"Poise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or unsteady gait, but at a quick pace; the equilibrium of the body requiring to be kept up, either by touching the ground with the knuckles, first on one side then on the other, or by uplifting the arms so as to poise it. As with the Chimpanzee, the whole of the narrow, long sole of the foot is placed upon the ground at once and raised at once, without ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... the clear ivory pallor of complexion did her charm lie. Nor in the trim figure with its promising lines, nor in the poise of head nor pride of carriage, nor in the ready laughter that came to those quiet eyes. In no one particular quality of attraction did she excel. Rather was her charm the charm of the perfect agglomeration of all those characteristics which men find ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... he gazed away into nothing through slightly narrowed eyes. Vaguely, his attitude reminded her of a picture she had once seen of the Duke of Wellington; there was the same mastery, the same far vision, the same poise of self-contained power. His nose was not like the Iron Duke's, for young Cunningham's had rather more tolerance in its outline and less of Roman overbearing; but the eyes, and the mouth, and the angle ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... surrounding waste. Of night or loneliness it recks me not; I fear the dread events that dog them both, Lest some ill-greeting touch attempt the person Of our unowned sister. ELD. BRO. I do not, brother, Infer as if I thought my sister's state Secure without all doubt or controversy; Yet, where an equal poise of hope and fear Does arbitrate the event, my nature is That I incline to hope rather than fear, And gladly banish squint suspicion. My sister is not so defenceless left As you imagine; she has a hidden strength, ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... water underneath. Against the green palisade of reeds its veined and crystal wings scattered the sunlight into shining flakes. The blue upon its body burned—a patch of flaming beauty in mid-air. They watched it for a moment. Then, suddenly—it was gone, the spot was empty. But the speed, the poise, the perfect movement, the flashing wings, above all the flaming blue upon its tail still held them spellbound. Somehow, it seemed, they had borrowed that speed, that flashing beauty, making the loveliness part and parcel of themselves. Swiftly they turned and stared up at the Tramp. There was a ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... first place, that indefinable quality of taste, which means so much in portraiture. His was an unerring instinct for poise, drapery, color, and composition. Each of his figures seems to assume naturally an attitude of perfect grace; the draperies fall of their own accord in ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... indignation of a candid mind face to face with arrant knavery. But when he forced himself to consider the complacent Quimby he did not know what to think. His aspect of self-confidence equalled hers. Indeed, he showed the greater poise. Yet her tones rang true as ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... and so it is in grace; wherefore, notwithstanding what was said under the first head, it doth not follow, that if I be a child I must certainly know it, and also be able to call God, Father. Let the first, then, serve to poise and balance the confident ones, and let this be for the relief of those more feeble; for they that are children, whether they know it or no, have Jesus Christ for their Advocate, for Christ is assigned to be our Advocate by the Judge, by the King, by our God and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was beautiful. She was a deep-tinted blonde, with the calm poise of a lady who cooks butter cakes in a window. She stood behind her counter in the Biggest Store; and as you closed your hand over the tape-line for your glove measure you thought of Hebe; and as you looked again you wondered how she had ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... sudden devotion to parallel bars, ropes, the running track, and breathing exercises. But in time she did thoroughly appreciate the results of this physical training. Helen Chase Adams was never exactly "a marvel of grace"; but she was erect and supple, with considerable poise and dignity of bearing, when she ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... terrifying effect upon the auditor. The thought of God's displeasure is constantly dwelt upon—the idea of guilt, death and eternal torment. If the victims can be made to indulge in hysterical laughter occasionally, the control is better brought about. No chance is allowed for repose, poise or sane consideration. When the time seems ripe a general promise of joy is made and the music takes an adagio turn. The speaker's voice now tells of triumph—offers of forgiveness are tendered, and then the promise of ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... other, to argue, to grow heated and naturally from that to become angry. It seems a fatality of campers along a wild trail, like explorers in an unknown land, to be prone to fight. If there is an explanation of this singular fact, it must be that men at such time lose their poise and veneer of civilization; in brief, they go back. At all events we had it hot and heavy, with the center of attack gradually focusing on Jones, and as he was always losing something, naturally we united in force ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... was a blushing and sensitive person, she was not what is commonly called a diffident girl;—her nerves had that healthy, steady poise which gave her presence of mind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... their cream white teeth showing in smiles and their wide rolling eyes make a striking contrast to the rugged face and poise of the President.] ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... confidence, he must have been surprised at the revulsion of manner that greeted him. Kate recovered her poise—her coldness vanished, a smile broke through her reserve and her confused regret was promptly expressed: "Did I give you coffee out of the ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... all this Brian noted at the moment only that before him sat a girl-woman whose calm poise and confident power struck out at him like a vibrant presence. Like himself, she wore a cloak of dark red, but no steel jack glittered beneath it; there was a torque of ancient gold about her neck, and her hair was caught up and hidden ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... thoroughly feminine decision she tumbled off the gate, raced across the orchard and, having paused a moment to regain breath and poise, appeared casually at the office door. The office looked cool and empty; Bubble was not upon his official stool. Perhaps, after all, he had not heard the ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... the surf with a long narrow board and then sits astride of it upon the surface of the water. As the long billows come rolling in, he places his board upon the convex surface of an advancing wave, then, with the poise of a rope-dancer, he places his weight properly upon the plank and is shot ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... in a kind of befuddled astonishment. "You mean she really is a—" He stopped and brought his tenor voice to a squeaking halt, regained his professional poise, and began again. "I'd rather not discuss the patient in her presence, Mr. Malone," he said. "If you'll just come into ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... before Ramona Wadley that morning, but he was not in the least self-conscious now. In the course of a short and turbid life he had looked too many tough characters in the eye to let any mere man disturb his poise. ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... The plump little queen ate like a hungry dragoon. The royal cortege, enveloping the Swedish princess, returned to the palace of Compiegne. Several days were spent at Compiegne, during which she astonished every one by the remarkable self-poise of her character, her varied information, and the versatility of her talents. She conversed upon theology with the ecclesiastics, upon politics with the ministers, upon all branches of science and art with philosophers and the virtuosi, and eclipsed the most ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... following day the loneliness of the place was broken by the appearance of a great steamship, making for the anchorage with a lofty bearing. She was no Diego craft. I knew the sheer, the model, and the poise. I threw out my flag, and directly saw the Stars and Stripes flung to the ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... was handsome, for a Siamese; of medium stature, compact and symmetrical figure, and rather dark complexion. His conversation and deportment denoted the cultivation, delicacy, and graceful poise of an accomplished gentleman; and he delivered his English with a correctness and fluency very noticeably free from the peculiar spasmodic effort that marked his royal brother's exploits ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... harmony unheard; Fierce the dispute, whate'er the theme; while she, Fell Discord, arbitress of such debate, Perched on the sign-post, holds with even hand Her undecisive scales. In this she lays A weight of ignorance, in that, of pride, And smiles delighted with the eternal poise. Dire is the frequent curse and its twin sound The cheek-distending oath, not to be praised As ornamental, musical, polite, Like those which modern senators employ, Whose oath is rhetoric, and who swear for fame. Behold the schools in which plebeian minds, Once simple, are initiated ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... of opinion, from such opportunities to observe and compare as my constant travel has given me, that the quiet work of this gracious woman of the old school, with her dignity that nothing ever invaded and her poise that nothing ever disturbed, is perhaps the most powerful single influence that has come into the lives of the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... of quantity or degree.] Equality. — N. equality, parity, coextension[obs3], symmetry, balance, poise; evenness, monotony, level. equivalence; equipollence[obs3], equipoise, equilibrium, equiponderance[obs3]; par, quits, a wash; not a pin to choose; distinction without a difference, six of one and half a dozen of the other; tweedle dee and tweedle ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... hair showed indications of changing its tint. Its tendency was unmistakably toward brown. This was temporarily unfavourable, but a brightening of the blue eyes and a newly acquired poise of the head, with a step toward self-confidence in manner, ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... nought discerning throng Who are clamouring now 'gainst thee Long and loud, and strengthless we, Mighty chieftain, thou away, To withstand the gathering fray Flocking fowl with carping cry Seem they, lurking from thine eye, Till the royal eagle's poise Overawe the paltry noise Till before thy presence hushed Sudden ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... I a God? What other wing, If not a God's, could in the rounded sky Hang thus in solitary poise? What need, Ye proud Immortals, that my balanced plumes Should grow, like yonder eagle's, from the nest? It may be, ere my crafty father's line Sprang from Erectheus, some artificer, Who found you roaming wingless on the hills, Naked, asserting godship ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... first looked on her face, Mabel Lee Had seemed to his self sated nature to be, On life's troubled ocean, a beacon of light, To guide him safe out from the rocks and the night. Her calm soothed his passion; her peace gave him poise; She seemed like a silence in life's vulgar noise. He bathed in the light which her purity cast, And felt half absolved from the sins of the past. He longed in her mantle of goodness to hide And forget the whole world. By the incoming tide He talked ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... The perfect poise that comes-from self-control, The poetry of action, rhythmic, sweet— The unvexed music of the body and soul That the Greeks dreamed of, made at last complete. Our stumbling lives attain not such a bliss; Too often, while the air we ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... talked, and in them was just such a look of innocent, pleased wonder, as might be in a child's eyes, who had been told to leave studying and go pick violets. But as the Colonel ended he spoke, and the few words he said, the few questions he asked, were full of poise, of crisp directness. As the General volunteered a word or two, he turned to him and answered with a very charming deference, a respect that was yet full of gracious ease, the unconscious air of a man to ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... animals and plants, adapting themselves each to its own place in the universal order, they attain to beauty by force of being fit. That law of adaptation which shapes the wings of a swallow and prescribes the poise and elegance of the branches of trees is the same that demands symmetry in the corn-rick and convexity in the beer-barrel; the same that, exerting itself with matchless precision through the trained senses of haymakers and woodmen, ...
— Progress and History • Various
... offered to hold his horse, but he would not dismount, and sat his horse with grave dignity until Faye went out and in person invited him to come in and have a smoke. He is an Indian of striking personality—is rather tall, with square, broad shoulders, and the poise of his head tells one at once that he ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... taught us that certain attitudes of body, certain shades of countenance, certain gestures, tones of voice, spontaneous or willed actions, represent anger or joy, impatience or irritability, stern control or poise of mind. We realize that the average man has learned to conceal his mental reactions from the casual observer at will. But if we see him at an unguarded moment, we can very often get a fair idea of his mental attitude. Through these outward expressions we are able to judge ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... must simply paddle straight ahead. The adjustment is to be accomplished entirely by the poise of the body. You must prevent the capsize of your canoe when clinging to the angle of a wave by leaning to one side. The crucial moment, of course, is that during which the peak of the wave slips under you. In case of a breaking comber, thrust the flat ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... and hopelessly with the current; and any such mental tendency as this is just as surely a definite evil to be recognized and combated as would be any epidemic of disease. To rise in the morning confronting a day that is full of exacting demands on his best energies; on his serenest and sunniest poise; that require all the exhilaration and sparkle and radiance which have vanished from his possession, and yet to be forced, someway and somehow, to go through his appointed tasks,—no one can deny that here is a very real problem, and one that certainly taxes every conceivable ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... which each of these lines presents is the same and the principle governing the solution of each identical; balance by equalization of forces. Given a line which coincides with but one side of the picture it becomes necessary for the poise of the quadrilateral to cross it with an opposing line. The rectangular cross, though more positive and effective, is no more potential in securing this unity than the crossing of lines at a long angle. A series ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... situation, turned and fled after him in silence. Then the triumphant raccoons touched noses in brief congratulation, and presently moved off to their hunting as if nothing had happened. The wild kindred, as a rule, maintain a poise which the most extravagant adventures this side ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... speechless before the unexpected words of the Indian. The clenched fist fell to his side. The young man who stood there before him, with the straight proud poise of the savage chieftain, spoke the words of the white man's warfare, the warfare of the mart and of barter. He must be met and beaten on his own ground. Clearly, he had spoken to effect, and the rancher must justify his position before his fellow ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... class could not conceal the grace of form which health and activity had moulded, working through highly favoured generations. There was latent force implied in every line of it, and, in the steady poise of look and mien, that perfect nervous balance which ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... bronze? These no scientist, no discoverer, no leader of expeditions have ever borne into the light. No footprints along the trail can spell out for us his majestic mien, his stolid dignity, his triumphant courage, his inscrutable self-poise, and all of these dyed with a blood-red struggle for survival such as crowns no ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... her hand. "I don't believe we should be any happier if we did get away from them. I think it gives you some of your poise, having that anchor. You look," glancing down at her head and shoulders, "sometimes so ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... beautiful women that I have seen in years, Jewish or Christian, there's not one can compare with Leah Mordecai—such hair and such eyes are seldom given to woman. Helen says that her hair measures four feet in length! What a queenly poise to that elegant head! ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... her child, having all of Mr. Volrees' features. There were his dark chestnut hair, his large dark eyes, his nose, his lips, his poise and a dark brown stain beneath the left ear which had been a recurrence in the Volrees family for generations. The public was mystified as it was commonly understood that the marital relations had extended no farther than the marriage ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... turned his gaze to the face of the woman. He felt with all the power of intuition that his fate rested on her decision. But she was a woman. And she was, too, a true daughter of her father. A kindred spark leaped up in her own soul, and she met Dick's gaze. She noted his fearless poise, and she saw the gallant spirit in his eye. Then she ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... as one may know a brother. There was in her manner some subtle understanding of his mood. Her master saw it in the poise of her head, in the shift of her ears, and in her tender way of feeling for his hand. She, too, was looking right and left in the fields. There were the scenes of a boyhood, newly but forever gone. "That's where you overtook me on the way to school," said he to Phyllis, for so the tinker ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... century, and had established itself in western Sussex, where the Manor House of Hurlstone is perhaps the oldest inhabited building in the county. Something of his birth place seemed to cling to the man, and I never looked at his pale, keen face or the poise of his head without associating him with gray archways and mullioned windows and all the venerable wreckage of a feudal keep. Once or twice we drifted into talk, and I can remember that more than once he expressed a keen interest in my methods ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... possible that he, defiant of man and God, could languish under this dread of a midnight visitation or a discovery that never would be made. It was the reentering into the communal life that had upset his poise—or was it the influence of the woman, the softly pervasive, enervating influence? He came up against this thought with a dizzying impact and felt himself droop and sicken as one who is faced with a task for which ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... not over-looking. The Saxon grapples with the Celt, and the Norman forces the twain to do what the one would not dream of doing and what the other would dream beyond and never do. Do you catch me? Her most salient charm, is I think, her perfect poise, her ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... When Job perceived that his friends did not deal with him in an even spirit and orderly manner, he said that they forsook "the fear of the Almighty" (Job 6:14). For this fear keeps a man even in his words and judgment of things. It may be compared to the ballast of the ship, and to the poise of the balance of the scales; it keeps all even, and also makes us steer our course right with respect to the things that pertain to God ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... thrown from a mental balance, but this was one of the exceptions to a rule of conduct where poise was essential. His eyes half-closed in their clash with the coldly antagonistic orbs of his host. His instinctive dislike of the man flamed into open anger and he controlled ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... hill-enclosed. Only small coasting craft were there, mostly ketches; but we had topsail schooners also and barquantines, those ascending and aerial rigs that would be flamboyant but for the transverse spars of the foremast, giving one who scans them the proper apprehension of stability and poise. ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... First seized a ship on that contested strand; The same which dead Protesilaus bore,(242) The first that touch'd the unhappy Trojan shore: For this in arms the warring nations stood, And bathed their generous breasts with mutual blood. No room to poise the lance or bend the bow; But hand to hand, and man to man, they grow: Wounded, they wound; and seek each other's hearts With falchions, axes, swords, and shorten'd darts. The falchions ring, shields rattle, axes sound, Swords flash in air, or glitter on the ground; With streaming ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... exaggerated by a terrific nightmare. It pretty nearly pulled all the legs off me, and to this hour I cannot tell you if it is best to put your foot into a footmark—a young pond, I mean—about the size of the bottom of a Madeira work arm-chair, or whether you should poise yourself on the rim of the same, and stride forward to its other bank boldly and hopefully. The footmarks and the places where the elephants had been rolling were by now filled with water, and the mud underneath was in places hard and slippery. In spite ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... dissipated man of the night before. It was Hillars as I had seen him in the old days. But for his 19th century garb, he might have just stepped down from a frame—a gallant by Fortuny, who loved the awakened animal in man. The poise was careless, but graceful, and the smile was debonair. His eyes were holding Gretchen's. A ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... conversations had been made possible in sixty minutes. There are always girls in reserve for such explosive occasions, and when the hands of any operator are seen to tremble, and she has a warning red spot on each cheek, she is taken off and given a recess until she recovers her poise. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... this reason it is rather remarkable that the story, which is omitted from the Montessori system of education, is perhaps the most valuable means of effecting that sense-training, freedom, self-initiated play, repose, poise, and power of reflection, which are foundation stones of ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... sorrow that wrenched the heart strings of the parent? There was a strange look on his face and his massive frame trembled. But he quickly recovered his self-poise, and looking away from his child, fixed his ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... his professorship in Moscow, he composed a Concert Overture in C minor. To his surprise and disappointment, Rubinstein disapproved of the work in every way. This was a shock, after the lack of encouragement in St. Petersburg. But he recovered his poise, though he made up his mind to try his next work in St. Petersburg instead of Moscow. He called the new piece a Symphonic Poem, "Winter Daydreams," but it is now known as the First Symphony, Op. 13. About the end ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... bed and leaned his head on his hands, pressing his fingers against his throbbing temples. Half an hour passed; still he sat there trying to recover his mental poise; the terrible anger he had felt, combined with her last thrust, had shocked him out ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... Bannister, opening up a bewildering attack of criss-crosses, line plunges, cross-bucks, and tandems, from all of which the forward pass frequently developed; they literally overwhelmed a supposedly unbeatable team. And once they got the edge, it was hard for Bannister to regain poise and to smother the fast plays that swept through ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... over-anxious parent would have felt confident that Bet Baxter could look out for herself under any circumstances. Her straight young body had poise and assurance of power and she had a resourcefulness of mind that made her a ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... ancient Greeks," said Le Moine, "with the grace of accustomed nudity and the poise of the barefooted. You must not judge them by the present standards of Europe, but by the statues of Greece or Egypt. M'a'mselle Theater there in the brook would have been renowned in the Golden Age of Pericles. I ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... see, dear, that it's better for us we didn't? And that it would be better for you now if you would just resolutely look somewhere else? You must see yourself that you haven't the poise of people who are held—well, within the circle, if you choose to put it that way. There's something about being in that main body, having one's roots in the big common experiences, gives a calm which you have missed. That's why ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... Chaldeans to their tasks.— Are then regalities all gilded masks? No, there are throned seats unscalable But by a patient wing, a constant spell, Or by ethereal things that, unconfin'd, Can make a ladder of the eternal wind, And poise about in cloudy thunder-tents To watch the abysm-birth of elements. Aye, 'bove the withering of old-lipp'd Fate A thousand Powers keep religious state, 30 In water, fiery realm, and airy bourne; And, silent as a consecrated urn, Hold sphery sessions for a ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... dull mulberry Saxon habiliments. It was like the creation of a man from a lay figure. The jerk at the kilt-belt buckle somehow seemed to brace the sluggish spirit; his shoulders found their old square set above a well-curved back; his feet—his knees—by an instinct took a graceful poise they had never learned in the mean immersement of breeches and Linlithgow boots. As he fastened his buckled brogues, he hummed the words of MacMhaister ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... goodly of men, though you had for your model the most abject you must depend on him, and can depend on him for the structure of the human body, for its movement and poise. The proof of this is that Raphael used his pupils in his studies for the movements of the figures ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... votive on the altar of Leander's vigor and his agility, for as he scrambled about the crags he seemed, she was wont to say, to climb straight out of them. The recollection of all this—the lesser and unspiritual maternal values, perchance, but essential—surged over her with bitterness; she lost her poise, and fell a-bickering. ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... some years ago by self-appointed "divine healers" who succeeded the grasshopper crop. His outward vesture appeared to be kind of gunny-sacking, cut and made into a garment that would have made the fortune of a London tailor. His long, well-shaped fingers, delicate nose, and poise of manner raised him high above the class of hermits who fear water and bury money in oyster-cans in their caves in spots indicated by rude crosses chipped ...
— Options • O. Henry
... National Protective Association formed after the great Baltimore and Ohio strike in 1854; another was the Brotherhood of the Footboard, organized in Detroit after the bitter strike on the Michigan Central in 1862. Though born thus of industrial strife, this railroad union has nevertheless developed a poise and a conservatism which have been its greatest assets in the numerous controversies engaging its energies. No other union has had a more continuous and hardheaded leadership, and no other has won more universal respect both from the public and from ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... magnificence, he sent also poets and musicians to present his verses, with tent and pavilions royally gilt and hung with tapestry. When his verses came to be recited, the excellence of the delivery at first attracted the attention of the people; but when they afterwards came to poise the meanness of the composition, they first entered into disdain, and continuing to nettle their judgments, presently proceeded to fury, and ran to pull down and tear to pieces all his pavilions: and, that his chariots neither performed anything to purpose in the race, and that ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... "Certainly," said Keene, whose poise, if shaken at all, had returned, "certainly, you are right. It is not of my seeking, nor shall I be the one to keep it up. I am willing to let it pass. It is but a ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... of three small brothers and a weak-minded father gives a girl exceptional opportunities of cultivating poise under difficult conditions. It had become second nature with Mamie to keep her ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... neck and shoulder was exquisite, and her simple dress was admirably adapted to display the lines of her supple form. As she walked down the studio, setting her feet firmly and carrying her head with fine poise, Grant Herman felt the ghost of an old passion stir ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... should learn them afresh. And it is well, too, that we should not resist the rhythmic reaction bearing us now somewhat to the side of the Latin. Such a reaction is in some sort an ethical need for our day. We want to quell the exaggerated decision of monosyllables. We want the poise and the pause that imply vitality at times better than headstrong movement expresses it. And not the phrase only but the form of verse might render us timely service. The controlling couplet might stay with a touch a modern grief, as it ranged in order the sorrows of Canning for his son. But it ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... idea of the special character of her type of beauty. Here are the large lustrous eyes and the very delicately modelled, sensitive, refined features; here, the luxuriant hair, the slender neck, and the sloping shoulders; and here, the superb poise of head and of mind. There is another fine picture of her by Gainsborough, for this painter was one of the brilliant men who frequented her father's house at Bath. A musician he was, too, and an excellent performer on the violin, so was congenial ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... breakfast the next morning looking weary and haggard. Her face was very pale and her eyes were heavy. By night, however, she seemed to have regained something of her old poise. Covertly watching her, Grace noticed that for some unknown reason she was much subdued. Several days afterward she came to Grace and finally refused Anne's offer. "But are you quite certain that you are acting wisely, Miss Ward?" Grace asked in perplexed amazement. "Last winter ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... it all—something more than she admitted. He was tempted to ask definitely but second reflection brought the conviction that it would be a mistake, that it would be taking an unfair advantage. Sufficient unto the day—his present concern was to help her regain a normal mental poise. And to do that he must ignore half of what her suggestions seemed to imply. He felt her breakdown acutely, he must say nothing that would add to her distress of mind. It was better to appear obtuse than to concur too heartily in fears, ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... to some extent appropriated for war purposes, and delicate diplomatic questions are forced upon the neutral nations. Just at this time, when these questions are most acute, the belligerent Governments are least able to deal with them with the calmness and poise which their ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... and stars, as profane spectra:—a company of the blind, beseeching those they lead to remain blind also. "The heavens and the lights that rule them are untrue; the laws of creation are treacherous; the poles of the earth are out of poise. But we are true. Light is in us only. Shut your eyes close and fast, and we will ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... impressions of it. This had happened so often that it had come to be a sort of joke between them. But now Fulkerson clearly meant business, and March had a struggle to maintain himself in a firm poise ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the General, folding the thin letter reverently with hands that trembled; 'but I feel surer and surer—my heart tells me that the little boy Paul Fife must be my own flesh and blood. He is Miguel Sarreco's very image: the same haughty poise of the head, and lean, sinewy body; but when he speaks, the voice is my son's, and the curve of the ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... invisible trail until she was beside him on the hard earth. It required no little skill on her part, for when she withdrew her foot from her stirrup, and was obliged not only to hold her own poise, but to take care of Dot, her task became delicate and difficult. But the little one behaved like a heroine. She did not speak or stir, through fear of disturbing her parent, and was as relieved as both when the current was ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... bird rather than a cat. There was nothing in her of the feline grace of which we hear so much. Her movements were all direct and rapid; her feet seemed to skim, not to tread, the ground with an airy poise, which even when she stood still implied movement, always light, untiring, full of energy and impulse. Her eyes were gray—if it is possible to call by the name of the dullest of tints those two globes of light, now dark, now golden, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... was to gather her sister up in her arms and kiss her. But the faint ironic smile on Portia's fine lips, the twist of her eyebrows, the poise of her body as she sat up in bed watching the blue-brown smoke rising in a straight thin line from her diminishing cigarette, combined to make such a demonstration ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... trim little figure in loosely-fitting outing clothes striding across the floor. Facing the light which streamed in from the open door, he could not distinguish the newcomer's face. He only noted the ease of the stranger's movements, the poise of the uptilted head and the nervous manner with which the Italians fell away before the ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... stores, the risk of loss is proportionately increased, and we are only the more exposed to the malice of hostile fortune: when we think upon all this, every heart which is not dead to feeling must be overpowered by an inexpressible melancholy, for which there is no other counter-poise than the consciousness of a vocation transcending the limits of this earthly life. This is the tragic tone of mind; and when the thought of the possible issues out of the mind as a living reality, when this tone pervades ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... stood behind you as you sat, uncrowned and expectant before the mirror, she would poise the hat four inches above your head, holding it in the tips of her fingers, a precious, fragile thing. Your fascinated eyes were held by it, and your breath as well. Then down it descended, slowly, slowly. A quick pressure. ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... summon all his power to poise and steady the pen, but his hand shook, his fingers loosened, and it fell upon the document, making two or three blots there and another on the bed-covering, whither it rolled. He groped faintly for it, ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... through ditches, twist through vines, putting out a hand every now and then to feel whether the bunch of leaves at their back is in place. They were certainly no beauties, but there was a charm in their light, soft step, in the swaying of their hips, in the dainty poise of their slim ankles and feet, and the softness and harmony of all their movements. And the light playing on their dark, velvety, shining bodies increased this charm, until one almost forgot the many defects, the dirt, the sores, the disease. This pleasant walk in the cool, dewy ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... eyes, took no note for the moment that Field remained so silent. Out at the front the excitement increased. Out through the veil of surging warriors, the loud-voiced, impetuous brave twice burst his way, and seemed at one and the same time, in his superb poise and gesturings, to be urging the entire body to join him in instant assault on the troops, and hurling taunt and anathema on the besieged. Whoever he was, he was in a veritable fury. As many as half of the ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... be of that way of thinking, young woman.—Dick, there's a sort of murderous, viperine suggestion in the poise of the head that I don't ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... allies;—and Life forlorn, Yet patient, droops, nor breathes repinings vain; But now, Usurper, thou hast madly torn From Summer's hand his stores of angry sway; His rattling thunders with thy winds unite, On thy pale snows those livid lightnings play, That pour their deathful splendors o'er his night, To poise the pleasures of his golden day, Soft gales, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... heroic by nature, and quickly recovered her poise. When she arrived at home she sent the nurse to Charles Town on an errand, then went directly to her bedroom, which was disconnected from the other rooms, and called her three devoted maids, Rebecca, Flora, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... graceful spars Poise aloft in the air, And at the mast-head, White, blue, and red, A flag unrolls the stripes and stars. Ah! when the wanderer, lonely, friendless, In foreign harbors shall behold That flag unrolled, 'T will be as a friendly hand Stretched out ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... if something is added or subtracted, something is subtracted or added, so long as there is life. Judith got her poise again in time, as strong natures do after any death; with some fibres weakened past mending, gray, but calm. If his side of her nature was stunted, she seemed to blossom all the more richly in other ways. She loved her children in proportion ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... saying now with admirable poise, in answer to her question, "I haven't visited your wonderful Golden Gate, but I hope to go there some day—with you!" he added. His words were simple; the accent alone made them sound formidable; it seemed to convey an impregnable purpose, one not ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... her gaze so seriously that she blushed before she could recover her poise. He saw ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... Poise was returning to both men. "There could be other attempts, though, in the next few years." He scowled. "I think we should arm the Station. A couple of laser guns, if nothing else. We can say it's for protection ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... evening. The glory of the dawning day, with its golden clouds and its dewy freshness, its new awakened hopes and its unworn vigour, climbs by silent, inevitable stages to the hot noon. But its ardours flame but for a moment; but for a moment does the sun poise itself on the meridian line, and the short shadow point to the pole. The inexorable revolution goes on, and in due time come the mists and dying purples of evening and the blackness of night. The same progress which brings April's perfumes burns them in the censer of the hot summer, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... is Libra, House of Marriage; that all-important relation which may make or mar a life, the Balance is so easily disturbed in its equilibrium. To preserve its harmony, equality must reign, blending love and wisdom. It is the perfect poise of body, mind, and soul, achieved by loving obedience to the higher laws of our being and the true ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... splash. This in itself was nothing remarkable, as such things are of frequent occurrence in the great order of things, and the tooth of time easily could have gnawed away the few crumbs of earth that held the stone in poise. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... kite, no longer held in poise against the wind, commenced darting hither and thither; at each turn descending lower and lower— until by one last swoop, in which it seemed to concentrate all its failing strength, it came down towards Ossaroo like a gigantic bird of prey ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... blossom, Breezy, abundant, good for human joys; Oriole has touched the burning secret Poppies hide with their deliberate poise. ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... Jimsy from here when he comes by from football practice, and call him in. I just didn't happen to go to watch practice to-day, and now"—she smiled at him,—"I'm glad I didn't." There was something intensely pitiful about this lad to her mothering young heart, for all his poise and pride. ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... a hat in summer," and Dolly tossed back her golden curls and looked at the man steadily. Her sleep had refreshed her somewhat, and she had recovered her poise. Her determination was still unshaken and she had every intention of going on that ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... inmost self, however, she is proud. When first this pride is touched, then hurt, and finally the very woman in her is mortally wounded, it is at once perceptible that she descends from the strong, wild women of olden times. The wildness has become resolution, the pride has become poise, the strength has remained unchanged. She plays with life and death like the heroes of a thousand years ago. She faces death without flinching, and despite all her goodness, her delicacy, her kindly love for the old and the young, for the humble and the poor, for animals and plants, ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... simplicity of her attire proved that, and moreover she was accompanied by a French maid to whom she spoke French in a manner which testified that before acquiring the French maid she had been in the custody of a French nurse. She possessed poise. For the rest, she had wonderful jet-black hair, violet eyes, and milk-white skin, a correct nose but a somewhat generous mouth, Bryce guessed she was twenty or twenty-one years old and that she had a temper susceptible of being aroused. ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... before eight o'clock, a thin upright figure in hard straw hat and grey flannel clothes, walking with the indescribable loose poise of the soldier Englishman, with that air, different from the French, German, what not, because of shoulders ever asserting, through their drill, the right to put on mufti; with that perfectly quiet and modest air of knowing that, whatever might ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... middle, her right hand laid flat over her left in her lap. Her vocabulary was choice. For a second, when she referred to winter sports at Lake Placid, she forgot herself and tucked one smooth, silk-clad, un-mid-Victorian leg under her, but instantly she recovered her poise of a vicarage, remarking, "I have been subject to very careless influences lately." She called him neither "Carl" nor "Mr. Ericson" nor anything else, and he dared not ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... she took out of a box a broad white straw hat, like an oyster shell, with a silver-grey ribbon, and a sweeping ostrich feather.. She looked at it a moment, blew on it, plucked at its ribbon, lifted it over her head, held it at poise there, dropped it gently on to her hair, stood back from the glass to see it, and finally tore it off and sent it ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... credulity. The Protestant labors of Frederick Spanheim (Historia Imaginum restituta) and James Basnage (Hist. des Eglises Reformees, tom. ii. l. xxiiii. p. 1339-1385) are cast into the Iconoclast scale. With this mutual aid, and opposite tendency, it is easy for us to poise the balance with philosophic indifference. * Note: Compare Schlosser, Geschichte der Bilder-sturmender Kaiser, Frankfurt am-Main 1812 a book ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Miss Stewart! 'Ave a care! She's a snappy one," warned Dawson with bristling importance as he turned from settling Is-a-bel Boylston upon a big, white, heavy-footed horse, where she managed to keep her place with all the grace of outline and poise of a ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... more than ever the chaste and well- ordered adornments of a noble character. She was as vivacious and sparkling as if she had never known the restraints of school, but without extravagance of any kind to detract from her self-poise. In short, she was a symphony, a grand and harmonious composition, and still human enough to love a mortal like me. Such was the woman who was trying to instill into my wooing a little of the warmth and sympathy of her delightful nature. As for myself, it ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... Louvre will recall the bust of the Empress Faustina. It stands near the entrance, coercing the idler to remove his hat; to stop a moment, to gaze and dream. The face differs from that which Mr. Swinburne has described. In the poise of the head, in the expression of the lips, particularly in the features which, save the low brow, are not of the Roman type, there is a commingling of just that loveliness and melancholy which must have come to Psyche when she lost her god. ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... indoor aspect, with her unique and perfect manner of sitting still; now he saw that her beauty was of that rare kind that is most beautiful in movement. He would have liked that walk to last for ever, for the pure pleasure of following, now the delicate poise of her head, now the faint ripple of her shoulders under her thin coat, now the lines of her skirt breaking and flowing with the almost ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... himself all the time, and trying to keep the eyes of the world upon him. But it is all growth really, though sometimes, as on the beach when the tide is coming in, the waves seem to draw backward from the land, and poise themselves in a crest of ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mental condition; either influences the other. Agitation makes us catch our breath, and sadness makes us sigh. Conversely, slow, even breathing calms mental agitation. It is not without reason that, in the East, breathing exercises are used as a means of cultivating mental poise and as ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... may as well be ten times a sinner: a bad job anyhow. If in his moments of reflection—these being not yet wholly crowded out from his life—there comes a shadowy hope of better things, of some moral poise that should be in keeping with the tenderer recollections of his boyhood,—all this can never come, (he bethinks himself, in view of his old teaching,) except on the heel of some terrible conviction of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... is Natalie de Santos. The steady self-poise of her nature prevents even a breath of scandal. Frank, daring, and open in her pleasures, she individualizes no swain, she encourages no one sighing lover. Her name needs no defence save the open record of her social life. A solid, undisturbed ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... should succeed so quickly, so easily, even with the help of one so powerful as Helen Merival. It is my fate to work for what I get." And with this return of his belief that to himself alone he must look for victory, his self-poise and ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... know, by measure Of their observant toil, the enemies' weight— Why, this hath not a finger's dignity. They call this bed-work, mappery, closet-war: So that the ram, that batters down the wall, For the great swing and rudeness of his poise, They place before his hand that made the engine, Or those that with the fineness of their souls ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... of its novelty appears. As the argument stands it reminds one of Lowell's remark in relation to this style of criticism: "Scarce one but was satisfied that his ten finger tips were a sufficient key to those astronomic wonders of poise and counterpoise ... in his metres; scarce one but thought he could gauge like an ale-firkin that intuition whose edging shallows may have been sounded, but whose abysses, stretching down amid the sunless roots of Being and ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... sands, o'er gulf and bay, O'er Ganges and o'er Himalay, Bird-like I fly, and flying sing, To flowery kingdoms of Cathay, And bird-like poise on balanced wing Above the town of King-te-tching, A burning town, or seeming so,— Three thousand furnaces that glow Incessantly, and fill the air With smoke uprising, gyre on gyre And painted by the lurid glare, Of jets ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... was a battlefield of conflicting emotions this evening. Just for a moment she had been shaken out of her usual poise, had spoken warmly, as a normal woman might have done; yet both Iris who loved her, and Anstice who had studied her, knew that this warmer manner, this apparent freedom of speech, was in reality the outward sign of some inward disturbance; and both guessed, vaguely, ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... itself in his outward bearing. He does not shuffle; he is not either obsequious or impudent. Even when he acknowledges the white man's divinity and pays it appropriate respect, he does not lose the poise of his own well-worked-out attitude toward life and ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... chance for happiness twice in a lifetime. I did not believe there was such a woman in the world. You may laugh and say that is the way all lovers talk. I answer emphatically, No. I have not yet lost my poise, and I never was a predestined lover. I might easily have gone through life and never given to these subjects an hour's thought. Even now I could quietly decide to go away and take up my old life as I left it. ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... to remember further having proved vain, Lollie, far from being embarrassed, bowed low again with the poise of one who has recited brilliantly, and took his seat amid the ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... frigid, trying to think of many pleasant things, and wondering whether she would really succeed in being entertaining. Cowperwood accompanied her, a very different person in so far as mood and self-poise were concerned. To himself his own future was always secure, and that of Aileen's if he wished to make it so. The arduous, upward-ascending rungs of the social ladder that were troubling her had no such significance ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... man; his figure had nothing imposing; but the child's heart went after him down the avenue. His face had so much of the strength and the sweetness and the beauty of goodness, that it attracted inevitably those who saw it; there was a look of self-poise and calm which as surely invited trust; truth and power were in the face, to such a degree that it is not wonderful a child's heart, or an older person's, for that matter, should be won and his confidence given ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... should have known he was a "personality." His high-bred features were those of a maker of history, of a man who has faced the ruin of his own ambitions; who has seen his emperor deposed and his dynasty shattered; but who has lost not one whit of his poise or self-esteem. He carried himself with a quiet dignity, and there was a royal courtesy in his greeting which inspired profound respect. Had he been marked for death in the revolution I am sure that he would have received his executioners in the same calm way that he met us in the reception ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... autocrat's appearance. The old buffalo-head, with its shaggy white hair and beard, did not seem to have the poise of former times; the cheeks were hollow, and the whole body thinner. But the eyes, burning as of old, looked fiercely out from under their beetling white brows. Evidently, the grief over Jean's disappearance had eaten away the body, although the spirit burned like ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... Exercise upon the Personal Appearance. Judicious and systematic exercise, if moderately employed, soon gives a more upright and symmetrical figure, and an easier and more graceful carriage. Rounded shoulders become square, the awkward gait disappears, and there is seen a graceful poise to the head and a bearing of the body which mark those whose muscles have been well trained. A perfectly formed skeleton and well-developed muscles give the graceful contour and perfect outline to the human body. The lean, soft limbs of those who have never had any physical education, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... stalwart man whose face was full of the serenity that comes from breadth and poise, but whose mind, as she herself knew well enough, was too habituated to the broad treatment of big matters to have any aptitude for repartee and chatter. She liked to disconcert him, and it was usually an easy thing to do. "And I wish, while you ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... question of reconciling three vast and partially contradictory streams of thought, the one panacea of Education leaps to the lips of all; such human training as will best use the labor of all men without enslaving or brutalizing; such training as will give us poise to encourage the prejudices that bulwark society, and stamp out those that in sheer barbarity deafen us to the wail of prisoned souls within the Veil, and the mounting ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... hens are all Presbyterians at heart, in spite of the fact that her roosters are Mormons. The Major likewise insists that you couldn't possibly hope to know the real Judge Hammond Mayne unless you knew his pet cats. You admire that calm and imperturbable dignity, that sphinxlike and yet vigilant poise of bearing which has made Judge Mayne so notable an ornament of the bench? It is purely feline: "He caught it from his cats, suh: he caught every God-blessed bit of it from ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... own were adroitly stuffed into them; nor were letters, arts, and sciences neglected, nor the mundane and social patter, accomplishments, and refinements, including poise, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... feet of the baby beat across the grass The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind, They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water; And the sight of their white play among the grass Is like a little robin's song, winsome, Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower For a moment, then away with ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... exquisitely wrought, and performing the most delicate and sacred functions which God has ever entrusted to a created being, is disturbed by disease, when the nicely-adjusted balance of her complex nature deviates from its true and intended poise, the most efficient aid should be extended, in order that the normal equilibrium may be regained, her health restored, and her divine mission, on which human welfare so largely depends, be fulfilled. Its importance should elicit the best ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... puff of tobacco smoke instantly retards the rate. To induce further retardation a depressing drug is next applied. The growth gradually comes to a stop and the quiescent of the spot of light shows life in a state of suspense. The plant is now hovering in an unstable poise between life and death, a slight tilt one way, and life gets interlocked in the rigidity of death. But the antidote is applied just in time, the torpor and suspense is over, and life renews her activity once ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... haven't got no sort of affection for the lady. My trouble is that she puts me out of countenance, and I can't fit her in as an antagonist. I guess we Americans haven't got the right poise for dealing with that kind of female. We've exalted our womenfolk into little tin gods, and at the same time left them out of the real business of life. Consequently, when we strike one playing the biggest kind of man's game we can't place her. We aren't used to regarding ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... unusual luxury had been offered the roustabouts and idlers of the steam-boat landings, and many had bought and eaten freely of the very small, round, shiny, sugary, and artificially crimson roasted apples, with neatly whittled white-pine stems to poise them on as they were lifted to the consumer's watering teeth. When, the next morning Richling laughed at the story, the Italian drew out two dollars and a half, and began to take ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... He was completely intrigued by her. Her performance in "The Zingara" had led him to expect a girl of much more poise and finish, and yet with all her rawness she was far from naive. His own experience recognized hers; both had lived in the world's squalid byways; he could have talked to her in their language and she would have understood. But ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... own, but that hers glowed with the light of triumph, and his burned with the agonised protest of the vanquished. At such times there was somewhat of fear in the glances that followed her beauty, which almost seemed to blaze—her colour was so rich, the curve of her red mouth so imperial, the poise of her head, with its loosening coils of ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... singularly, a more even poise. There was never a fighter who was not a nervous man; there was never a fighter who in a ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... a relative, who had probably gone back to Salem, after seeing the young man at Brunswick, with a eulogy on his lips. Hawthorne's modesty held too delicate a poise to bear a hint of praise, before he had yet been put to the test or accomplished anything decisive. In some ways this modesty and shyness may have postponed his success as an author; yet it was this same delicate admixture which precipitated and made perfect the mysterious ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... open she possessed the beauty of perfect health. Her brown cheeks glowed like old gold from the pulsing of rich blood. An athletic poise of her shoulders and carriage of head added grace to ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... brain to discover whether it was her coloring or her form that impressed me most. Fruitless speculation! Seriously, I think it was neither; it was her movement. She walks a queen. It was the conscious poise of her head, the unconscious "hang" of her arms, the careless grace and dignity with which she lingered along the garden-path, smelling a red red rose! She has very little to say, apparently; but when she speaks, it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... laird had carefully levelled the gun that surmounted the great gate. Everything depended now on the skill with which he had aimed it. He gave the foe a minute or two to fix and point their weapon, and once more carefully calculated the poise of his own. Then, just as they were proceeding to load, and the horsemen were preparing to follow up the attack on the gate, he applied the match, and with a mighty roar the ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receives its designation (pitchpoling) from its being likened to that preliminary up-and-down poise of the whale-lance, in the exercise called pitchpoling, previously described. By this motion the whale must best and most comprehensively view whatever ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... about him. His face, with its clear brow, firmly moulded chin, and brown moustache, was that of a man who understood himself as well as music. His figure, in its faultless evening dress, had the tranquil poise and force of one who obeys the customs of society in order to be free to give his mind to other things. With slight motions, easy and graceful as if they came without thought and required no effort, his right hand, with the little baton, gave the time and rhythm, commanding ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... venu Petit et grant, jone et chenu, Il vos est trop bien avenu Sachiez de voir; Je ne vos vueil pas decevoir Bien le porroz apercevoir Ainz que m'en voise. Asiez vos, ne fetes noise Si escotez s'il ne vos poise Je sui ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... understood as never before the beauty of calm—calm of the nerves, calm of the body, calm of the mind, the heart and the soul; peace physical, intellectual and moral. In looking at the Hermes they saw, or seemed to themselves to see, the goal, what struggling humanity is meant for—the perfect poise, all faculties under ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... fine poise of the man—the entire absence of "nerves," as often shown in the savage—seemed to carry out the idea that his was a peculiar pedigree. In his youth, when his hair was as black as the raven's wing and coarse as a horse-tail, and his complexion ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... fresh young woman were going in to do her shopping, he hailed her, and reined in his horse, and picked her up. Then he was glad to have her near him, his eyes shone, his voice, laughing, teasing in a warm fashion, made the poise of her head more beautiful, her blood ran quicker. They were both stimulated, the morning ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... tall, there was something exhilarating in the way this new couple swung along, holding their heads up, turning towards each other, to exchange words or smiles. Even at that distance they could be seen to be of high fashion; in their gait was the almost insolent poise of those who are above doubts and cares, certain of the world and of themselves. The girl's dress was tawny brown, her hair and hat too of the same hue, and the pursuing sunlight endowed her with a hazy splendour. Then, Courtier saw who they ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
