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More "Gravity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like that of the Christ in art, added to his ecstatic air a certain solemnity which was absolutely deceptive as to his real nature; for he was capable of committing any silliness with the most exemplary gravity. His clothes were a necessary envelope, to which he paid not the slightest attention, for his eyes looked too high among the clouds to concern themselves with such materialities. This great unknown artist belonged to the kindly class of the self-forgetting, who give their time and their ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... Kate said, paying one of her highest compliments with due gravity. But Norma did not respond with her usual buoyancy. She sighed impatiently, and her face fell into lines of discontent and sadness that did not escape the watching eyes. Mrs. Sheridan changed the subject to the one of ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... dated the man almost to a decade. He had begun life, under his mother's influence, as an admirer of Junius, but on maturer knowledge had transferred his admiration to Burke. He cautioned me, with entire gravity, to be punctilious in writing English; never to forget that I was a Scotsman, that English was a foreign tongue, and that if I attempted the colloquial, I should certainly be shamed: the remark was apposite, I suppose, in the days of David Hume. Scott was too new for him; he had known ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... provinces were murdered. The governors remained at the head of their troops in their provinces, and for the moment made common cause with the revolutionaries, from whom they meant to break free at the first opportunity. The Manchus themselves failed at first to realize the gravity of the revolutionary movement; they then fell into panic-stricken desperation. As a last resource, Yuean Shih-k'ai was recalled (November 10th, 1911) ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... those mentioned, though a wit of the day gave the masons a shilling to carve "O rare Ben Jonson!" on his grave stone. On the other hand, if given at the font, the name of Ben would have acquired all the legal gravity of Benjamin. In the English Navy List, not long ago, one of our gallant admirals used to figure as ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... his brother, the new Lord Howe was distinguished by the same fairness of mind, and by an equanimity to which perturbation and impulsive injustice were alike unknown. There seems to have been in his bearing something of that stern, impassive gravity that marked Washington, and imposed a constraint upon bystanders; but whatever apparent harshness there was in the face only concealed a genuine warmth of heart, which at times broke with an illumining smile through the mask that covered ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... "but do not forget"—she spoke with a certain gravity; death was a very real thing to her, for she had seen in the last two years two deathbeds, that of her father, that of her husband—"do not forget, Anna, that she told you you would not live long if you ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Notwithstanding the gravity of the situation, a smile flitted momentarily over the faces of the officers and crew. The boat by this time was within hailing distance, though it had grown so dark the inmates of it could be ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... which was surrounded by arcades. Ranged round this fountain, in a circle, were twenty saddled steeds of the highest race, each held by a groom, and each attended by a man-at-arms. All pressed their hands to their hearts as the Emir entered, but with a gravity of countenance which was never for a moment disturbed. Whether their presence were habitual, or only for the occasion, it was unquestionably impressive. Here the travellers dismounted, and Fakredeen ushered Tancred through a variety of ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... strong, mysterious, impalpable (no, not impalpable), pachydermatous, and the extraordinary accuracy with which they succeeded in balancing trees or parts of trees, branches, logs, beams, planks, ... etc., ... with their trunks (the beams carefully supported at their centre of gravity, the logs carefully supported at their centre of gravity, the elephants without a smile at their centre of gravity) From ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... the Romans call Fabius Maximus the target of the people, and Marcellus the sword? A. Because the one adapted himself to the service of the commonwealth, and the other was very eager to revenge the injuries of his country; and yet they were in the senate joined together, because the gravity of the one would moderate the courage and boldness of ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... books; that they have reproduced the same incident seems rather to prove that they have by accident stumbled upon the same fact—whether a dizziness of the eyes, or an affection of the brain, or an actual counteraction of gravity, I cannot tell." ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... stories about our own Legrandin and about his snobbishness which would have ruined his reputation for ever; and this other Legrandin had replied to me already in that wounded look, that stiffened smile, the undue gravity of his tone in uttering those few words, in the thousand arrows by which our own Legrandin had instantaneously been stabbed and sickened, like a Saint ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... jack-pudding; the family all the while singing, 'youth it self, most exactly youth it self ;' and he had gotten into the middle of the room, but that Fortunata whispered him, and I believe told him, such gambols did not become his gravity. Nor was there any thing more uneven to it self; for one while he turned to his Fortunata, and another while to his natural inclination: But what disturbed the pleasure of her dancing, was his notaries coming in; who, as they had been the acts of a ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... the eastern bank of the Hudson, a little south of Albany. Early in June, the troops of the eastern provinces began to pour in company after company, and such an assemblage never before thronged together on such an occasion. "It would have relaxed the gravity of an anchorite," says the historian, "to see the descendants of the Puritans marching through the streets of the ancient city, and taking their stations on the left of the British army—some with ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... could even notice its interior smell, blend of plastic and oxygen cycle chemicals, flesh and sweat. He was used to the sensation of hanging upside down on the surface, grip-soled boots holding him against that fractional gee by which the asteroid's rotation overcame its feeble gravity. But it came to him that this was an eerie bat-fashion way for an Oregon ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... not open; it was enough, and for a moment it seemed that it was all; neither Chu-bu nor Sheemish commanded there should be more, but they had set in motion an old law older than Chu-bu, the law of gravity that that colonnade had held back for a hundred years, and the temple of Chu-bu quivered and then stood still, swayed once and was overthrown, on the heads of Chu-bu ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... depicting. Let him speak whose words he would, from Shakspeare to Colman, it was impossible not to feel that half the fun was his own; he had, too, in a very high degree, the power that Fawcett possessed, of drawing tears by a sudden touch of natural feeling. His comic songs might have set the gravity of the judges and bishops together at defiance. Liston is great, ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... that the lady likes the proposal no better than you do," suggested Paolina, with a wise look of child- like gravity up at ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... American visitors taught the St. Moritz coasters that the way to ride a clipper sled on a swift coast was to go "belly-bump," prone on one's belly, with a foot ready to steer at the right or left as the case might be. The stability is surer because the centre of gravity is lower, the wind resistance is less, and the method is safer and better, if it is not so dignified. The records made thus converted the most phlegmatic Englishmen at St. Moritz, and since then this has been the ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... to the bed. As she turns she knocks over the bottle of medicine with one hand. It falls to floor and breaks, spilling on carpet. Jess shows utter consternation. Steve also distressed. Jess points to alarm clock standing on table, speaking to Steve excitedly. He greatly impressed by the gravity of the situation. She indicates that the doctor lives in the distant town. He nods, evidently trying to make up his mind what to do. Suddenly turns to Jess, looks straight into her eyes, then extends hand. She is puzzled, but takes ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... compelled us to take up the succession, have impelled us to send an envoy to the said king, and for this purpose we have made choice of yourself, being persuaded that your faithfulness and prudence will be equal to the gravity of this emergency. And so I desire you to start with the utmost speed, and not to rest till you have found his Majesty, and our councillor and ambassador Messer Erasmo Brasca, to whom you will explain the reason of your coming, and having through his means obtained an ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... people of letters or of effort in abstract thought, in so far as they possessed the arts of sculpture, architecture, painting, and music, they were almost wholly indebted to Greece. Their own strength lay in solidity and gravity of character, in a strong sense of national and personal discipline, in the gift of law-making and law-obeying. In culture they stood to the Greeks of that time very much as the Germans of two centuries ago stood to the French. After their conquest ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... and spreading out at its top in a spray of leaves and flowers; and if we could see its hidden processes we should realize how truly like a fountain it is. While in full leaf a current of water is constantly flowing through it, and flowing upward against gravity. This stream of water is truly its life current; it enters at the rootlets under the ground and escapes at the top through the leaves by a process called transpiration. All the mineral salts with which the tree builds up its woody tissues,—its osseous ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... limb. I saw that constable class leader become crimson in the face with suppressed laughter, while he held up his handkerchief, that those who were weeping for the poor woman's calamity might not see his merriment. Then, with assumed gravity, he said to the bereaved mother, "Sister, pray to the Lord that every dispensation of his divine will may be sanctified to the good of ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... peninsulas. Valley-like formation of the Atlantic Ocean. Forms which frequently recur — p. 285-293 and notes. Ramifications and systems of mountain chains, and the means of determining their relative ages. Attempts to determine the centre of gravity of the volume of the lands upheaved above the level p 21 of the sea. The elevation of continents is still progressing slowly, and is being compensated for at some definite points by a perceptible sinking. All geognostic phenomena indicate a periodical alteration of ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... great stage; but though thou shouldst have resided all thy days in those remote parts of this island which great men seldom visit, yet, if thou hast any penetration, thou must have had some occasions to admire both the solemnity of countenance in the actor and the gravity in the spectator, while some of those farces are carried on which are acted almost daily in every village in the kingdom. He must have a very despicable opinion of mankind indeed who can conceive them to ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... cried to his encounterer, the possessor of years and gravity but of no great size, whom he had almost knocked down. "I heard you, but knew not you were so close. We ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... over after service, but late, as the rain threatened to be heavy. A case was in process of hearing, and one old man spoke an hour on end, the chief listening all the while with the gravity of a judge. He then delivered his decision in about five minutes, the successful litigant going off lullilooing. Each person, before addressing him, turns his back to him and lies down on the ground, clapping ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... simmering and more or less latent condition to a state of open and acute hostility. The exactions and tyranny of the eunuchs had led to increased taxation and general discontent; and the horrors of famine now enhanced the gravity of the situation. Local outbreaks were common, and were with difficulty suppressed. The most capable among Chinese generals of the period, Wu San-kuei, shortly to play a leading part in the dynastic drama, was far away, employed in resisting the invasions of the Manchus, when a ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... moral weight as the most loudly vaunted certainty. And meantime, apart from and beneath the strife of tongues, there is the still small voice which whispers to a man and bids him, in no superstitious sense but with the gravity and humility which befits a Christian, to 'work out his own salvation with ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... him, and then looked at me with an expression of the sweetest gravity in the world. Surely there never was such a girl in the world since the sun first ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... attending to his special duty, will co-operate in securing the desired effect.—Evidently, again, to apply all these instruments, the public power must have, according to the case, this or that form or constitution, this or that degree of impulse and energy: according to the nature and gravity of external or internal danger, it is proper that it should be concentrated or divided, emancipated from control or under control, authoritative or liberal. No indignation need be cherished beforehand against its mechanism. Strictly speaking, it is a vast piece appliance in the human ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... persuaded her to leave her home and venture on board Captain L—-n's vessel with her lover; for, though this counsellor, according to a very good picture of him drawn by a famous master, has more of the wanton roguish smiles of a boy in his countenance, than the formality, wisdom, and gravity of those counsellors whom thou hast perhaps seen in Westminster-hall; and never wore one of those ponderous perukes which are so essential to the knowledge, wisdom, and eloquence of those gentlemen; yet ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... strange cat, took her by the top of the back, and shook her for a considerable period with some earnestness. Then depositing her in a ditch, he remarked with gravity: ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... foremost it depends on the matter in which the sin is committed: and in this way sins committed in connection with Divine things are the greatest. From this point of view gluttony is not the greatest sin, for it is about matters connected with the nourishment of the body. Secondly, the gravity of a sin depends on the person who sins, and from this point of view the sin of gluttony is diminished rather than aggravated, both on account of the necessity of taking food, and on account of the difficulty of proper ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... had retreated in so much haste. This fact led Clinton to suspect the true errand of the Mohawk the instant he started. He said nothing of his belief to his friends, however, as he had no wish to make a blunder, and the truth would soon become apparent. All were so impressed with the gravity of the situation, that only a few syllables passed between them during the ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... de Medici, the wisest and gravest man of his time in Italy, that he would [3518]"now and then play the most egregious fool in his carriage, and was so much given to jesters, players and childish sports, to make himself merry, that he that should but consider his gravity on the one part, his folly and lightness on the other, would surely say, there were two distinct persons in him." Now methinks he did well in it, though [3519] Salisburiensis be of opinion, that magistrates, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... justified pride that he could walk this planet under his own power. The natives, adapted to the deadliness and heavy gravity since birth, were still his superiors, but he was the only off-worlder who could stand the dangers of Pyrrus. His gun whined out of his power holster into his waiting hand as he searched for some target to use his talents ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... his officers were feasted on shore, paper parcels of the remnants were thrust into their hands on leaving. After the banquet the Japanese were entertained by an exhibition of negro minstrelsy, got up by some of the sailors. The gravity of the saturnine Hayashi was not proof against the grotesque exhibition, and even he joined in the general hilarity. It was now sunset and the Japanese prepared to depart, with quite as much wine in them as they could well bear. The jovial Matsusaki threw his arms about the Commodore's neck, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... Town, kept an affected State, called themselves the Queen's Managers, and had a Court as great as if they had been really so; they received the Visits of the Nobility with an Air of Majesty, and affected Gravity; and under this assumed Authority they took upon them to Closet the Noblemen when they came to pay their Respects to them; not to ask who they would give their Votes for, or to sollicit them to Vote for ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe
... immediate risk of success or failure; which years hence may indeed issue in a crop of bad debts, but which any grave persons may make at the time to look fair and plausible. A large Bank is exactly the place where a vain and shallow person in authority, if he be a man of gravity and method, as such men often are, may do infinite evil in no long time, and before he is detected. If he is lucky enough to begin at a time of expansion in trade, he is nearly sure not to be found out till the time of contraction has ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... off, leaving the curate speechless with fury; and joining the little crowd of mourners who had been startled and interrupted by this unexpected scene, drew a prayer book from his pocket, and without asking anyone's permission read with exquisite gravity and pathos the concluding words of the funeral service,—and then with his own hands assisted the grave-diggers to lay the coffined dead tenderly to rest. Awestruck, and deeply impressed by his manner the fisher-folk mechanically obeyed his instructions, and followed his ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... from the bottom of the spring, it carried the sand up in clearly-curved clouds until their own gravity caused the particles to sink, and again be thrown up by the force of the water. The party watched this phenomenon with interest for some time, for not one of them had ever seen anything like it, with the exception ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... Now, among the scraps of useless information which lumbered my mind was an acquaintance with the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, and forthwith I began to spell out with my fingers some of the phrases I had already uttered to so little effect. My resort to the sign language overcame the last remnant of gravity in the already profusely smiling group. The small boys now rolled on the ground in convulsions of mirth, while the grave and reverend seniors, who had hitherto kept them in check, were fain momentarily to ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... cool in summer, seem expressly designed to glimmer warmly with candle and fire-light; and the books seem to lean forward protectively and reassert themselves, and the low beamed ceilings to shelter and safeguard the interior comfort. The center of gravity is changed almost imperceptibly. In summer the place is a garden with a house in the middle; in winter a house ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... an effort to carry off the situation lightly. With a great sense of humour, she had also an infinite capacity for taking things seriously—with an almost sensational gravity. Yet she had always responded to his cheerful raillery when he had declined to be tragical. He ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... they advanced seemed to him, for the most part, sensible. What puzzled him was the uniform gravity which they accorded equally—as it appeared to him—to the discussion of the most pompous platitudes and of the most arrant nonsense. They were always serious; and the general tone of infallibility, Billy thought, could be warranted only by a vast ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... Therefore, O foremost of truthful men, asked by me, tell me truly (what that cause is). Indeed, if it be not a secret, it behoveth thee, O chastiser of foes, to say it unto me. O slayer of Madhu, tell me what has removed thy gravity today. This act of thine, O Janardana, this lightness of heart, seems to me like the drying up of the ocean or the locomotion ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... often possess great interest, and furnish suggestive lessons which few living poets can study without profit. Numerous extracts from the correspondence of Wordsworth are given in this volume, which are marked by his usual gravity and intenseness of reflection, but are destitute of the spontaneous ease which forms the chief beauty of epistolary writing. On the whole, we regard this biography as eminently instructive, presenting many noticeable facts ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... and thus only, can we value our possession. In this estimate, mention is made of the greater historians, not because others are not worthy of notice, but because the scope of this essay does not allow, inasmuch as reference is here had to the specific gravity of the historian and the epoch of our history ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... gravity is considerably less than on Earth. Therefore, even the heaviest bim weighs less and can be pushed over with the greatest ...
— Mars Confidential • Jack Lait
... dull.' The best conversationalists are those whose ancestors have been bilingual, like the French and Irish, but the art of conversation is really within the reach of almost every one, except those who are morbidly truthful, or whose high moral worth requires to be sustained by a permanent gravity of demeanour and ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... a letter written unto him, from the Imperial Assembly, by Philip Melancthon, after the reading of it, he said, What Philip Melancthon writeth hath hands and feet, hath authority and gravity, it is of weight, contained in a few words, as always I have found by his letters. But, I perceive, we must have wars; for the Papists would willingly go on, but they want a good stomach, neither may we endure the case to stand upon these terms. Let ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... as to be near the edge of sorrowful expression. She would not have permitted it to choose such expression, and indeed it easily took another line; for even as she looked, her eye caught the light from Mr. Linden's and the gravity of her face broke in a sunny and somewhat obstinate smile, which Faith would have controlled ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... comedy, abounding with innocent mirth and pleasant jests. This species of composition is generally the child and offspring of youth, as tragedy is that of old age; the former being by its facetious and sprightly turn suited to the bloom of life, and the latter by its gravity adapted to riper years. Now, if that good old man [Sophocles], a Grecian by birth, and a poet, was so much extolled for having written a tragedy at the age of seventy-three, and, on that account ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... He swung his legs off his bed and padded barefoot over to the light switch. He was so used to walking under the light lunar gravity that he was no longer conscious of it. He pressed the switch, and the room was suddenly flooded ...
— The Bramble Bush • Gordon Randall Garrett
... large extent on the customs of the country. In some countries the injured person, instead of putting the law in motion against an offender, takes the matter in his own hands, and administers the wild justice of revenge. Great differences of opinion also exist among different nations as to the gravity of certain offences. Among some peoples there is a far greater reluctance than there is among others to appeal to the law. Murder is perhaps the only crime on which there exists a fair consensus of ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... allowance for Steerforth's light way of treating the subject, and, considering it with reference to the staid air of gravity and antiquity which I associated with that 'lazy old nook near St. Paul's Churchyard', did not feel indisposed towards my aunt's suggestion; which she left to my free decision, making no scruple of telling me that it had occurred to ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... St John the Baptist was, by our ancestors, accounted mysterious, and connected with their own superstitions. The fairy queen was sometimes identified with Herodias.—DELRII Disquisitiones Magicae, pp. 168. 807. It is amusing to observe with what gravity the learned Jesuit contends, that it is heresy to believe that this celebrated figurante (saltatricula) still leads choral dances ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... of a narrow disc of land surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. That sea deserved at that time the name it bears, for the world's center of gravity, which has since shifted to other latitudes, lay in it. The interest of human life was concentrated in the southern countries of Europe, the portion of western Asia and the strip of northern Africa which ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... her chamber, soon after dinner, to take a short nap. One noon, after she had been scolding, with assumed gravity, about the dog's mischievousness, Oscar thought he would play a joke upon the old lady; so, on rising from the dinner-table, he carried Tiger up to her bed-room, and shut him in. He wanted to conceal himself somewhere, ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... up from his work with much gravity. "This ain't no funnin' we're goin' on, Nuck. It's serious business. You kin shoot straight, an' that's why I begged for ye. This may be the most turrible day you ever seen, my lad, for the day on which a man or boy ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... so-called "simple natures," which form, as it were, the alphabet of nature or the colors on her palette, by the combination of which she produces her varied pictures; e. g., the nature of heat and cold, of a red color, of gravity, and also of age, of death. Now the question to be investigated becomes, What, then, is heat, redness, etc.? The ground essence and law of the natures consist in certain forms, which Bacon conceives in a Platonic way as concepts and substances, but phenomenal ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... appears at the public ceremonies, at the theatre, and even at the courts. And still she is ordinarily uncultured; the Romans do not care to instruct their daughters; the quality which they most admire in woman is gravity, and on her tomb they write by way of eulogy, "She kept ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... punch, heaped more wood on the fire and lit their pipes. By the time each had emptied his tin mug for the third time all felt inexpressibly sleepy. Mr. Darling, the commander of the guard, counted his men with a waving forefinger, and an expression of owlish gravity on his round face. Then, "Daniel Berry, you'll stand the first trick," said he. "Keep a sharp look-out and report anything unusual. Silas Nixon will relieve you at eight bells of ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... that influence of mine could prevail to induce him to divide his dual nature, "To throw away the worser part of it, and live the purer with the better half!" But I could only show disapprobation by the gravity ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... phallus element should be so conspicuous in this play.... (This) coarseness, so repulsive to ourselves, was introduced, it is impossible to doubt, for the express purpose of counter-balancing the extreme earnestness and gravity of the play. It seems so logical, so irrefutable; and so completely misinterprets every creative force of Aristophanes' Psyche that it certainly deserves a little admiration. It is in the best academic tradition, ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... 4. Want of gravity in carriage and apparell, dissolutenesse in haire, and shaking about the knees, lightnesse in the apparrell of their wives ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... dignity was of their respect. A new scene of royalty presented itself in this gay court to Wallace, for all was pageant and chivalric gallantry; but it had no other effect on him than that of exciting those benevolent affections which rejoiced in the innocent gayeties of his fellow-beings. His gravity was not that of a cynic. Though hilarity never awakened his mind to buoyant mirth, yet he loved to see it in others, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... that are expressed or tacitly assumed throughout this work are not so much those personal to the author as they are those of our present day American democratic society, taken at about its center of gravity. When the people generally feel differently as to the ends to be attained, a different public policy must be formulated, tho the economic analysis may not need to be changed. Therefore, in some cases, the author has discussed merely the economic aspect, or has referred to the ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... my mind all gravity Is a grave subjection; Sweeter far than honey are Jokes and free affection. All that Venus bids me do, Do I with erection, For she ne'er in heart of man Dwelt with ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... myself always in the third person as Una. I can remember with a smile now how I went one day to Aunt Emma—I, a great girl of eighteen—and held up my skirt, that I'd muddied in the street, and said to her, with great gravity: ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... different thing." Now B. went out to dinner that night, and sitting next to a distinguished Liberal member of Parliament, told him this tale, expecting that he would laugh. "Ah! yes," said he with much gravity, "it is ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... hag—oh! Cormac—oh! Branwen, I hope you won't be the death of me," cried the chief, flinging his huge limbs on a couch and giving way to unrestrained laughter, till the tears ran down his cheeks. "If they did not all look so grave when speaking about you, it wouldn't be so hard to bear. It's the gravity that kills me. But come, Branwen," he added, as he suddenly checked himself and took her hand, "what makes you look so ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... be present in the bottom finds its way by gravity to the port steam entrance, and is forced out by and with the exhaust steam at or before the commencement ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... excursions, it was necessary to favorably impress the imagination of the Indians. He was distinguished as an ornithologist, and was never so much at home as in the midst of the forests; in fact, he often regretted that he had not been born an Indian. His gravity entirely devoid of sadness, his skill in shooting, and his silent laugh, often led me to compare him to Cooper's "Leather-Stocking;" but it was "Leather-Stocking" become a man of ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... with the view of solving the honourable gentleman's difficulty, how the Russians can be useful, if not on the continent. It is unnecessary to occupy the time and attention of the House with a serious answer to objections, which it is indeed difficult to repeat with the same gravity with which ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... me the first thing I asked you. You knew what was right, and I did not. You have always known what was right, and have always done it. I see that now as I look back. So I have learnt my lesson, you see." She concluded with a grave smile. Life is full of gravity, but love is the gravest part ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... some moments he sat gazing at the latter, evidently in doubt whether to give credence to the story, or reject it as a little bit of a "sell" upon the part of his comrade—with whose eccentricity of character he was well acquainted. Equally ludicrous was the look of gravity on the countenance of the other—which he continued to preserve under the continued gaze of his comrade, with all the solemnity of a judge upon the bench. It was as much as my companion and I could do to restrain our laughter; but we were desirous of witnessing the finale of the affair, and, by ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... European importance. She now, by taking a hand in the affairs of Italy, endeavored to grasp what she had hitherto let slip by,—namely, the opportunity of becoming the head of the Latin world and, above all, the center of gravity of European politics and civilization. She soon forced herself into the Papacy and into the Empire. From Spain the Borgias first came to the Holy See, and from there later came Charles V to ascend the imperial throne. From Spain came also Ignatius Loyola, ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... sitting on a very low chair at a very high table, consequently my left arm feels as though it was restraining an apparent tendency on the part of the table to set at nought the established laws of gravity. How is the old Tadpole, the wily banker, the impecunious toiler among heaps of gold? Tell him to prig a few thousand pound notes, and wrap himself up in them all but his head, that will do for the port light, and labelled "wrong side up, with care," and get himself sent across ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... Oscar, after which he subsided, listening to the proceedings that followed, with grave, expressionless eyes. It is doubtful if Oscar understood what it was all about, but his gravity and judicial manner sent the whole dressing tent ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... the {ridiculous} than this before us. The idea is truly comic, and it is worked up with all that simplicity and chastity so peculiar to the manner of Terence. An ordinary writer would have indulged himself in twenty little conceits on this occasion; but the dry gravity of Terence infinitely surpasses, as true humor, all the drolleries which, perhaps, even those great masters of Comedy, Plautus or Moliere, might have been tempted to throw out. It is the highest art of a Dramatic Author, on some occasions, to leave a good deal to the Actor; and ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... Antarctica katabatic (gravity-driven) winds blow coastward from the high interior; frequent blizzards form near the foot of the plateau; cyclonic storms form over the ocean and move clockwise along the coast; volcanism on Deception ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... said Master Hardy. "Here." He put his hand in his pocket, and producing some nuts offered them over the gate. At this Miss Nugent ceased her capering, and wrath possessed her that the enemy should thus misunderstand the gravity ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Chateaubriand and Lamartine in France, or to Goethe in Germany, who would ever have blamed him for the slight errors which fell from his pen in "Don Juan,"—a poem written hastily and with carelessness, but of which it can be said, as Montesquieu said of the prettiest women, "their part has more gravity and importance than is generally thought." If the sense of the ridiculous is ever stronger among people whose appreciation of the beautiful is keenest, who more than Byron could have possessed it to a higher degree? Is it therefore ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... hesitating and considering. "We don't desire to see in boys the sedateness and gravity of demeanor that we like to see in men. We like to see them playful and joyous ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... bestowed on him a large jurisdiction—even more, put under his supervision the conduct of public functionaries in their administration, and conferred on him a preponderating influence on their election. In a word, it by degrees displaced the centre of gravity in political life by investing the episcopate with a large portion ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... either fear, aversion, or surprise. Their looks were rather expressive of a ready acquiescence in the proffered kindness of the men, and when at length they brought a sable nymph vis-a-vis to Mr. White, I could preserve my gravity no longer, and throwing the spears aside, I ordered ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... moment Mr. Coleman returned, and Lawless, giving me a sly glance, accosted him with a face of the most perfect gravity, begging the favour of a few minutes' private conversation with him, a request which that gentleman, with a slight appearance of surprise, immediately granted, and they left the ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the tide of the broken dam of gossip. The names were openly spoken and swept from mouth to mouth of the scandalmongers, gathering matter as they flew. He knocked at Diana's door, where he was informed that the mistress of the house was absent. More than official gravity accompanied the announcement. Her address was unknown. Sir Lukin thought it now time to tell his wife. He began with a hesitating circumlocution, in order to prepare her mind for bad news. She divined immediately that it concerned Diana, and forcing him to speak to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for the preservation of the level of the ocean is gravity. But the surface is seldom smooth. The winds lash it into fury and pile high its waves, but gravity pulling upon every drop of water tends to draw it back to its place and smooth down the surface again. The wind cannot build permanently a mountain of water ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... the other's sudden change to gravity. "It's two years and more since I got a letter from Mother. I wrote a couple of times, but ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... farther than the geometrical facts. He realised that the orbits are followed owing to a force directed to the sun; and he guessed that this is the same force as the gravity that makes a stone fall. He saw the difficulty of gravitation acting through the void space. He compared universal gravitation to magnetism, and speaks of the work of Gilbert of Colchester. (Gilbert's book, De Mundo Nostro Sublunari, ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... had lost his gravity, and spoke with warmth and bitterness. As he paused for breath, Mistress Evelyn took her eyes from the group of those about to run and opened her fan. "A careless father, at least," she said. "If he hath learning, he should know better than ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... express my thanks for having been allowed to pass the night in a comfortable cabin, my host interrupted me with a good-natured laugh, and assured me that, on the contrary, he was under obligations to me. "You see," he said, assuming an air of mock gravity, "I have always on board a large body of light cavalry, and when I have all this part of the ship to myself they make a combined attack on me; whereas, when some one is sleeping close by, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... stated above (A. 1), blasphemy is opposed to the confession of faith, so that it contains the gravity of unbelief: while the sin is aggravated if the will's detestation is added thereto, and yet more, if it breaks out into words, even as love and confession add to the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... found Jerome much improved. He had become more serious; a certain gravity had taken the place of his youthful bubbling high spirits. He spoke with emotion, respect, and affection of his young wife whose pathetic situation was made even more disturbing by the state of her health. He proposed to throw himself at his brother's feet, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... sudden gravity of his tone, and almost regretted the impulse that had made her speak. She forgot it, however, in the tableaux vivants which they were preparing for the evening, in which she and Charles illustrated the syllable nun to enthusiastic applause. Ruth represented the nun, engaged ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... other circumstances, the plumber's compliments on her taste and his lugubrious assumption of character of the Destroying Angel would have sorely tried, if not completely upset, Ella's gravity; as it was, she was too wretched to have more than a passing and quite unappreciative sense of his absurdity. George, having the quality of mind which makes jokes more readily than sees them, ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... ale. It happened that the kitchen where he and his companion were sitting was neatly paved with sheep's trotters disposed in various compartments. After one pipe, Mr. Hearne, consistently with his usual gravity and sobriety, rose to depart; but his friend, who was inclined to enjoy more of his company, artfully observed, that the floor on which they were then sitting was no less than an original tesselated Roman pavement. Out ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... of the United States, or the validity or construction of any treaty of the United States, and except cases of prize and capital or infamous crime, in which cases of appeal lies directly to the supreme court. In cases of gravity and importance the Supreme Court may by certiorari review the judgment of the circuit court of appeals, but such cases are rare (re Lau Ow Bew, 141 U.S. Rep 587; Benedict's The American Admiralty, sec. 607). ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Church-Member now take an easier method of traveling, for they ride on a strange vehicle down the gravity road. ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... girl," answered Lord Orville, shaking his head. "Whether ignorant or mischievous, I will not pretend to determine; but she attended to all I said to her with the most immovable gravity." ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the worst feature of it—his daughter with him. And at such a time! Scarce a day passed without its rumors or reports of new affronts and even atrocities being perpetrated upon American residents of Mexico. Each day, too, the gravity of these acts increased. From mere insult they had run of late to assault and even to murder. Nor was ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sea a week, the S.B. managed to get a sunstroke. He grew alarmingly ill, and the ship's doctor told me that he had developed tubercular meningitis, and that his recovery was impossible. I gave the S.B. a hint as to the gravity of his case, but the boy's pluck was indomitable. "I am going to sell that doctor," he said, "for I don't mean to die now. I have sold the doctors twice already when they told me I was dying, and I am going to make this chap look silly, too, for I don't intend to go out." ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... ore, as taken from the lode, contains from 2 to 5 per cent. of cassiterite, and is mainly made up of quartz, felspar, chlorite, schorl, and other stony minerals, together with more or less mispickel, iron and copper pyrites, oxide of iron, and wolfram. The cassiterite has a specific gravity (6.4 to 7.1) considerably higher than that of the vein-stuff (2.5 to 3.0), and is concentrated by a series of washings till it is free from the lighter material. Those minerals which have a specific gravity ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... stood near, observing Penrod with gravity. It was the first great surprise of her life. Customarily, she had seemed to place his character somewhere between that of the professional rioter and that of the orang-outang; nevertheless, her manner at times just hinted a consciousness that this Caliban was her property. Wherefore, ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... preposterous manner and fantastic speech, both Lady Enid and the Prophet fancied that they could detect an element of real gravity, even perhaps a hint of weighty censure which made them both feel very young—rising two, ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... decent a fellow he is, your mood seems severe, Irene. Well, you have made up your mind. It's an affair of no small gravity, and we must get through it as best we can. I have no doubt whatever it's worse for you than for anyone ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... looked anxious at the serious and energetic manner in which he made those assertions; even the sportive kiss that ended the question did not dispel the gravity with ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... occasion. I cannot, however, omit to notice how early Dr. Bucknill was in the field, as his laborious examination of a number of brains of the insane to determine the amount of cerebral atrophy and the specific gravity, bear witness, as also his demonstration of the changes which take place, not only in the brain and its membranes, but in the cord, in general paralysis; these observations, along with those of Dr. Boyd, having been fully confirmed ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... not so persistently amuse the reader it is, of course, scarcely necessary to say. The jest has not substance enough—few of Sterne's jests have—to stand the process of continual attrition to which he subjects it. But the mere historic gravity with which the various turns of this monomania are recorded—to say nothing of the seldom failing charm of the easy, gossiping style—prevents the thing from ever becoming utterly tiresome. On the whole, however, one begins to grow impatient for more of the same sort as the three admirable chapters ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... obtained? By skimming after it has stood for twenty-four hours, "gravity cream"; by a separator, and it is then known as "centrifugal cream"; (most of the cream now sold in ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... been torn. These are prodigies to the rustic population, little accustomed to think of the dynamics of water, and totally ignorant of the deduction made in such circumstances from the specific gravity of any heavy mass carried by it. Geologists, who have looked into the great question of erratic blocks, are less apt to be startled ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... costume?" she asked, playfully, alluding to her daughter's morning dress. Startled and blushing, Caroline, for the first time, perceived her mother was dressed for dinner, and her father, determining to banish all appearance of gravity, held up his watch, which pointed to some few minutes after the usual dinner-hour. Glad to escape for a few minutes to the solitude of her own room, Caroline hastily withdrew her hand from St. Eval's detaining grasp, and smiling a brief farewell, brushed by Emmeline and Ellen, who were that instant ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... take the liberty of expressing an opinion, sir. A young girl who rejects the remedy of the fiddle presents a case of extreme gravity. Don't despair, sir! It is my pride and pleasure to be never at a loss, where your interests are concerned. This is, I think, a matter for the ministrations of a woman. If you have confidence in my wife, I venture to suggest a ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... regarded as a portent of direst evil, —indeed, as a present disaster, immeasurably sorrowful. The excitement in the Southern States over the probability of Mr. Lincoln's election he considered natural, their serious protest altogether justifiable. He desired the free States to be awakened to the gravity of the situation, to be thoroughly alarmed, and to repent of their sins against the South. He wished it understood from ocean to ocean that the position of the Republican party was inconsistent with loyalty to the Union, and that its permanent success ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... letter without a word and with the solemnest mien in the world laid it upon a table on the other side of the window. The station-master arose, stretched himself, took off his red cap, and walked over to that table; then he put on an ordinary cap with a red border and with the greatest gravity opened the letter that he had written a moment ago. He read it, wrote on the other side a few lines in reply, again signing his name, and then addressed it to the "Local Station-Master" and had ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... of the Mint was accompanied by another gentleman almost as portly as himself, and quite as deliberate in his movements. The costume of this personage was somewhat singular, and might have passed for a masquerading habit, had not the imperturbable gravity of his demeanour forbidden any such supposition. It consisted of a close jerkin of brown frieze, ornamented with a triple row of brass buttons; loose Dutch slops, made very wide in the seat and very tight at the knees; red stockings with black clocks, and a fur ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the constitution of the League of Nations there are two clauses which form its fundamental weakness, sections desired by France, whose gravity escaped Wilson. ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... the Soleil d'Or, where he naturally conversed with the landlord while waiting for dinner. Mitouflet was an old soldier, guilelessly crafty, like the peasantry of the Loire; he never laughed at a jest, but took it with the gravity of a man accustomed to the roar of cannon and to make his own ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Government seemed quietly to have deserted us, we watched the public sentiment at the North with much interest. There was but little to encourage us there. The Northern cities, however, were beginning to appreciate the gravity of the crisis. At the call of the Mayor of Philadelphia, a great public meeting was held in Independence Square. For one, I was thoroughly dispirited and disgusted at the resolutions that were passed. They were evidently prompted by the almighty dollar, and ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... for even then they prated of the golden age of their grandfathers, lamenting their own decadence.... As behoved good Castilians, burdened with such a line of noble ancestors, the fortunate couple conducted themselves with all imaginable gravity. No strange eye was permitted to witness a caress between the lord and his lady, or to hear an expression of endearment; but everyone could see the devotion of Don Sebastian, the look of adoration which filled his eyes when he gazed upon his wife. ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... speech that has no relation to the real thought of speaker or hearer, but to the rostrum only, we must not be hasty to condemn a sentimentalism which we do our best to foster. We listen in public with the gravity or augurs to what we smile at when we meet a brother adept. France is the native land of eulogy, of truth padded out to the size and shape demanded by comme-il-faut. The French Academy has, perhaps, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... experienced, and successful instructors in our country fall into it at all; but some young beginner, whose knowledge is very limited, and who, in manner and habits, has only just ceased to be a boy, walks into his school-room with a countenance of forced gravity, and with a dignified and solemn step, which is ludicrous even to himself. I describe accurately, for I describe from recollection. This unnatural, and forced, and ludicrous dignity cleaves to him like a disease through the whole period of his duty. In the presence ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... phenomenon of life to a vital force or principle, am I any more unscientific than I am when I give a local habitation and a name to any other causal force, as gravity, chemical affinity, cohesion, osmosis, electricity, and so forth? These terms stand for certain special activities in nature and are as much the inventions of our own minds as are any of the ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... slide, roll, leap, tumble headlong, to get as low as the earth will let it! That is genius. But what is this transient upward movement, which gives us the glitter and the rainbow, to that unsleeping, all-present force of gravity, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, (if the universe be eternal,)—the great outspread hand of God himself, forcing all things down into their places, and keeping them there? Such, in smaller proportion, is the force of character to the fitful movements of genius, as they are or have been ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... frequently act little scenes from "The Tempest," as being the most appropriate to our circumstances. The girls' favourite play, however, was Pericles, "Prince of Tyre." I took the part of the King, and when I called for my robes Yamba would bring some indescribable garments of emu skin, with a gravity that was comical in the extreme. I, on my part, recited passages from the French classics—particularly the Fables of La Fontaine, in French; which language the girls ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... upon the schoolmaster the effect which the mason's sign is said to produce on the brethren of the trowel. He was at once interested in the learned traveller, listened with gravity to his story of a tired horse and a lost shoe, and then replied with solemnity, "It may appear a simple thing, most worshipful, to reply to you that there dwells, within a brief mile of these TUGURIA, the best FABER FERARIUS, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... followed, in which Frontenac asked the envoy what was the strength of Bellomont's government. Schuyler parried the question by a grotesque exaggeration, and answered that the earl could bring about a hundred thousand men into the field. Frontenac pretended to believe him, and returned with careless gravity that he had ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... circumference at breast-height, one hundred twenty-five feet in height and having a spread of one hundred fifty feet. The wood of the pecan is similar to that of the hickory in both toughness and specific gravity, although for practical purposes, such as being used for tool handles, the shagbark hickory is enough harder and tougher to make it the superior ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... north through immeasurable time, its record being the ancient water-marks now high up on the mountain sides of British Columbia and elsewhere. It is certainly not unthinkable that, if subject to such a displacement of its centre of gravity, our planet at some inconceivably remote period capsized, so that what were before the Tropics became the Poles, and that such a catastrophe is not only possible but is certain to happen again. As a conjecture it may be unscientific; but how many of the accepted theories of science have ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... an apparent simplicity and gravity, a quiet repose of manner, and an evident consciousness of her own strength, which meant that she was ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... society of Friends, Fenwick sailed for his new possessions. They entered at a spot not far from the Delaware River, which they named Salem, on account of the peaceful aspect of the country and the surrounding Indians. There, with the peculiar gravity of the sect, Fenwick and his two daughters, thirteen men (most of them heads of families) and one woman, the wife of one of the emigrants, sat in silent worship, according to their custom, under the shadow ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... public men of the United States. Mr. Emerson has a phrase which is exactly applicable to these efforts of Webster's mind. That phrase is, "superb propriety." Throughout his despatches, he always seems to feel that he impersonates his country; and the gravity and weight of his style are as admirable as its simplicity and majestic ease. "Daniel Webster, his mark," is indelibly stamped on them all. When the Treaty of Washington was criticised by the Whigs in the English Parliament, Macaulay specially noticed the difference in the style of the two ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... away the knife and beckoned to his man, who was looking on from the door. They both took a firm hold of Dave and stood him upon his feet. He looked hard and contemptuously at Maloney for some seconds. Then with gravity and deliberation Dave said: "Now wot 'n th' devil are y' up ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... The gravity of the Spaniard, and the levity of the Frenchman, are as evident in all their productions as in their persons themselves; and the style of my countrymen is as naturally strong and nervous, as that of an Arabian or ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... Church held control; until all mankind seemed to draw itself out in a long series of groups, dragged on by an attractive power in advance, which even the leaders obeyed without understanding, as the planets obeyed gravity, or the trees obeyed ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... what we should next try to do, when we heard a loud chattering above our heads; and looking up, we saw several monkeys, which had descended from the topmost boughs, gazing down on us,—some inspecting us with all the gravity of Turks, others swinging backwards and forwards on the pendent vines, as if they felt themselves at home, and were perfectly indifferent to our presence. While we remained quiet, they held their posts. One big fellow, especially, with a long tail and huge bushy whiskers, was ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... Khayme, but as he had charge of our rhetoric and French, as well as oratory, it was impossible that we should not meet. In class he was reserved and confined himself strictly to his duties, never by tone or look varying his prescribed relation to the class; yet, though his outward gravity and seeming indifference, I sometimes felt that he influenced me by a power which no ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... were of the same generation, and no less anxious for the honor of their house, but they represented opposite poles of Venetian character; Bernardini's gravity and dignity of demeanor concealed a depth of tenderness and consideration which he rarely confessed, yet, a true Venetian statesman, he could observe in silence, nor use his knowledge until it might be of some avail. The King disliked him, fearing his silent judgment, and was ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... some of these idiotic braves and the Medicine Man insist upon it that she's A SQUAW, and that you're keeping her in captivity against your plighted faith to them! You'll excuse me," he went on with an attempt to recover his gravity, "troubling you with their d—d fool talk, and you won't say anything to HER about it, but I thought you ought to know it on account of your position among 'em. You don't want to lose their confidence, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... evil Merodach, and was that famous Nitocris whom Herodotus mentions as a woman of extraordinary prudence and wisdom. She was not present at the feast, as were the king's wives and concubines. It was not agreeable to her age and gravity to dissipate at night; but tidings of the consternation in the banquet hall were brought to her, so that she came and entreated him not to be discouraged by the incapacity of the wise men to solve the riddle; for there was a man in his kingdom who had more ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... down the mountain to the cars on the spur tracks, hundreds of feet below, by means of a rail tramway on trestle work, some three thousand feet in length, having a grade of nine feet per each hundred feet, over which cars of ore were passing, operated by gravity, the weight and velocity of the descending, loaded car, carrying the empty car upward. He thoroughly enjoyed these novel scenes, and congratulated himself upon the many picturesque mining views which he would add to ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... you got it."—"Who says so roared Jack. Show me the blank liar." There was a dead silence. Then the possessor of the quiet voice, Mr. Jack Hamlin, languidly reached under the table, took the chalk, and, rubbing the end of his billiard-cue, began with gentle gravity: "It was an old friend of mine in Sacramento, a man with a wooden leg, a game eye, three fingers on his right hand, and a consumptive cough. Being unable, naturally, to back himself, he leaves things ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... hands full of bread for Snowflake and Eiderdown, while a little troop of rare foreign ducks hung somewhat timidly in the rear. Presently, to Mollie's intense delight, they got into the canoe, and Audrey, with much gravity, commenced their voyage. ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... houses. This morning she had possessed herself of a square, thin volume which gave lists and plates of the nerve system of the human body. The doctor had nearly laughed aloud when he caught sight of it, and when Nan opened it with decision and gravity and read the first page slowly, she was conscious of a lack of interest in her subject. She had lost the great enthusiasm of the night before, and felt like the little heap of ashes which such a burning and heroic self ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... ascribed to these elders. They are called elders, say some, because for the most part they were chosen out of the elder sort of men: others better, from the maturity of knowledge, wisdom, gifts, gravity, piety, &c., which ought to be in them. This name elder seems to have rule and authority written upon it, when applied to any church officer; and it is by the Septuagint often ascribed to rulers political, elders in the gate, Judges viii. 14; Ruth iv. ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... for your army and I have brought your young friend to assist me if I should need translating from or to you. We Americans, Captain, are poor handlers of any language not our own, and the matter is of much gravity." And as the Gouverneur Faulkner spoke those words to my Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, with a great courtesy but also a great sternness, in which he named me not as his friend but as the friend of that Capitaine, the Count de Lasselles, I knew that I was ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... enhance when the plate came round. After his first contribution Mrs. Sand regarded his spiritual interests with almost superstitious reverence, according them the fullest privacy of which she was capable. The gravity which the gentleman attached to his situation was sufficiently testified by the "amount"; Mrs. Sand never wanted better evidence than the amount. Even Laura, acting doubtless under instructions, seemed ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... lived daily in the consciousness of his own call to this exalted ideal. It made his face, in repose, grave. His gravity came from the sense of duty and the consciousness of problems to be met and solved as his fathers before him had ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... company with those pretended 'Esprits forts', or with thoughtless libertines, who laugh at all religion to show their wit, or disclaim it, to complete their riot, let no word or look of yours intimate the least approbation; on the contrary, let a silent gravity express your dislike: but enter not into the subject and decline such unprofitable and indecent controversies. Depend upon this truth, that every man is the worse looked upon, and the less trusted for being thought to have no religion; in spite ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... shows are very brave; and you will forgive me if my head is full of them just now. Presently, when the pageants are all over, I shall settle down to be a sober prince enough. I think you do not trust me wholly in the matter—but I would not seem ungrateful," he added rather hastily, seeing the gravity in the Duke's face—"for indeed you have been as a true ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to which the eye continually returns as indicating the motive of the conception. Yet here I would dwell rather on two pictures which show the splendid simplicity and directness of his strength, the one a portrait of himself, the other that of a little child called Dorothy, who has all that sweet gravity and look of candour which we like to associate with that old-fashioned name: a child with bright rippling hair, tangled like floss silk, open brown eyes and flower-like mouth; dressed in faded claret, with little lace about the neck and throat, toned down ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... a great deal and presently wept a great deal in convulsive sobs, and then opened his eyes and saw the tourbillon of whirling elements settling down into Rossiter's grave, handsome face—yes, but a gravity somehow interpenetrated by love, a love not ashamed to show itself—bending over him with great concern. The secret had been guessed, was known; and as they held each other with their eyes as though the world were well lost in this discovery, their ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... friends with them. She was something of a mystery to the Achill people, this small moony creature, with her silver fair hair, and strange light eyes, the colour of spilt milk. She was as small as a child, but had the gravity of a woman. She loved the sea with a love unusual in Achill, where the sea is to many a ravening monster that has exacted in return for its hauls of fish the life of husband and son. Patrick Lavelle had built for her a snug cabin ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... coom to ask yo, sir, how I am to be ridded o' this woman.' Stephen infused a yet deeper gravity into the mixed expression of his attentive face. Mrs. Sparsit uttered a gentle ejaculation, as having ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... with pretended gravity, "when a man has waited, as long as I've waited, he gets sort of impatient." He grinned again, and gave her this last shot: ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... suddenly reinscribed Miss Conway upon the tablets of his consideration. He threw away the remaining inch-and-a-quarter of his cigar, that would have been good for eight minutes yet, and quickly shifted his center of gravity to ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... the biter was bit and a metamorphosis into the animal of attack seemed imminent; at the hands of another a warrior in barley-sugar was experiencing the vernacular for defeat with reproving haste and gravity; and there was yet another little omnivorous creature that put out both hands for indiscriminate snatching, and made a spectacle of himself in a general plaster ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... States. Mr. Emerson has a phrase which is exactly applicable to these efforts of Webster's mind. That phrase is, "superb propriety." Throughout his despatches, he always seems to feel that he impersonates his country; and the gravity and weight of his style are as admirable as its simplicity and majestic ease. "Daniel Webster, his mark," is indelibly stamped on them all. When the Treaty of Washington was criticised by the Whigs in the English Parliament, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... a deeper impression than Nature creates for you, and that means never attempt to create any impression at all. For example, never try to look wise. Many a front of gravity and weight conceals an intellectual desolation. In Moscow you will find the exact external counterpart of Tolstoi. It is said that it is difficult to distinguish the philosopher from his double. Yet this duplicate in appearance of the greatest of living writers ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... or abundance; it is the child of physical motion and the grandchild of spiritual motion, and the mother and origin of gravity. Gravity is confined to the elements of {149} water and earth, and this force is infinite, because infinite worlds could be moved by it if instruments could be made by which the force could be generated. Force, with physical motion, and gravity, with ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... a place in my list of boys. He is a big, brown man now, and, having done his part in the war, is at work on his farm. We meet sometimes, and though we try to be dignified and proper, it is quite impossible; there is a sly twinkle in Cy's eye that upsets my gravity, and we always burst out laughing at the memory of ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... would be effected by the herald shouting out at the top of his voice, "Here comes the lord; the great lion;" the latter phrase being "tau e tona", which, in his imperfect way of pronunciation, became "Sau e tona", and so like "the great sow" that I could not receive the honor with becoming gravity, and had to entreat him, much to the annoyance of my party, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... encounter the desperate odds connected with ignorance and old-fashioned ideas which Miss Nightingale successfully combated, did marvellous service by displaying what private enterprise can do in a national emergency—an emergency with which, in its suddenness, gravity, and scope, no Government could have hoped to deal successfully. I must go back to the winter of 1899 to call their great work to mind. War had already been waging some weeks in South Africa when the Government's proclamation was issued calling ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... Master Gravity, Let not a word of the Law be spoken! One thing be clearly understood,— Unless I clasp the sweet, young blood This night in my arms—then, well and good: When midnight strikes, ...
— Faust • Goethe
... march; passing through every place Without molestation, his allies receiving him courteously, and escorting him as he passed the boundaries of each district. Indibilis, who spoke for both, addressed him by no means stupidly and imprudently like a barbarian, but with a modest gravity, rather excusing the change as necessary, than glorying that the present opportunity had been eagerly seized as the first which had occurred. "For he well knew," he said, "that the name of a deserter was an object of execration to former allies, and of suspicion to new ones; nor did he ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... farther afield. They found a group of spring-heads in an absolutely clean gathering ground on the hills yielding some 14,000 gallons an hour, and this water which was running to waste is lifted to the top of a hill from which it flows by gravity through a long pipe-line to Jerusalem, where a reservoir has been built on a high point on the outskirts of the city. Supplies of this beautiful water run direct to the hospitals, and at standpipes ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... the simple hymn rose and fell in its measured cadences. Among the honest folk who sang it there was none more venerable and seemly than he. His head was white with the sober snow of years; by contrast with his elderly gravity, the young vividness and force of ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... full of this exciting event, the girls went bursting down to the Meeting Room they found the nuns in great agitation over an incident of still deeper gravity—Father Giovanni ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... old sailor hitched his trowsers; and with perfect gravity passed on—leaving Bertram not much in his debt for any accessions to his geographical knowledge. He had no leisure however to ruminate on this little specimen of nautical gaiety; for just at this moment up rolled a brawny thick-set figure, and without any ceremonies ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... took counsel in the matter with the Chancellor. Clarendon's habitual gravity was increased to sternness. He spoke to the King—taking the fullest advantage of the tutelary position in which for the last twenty-five years he had stood to him—much as he had spoken when Charles had proposed to make Barbara Palmer a Lady of the Queen's Bedchamber, saving that he ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... thing for the princess would have been falling in love. But how a princess who had no gravity at all, could fall into anything, is a difficulty—perhaps the difficulty. As for her own feelings on the subject, she did not even know that there was such a bee-hive of honey and stings to be fallen into. And now I come to mention ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... head a cunning shake, crooks his finger on his red nose. "Just a thing of that kind," he whispers, making some very delicate legal gesticulations with the fore-finger of his right hand in the palm of his left; then, with great gravity, he discusses some very nice points of nigger law. He is heard to say it will only be a waste of time, and make some profitable rascality for the lawyers. He could have settled the whole on't in seven minutes. "Better give them up honourably, and let them be sold with the rest. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... in the middle with a table before him, and the other policeman at his left with note-book and pencil to take down the evidence. Both youngsters as the representatives of authority wore an air of gravity beyond ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... that the lines may be utilized otherwise than as adjuncts of performances on the high trapeze!" They were standing by a picket-fence, and he leaned against it, overcome by mirth in which she did not join. Her gravity reacted upon him at once, and his laughter was stopped short. "Will you not accept me as an escort to your home?" he said formally. "I do not know," she returned simply, the sort of honest trouble in her glance that is seen only in ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... Francis, at that time more than fifty years old. His mien was so right royal, we are assured, that even a foreigner, never having seen him before, would single him out from any company and instinctively exclaim, "This is the king!" No ruler of the day surpassed him in gravity and nobility of bearing. Well did he deserve to succeed that long line of monarchs upon each of whom the sacred oil, applied at his coronation in the cathedral of Rheims, had conferred the marvellous property of healing the king's-evil by ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... resignation in her face and voice, merely an expression of the physical listlessness of despair? There was about her now that peculiar dignity which belongs less to the human creature than to the gravity of the moment in which he stands; and he remembered vividly that he had never watched any soul in the supreme crisis of its experience without the stirring in himself of a strange sentiment of reverence. Even ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... a strong effort of will to enable him to answer the questions of inquiring friends; and when at length aroused to exercise his colloquial powers, he performed the task in so original a manner that it never failed to upset the gravity of the interrogator. When he raised his large, prominent, leaden-coloured eyes from the ground, and looked the inquirer steadily in the face, the effect was irresistible; the laugh would come—do your best ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... under any of these circumstances, lightly foolishly, and idly, but to beautify this gesture with the inward working of my mind and spirit in prayer; that whether I stand or sit, walk or lie down, glory and gravity, humility and sincerity shall make my prayer profitable, and my outward behaviour comely in his eyes, with whom in prayer I ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... vanity, he declareth that nothing shall ever part them. 'Nature (saith he) hath amply supplied me in vanity—a pleasure which neither the pertness of wit nor the gravity of wisdom will ever persuade me to part with.'[229] Our poet had charitably endeavoured to administer a cure to it: but he telleth us plainly, 'My superiors perhaps may be mended by him; but for my part I own myself incorrigible. I look ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... Janet, however, was far from being the prevalent one in Milby. Even neighbours who had no strong personal interest in her, could hardly see the noble-looking woman in her widow's dress, with a sad sweet gravity in her face, and not be touched with fresh admiration for her—and not feel, at least vaguely, that she had entered on a new life in which it was a sort of desecration to allude to the painful past. And the old friends ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... not used to the address of falshood; and strongly warned as he had previously been of the iniquity of the train, the ingenuousness of his mind induced him at first without reflection to yield an easy credit to the story that was told him. It was related with fluency, plausibility, and gravity; and it was accompanied with a manner seemingly artless and humane, which it was scarcely possible for one unhackneyed in the stratagems of deceit to distrust ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... almost with fear by the contrast between his gravity and the frivolous gayety of the others. But he made all the rest look ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... receive at last, Is conscience of our virtuous actions past. I (when a youth) with reverence did look On Quintus Fabius, who Tarentum took; Yet in his age such cheerfulness was seen, As if his years and mine had equal been; His gravity was mix'd with gentleness, Nor had his age made his good humour less; Then was he well in years (the same that he Was Consul that of my nativity), 90 (A stripling then), in his fourth consulate On him at Capua I in arms did ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... Christmas fantasies: the sacred old rag doll at the top of the tree, the score of cheap presents, the punch and carols, the roast chestnuts by the fire, and the gravity with which the judge opened the children's scrawly notes and took cognizance of demands for sled-rides, for opinions upon the existence of Santa Claus. She remembered him reading out a long indictment of ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... young man with imperturbable gravity, but when with a toss of her head she asked; "Didn't you think there was too much 'PHYSICS in it?" he went off into peals of laughter so loud and long that they brought old Rachel to the door to see if "he was done gone crazy ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... long an absence, she found herself as in a foreign land. Domingo and Mary personated the reapers. Virginia followed their steps, gleaning here and there a few ears of corn. She was interrogated by Paul with the gravity of a patriarch, and answered, with a faltering voice, his questions. Soon touched with compassion, he granted an asylum to innocence, and hospitality to misfortune. He filled Virginia's lap with plenty; and, leading her towards us, as before the old men of ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... thorough searches, no clue as to what had befallen them had, so far, been discovered. The Count doubled the men on night duty, but in spite of these and other extraordinary precautions the disappearances continued, and the affair—already of the utmost gravity—promised to be one that would prove disastrous, not merely to the heads of families, but to the head of the police himself. So long as the missing ones had been of the lower orders only, the Count had not had much to fear—the murmurings ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... for the just exercise of the discretion it permits and the performance of the duties it imposes. Summoned to these high duties and responsibilities and profoundly conscious of their magnitude and gravity, I assume the trust imposed by the Constitution, relying for aid on divine guidance and the virtue, patriotism, and intelligence of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... her way, and the words stayed with her. "God left a hand on her." There had been no resentment in the father's voice, only a profound and noble gravity. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... interest in the news that came from Paris, and though they sometimes observed a cloud on the brow of the Marquis, or tears in the eyes of his wife, they were ignorant of the cause. Nor was it possible for them to understand the gravity of the political situation or the well-founded fears of the Royalists, which were frequently mentioned in the letters received at ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... these have been—beating with the light bamboo, beating with the heavy bamboo, transportation for a certain period, banishment to a certain distance, and death, the last being subdivided into strangling and decapitation, according to the gravity of ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... I called Calvin. (That is the name of our cat, given him on account of his gravity, morality, and uprightness. We never familiarly call him John). I petted Calvin. I lavished upon him an enthusiastic fondness. I told him that he had no fault; that the one action that I had called a vice ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... without ludicrous effect, either in jest or earnest. His Splendid Shilling is the earliest and one of the best of our parodies; but Blenheim is as completely a burlesque upon Milton as The Splendid Shilling, though it was written and read with gravity, ... yet such are the fluctuations of taste that contemporary criticism bowed with solemn ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... the gravity of the situation," Sir Neville Lawton said. "And if the Sugihara Effect was among the data betrayed, I can understand that nobody but one of us could have betrayed it. But why, necessarily, should it be Adam? We all have unlimited access to all ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper
... is called weight. This means that everything is attracted toward the earth by the force of gravity. Gravity, however, is different from weight. All substances attract each other; not only in the direction of the center of the earth, but ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... indubitable halo of romance about him. Eugene felt that his consideration for Stafford might, perhaps, turn out to be more than a graceful tribute to friendship; it might mean a real sacrifice, a sacrifice of immense gravity; and he did what most people would do—he reconsidered ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... success. Lord Martin received him with perfect serenity. "Bless us," cried he, "and is Miss Delia gone? I never was more astonished in my life. I do not know what to do," and he took a pinch of snuff. "Mr. Villiers," said he, with the utmost gravity, "I have all possible respect for you. Blast me! if I am not willing to forget all our former rivalship. Tell me, sir, can I do you any service?" Damon had every reason to be satisfied with his behaviour, and flew out of ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... informed that the whole nation was racked with anxiety concerning the health of the young Queen Myra, who seemed gradually becoming deranged; the especial significance of their anxiety being explained by the fact— stated with the utmost gravity—that an ancient prophecy, in which they placed the most implicit faith, foretold that should ever a monarch die without issue, the fall of the nation and its absorption by its savage neighbours would immediately ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... worship involves the fitness, we may even say the necessity, of appropriating exclusively to it certain places and times. Associations attach themselves to places so indelibly, that it would be impossible to maintain the gravity and sacredness of devotional services in buildings or on spots ordinarily devoted to secular purposes, either of business or of recreation. Nor could assemblies for worship be convened, otherwise that at predetermined ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... said Duncan. "Good sign!" he told himself: "he hasn't ordered me thrown out yet." And he hurried on, speaking quickly in the semi-humorous style he had, more arresting to the attention than absolute gravity would ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... latter, the essential quality of the sense of feeling is resistance, without which there can be no perception. And what is resistance? In one class of cases it is simply the vis inertiae of matter: in the other and only remaining one, the opposition of some material matter to the force of gravity. Even the perception of the lightest zephyr depends upon the resistance of the atmosphere. Does spirit possess this quality of resistance? The argument on this head is closed the moment the distinction is made between ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... departure of Georges and Oscar, Godeschal sounded the new clerk to discover the joke which, as he thought, lay behind this Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos. But Frederic, with the coolness and gravity of a king's attorney, continued his cousin's hoax, and by his way of answering, and his manner generally, he succeeded in making the office believe that the marquise might really be the widow of a Spanish grandee, to whom his cousin Georges ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... than thirty seconds before a firing key made contact down below. As a matter of history, years ago the Huks had used eighty-gravity rockets with tracking-heads and bust-bombs on them. These Huks would hardly be behind the others in equipment. And back then, too, Huks kept their rocket missiles out in orbit where they could flare into eighty-gee acceleration without wasting ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... low notes; the; higher voice of woman is called soprano, or above, the deeper voice of man is called bass. Grave tones were so called by the Greeks because they seemed heavy and to incline downward. Sounds seem to be subject to the action of gravity; so that some rise and others fall. Baudelaire, speaking of the prelude to Lohengrin, remarks: 'I felt myself delivered from the bonds of weight.' And when Wagner sought to represent, in the highest regions of celestial space, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... it were kept constantly wet, it would be unbearable to the feet. But I am glad, Mr. Kazallon," he added; "that you have made the discovery. It is better that you should know it." I listened in silence. I was now fully aroused to the gravity of the situation and thoroughly comprehended how we were in the very face of a calamity which it seemed that no human ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... back again to its gravity and silence, and the child played about in the shrubberies and sat in the apple-tree gazing wistfully up the dusty high-road. And deep down in his heart the hope still lingered that his father would appear one day. ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... the Indians, although their desire is to trade the skins and furs they are carrying, cross to left, feigning entire indifference, and seat themselves in a semicircle. Red Plume in passing Lincoln has given him a grave "How!" to which Lincoln has returned "How!" with equal gravity. The settlers stand in a group at right, a little towards the background, watching the Indians. The Indians continue to sit in a grave circle. An old Indian smokes. Two of the Indian maidens appear to chatter. Finally Dark Cloud rises with a bundle of skins ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... expression of his mind is correlated in some way to phenomena in the external world, and that he shall say how correlated, he is in a position where the power of speech is at a maximum. His figures of speech, his tropes, his witticisms, take rank with the law of gravity and the precession of the equinoxes. Philosophical exaltation of the individual cannot go beyond this point. It is ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... after making a communication of great gravity. Mrs. Hawthorne, listening with breathless interest, made no sound that urged him to go on. The fact he had announced seemed solemn to both alike, with the vision floating between them of Brenda's white-rose face and deer's eyes, the feeling they had in common that Brenda, ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... of the United Kingdom there is no need to consider in detail how serious would be the effects—naval, military, and economic—of separation, for the gravity of such a contingency is admitted by all. Admiral Mahan, the American naval ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... That is, lay naked, Behold ye now, that a little of the fruit of the vine, lays gravity, grey hairs, and a man that for hundreds of years was a lover of faith, holiness, goodness, sobriety, and all righteousness; shamelessly, as the object to the eye of the wicked, with his nakedness in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "altogether disqualified for it by nature."[23] "I have refrained, as much as human frailty will permit, from all satirical composition,"[24] he said. For satire he seems to have substituted that kind of "serious banter, a style hovering between affected gravity and satirical slyness," which has been pointed out as characteristic of him.[25] Washington Irving noticed a similar tone in all his familiar conversations ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... his tone that Gerard had heard before, and never had succeeded in analyzing; not the change from gayety to gravity, although that was present, but some more subtle alteration that stirred the hearer to a strange, illogical sense of discomfort and failure on his own part. The feeling was transient and most unreasonable; common-sense swept it aside almost as it was formed. He ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... greatly lessened administration of alcohol in the treatment of smallpox in the London hospital ships, is of deep interest. Having been requested to inquire into the effects of this diminished alcoholic stimulation on mortality and convalescence, Dr. Birdwood stated that though the gravity of the cases had increased, with a mortality of 15 per 100 in the metropolis, the ship's death-rate had remained at less than 7 per 100. Convalescence had been more rapid, and there had been fewer and less serious ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... of the little work which I would give to the public," Casanova wrote the 23rd August 1793, "is 'In pondere et mensura'. It is concerned with gravity and measure. I would demonstrate not only that the course of the stars is irregular but also that it is susceptible only to approximate measures and that consequently we must join physical and moral calculations in establishing celestial movements. For ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... with the gentle, but yields its consummate favor only to the strong. I imagine that Leigh Bunt may have been more beautiful when I met him, both in person and character, than in his earlier days. As a young man, I could conceive of his being finical in certain moods, but not now, when the gravity of age shed a venerable grace about him. I rejoiced to hear him say that he was favored with most confident and cheering anticipations in respect to a future life; and there were abundant proofs, throughout ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 'is the word of fools, or of those wiser men who cheat them. 'Tis a fantastic bauble that does not suit the gravity of your father's age; but, whatever it is, I am afraid it can never be perfectly restored to you: exchange the word then, and let pleasure ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... ballad between, a great thick stone cut ridiculous capers, the rose stole lovingly about him from behind and crept through his locks, while the ivy stroked his troubled brow. But his melancholy and gravity were stubborn. His parents were much troubled, and did not know what to do. He was in good health, and ate well enough; they had never caused him any offence; and, until a few years ago, he had been the liveliest and merriest ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... father, having neither respect to herself nor to the press of people about him, suddenly turned back, and ran hastily to him, and took him about the neck and divers times together kissed him; whereat he spoke not a word, but carrying still his gravity, tears fell also from his eyes; yea, there were very few in all the troop who could refrain hereat from weeping, no, not the guard themselves. Yet at last with a full heart she was severed from him, at which time another of our women embraced him; and my aunt's maid Dorothy Collis did the like, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... the running in our own Province,' Scott replied, with equal gravity. 'I hoped to be put on the Luni Protective Works this cold weather; but there's no saying how long the famine may ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... In the "gravity" Daniell the solutions are kept apart by their specific gravities, yet mingle by slow diffusion. Figure 15 illustrates this common type of cell, where Z is the zinc plate in a solution of sulphate of zinc, and C is the copper plate in a solution of sulphate of copper, fed by crystals of the "blue ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... whatever excess; it arose in part from the many and extraordinary endowments which had centered in his person, not less from fortune than from nature; in part also, as I have said, from the profound sadness and freezing gravity of Mr. Wyndham's manner; but still more from the perplexing mystery ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... permanence of force. From Galileo to Newton, from Newton to our own time, eager eyes have been scanning the heavens, and clear heads have been pondering the phenomena of the solar system. The same eyes and minds have been also observing, experimenting, and reflecting on the action of gravity at the surface of the earth. Nothing has occurred to indicate that the operation of the law has for a moment been suspended; nothing has ever intimated that nature has been crossed by spontaneous action, or that a state of things at any time existed which ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... take them without liberty, to be sure, but leave an equivalent in money on the stand. Another, that the only way to get up an effectual charm, is to exchange sheep for them; and still another says, that bees must always be a gift. I have had all these methods offered me gratis, with gravity, suitable to make an impression. And, finally, there has yet another method been found out, and that is, when you want a few stocks of bees go and buy them, yes, and pay for them too, in dollars and cents, or take them for a share of the increase for a time, if it suits your pecuniary resources ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... nothing is more amusing than to hear the absurdities that are gravely asserted by each of their neighbors. To a Briton, a Frenchman will always be "either tiger or monkey" according to Voltaire; while to the French mind English gravity is only hypocrisy to cover every vice. Nothing pleases him so much as a great scandal in England; he will gleefully bring you a paper containing the account of it, to prove how true is his opinion. It is quite useless to explain to the British mind, as I have often tried ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... a white wand, and bowing very reverently as he ushered in servants bearing a cold collation. As he entered, it was with difficulty that he could settle his countenance into the due and requisite degree of gravity; and so often was the fat steward on the point of bursting into laughter, as he arranged the setting out of the refreshments on the table, that the Prince, with whom he was at the same time ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... me, I kept my gravity—or, rather, how could I lose it, hearing such nonsense about that ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... device of inserting resistances, which cause a waste of energy. By breaking the circuit entirely the motive power ceased, and the vehicle might either be stopped by the brakes or allowed to run forward by gravity, if the road were sufficiently inclined. The reversal of the motor was effected by means of a lever which reversed the position of the brushes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... was hardly composing, for Faith's head drooped yet, in a statue-like stillness. Not very unlike a bird on its rest however, albeit her gravity was profound. And rest—to speak it fairly—is a serious thing to anybody, when it has been in doubt or jeopardy, or long withheld. What could be done to bring the colour ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... quiet of my new abode I unsealed the package. The first sheet contained the official offer of the rewards in store for success with the research. The further papers explained the occasion for the gravity and secrecy, and ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... extraction of two wisdom teeth had been of trifling difficulty in comparison with the task of extracting from his patient the amount named in his bill, and who had found in Wilkinson's mouth no cavity comparable in gravity with that apparently existing in his bank balance. The third envelope carried the name of a firm of lawyers not unknown to the man addressed—a firm that specialized in the collection of bad debts; Wilkinson ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... was opened, the Major had grown very jolly, and he began to exchange jokes with the Governor and the rector. Mr. Bill and the doctor, neither of whom could have told a story for his life, listened with a kind of heavy gravity; and the young men, as they rattled off a college tale or two, kept their eyes ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... instead of working with and for the society, has turned against it, and become destructive and injurious. His punishment means that society rules him out of its membership, and separates him from its association, by execution or imprisonment, according to the gravity of his offense. He has no claims against society at all. What shall be done with him is a question of expediency to be settled in view of the interests of society—that is, of the non-criminals. The French writers of the school of '48 used to represent the badness of the bad men ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... fastened the door open with a chair. On second thoughts, he decided such a move would be open to misconstruction. Had he only known it, she was dying to laugh and, at the slightest twinkle in his eyes, would have gone off into a peal. Only Garth's severe gravity restrained her—and that in turn made her want to laugh harder than ever. But how was Garth to learn all that? Girls, more especially girls like this, were to him insolvable mysteries—like the heavenly constellations. Of course, ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... looked straight at me, and as I recall her gaze now, it was almost maternal in its yearning gravity. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... house let go, strangers and all. Even Mr. Burgess's gravity broke down presently, then the audience considered itself officially absolved from all restraint, and it made the most of its privilege. It was a good long laugh, and a tempestuously wholehearted one, but it ceased at last—long enough for Mr. Burgess to try to resume, and for the people ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... manager with pain, and the manager heard with deep pain, that the left boot of the new pair he then wore was not quite comfortable in the toes. The manager simply could not understand it, just as he simply could not have understood a failure in the working of the law of gravity. And if God had not told him he would not have believed it. He knelt and felt. He would send for the boots. He would make the boots comfortable or he would make a new pair. Expense was nothing. Trouble was nothing. Incidentally he remarked ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... would not take up arms in defense of the prescriptive rights of the plutocrat from the assaults of the proletariat. Yet the American press proclaims that all is well! The "able editor" looks into his leather spectacles— free trade or high tariff brand—and with owl-like gravity announces that if the import tax on putty be increased somewhat, or fiddle-strings be placed on the free list, the American mechanic will have money to throw at the birds— that mortgages and mendicancy will pass like a hideous nightmare, and the farmer gayly ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... opposite sides in the games; small stakes were allowed, merely to create an interest in the issue of the contest. The chiefs of both tribes sat smoking their pipes together, viewing the sports in silent gravity, and acting as umpires in all cases of doubt between the parties. They, in fact, led a glorious life during the three months they remained at the village; that period was to them a continued carnival. The best fare the country afforded—the best attire that money could procure—all ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... these words, Master Gridley looked full upon him, with a face so charged with grave meaning, so impressed with the gravity of his warning accents, that the Doctor felt as if he were before some dread tribunal, and remained silent. He was a member of the Rev. Mr. Stoker's church, and the words he had just listened to were those of a sinful old heathen who had never heard a sermon in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... playful skirmish; and, when they move from one place to another, frequently turn on their backs with a loud croak, and seem to be falling to the ground. When this odd gesture betides them, they are scratching themselves with one foot, and thus lose the centre of gravity. Rooks sometimes dive and tumble in a frolicsome manner; crows and daws swagger in their walk; wood- peckers fly volatu undoso, opening and closing their wings at every stroke, and so are always rising or falling in curves. All of this genus ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... supputation of numbers,—the third in the dimension of geometrical quantities,—the fourth in the composition of heroic poems,—the fifth in the jovial interludes of a comic strain,—the sixth in the stately gravity of a tragic vein,—the seventh in the melodious disposition of musical airs,—the eighth in the completest manner of writing histories and books on all sorts of subjects,—and the ninth in the mysteries, secrets, and curiosities of all sciences, faculties, disciplines, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... enthroned among the lords, whom, by the chancellor, the little King saluted, and spake to them his mind at large by means of another's tongue." It was declared that during this scene in Parliament the baby King conducted himself with marvellous quietness and gravity. Henry VI. had been already proclaimed King of France, at Paris, before even he thus held his first Parliament on his mother's lap. For as soon as the last service had been performed over the dead body of Charles VI., and the body lowered into the vault belonging to the royal ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... moved and spoke as though Sigmundskron were still what it had been in former days, and she had brought up her only child to be as much like herself, as it was possible that anything so young and fair could resemble what was already a type of age and gravity. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... those whose ancestors have been bilingual, like the French and Irish, but the art of conversation is really within the reach of almost every one, except those who are morbidly truthful, or whose high moral worth requires to be sustained by a permanent gravity of demeanour and a general ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... they thought it was volitional and self-conscious like their own movements. If they saw a tree waving in the wind, having no idea or conception of the wind, they thought the tree was moving its branches about of its own accord; if a stone fell, they, knowing nothing of the force of gravity, thought the stone projected itself from one place to another because it wished to do so. This is exactly the point of view taken by children when they first begin to observe. They also think that everything they see is alive like themselves, and that animals exercise volition ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... quarter of the pull of the earth on that body so long as it lies on the ground. We may imagine the effect of this pull to be shown in different ways. Allow the body to fall, and in the interval of one second it will only drop through four feet, a mere quarter of the distance that gravity would cause near the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... and they set off without her. The meeting between 'Lena and her grandmother was affecting, and Carrie, in order to sustain the character she had assumed, walked to the window, to hide her emotions, probably—at least John Jr. thought so, for with the utmost gravity he passed her his silk pocket handkerchief! When the first transports of her interview with 'Lena were over, Mrs. Nichols fastened herself upon Mr. Graham, while John Jr. invited 'Lena to the garden, where he claimed from her the promised story, ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... resemblance betwixt King James's solicitor-general and his only famous namesake. But although it is difficult to identify the sphery figure of the judge with the slim consumptive preacher, and still more difficult to light up with pensive benevolence the convivial countenance in which official gravity and constitutional gruffiness have only yielded to good cheer; yet, it would appear, that for some of his mental features the divine was indebted to his learned ancestor. Sir John was a bookworm and a scholar; and for a great period of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... excellent cook," said Mr Vavasor, with great gravity; "one of the best second-class cooks in London. We were very nearly getting him, but you nicked him just in time. I ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... studied mathematics there in the school of Euclid. He not only distinguished himself as a pure mathematician and astronomer, and as the founder of the theory of statics, but he discovered the law of specific gravity, and constructed some of the most useful machines in the mechanic arts, such as the pulley and the hydraulic screw. His works are written in the Doric dialect. Apollonius of Perga (221-204 B.C.) distinguished himself in the mathematical ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
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