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Stability   /stəbˈɪlɪti/   Listen
Stability

noun
1.
The quality or attribute of being firm and steadfast.  Synonym: stableness.
2.
A stable order (especially of society).
3.
The quality of being enduring and free from change or variation.  Synonym: constancy.



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"Stability" Quotes from Famous Books



... immutable purpose of God only a few short months ago, we have already discovered to have been founded only in human passion or ambition. What seemed eternal has passed away, and what appeared to be evanescent has assumed stability. The storm has been raging around us, and doing its work not the less destructively because we failed to perceive that we were passing through anything more threatening than a summer shower. While we have stood upon the bank of the swelling ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... to the stability of the financial situation at some point abroad where American bankers usually carry large balances is another circumstance which often depresses the exchange market sharply. "Trouble in the Balkans" and "trouble over the Moroccan situation" are two bugbears which have for ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher

... Venice with the permission of the Duke of Parma, to set up the beam, which was never brought into use. Republics are famous for their superstitious attachment to old customs; they are afraid that changes for the better may destroy the stability of the state, and the government of aristocratic Venice still preserves its original ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... spoke in addition French, Italian and English with great ease and fluency. Indeed, the Armenians are the best of the different nationalities of Asia Minor and Syria: diligent in business, moderately honest, good linguists and accountants, they have more dignified manners and stability than the Fanariot Greeks, and more brains than the Turks. They retain their physical type as distinctly as do the Parsees in India, and are equally ready to turn an honest penny, en gros ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... what I once used to have," he muttered. "Thank you, thank you, little girl. I cannot buy such things for myself, but I am glad to get them from others. Sit down, pray do, after your walk," and he pointed to a high-backed oak chair, of very doubtful stability and covered with dust. He saw that Mary on that account hesitated to sit down, so rising he shambled forward and wiped it with an old cotton handkerchief which he drew out of his pocket. "There, now it's all clean and nice; you must sit down and rest, ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston

... we should quit the Halbrane, which might slide down at a sharp shake ot the iceberg. Were we even certain that the latter had regained its position on the surface of the sea? Was her stability secure? Should we not be on the look-out for a fresh upheaval? And if the schooner were to fall into the abyss, which of us could extricate himself safe and sound from such a fall, and then from the final plunge into the ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne

... GENERATORS.—(a) Must be made of iron or steel, and in a manner and of material to insure stability and durability. ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... unshaken faith in ultimate success, that kept me going. I suppose it is my French ancestry that is responsible for my lack of just the qualities that made your father the man he was. I lacked his stability—his balance. I had imagination—vision, possibly greater than his. And under the stimulus of apparent success, my spirits would rise to heights his never knew. But I paid for it—no one knows how bitterly I paid. For when apparent success turned into ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... the first shiver of dismay. Her limbs seemed ready to collapse. The flush of anger and excitement left her face; a white, desolate look came in its stead. Her eyes grew wide and she blinked her lashes with an awed uncertainty that boded ill for the stability of her adventure. An owl hooted in mournful cadence close by and she felt that her hair was going straight on end. The tense fingers of one hand gripped the handle of the travelling-bag while the other went spasmodically to ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... rate of sailing did not continue. Toward evening, the breeze lessened almost to a calm again, the late tornado appearing to have quite deranged the ordinary stability of the trades. When the sun set, and it went down into the broad waters of the Gulf a flood of flame, there was barely a two-knot breeze, and Mulford had no longer any anxiety on the subject of keeping his vessel ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... cause of education; and he built a school at Altrive, and partly endowed a schoolmaster, for the benefit of the children of the district. A Jacobite as respected the past, he was in the present a devoted loyalist, and strongly maintained that the stability of the state was bound up in the support of the monarchy; he had shuddered at the atrocities of the French Revolution, and apprehended danger from precipitate reform; his politics were strictly conservative. He was earnest on the subject of religion, and regular ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... Wilson's speech was especially malicious when directed against the poor folks with whom he lived, and who, being conscious of how essential he was to the stability of the household, were largely at his mercy. It happened on one occasion that when Wilson returned to the cottage after a day's absence, he found Sim's daughter weeping ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... Temple of Theseus is the most perfect ancient edifice in the world. In this fabric, the most enduring stability, and a simplicity of design peculiarly striking, are united with the highest ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... fashion has been to contrast the stability and rejuvenescence of nature with the evanescence and unreturning ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... authors themselves. For social life to furnish material suitable for the artist's description, it must first of all have types which show a certain consistency, a more or less determined attitude. But it is futile to look for either stability or precision in Russian life since Russia has been going through continual crises. It would be just as difficult for literature to record rapid changes of ideas, as for an artist to copy a model that cannot pose for him. Besides, most contemporary writers are struggling ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... dependent on the Central Powers, or by means of the so-called Austro-Polish solution. The Czecho-Slovaks, owing to their geographic position and past traditions, and owing to their advanced civilisation, may be fully relied upon as the pioneers of peace and stability in Central Europe. ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... farms are well-fed and relatively opulent. In Russia, Poland, Hungary, Germany, Austria; the cities perish but the peasants for the most part have a sufficiency. The cities are finding that with the breakdown of the old stability—of the transport and credit systems particularly—they cannot obtain food from the farmers. This process which we now see at work on the continent is in fact the ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... contempt. "She wouldn't stand for the sort who marry her kind. She'll land hard on her neck one of these days, and the one best bet will be some long-faced Botticelli with heavenly principles and the moral stability of a tumbler pigeon. Then there'll be hell to pay; but he will get over it and she'll get aboard the toboggan. That's the way ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... presided over its deliberations with wonderful dignity and grace. The foreign ministers, confident in the stability of her reign, hastened to present their congratulations. Peter found even a few hours in the solitude of the palace of Ropscha exceedingly oppressive; he accordingly sent to the empress, soliciting the presence of a negro servant to whom he was much attached, and ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... or the universal sigh, the autumnal refrains of Chopin, and the monotony of love. "Life is quotidian!" he has sung, and women are the very symbol of sameness, that is their tragedy—or comedy. "Stability thy name is Woman!" exclaims the Hamlet of this most spiritual ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... not endure but for the stability which habits afford. It is easy to denounce custom and tradition as obstacles to progress and reform, but it should be remembered that they are the social habits which society has acquired through registering the experience of the past, and that while ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... indeed, not soon broken. "Chosen," God's own love and wisdom is the fount and spring whence all flows. And that in blessed connection with the dearest object of His love—"in Him." "Before the foundation of the world." In the stability and changelessness of Eternity,—before that scene that is, and ever was, characterized by change, began,—with its mirth and sorrow, sunshine and shadow, life and death. Blessed solid rock-foundation for ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings

... her displeasure was not entirely free from contempt. As for Guert's case, it did not strike me as being half so desperate as my own; for there was nothing unnatural, but something quite the reverse, in women of sense and stability, when they admire any youth of opposite temperament—and I remembered to have heard my grandfather say that such was apt to be the case,—wishing to elevate their suitors in their pursuits and characters. Had Anneke taken the pains ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... One lady, whose baby I held for a little this morning, told me I had such a sweet, unspoiled disposition! But what really pleased me and made me feel inches taller was that Captain Gordon told someone who told me that he thought I had great stability of character. It is odd how one loves to be told one has what one hasn't! I, who have no more stability of character than a pussy-cat, felt warm with gratitude. Only—I should like to make my exit now before he discovers how mistaken ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... manufacture at less cost than we can; and this disadvantage can be counteracted only by protective legislation. The benefits which have accrued to the manufacturers of England from a governmental policy on whose stability they could rely, the advantage of a long and firmly established business with all its results of experience and skill, and the collateral aid of a widely extended commerce, are points clearly brought out and presented to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... now," said he, "the sense of stability and comfort that Blanquette affords me. She is unchangeable. God has given her a sense whereby she has pierced to the innermost thing that is I, and externals don't matter. She has got nearer the true Paragot than you, my son, although I know you ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... loss of her brother: he had been the youngest, and she had been fond of him, but never had Emma Brigham lost sight of her own importance amidst the waters of tribulation. She was always awake to the consciousness of her own stability in the midst of vicissitudes and the splendor of ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... Under his management, affairs are soon brought to a stand-still. Notwithstanding his profound faith in the capabilities of the Charitable Chums, and his settled conviction that their immense body must embrace the elements of stability, his whole course is but one rapid descent down to the verge, and headlong over the precipice, of bankruptcy. The dismal announcement of 'no effects,' first breathed in dolorous confidence at the bedsides of the sick, soon takes wind. All the C.C.s in London ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various

... population is in direct contact with the natives, both Pagans and Mohammedans. Thus the republic has, indirectly, a powerful missionary influence, and its moral and religious condition is a matter of grave concern to the Church. Hence the Protestant Christian missions in Liberia are essential to the stability and prosperity of the republic, and the stability and prosperity of the republic are necessary to the protection and action of the missions. It will thus appear that the Christian education of the people is the legitimate work ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... feels his horse sinking, the first movement, if an inexperienced traveller, is to throw himself from the saddle, and endeavour to wade or to swim to the cane-brakes, the roots of which give to the ground a certain degree of stability. In that case, his fate is probably sealed, as he is in immediate danger of the "cawana." This is a terrible and hideous monster, with which, strange to say, the naturalists of Europe are not yet ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... my dear Eliza, on the stability of your conduct towards Mr. Boyer. Pursue the system which you have adopted, and I dare say that happiness will crown your future days. You are indeed very tenacious of your freedom, as you call it; but that is a play about ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster

... that these two recommendations are equally important and reinforce one another. If they are effectively implemented, and if the Iraqi government moves forward with national reconciliation, Iraqis will have an opportunity for a better future, terrorism will be dealt a blow, stability will be enhanced in an important part of the world, and America's credibility, interests, ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace

... supposed, in order to destroy the authority of religious belief. In spite of appearances, it was essentially a social and political revolution; and within the circle of social and political institutions it did not tend to perpetuate and give stability to disorder, or—as one of its chief adversaries ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... fight singular; so he agreed to that and he saith to you, 'Verily, I will ransom my army with my life; so let the Moslem King do as I do and with his life ransom his host. And if he kill me, there will be no stay left in the army of Roum, and if I kill him, there will be no stability with the Moslems." When Sharrkan heard this he said, "O monk, I agree to that, for it is just nor may it be gainsaid; and behold, I will meet him in duello and do with him derring do, for I am Champion of the Faithful even as he is Champion of the Faithless; and if ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... You will smile at seeing Doddington again revolved to the court, and Lord Sandys and Harry Furnese, two of the most ridiculous objects in the succession to my father's ministry, again dragged out upon the stage: perhaps it may not give you too high an idea of the stability or dignity of the new arrangement; but as the Duke of Newcastle has so often turned in and out all men in England, he must employ some Of The same dukes over again. In short, I don't know whether all this will make your ministerial gravity ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... communism: influences all these perpetually rising up and being trodden down, till they all rotted away in the great stagnation of the fifteenth century; and only in one part of the world, where the conflict was more speedily ended, where one set of tendencies early triumphed, where stability was temporarily obtained, in Italy alone did civilization continue to be nurtured and developed for the benefit of all mankind. In such a state of affairs only such things could flourish and mature as ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... government to issue with the country. Queen Elizabeth did not overlook the convenience of this source of revenue. In fact, she pushed the system of monopolies very far, and nearly endangered the stability of her power. But she was a very wise ruler, and always stopped short at the point of endurance. Hallam gives the following animated account of a parliamentary contest in 1601. When we reflect on the departed corn-laws, the allusion to bread is ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various

... ever be known in this world how much of the success, prosperity, and happy conservatism which have marked this commonwealth in all the days and years since, have come directly from this planting of it on the grand corner-stone of all national stability, order, and happiness. Surely, a widely different course and condition of things would have come but for this secure anchoring of the ship on the everlasting Rock. And a thousand pities it is that the influence ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss

... shall keep my word, and on all occasions, I shall speak the truth, even though it be to my own detriment. I have more stability in my disposition than you imagine, and I fear exceedingly that the result of our intercourse may sometimes lead you to think that I carry this virtue into severity. But you must remember that I have only the external appearance of a woman, and that ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... unstable foam-crests dashing hither and thither, the playful ripples of the surface, and, blind to the still and measureless waters beneath, calls woman capricious, uncertain,—varium et mutabile. But the thinker and seer, undeceived by such externals, knows that beneath this seeming change is stability unequaled in the stronger sex, a power of will to which man is a stranger, a devotion and purpose which ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... botanist, working on the OEnothera Lamarckiana, obtained at the end of a few generations a certain number of new species. The theory he deduces from his experiments is of the highest interest. Species pass through alternate periods of stability and transformation. When the period of "mutability" occurs, unexpected forms spring forth in a great number of different directions.[28]—We will not attempt to take sides between this hypothesis and that of insensible variations. Indeed, perhaps both are partly true. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... reason she must be more conservative, more circumspect, and more virtuous than man. There is no state or civilization which has comprehended the highest things in life which has not been forced to instil into its women rather than into its men the sense for all those virtues upon which depend the stability of the family and the future of the race. And for every era this is a question of life and death. In such periods when one world is dying and another coming to birth, all conceptions become confused, ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... information removed another of the fearsome doubts that had beset her. She had been afraid that he might prove to be an irresponsible wanderer, but when a man kept a house it gave to his character a certain recommendation, it suggested stability, more, it indicated honesty. ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer

... a manner believes, that this will lie uppermost; though still with hesitation and doubt, in proportion to the number of chances, which are contrary: And according as these contrary chances diminish, and the superiority encreases on the other side, his belief acquires new degrees of stability and assurance. This belief arises from an operation of the mind upon the simple and limited object before us; and therefore its nature will be the more easily discovered and explained. We have nothing but one single dye to contemplate, in ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... in a certain sense, inasmuch as they show that women are awakening to the realization that some compensation is due to household employees for the extra long hours of work frequently unavoidable in family life. But unfortunately these plans lack stability, for they depend altogether upon the generosity and kindness of different employers, instead of upon a just and ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker

... here comes a very sudden trial of our stability in good thoughts. Well, (smiling,) I hope it may be allowed that if compassion has produced exertion and relief to the sufferers, it has done all that is truly important. If we feel for the wretched, enough to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... righteous principles. They know, also, that the best means of preserving them from danger is so to promote the increase of general information, as to make the people perceive how intimately their own well-being depends upon the stability of the state, thus making them wise ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various

... strong, rigid, and healthy union a formation of elastic cartilage is the result. This false structure unites the broken ends of the bones in such way that they move one upon another, depriving the bone of its stability and usefulness. When once the healthy process of union is interrupted in the manner just described, it is again established with great difficulty. It no longer does any good to continue the restraining power; in fact, the change of the temporary cartilage ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... more favourable view is not only possible: it is forced upon anyone who studies his self-revelation through his letters. He seems to have hoped that his ordination would have given him moral strength and stability, but he had to admit that he had never been so strongly tempted to sin, so unable to resist it, or so ingloriously foiled, as since his return from England. Marsden's sharp exercise of discipline, though it elicited outbursts of passion, seems to have had a healing effect. "Blessed ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas

... were in no sense adventurers, gold seekers, cavaliers, or desperadoes. They were well-to-do middle class English tradespeople who would never have thought of leaving England if they had not lost faith in the stability of civil and religious liberty and the security of their property under the Stuart Kings. With them came servants, as they were called; that is, persons of no property, who agreed to work for a certain time in payment of their passage, ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher

... attributing motion to the earth in these books of mine, will at once declare that such an opinion ought to be rejected. Now, my own theories do not please me so much as not to consider what others may judge of them. Accordingly, when I began to reflect upon what those persons who accept the stability of the earth, as confirmed by the opinion of many centuries, would say when I claimed that the earth moves, I hesitated for a long time as to whether I should publish that which I have written to demonstrate its motion, or whether ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... that rare tact of adapting himself to almost any company in which he might be thrown. We always met with a cordial welcome from him; and it was very interesting to hear his comments upon the government and the social life of England. I am sure the contrast between the conservatism, stability and respect for precedents and laws, so manifest everywhere in that favored land, and the rapidly growing disregard of all these obligations in our own country, struck him most forcibly. He closed a long eulogy of England upon one occasion by ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson

... important qualities of the lifeboat. However good it may be in other respects, a boat without this quality is a lifeboat only so long as it maintains its proper position on the water. If upset it is no better than any other boat. It is true that, great stability being one of the lifeboat's qualities, such boats are not easily overturned. Nevertheless they sometimes are so, and the results have been on several occasions disastrous. Witness the case of the Liverpool boat, which in January 1865 upset, ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... upon damp soil and germinates, producing a small, green, shield-shaped patch much smaller than a dime, which is called a prothallium (or prothallus). On its under surface delicate root hairs grow to give it stability and nutriment; also two sorts of reproductive organs known as antheridia and archegonia, the male and female growths analogous to the stamens and pistils in flowers. From the former spring small, active, ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton

... magnificent temple, the erection of which was the best feature of Solomon's reign. They were of such prominent importance that a name was affixed to each of them. One was called "Jachin," which means, "he will establish," the other was called "Boaz," which means "in strength." The ideas involved are stability and strength. Possibly the Psalmist had these pillars in his mind when he wrote, "Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary" (Ps. xcvi. 6); strength first, then beauty; strength as the foundation of divine work, then ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... her ugly. But I illuminated her with the colours of my longings. Such is the condition of men when left to themselves; they err wretchedly. We are all abused by empty images; we go in chase of dreams and embrace shadows. In God alone is truth and stability." ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... to explain that it means a board passing longitudinally through the keel, above which a strong water-tight case is fixed for its reception; it is raised and lowered by hand or by machinery, according to its weight. The advantages proposed by the centre-board are—the stability it gives to the vessel on a wind when let down; the resistance it removes if, when running before the wind, it be raised; the small draught of water which the vessel requires, thereby enabling her to keep close in-shore out of the influence of strong tides, &c.; ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... be disturbed about the course of the Wisconsin River. I might as well worry over the rush of a cataract. The lad has no stability." ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... She walked briskly to the door and gave it a push. Gerald, still clinging to his chosen support, moved out into the passage, attached to the handle, with the air of a man the foundations of whose world have suddenly lost their stability. He released the handle and moved uncertainly across the passage. Finding his own door open before him, he staggered over the threshold; and Sally, having watched him safely to his journey's end, went into her bedroom with the intention of terminating ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... coach-makers, harness-makers, inn-keepers and others along the great roads would have nothing to do, etc., etc. In the face of ignorance, ridicule, contempt, and self-interest, Stephenson firmly maintained the safety of a good road, the stability of his engines and cars, the harmlessness of smoke and noise, and the facility with which animals became indifferent to trains. He said that at Killingworth cattle would not stop feeding as the trains went by. As to the effect of speed, he boldly asserted that at twelve miles per ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... and turned aside. There was no time left to reason further. The future alone could prove the depth and stability of his love. He made his way to the gangway, his heart wrung with the sense of loss, of wounded love and pride. By his side men and women sobbed and cried, while others laughed and exchanged merry banter with their friends on board. To some this meant ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... then, as well as the statesmen, required a man who should express this word Halt. An Although-Because. A composite individuality, signifying revolution and signifying stability, in other terms, strengthening the present by the evident compatibility of the past ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... its succeeding rulers, and showed in the same moment its regret for the past and its resolution for the future. To me, the scene in the White House, the street, and the capitol to-day, was the strongest evidence the war afforded of the stability of our institutions, and the worthiness and ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... describing the reigning Pharaoh as the "Vice-gerent of the Giver of Eternal Life"; or, in other words, of the Sun-God. Other expressions applied to the Pharaoh are "Giver of Life and Strength like the Sun"; "Who gives all Life, Stability, and Health like the Sun"; and "Approved of the Sun and Giver ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons

... be governed? Is there any such governing? Mlle. Clairon complained that, so soon as she became seriously attached to any one, she was sure to meet somebody else whom she liked better. Have human hearts," he said, "or at least, has my heart, no more stability than this?" ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... of the modern mind? The power to make quick decisions and the inability to cling to convictions; the nervous high pitch and the failure to sustain the triumphant note; energy without direction; success without stability; martyrdom without faith. And around, above, beneath, the pervading mediocrity, the apotheosis of the average. Was this the best that democracy had to offer mankind? Was there no depth below the shallows? Was it impossible, even by the most patient search, to discover ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... been so definite a symptom in his childhood of that state wherein he simply could not drag himself to blow up the embers of his extinguished enthusiasm, that he recoiled from himself in alarm. He felt his whole stability of character on trial. If he could not "make good" here, what excuse could there be for him; what was there left for him save the profitless and honourless life of the dilettante and idler? He had caught on to a big business remarkably well, ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... to pieces, I mean) the bananas are all actually blown down, and the crop for that season utterly destroyed. The apparent stem, being merely composed of the overlapping and sheathing leaf-stalks, has naturally very little stability; and the soft succulent trunk accordingly gives way forthwith at the slightest onslaught. This liability to be blown down in high winds forms the weak point of the plantain, viewed as a food-stuff crop. In the South Sea Islands, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... tolerance. And it was this tolerance she mistrusted, not the fury. She saw that, all the while, in spite of himself, he would have to be trying to save the world. And this knowledge, whilst it comforted her heart somewhere with a little self-satisfaction, stability, yet filled her with a certain sharp contempt and hate of him. She wanted him to herself, she hated the Salvator Mundi touch. It was something diffuse and generalised about him, which she could not stand. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... or noble patron extended a munificent hand to give independence to the man who had conferred stability on the language of his country. We may feel indignant that there should have been such unworthy neglect; but we must, at the same time, congratulate ourselves, when we consider, that to this very neglect, operating to rouse the natural ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... boys; never was there a day when character counted for so much as now; never a day when a young man, equipped with education and stability of character, filled with energy and ambition, was in such demand as he is today; while on the other hand, never was there a day when a young man with bad habits was in so little demand as now. The industrial ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... and floated it; but it was not the less popular on that account. A railway from Salt Lake City to Mexico no doubt had much of the flavour of a castle in Spain. Our far-western American brethren are supposed to be imaginative. Mexico has not a reputation among us for commercial security, or that stability which produces its four, five, or six per cent, with the regularity of clockwork. But there was the Panama railway, a small affair which had paid twenty-five per cent.; and there was the great line across the continent to San Francisco, in which enormous ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... given attention to buildings in the course of erection in London, you must have been struck with their marvellous stability. The mere fact that they should remain standing for five minutes after the removal of the scaffold must have seemed to you to reflect credit on the skill of the builder; but that they should do so for a lifetime—even for a century!—a thing absolutely incredible. Especially ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... coming age in which the forces of natural selection are again to operate without the restraints imposed by religion, and the heaviest fist is once more to make the law. In the work of Ihne we see a certain recoil from Mommsen, and at the same time an occasional inconsistency and a want of stability in the principle of judgment. Our standard ought not to be positive but relative. It was the age of force and conquest, not only with the Romans but with all nations; hospes was hostis. A perfectly independent development of Greeks, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... settlements on the Holston grew with great rapidity as soon as the Franklin disturbances were at an end. As the people increased in military power, they increased also in material comfort, and political stability. The crude social life deepened and broadened. Comfortable homes began to appear among the huts and hovels of the little towns. The outlying settlers still lived in wooden forts or stations; but where the population was thicker, the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... the stability of the ship prevailed, and she began to right. Then, Roger and Harry, rushing to Leigh's assistance, helped him to put the helm up, and the ship paid off and began to scud before the wind, while Cavendish, encouraging his little body of men up in the eyes of the ship, managed ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... submissive, non-resisting, heaven-seeking Christianity. Thus we find Mosheim saying of Constantine: "It is, indeed, probable that this prince perceived the admirable tendency of the Christian doctrine and precepts to promote the stability of government, by preserving the citizens in their obedience to the reigning powers, and in the practice of those virtues that render a State happy" ("Eccles. Hist," p. 87). We discover Charlemagne enforcing Christianity among the Saxons by sword and fire, hoping ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... began to be very useful in the surveying department. His loss was severely felt by me; and he was lamented by all on board, more especially by his mess-mates, who knew more intimately the goodness and stability of his disposition. ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders

... which he had had enough. Napoleon was at heart too much of a gamin for his taste. Looking over Europe in more recent times, he concluded that the Prussian monarchy had been the main centre of modern stability, and that it had been made so by its virtual creator, Friedrich II., called the Great. Once entertained, the subject seized him as with the eye of Coleridge's mariner, and, in spite of manifold efforts to get free, compelled ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... types of apparel eminently becoming to the human form; and we might even feel that ge have substantial ground for the hope that today, after all the ingenuity and effort which have been spent on dress these many years, the fashions should have achieved a relative perfection and a relative stability, closely approximating to a permanently tenable artistic ideal. But such is not the case. It would be very hazardous indeed to assert that the styles of today are intrinsically more becoming than those of ten years ago, or than those of twenty, or fifty, or ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... pale halo of piratical romance, a thing especially dear to the hearts of his countrymen, had remained incongruously about his head through the years when he stood in every eye as the unquestioned guardian of stability, the stamper-out of manipulated crises, the foe of the raiding chieftains that infest the borders of ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... long grass its own strange virtue [5] Hath blinded up its crystal eye withal: Make me a broad strong river coming down With shouts from its high hills, whose rocky hearts Throb forth the joy of their stability In watery pulses from their inmost deeps, And I shall be a vein upon thy world, Circling perpetual from the parent deep. O First and Last, O glorious all in all, In vain my faltering human tongue would seek To shape the vesture of the boundless thought, Summing all causes ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... singular discrepancies of human life this state of the case will be fruitful of much profound speculation. The patriotic animus appears to be an enduring trait of human nature, an ancient heritage that has stood over unshorn from time immemorial, under the Mendelian rule of the stability of racial types. It is archaic, not amenable to elimination or enduring suppression, and apparently not appreciably to be mitigated by reflection, education, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... formative power of order and measurement he always stands on a four-square pedestal, "the Egyptian cubit, metaphorically used as the hieroglyphic for truth," his limbs are bound together, to signify fixed stability, as of a pillar; he has a measuring-rod in his hand, and at Philas, is represented as holding an egg on a potter's wheel; but I do not know if this symbol occurs in older sculptures. His usual title is the "Lord ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... philanthropist, both executed by the late Mr. Bacon, were opened for public inspection in 1796. That of Dr. Johnson represents a moral philosopher, with the attitude and expression of intense thought, leaning against a column, indicative of the firmness of mind and stability of principles of the man whom it is ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... that of a large number of the ablest men in India, a downward tendency—a tendency to crush all the higher and middle classes connected with the land. These classes it should be our object to create and foster, that we might in the end inspire them with a feeling of interest in the stability of our rule. We shall find a few years hence the tables turned against us. In fact, the aggressive and absorbing policy, which has done so much mischief of late in India, is beginning to create feelings of alarm in the native mind; and it is when the ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... indiscriminating restriction of the birth-rate—an end practically attained in the homely, old-fashioned civilisation of China by female infanticide, involves not only the cessation of distresses but stagnation, and the minor good of a sort of comfort and social stability is won at too great a sacrifice. Progress depends essentially on competitive selection, and that ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... These were the first peers that had been burned in the hand, and the democratic Earl of Leicester expresses at the event some satisfaction, and derives from the whole circumstances of the trial comfortable assurance of the power and stability of the Government. The Earl, however, misleads us in one particular. Lord Arundel was Henry Compton's second. He had married Cecily Compton, and naturally enough acted as his brother-in-law's second. ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... forefather and mankind's, Legitimately sire to son, with us, Bequeaths the allegiance of our shepherd-tribes, More loyal, as our line continues more?— How can your Heracleidan chiefs inspire This awe which guards our earth-sprung, lineal kings? What permanence, what stability like ours, Whether blood flows or no, can yet invest The broken order of your Dorian thrones, Fix'd yesterday, and ten times changed since then?— Two brothers, and their orphan nephews, strove For the three conquer'd kingdoms of this isle; The eldest, mightiest brother, Temenus, took ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... and the power of England. The people which has made for itself such homes as these is distinguished, above all things, by its love of order; it has understood, as no other people, the truth that "order is heaven's first law." With order it is natural to find stability, and the combination of these qualities, as seen in domestic life, results in that peculiarly English product, our name for which—though but a pale shadow of the thing itself—has been borrowed by ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... order in which they put things. Each was primarily itself, secondarily all the rest. Wisdom had to determine what it was right to do, but this involved the other virtues. Temperance had to impart stability to the impulses, but how could the term 'temperate' be applied to a man who deserted his post through cowardice, or who failed to return a deposit through avarice, which is a form of injustice, or yet to one who misconducted ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock

... dashing players. It is more a lack of dogged determination to win, than in any stroke fault that one finds the reason for French defeats. The temperamental genius of this great people carries with it a lack of stability that can be the only explanation for the sudden crushing and unexpected defeats their representatives receive ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D

... commission, and Gates formally delivered to him his own authority as governor. De La Warr's arrival had given the settlement new life and new hope. Lean times lay ahead, yet the most difficult years lay behind. Virginia now had a government that made for stability under the governor, and the old settlers, who, a little later, came to be called "ancient planters," had learned ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch

... English people. For, ever since that memorable day on which that noble instrument was extorted from King John at the point of the sword, England has been the pioneer to all the other nations of the earth in personal freedom, in public righteousness, in domestic stability, and in foreign influence and enterprise. Runnymede is a red-letter spot, and 1215 is a red-letter year, not only in the history of England, but in the history of the whole modern world. The keystone of all sound constitutional government was laid at that place on that ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... a source of happiness to Lord Hardinge to have contributed his efforts towards maintaining the stability of your Majesty's Indian possessions committed to his charge, and he feels, in the performance of these duties, that the approbation of his Sovereign is the most grateful distinction to ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... found myself able thus to support my weight without any sense of fatigue for a quarter of an hour or more; in fact, I felt during that time absolutely no sense of muscular weariness. This state of things entailed only one inconvenience. Nothing had any stability; so that the slightest push or jerk would upset everything that was not fixed. However, I had so far anticipated this that nothing of any material consequence was unfixed, and except that a touch with my spoon upset the egg-cup and egg on which ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... sensations become the supports of other and less important sensations. It would suffice to insist on the detail of this representation and on its origin to show its artificial character. The notion we have of the stability of bodies and of the persistence of their identity, notwithstanding certain superficial changes, is the reason for which I thought proper to attribute a substance to them, that is to say, an invariable element. But we can ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... him, for quite a wave had descended the river at that moment, whose impetus, and the jerk given to the tree, was too much for its stability. Already undermined by the furious rush of the flood, that new leverage at the end of the longest bough was enough, and its top came slowly down overhead, while the bough to which the lad ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... of Liberian civilization may be estimated from the fact, that the people have formed a republican government, and so administer it, as to secure the confidence of European governments in its stability. The native tribes who have merged themselves in the Republic, have all bound themselves to receive and encourage teachers; and some of them have insisted on the insertion, in their treaties of annexation, of pledges that teachers and other means of ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany

... The deductions of his free reasoning led him upon perilous ground. They made innuendoes concerning the stability of the other articles of hieratical law. He was startled and afraid ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... bounds stiff-legged, and generally performs like an irresponsible infant. To see a whole herd at once of these grave and reverend seigneurs suddenly blow up into such light-headed capers goes far to destroy one's faith in the stability of institutions. ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... these 4,000,000 of Africans to barbarism, why any longer agitate the subject? Why keep the negro in perpetual dread of change, and the owner dubious of the future? Why, by this negro agitation, create apprehension in the minds of our own people for the stability and permanence of this government, and hope in the minds of all the monarchists of the world that this agitation will divide and destroy this last great bulwark ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit

... degradation to which the Republic could sink, or its end. In this trial our system would be put to its severest strain. If a partisan majority in Congress could remove the Executive and defy the Supreme Court, stability to civic institutions was at an end, and the breath of a mob would become the sole standard ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... Sabbath afternoons used to crowd round our dear old grandmother, who, great bowed spectacles on her nose, would read to us from "Yosippon." On many such occasions an unruly listener, with a view to hurrying the distribution of the "Sabbathfruit," would endanger the stability of the dish by vigorous tugging at the table-cloth, and elicit the reproof suggested by our reading: "You are a veritable Sambation!"—Aristotle, Pliny, Olympia, Cyrene, "Yosippon," and grandam—all unite to whet our appetite ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... Give them their new Messiah, and all our painfully accumulated art and knowledge, all that reconciles civilized man to earthly existence, is blown to the winds. Society can deal with its criminals. Not they, but fond enthusiasts such as these, are the menace to its stability. Bitter reflections; but then—the drive upward had chilled my human sympathies, and besides—that so-called breakfast. . ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... dignified, companionable, pleasant in his ways, and looking perhaps a trifle older than he was, which was sixteen. One evening his mother said she had something of grave importance to say to him, adding that he was old enough to hear it now, and old enough and possessed of character enough and stability enough to carry out a stern plan which she had been for years contriving and maturing. Then she told him her bitter story, in all its naked atrociousness. For a while the boy was paralyzed; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... that God, who forgets none of his children, has given this teacher to the swarming millions of China to lead them on till they are ready for a higher light. And certainly the temporal prosperity and external virtues of this nation, and their long-continued stability amid the universal changes of the world, are owing in no small decree to the lessons of reverence for the past, of respect for knowledge, of peace and order, and especially of filial piety, which he inculcated. In their case, if in no other, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... reviewing these questions, to be perfectly indifferent, as to the stability of the argument we have used, which side was taken; that, for want of experience, hypothesis must settle a curiosity that always endeavours to spring forward beyond the boundaries prescribed to our mind. This granted, the contemplator of Nature will say, that ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... market where coffee could be bought and sold and to fix quotations therefor, in distinction from the former method of alternate glut and scarcity, with wide variations in price—in short, to create stability and certainty in trading in an important article of commerce. This it has accomplished; and it has made New York the most important primary coffee market in the United States. But there has been recently introduced a non-commercial factor ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... "When anyone can have anything he wants, merely by wanting it, what good is money? Now, remembering how long we're going to have to live, what we'll be up against, that the Masters failed, and so on, it is clear that the prime basic we have to select for is stability. We twelve have, by psychodynamic measurement, the highest stability ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... will not appraise thee and if ill they will abuse thee and curse thee. O dear my son, company with one who hath his hand fulfilled and well-furnisht and associate not with any whose hand is fist-like and famisht. O dear my son, there be four things without stability: a king and no army,[FN28] a Wazir in difficulty for lack of rede; amongst the folks villainy and over the lieges tyranny. Four things also may not be hidden; to wit, the sage and the fool, the richard and the pauper."[FN29] Now when Haykar had made ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... held themselves studiously aloof from the insurrectionary ranks—that calm, conservative class, which is recognized by all as the basis of every society which has acquired, or having acquired, hopes to retain, stability of government and security of morals. The sentiments of the speaker were too well known to admit of any doubts as to the probable character of his address. He appeared as the undisguised advocate of secession. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... common to many faiths; when nations attain to a certain stage of civilisation, and inherit a certain amount of culture, they also develop a morality proportionate to the point they have reached, because morality is necessary to the stability of States, and utility formulates the code of moral laws. Christianity can no longer stand on a pinnacle as the sole possessor of a pure and high morality. The pedestal she has occupied is built out of the bricks of ignorance, and her apostles and her master must ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... into the ground, and bending them over so as to form a succession of arches. These were further secured by weaving a few flexible twigs along the top and sides of the framework, thus giving it sufficient stability to support the saddle-cloths and skins with which we covered them. By placing our buffalo-robes within, we had thus a comfortable and warm bed-place apiece, and were better protected from the fiercest storm raging without than we should ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston

... Corn Bottle, Delicacy Corn Cockle, Gentility Cornel Tree, Duration Coronella, Success to you Cosmelia, Charm of a blush Cowslip, Winning grace Crab (Blossom), Ill-nature Cranberry, Cure headache Cress, Stability Crocus, Cheerfulness Crocus, Saffron, Mirth Crown Imperial, Power Crowsbill, Envy Crowfoot, Ingratitude Cuckoo Plant, Ardour Cudweed, Remembrance Cuscuta, Meanness Cyclamen, Diffidence Cypress, Death Daffodil, Yellow, Regard ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... a premium of five per cent over gold itself, because, being convertible into government bills of exchange on London, they were secure against any fluctuations in the price of bullion. A special comparison well worth making is that between their own remarkable stability and the equally remarkable instability of similar instruments of finance in the United States, where, after vainly trying to help the government through its difficulties, every bank outside of New England was ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood

... sum of the cognition of pure speculative reason as an edifice, the idea of which, at least, exists in the human mind, it may be said that we have in the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements examined the materials and determined to what edifice these belong, and what its height and stability. We have found, indeed, that, although we had purposed to build for ourselves a tower which should reach to Heaven, the supply of materials sufficed merely for a habitation, which was spacious enough for all terrestrial purposes, and high enough to enable us to survey the level plain ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... Clifford's return was made the reason for the absence on a long journey of Roland Sefton, whose disappearance had to be accounted for. By the time he was arrested and brought to trial the confidence of the bank's customers in its stability would in some ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... already gathering a cloud heavy and dark with calamity—calamity that must have overwhelmed the stability of any faith which was not ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... it is true that according to present geological theories, the bedded structure was a necessary consequence of the mode in which the materials were accumulated; but it is not less true that this bedded structure is now the principal means of securing the stability of the mass, and is to be regarded as a beneficent appointment, with such special view. That structure compels each mountain to assume the safest contour of which under the given circumstances of upheaval it is capable. If it were all ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... effective resistance, and operations there may hence be dismissed briefly, but with emphasis on the benefit which naval control conferred upon British trade, the main guaranty of England's financial stability and power to keep up the war. Fully one-fifth of this trade was with the West Indies. Consequently, both to swell the volume of British commerce and protect it from privateering, the seizure of the French West Indian colonies—"filching the sugar islands," as Sheridan called ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... frames placed horizontally, one in the other, on little bolts, as in Cardan's lamps. There was science and cunning in the construction of the hooker, but it was ignorant science and barbarous cunning. The hooker was primitive, just like the praam and the canoe; was kindred to the praam in stability, and to the canoe in swiftness; and, like all vessels born of the instinct of the pirate and fisherman, it had remarkable sea qualities: it was equally well suited to landlocked and to open waters. Its system of sails, complicated in stays, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... multiply, we are convinced that in this struggle of light and darkness it is the shadows of night which are to yield. Raising our eyes to the Dome of lead above us, we feel that it weighs less heavily upon us, that it has already lost its fatal stability. ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... galleys at Cavite has been changed; for one unfavorable result changes the opinions of men which are of but little stability. Certain workmen declared that the woods of which the ship "Santa Maria Magdalena" was made (which was the one which sank last year) were heavy; and that for that reason it had become worthless—and not because its sides were defective. That was ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various

... characterised subordination would be incompatible with the stability of their systems and with the planetary nature of their orbits. Unless close under the protecting wing of their immediate superior, the sweep of their other sun, in its perihelion passage round their own, might carry them off or whirl them into orbits utterly ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... humanity existing somewhere in the mountains of Syria. At all events, since the late Sir Robert Peel placed it beyond the power of the governor and company to indulge in dangerous or erratic courses, it is abundantly manifest that to doubt of the perfect stability of the Bank of England is tantamount to questioning the infallibility of arithmetic. In the vaults and coffers of this huge establishment there is at present—as we learn from the published weekly-returns, a device of Sir Robert's—the bewildering amount ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various

... unsuccessful novel and collaborated with Mark Twain on an unremunerative play. His attempts to increase his income by lecturing were even less rewarding. From his departure from California in 1872 to his death thirty years later, Harte's struggles to regain financial stability were unremitting: and to these efforts is due the relinquishment of his early ideal of "a peculiarly characteristic Western American literature." Henceforth Harte accepted, as Prof. Hicks remarks, "the role of entertainer, and as ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... wind like that, and her quick young blood kept her from being chilled. The sidewalk was frozen. There was no snow, and the day before there had been a thaw. One could see on this walk, hardened into temporary stability, the footprints of hundreds of the sons and daughters of labor. Read rightly, that sidewalk in the little manufacturing city was a hieroglyphic of toil, and perhaps of toil as tending to the advance of the whole ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... All that deserves doubtlessly even major excommunication, if this monk had quitted his profession and retired from the monastery to lead a secular life; but at that time the monks were not, as now, bound by vows of stability and obedience to their regular superiors, who had not a right to excommunicate them with grand excommunication. We will ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... no class of men more interested in the stability of our rule in India than this of the respectable merchants; nor is there any upon whom the welfare of our government, and that of the people, more depend. Frugal, first, upon principle, that they may not in their expenditure encroach upon their capitals, they become so by habit; ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... they have thus become twofold images,—on the one side, of spirits restrained and half destroyed, whence the fables of transformation into trees; on the other, of spirits patient and continuing, having root in themselves and in good ground, capable of all persistent {29} effort and vital stability, both in themselves, and for the human States ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... various convolutions of the canals, the angles of the palaces are not only frequent, but often necessarily acute, every inch of ground being valuable. In other cities, the appearance as well as the assurance of stability can always be secured by the use of massy stones, as in the fortress palaces of Florence; but it must have been always desirable at Venice to build as lightly as possible, in consequence of the comparative insecurity of the foundations. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... its financial obligations to the International Momentary Fund or put in place the financial measures advocated by the IMF. Although short-term prospects for improvement are dim, improved political stability would boost Zaire's long-term potential to effectively exploit its vast wealth of mineral and agricultural resources. National product: GDP - exchange rate conversion - $9.2 billion (1992, at 1990 exchange rate) National product real growth ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... experimental trip in the canoe before finally starting. We could have wished her considerably lighter than she was; at the same time, what she wanted in speed, she possessed in stability. ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... well perceive for yourself, it means that the nature of the comprehension of sense and its varied appetite, is vague, inconstant, and uncertain, and the conception and definite appetite of the intelligence is firm and stable. This is the difference between sensual love, which has no stability nor discretion as to its object, and intellectual love, which aims only at one, sure and fixed, towards which it turns, through which it is illuminated in its conception, by which, being kindled in its affections, it becomes inflamed ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... exploit the state; he built it. He fashioned Sweden out of a bunch of quarrelsome provincial governments into a hereditary monarchy, as the best way—indeed, the only way then—of giving it strength and stability. He was suspicious because everybody had betrayed him, or had tried to. With all that, his steady purpose was to raise and enlighten his people and make them keep the peace, if he had to adopt the ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... inappropriately filled with sand from the great Egyptian desert. I turn it, and watch the sand as it accumulates in the lower half of the glass. How symmetrically, how beautifully, how inevitably, the little particles pile up the cone, which is ever building and unbuilding itself, always aiming at the stability which is found only at a certain fixed angle! The Egyptian children playing in the sand must have noticed this as they let the grains fall from their hands, and the sloping sides of the miniature pyramid must have been among the familiar sights ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of FIRMNESS is physiological stability. The exercise of the volitive faculties displays both mental and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... is most representative of the sanest British opinion, 'and he will find that the power of the republic will become not weaker, but infinitely more secure. Let him once give the majority of the resident males of full age the full vote, and he will have given the republic a stability and power which nothing else can. If he rejects all pleas of this kind, and persists in his present policy, he may possibly stave off the evil day, and preserve his cherished oligarchy for another few ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... eye. Even in outward demeanor, they showed a stamp of majesty that made the warrior's haughty stride look vulgar, if not absurd. It was an age when what we call talent had far less consideration than now, but the massive materials which produce stability and dignity of character a great deal more. The people possessed, by hereditary right, the quality of reverence; which, in their descendants, if it survive at all, exists in smaller proportion, and with a vastly diminished force, in the selection and ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... sadness, which gradually assumed a darker character, began to overcloud the young man's temper. Tears, which seemed involuntary, broken sleep, moonlight wanderings, and a melancholy for which he could assign no reason, seemed to threaten at once his bodily health, and the stability of his mind. The Astrologer was consulted by letter, and returned for answer, that this fitful state of mind was but the commencement of his trial, and that the poor youth must undergo more and more desperate struggles with the evil that assailed him. There was no hope of ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... and each bore a napkin upon his shoulder. Then came a table with offerings and a chariot drawn by a pair of horses, the charioteer driving them as he walked behind the chariot. Then came the bearers of a sacred boat and the mysterious eye of Horus, the god of stability. Others carried small images of blue pottery representing the deceased under the form of Osiris, and the bird emblematic of the soul. Then eight women of the class of paid mourners came along beating their breasts, throwing dust ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty

... inclined to accept favourably anything which had the same origin. These are exactly the surroundings in which a religion can flourish without change for many centuries and Buddhism in Ceylon acquired stability because it also acquired a certain national and patriotic flavour: it was the faith of the Sinhalese and not of the invading Tamils. Such Sinhalese kings as had the power protected the Church and erected ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... France we don't do as you, where a few people take a great many shares each. With us a large number of people take one share or a very few. When these were in the market my wife said to me, 'You take two shares, one for you and one for me.'" As regards the stability of a man's personal fortunes this kind of prudence is doubtless wise; but when excessive prudence or financial timidity becomes a national trait, it must tend to hamper the expansion of commerce and of the nation's shipping. The same caution in money matters, appearing ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... entered into with the nation. But now he was bound by an influence which he could not withstand. Ensnared by the machinations, the threats, and the fears of his emigrant court, and perhaps believing that the new order of things was incompatible with the stability of the Bourbon dynasty, the maxims of his government underwent a total change. He was taught to consider the equality of civil rights as a revolutionary conquest, the liberties of the nation as an usurpation of the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... increased. Even the love of beauty, strong as it commonly is, may well find support through connection with an equally powerful and enduring affection. The aesthetic interest is no exception to the general truth that each part of the mind gains in stability and intensity if connected with the others; isolated, it runs the risk of gradual decay in satiety or through the crowding out of other competing interests, which if joined with it, would have kept it alive instead. Moreover, the understanding of art may increase the appreciation of particular ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... they came to a mutual compromise, and united in the common exercise of power: and England has found, in this amicable understanding between the different classes, in this communion of their rights and mutual influence, internal peace with greatness, and stability ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Isaac wasn't a heavy flow of base ideas; they hadn't even the wit to sham very much about their social significance. They cared no more for the growth, the stamina, the spirit of the people whose lives they dominated than a rat cares for the stability of the house it gnaws. They wanted a broken-spirited people. They were in such relations wilfully and offensively stupid, and I do not see why we people who read and write books should pay this stupidity merely because it is prevalent even the mild tribute of an ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... which while nominally derived from Western conceptions, was primarily designed to rehabilitate the semblance of the authority which had been so sensationally extinguished, the Republic remained only a dream; and the world, taught to believe that there could be no real stability until the scheme of government approximated to the conception long formed of Peking absolutism, waited patiently for the rude awakening which came with the Yuan Shih-kai coup d'etat of 4th November, 1913. Thus we had this double paradox; ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... egotism sprang from a blackguardly sense of humour that found joy in the abounding weaknesses and simplicity of the people he imposed upon, but, on the other hand, it would be sufficient to show that Mr. Crips was inspired only with gross selfishness or to comprehend that the stability of society depends upon fair ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... you to cut adrift from the objectionable associations you have formed during the past few months. With a fresh start, and surroundings calculated to inspire in you a desire for self-improvement, it will not be too late to hope for better things. I have every confidence in the natural stability of your character if you are once put upon the right track. I blame your advisers more than I ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... of the army, did not seem to despair of impelling the officers to the desired point. He affected to consider the orders in a light favourable to his views:—"as giving system to their proceedings, and stability to their resolves." ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... of these two principles is fixed and permanent, while the latter is uncertain and dependent on the opinion of the multitude. Wealth, after all, plays a great part in the Second Republic of Plato. Like other politicians, he deems that a property qualification will contribute stability to the state. The four classes are derived from the constitution of Athens, just as the form of the city, which is clustered around a citadel set on a hill, is suggested by the Acropolis at Athens. Plato, writing under Pythagorean influences, seems really to have supposed ...
— Laws • Plato

... even in monuments of a very moderate size, involved the Phoenician architects in awkwardnesses and anomalies, which offend a cultivated taste; but it should be remembered, on the other hand, that massiveness in the material conduces greatly to stability, and that, in lands where earthquakes are frequent, as they are along all the Mediterranean shores, not many monuments would have survived the lapse of three thousand years had the material employed been of a less ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... that all the satisfaction I could make him was to live virtuously for the time to come, not being able to retrieve what had been in time past; and this I resolved upon, though, had the great temptation offered, as it did afterwards, I had reason to question my stability. But ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... variety in these regards which operates beneficiently, but profound and abiding social and political differences, engendering profound and abiding social and political antagonisms, naturally and inevitably affecting sometimes more, sometimes less, national stability and security, and leaving everywhere in the subconscious life of the republic a sense of vague uneasiness, rising periodically to the keenest anxiety, like the ever-present dread felt by a city subject to seismic disturbances. For what has once ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke

... the name of the Government and who have at my back the strongest majority that was ever known in Belgium, owe it to truth to say that our opinions have not a corresponding preponderance in the country; and I believe that, if that majority were always correctly expressed, we should gain in stability what we might lose in apparent strength. Gentlemen, in the actual state of things, to whom belongs the Government of the country? It belongs to some two or three thousand electors, who assuredly are neither the best nor the most intelligent, who ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... disarticulated as readily as a watch. He had entire confidence in his engineering skill, and in the ability of the three experienced men of the crew to aid him. He decided to employ the planes for outriders, which would serve to increase the buoyancy and stability. ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... affected by that event, he makes me great offers, even to the last drop of his blood, vowing never to abandon the cause of the League. But of the intentions and inner mind of this man I find such vague information, that I don't dare to expect more stability from him than may be founded upon his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... by some students of character that in what concerns the formation of the individual nature, the shaping and determination of it in the plastic stage, and especially in respect to the moral elements on which the stability and purpose of a man's life depend, a man is indebted to his mother, for good or for ill. The question is too abstruse for argument, but, so far as my own observation goes, it tends to a confirmation of the theory. I have often noticed ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James



Words linked to "Stability" :   steadiness, order, unstableness, unchangeability, changelessness, instability, unchangingness, firmness, monotony, inconstant, constant, unchangeableness, inconstancy, stable, invariance



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