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Symmetrical   /səmˈɛtrɪkəl/   Listen
Symmetrical

adjective
1.
Having similarity in size, shape, and relative position of corresponding parts.  Synonym: symmetric.
2.
Exhibiting equivalence or correspondence among constituents of an entity or between different entities.  Synonyms: harmonious, proportionate.



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"Symmetrical" Quotes from Famous Books



... practical way by deftly folding a scrap of paper; then with a single clip of her scissors she displayed a true, symmetrical, five-pointed star. ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... which are essential to faith and Christian life, are fundamental and ought to be received by the heart and practised, while all other doctrines may be necessary more or less in order to perfect the Christian character and render it more symmetrical, but do not strike the heart of true religion." (L. u. W., 1864, 154.) Observer, March 12 and 19, 1869: "The doctrinal basis of the General Synod demands adoption of the fundamental doctrines of the Word of God as ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... meetings were now read by one whom I at once recognized as my brother, a perfectly Symmetrical Square, and the Chief Clerk of the High Council. It was found recorded on each occasion that: "Whereas the States had been troubled by divers ill-intentioned persons pretending to have received revelations from another World, and professing to produce demonstrations ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott

... last to leave the boat which had brought the passengers alongside, and he was closely followed on board by Mr Brook. On reaching the deck they both paused to glance round them and aloft at the towering symmetrical masts and spars, with their ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... subsided, and much of what was then seething has gone off in vapor or other volatile products. But some very solid matters have also been precipitated, some crystals of poetry translucent, symmetrical, enduring. The immediate practical outcome was disappointing, and the external history of the agitation is a record of failed experiments, spurious sciences, Utopian philosophies, and sects founded only to dwindle away or to be ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... in its youth, was as comely and symmetrical a cone as ever graced the galaxy of volcanic peaks. To-day, while still young as compared with the obelisk crags of the Alps, it has already taken on the venerable and deeply-scarred physiognomy of a veteran. ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams

... King[1], Where the pines and cypresses grew symmetrical. We cut them down and conveyed them here; We reverently hewed them square. Long are the projecting beams of pine; Large are the many pillars. The temple was completed,—the tranquil abode (of the ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... seemed to extend, as far as the eye could see, in one long avenue, and we were surprised to find, upon coming nearer, that the forest which at first appeared to be but a heterogeneous mass of stems, was set out and arranged in the most orderly and symmetrical manner, and we saw that we should be enabled to find our way about much more easily than we had at first feared. In accordance with our guide's directions, we began jotting down in our memory tablets the names of the different trees, and the peculiarities of each. Certain kinds occurred ...
— Silver Links • Various

... of the ship was fitted with an outer cover, to protect the gasbags and hull framework from weather and to render the outer surface of the ship symmetrical and reduce "skin friction" and resistance to the air to a minimum. To enable this cover to be easily removed it was made in two sections, a port and starboard side for each gasbag. The covers were laced to the hull framework and the connections were covered ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale

... vigorous reaction, Renouvier restored the philosophy of Kant, depriving it of its too symmetrical, too minutely systematic, too scholastic character and bringing it nearer to facts; from him was to come the doctrine already mentioned, "pragmatism," which measures the truth of every idea by the moral ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet

... behold a lofty human ideal in the portrait of Christ without such emphasis on this ideal as also a revelation of the divine character? The answer depends upon what we are most interested in. If we care most for a perfect and symmetrical human life, we reply that we find that perfection and symmetry in Christ. In our second chapter we laid such stress upon the importance of the enlarging human ideal that we have committed ourselves to the importance of the Christ ideal as a ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell

... the mutual and simultaneous exclamation which burst from our lips as we gazed intently on the small but symmetrical vessel. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... from the last group by their enormous heads, with more symmetrical skulls, the facial portion of which is greatly in excess of the cranial. The bones of the lower jaw are not united at the symphysis, but are held together by strong fibrous bands; the two rami are very much rounded and arched outwards; there are no teeth. The maxillary and premaxillary bones ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... animals. All the roarers and lashers served to help him to magnify the dangers and horrors of the engagement that he might try to prove to himself that the thing with which men could charge him was in truth a symmetrical act. There was an amount of pleasure to him in watching the wild ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... largely grown upon hill-slopes and in small plantations or gardens, the latter term being peculiarly appropriate to their neat, symmetrical and picturesque appearance. The character of the soil is noticeably connected with the quality of the tea. From the putting forth of new leaves in the Spring-time until the advent of its white fragrant blossoms in the Autumn, ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.

... now, all have felt the power of woman's beauty, and been more than willing to sacrifice to it. The proper, not exclusive search for it is a legitimate inspiration. The way for a girl to obtain her portion of this radiant halo is by the symmetrical development of every part of her organization, muscle, ovary, stomach and nerve, and by a physiological management of every function that correlates every organ; not by neglecting or trying to stifle or abort any of the vital and integral parts ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke

... times when it was the mode to imitate stage-coachmen as closely as possible in costume, and when the hair was invariably cropped, like that of our soldiers, this eccentricity was very striking. His features were not symmetrical (the mouth, perhaps, excepted), yet was the effect of the whole extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, an enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never met with ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... the garments of S. Philip, which are held by a priest, standing before an altar, the women and their children kneeling in front of him. The grouping is symmetrical, the figures lifelike, but not refined, round-cheeked buxom women, and rough, human men's faces, bespeak Andrea as the painter of reality rather than ideality; there is vivid life in every attitude, but the life is not high caste. A fine old man, leaning on his staff, is a portrait ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... point called Portland, a colossal bridge opened into view, so symmetrical in its outline that it was difficult to believe it was not of artificial construction. The arch is about fifty feet high by thirty in width, and affords shelter to innumerable flocks of birds, whose nests are built in the crevices underneath. Solan-geese, eider-ducks, and ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... a man" from his elbow to the end of his middle finger. The measure of the wall, in height or breadth, was a hundred and forty-four cubits, or the twelve tribes, as before, multiplied by the twelve apostles; for the idea of a cube, as the most perfect symbol of symmetrical ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... ended, or nearly so; my adventures on the Congo and the west coast terminating with the capture of the Black Venus; a few additional words, therefore, will suffice to fittingly dismiss the principal personages who have figured in this history, and to bring the history itself to a symmetrical conclusion. ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... he brought his successor to the house; a man so remarkable that Mrs. Gaunt almost started at first sight of him. Born of an Italian mother, his skin was dark, and his eyes coal-black; yet his ample but symmetrical forehead was singularly white and delicate. Very tall and spare, and both face and figure were of that exalted kind which make ordinary beauty seem dross. In short, he was one of those ethereal priests the Roman Catholic Church produces ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... noticed how the written or printed notes of a tone piece or the perforations on the paper music roll of an automatic player are arranged in symmetrical and geometrical figures and groups? Dry sand strewn on the top of a piano on which harmonious tone combinations are produced shows a tendency to arrange itself in ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... organism concentrates all its forces, the outer skin finally splits along the line of least resistance which the subtle previsions of life have prepared. The fissure extends the whole length of the corselet, opening precisely along the ridge of the keel, as though the two symmetrical halves had been soldered together. Unbreakable elsewhere, the envelope has yielded at this median point, which had remained weaker than the rest of the sheath. The fissure runs back a little way until it reaches a ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... the whole of what is now designated the Colony, was inhabited by Hottentots, a people lighter in colour than the Kafirs and Bechwanas, having pale yellow-brown skins, symmetrical in form when young, hardy, and having small hands and feet. They have nomadic tendencies; and, in their uncivilised state, scarcely practise agriculture. Their system of government is somewhat patriarchal; and they live in "kraals," or villages, consisting of ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane

... most perfect type of beauty on earth. To her we ascribe the highest charms belonging to this wonderful element so profusely mingled in all God's works. Her form is molded and finished in exquisite delicacy of perfection. The earth gives us no form more perfect, no features more symmetrical, no style more chaste, no movements more graceful, no finish more complete; so that our artists ever have and ever will regard the woman-form of humanity as the most perfect earthly type of beauty. This form is most perfect and symmetrical in the youth of womanhood; ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... low stage of development. There is no reason for supposing that the deep frontal hollow is due to any artificial flattening, such as is practised in various modes by barbarous nations in the Old and New World. The skull is quite symmetrical, and shows no indication of counter-pressure at the occiput, whilst, according to Morton, in the Flat-heads of the Columbia, the frontal and parietal bones are always unsymmetrical. Its conformation exhibits the sparing development of the anterior part of the head which has been so often observed ...
— On Some Fossil Remains of Man • Thomas H. Huxley

... movements was strangely contrasted with his slight, and symmetrical figure; that looked as if it only awaited the will of the owner to be the most active piece of human machinery that ever responded to the impulses of youth and health. But then, his face! What pencil could faithfully delineate features at once so comical ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... that in all our historical work, I will endeavor to do, myself, what I have asked you to do in your drawing exercises; namely, to outline firmly in the beginning, and then fill in the detail more minutely. I will give you first, therefore, in a symmetrical form, absolutely simple and easily remembered, the large chronology of the Greek school; within that unforgettable scheme we will place, as we discover them, the minor ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... and they receive, in a passive, otiose, unfruitful way, the various facts which are forced upon them there. Seafaring men, for example, range from one end of the earth to the other; but the multiplicity of external objects, which they have encountered, forms no symmetrical and consistent picture upon their imagination; they see the tapestry of human life, as it were on the wrong side, and it tells no story. They sleep, and they rise up, and they find themselves, now in Europe, now ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... normal; pulse, 76; lungs healthy; respiratory murmur clear and distinct over every part; respiration, easy and twenty per minute; the mammae are well developed, firm, and round; nipples, small, no areola; her skin is soft, smooth, and healthy; figure erect, plump, and symmetrical; her bowels are regular; kidneys, healthy. She has a good appetite, sleeps well, and in no particular shows any sign of ill health. The uterine examination reveals a short vagina, and a small, round cervix ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... bisected bladders were also irrigated with a fresh solution of urea of the same strength; their quadrifids after 21 hrs. were much less affected than in the former case; nevertheless, the primordial utricle in some of the arms was a little shrunk, and in others was divided into two almost symmetrical sacks. ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... many places by fallen masses of rock, until they reached a narrow platform, a sort of cornice projecting over the vertical cliff on which the rocks, apparently thrown together by chance, nevertheless exhibited on close examination some symmetrical arrangement. ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... Accordingly he directed the child to be exposed on Mount Ida; but the inauspicious kindness of the gods preserved him; and he grew up amid the flocks and herds, active and beautiful, fair of hair and symmetrical in person, and the special favorite ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... and the same proportionate power, in the proportion of the square roots of the linear dimensions of the vessels. A vessel therefore with four times the sectional area and four times the power of a smaller symmetrical vessel, and consequently of twice the length, will have its speed increased in the proportion of the square root of 1 to the square root ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... workmen in its different storeys, each man at his avocation with hammer and chisel, pulley and wheel, and the grave architect himself directing their labour. All this is set in motion by water, and is not a mere doll's house, but a symmetrical model. Then we enter a subterranean grotto, with a roof of pendant stalactites, where the pleasant sound of falling waters and the melodious piping of birds fill all the air. There is a sly drollery too in some of the water performances, invented ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... mullioned windows and lead-glazed casements, nor is the other extreme of heavy Classic with ponderous detail and a portico two stories high at all desirable. The style of Francis I offers a mean between these, giving emphasis to the principal block by a certain amount of symmetrical planning, together with picturesqueness, with rich and refined detail, which a gentleman's country-house certainly requires. The exterior would be of long and thin red bricks, with stone cornices and other dressings, and roofed with green slates. The interior ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... the opposing half such a picture, when completely in balance, will have some bit of detail or accent which the eye in its circular, symmetrical inspection will catch, unconsciously, and weave into its calculation of balance; or if not an object or accent or line of attraction, then some technical quality, or spiritual quality, such, for example, as a strong ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... from her own waist to her friend's slender, beautiful one, and sighed profoundly. "What ought I to be?" she said in a low tone; and Aldith had answered, "Eighteen—or nineteen, Marguerite, at the most; true symmetrical grace can never be obtained with a ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... carried out properly the shoulder of the "draw" should be perfectly symmetrical and of even thickness, and its axis regarded as that of a cone should lie in the axis of the tube produced. The operation should be repeated till the student finds that he can produce this result with certainty, and he ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... subtend, subterfuge, subterranean, subvention, subvert, sudorific, supercilious, supernal, supervene, supine, supposititious, surreptitious, surrogate, surveillance, susceptible, sustenance, sycophantic, syllogism, sylvan, symmetrical, symposium, synchronize, synonymous, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... transparent hazel eyes mirrored her pure thoughts; her dark brown hair waved in graceful undulations on her intelligent forehead, and fell in ringlets on her shoulders, her bewitching smile, her slender, symmetrical shape, all contributed to make her a most attractive picture ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies

... to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it." This is a principle of defensive design, cited here because it is usually given in mutant forms less descriptive of the challenges of design for {luser}s. For example, you don't make a two-pin plug symmetrical and then label it 'THIS WAY UP'; if it matters which way it is plugged in, then you make the design asymmetrical (see also the ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... round, with all his faculties polished and exercised to the full, may have one side of his nature undeveloped—that which connects him with God in Christ. And so he may be like some fair tree that stands out there in the open, on all sides extending its equal beauty, with its stem symmetrical, cylindrical, perfect in its green cloud of foliage, yet there may be a worm at the root of it, and it may be given up to rottenness and destruction. Cultivated men may perish, and uncultured men may have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... therefore, are to be found in the verse of the great poets, of the deep rhythmic souls who make a sure, agile intellect their willing Ariel; and no prose writer gets to be a master in style but through kindred endowment. The compact, symmetrical combination of gifts and acquirements, of genius with talent, demanded for the putting forth of a fresh, priceless poem, this he need not have; but his perceptions must be brightened by the light whose fountain is the inward enjoyment of the more ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... observers, that a cryptogamic plant may have two kinds of tissue growing side by side, without the necessity of one being parasitic upon the other, just as one of the higher plants may have half a dozen kinds of tissue making up its organization? The beautifully symmetrical growth of the same lichens has seemed to me a sufficient argument against one portion being parasitic upon another, but when we see all harmony and robust health, the idea that one portion is subsisting parasitically upon ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... debate between ye beasts, not onely those that are yoked together, but even those that are wild also, by making them tame and quiet ... if it be either put about their yokes or their necks," significantly adding, "which how true, I leave to them shall try and find it soe." Our slender, symmetrical, common loosestrife, with its whorls of leaves and little star-shaped blossoms on thread-like pedicels at regular intervals up the stem, is not even distantly related ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... four or five feet above the level of the swamp. The trees which dotted it were smooth, straight, towering shafts with wide fans of foliage at their far-off tops. And the ground between these clean, symmetrical trunks was unencumbered, being clothed only with a rich, soft, spicy-scented herbage, akin to the thymes and mints. Such an opportunity for rest and refreshment was not to be let slip, and Grom ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... premature, perhaps, but I desire to suggest to anyone who may be contemplating the erection of a summer residence for me, as a slight testimonial of his high regard for my sterling worth and symmetrical escutcheon—a testimonial more suggestive of earnest admiration and warm personal friendship than of great intrinsic value, etc., etc., etc., that I hope he will not construct it on the modern plan of mental hallucination ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... sugar maple is the most highly prized of our native trees for ornament and shade. It grows fairly rapidly and becomes a goodly-sized tree within twenty years after it is planted. The symmetrical dome-shaped crown and the dense foliage of restful dark green give to it a fine appearance. It is hardy and has few insect pests, and its value is enhanced by the abundant yield of ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education

... carbide may be controlled with absolute certainty, and therefore it should apparently follow that the make of acetylene should be under perfect control by controlling the water current. On the other hand, unless made up into balls or cartridges of some symmetrical form, calcium carbide exists in angular masses of highly irregular shape and size. Its lumps alter in shape and size directly liquid water or moisture reaches them; a loose more or loss gritty powder, or a damp cohesive mud, being produced which is well calculated to choke ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... on, after a moment, "I don't ask what you think of me. You couldn't think anything much as yet, but there's something about this whole affair, our meeting and all, that makes me think it's going to be symmetrical in the end. I know it won't end here. I'll tell you one way Western men learn. They learn not to be afraid to want things out of their reach, and they believe devoutly—because they've proved it so often—that if you want a thing hard enough and keep wanting it, nothing can keep ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... Sussex, a square house, with two symmetrical belfried pavilions on each side of the great courtyard, belongs to the Right Honourable Forde, Baron Grey of Werke, Viscount Glendale and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... teak rail. They were as inexpert at their work as so many monkeys. In fact they looked very much like monkeys of some enlarged and prehistoric type. Their eyes had in them the querulous plaintiveness of the monkey, their faces were even less symmetrical than the monkey's, and, hairless of body, they were far more ungarmented than any monkey, for clothes they had none. Decorated they were as no monkey ever was. In holes in their ears they carried short clay pipes, rings of turtle shell, ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... correspond (the word fits nicely to this subject) with those of letters received. For 'tis a metaphysical mistake, or myth of language, like those victoriously exposed by the ingenious M. Tarde, to regard the reading of a letter as the symmetrical opposite (the right glove matching the left, or inside of an outside) of the writing thereof. Save in the case of lovers or moonstruck persons, like those in Emerson's essay on "Friendship," the reading of a letter is necessarily less potent, and, as the French say, intimate, in emotion, than ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... shopkeeper who does not discuss markets wherever he goes. A man should be so much larger than his calling, so broad and symmetrical in his culture, that he would not talk shop in society, that no one would suspect ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... rooms, otherwise well enough proportioned, stuck with little cupboards, in recesses and corners, and out-of-the-way places, in a style impertinently suggestive of housekeeping, and fitted to shock any symmetrical set of nerves. The old house had undergone a thorough putting in order, it is true; the chocolate paint was just dry, and the paper-hangings freshly put up; and the bulk of the new furniture had been sent on before and ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... that was among the many winning traits of Saumarez's symmetrical and attractive character impelled him to copious letter-writing. Hence we have a record of this pursuit of the French fleet, with almost daily entries; an inside picture, reflecting the hopes, fears, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... nice animals for a paddock, and give good milk. The horses were good; and I longed to bring home one or two that I saw, and felt strongly tempted. But the sheep and swine were the most remarkable things there. Really, we know little about sheep. They are monstrous, and yet very symmetrical and beautiful; whilst there are pigs, strange as you may think it, that have established high claims to beauty and perfection. I greatly preferred the Sussex breed to any other. Never was a town so crowded as this same Windsor. Thousands upon thousands were flocking ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... I do? Compassion and curiosity are strong. The man whose heart can be rent so sorely ought not to be allowed to linger here with his despair. He is gazing, as I did, upon the lake. I mark his profile—clear-cut and symmetrical; I catch the lustre of large eyes. The face, as I can see it, seems very still and placid. I may be mistaken; he may merely be a wanderer like myself; perhaps he heard the three strange cries, and has ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... side of Rachel's. There are many men who would have admired Hetty's hand the more of the two. It was a much more significant hand. To one who could read palmistry, it meant all that Hetty was; and it was symmetrical and firm. But, at that moment, to Dr. Eben it looked large ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous

... large, symmetrical, and decorated with two alleys of trees; it is also used as a drilling-ground for the soldiers' minor manoeuvres. I was particularly struck with the number of military men to be seen here. Go where I would, I was sure to meet soldiers and officers, frequently in large companies; in time ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer

... incongruous assemblages of unconnected and unmeaning figures, till they are regarded from one particular point of view, when these figures immediately mass themselves into a regular form, and the whole picture assumes a coherent and symmetrical appearance. To discover in each system this point of view; to cultivate that peculiar form of imagination which makes it possible to realise how different forms of opinions are held by their more intelligent adherents, appeared to ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... her domicile, the construction of which was a decided improvement upon the first. For the next nest she returned to the Oak and raised a second story on the old one of the previous year, but making it much more symmetrical than the one beneath. The present season her first dwelling was as before, erected on a pillar of the piazza—as fine a structure as I ever saw this species build. When this brood was fledged she again repaired to the Oak, and reared a third story on the old domicile, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous

... of Webster at once made a movement in that direction, followed by the shorter and more symmetrical ones of Crawford. They reached the door of the wood-house, opening towards the burned mansion. The door was unclosed, and they could look within. Just as they reached the door both heard another groan—quite sufficient ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... Fig. 30, is two hundred and thirty-eight feet long, and the wing one hundred and seventy-four feet. It seems probable, from the symmetrical character of most of these structures, that the original plan contemplated an extension of the main building, the addition of another wing, to be followed by the connection of the wings with a wall, thus closing the court. These buildings ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... at the pages covered with angles and circles, chords and curves, and wildernesses of symbols, which were scattered about his desk. As he stared at them they seemed somehow to come together, and the lines and curves arranged themselves in symmetrical shapes, until they developed from diagrams into pictures; and as they did so he found himself forgetting all about the problems, and thinking only of the strange vision which seemed to be unfolding itself among the scattered papers before him. The straight lines became ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... one against another." (Ecclus. xlii. 25.) The son of Sirach may have had in view the human body as divisible by a vertical median line into two symmetrical halves. But in each of the halves thus made, the same organ or limb is never repeated twice in exact likeness, nor do any two parts render exactly the same service. This variety of organs in the bodies of ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... the outlines symmetrical, but rather feeble, and the countenance would have seemed rather lamblike but for the fact that it was framed with thick, long hair and a luxuriant beard, which ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens

... a child's job," Juve replied. "I got the anthropometric records of the body that had been buried as yours, and I planned to get symmetrical photographs of you in your character of Mademoiselle Jeanne, as I did of you to-day at head-quarters. My first job was to lay hands upon Mademoiselle Jeanne, and I very soon found her, as I expected, turned into a man again, and living in the most disreputable company. I made any number ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... and focal planes, permits the determination of the image of any object for any system (see LENS). The Gaussian theory, however, is only true so long as the angles made by all rays with the optical axis (the symmetrical axis of the system) are infinitely small, i.e. with infinitesimal objects, images and lenses; in practice these conditions are not realized, and the images projected by uncorrected systems are, in general, ill defined and often completely blurred, if the aperture or field of view exceeds certain ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... been Medusa, the glance he bent upon his spouse would have transformed her instantly into a not particularly symmetrical statue of concrete. He had ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... dark and cursed mines? Unhappy, sad exchange! what, must I buy Guiana with the loss of all the sky? Intelligences shall I leave, and be Familiar only with mortality? Must I know nought, but thy exchequer? shall My purse and fancy be symmetrical? Are there no objects left but one? must we In gaining that, lose our variety? Fortune, this is the reason I refuse Thy wealth; it puts my books all out of use. 'Tis poverty that makes me wise; my mind ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... functions (vide fig. 16.) Thus there is a significance in the convolutional pattern of the brain. But just as there are no two faces alike, so there are no two brains alike in their pattern; and just as it is rare to find the two halves of the face quite symmetrical, so the two halves of the brain are seldom exactly alike in their pattern. Although each hemisphere is especially related to the opposite half of the body, the two are unified in function by a great bridge ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott

... from the door jamb and with a parting "I should bibble," started back to his goats, which he had refused to graze outside the Basin as Holman Sommers advised. Helen May began valiantly to struggle with the fine, symmetrical, but almost unreadable chirography of the man of many words. She succeeded in transcribing the human polyp properly lithified and correctly constituting the strata of the psychozoic age, when Vic stuck his head in at ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... a landscape with less amenity; the hill shapes are featureless, without boldness or intricacy of line. Redmond, a born artist in words, possessing strongly the sense of form, was sensitive to beauty in all kinds—yet rather to the beauty that is symmetrical, graceful and well-planned. A sailor does not love the sea for its beauty, and Redmond loved Ireland as a sailor loves the sea—yet with a difference. Ireland to him in a great measure was Aughavanagh, and Aughavanagh ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... crater-summit of Mount Eden one's eye ranges over a grand sweep and variety of scenery—forests clothed in luxuriant foliage, rolling green fields, conflagrations of flowers, receding and dimming stretches of green plain, broken by lofty and symmetrical old craters—then the blue bays twinkling and sparkling away into the dreamy distances where the mountains loom spiritual in their veils ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... whirling in every direction. At each glance, the eye lit on some pleasing bit of sculpture, some delicate curve of architecture. Statues were everywhere, everywhere colour, everywhere crowds of gayly dressed citizens and foreigners. Cornelia contrasted the symmetrical streets, all broad, swept, and at right angles—the triumph of the wise architectural planning of Dinocrates—with the dirty, unsightly, and crooked lanes of the City of the Seven Hills, and told herself, as she had told herself often in recent days, that Romans ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... with its symmetrical spread of branches stood lifeless. And its tons of low-hanging festooned moss was as void of life as was the tree they had killed. Tinder-dry it hung there, a beauteous, tragic, spectacle, towering high above the surrounding flatness of landscape, visible ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... an unusually fascinating one," Myrtilus asserted resolutely. "I have no idea of flattering you, and you are certainly aware that I do not number you among the beauties of Alexandria. But instead of the delicate, symmetrical features which artists need, the gods bestowed upon you a face which wins all hearts, even those of women, because it is a mirror of genuine, helpful, womanly kindness, a sincere disposition, and a healthy, receptive mind. To reproduce such a face, not exactly beautiful, and yet bewitching, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... much more wonderful than the opera itself," observed his Excellency. The floor and wings were like great yellow spots, and the whole immense stage resembled a great, sandy desert. Vaudrey raised his head to gaze at the symmetrical arrangement of the chandeliers, as bright as rows of gas-jets, amongst the hangings of the friezes. A huge canvas at the back represented a sunlit Indian landscape, and in the enormous space between the lowered curtain and the scenery, some black spots ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... present occasion, was apparently a mere youth. He had probably seen twenty summers—scarcely more. Yet his person was tall and well developed; symmetrical and manly; rather slight, perhaps, as was proper to his immaturity; but not wanting in what the backwoodsmen call heft. He was evidently no milksop, though slight; carried himself with ease and grace; and was certainly not only well endowed with bone and muscle, but bore the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... is that of introducing a main central form, with others branching out on either side and symmetrically balancing each other. An example of this is given in fig. 16. The symmetry may be much more free than this; a tree is symmetrical taken as a whole, but the two sides do not exactly repeat ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie

... obstacles to both mental and physical improvement, for thoughts are real things. The patient must actively co-operate with the healer, and make himself transparent to the truth. That which is misshapen has to grow symmetrical. Even if the mind could be instantly permeated with the belief of health, the body will need a little time to completely change its expression. Should these limitations discourage anyone? Not in the least, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... when they simply record the results of the fact that the likeness of the offspring to the parent in evolution is constantly inexact, are (like the records of other cases of 'chance' variation) fairly symmetrical, the greatest number of instances being found at the mean, and the descending curves of those above and those below the mean corresponding pretty closely with each other. Boot manufacturers, as the result of experience, construct in effect such a ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... known Lily all his life; the element of wonder and surprise was lacking in his consciousness of her beauty, and she also lacked something else which Maria had. Lily meant no more to him—that is, her beauty meant no more to him—than a symmetrical cherry-tree in the south yard, which was a marvel of scented beauty, humming with bees every spring. He had seen that tree ever since he could remember. He always looked upon it with pleasure when it was in blossom, yet it was not ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... structure of the fin, at first pointed out by Huxley, but also in the position of the pectoral, ventral, and anal fins, and in having an elongated body and rhomboidal scales. On the other hand, the tail is more symmetrical in the recent fish, which has also an apparatus of dorsal finlets of a very abnormal character, both as to number and structure. As to the dorsals of Osteolepis, they are regular in structure and position, having nothing remarkable about them, except that there are ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... sure foundations of the Ionic order, with symmetrical proportions, it towered high in majesty, with double rows of fluted marble pillars carved magnificently, many of which ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... the organized school; and he is right. An education left to chance and the street would be but a disjointed product. To insure strength, patience, and consistency, there must be methodical cultivation and symmetrical growth. But there is no need of argument on this point. In regard to mental training, there is, fortunately, among Americans, no difference of opinion. Discriminating, systematic, scientific culture is our demand. No ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... each cliff and crag and mountain-peak was to be to him an open book, whose secrets would leave their indelible impress upon his heart and brain, revealing to him the breadth and length, the depth and height of life, moulding his soul anew into nobler, more symmetrical proportions. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... symmetrical band before us seems to stand as the type of all that immeasurable communicating system which is more completely with every year to interlink cities, to confederate States, to make one country of our distributed imperial domain, ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley

... splendid banishment it was his consolation to create round him, by building, planting, and digging, a scene which might remind him of the formal piles of red brick, of the long canals, and of the symmetrical flower beds amidst which his early life had been passed. Yet even his affection for the land of his birth was subordinate to another feeling which early became supreme in his soul, which mixed itself with all his passions, which impelled him to marvellous enterprises, which supported him when sinking ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... has spread to domestic architecture, and the old, dreadfully-symmetrical brick and stuccoed house, and the hybrid Italian villa, make way for residential structures with gabled roofs, pointed arch windows, red tiles instead of dull-coloured slates, and attractive detail and ornamentation. In looking at such houses, ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton

... name, and now he saw where the desert got its pale-gray color. A huge, lofty, fluted column of green was a saguaro, or giant cactus. Another oddshaped cactus, resembling the legs of an inverted devil-fish, bore the name ocatillo. Each branch rose high and symmetrical, furnished with sharp blades that seemed to be at once leaves and thorns. Yet another cactus interested Gale, and it looked like a huge, low barrel covered with green-ribbed cloth and long thorns. This was the bisnaga, or barrel cactus. According to Nell and Mercedes, this plant was a happy exception ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... the hand; she is too literary, not to say professional; she is definite at all costs. She has "restored" Miss Coleridge as a German archaeologist might restore a Tanagra figure. Indeterminate lines have been ruthlessly rectified and asymmetry has grown symmetrical. Though we do not suggest that she misunderstood her friend, we are sure that the lady exhibited in the memoir is not the lady who ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... were apt to lack personal interest, and to suffer from a general and deplorable frigidity. They were infected with the faults which accompany an artificial style; they were monotonous, rhetorical and symmetrical, while the uniformity of treatment which was inevitable to their plan rendered them hopelessly tedious, if they were ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... shoe, or a dirty face. By thus making every written exercise an exercise in writing, his progress will be increased beyond your expectations, and you will soon see him looking with pleasure at the clean and symmetrical forms which flow so gracefully from his pen, as he goes from line to line over the virgin page, no half-formed or misshapen letters to embarrass, but all in every part as elegantly written as it is ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... which they took for towers, but which were nothing less than altars or teocallis, erected to the gods of the sea, protectors of the pilgrims. On the fifth day a pyramid came in view, on the summit of which there was what appeared to be a tower. It was one of the temples, whose elegant and symmetrical shape made a profound impression upon all. Near by they saw a great number of Indians making much noise with drums. Grijalva waited for the morrow before disembarking, and then setting his forces in battle array, ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.

... this purpose was very complete and symmetrical. Though enthusiastic, he was never dreamy. His idea always went forth fully ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... Neuritis, Peripheral Neuritis. Meaning—Multiple neuritis is an inflammatory disease of the peripheral (toward the end of the nerves or external nerves) nervous system. It varies much in extent and intensity and affects symmetrical ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... distance another little circle, of more symmetrical outlines, and comprising both sexes, are standing with linked hands. A shame-faced young maiden is carrying a little cushion around her companions. They are playing the ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... early times were forced to fall back on certain principles of more or less validity, which they derived from their imagination as to what the natural fitness of things ought to be. There was no geometrical figure so simple and so symmetrical as a circle, and as it was apparent that the heavenly bodies pursued tracks which were not straight lines, the conclusion obviously followed that their movements ought to be circular. There was no argument in favour of this notion, other than the merely imaginary reflection that circular ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... sure to follow an evil life. The "willing and obedient" shall eat the good of the land. Our blessed Lord tells us: "If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love" (John xv: 10). Thus beautiful, symmetrical, spiritual organisms are built up, not by "sowing wild oats" during youth, and disobeying the divine commandments during the subsequent period of life. It is well for all, young or old, to remember the Word: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis

... unproportionate fruit, everywhere the banana, king of vegetables, clothed in its own immense leaves, the frondy zapote, now and then in a hollow a clump of yellowish-green bamboo, though not numerous or nearly so large as in many another tropical land, above all else the symmetrical Gothic fronds of the palm nodding in a breeze the more humble vegetation could not know. The constant music of insect life sounded in my ears; everywhere were flowers of brilliant hue, masses of bush blossoms not unlike the lilac in appearance, ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... laceration of the comb, as they peck at each other's heads. This laceration of the skin is, in my view, the primary cause of the evolution of these structures, leading to hypertrophy. But in this, as in other cases, the hereditary result is regular, constant, and symmetrical, while the immediate effect on the individual is ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... you just one more tit-bit—the definition of a square at page 123: "A quadrilateral which is a kite, a symmetrical trapezium, and a parallelogram is a square!" And now, farewell, Henrici: "Euclid, with all thy ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... be thrown into contact with each other by the wind, but, on the other hand, it diminishes the geometrical symmetry of the wires—so very essential to insure silence. As a matter of fact, contacts do not occur on well constructed lines, and I think our English wires, being more symmetrical, are freer from external disturbance than ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various

... this land of ours there are men like Lee—not as great, not as symmetrical in the development of character, not as grand in the proportions which they have reached, but who, like him, are sleeping upon memories that are holy as death, and who, amid all reproach, appeal to the future, and to the tribunal of History, when she shall render her final verdict in reference ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... attachment for their contents. The bookcase curtain is useful more as a protection against dust than as an art adjunct, for there is nothing more delightful to the cultivated eye than the brave front presented by even, symmetrical rows of well-bound volumes, so suggestive of hours of profitable companionship. All the books must be taken down frequently and first beaten separately, then in pairs, and dusted, top and covers, with a soft brush or a ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... longer (Fig. 69). This type of fin is, therefore, vertebrated, the other non-vertebrated. Figs. 68 and 69 show these two types in form and structure. But there is still another type found only in the lowest and most generalized forms of fishes. In these the tail-fin is vertebrated and yet symmetrical. This type is ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... Two or three garden chairs were disposed about the room. Ferguson mounted on one of them, and turned up the gas so that its full light shone upon the plant. The bud was a very large one, perfect and symmetrical; the strong sheath, of a rich and even brown, as yet showed only a few fissures of its surface, but even now a faint odor stole from the travailing sphere, as from a cracked box of alabaster filled ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... there is a splendid show which Mr. Jerdan wants us to see at Lord Warremore de Tabley's; it is a vast salt mine of twenty acres, cut into a symmetrical columned gallery! He says it shall be lighted up, so that we shall walk in a diamond corridor. Mr. Jerdan said that salt used to be the medium of traffic in those districts; and I think Lord de Tabley [1] is a beauty for having his mines cut in the form of art, instead ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... glimmered in the rosy light, with here and there an alder branch reflected upon its mirror-like surface, and Millicent stood on a strip of gravel with her figure clearly outlined against it. Dressed in closely-fitting, soft-colored tweed, tall and finely symmetrical, she harmonized with rock and flood wonderfully well. Lisle had occasionally seen a bush rancher's daughter, armed with gun or fishing-rod, look very much at home in similar surroundings; but this English lady, of culture and station, reared in civilized ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... resolute, conscienceless sinner was the handsome Leah Einstein; already, when, on the voyage, she fell under the influence of a man who found his ready tool in this greasy but symmetrical Esther, clad in ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... entered the field of operatic composition when it was hampered with a great variety of dry forms, and utterly without soul and poetic spirit. The object of composers seemed to be to show mere contrapuntal learning, or to furnish singers opportunity to display vocal agility. The opera, as a large and symmetrical expression of human emotions, suggested in the collisions of a dramatic story, was utterly an unknown quantity in art. Gluck's attention was early called to this radical inconsistency; and, though he did ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... on a horizontal surface, where nothing interferes with it, the structure of Eumenes Amedei is a symmetrical cupola, a spherical skull-cap, with, at the top, a narrow passage just wide enough for the insect, and surmounted by a neatly funnelled neck. It suggests the round hut of the Eskimo or of the ancient Gael, with its central ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... York—very like New York, with its mighty towers, but more symmetrical, sloping upward from the sea toward a towering rampart at the heart of it, crowned with huge domes and minarets and serpentine ramps and mighty blocks of stone that must have sheltered as many occupants as New York's ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... was to possess! How graceful, how gracious, how precious were her charms,—charms in which no other woman surely ever approached her! How warm and yet how cool was the touch of her lips; how absolutely symmetrical was the sweet curve of her bust; what a fragrance came from her breath! And the light of her eyes, made more bright by her tears, shone into his with a heavenly brightness. Her soft hair as he touched it filled him with joy. And once more she was all his own. Let the secret be what it ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope

... face and Spanish eyes. There too, white staff in hand, was Lord High Treasurer Burghley, then sixty-five years of age, with serene blue eye, large, smooth, pale, scarce-wrinkled face and forehead; seeming, with his placid, symmetrical features, and great velvet bonnet, under which such silver hairs as remained were soberly tucked away, and with his long dark robes which swept the ground, more like a dignified gentlewoman than a statesman, but for the wintery beard which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... or Alexandrian stanza;—read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)



Words linked to "Symmetrical" :   radial, asymmetrical, balanced, regular, bilateral, symmetric, isobilateral, stellate, interchangeable, centrosymmetric, radiate, bilaterally symmetric, parallel, cruciate, isosceles, even, cruciform, biradial, trigonal, radially symmetrical, rhombohedral



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