"Leveling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at first have acted as you dreamed they did," she replied. "Perhaps they would not at once have liked the idea of economic equality, fearing that it might mean a leveling down for them, and not understanding that it would presently mean a leveling up of all together to a vastly higher plane of life and happiness, of material welfare and moral dignity than the most fortunate ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... humped over the saddle-horn like an old man and stared at the trail and at the forefeet of Barney coming down pluck, pluck with leisurely regularity in the dust. Just so was Charming Billy Boyle trampling down the dreams that had been so sweet in the dreaming, and leveling ruthlessly the very foundations of the fair castle he had builded in the air for Dill and himself—and one other, with the fairest, highest, most secret chambers for that Other. And as he rode, the face of him was worn and the blue eyes of him sombre and dull; and his mouth, ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... so-called astringent effect of the milieu upon the individuals who are incapable of rising out of their environment, of stepping out of it. In society that bacillus for which one has found the name "suggestion" appears certainly as a leveling element, and, accordingly, whether the individual stands higher or lower than his environment, whether he becomes worse or better under its influence, he always loses or gains something from the contact with others. This is the basis of the great importance of suggestion as ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... man carries within himself any privilege which puts him above the universal law. It means an equality in principle, and that does not invalidate the legitimacy of the differences due to work, to talent, and to moral sense. The leveling only affects the rights of the citizen; and not the man as a whole. You do not create the living being; you do not fashion the living clay, as God did in the Bible; you make regulations. Individual worth, on which ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... respecter of persons, did not spare him the misfortunes common to the race. He had whooping cough, measles, and mumps like other children, and when at length he reached the ripened age of six he was led to school and it was here, with one swift, leveling blow, that his splendor vanished even as the grass which in the morning groweth up and at night is cut down, ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... on which the upper fort of Jacques Cartier was built, afterward enlarged by Roberval, has been fixed by an ingenious gentleman at Quebec at the top of Cape Rouge Height, a short distance from the handsome villa of Mr. Atkinson. A few months ago, Mr. Atkinson's workmen, in leveling the lawn in front of the house, and close to the point of Cape Rouge Height, found beneath the surface some loose stones which had apparently been the foundation of some building or fortification. Among these stones ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... and purposes as good as anything that has been, is, or can be taught in the nine universities of the land, and to deprive it of its rights is a most cruel innovation and usurpation, tending to destroy all just subordination in the world, making all universities superfluous, leveling vice-chancellors, doctors, and proctors, masters, bachelors, and scholars, to the mean and contemptible state of butchers and tallow-chandlers, bricklayers and chimney-sweepers, who, if it were not for these learned mysteries, might think that they knew as much as their betters. Every one ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... every effort to eliminate from a machine the waste due to friction, leveling and grinding to the most perfect smoothness and adjustment every part of the machine. When the machine is in use, friction may be further reduced by the use of lubricating oil. Friction can never be totally eliminated, however, and machines of even the finest ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... was, Ulysses fitted an arrow to the string and drew back, leveling his eye to every ring. Then with a mighty pull, he drew back the bow and gave the arrow wing. Straight it left the string, and straight it passed through every ring and struck the gate behind, piercing even the solid wood ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... semicircular piece of thick pasteboard fitted with two corks into the top of the cylinder. This seemingly awkward proceeding has in no case been attended with the slightest accident, and owing to the presence of the four leveling-screws, the pump when righted returns, as shown by the telescope of the cathetometer, almost exactly to its original place. In the inclined position the exhaustion of the vacuum bulb is accomplished along with that of the rest of the pump. The exhaustion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... better.—I don't believe what I said? Now listen. How could the fact that the world was turned into a military camp, officers commanding, privates obeying, rank, rank, rank everywhere throughout mankind, how could that fail to hinder democracy, which is in its essence the leveling of ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the stress of my poems from beginning to end to bear upon American individuality and assist it—not only because that is a great lesson in Nature, amid all her generalising laws, but as counterpoise to the leveling tendencies of Democracy—and for other reasons. Defiant of ostensible literary and other conventions, I avowedly chant 'the great pride of man in himself,' and permit it to be more or less a motif of nearly ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... LEVELING. The art of finding how much higher or lower horizontally any given point on the earth's surface is, than another point on the same; ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... that it is so impartial. To deify a man and his cat by the same process is not much of a distinction to the former; and of what advantage is it to be made a god, if he does not thereby obtain some distinction? This leveling apotheosis is generally confined to the German Pantheists; their more ambitious American brethren ascribe the contented humility which accepts it to the continual influence of the fumes ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... sank a pit below that of Ashmedai, into which he drained off the water and plugged the duct between with the fleece. Then he set to and dug another hole higher up with a channel leading into the emptied pit of Ashmedia, by means of which the pit was filled with the wine he had brought. After leveling the ground so as not to rouse suspicion, he withdrew to a tree close by, so as to watch the result and wait his opportunity. After a while Ashmedai came, and examined the seal, when, seeing it all right, he raised the stone, and to his surprise found wine in the ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... was, though a peaceful, a stirring and an eventful time. English manufacturers, not content with leveling mountains of American cotton bales, converting them into textile fabrics and clothing the world therewith, were reaching deep and deeper into the bowels of the earth, and pulling up sterner stuff to spin into gigantic threads ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... Federal program in the field of resource development. Its major projects should be timed, where possible to assist in leveling off peaks and valleys in our economic life. Soundly planned projects already initiated should be carried out. New ones will be planned ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... to demolish them and on the site to raise the noblest and most beautiful wing of the great palace. This edifice, known to contemporaries as the great new palace, comprised a spacious Chapel and Hall of Justice; and in August 9, 1344, contracts were made for cutting away and leveling the rock above the present Rue Peyrolerie, whereon, by October 21, 1351, the masons had ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... present the appearance of a mound in any sense, due probably both to the fact that the sandy soil will not heap up to such a height over a honeycomb of tunnels as will a firmer or rocky soil, and also to its greater exposure to the leveling action of rains and the trampling of animals. These mounds are in themselves large enough to attract some attention, but their conspicuousness is enhanced by the fact that they are more or less ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... with God" is always ready for the Master's call. His loins are girded about and his lights burning. He "lies down with the Kings of the earth," and that leveling process which is thus intimated and begun in death he feels is the order of a higher plane of life to come, when all the abuses and incongruities of human government will be swept away, and the light of omniscient wisdom ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... go about over the surface of the earth, delving it or cultivating it or leveling it, without thinking that it has not always been as we now find it, that the mountains were not always mountains, nor the valleys always valleys, nor the plains always plains, nor the sand always sand, nor the clay always clay. Our experience goes but a little way ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... magistrate, leveling a pudgy finger at Blount. "This here co't is already cognizant of certain facts bearing on that p'int. The boy was left with Bob Yancy mainly because nobody else would take him. Them's the facts. Now go on!" he ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... to get back. I have never talked seriously to you before; I may never do it again. The essence, the distinctive finesse, of breeding, lies in a trained gaiety and an implied sincerity. But what I must say to you is this: Even in this leveling age there are a few of us who look with terror upon an incipient socialism; who believe money as money to be despicable and food and clothing, incidental; who abhor equality, cherish sorrow and suffering and look uponeducation—knowledge ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... three presidents were born in New England, two were graduates of Yale College, and one was a Congregationalist, while Samuel Blair, an alumnus of the new institution, was not thought unworthy to be minister of the Old South Church of Boston. These are but isolated instances of the leveling of religious barriers between Protestant sects in the Northern colonies. In the decades following the Great Awakening New England religious solidarity was already a thing of the past. While cultivated and tolerant liberals ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... lashed the horses, and a moment later a pistol was fired, and the ball went through his hat. By the light of the lamps Mark saw the other man raise his hand, and, leveling his pistol, fired on the instant; then, as there was no reply to his shot, he discharged the second barrel at the first who had fired, and who had at once drawn another pistol. The two reports rang out almost at the same moment, but Mark's was a little the first. There was ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... were whose names were not recorded, of course, we cannot now tell. Andover sent Tites Coburn, Alexander Ames, and Barzilai Low; Plymouth sent Cato Howe, and Peter Salem immortalized his name by leveling the piece in that battle which laid low Major Pitcairn. It is fair to presume that other towns, like Andover, sent in the ranks of their volunteers colored Americans. In the town of Raynham, within forty miles of Boston, there is now a settlement of colored ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... was stationed on a runway, gun in hand, with a gillie in attendance. The dogs started a fine buck, which ran close to them, but instead of leveling his gun, Landseer shoved the weapon into the hands of the astonished gillie with the hurried whispered request, "Here, you, hold this for me!" and seizing his pencil, made a hasty sketch of the gallant buck ere the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... himself was weakening, and because of a Chinaman, maddened him. And he must turn. Not to face Shan Tung now would be but a postponement of the ordeal and a confession of cowardice. Forcing his hand into Conniston's little trick of twisting a mustache, he turned slowly, leveling his eyes squarely to meet ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... terror, and the others fell back a step. A little man with very black eyes stood facing them, and at them he was leveling a small, businesslike looking revolver. The door had closed noiselessly, and he had ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... their lower branches heavy with the unwholesome fruit of the flood, in wisps of hay and straw, rakes and pitchforks, or pathetically sheltering some shivering and forgotten household pet. But everywhere the same dull, expressionless, placid tranquillity of destruction,—a horrible leveling of all things in one bland smiling equality of surface, beneath which agony, despair, and ruin were deeply buried and forgotten; a catastrophe without convulsion,—a ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... situation for a child of Harry Howard, though she knelt in the presence, and before the throne, of her sovereign. Behold, my dear Cecilia, the natural consequences of this rebellion! It scatters discord in their ranks; and, by its damnable leveling principles, destroys all distinction of rank among themselves; even these rash boys know ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... began Mr. Damon, but another of the footpads leveling his weapon at the eccentric ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... be, fill the pot level full of soil, make a hole with the forefinger of one hand; insert the cutting to about half its depth with the other, rap the bottom of the pot smartly against the bench to settle the earth, and then press it down firmly with the thumbs, leveling it as the pot is placed to one side in an empty flat. (The jarring down of the soil should precede the firming with the thumbs, as this will compact the soil more evenly within the pot.) This should leave the soil a little below the rim ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... Jim, as the Mexican started to draw, and himself leveling a revolver which they had captured in the castle. It is true it had but one cartridge in it, but that was enough with Jim at the ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... latter, leveling his pistol at something that moved among the bushes. "Stand where ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying and leveling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. He had worked his stony way into her Majesty's most Honorable Privy Council's Schedule B, and had taken the bloom ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... he was able to study the legislation affecting it, and, first, "the Jacobin laws on marriage, divorce, paternal authority and on the compulsory public education of children; next, the Napoleonic laws, those which still govern us, the Civil Code" with that portion of it in which the equality and leveling spirit is preserved, along with "its tendency to regard property as a means of enjoyment" instead of the starting-point and support of "an enduring institution."—Having exposed the system, M. Taine meant to consider its effects, those of surrounding ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... exasperation of public feeling in a nation like the French, so uniformly proud of military glory, when very shortly after the first arrival of their new monarch, Louis XVIII., an order was issued for leveling with the dust that proud monument of their victories, the famous column and statue of Napoleon in the Place Vendome cast from those cannon which their frequent victories over the Austrians had placed at their disposal? The ropes attached to the ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... Keswick," said the man, leveling a long fore-finger at him, and speaking very earnestly, "don't you go and flatter yourself that this thing has been dropped, because you haven't heard of it for a month or two; and if you'll take ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... intelligence counted for so much, and the sterling qualities of character for so little. But the etiquette, the urbanity, the measure, which assured the outward harmony of a society that courted distinction of every kind, were quite foreign to the iconoclasts who were bent upon leveling all distinctions. The Revolution which attacked the whole superstructure of society, was antagonistic to its minor forms as well, and it was the revolutionary party alone which was represented ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... with a little piece of onion, some parsley, and some thyme, then add twice its volume of fresh bread crumbs (which have been dipped in water and squeezed out). When the bread has been well mixed add the yolk of one egg and mix again well, spread this mixture all over the surface of the beef, leveling it off with a knife. Then sprinkle on a few raisins, and then roll up the meat like a cigar, but bigger in the middle than at the ends. Tie it up then, crosswise and lengthwise, and brown it in a saucepan with a little lard ...
— Simple Italian Cookery • Antonia Isola
... The Metropolitan opera company from New York had just opened its season there and all the expensive scenery and costumes were soon reduced to ashes. From the opera house the fire leaped from building to building, leveling them almost to the ground ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... and mentally, the rollicking democracy of these old-fashioned festivals, in which the peasant bonneted the peer without ceremony, and rustic maids ran races en chemise for a pound of tea, is entirely too leveling for culture. There are still, however, numbers of village fairs, quietly conducted, in which there is much that is pleasant and picturesque, and this at Cobham was as pretty a bit of its kind as I ever saw. These are old-fashioned ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... appeal. He says there is a powerful party here who are intimidated by fears of a civil war, and they have been induced to acquiesce by assurances that there was no danger, and that a peaceful cessation of commerce would effect relief. Another party, he says, are intimidated lest the leveling spirit of the New England colonies should propagate itself into New York. Another party are instigated by Episcopalian prejudices against New England. Another party are merchants largely concerned in navigation, and therefore afraid of non-importation, nonconsumption, ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... human kind has been assumed which never has existed and does not now, and in the effort to enforce this false theory the achievement of distinction has been impeded, leadership discouraged and leaders largely eliminated, the process of leveling downward carried to a very dangerous point, the sane and vital organization of society brought near to an end and a peculiarly vicious scale and standard of social values established. I have urged the return to human scale in human ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... years we waste Leveling what we raised in haste: Doing what must be undone Ere content or love be won! First, across the gulf we cast Kite-borne threads, till lines are passed, And habit builds the ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... shovels, leveling the sand-hills, piled the wagons high with shimmering grains which were ... dumped into pile-surrounded bogs. San Francisco reached farther and farther out into ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... plucked the bluebells to press to her face, but leaned to them. Every blade of gramma grass, with its shining bronze-tufted seed head, had significance for her. The scents of the desert began to have meaning for her. She sensed within her the working of a great leveling process through which supreme happiness ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... literally and figuratively in the dark, grew impatient, and announced his intention to commence a pistol practice on them that would draw out some demonstration. He rode down to the water's edge, and was leveling a long pistol at the middle of the dark mass, when some epithet of Hatton's more stinging than any he had yet invented, proved too much for Goring's gravity. He began to laugh, and the contagion seized every dragoon of the party. The mask of hostility fell off, and they were instantly recognized ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... to work intelligently, effectively, tirelessly for world-wide peace and service. not by the suppression of racial and national diversities, the leveling of the mass to a deadly sameness, but through steadily increasing appreciation of racial and national traits. May the world, even sooner than we dare to hope, be ruled by sympathy instead of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... language with the pleasing certainty of an appreciative audience. But times have sadly changed within the past few years. A trip to Iceland nowadays is little more than a pleasant summer excursion, brought within the capacity of every tyro in travel through the leveling agency of steam. When a Parisian lady of rank visits Spitzbergen, and makes the overland journey from the North Cape to the Gulf of Bothnia, of what avail is it for any gentleman of elegant leisure to leave his ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... are exactly the opposite of those ascribed to water erosion. Instead of the running water cutting deeper into the earth it has partly filled the canon with alluvium, thereby demonstrating nature's universal leveling process. Even the floods of water which pour through them during every rainy season with an almost irresistible force carry in more soil than they wash out and every freshet only adds new soil to the old deposits. If these canons were all originally made by water erosion as is claimed, ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... expending their share of the power. It is high time they were enjoying their share of the glory. What an unconscionable leveling up and down there will presently be when it dawns upon humanity what a large though inglorious share it has been having in the spiritually creative work of the world! In that day the seats of the mighty individualists of science, industry, politics, and discovery; of religion ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... in order, stowing the duffel in neat little piles. Just outside the tent Lew built a foundation for the alcohol stove, by leveling the earth and setting a flat stone for the stove to stand on. Meanwhile, Charley was stuffing the tick with ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... who suggested that the causes of the revolution in England were less religious than social. When Henry VIII put the confiscated lands of abbey and noble into the hands of scions of the people, Harrington thought that he had destroyed the ancient balance of power in the constitution, and, while leveling feudalism and the church, had raised up unto the throne an even more ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... correct view of this question, is largely a matter of education. You have, perhaps unconsciously, voiced the usual argument against the equity of equality, which is made by the champions of the competitive system. Our people have learned from experience, that the co-operative farm movement is a leveling up process, which purposes to raise the weaker units, to the condition of the higher. They have learned, that society is a purely co-operative institution. They have learned, that the wants of society, create value for the products of labor. Society, then, is labor's ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... As Tennyson threw into his retelling of Arthurian romance a moral sense, so Lowell, also a moralist in his poetic apprehension, made a parable of his tale, and, in the broadest interpretation of democracy, sang of the leveling of all ranks in a common divine humanity. There is a subterranean passage connecting the Biglow Papers with Sir Launfal; it is the holy zeal which attacks slavery issuing in this fable of a beautiful charity, Christ in ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Michael. The only fortification in 1530 was the Fort of St. Angelo, with a few guns and very weak walls. The intention of the Knights, even from the beginning, was to make the main peninsula, Mount Sceberras, the seat of their "Convent"; but as that would mean the leveling of the whole promontory, a task of enormous expense and difficulty, and as immediate defence was necessary, they decided to occupy the Peninsula of St. Angelo for the present. Wedged between St. Angelo and the mainland there was a ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen
... even among the poor and least restrained class the birthrate is still but little above the general average for England, where prevention is widespread, and very considerably lower than the average (now rapidly falling) in Germany. It is evident that even among the poor class there is a process of leveling up to the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... exclamation of surprise and alarm all eyes were turned in Tom's direction. With a steady hand he was leveling an automatic pistol at the head of the outlaw who now dropped his pistol hand to his side without, however, relinquishing his hold upon the weapon. His shifty eyes ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... oath Dan turned in his saddle, giving the horse the head, and leveling his rifle fired ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... light, and he saw that the watchman held a drawn revolver, and was leveling it at Bill. The motion of the fight was all that prevented the shot, as Mathews leaped to and fro. A dozen men were between Dick and the watchman; but almost under his hand, at the edge of the bar, stood a whisky bottle. He dove for it, brought it up, and threw. The watchman, struck ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... around the house. I wished to make them familiar to each other, so there would be less danger of their killing him. So I would take them both on my knee, when the bird would soon notice the kitten's eyes, and leveling his bill as carefully as a marksman levels his rifle, he would remain so a minute when he would dart his tongue into the cat's eye. This was held by the cats to be very mysterious: being struck in the eye by something invisible to them. They soon acquired such a ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... destroyed by the use of the hermodactyl. When the external wound is healed, the cicatrix is to be dressed with the apostolicon cyrurgicum, an ointment very valuable for the consolidation of bones, the leveling (adaequatio?) of ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... the grantee whom he derives from was that of being a prompt and greedy instrument of a leveling tyrant, who opprest all descriptions of his people, but who fell with particular fury on everything that was great and noble. Mine has been in endeavoring to screen every man, in every class, from ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... earthen Citadel, a relic of mediaeval defence, was, about seventy years ago, removed, its material being used in the leveling and enlargement of the Parade Ground, or, as it is called, the "Champ-de-Mars." Its demolition might be regretted were it not that in an age of progress even sentiment must give way before advance. The grand ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... into the sea-green wilderness. Leveling off in sight of the ocean floor, they tried their drive jets. The effect was thrilling! Zip ... Whoosh! They darted to and ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... which has affronted the Roman power by keeping their great army at bay, for nearly seven weeks, and whose capture has cost them thousands of men. We know what has happened—they have slain every soul, save a few young women, who were worth money as slaves. Now they are leveling the town to its foundations. The place that defied them will cease ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... long ago made a name for himself in science. After some remarkable publications upon the trigonometrical junction of France and England (1861) and upon the triangulation and leveling of Corsica (1865), he was put at the head of the geodesic service of the army in 1879. In 1880, the learned geodesian was sent as a delegate to the conference of Berlin for settling the boundaries ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... rebellion of the clowns, we have now an opposition of the pedlers. The quiet of the nation has been, for years, disturbed by a faction, against which all factions ought to conspire; for its original principle is the desire of leveling; it is only animated, under the name of zeal, by the natural malignity of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... that those atrociously leveling sentiments were received by the young ladies with that feminine scorn which is only qualified by misconception. Rose, who, under the influence of her hostess, had a vague impression that they sounded something like the French Revolution, and that Adele must feel like ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... of wine, and leaving none for his host, or scarcely a morsel of the enormous loaf which occupied a corner of the table. Whilst he was eating so voraciously, he started at the slightest noise; if a gust of wind suddenly closed the door, he sprang up and leveling his rifle, seemed determined to repel intrusion; having recovered from his alarm, he again sat down, and went on with his repast. "Now," said he, speaking with his mouth full, "I must tax your kindness to the utmost. I am wounded in the thigh, and eight days have passed without ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... the doctrines of Leibnitz are far from being improvements, and the parts which he rejected are just the most characteristic and thoughtful of all. Such at least is the opinion of thinkers to-day, though this mutilation and leveling down of the most daring of Leibnitz's hypotheses was perhaps entirely advantageous for Wolff's impression on his contemporaries; what appeared questionable to him would no doubt have repelled them also. Leibnitz's two leading ideas, the theory of monads and the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... He never killed unless he could not avoid it; this was as much a part of his creed as his remorseless leveling of a blood-debt. He struck with the suit. Under a quick turn of the control, the great heavy bulk of fabric-joined metal lunged forward. The move was quick, but not quite quick enough, for just before the coolie was bowled headlong to the ground, he ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... In the Scottish conception of liberty, duties have always been rated as highly as rights; it has been a constructive, not a destructive formula; it has been an inspiration to raise men out of themselves, not to prompt them to indulge in antics of promiscuous leveling. The kind of democracy for which Scotsmen have deemed that the world should be made safe is a human brotherhood, indeed, but a brotherhood imbued with the generous rivalry of effort, the enthusiasm of emulous achievement, and not one of inglorious, ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... nater, nor mine, but it may be some folkses. Well, argy as you may, the place don't look the same, now does it? D'ye mind the houses they've finished off? Well they're leveling off the yards around 'em, and seedin' 'em to grass. Fact! I see it myself. And 'nother thing. They're filling up that old flat-iron place, where we used to cart rubbish to, and hauling trees to set out as they get it leveled down. If ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... old are no more. The brilliant defeat of Custer, by Sitting Bull and his braves, was their last grand rally against the resistless march of the sons of the Saxons. The plow-shares of a superior race are fast leveling the sacred mounds of their dead. But yesterday, the shores of our lakes and our rivers were dotted with their teepees, their light canoes glided over our waters, and their hunters chased the deer and the buffalo on the sites of our cities. To-day, they are not. Let us do justice to their ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... you are, Corbett!" said the sergeant, jumping up and leveling a paralo-ray gun at him. "You're ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... being enacted on the Pincetto, where the wholly separated resting-places of the "Upper Ten" protest so successfully against the leveling notion that in death all are equal, I might have suggested many a mordant epigram to the cynically-minded visitor. I fear that there is often something provocative of cynicism in sundry of the aspects of fashionable devotion, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... caught up in their own thoughts and in the barrage of demands they were leveling at Crowley to notice direction. It wasn't until they were already on the George Washington Bridge that Patricia blurted, "Don, this isn't ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... floor, were finished on the same day of the raising. A third day was commonly spent by a few carpenters in leveling off the floor, making a clapboard door and a table. This last was made of a split slab, and supported by four round legs set in auger-holes. Some three-legged stools were made in the same manner. Some pins stuck in the logs at the back of the house, supported some clapboards which served for ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... the light-colored stone so commonly used in France, and so easily wrought—with broad streets and, what is rare in French towns, convenient sidewalks. New streets are laid out, gardens are converted into building-lots, the process of leveling hills and filling up hollows is going on as in New York, the city is extending itself on every side, and large fortunes have been made by the rise in ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... a storm of stones and gravel and clay-dust!—not a mere shower either, but falling in black masses, darkening the heavens, vast enough to cover the world in many places hundreds of feet in thickness; leveling valleys, tearing away and grinding down hills, changing the whole aspect of the habitable globe. Without and above it roars the earthquaking voice of the terrible explosions; through the drifts of dbris glimpses are caught of the glaring and burning monster; ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... is intimidated by an apprehension of contingent consequences dependent on some act of his own to be done or forborne; the means of intimidation may act through the senses, or may appeal only to the intellect or the sensibilities. The sudden rush of an armed madman may frighten; the quiet leveling of a highwayman's pistol intimidates. A savage beast is intimidated by the keeper's whip. Employers may intimidate their employees from voting contrary to their will by threat of discharge; a mother may be intimidated through fear ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... in the South Central District continued steadily with no delay through lack of help, and when the canal was finished and the water ready, the men who had built it turned to making the ditches on their own claims, leveling their land for irrigation, preparing for the first crops and making what other improvements they could. Meanwhile the new townsite was laid out on the ground already occupied by the headquarters camp and the camp itself became ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... now leveling their pikes, advanced under cover of the smoke, and were soon hotly engaged with the opposite files of spearmen. Then came the charge of the cavalry, which—notwithstanding they were thrown into some disorder ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... turned themselves to bravely leveling with road-scrapers and teams the hummocks where the sagebrush grew, bringing in surveyors to strike the level for them in the river-shore, plotting ditches to carry the water to their fields. Many of them would falter before the fight was done; ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... by the tenacity of the people to the homely virtues of honesty and thrift, to their customs which testify to their home-loving character, and to their quaint costumes. It is a genuine delight to study and visit these lands, because they are the least, perhaps in Europe, affected by the leveling hand of cosmopolitan ideas. Go where you will,—to England, about Germany, down into Italy,—everywhere, the same monotonous sameness is growing more oppressive every year. But in Norway and Sweden there is still an ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... down the road, spattering the gravel under the big hoofs of the gray. Close at his heels rode two officers in Confederate gray uniforms, and a motley crowd of riders closed up the road behind. In an instant the guide and I were surrounded, the whole cavalcade leveling their guns at the thicket and calling on our companions, who could be plainly heard crashing through the bushes, to halt. The dress of but few of our captors could be seen, nearly all being covered with rubber talmas; but their mounts, including ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... spoke the truth," he said, returning the pistol to his belt, and again leveling the shot-gun. "Now, Mr. Thomson Tuttle, you've been a gentleman so far, and as long as you keep up that play you'll be all right. You won't be hurt if you don't make any breaks. Take down your hands and we'll go into camp and have ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... Manor years: she was always immeasurably older than such infants as Mammy Juliet and Uncle Scipio. And this also she remembered: that when these and all the others, including her grandfather and Japheth Pettigrass, were busily leveling all the barriers of restraint for her, she had built some of her own and set herself the task of ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... for his age, unusually active and remarkably direct mentally, therefore little adjustment was needed as he entered that usually leveling community—boy-school-life. He was generous and good- hearted to a lovable degree and with such qualities and advantages he early became, and remained, leader in his crowd. After his father died, the boy, not unnaturally, ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... jerks, and sometimes on the contrary, the plateau would reel and roll like a ship in a storm, coasting past abysses in which fragments of the mountain were falling, tearing up trees by the roots, and leveling, as if with the keen edge of an immense scythe, every projection of ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... object in its track will fail to feel its power for long distances; in other instances it will seem to act like a cannon-ball that plows up the earth on striking, then rises and strikes again, leaving the space between untouched. Sometimes it will go through a forest leveling the trees as though a gang of axemen had plied their tools on lines laid out by surveyors, nothing outside the track being touched; but again in similar windfalls there will be found occasional pockets ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... the downside, the government must deal with high rates of unemployment and poverty. Unemployment officially is 23.8%, but unofficial estimates place it closer to 40%. HIV/AIDS infection rates are the second highest in the world and threaten Botswana's impressive economic gains. An expected leveling off in diamond mining production ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... your hands and surrender," said an officer to a Texas cowboy, who had spurred an excitable horse until it was rearing and plunging in the street, leveling meanwhile a double-barreled shotgun ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... woman who had married her twenty-third husband, she being his twenty-first wife.[1254] Seneca said that the women reckoned the years by their husbands, not by the consuls.[1255] The women got equality by leveling downwards. "The new woman of Juvenal boldly claims a vicious freedom equal to her husband's."[1256] These cases belong to the degeneration of the mores at the period. As they are astonishing, we are in danger of giving them too much force in the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... ascents of the neighboring summits would be made. Here, on the great median moraine, stood a huge boulder of micaceous schist. Its upper surface projected so as to form a roof, and by closing it in on one side with a stone wall, leveling the floor by a judicious arrangement of flat slabs, and rigging a blanket in front to serve as a curtain across the entrance, the whole was presently transformed into a rude hut, where six persons could find sleeping-room. A recess, sheltered by the rock outside, served as kitchen and dining-room; ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... make out the group at the farther end of the gallery, as he stepped out; but he could hear the resounding crashes against the door into the north hall, each one of which seemed to be the last that even that massive frame could hold out against. Leveling his pistol at the group; he took aim, and fired; snatched another from his pocket, and fired a second time. Again, by good luck, the defender's shots had told. There was a thud on the gallery floor, and the besiegers scurried to cover ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... We fully recognize the relation which these words indicate. It is useless to quarrel with Nature, who has nowhere in the universe given us an example of the absolute, unqualified, dead-level equality which some pseudo-reformers have vainly endeavored to institute among men. Such leveling is neither possible nor desirable. Harmony is born of difference, ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... dark. Moon and stars still shed an abundant light for the flying horseman, and presently he caught fleeting glimpses through the trees of roofs that belonged to Winchester. Then two men in gray spring into the road, and, leveling their rifles, gave him ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... clearer elsewhere, the enforcement of standard wage rates in an industry is usually equivalent in practice to the enforcement of those rates that are already being paid by the better organized units of that industry.[82] This leveling process may have any or all of several consequences. It may cause enterprises which had succeeded in competing partly because they paid lower wages than more efficient enterprises for the same grade of labor either to improve their productive ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... yoke of Popery in religion; for you is reserved the honor of leveling the popery of politics. They opened the Bible to all, and maintained the capacity of every man to judge for himself in religion. Are we sufficient for the comprehension of the sublimest spiritual truths, and unequal ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... in his land! New and freer municipal organizations were given to the cities, enlarging the privileges of the citizens; schools and colleges were established; the awful punishment for debtors swept away. He was leveling up as well as leveling down—trying to create a great plateau of modern society, in which he alone towered high, ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... on the table. "Evidently several notable gentlemen in our state rise early, read the newspapers before breakfast, and are handy to telegraph offices," he remarked, leveling steady gaze at Stewart. "These telegrams are addressed to me, but by good rights they belong to you, Mister Mayor, I'm inclined ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... Mr. This nor Mr. That any longer, but a priest of the Church of England, as by law established. My poor Helen! She has thrown herself away upon a charlatan! And what will become of her money in the hands of a man with such leveling notions, ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... rulers; the proscription of a nobility that had ever lived in the kindliest relations with its tenantry; and on the ruins of old aristocratic and municipal institutions that had long guarded and sustained popular freedom, a coarse, leveling tyranny, sometimes democratic, sometimes imperial, established; in the church the oppression of the priesthood, a heartless religious indifferentism, undignified even by attempts at philosophic speculation, propagated and encouraged; and through the ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... possibility of building railroads in a country scarce of capital, and with immense stretches of very rough country to pass, in order to connect commercial centres, without the deep cuts, the tunneling and leveling which short curves might avoid. My contrivance ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... now ensued, as his archers fell headlong from the rocks, and his cavalry lay drowning before him, Lord Percy called up his infantry; they appeared, but though ten thousand strong, the determined Scots met their first ranks breast to breast; and leveling them with their companions, rushed on the rest with the force of a thunder-storm. It was at this period, that the signal was given from the horn of Wallace; and the division of Graham, meeting the retreating Southrons as they attempted to form behind the hill, completed their defeat. ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... had infested the roadways of this neighborhood, and who had rendered the highways impassable because of their depredations. Near Tarrytown, three of this party confronted a passing traveler, and leveling their muskets at him, ordered him to halt. They were obeyed on the instant, and because of the suspicious manner of the stranger, a complete search of him was made. The set of papers was found in their hiding place, and he was placed under arrest, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... regard to race, color or social condition, must take their turn exactly alike at the polling place. Each ballot has exactly the same weight in the election, and the ballot of the poorest man counts just as much as the ballot of the most influential citizen. The voting place is the leveling place, and when women realize that the exercise of suffrage gives not only the equal right to vote, but also allows equal expression of opinion, then the better purpose of woman suffrage will have been accomplished. This equality is not a condescension on the part of women, but it is ...
— Citizenship - A Manual for Voters • Emma Guy Cromwell
... quarrel which will have to be fought out sooner or later, and the sooner the better, say I. Although I am no man of war, and love looking after my falcons or giving food to my dogs far more than exchanging hard blows, yet would I gladly don the buff and steel coat to aid in leveling the keep of that robber and tyrant, Sir ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... movement of armies that they could march over the country in any direction almost as well as on the roads, the creeks and rivers being everywhere fordable, with little or no difficulty beyond that of leveling the approaches. ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... legal matters were attended to, the lumber company sometimes bought as much as seventy thousand acres of forest. Woodsmen were brought in to work along with the mountain men. Portable sawmills were set up and busy hands—sawyers, choppers—set to work leveling the ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... King and Pope may be termed the special feature of the last age of feudalism which preceded the Renaissance. It was thus that the necessary conditions and external circumstances were prepared. The organization of the five great nations, and the leveling of political and spiritual interests under political and spiritual despots, formed the prelude to that drama of liberty of which the Renaissance was the first act, the Reformation the second, the Revolution the third, and which we nations of the present are still ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... make the trip to the temples in the Malay jungle. Biskra was deadly, and Italy worse . . . vulgarity and commonness everywhere. What an absolutely dreary outlook wherever one turns one's eyes! There is no corner of the modern world that is not vulgar and common. Democracy has done its horrible leveling down with a ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... had seen three men on horseback: how he had noticed the sorrel with the white left forefoot and white nose; how he had seen Dr. Small; how, after his return, he had heard some one enter the house, and how he had recognized the horse the next morning. "There," said Ralph desperately, leveling his finger at Pete, "there is a man who will yet see the inside of a penitentiary, I shall not live to see it, but the rest of you will." Pete quailed. Ralph's speech could not of course break the force of the testimony against him. But it ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... Suddenly from the densest fold of the cloud the flash leaped out, quivering again and again down to the edge of the prairie; and at the same instant came the sharp burst and the long rolling peal of the thunder. A cool wind, filled with the smell of rain, just then overtook us, leveling the tall grass by ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... exacerbated by rapid population growth, industrial expansion, and increased water pollution. Private investment is critical to the modernization of the agricultural, energy, and export sectors. Oil production is leveling off, and the efforts of the nonoil sector to penetrate international markets have fallen short. Syria's inadequate infrastructure, outmoded technological base, and weak educational system make it vulnerable to future shocks and hamper competition with neighbors ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... crackling of branches draws attention to yonder tree which comes tumbling to the ground with a crash—others follow rapidly and the axmen's blows resound on every side. On yonder knoll a company of mowers are rapidly leveling the tall wheat. Here inside the fort an artillery officer is drilling a squad in artillery firing: and there a gang of contrabands, now for the first time, very likely, receiving wages for their labor judging by the spirit they ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... as rational? Physical life is only a simple balance of forces, the expenditure and nourishment corresponding exactly to demand and supply in the Science of Political Economy.[2] They tend continually to level themselves. Have we not the right to decide in which way the leveling shall be effected—the equation be formed? This is a simple solution of the difficulty. I suggest that this experiment be tried: let the girl study her extra time in the evening, if she desires, only being cautious ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... leveling her black eyes at him for a reply, but Mr. Wetherley, trying to regulate his hands, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... a very few moments every soldier was equipped with tools, which they began to use with unanimous energy and willingness during the greater part of the day. And it was truly wonderful to see those brave soldiers working untiringly, chopping heavy trees, digging and filling deep ravines, leveling stout barricades, all working diligently for that one aim which was to be the downfall ...
— The Battle of Bayan and Other Battles • James Edgar Allen
... his illustrious ancestor. His first act was to issue a charter confirming the Charter of Liberties or pledges of good government which his grandfather, Henry I, had made (S135). His next was to begin leveling to the ground the castles unlawfully built in Stephen's reign, which had caused such widespread misery to the country[3] (S141). He continued the work of demolition until it is said he destroyed no less than eleven hundred of ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... when he fell, which certainly was not a threatning posture. It may be supposd that he had as good Right to carry a Stick, even a Bludgeon, as the Soldier who shot him had, to be armd with Musquet & ball; & if he at any time lifted up his Weapon of Defence, it was surely not more than a Soldiers leveling his Gun at the Multitude chargd with Death - If he had killed a Soldier, he might have been hangd for it, & as a traitor too, for to attack a Soldier upon his post, was declared Treason; But the Soldier shot Attucks & killed him, & he was convicted of Man Slaughter! ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... the city woke! With what a rush of wonder in her streets, "Burr" of strained voices, earthquakes of feet, Tramping to rolling drums, The crowd swept to the Battery. Roofs were black with gazing folk in knots, Leveling their spyglasses Like phalanx spears, From sea ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... wrenched to fit into the Foote tradition. Ruth Frazer, his secretary, needed no alterations to conform to the tradition of HER family. This was the leveling tradition; the elevating of labor and the pulling down of capital until there was a dead level of equality—or, perhaps, with labor a bit in the saddle. Probably a remote ancestor of hers had been a member of an ancient guild; perhaps ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland |
