"Gravity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... how life arises, and likewise to a certain extent Asa Gray's remark that natural selection is not a vera causa, I was much interested by finding accidentally in Brewster's 'Life of Newton,' that Leibnitz objected to the law of gravity because Newton could not show what gravity itself is. As it has chanced, I have used in letters this very same argument, little knowing that any one had really thus objected to the law of gravity. Newton answers by saying that it is philosophy to make out the movements of a clock, though you ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... were not slow to respond to the altered mood of their host; for it was merely the reflection of his sullen gravity that had eclipsed their own vivacity. The instant, therefore, that he led the way, the hall began to resound with jest and laughter. The poet, with some humiliation, which he endeavored to conceal beneath an affectation of wounded ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... current, that was winding slowly, like Vesuvian lava, on the line of least resistance. Dolly followed his example, filling a garment she called her pinafore with whatever mould or debris was attainable, and bringing it with much gravity and some pride to help on the structure of the dyke. A fiction, rather felt than spoken, got in the air that Sapps Court and its inhabitants would be overwhelmed as by Noah's flood, except for the exertions of Dave and his sister. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... girl sat paralysed with terror as her brain grasped the full gravity of her position. The wind had risen, and blowing up river, kicked up waves that struck the boat with sledgehammer force and broke over the gunwales. Overhead the thunder roared incessantly, while about her the ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... level of the tank. The steam tubes in a non-lifting injector are different and it will not raise the water, but merely force it into the boiler. A non-lifting injector must be placed below the level of the water in the tank so the water will flow to it by gravity. ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... noble and gracious introduction. From the very beginning, Berlioz revealed himself a proud and aristocratic spirit. Even in his most helpless moments, he is always noble. He shows himself possessed of a hatred for all that is unjust and ungirt and vulgar. There is always a largeness and gravity and chastity in his gesture. The coldness is most often simply the apparent coldness of restraint; the baldness, the laconism of a spirit that abhorred loose, ungainly manners of speech. Even the frenetic ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... hand, and owned and blessed of him. Still later in life I retained and could evoke at times the same profoundly religious impressions, contaminated, however, by other favorite objects of study and attachment. Even the expression of my countenance wore an aspect of deep, tender, and benignant gravity, which the reflection of less holy subjects could not produce. It was my delight to pray fervently and tacitly, and this I often did besides the usual time allotted for such devotion. (Vocal prayer is not admissible among the Shakers.) I loved to unite in the dance, ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... What rhyme improved in all its height can be: At best a pleasing sound, and fair barbarity. The French pursued their steps; and Britain, last, In manly sweetness all the rest surpass'd. The wit of Greece, the gravity of Rome, Appear exalted in the British loom: The Muses' empire is restored again, In Charles' reign, and by Roscommon's pen. Yet modestly he does his work survey, 30 And calls a finish'd Poem an Essay; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... evolutionary conception of the world. The first count adduced against the cosmic process is its connection with suffering. It may be doubted, so far as the animal world is concerned, if Huxley has not exaggerated the gravity of this. The two greatest contributors to the modern conception of evolution are not in agreement with him. Alfred ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... He ordered it so and Artur is His mouthpiece in this day." The Strobian weighed every word carefully before he uttered it speaking with a solemn gravity ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... "I do' wanner sit down—I wanner ask you a question." He reeled, and balanced himself against a chair. "I wanner ask you," he continued, with drunken gravity, "on the squar', now, did ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... is the electrical discovery of the age, and so simple in application that the marvel is that it has escaped us so long. The lightening power of magnetism has been known for years, the greatest saving power to overcome gravity, but it seems it had to wait for Doctor ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... an almost imperceptible flash in the eyes that were looking down at him, the features, however, retaining their composed gravity. ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... the Prince was accosted by some friends and remained talking for several moments. When he entered the omnibus, there seemed to Penelope, who found herself constantly watching him closely, a certain added gravity in his demeanor. The drive to the theatre was a short one, and conversation consisted only of a few disjointed remarks. In the lobby the Prince laid his hand upon ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the novice-master," he said, "you will find him very holy and careful. The first matter you will have to learn is how to wear the habit, carry your hands, and to walk with gravity. Then you will learn how to bow, with the hands crossed on the knees, so—" and he illustrated it by a gesture—"if it is a profound inclination; and when and where the inclinations are to be made. Then you will learn of the custody of the eyes. It is these little things that help the ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... that, Captain Collyer, and take care that it never again occurs," answered Mr Fitzgerald, with inimitable gravity, but with an expression on his comical features which made our good-natured skipper almost burst ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... explanations to her friends; promising that if need were she would some back again, or her mother, after Christmas. Miss Dilly let her go very willingly, yet most unwillingly; and Madame Danforth's reluctance had nothing to balance it. So it was that Faith's joy had its wonted mixture of gravity when ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... the same. Most human frames floating, in their natural state, so long as the lungs are inflated with air, it follows that one in this condition would bring up with it as much weight in iron, as made the difference between its own gravity and that of the water it displaced. The upright attitude of Caraccioli was owing to the shot attached to the feet; of which, it is also probable, one ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... how very severe you are growing, Miss Faithfull?' said Louis, looking her in the face, in the gravity of amusement. ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... carried him along in spite of himself. He was, however, so chagrined and provoked that till the moment we reached my door he never uttered a word, nor paid the slightest attention to Monsoon, who talked away in a vein that occasionally made gravity all ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... he saw him spring out on the quay and disappear in the midst of the throng, which from five o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock at night, swarms in the famous street of La Canebiere,—a street of which the modern Phocaeans are so proud that they say with all the gravity in the world, and with that accent which gives so much character to what is said, "If Paris had La Canebiere, Paris would be a second Marseilles." On turning round the owner saw Danglars behind him, apparently awaiting orders, but in reality also ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to call the guardian of her shrine at the high altar. Indolent, and in compliant mood, with languid curiosity and half an hour to spare, we assented. A handsome young man appeared, who conducted us with decent gravity into a little darkened chamber behind the altar. There he lighted wax tapers, opened sliding doors in what looked like a long coffin, and drew curtains. Before us in the dim light there lay a woman covered with a black nun's dress. Only her hands, and the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... to disturb them, etc. When all was said that could be said, and I was about to return, one of the chiefs, "Yarree," said "good night," words which he must have learnt at some cattle station. Although it was only morning, I returned the compliment with all possible gravity, and took my leave. Soon after, we arrived on the bank of the Balonne, as fine a looking river as I have seen in the colony, excepting only the Murray. There was a slight current, and the waters lay in broad reaches, under banks less ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... of you therefore, brethren, bless God in his proper station, with a good conscience, and with all gravity, not exceeding the rule of his service that is appointed ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... first to perceive that Mr. Pickwick was looking on; upon which he winked to the Zephyr, and entreated him, with mock gravity, not to wake the gentleman. 'Why, bless the gentleman's honest heart and soul!' said the Zephyr, turning round and affecting the extremity of surprise; 'the gentleman is awake. Hem, Shakespeare! How do you do, Sir? How is Mary and Sarah, sir? and the dear old lady at home, Sir? ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... an air of gravity and importance about the garb of this person, and something indescribably odd, I might say awful, in the perfect, stone-like movelessness of the figure, that effectually checked the testy comment which had at once risen to the lips of the irritated ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... quivered on the firm but delicate lips. But it was only for a moment; before Stafford had fully taken it in and had responded to it with one of his own short laughs, her face was grave and calm again. "Thank you." she said, with a gravity matching her face, and very much as one is thanked for passing the salt. "It would have drowned if you had not been there. It is lame and couldn't swim. I saw, from the top of the hill, that it was lame, and I was afraid something would happen ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... cab one day to the Grey Friars, and renewed acquaintance with some of their old comrades there. The boys came crowding up to the cab as it stood by the Grey Friars gates, where they were entering, and admired the chestnut horse, and the tights and livery and gravity of Stoopid, the tiger. The bell for afternoon-school rang as they were swaggering about the play-ground talking to their old cronies. The awful Doctor passed into school with his grammar in his hand. Foker slunk away ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... improvements in the adjoining Parks; since we are persuaded that the patriotic feelings of our subscribers will hail them as subjects of paramount importance. The great Lord Bacon, who treated these matters with the gravity of a philosopher, in his "Essays," gives a "brief model of a princely palace;" and in our times Napoleon is known to have expended many thousands in restoring the gilding of the palace at Versailles—although the extravagance of its founders paved ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 278, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... favored his father) were at least smudgy with moustaches. With the head-master's valediction and the grave elder-brotherliness of old Henson, and the shrill cheers of a little crowd of juniors still echoing in my head, I very naturally came home in a mood of exalted gravity, and I can still remember pacing up and down the oblong lawn behind the rockery and the fig-tree wall with my father, talking of my outlook with all the tremendous savoir faire that was natural to my age, and noting with a secret gratification that our shoulders were now on a level. ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... voice, and with the most cruelly matter-of-fact precision, "This was a pathetic description of the decease of Mr. Bardell, who had been knocked on the head with a quart-pot in a public-house cellar." The gravity of the Reader's countenance at these moments, with, now and then, but very rarely, a lurking twinkle in the eye, was of itself irresistibly provocative of laughter. Even upon the Serjeant's mention of the written placard hung up in the parlour window of Goswell ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... adults. Women have very definitely fewer red blood corpuscles than men, and a smaller proportion of haemoglobin, and their blood is more watery. According to one authority this difference in the haemoglobin can be observed from the ages of eleven to fifty, but not before. The specific gravity of the blood is found to be the same in both sexes before the fifteenth year. Thereafter, that of the boy's blood rises, and between seventeen and forty-five is definitely higher than in women of the corresponding age. It thus seems quite clear that, ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... off by the ponderous gravity which the parson habitually wore, that men like Elderkin loved occasionally to launch a quiet joke at him, for the pleasure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... palace. He was probably led to make the suggestion by his knowledge of the resemblance borne by this person to the murdered prince, which was sufficiently close to make personation possible. Cambyses was thus enabled to appreciate the gravity of the crisis, and to consider whether he could successfully contend with it or no. Apparently, he decided in the negative. Believing that he could not triumph over the conspiracy which had decreed his downfall, and unwilling to descend to a private station—perhaps even uncertain whether ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... conception, "thousands, aye, millions of worlds are rushing through space, inert, frozen, and dead. Suns have cooled down and ceased to give forth the life-sustaining element of light, but have still retained their mighty attraction upon their attendant planets, according to the laws of gravity, by virtue of their material mass, and thus hold their planetary offspring in the eternal, cold, icy grasp of death. Our Sun, too, is cooling fast; the Earth has already lost a great portion of her own internal heat. She has passed her prime of life, and death—cold, icy death—has already ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... hours, in spite of the gravity of conditions that troubled Esmond Clarenden, in spite of the terrible tidings of daily killings on the unprotected plains, I forgot everything except the girl beside me as I went with her and Mat and the children to the new home ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... Anglican formularies; and they would say to the Puritans: "Come all of you into this liberally conceived Anglican Establishment." But to say this is hardly, perhaps, to take sufficient account of the course of history, or of the strength of men's feelings in what concerns religion, or of the gravity which may have come to attach itself to points of religious order and discipline merely. When the Rev. Edward White talks of "sweeping away the whole complicated iniquity of Government Church patronage," ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... delicacy which we had to accept—it was agreed, I say, that the nature of the insult offered by Monsieur Gorka to Monsieur Chapron should not be divulged.... We have the right, however, and I may add the duty devolves upon us, to measure the gravity of that insult by the excess of anger aroused in Monsieur Chapron.... I conclude from it that, to be just, the plan of reconciliation, if we draw it up, should contain reciprocal concessions. Count ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... her: I assure you that her chief study is to please you; and that she loves you with all her heart. But my mother-in-law might as well hold her peace; I will not make her the least answer, but keep my gravity. Then she will prostrate herself at my feet, kiss them, and say to me, Sir, is it possible that you can suspect my daughter's chastity? I assure you that I never let her go out of my sight. You are the first man that ever saw her face; do not, then, mortify her so much. Do her the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... of late, bringing up little pictures of home duties and responsibilities, homely tasks and trials. "John giving up the store for good"; what did that mean? Had he gone from bad to worse in the solitude that she had hoped might show him the gravity of his offenses, the error of his ways? In case she should die, what then would become of the children? Would Louisa accept the burden of Jack, for whom she had never cared? Would the Shakers take Sue? She would be safe; perhaps she would always be happy; but brother ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and then a great gravity settled upon him, and he cogitated for some time. "Why did you jump in?" he said ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... she would remain in her room, and begging to be supplied with tea. She would not even condescend to say that she was troubled with a headache. Then Belinda came up to her, just before dinner was announced, and with a fluttered gravity advised Miss Amedroz to come down-stairs. 'Mamma thinks it will be much better that you should show yourself, let the final result ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... never seen to be transported with mirth, or dejected with sadness; always cheerful, but rarely merry, at any sensible rate; seldom heard to break a jest; and when he did, he would be apt to blush at the levity of it: his gravity ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... divine; While her left hand, as shrinkingly she stood, Held a small lute of gold and sandal-wood, Which once or twice she touched with hurried strain, Then took her trembling fingers off again. But when at length a timid glance she stole At AZIM, the sweet gravity of soul She saw thro' all his features calmed her fear, And like a half-tamed antelope more near, Tho' shrinking still, she came;—then sat her down Upon a musnud's[74] edge, and, bolder grown. In the pathetic mode of ISFAHAN[75] Touched a ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... personal reliance on him made his task the more easy, and it was all along remarked that trusty Giles Sharp saw the most extraordinary sights and visions among the whole party. The unearthly terrors experienced by the Commissioners are detailed with due gravity by Sinclair, and also, I think, by Dr. Plott. But although the detection or explanation of the real history of the Woodstock demons has also been published, and I have myself seen it, I have at this time forgotten whether it exists in a separate collection, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... in the light of lamp and fire, one hand drooping at her side, the other lying upon the marble of the mantel-piece, hardly whiter and hardly colder. George Brudenell had begun to think that her coldness and gravity suited her beauty—laughter, blushes, dimples would have spoiled it. Her frigid manner did not repel him now; it had a charm for him which no warmth and graciousness could have had; and yet, perversely he longed intensely to see her ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... servant-maids, and hitting her, but without hurting her in the least, or even causing her any alarm; it being a fact well known to her, that all objects thus thrown about by the devil lost their specific gravity, and could harm nobody, even though they fell upon ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... an early age, and studied mathematics there in the school of Euclid. He not only distinguished himself as a pure mathematician and astronomer, and as the founder of the theory of statics, but he discovered the law of specific gravity, and constructed some of the most useful machines in the mechanic arts, such as the pulley and the hydraulic screw. His works are written in the Doric dialect. Apollonius of Perga (221-204 B.C.) distinguished himself in the mathematical department ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Fully alive to the gravity and responsibilities of his marvellous discovery he had kept the results of his experimentation, and even the experiments themselves, a profound secret not only from his colleagues, but from his only daughter, who heretofore had shared his every ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I have come for my lecture, or whatever you have laid up in store for me," she announced with mock gravity and a slight tremble of ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... followed by a feverish period of juvenile authorship, when the house was littered over with stanzas from the opening canto of a great poem on Columbus, or with moral essays in the manner of Pope, castigating the vices of the time with an energy which sorely tried the gravity of the mother whenever she was called upon, as she invariably was, to play audience to the young poet. At the same time the classics absorbed in reality their full share of this fast developing power. Virgil and AEschylus appealed to the same fibres, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the work of Southern reconstruction. The extreme gravity of the situation as it affected the Negro lay in the political solidity of that section with its one-party governments in which he was denied a voice. His freedom could not long survive such a combination of Southern race prejudice and passion and political power ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke
... in, and with due gravity admired the mourning insignia, and examined the dates, age, etc., of the defunct Griffey. He went so far as to venture upon a distant allusion to ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... a book to amuse myself during the afternoon, and at seven in the evening, Don Francisco came to visit me in his night-gown and cap, not with the gravity of an inquisitor, but with the gayety ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... odour filled every room. By the aid of a ladder she reached up to the spot whence the light came, found the pill of immortality, and ate it. She suddenly felt that she was freed from the operation of the laws of gravity and as if she had wings, and was just essaying her first flight when Shen I returned. He went to look for his pill, and, not finding it, asked Heng ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... from gravity to mock seriousness in the voice of Ellis as he closed this sentence. Wilkinson compressed his lips and ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... Gravity!—But what must be, must. The man is bound to see it. It will be all his own seeking. He will sin with his eyes open. I think he has seen enough of me to take warning. All that I am concerned about ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... their reach. He contrasted their circumspect liberality with her thoughtless waste; the matronly sobriety and tempered magnificence of their attire with her new fangled fickleness and wanton costliness; their modest dignified courtesy with her wayward perverseness; their gravity with her lightness, in acting at court-revels and maskings, familiar with every gallant, and accepting praise from the most polluted sources. He spoke to the winds; the full proof of that perfidy which Evellin had so long struggled to disbelieve, fell like a thundering cataract on his mind, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... next day after Boggs gets ag'in Tutt, an' Doc Peets has plugged up the hole, when Enright rounds up the whole passel of us in the Red Light. He looks that dignified an' what you-alls calls impressive, that the barkeep, yieldin' to the gravity of the situation, allows the drinks is on the house. We-alls gets our forty drops, an' sorter stands pat tharon in silence, waitin' for Enright to onfold his game. We shore knows if thar's a trail ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... them. Behind him stood his brother, Don Pedro of Aragon, whom he hated, and his confessor, the Grand Inquisitor of Granada, sat by his side. Sadder even than usual was the King, for as he looked at the Infanta bowing with childish gravity to the assembling counters, or laughing behind her fan at the grim Duchess of Albuquerque who always accompanied her, he thought of the young Queen, her mother, who but a short time before—so it seemed to him—had come ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... were the guests of honour. They wore fantastic headdresses and long female robes, above which their flowing dyed beards and their painted eyebrows looked like masks of Carnival time. After Battista's gravity their vain eyes and simpering tones seemed an indecent folly. These were the folk he had called friends, this the life he had once cherished. Assuredly he was ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... Saleeby, and apparently with Dr. Karl Pearson. Every quality desired in the ideal baby was carefully cultivated in the parents. The problem of a sense of humour was felt to be a matter of great gravity. The Eugenist couple, naturally fearing they might be deficient on this side, were so truly scientific as to have resort to specialists. To cultivate a sense of fun, they visited Harry Lauder, and then Wilkie Bard, and afterwards George Robey; but all, it would appear, in vain. To the newspaper ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... is something in the misfortunes of our very best friends that does not displease us; assuredly we can, most of us, laugh at their petty inconveniences, till called upon to supply them. Tom composed his features on the instant, and replied with more gravity, as well as with an expletive, which, if my Lord Mayor had been within hearing might have cost ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... the gallery to the top of the shaft, and after certain preliminary movements, to indicate how perilous was the adventure, and how chilly the evening, and how more than worth two rupees it was, he committed his body to the operations of the law of gravity. We saw it through the apertures in the shaft on its downward way and then heard the splash as it reached the distant water, while a crowd of pigeons who had retired to roost among the masonry dashed out and away. The diver emerged from the well and came running up the steps towards us, while ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... itself to no words. I wish that I had the sister art and could draw in my margin something that escapes description. There was a sort of gravity in her eyes. There was something, a matter of the minutest difference, about her upper lip so that her mouth closed sweetly and broke very sweetly to a smile. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... information Iemon might have withheld, or minimised, or given a different complexion, was cheerfully volunteered by others, who also corrected and amplified any undue curtailing or ambiguity of their spokesman. Shu[u]den listened to Iemon with a gravity and an expression hovering between calculation and jeering comment. He turned from him to the committee, giving great attention to those scholiasts on the text of the orator. He gravely wagged his head in agreement with the rival prelate, whose acumen ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... looked with distrust at Cheschapah as he led the dance; now that the entertainment was over, they rose with gravity to ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... any one of the innumerable directions intervening between zenith and nadir, travelling too, unless interrupted, in the direction selected for any period, from a single moment to endless ages. Experience, however, teaches that an apple or any other body of greater specific gravity than air, does invariably, when deprived of support, fall straight downward, such downward movement being part of one of those sequences of phenomena which are classed under the head of gravitation. Now, to assert that this, or any other, and consequently every other, specimen of gravitation, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... journey home, gorgeous with gold lace. He was conscious, however, that some change had taken place, and a resemblance to the man-in-armor in the picture over the library mantel suddenly struck the boy. There was the high look, the same light in the eyes, the same gravity about the mouth; and when his father, after taking leave of the servants, rode away in his gray uniform, on his bay horse "Chevalier," with his sword by his side, to join his men at the county-seat, and let Gordon ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... gravity of expression in the disclamation with which Major Bridgenorth replied to the thanks tendered to him by Lady Peveril, for the supply of provisions which had reached her Castle so opportunely. He seemed first not to be aware what she alluded to; and, when she explained the circumstance, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... katabatic (gravity-driven) winds blow coastward from the high interior; frequent blizzards form near the foot of the plateau; cyclonic storms form over the ocean and move clockwise along the coast; volcanism on Deception Island ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... confessing anything," agreed Mr. Milburgh with heavy gravity. "It is sufficient that Mr. Lyne suspected me, and that he was prepared to employ a detective in order to trace my defalcations, as he termed them. It is true that I lived expensively, that I own two houses, one in Camden Town and one at Hertford; ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... service with her soup-kitchen in Flanders, where her energy and almost too tender sympathy had full scope and the reward of good work accomplished. She seemed also to be happy in her lecture tour on her return to England, trying to arouse the sluggish-minded to a sense of the gravity of the business. But in her Russian and Persian adventure it is clear that she was deeply disappointed at feeling herself unwanted and useless in a region of waste and muddle. It is probable that for all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... She gratified the young people every moment afresh with her readiness to understand or guess their English queries and remarks, hung her head archly when she had to explain away little objections, delivered her No sirs with gravity and her Yes sirs with bright eagerness, shook her head slowly with each negative announcement, and accompanied her affirmations with a gracious bow and a smile full of ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... look at, he quietly remains (in his proper place), indifferent to them. How should the lord of a myriad chariots carry himself lightly before the kingdom? If he do act lightly, he has lost his root (of gravity); if he proceed to active movement, he ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... warrior; the delicate Mercurius, a beautiful page-boy stripped of his emblazoned clothes; Luna dragged along by two nymphs; and Venus daintily poised on one foot on her dove-drawn chariot, the exquisite Venus in her clinging veils, conquering the world with the demure gravity and adorable primness ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... forever goaded her, and to him, with each maltreatment, she had told again her heart's whole burden, outermost wrong, innermost rage, thus recovering poise to treat his sisters and brother with exemplary care and tenderly to discuss with their mother Hugh's precocious reticence and gravity. Always she had held a self-command cunningly tempered in the fire of her triple resolve and fitted to the desperate chances with which she unceasingly crossed daggers. She never tired of telling her little white slave that, having herself once got the lash, she was only paying interest on it through ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... hands full of work. They were willing hands that were outstretched to receive the load,—strong hands too, and skilful; but it may be, better suited to other work. Certainly as the days passed Endecott's gravity took a deeper tinge, and his words became fewer. Still maintaining his morning walk, and a like tasting of the air at night,—ever punctual at meals, and when there displaying an unruffled equanimity and cheerfulness,—the even ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... themselves the guests of the lawyers; and the humbler folk, who by special grant had acquired the privilege of entry, or whose decent attire and aspect satisfied the janitors of their respectability, moved about with watchfulness and gravity, surveying the counsellors and their ladies with admiring eyes, and extolling the benchers whose benevolence permitted simple tradespeople to take the air side by side with 'the quality.' In 1736, James Ralph, in his 'New Critical Review of the Publick Buildings,' wrote about the square ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... man. But that is not against him. If this were a case where leniency were possible, it should count for him, as indicating an ignorance of the gravity of conditions which confront us here, every day and all the time. If he were my own brother, I would still ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... difficult, nowadays, to realise the gravity with which these trials were undertaken. An outline of a very famous witch trial, before an eminent judge in the latter part of the seventeenth century, will best serve as an illustration. Before me there lies a little tract of some sixty pages, printed "for ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... and calmly searching gaze; he liked her voice which, while soft and pleasant, had a trace of gravity in it. He knew that her fine carriage was a sign of physical vigor and he recognized how it had been gained by the clear, warm tinting of her slightly sun-darkened skin. But, apart from this and her comeliness, which was marked, there was that in her personality which spoke of evenness and depth ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... by their leaders. It is a fearful array. It will be said, that these are imaginary fears. I know they are so at present. I know it is as impossible for these agents of our choice and unbounded confidence, to harbor machinations against the adored principles of our constitution, as for gravity to change its direction, and gravid bodies to mount upwards. The fears are indeed imaginary: but the example is real. Under its authority, as a precedent, future associations will arise with objects at which we should shudder at this time. The society of Jacobins, in another country, was instituted ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... spurred heels and spoke beguilingly. At last he settled down to sober climbing. Sheila looked back and waved her hand. The two tall, lean men were gazing after her. They took off their hats and waved. She felt a warmth that was almost loving for their gracefulness and gravity and kindness. Here was another breed of man than that produced by Millings. A few minutes later she came to the top of The Pass and looked down ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... gravity is design, and consequently deceit; a taught trick to gain credit with the world for more sense and knowledge ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... extraordinary session, June 21, 1905, at the call of King Oscar, to consider the action of the Norwegian Storthing in declaring the dissolution of the union between the two countries. The opening of the session was marked by the usual ceremonial pomp, but also by a gravity and solemnity befitting the unusual occasion. The emotional feeling was intense and repressed with difficulty by both speakers and audience. The king, in his address to the Riksdag, maintained with dignity that he had acted within his constitutional rights ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... I failed to like, It were a sheer depravity; For I went down with the 'Thomas Hyke,' And up with the 'Negative Gravity.' ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with an unusual and convincing gravity; "I do not believe that being perfectly good in all respects would ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... are of course deposited at the base of it. But they are deposited in various ways, of which it is most difficult to analyze the laws; for they are thrown down under the influence partly of flowing water, partly of their own gravity, partly of projectile force caused by their fall from the higher summits of the hill; while the debris itself, after it has fallen, undergoes farther modification by surface streamlets. But in a general way debris descending from the hill side, a b, Fig. 103, will ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... each other's eyes and found there strange depths and lights. They were aliens, strangers, groping dimly for a common ground, and finding little, though presently they fell once more upon the law in Lost Valley and earnestness deepened into gravity. ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... give us a beautiful Spanish-French dinner in a private room of the Gran Hotel where they live. Mrs. Dalton is palpably delighted with the Baron de Bach. He is unusually reserved, but gravity sits well on him, and, as I see him crossing swords with this clever woman of the world, I find my admiration growing. He seems not to see me all through dinner, and, like the stupid young person I am, I fall to regretting that by the side of our brilliant, travelled ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... undefined shadows, compared with our brilliant sunshine and sharply defined shade—then the coloring of the houses, the streets, the ground, of every thing; no bright colors, all sober, some very dark,—the idea of age, gravity, and stability. Nobody seems in a hurry. Our country seems so young and vehement; this so ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen
... contemplates the construction of gravity canals from a point in the Colorado River, several miles above Yuma, and the conducting of the waters of this river over an arid waste, that, while forbidding in appearance, is known to be capable of great fertility. One interesting ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... O'Shiels, the O'Hickeys, the O'Lees, have sedulously set down the divers methods by which the sick and the relapsed found again health whether the malady had been the trembling withering or loose boyconnell flux. Certainly in every public work which in it anything of gravity contains preparation should be with importance commensurate and therefore a plan was by them adopted (whether by having preconsidered or as the maturation of experience it is difficult in being said which the discrepant opinions of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... fears were realized when upon the morrow Gregory awoke on fire with the fever. They summoned a leech from Sheringham, and this cunning knave, with a view to adding importance to the cure he was come to effect, and which in reality presented no alarming difficulty, shook his head with ominous gravity, and whilst promising to do "all that his skill permitted," he spoke of a clergyman to help Gregory make his peace with God. For the leech had no cause to suspect that the whole of the Sacred College might have found ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... she, with reproachful gravity, 'but I know many that have; and some, through carelessness, have been the wretched victims of deceit; and some, through weakness, have fallen into snares and temptations terrible ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... were alike to Lemoyne; he had appeared in dozens. If he lacked costume now, he made it up in manner. He had bestowed an immensity of manner on Amy Leffingwell, downstairs: his cue had been a high, delicate, remote gravity. "I know, I know," he seemed to say; "and I make no comment." Upstairs he kept close by Cope: he was proprietary; he was protective. If Cope settled down in a large chair, Lemoyne would drape himself ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... the rocks, and sat near-by, looking into his face with almost disconcerting steadiness; her solemn-pupiled eyes were unblinking, unsmiling. Unaccustomed to the gravity of the mountaineer in the presence of strangers, he feared that he had offended her. Perhaps his form of ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... seem to have been an infinite source of anxiety; there must be only one slash on each sleeve and one in the back. Men also must be prohibited from shoulderbands of undue width, double ruffs and cuffs, and "immoderate great breeches." Part of the solicitude was for modesty, part for gravity, part for economy: none must dress above their condition. In 1652, three men and a woman were fined ten shillings each and costs for wearing silver-lace, another for broad bone-lace, another for tiffany, and another for a silk hood. Alice Flynt was accused of a silk hood, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... gravity and courtesy, "Monsieur Iberville," he said, "let me present you to Mistress Jessica Leveret, the daughter of my good and honoured and absent ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... continued notwithstanding the representations made before the "high spheres of Government" by the leading men in commerce and agriculture, by the press of all political colors, and by Congress. The Minister of Ultramar in Madrid recognized the gravity of the situation, and it is said that the lamentations of the people of Puerto Rico found an echo even at the foot ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... frank young face was again yearning toward the spring sky. The young, pale girl, known only by the name of Musya, was also looking in the same direction, at the sky. She was younger than Golovin, but she seemed older in her gravity and in the darkness of her open, proud eyes. Only her very thin, slender neck, and her delicate girlish hands spoke of her youth; but in addition there was that ineffable something, which is youth itself, ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... (no, not impalpable), pachydermatous, and the extraordinary accuracy with which they succeeded in balancing trees or parts of trees, branches, logs, beams, planks, ... etc., ... with their trunks (the beams carefully supported at their centre of gravity, the logs carefully supported at their centre of gravity, the elephants without a smile at their centre of gravity) From Rangoon ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... gives this note of Cosmo de Medici, the wisest and gravest man of his time in Italy, that he would [3518]"now and then play the most egregious fool in his carriage, and was so much given to jesters, players and childish sports, to make himself merry, that he that should but consider his gravity on the one part, his folly and lightness on the other, would surely say, there were two distinct persons in him." Now methinks he did well in it, though [3519] Salisburiensis be of opinion, that magistrates, senators, and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... exit the situation assumes a special gravity; for then is the moment in which the enemy has crossed all the intrenchments within which he was subject to our examination and has escaped into the street! At this point a man of understanding when he sees a visitor ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... average nut and weigh, then fill up the hollows in the surface of the nut with wax just covering the ridges till the surface is smooth, and weigh. This will give the weight of the nut plus the weight of the wax needed to fill up the hollows on the surface. As the specific gravity of the wax is 4/5 that of the nut the figure actually used is weight of nut plus 5/4 weight of the wax, which gives the weight of a nut of the size of the sample with the hollows in the shell filled ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... true that 'he prophesies of times that are far off'? Yes! and No! Yes! it is true, and it is the great glory of Christianity that it shifts the centre of gravity, so to speak, from this poor, transient, contemptible present, and sets it away out yonder in an august and infinite future. It brings to us not only knowledge of the future, but certitude, and takes the conception of another life out of the region of perhapses, possibilities, dreads, or hopes, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... or Patches, are liable to break out anywhere on the trousers, and range in degree of gravity from those of a trifling nature to those of a fatal character. The most distressing cases are those where the patch assumes a different colour from that of the trousers (dissimilitas coloris). In this instance the mind of the patient is found to be in a sadly aberrated ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... cannot add famous—actors in the conduct of the war; we mean the notorious Lord George Sackville, who, after being cashiered for cowardice at Minden, was whitewashed by the first Rockingham ministry, and thenceforward so boldly held up his head again, and traded on his plausible gravity of manner and family connections, that in the heat of the war the court actually got him appointed to the peculiarly responsible post of American secretary. Shelburne is terribly severe upon his conduct. "He sent out (writes Shelburne) the greatest force which this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... of the Turks of a masked ball, and the travellers had often hard work to preserve their gravity. To compensate, however, for the grotesque solemnity of the various receptions, a new field for observation was open, and much valuable information ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... that, but for her child and husband, she would have taken her own life in order to escape from this villain. And doubtless she had weighed the matter in her own mind. Sensible people do not take steps of this gravity without reflecting on the possible consequences. She must have tried her hardest to talk Muhlen over, before coming to the conclusion that thee was nothing to be done with the fellow. She knew him; she knew her own mind. She knew better than anyone ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... is their power to facilitate every phase of historical movement; that of mountains is their power to retard, arrest, or deflect it. Man, as part of the mobile envelope of the earth, like air and water feels always the pull of gravity. From this he can never fully emancipate himself. By an output of energy he may climb the steepest slope, but with every upward step the ascent becomes more difficult, owing to the diminution of warmth and air and the increasing tax upon the heart.[1186] Maintenance of life in high altitudes is always ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... N. importance, consequence, moment, prominence, consideration, mark, materialness. import, significance, concern; emphasis, interest. greatness &c. 31; superiority &c. 33; notability &c. (repute) 873; weight &c. (influence) 175; value &c. (goodness) 648; usefulness &c. 644. gravity, seriousness, solemnity; no joke, no laughing matter; pressure, urgency, stress; matter of life and death. memorabilia, notabilia[obs3], great doings; red-letter day. great thing, great point; main chance, "the be all and the end all" [Macbeth]; cardinal point; substance, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... neuralgia. There is partial or complete obstruction of one or both nostrils. In some cases the obstruction changes from one nostril to the other when lying down; the stoppage generally being on the side toward the pillow. A polypus located at the junction of the nasal passages and throat by force of gravity always causes obstruction to the lower nasal cavity when lying down. Polypi often attain considerable size and by pressure upon and displacement of the surrounding structures occasion hideous facial deformity. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce |
