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Stimulus   Listen
noun
Stimulus  n.  (pl. stimuli)  
1.
A goad; hence, something that rouses the mind or spirits; an incentive; as, the hope of gain is a powerful stimulus to labor and action.
2.
That which excites or produces a temporary increase of vital action, either in the whole organism or in any of its parts; especially (Physiol.), any substance or agent capable of evoking the activity of a nerve or irritable muscle, or capable of producing an impression upon a sensory organ or more particularly upon its specific end organ. Note: Of the stimuli applied to the sensory apparatus, physiologists distinguish two kinds: (a) Homologous stimuli, which act only upon the end organ, and for whose action the sense organs are especially adapted, as the rods and cones of the retina for the vibrations of the either. (b) Heterologous stimuli, which are mechanical, chemical, electrical, etc., and act upon the nervous elements of the sensory apparatus along their entire course, producing, for example, the flash of light beheld when the eye is struck.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stimulus" Quotes from Famous Books



... employed in studying the geography of the Archipelago, the productions of the islands, the habits and manners of the people, and more particularly the Malay language, which I knew, in order to obtain my object, it would be important for me to speak well. With so powerful a stimulus, aided by a Malay seaman on board, I acquired a fair knowledge of it with great rapidity. I also studied Dutch, which I knew I should ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... it had ceased to be the dwelling-house of a real farm) was an eccentric old miser, the chief object of whose existence seemed to be to thwart any attempt to pry into the daily details of it. What manner of stimulus this was to boyish curiosity needs no explanation, ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... creative return of the child may sometimes take the form of objectification or representation. The Steadfast Tin Soldier is a model of the literary fairy tale which gives a stimulus to the child to represent his fairy tale objectively. As straightforward narrative it ranks high. Its very first clause is the child's point of view: "There were five and twenty tin soldiers"; for the child counts his soldiers. Certainly ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready

... of fear—then cold quiet of the nerves. He was surprised at himself. He found himself stepping into whatever adventure lay toward him with the lifting of the spirits. It was a stimulus. ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... in self-government of the isolated people beyond the mountains, and the ability they had already demonstrated in the organization of "associations," received a strong stimulus on June 2, 1784, when the legislature of North Carolina ceded to the Congress of the United States the title which that state possessed to the land west of the Alleghanies. Among the terms of the Cession Act were these conditions: that the ceded territory should be formed into a separate ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson

... direct instruction in the school-room. In a little memoir of John Allen, published in the "Annual Monitor," we read, "In the domestic circle, the tender, watchful care and sympathy of the parent were blended with the constant stimulus to self-improvement of the teacher; and the readiness to sacrifice personal ease and convenience, in order that he might enter into the pursuits and amusements of his children, was united with ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall

... deceased author proceeds to tell his Traveller how to eat and drink; and remarks, "that people are apt to imagine that they may indulge a little more in high living when on a journey. Travelling itself, however, acts as a stimulus; therefore less nourishment is required than in a state of rest. What you might not consider intemperate at home, may occasion violent irritation, fatal inflammations, &c., in situations where you are least able to obtain ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... of 1846-1849 which supplied the movement for distributive cooperation with the needed stimulus, especially in New England. Although the matter was discussed in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and even as far west as Ohio and Illinois, yet in none of the industrial centers of these States, except perhaps in New York, was it ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... astonishment at the profound immobility of the prey before my eyes. In the other victims with flexible skins, Caterpillars, Crickets, Mantes, Ephippigers, I perceived at least some pulsations of the abdomen, a few feeble contortions under the stimulus of a needle. There is nothing of the sort here, nothing but absolute inertia, except in the head, where I see, from time to time, the mouth-parts open and close, the palpi give a tremor, the short ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... women. Intellectually, they are very apt to leave life where they begin it. Socially, they become dead for years before they die. The inhabitants of a city can have but a poor apprehension of the amount of enjoyment and development that comes to them through social stimulus. Like gold, humanity becomes bright by friction, and grows dim for lack of it. So, we say, the farmer's life and home can never be what they should be,—can never be attractive by the side of other life containing a true social element,—until they have become more social. The individual ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... make a comparison between my Clarissa for a woman, and thy Lovelace for a man. For her FAMILY; that was not known to its country a century ago: and I hate them all but her. Have I not cause?—For her FORTUNE; fortune, thou knowest, was ever a stimulus with me; and this for reasons not ignoble. Do not girls of fortune adorn themselves on purpose to engage our attention? Seek they not to draw us into their snares? Depend they not, generally, upon their fortunes, in the views they have upon us, more than on their merits? ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... for an increase are at hand is felt in popular apprehension to call for explanation, and unworthy motives of miserliness are imputed to those who fall short in this respect. A prompt response to the stimulus, on the other hand, is accepted as the normal effect. This suggests that the standard of expenditure which commonly guides our efforts is not the average, ordinary expenditure already achieved; it is an ideal of consumption that lies just ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... products of wealth and noble leisure. And it could be easily explained how it was that architecture and music were the first of the arts to develop. Architecture necessarily and at once received a strong stimulus from the needs of a commonwealth of a novel and comprehensive character; and in the case of Freeland the influence of the grand yet charming nature of the country was unmistakable. On the other hand, music is the earliest of all forms of art—that ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... encouraged and assisted emigration to New France. Whole shiploads of settlers were at times gathered and sent to Quebec. The seigneurs, by the terms of their grants, should have been active in this work; but very few of them took any share in it. Nearly the entire task of applying a stimulus to emigration was thrust on the king and his officials at home. Year after gear the governor and intendant grew increasingly urgent in repeated requests for more settlers, until a rebuke arrived in ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro

... the community. But Roman dominion had destroyed patriotism as a guiding principle of life, and thus in every way the minds of men were left in a sceptical, unsatisfied state,—craving after a new theory of life, and craving after a new stimulus to right action. Obviously the only theology which could now be satisfactory to philosophy or to common-sense was some form of monotheism;—some system of doctrines which should represent all men ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... who had been walking to and fro, during the preceding controversy, "as you seem to agree so ill with each other, I trust you will unite in adopting my course. Let us begin with this cordial; we will then vary the stimulus, if necessary, by means of the elixir, and you will see the salutary effects immediately. A loss of blood would still farther increase the debility of the patient; and I appeal to your candour, Dr. Shuro, whether you ever practised ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... which infused life and confidence into our infant navy and contributed as much as any exploit in its history to elevate our national character. Public gratitude, therefore, stamps her seal upon it, and the meed should not be withheld which may hereafter operate as a stimulus ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro

... more than any other," said the Wheel statelily. "I am not aware that my department requires the stimulus of external pressure to keep it up to its duties. I trust I have the elementary instincts of ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... there must always linger in the background of her mind a sense of dread. In spite of this, she determined to make the most of her opportunity. Bo was a stimulus. And so Helen spent the rest of that day riding ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... anxiety and the weariness of a prolonged search after a near relative would have prevented my taking any interest in or paying any regard to the little matters around me. Perhaps it had just the contrary effect, and acted like a diffused stimulus upon the attention. When all the faculties are wide-awake in pursuit of a single object, or fixed in the spasm of an absorbing emotion, they are oftentimes clairvoyant in a marvellous degree in respect to many collateral things, as Wordsworth has so forcibly illustrated in ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... course. It does not appear to interest or please him at all. Nothing arouses him, but when they do wrong, and that only excites him to anger and frowns. Now, in such a case, there can of course be no stimulus to effort on the part of the pupils, but the cold and ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... brethren, if we think of all that is given to us in God's Gospel in the way of stimulus and encouragement, and exhortation, and actual communication of powers, we may calculate, from the abundance of the resources, how great will be the strain upon us before we come to the end, and our 'feet stand within thy gates, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... labor of finding new stimulus for the appetite—daily more gross—of this tyrannous mob, we may count as lost, beyond any hope, the artists who are dull, docile, or distressed enough to submit to its demands; and we may count the dull and the distressed by ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... standard. It is true that we shall not benefit, as much as we undoubtedly have in the past, from the "help of Germans" in developing our finance. But indirectly the Germans will still be helping us by the great stimulus that the war will have given us ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers

... mere animal existence for most of the race, without enjoyment for the present or hope for the future. Education being denied them, there was no mental stimulus to compensate for physical wretchedness, and even their meager religious privileges were accompanied with so many superstitious and unnatural rites that life was relieved of but ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... various popular beliefs and conventional assumptions concerning the sexual impulse can no longer be maintained. The sexual activities of the organism are not mere responses to stimulation, absent if we choose to apply no stimulus, never troubling us if we run away from them, harmless if we enclose them within a high wall. Nor do they constitute a mere excretion, or a mere appetite, which we can control by a crude system of hygiene and dietetics. We better understand the psycho-sexual constitution if we regard the motive ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis

... conflict. Moreover, the work of the Society in promoting general culture among the Jews was gradually losing its raison d'etre, since, without any effort on its part, the Jews began to flock to the gymnazia and universities. The former practical stimulus to general culture—the acquisition of a diploma for the sake of equal rights—was intensified by the promulgation of the military statute of 1874 which conferred a number of privileges in the discharge of military duty on those possessing a higher ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... is enough to show an extraordinary stimulus to commerce, on a line of railway. The length of the entire line will be less than half that which is proposed to be made from Cincinnati and other cities to San Francisco; yet, will pass through varieties of production, which that line cannot have. In two days, every inhabitant ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... members of its own species. In a single day's activity we who are citizens of a great metropolis are forced into contact with almost countless other lives, glancing off from one and another after influencing them to some degree, and gaining ourselves some impetus and stimulus from our longer or shorter intercourse with each of them. Our varied social relations are so many and obvious that it is quite superfluous to specify them as essential things in human life. For the very ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... rather too cursory to allow me to do ample justice to several of much merit. Another visit has enabled me to make a few additional remarks on the performances of many worthy young aspirants, who, it is presumed, will receive fresh stimulus from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various

... seemed indeed destitute of the power of employing his faculties in any regular pursuit. His principles of action were so loose, and his mind so uncultivated, that every thing like order appeared to him in the shape of restraint; and, like men in the savage state, he required the strong stimulus of hope or fear, produced by wild speculations, in which the interests of others went for nothing, to keep his spirits awake. He one time possessed patriotism, but he knew not what it was to feel honest indignation; and pretended to be ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... mind cures, and their boasts of remarkable cases of healing, it may be admitted that the mind has much influence over the body. This fact has been recognized by intelligent physicians for centuries. And that the peculiar modern type of nervous diseases, which are so largely caused by excessive stimulus of the nerves and the imagination, should be amendable to cure through the imagination, is not strange. It will be noted that this mental cure has effected its miracles mainly among women, where it has the emotional temperament to work on, and almost wholly in the ranks ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... Under a sudden stimulus of rallies, red fire, and band-music, the campaign blossomed promisingly. Democracy's dark hints that the dominant party had been rent by factional strife were suddenly answered by an outrush of spellbinders from Republican headquarters, a flood of literature, and an astonishing display ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... determination was known, the Commissioners of the Colony hastened away from the spot with consciences that required some aid from the stimulus of their subtle doctrines, in order to render them quiet. They were, however, ingenious casuists; and as they hurried along their return path, most of the party were satisfied that they had rather manifested a merciful interposition, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... was overlooked. Great inconvenience must have been felt by the early adventurers to the mines: for so many hands were employed in searching for gold, that few remained to cultivate the soil, and provide the necessaries of life. Yet that insatiable thirst of gold is a stimulus which has led to useful and to honourable things: it is not the love of the metal, but the possession of it gives power, and that is the real object of most men's ambition: it is certainly that of the ambition ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... here and live in this deathly quiet, away from even such amusement as the camp offered? Submit to all his tiresome religious conversations, and, above all, give up those feverish nights of excitement? the hazard and the stimulus of the long tables and the little heaps of gold dust? and her free life, her incomings and outgoings, with no one to question her? ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross

... carelessness of the workmen naturally proved very annoying to the employers. But it gave an increased stimulus to the demand for self-acting machine tools by which the untrustworthy efforts of hand labour might be avoided. The machines never got drunk; their hands never shook from excess; they were never absent from work; they did not strike for wages; ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... Italy of her greatest literary inspirer since Carducci, said of "Aurora Leigh" that he wished the youth of Italy might study this great poem,—"those who desire poetic fame that they might gain a high conception of poetry; the weak, in that they might find stimulus for strength; the sad and discouraged, in that they might find comfort and encouragement." It was this eminent Italian novelist and Senator (the King of Italy naming a man as Senator, not in the least because of any ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... The player had every stimulus to appear at her best on this particular evening, for the audience, frivolous, volatile, taking its character from the loose, weak king, was unusually complaisant through the presence of the first gentleman ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... litters suitable for bacon production, which can be brought into condition for market in the quickest time. The introduction of these businesslike methods has naturally resulted in greater gains, and has further given a stimulus to the pig-raising industry. ...
— Australia The Dairy Country • Australia Department of External Affairs

... deer; there certainly existed ancestral wolves and foxes of similarly small proportions. You have all read your Darwin carefully enough to know that neither camels, horses, nor deer would have evolved as they did except for the stimulus given to their limb and speed development by the contemporaneous evolution of their ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... means free of the harassments of debt. Although successful in his former attempt at fiction, novel writing was but an aside with him, after all; he had not during the previous six years given regular time and attention to literary composition, as a modern story-maker would have done under the stimulus of like encouragement. The eighteenth century audience, it must be borne in mind, was not large enough nor sufficiently eager for an attractive new form of literature, to justify a man of many trades like Fielding in devoting his days steadily to the writing ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... respective fluids seem to be carried on in the vessels of plants precisely as in animal bodies by their irritability to the stimulus of their adapted fluids, and not by any mechanical or chemical attraction, for their absorbent vessels propel the juice upwards, which they drink up from the earth, with great violence; I suppose with much greater ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... the young of this battling age should study his character and emulate his deeds. His life was the richest legacy that he could leave to unborn generations, save the glorious Republic that he founded; and well will it be for the youth of our country when that life becomes to them the stimulus to exalted aims. Then loyalty will be free as air, and rebellions be unknown; then treason will hide its hydra-head, and our insulted flag wave in triumph where the last chain ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... young women are left by themselves, they will soon lose interest. A gymnasium with either sex alone is like a ball-room with one sex excluded. To earn a living, men and women will labor when separated; but in the department of recreation, if there be lack of social stimulus, they will soon fall off. No gymnasium, however well managed, with either sex excluded, has ever achieved a large and enduring success. I know some of them have long lists of subscribers; but the daily attendance is very small. Indeed, the only gymnasium which never lacks patronage is the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... introduction of a second person acting powerfully upon the speaker throughout, draws the latter forth into a more complete and varied expression of his mind. The silent person in the background, who may be all the time master of the situation, supplies a powerful stimulus to the imagination of the reader.—Rev. Prof. E. Johnson's "Paper on 'Bishop Blougram's Apology'" ('Browning Soc. Papers', Pt. III., p. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... hurtfulness of the trial is masked by the excitement which furnishes for a while the means of waging unequal battle, and prevents the sufferer from knowing or feeling the extent of the too constant effort he or she is making. This is one of the evils of all work done under excessive moral stimulus, and when the excitation comes from the emotions the expenditure of nerve-force becomes doubly dangerous, because in this case not only is the governing power taken away from the group of faculties which make up what we call common sense, but also ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... fortnight: two frigates at anchor, and the arrival of Governor Gore from the upper province, have given a zest to society. Races, country and water parties, have occupied our time in a continued round of festivity. Such stimulus is highly necessary to keep our spirits afloat. I contributed my share to the general mirth in a grand dinner given to Mrs. Gore, at which Sir J. Craig was present, and a ball to a vast ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... fracture of the cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would, according to the best approved tradition of medical science, be calculated to inevitably produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centres of the genital apparatus, thereby causing the elastic pores of the corpora cavernosa to rapidly dilate in such a way as to instantaneously facilitate the flow of blood to ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... and now known to be identical with frictional electricity. In 1805 Poisson was the first to analyze electricity; and when [OE]rsted of Copenhagen, in 1820, discovered the magnetic action of electricity, it offered a great stimulus to the science, and paved the way for investigation in a new direction. Ampere was the first to develop the idea that a motor or a dynamo could be made operative by means of the electro-magnetic current; and Faraday, about 1830, ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... no inspiration on the subject. She said: "Don't be silly!" sharply, and left it to Lavender to supply the necessary stimulus. ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... a son. About one-third of the attacking force were killed or badly wounded in the assault, and among the rest the son of this devoted mother, who at that very hour might have been ministering to the wounded and dying son of some other mother. This loss was to her but a stimulus to further efforts and sacrifices. She mourned as deeply as any mother, but not as selfishly, as some might have done. In this, as in all her ways of life, she but carried out its ruling principle which was self-devotion, and ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... nevertheless piracy went on, and most pertinaciously on the part of the Christians. The Greeks, Sardinians, Maltese, and Genoese were by far the worse members of the fraternity of rovers, as the treaties themselves prove: the increase of commerce under the stimulus of the Crusades tempted the adventurous, and the absence of any organized State navies gave them immunity; and there was generally a war afoot between some nation or other, Christian or Moslem, and piracy (in the then state of international ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... we had no rewards at Hofwyl, I ought to have admitted that the annual election to the offices of our Verein acted indirectly as a powerful stimulus to industry and good conduct. At these elections was to be read, as on a moral thermometer, the graduated scale of public opinion. The result of each election informed us with certainty who had risen and who had fallen in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... he thought. "When men leave their homes and business to attend church, they want something practical, something acting as a stimulus in daily life. Being surrounded as we are on every hand by social evils, strife between capital and labor, and with anarchical tendencies becoming constantly more prevalent, we need something bearing ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright

... that a man cannot live and function without heat and oxygen, nor long without food, and yet his relation to his medium and environment is as radically different from that of the steam-engine as it is possible to express. His driving-wheel, the heart, acts in response to some stimulus as truly as does the piston of the engine, and the principles involved in circulation are all mechanical; and yet the main thing is not mechanical, but vital. Analyze the vital activities into principles ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... help. They say the plainest face looks better under the stimulus of exercise. Is your foot fit to ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... Unaired sheets have often brought on fatal sickness. Examine all clothes sent up from the wash. If the laundress is sure this inspection will take place, it is a constant spur to working in the best way, and a word of praise for good points is always a stimulus. Mending should be done as the clothes are looked over, before putting away. Place the sheets from each wash at the bottom of the pile, that the same ones may not be used over and over, but all come in rotation; and the same with table-linen. If the table-cloth ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... was hence in high glee, a man rejuvenesced. His sallies grew livelier and more barbed as the death-tide rose higher about him. His one regret was that he had been so hasty in casting his snuff box from him, for he was missing its familiar stimulus. At his side the Marquis was fighting desperately, fencing with his left arm, and in the hot excitement seeming oblivious of the pain his broken ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... hardware term] Describes any stimulus compelling enough to yank one right out of {hack mode}. Classically used to describe being dragged away by an {SO} for immediate sex, but may also refer to more mundane interruptions such as a fire alarm going off in the near vicinity. Also called an {NMI} (non-maskable ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... swim, and it was fortunate for him that he took the water on the turn of the tide, so that where the tail of the ebb set him down the first of the flood bore him back. The stimulus of the chill and the labor of swimming cleared the poison from his body and brain; he swam steadily, with eyes fixed on the lights beading the waterside and mind clenched on the single purpose to find Tom Mowbray, to deal with him, to satisfy the anger which ached in him like a starved ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... took him a basin of the doctor's soup. But his success was very little better here. All the men were in the dull, apathetic state pretty well expressed by the Highlander, who, after partaking of a few spoonfuls of the stimulus, said softly: ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... the plot forms an objection to its success upon a British stage. Distress, which turns upon the involutions of unnatural or incestuous passion, carries with it something too disgusting for the sympathy of a refined age; whereas, in a simple state of society, the feelings require a more powerful stimulus; as we see the vulgar crowd round an object of real horror, with the same pleasure we reap from seeing it represented on a theatre. Besides, in ancient times, in those of the Roman empire at least, such abominations really occurred, as sanctioned the story ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... steeped in the beauty and gladness of the universe. She had never been gay as young lambs and foals and fawns and kittens and puppy dogs are gay, by reason of the well-spring of delight within them, needing no stimulus from the outside world. She had been just a little inclined to murmur at the dulness of her life at Fellside; yet she had borne herself with a placid sweetness which had been Lady Maulevrier's delight. But now there was a marked change in her manner. She was not the less submissive and ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... having wintered in the north, which satisfied the statutes—as there was no doubt but they had wintered somewhere. Steer cattle of acceptable age and smoothness of build were in demand by feeders; all classes in fact felt a stimulus. My beeves were sold for delivery north of Cheyenne, Wyoming, the buyers, who were ranchmen as well as army contractors, taking the herd complete, including the remuda and wagon. Under the terms, the cattle were ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... some days, suddenly ceased, and the atmosphere became misty; at length heavy clouds collected where a uniform blue sky had for many weeks prevailed, and down came a succession of heavy showers, the first of which lasted a whole day and night. This seemed to give a new stimulus to animal life. On the first night there was a tremendous uproar—tree-frogs, crickets, goat-suckers, and owls all joining to perform a deafening concert. One kind of goat- sucker kept repeating at intervals throughout the night a phrase similar to the Portuguese words, "Joao corta pao,"—"John, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... he manifested, as well as the liberality of his offer, had a decidedly beneficial effect upon the small growers in the neighborhood. "It proved a great stimulus to the growth of the Catawba vine in the country around Cincinnati," to know that a man of Mr. Longworth's means stood ready to pay cash, at the rate of from a dollar to a dollar and a quarter ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... there is no limit fit to be assigned to it by the human mind, because I find at work everywhere, on both sides of the Atlantic, under various forms and degrees of restriction on the one hand, and under various degrees of motive and stimulus on the other, in these branches of the common race, the great principle of the freedom of human thought, and the respectability of individual character. I find everywhere an elevation of the character of man as man, an elevation of the individual as a component part of society. I find everywhere ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser

... hand, but they exist, and they prove conclusively that those wards in Boston which have a population most purely native reach a salubrity unexcelled. So that, with all the real drawbacks of climate, and the pretended drawbacks of unnatural or excessive mental stimulus, the health here is absolutely unequalled by that of any country in Europe. Certainly, if the mental and moral sainthood which we have does not build up the body, it cannot be said that it does ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... in the textile trade by the introduction and persistence of the "hobble skirt." As a consequence of this sudden disturbance of the evolutionary law governing creation in the modiste's sense of the word, there was a sharp reaction a year later, which—after the artificial stimulus of the previous season—threw more women out of employment than ever; new fancy-trades had to be learned in apprenticeships at starvation wages—with the result that wages had to be eked out in other ways. But of all this her Majesty heard nothing. It never occurred to anybody ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... Under the stimulus from his intercourse with his brother and Ranney, and profiting by their hints and suggestions, he plunged more eagerly into law-books than ever. He constructed a light boat, with a pair of sculls, ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... entirely confined to external use, and was formerly an ingredient in several ointments and plasters. In inveterate coughs, affections of the lungs, and other internal complaints, plasters of this resin, by acting as a tropical stimulus, are frequently found of ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury

... result was that the independent forming of opinions was encouraged and helped in Plymouth Church as in few churches. Those who imagined that Mr. Beecher dominated the thought of his people to an extent which made them mere echoes of himself were very far from the truth. It was an intellectual stimulus to sit under him, not merely in the effort to keep up with his thought, which poured forth like Niagara, but in the compulsion to form an independent personal opinion. Men loved to hear him, not so much because ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold

... here! You area brave fellow—I saw you at Aboukir—how is your old father? What! have you not got the Cross? Stay, I will give it you." Then the delighted soldiers would say to each other, "You see the Emperor knows us all; he knows our families; he knows where we have served." What a stimulus was this to soldiers, whom he succeeded in persuading that they would all some time or other become ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... continued. The desire and loathing excited by improper esthetic means are really not esthetic emotions not only because they are kinetic in character but also because they are not more than physical. Our flesh shrinks from what it dreads and responds to the stimulus of what it desires by a purely reflex action of the nervous system. Our eyelid closes before we are aware that the fly is about ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... speaking a few words: but he also maintained that on the rare occasions when he felt quite confident and free from nervousness, the result was a failure: he said that a real anxiety as to the effect of the sermon was a necessary stimulus, and evoked a mental power which confidence ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson

... were some missteps and mishaps,—flounderings in the water, and some dangerous rescues,—but in half an hour the whole concourse stood upon the trail and commenced the ascent. It was a slow, difficult, and lugubrious procession—I fear not the best-tempered one, now that the stimulus of danger and chivalry was past. When they reached the dam made by the fallen tree, although they were obliged to make a long detour to avoid its steep sides, they could see how successfully it had diverted the current to a declivity ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... the notch, till they leave a flat superficies. This they hollow out to a capacity to receive about a quart. They then put into the hollow a bit of lighted reed, and let it remain for about ten minutes, which, acting as a stimulus, draws the fluid to that part. In the space of a night the liquor fills the receptacle prepared for it, and the tree continues to yield a lesser quantity for three successive nights, when the fire must be again applied: but on a few repetitions ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... extract gives a vivid and piteous picture of the utter desolation and misery into which he was cast: it shows likewise that, after a lapse of fifteen years, the memory of his shame and sorrow was yet green, and that a powerful stimulus had been given to his superstitious fancies by the events lately chronicled. "In the month of May, in the year MDLX, a time when sleep had refused to come to me because of my grief for my son's death: when I could get no relief ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... from their thoughts. Curled within their minds, like an endless scroll, are the marvellous scriptures of millenniums, and yet their brain-surfaces are fresh for earth's newest concept.... What are they whispering? Their voices falter with emotion over vague bits of dreaming. They ask no greater stimulus to fly to the uttermost bounds of their limitations—than each other and the night. Reason dawns upon their stammered expressions, and farther they fly—thrilling like young birds, when their wings for the first time catch the sustaining cushions of ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... grievances of the people, and their hope that the man of victory would become their deliverer. The general enthusiasm excited by the return of the conqueror of Egypt delighted him to a degree which I cannot express, and was, as he has often assured me, a powerful stimulus in urging him to the object to which the wishes of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... quietly for a moment, trying to release his fear-tightened muscles. He relaxed the panic in his stomach and looked slowly about the room. He could recall no stimulus in his sleep that had produced such a reaction. He hadn't even been dreaming, as far as he could tell. There was no recollection of any sound or movement within the house ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones

... glorious gospel, a state which I often pant after, and am so generally a stranger to; in each day a religious engagement seemed peculiarly blessed to myself. A sense of being liked and loved, is gratifying; at the same time I acknowledge, it has its dangers; it is, however, a stimulus to ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous

... to work in the prime of life, nor to lend, that we may enjoy repose in its decline? The law will rob us of the prospect of laying by a little property, because it will prevent us from gaining any advantage from it. It will deprive us of all stimulus to save at the present time, and of all hope of repose for the future. It is useless to exhaust ourselves with fatigue: we must abandon the idea of leaving our sons and daughters a little property, since modern science renders it useless, ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... through a damaging foreign exchange crisis. The crisis stems from years of loose fiscal policies that exacerbated inflation and allowed the public debt, money supply, and current account deficit to explode. In April 1997, Prime Minister SHARIF introduced a stimulus package of tax cuts intended to boost failing industrial output and spur export growth. At that time, the IMF endorsed the program, paving the way for a $1.5 billion Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility. Although the economy showed signs of improvement following the measures, ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... a difficulty in imagining. A man living alone with servants (for his son's childhood was spent elsewhere), who took hardly any interest in a profession that had become little more than nominal for him, who had not even the stimulus of a desire to accumulate wealth (almost the only recognized object in the place where he lived), a man who had no intellectual pursuits whatever, and whose youth was too far behind him for any joyous physical activity, was condemned to seek such ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... spoke on, the drum of the jungle. It whispered of revenge to those who crept up to the dusky drummer and stood waiting to drink in at each long interval this deep intoxicating stimulus, the note of the priestly drum. And each deep throb of the drum carried a greater frenzy, a frenzy still suppressed, yet mysteriously growing. The riot of the ominous clanging sank into the blood of these people, though still ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... voice that could make itself heard, if lifted in excitement or deepened by emotion. In the second place, while I had no flow, only a hesitating trickle of language, in ordinary circumstances, yet— under stimulus such as was now rife through the mutinous mass—I could, in English, have rolled out readily phrases stigmatizing their proceedings as such proceedings deserved to be stigmatized; and then with some sarcasm, flavoured with contemptuous ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... in the New York newspapers, of a girl's school, in that city, where the appointed hours of study amounted to nine and a quarter daily, and the hours of exercise to a bare unit. Almost all the Students' Manuals assume that American students need stimulus instead of restraint, and urge them to multiply the hours of study and diminish those of out-door amusements and of sleep, as if the great danger did not lie that way already. When will parents and teachers learn to regard mental precocity as a disaster to be shunned, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... digestible, relieving the organs of unnecessary work; it destroys bacteria that may be present in the food, diminishing the likelihood of introducing disease germs into the body; and it makes the food more palatable, thereby supplying a necessary stimulus to the digestive glands. While the methods employed in the preparation of the different foods have much to do with the ease with which they are digested and with their nourishing qualities, the scope of our subject does not permit of ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... butter, corn, vegetables, sheep, &c. for themselves, which almost ruin the proprietor. Any government but that of Egypt and Turkey would offer a bonus for the erection of irrigating machinery that would give a stimulus to cultivation, and multiply the produce of the country; but the only rule without an exception is that of Turkish extortion. I have never met with any Turkish official who would take the slightest interest in ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... troops were transported to the spot by the two vessels. Here he laid the foundations of a town, which he called San Miguel. With timber from the mountains, and stone from the quarries, and the labor of a large number of natives, who were driven to daily toil, not as servants, by the stimulus of well-paid labor, but as slaves, goaded by the sabres of their task masters, quite a large ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... not a right word for them; they were neither sentimental, nor, strictly speaking, poetical. They had more sense for rhetoric than for poetry, like the Romans; but, like the Romans, they had too high a spirit not to like a noble intellectual stimulus of some kind, and thus they were carried out of the region of the merely prosaic. Their foible,—the bad excess of their characterising quality of strenuousness,—was not a prosaic flatness, it was ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold

... production, we come to the human factor, the motives leading men to work, the possibilities of efficient organization of production, and the connection of production with distribution. Defenders of the existing system maintain that efficient work would be impossible without the economic stimulus, and that if the wage system were abolished men would cease to do enough work to keep the community in tolerable comfort. Through the alleged necessity of the economic motive, the problems of production and distribution ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... to procure it; but such is the fact, for there are so many obstacles thrown in the way of married persons, and especially, those with a family, that many are tempted to deny that they have any children, for fear they should lose their situations, though it is certainly an additional stimulus to a servant to behave orderly, when he knows that he has others to look to ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... the globe, a quiet and leafy suburb, peopled only by those whose vocation is not of the commonalty. Its very environment is inspiring to great thoughts and deeds, and small wonder it is that so many master minds have first received their stimulus amid the shady walks and rather gloomy ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... observation that the mothers of large families of ten and even twice that number are not less healthy nor shorter lived because of the children they have borne. Pregnancy is a stimulus to vitality. Because another life has to be supported, all the vital powers are invigorated and rise to the occasion—the circulation increases, the heart enlarges in response to the extra work, and the assimilative powers of the body are greatly accelerated. During lactation ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple

... workers of the North could have been present, who have so generously opened their purses to educate and fit "our brother in black" for leading his race from a darkness more than "skin deep" to noble citizenship. We wish you could realize, as you only can by seeing it, what a stimulus every such work is to the white people of the South, for as Dr. Haygood stated in his closing address, "though Northern money generously erected these buildings and pays a large share of the salaries here, yet the State pays the young men and women ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 08, August, 1885 • Various

... went over to Mrs. Graham with almost every fresh bit of news. She smiled, and listened, and applauded, and one day said with delightful cordiality that she wished there were more girls who cared whether their lives really amounted to anything. But not every one had a talent which was such a stimulus ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... temples are open to the sunlight; their theatres are uncovered to the heavens; and whithersoever they move, they are surrounded by what is fair, noble, and inspiring. This free and happy life in the company of great teachers becomes the stimulus to the keenest exercise of mind. They are as eager to see things in a true light as they are quick to sympathize with whatever is heroic or beautiful; and all their talk is of truth and justice, the good, the fair, the excellent, of philosophy, religion, poetry, and ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... result of this criticism on a character less determined or less phlegmatic than Godwin's would have been a violent reaction from hope to despair. But Godwin, who seems to have been independent of external stimulus, was not easily startled from his projects, and plodded steadily forward until his story was complete. He would have scorned not to execute what his mind had conceived. Godwin's businesslike method of planning the story backwards has been adopted by Conan Doyle and other writers of ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... handle to the British party at Court. For this reason I conceive that no advantage could result from demanding a categorical answer, and that it might involve us in disagreeable circumstances. The resolution enclosed in my last will either serve as a stimulus to the politics of Spain, or leave us a latitude on the negotiation for a peace, which will be of equal advantage to us with any of those slight aids, which Spain seems willing or able to give us. Congress have found so little ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various

... weight of Mr. Speed's address and gave to it an influence which he had not, perhaps, anticipated when he delivered it. This influence was doubtless enhanced by the fact that the author of the speech was a native and citizen of the South. It was a stimulus to the patriotic zeal of Northern Republicans to find a man from the South taking advanced ground that possibly involved peril to himself before the angry contest should ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... the debater can put down the main headings of his brief, all statistics that are difficult to remember, and all quotations. He had better not refer to these cards for the headings of his brief if he can possibly avoid doing so. It will be a great stimulus, however, for him to know that he has this help to rely on in case of necessity. Statistics and quotations ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... poor slaves are deprived of every hope and stimulus by which all other classes and individuals are animated; no good conduct of theirs towards their master, no attachment to his person or family, no fidelity or long service can ensure kind treatment. ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle

... Zionism without Zion, Jewish Socialism without a Jewish social order, Labour Parties without votes or Parliaments. The habit of actualities had been lost; what need of them when concepts provided as much intellectual stimulus? Would Israel never return to reality, never find solid ground under foot, never look ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... to which I must call attention, because, when recognized, it cannot but serve as the utmost stimulus to our efforts to arrange for vocational education for girls on the broadest lines. It is this. Whatever general, national or state plans prove the most complete and satisfactory for girls, will, speaking generally, ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... to the mental stimulus which they received from Macaulay's essays. Upon these essays, contributed to the EDINBURGH REVIEW in its prime, Macaulay lavished all the resources of his vast scholarship, his discursive reading in the ancient and modern classics, ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... Lovell's conversation and society afforded me. If he left Elmsley for a single day I felt the want of them so keenly, that I welcomed him back in a way that may have deceived others, deceived him, deceived myself perhaps—I know not—I lived but for excitement, and if the stimulus failed, I sunk for the time into momentary apathy. We sung together sometimes, and my voice seemed to have gained strength during the last few months—the old hall at Elmsley vibrated with the notes which, with the impetuosity that ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... reward offered to secure the latter's zeal; for, as stated, he too had his own old grudge against the German, brought about by a still older and more bitter hostility to Halberger's right hand man—Gaspar, the gaucho. With this double stimulus to action, Valdez entered upon the prosecution of his search, after that of the soldiers had failed. At first with confident expectation of a speedy success; for it had not yet occurred to either him or his employer that the fugitives could have escaped clear out of the country; a thing seemingly ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... this unmeasured length of way, it was necessary I should be as active in pursuit as I was ardent in my passion: and the stimulus was a strong one. Oratory accordingly, Olivia excepted, became the object that seemed the dearest to my heart. Demosthenes and Cicero were my great masters. They and their modern competitors were my study, day and night. No means were neglected that precept or example, as far as they ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... economy, generated by it, is it not probable that different parts of the human body may prepare or modify the virus differently? Although the skin, for example, adipose membrane, or mucous membranes are all capable of producing the variolous virus by the stimulus given by the particles originally deposited upon them, yet I am induced to conceive that each of these parts is capable of producing some variation in the qualities of the matter previous to its affecting the constitution. What ...
— An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae • Edward Jenner

... sight of her, saw that he was recognized. Flight, instant and permanent, had been his original intent. Now it would not do. Bolder measures must be devised. He appealed to the head-waiter to help him carry out a joke, and that functionary, developing a sense of humor under the stimulus of a twenty-dollar bill, procured him on the spot an ill-fitting coat and a black string tie, and gave him certain simple directions. When the patroness of Art next observed the object of her patronage, he was performing the humble but useful duties ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... gold. It was not, therefore, with a very hopeful feeling that they obeyed the summons and returned to the claim. Though of a sanguine disposition, they began to doubt seriously whether their efforts would ever be rewarded. They had pretty much lost the stimulus of hope. ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger

... concerned. I'll leave it to hospitals and homes for the helpless, especially for fractional humanity—needy remnants. But I decline absolutely, once and for all, to accept the noble future you have outlined. I grant you it would be heroic. But have you ever heard of great heroism with no stimulus to arouse it?" ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... curve of the great earth itself checked the view. Adjoining Los Muertos, and widening to the west, opened the Broderson ranch. The Osterman ranch to the northwest carried on the great sweep of landscape; ranch after ranch. Then, as the imagination itself expanded under the stimulus of that measureless range of vision, even those great ranches resolved themselves into mere foreground, mere accessories, irrelevant details. Beyond the fine line of the horizons, over the curve of the globe, the shoulder of the earth, were other ranches, equally vast, and beyond ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... was seen emerging from 'the Paddock' and moving in solitude towards the hills. Taciturnity was a striking feature in DeQuincey's character, and was, no doubt, owing to intense mental action. The inner life, aroused to extreme activity by continued stimulus, excluded all perceptions beyond its own limits, and the world in which he dwelt was sufficiently large without the intrusion of external things. In his walks I would often follow in his track, with that fondness of imitation peculiar to childhood, but was never the object of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... that Captain Marryat was an East Anglian, and have we not a right to be proud of Marryat's breezy stories of the sea? Our youth has found such plentiful stimulus in Peter Simple, Frank Mildmay, and Mr. Midshipman Easy; generations of boys have read them with delight, generations of boys will read them. And not only boys, but men. One recalls that Carlyle, in one of his deepest fits of depression, took refuge in Marryat's novels with infinite ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter

... of responsiveness to texture and colour we would remind the reader that Richard Wagner hung the room in which he worked at his operas with bright silks, for the art stimulus he got from colour, and it is a well-known fact that he derived great pleasure from wearing dressing gowns and other garments made ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank

... against his body, feeling at once the stimulus of contact. Nobody could see them; their footsteps resounded on the pavements with the echo of an abandoned place. The fermented ardor of those libations to the gods was giving the captain a ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... is one of the greatest motives to us for action. For, although to a generous mind the thought of the love of God would be a sufficient incentive to action, there are times of coldness when that love is not felt, and then there remains no sort of stimulus. I find as I adopt these sentiments I feel less fear of God, and, in view of sin, I feel only a sensation of grief which is more easily dispelled and forgotten than ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... by Pasteur that definite diseases could be produced by bacteria, proved a great stimulus to research in the etiology of infective conditions, and the result was a rapid advance in human knowledge. An all-important factor in this remarkable progress was the introduction by Koch of solid culture media, of the "plate-method," ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... could do anything with a serious positive character: they could place a human figure before you with perfect verisimilitude; but when the moment came for making it live and move, they found, unless it made them laugh, that they had a puppet on their hands, and had to invent some artificial external stimulus to make it work. This is what is the matter with Hamlet all through: he has no will except in his bursts of temper. Foolish Bardolaters make a virtue of this after their fashion: they declare that the play is the tragedy of irresolution; but all Shakespear's projections of the deepest ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... the peculiar faculty of transmitting impressions made upon it by stimuli. When a nerve is acted on by a stimulus, the impression wave is transmitted along the in-going nerve to the ganglion; here, the stimulus is transferred to the out-going nerve, which, going to the muscle, causes it ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... sufficient to develop the necessary steam-power for supplying that population with the electric light. The economical importance of a combined destructor and electric undertaking of this character naturally presented a somewhat fascinating stimulus to public authorities, and possibly had much to do with the development both of the adoption of the principle of dealing with refuse by fire, and of lighting towns by electricity. However true this phase of the question may be as the statement ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... his types, his schemes of colour, even his compositions. He aims at types which both in face and figure are simple, large-boned, and massive,—types, that is to say, which in actual life would furnish the most powerful stimulus to the tactile imagination. Obliged to get the utmost out of his rudimentary light and shade, he makes his scheme of colour of the lightest that his contrasts may be of the strongest. In his compositions, ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson

... from within or from without forces an impression upon my mind, and I stir, and slowly open my eyes. As yet I have really not seen anything. With my eyes open my mind still sleeps—but in a few seconds comes a possessing sense of well-being. Obeying some stimulus, not recognized by the senses as yet, I begin to stretch and yawn, then close my eyes and settle down into my pillows as for another nap. I am not aware that I am I, that I am awake, that I have yawned and stretched. I have a pleasant, half-dreamy feeling, but could not give it a name. For those ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter

... angel the promise that he was to be given a son who would be called John and who would be the herald of Christ, and when he had asked for a sign to attest the truth of the prediction, he was smitten with dumbness as a rebuke for his unbelief and as a stimulus for his faith. Even when at last the promise was fulfilled, the sign was not removed and he was not able to speak until he had given a written expression of his confidence in God. This interesting incident occurred on the eighth day after the birth ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... this recession, the way to create jobs, is to grow the economy by encouraging investment in factories and equipment, and by speeding up tax relief so people have more money to spend. For the sake of American workers, let's pass a stimulus ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George W. Bush • George W. Bush

... quicken their hope. Joyful confidence in our sonship is only warranted in the measure in which we are like our Father. Hope often deludes and makes men dreamy and unpractical. It generally paints pictures far lovelier than the realities, and without any of their shadows; it is too often the stimulus and ally of ignoble lives, and seldom stirs to heroism or endurance, but its many defects are not due to itself but to its false choice of objects on which to fix. The hope which is lifted from trailing along the earth and twining ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... believe and hope is better now. I think so, because I can speak about it, which I never can when grief is at its worst. I thought to find occupation and interest in writing when alone at home, but hitherto my efforts have been in vain: the deficiency of every stimulus is so complete. You will recommend me, I dare say, to go from home; but that does no good, even could I again leave papa with an easy mind. . . . I cannot describe what a time of it I had after ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... forbid the use of meat and butter. Animal food supplies chyle much more abundantly than vegetable food does; and this chyle is more stimulating in its nature. Of course, a person who lives chiefly on animal food, is under a higher degree of stimulus than if his food was chiefly composed of vegetable substances. His blood will flow faster, and all the functions of his body will ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... directions, among the helmsmen, leaders and commanders I search for a man inspired, or, at least, an enthusiast wholly forgetting himself for the holiness of the aim. Enthusiasm is eliminated from higher regions; is outlawed, is almost spit upon. Enthusiasm! that most powerful stimulus for heart and reason, and which alone expands, purifies, elevates man's intellectual faculties. Here the people, the unnamed, have enthusiasm, and to the people belong those noble patriots so often mentioned. But the men in power are cold, and extinguished as ashes. Jackson the President, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... II. The great stimulus to love and to all purity is set forth as being the near approach—of the day (verses 11-14). 'The day,' in Paul's writing, has usually the sense of the great day of the Lord's return, and may have that meaning here; for, as Jesus has told us, 'it is not for' even inspired ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... and here began a new element of progress for Wisconsin. The knowledge of these mines was possessed by the early French explorers, and as the use of firearms spread they were worked more and more by Indians, under the stimulus of the trader. In 1810 Nicholas Boilvin, United States Indian agent at Prairie du Chien, reported that the Indians about the lead mines had mostly abandoned the chase and turned their attention to the manufacture ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner

... were trifling compared with the stimulus given to medieval learning by the influx of Greek books and of Arabic versions of them. In the second half of the eleventh century the works of Galen and Hippocrates were re-introduced into Italy from the Arabian empire by a ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... testifies that Weber's love influenced all his work at the time. "It was the reason," he says, "that Weber took to heart, above everything else, the part of Aennchen, in which he saw an embodiment of his bride's special talent and characteristics, and it was under the fostering stimulus of this warm feeling that he allowed those parts of the opera in which Aennchen appears to ripen first. The first note which he wrote down for the 'Freischuetz' belongs in the duo between Aennchen ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... went into the house, where she kindled a fire in the kitchen stove, and made herself a cup of Japan tea: a variety of the herb which our country people prefer, apparently because it affords the same stimulus with none of the pleasure ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells

... were to the effect that as individuals we need difficulties to overcome, and that fear is a stimulus to overcoming them. Otherwise expressed, fear loses much of its fearfulness when we see it as the summons to putting forth new energies. Unless we were conscious of the energies such a call would not reach us. The creatures preceding man could have felt ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... vicious, or to make light of vices. This was not indeed true Epicureanism, and Epicurus is not to blame for it; it simply shows that Epicureanism, whatever its logical or other merits, provided no sufficient stimulus to a right life. As regards theology the position of the school was that there might very well be such things as higher beings—there was nothing in physical philosophy to make them any more impossible than a man or a fish—but that, if they existed, they were not concerned with man's affairs; ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... can estimate the importance of this occasion, who does not realize what a minister meant in those first days, when the sermon held for the majority the sole opportunity of intellectual stimulus as well as spiritual growth. The coming of John Cotton to Boston, was much as if Phillips Brooks should bestow himself upon the remotest English settlement in Australia, or a missionary station in northern Minnesota, and a ripple of excitement ran through ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... it so easy to go to sleep. His pulses were still tingling under the emotions of the day and the stimulus of the hubbub they had just passed through. His mind raced backwards and forwards over the incidents and excitements of the last six months, over the scenes of his canvass—and over some other scenes of a different kind which had taken place ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... not only working, but living, feeling, listening hard, under the stimulus day and night of the tense, rich life around me. About this time I made a friend of a gaunt, bearded Russian chap, whose dream for years had been, like mine, to become a writer of fiction. His god had been Turgenief. And a year ago, leaving his home, a little town near Moscow, with forty roubles ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... dear James," said Morris, lightly; "and thereby you have missed the truly divine stimulus for the day's work. Don't you realize, my friend, that no matter how hard a man may labour, some woman is always in the background of his mind? She is ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... falling uninterruptedly the livelong day, and yet the boys have been unusually merry, as they were wont to be on this anniversary before the war. Our celebration has been on a scanty scale, and yet we have felt the patriotic stimulus which comes from the great men and days of the past. And truly, the birth of the great Washington gives birth to many interesting thoughts, especially at this period of our history. A national salute has been fired from our fortifications ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier

... took place, as I have said, just after we four had returned from our tour of the Light Country, and before the recruiting of the young men was fairly under way. To this recruiting it proved an extraordinary stimulus. The girls, having been in successful action, stirred the young men of the nation as probably nothing else could, and all over the country they came forward faster than ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... sustained no longer by the feverish stimulus of doing kindly acts for her, began to give way, and ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... incitement, incitation; press, instigation; provocation &c (excitation of feeling) 824; inspiration; persuasion, suasion; encouragement, advocacy; exhortation; advice &c 695; solicitation &c (request) 765; lobbyism; pull [Slang]. incentive, stimulus, spur, fillip, whip, goad, ankus^, rowel, provocative, whet, dram. bribe, lure; decoy, decoy duck; bait, trail of a red herring; bribery and corruption; sop, sop for Cerberus. prompter, tempter; seducer, seductor^; instigator, firebrand, incendiary; Siren, Circe; agent provocateur; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... was one organized and commanded by the sons and relatives of Ragnar, whom, it will be recollected, the Saxons had cruelly killed by poisonous serpents in a dungeon or den. The relatives of the unhappy chieftain thus barbarously executed were animated in their enterprise by the double stimulus of love of plunder and a ferocious thirst for revenge. A considerable time was spent in collecting a large fleet, and in combining, for this purpose, as many chieftains as could be induced to share in the enterprise. The story of their fellow-countryman ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... Hetherington and Brace in broad daylight, without any jury-trial; and, soon after, they quietly disbanded. As they controlled the press, they wrote their own history, and the world generally gives them the credit of having purged San Francisco of rowdies and roughs; but their success has given great stimulus to a dangerous principle, that would at any time justify the mob in seizing all the power of government; and who is to say that the Vigilance Committee may not be composed of the worst, instead of the best, elements ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... bribes in the Restoration period, was met face to face in a long and doubtful struggle and thoroughly humbled in a war, in which an English General, in command of an English contingent, had won victories unprecedented in our history since the Middle Ages. Patriotic pride received a stimulus such as that which followed the defeat of the Armada and preceded the outburst of the Elizabethan literature. Those successes, too, had been won in the name of 'liberty'—a vague if magical word which I shall not seek to define at present. England, ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... not so invaluable and simple a remedy for disease, such a preservative of health, such a comfort, such a stimulus, be considered as much a matter-of-course in a house as a kitchen-chimney? At least there should be one bath-room always in order, so arranged that all the family can have access to it, if one cannot afford the luxury ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various



Words linked to "Stimulus" :   turnoff, stimulus generalisation, positive stimulus, input, discriminative stimulus, reinforcer, induction, evocation, stimulant, stimulus generalization, cue, positive reinforcing stimulus, turn-on, negative stimulus, reinforcing stimulus, aversive stimulus, negative stimulation, stimulation, information, elicitation, negative reinforcing stimulus, stimulate, conditioned stimulus, kick, reinforcement



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