"Static" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the slow discharge of static electricity facilitates the assimilation of nitrogen by plants. Faraday showed that plants grown in metallic cages, around which circulated electric currents, contained 50 per cent. less organic matter than plants grown in the open air. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... and Rick called the airport, then held the phones to his ears to hear the reply through heavy static. When the airport answered he asked for a weather report for the area between St. Thomas and Clipper Cay. He got it, and ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... The insight into the real fluidity of natural species ought long ago to have toned down the artificial rigidity of logical classifications. To know reality man can no longer rest in a 'timeless' contemplation of a static system; he must expand his thoughts so as to cope with a perpetually changing process. Since the world changes, his 'truths' must change to fit it. He is faced with the necessity of a continuous reconstruction of beliefs. This influence of Darwin ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... kindly feeling in one's make-up is, perhaps, the greatest single remedy against a too static condition of ideas. Feeling seems to have a double function in making one open and plastic. A kindly attitude toward new ideas is necessary before they can be viewed long enough to have their value tested. We must be positively friendly, or willing to see worth, ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... of view. Jeffryes and Bickerton worked every night from 8 P.M. until 1 A.M., calling at short intervals and listening attentively at the receiver. In fact, notes were kept of the intensity of the signals, the presence of local atmospheric electrical discharges—"static"—or intermittent sounds due to discharges from snow particles—St. Elmo's fire—and, lastly, of interference in the signals transmitted. The latter phenomenon should lead to interesting deductions, ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... reflecting the slightest amount of the sun's rays to those spheres. The fields, forests, rocks, and seas, only absorb light, they do not reflect it. In this phenomenon, therefore, there is no element of specular reflection. It consists rather of the lighting up of the static vito-magnetic fluid of our atmosphere, by the great solar current. The atmosphere, thus vivified, discloses our presence to those orbs, and in like manner, their presence to the inhabitants of ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... more or less stable or stationary, save at the times when volition or intense, active conscious operations are in progress—when, in short, effort is exerted. At such times, it is surely conceivable that what was static becomes dynamic; something is set into motion which in turn brings into activity some more "physical" energy, and so on, until sufficient material momentum has been gained to affect that most unstable and mobile substance, ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... compared or new ones co-operatively undertaken. Hence the importance of discussions of scientific method such as those who have so largely occupied our first volume. Yet, I submit, here lies the means of escaping from these too abstract (and consequently too static) presentments of the general methodology of social science into which sociologists are constantly falling; and to which must be largely ascribed the prevalent distaste for sociology so general in this would-be practical-minded community in which we find ourselves, ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... personal counsel. Having risen to greet them, Hal stood leaning against his desk, after they were seated. The lawyer disposed himself on the far edge of his chair, as if fearing that a more comfortable pose might commit him to something. Mr. Pierce sat solid and square, a static force neatly buttoned into a creaseless suit. His face was immobile, but under the heavy lids the eyes smouldered, dully. The tone of his voice was lifelessly level: yet with an ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... discriminating, the bourgeois creeps in and often is dominant. The bourgeois in American literature is a special variety that must not be too quickly identified with the literary product that bears the same name in more static civilizations. It is nearly always clever. Witness our short stories, which even when calculated not to puzzle the least intelligence nor to transcend the most modest limitations of taste, must be carefully constructed and ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... well known to all who are acquainted with the history of geology that the static conception of the earth—the idea that its existing condition is the finished product of forces no longer in action—led to prejudices which have long retarded, and indeed still retard, the progress of that science. This fact indicates ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... lives—an effect of insidious attraction, an idea of invincible appeal." And it is for this reason that he is so eager to battle with, annoy, disarrange and reconstruct that rule-of-thumb world he censures so steadily; he is fighting the assumption of a static condition which he ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... that the theory of expanding space, together with the empirical data of astronomy, permit no decision to be reached about the finite or infinite character of (three-dimensional) space, while the original " static " hypothesis of space yielded the ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... whole situation, I should foretell the history of this second Han Dynasty in this way: from 35 to 67,—the latter date the point where the old and new cycles intersect,— would be a static time: of consolidation rather than expansion; of the gathering of the wave, not of its outburst into any splendor of foam. Between 67 and 100, or when the two cycles coincide, I should look for great things and doings; for some echo ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... loaded being 66 tons in a space of 50 feet, and followed by loaded cars weighing 20 tons each in a space of 22 feet. An addition of 25 per cent will be made to the strains produced by the rolling-load considered as static in all parts which are liable to be thrown suddenly under strain by the passage of a rapidly moving load. A similar addition of 50 per cent will be made to the strain on suspension links and riveted connections ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... feeble one at the best of times. She informed him that Mr. Power had no sort of legal control over Paula, or direction in her estates; but Somerset could not doubt that a near and only blood relation, even had he possessed but half the static force of character that made itself apparent in Mr. Power, might exercise considerable moral influence over the girl if he chose. And in view of Mr. Power's marked preference for De Stancy, Somerset had many misgivings as to its operating in ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... dramas in their own subjective lives, and these things they do have reference to the desires for inner experiences. We may say that nations, like individuals, crave for luxuries of the emotional life, but to think of these experiences as merely static pleasure-states, after the fashion of a certain conception of the emotions, would be wholly to misunderstand this view which we have been trying to present. These subjective states are full of meaning and of purpose. They are not reactions, but rather, in so far as these ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... Smithsonian. All such tables as originally calculated are based upon the hypothesis of a temperature and humidity which decrease regularly with the altitude, and this is not always the case; nor is the "static equilibrium of the atmosphere" which Laplace assumed always maintained; that is to say an equal difference of pressure does not always correspond to an equal difference of altitude. There is, in point of fact, no absolute ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... in any one or more of three modes—the harmony or union of cooperating elements; the balance of contrasting or conflicting elements; the development or evolution of a process towards an end or climax. The first two are predominantly static or spatial; the last, dynamic and temporal. I know of no better way of indicating the characteristic quality of each ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... see, the beginning of the chain in China (as indeed in the West) was the making of simple static models of the celestial sphere. An armillary sphere was used to represent the chief imaginary circles (e.g., equator, ecliptic, meridians, etc.), or a solid celestial globe on which such circles could be drawn, together with the constellations ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... well known that the internal static conditions in reinforced concrete beams change to some extent with the intensity of the direct or normal stresses in the steel and concrete. In order to bring out his point, the speaker will trace, in such a beam, the changes in ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... renowned as a graver, found much to do with the chisel, introducing many a fine after-thought, when the rough-casting of his work was over. He studied human form under such conditions as would bring out its natural features, its static laws, in their entirety, their harmony; and in an academic work, so to speak, no longer to be clearly identified in what may be derivations from it, he claimed to have fixed the canon, the common measure, of perfect man. Yet with Polycleitus certainly the measure ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... certain Wasps and Bees does not explain the problem of the Empusa; it sets up another one, no less difficult. It shows us how deficient we are in insight, when it comes to differentiating between fatigue and rest in the cogs of the animal machine. The Ammophila, with the static paradox afforded by her mandibles; the Empusa, with her claws unwearied by ten months' hanging, leave the physiologist perplexed and make him wonder what really constitutes rest. In absolute fact, there is no rest, apart from that which puts an end to life. The struggle ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... as contrasts to his older curios. They were fully as interesting, in their way, as brasswork and leatherwork, those products of peasant natures and peasant hands. But these youths ran past one's eye, ran through one's fingers. They were not static, not even stable. They were restless birds of passage who fidgeted through their years, and even through the days of which the years were made: intent on their own affairs and their own companions; thankless for small favors and kind attentions— even unconscious of them; ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... function of personality is self-preservation, but personality itself is not a static but a dynamic thing. The basic factor in its development, is integration: each new situation calls forth a new adjustment which modifies or alters the personality in the process. The proper aim of personality, therefore, is not permanence and stability, ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... had flung down in a tangled heap. Nevertheless, his heart was in the other end of his work, not for any individual interest in the different girls; but because his whole instinct told him that here was the dynamic force of the whole organization, that the rest of it was curiously static. Under those befeathered hats were eager brains which weighed their theology and measured it, not took it ready made. It was for him to serve it out to them in such a guise that, weighed, they should not ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... done, a memory infinitely disagreeable but quite without the quality of remorse. I saw myself then as I see myself now, driven step by step towards that hasty blow, the creature of a sequence of accidents leading inevitably to that. I felt no condemnation; yet the memory, static, unprogressive, haunted me. In the silence of the night, with that sense of the nearness of God that sometimes comes into the stillness and the darkness, I stood my trial, my only trial, for that moment of wrath ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... in the same way classification consists in the discovery of resemblances in the things that undergo change. We may say (subject to subsequent qualifications) that Explanation deals with Nature in its dynamic, Classification in its static aspect. In both cases we have a feeling of relief. When the cause of any event is pointed out, or an object is assigned its place in a system of classes, the gaping wonder, or confusion, or perplexity, occasioned by an unintelligible ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... she assured him gravely. "It will have to work out somehow. Dick says all things work out. All is change. What is static is dead, and we're not dead, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... accomplished, clever, experienced woman,—she was very much more eager to monopolize it to herself. And in fairness she admitted that things could not continue as they were. The menace of Bert Morrison was static, so to speak. With fine self-abnegation Bert was standing aside. But how long would she continue to stand aside? Irene was old enough to know that the ramparts of friendship are a poor defence ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... writers—the way they have of absorbing language, of attracting it into the peculiar spirit they are of, with a subtlety which makes the actual result seem like some inexplicable inspiration. By mind, the literary artist reaches us, through static and objective indications of design in his work, legible to all. By soul, he reaches us, somewhat capriciously perhaps, one and not another, through vagrant sympathy and a kind of immediate contact. Mind we cannot choose but approve where we recognise it; soul may repel ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... formulae have always their practical equivalents. The ethical alliance of Heraclitus is with the Sophists, and the Cyrenaics or the Epicureans; that of Parmenides, with Socrates, and the Cynics or the Stoics. The Cynic or Stoic ideal of a static calm is as truly the moral or practical equivalent of the Parmenidean doctrine of the One, as the Cyrenaic monochronos hedone—the pleasure of the ideal now—is the practical equivalent of the doctrine of motion; and, as sometimes happens, what ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... the weather has been bad for sending so great a distance for days. When these spring storms come to an end the static will lift and well stand a better chance to hear ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... Dr. Worcester in his Preface, "men have been groping for a theology which should approach the old mysteries, God, evil, the soul and immortality from the point of view of modern scientific and philosophic thought. The old static aspect of the universe has been supplemented by the dynamic. The old transcendent conception of God has yielded to the immanent. The thought of God as mere ruler and judge is no longer sufficient for men's religious needs. Science has discovered ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... incommunicable knowledge of God received in contemplation" (Dom John Chapman). The revelation sought for was not so much a dogmatic revelation as a revelation of the processes of "transmutation" of Rebirth, of Apotheosis or "Deification." Its aim was dynamic rather than static. But while the followers of the Gnosis, both Christian and Hellenistic, would have agreed that the direct knowledge of God is incommunicable to others, they undoubtedly seem to have held that there were what may be described as intermediate or preparatory processes or energisings which could ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh
... conception God is an abstract vacuity; in the Greek, a static intellect; in the Christian, a dynamic will. As is the conception of God, so is the conception and character of man. The two are so intimately interdependent that it is useless at this time to discuss which is the cause and which the result. They are doubtless the ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick |
