy hands to another, till it finds a resting-place by the side of the now quiescent pig. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... brass axis of the plate, and the other attached to a conductor (86.), which itself was retained by the hand in contact with the amalgamated edge of the disc at the part immediately between the magnetic poles. Under these circumstances all was quiescent, and the galvanometer exhibited no effect. But the instant the plate moved, the galvanometer was influenced, and by revolving the plate quickly the needle could be deflected 90 ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... of some men are stimulated by what serves only to exalt the nobler qualities of others. In such epochs, evil as well as good is exaggerated. A great social convulsion shakes up the lees which underlie society, forgotten because quiescent, and the stimulus of calamity brings out the extremes of human nature, whether for good ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... altogether quiescent as an authour; but it will be found from the various evidences which I shall bring together that his mind was ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... settler, who went from this country to Botany Bay, thinking himself obliged to me for a recommendation to General M'Allister and Sir Thomas Brisbane, has thought proper to bring me home a couple of Emus. I wish his gratitude had either taken a different turn, or remained as quiescent as that of others whom I have obliged more materially. I at first accepted the creatures, conceiving them, in my ignorance, to be some sort of blue and green parrot, which, though I do not admire their noise, might scream and yell at their pleasure ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... to the same green, water-worn bulwark from which he had loosened it not more than an hour before. He walked up to the city along the same route which he had previously followed. Nothing had changed. Everything was profoundly quiescent. Every body was still asleep. If he courted secrecy, he must have been content, for it was evident that no one had been a ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... are peculiarly exciting. These are the startings, the ascents, the descents, the tunnels, the Chat Moss, the meetings. At the instant of starting, or rather before, the automaton belches forth an explosion of steam, and seems for a second or two quiescent. But quickly the explosions are reiterated, with shorter and shorter intervals, till they become too rapid to be counted, though still distinct. These belchings or explosions more nearly resemble the pantings of a lion or tiger, than any sound that has ever vibrated ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... thought that he should do such a thing. There is conscience left in him yet. His example suggests how little any of us know what it is in us to be or to do. We are all of us a mystery to ourselves. Slumbering powers lie in us. We are like quiescent volcanoes. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... to do with it," she cried with quick passionateness. "We will leave her out; there are only you and me now to think of." After a long look at him she resumed with the old quiescent warmth: "Must I go on weakly confessing to you things a woman ought to conceal; and own that no words can express how gloomy I have been because of that dreadful belief I held till two hours ago—that you had quite ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... Hillford," told a tale. At once the stoutest hearts pressed to the opening. "My harp!" Emilia made her voice reach Wilfrid's ear. Unprovided with weapons, Ipley parleyed. Hillford howled in reply. The trombone brayed an interminable note, that would have driven to madness quiescent cats by steaming kettles, and quick, like the springing pulse of battle, the drum thumped and thumped. Blood could not hear it and keep from boiling. The booth shook violently. Wilfrid and Gambier threw over half-a-dozen chairs, forms, and tables, to make a barrier ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... in fact come into being, and it found itself in touch with new neighbours, whom the Ancient Greek had never known. Eastward lay the Armenians, reviving, like the Greeks, after the ebb of the Arab flood, and the Arabs themselves, quiescent within their natural bounds and transfusing the wisdom of Aristotle and Hippokrates into their native culture. Both these peoples were sundered from the Orthodox Greek by religion[1] as well as by language, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... the foundations was reached when it was demonstrated that the whole physical universe must be regarded as composed of Energy, either kinetic and actually undergoing transmutation from one form to another, or potential and quiescent yet containing within itself the quantifiable capacity of transformation. The objective correlatives of the different classes of sensible experiences are found to be different forms which this ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip

... briefly summarized disregards some very essential considerations, e.g. that there remains in man, even after justification, concupiscence, which is accompanied by a certain weakness that requires at least the gratia sanans sive medicinalis to heal it.(354) Furthermore, a quiescent habitus cannot set itself in motion, but must be determined from without; that is to say, in our case, it must be moved by the gratia excitans to elicit supernatural thoughts and to will supernatural acts. Just as a seed cannot sprout without the aid of appropriate stimuli, so sanctifying grace ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... this May morning. For an hour or two Harley lay quiescent, apparently gazing out of his flat window over the uninspiring chimney-pots of the City of New York, at the equally uninspiring Long Island station on the far side of the East River. It was well for him that his eye was able to see, and yet ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs

... that were lately quiescent, and even trampled under foot, your Majesty has revived; and been yet so prudent in reforming, that even those which your Enemies made upon good deliberation, you permit to stand, shewing your self rather to have been displeased with the ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn

... of the invading crescent, reinforced this day by the commandos of Middelburg and Wakkerstroom, lay under Meyer some forty miles eastward, some in Utrecht, some in Vryheid, and some already at the concentration point, the Doornberg. On the 13th, whilst the wings remained quiescent, Joubert, with the main column, occupied Laing's Nek, having first, either by an excess of precaution, or from a fear lest the gap between him and Meyer were too great, made good that formidable obstacle by a turning movement around the left and over the Buffalo at Wools ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... nothing: he was escorted from brigade to brigade till he reached the Chateau d'If. The Protestants sided with M. Vincent de Saint-Laurent, the Catholics took the part of the authorities who were persecuting him, and thus the two factions which had been so long quiescent found themselves once more face to face, and their dormant hatred awoke to new life. For the moment, however, there was no explosion, although the city was at fever heat, and everyone felt that a crisis ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... qualities not universally bestowed. The ruin of another will produce no profit to him who has not discernment to mark his advantage, courage to seize, and activity to pursue it; but the cold malignity of envy may be exerted in a torpid and quiescent state, amidst the gloom of stupidity, in the coverts of cowardice. He that falls by the attacks of interest, is torn by hungry tigers; he may discover and resist his enemies. He that perishes in the ambushes of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... physical body (sthula sarira) does not indicate a condition of inactivity either on the astral or the spiritual plane of action. The human spirit is in its highest state of activity in samadhi, (highest trance) and not, as is generally supposed, in a dormant, quiescent condition. And, moreover, it will be easily seen, by any one who examines the nature of occult dynamics, that a given amount of energy expended on the spiritual or astral plane is productive of far greater results than the same amount expended on the physical objective ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... on the 13th of January. At that time little was known of the disturbances in America, and the king's speech represented the state of foreign affairs to be in such a quiescent state, that the legislature would have ample time to attend to the improvement of our domestic concerns, and to the prosecution of measures immediately connected with the revenue and commerce of the kingdom. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... sister, and the semicircular lines above their eyebrows disappeared. No, there was nothing more to be said on either side. Joan brushed her brother's head with her hand as she passed him, murmured good night, and left the room. For some minutes after she had gone Ralph lay quiescent, resting his head on his hand, but gradually his eyes filled with thought, and the line reappeared on his brow, as the pleasant impression of companionship and ancient sympathy waned, and he was ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... was thus drifting onward, the North remained quiescent, utterly refusing to believe in the existence of any real danger. Yet it was publicly known that, although the Southern States had refused to commit themselves to Secession, they were pledged not to allow South Carolina to be coerced, and this practically ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday

... I shall try to prove in a later lecture—that desire, like force in mechanics, is of the nature of a convenient fiction for describing shortly certain laws of behaviour. A hungry animal is restless until it finds food; then it becomes quiescent. The thing which will bring a restless condition to an end is said to be what is desired. But only experience can show what will have this sedative effect, and it is easy to make mistakes. We feel dissatisfaction, and think that such and-such a thing would remove it; but in thinking this, we ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell



Words linked to "Quiescent" :   quiet, quiescence, dormant, quiescency, pathology, quiesce, inactive



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com