Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Gravity   Listen
noun
Gravity  n.  (pl. gravities)  
1.
The state of having weight; beaviness; as, the gravity of lead.
2.
Sobriety of character or demeanor. "Men of gravity and learning."
3.
Importance, significance, dignity, etc; hence, seriousness; enormity; as, the gravity of an offense. "They derive an importance from... the gravity of the place where they were uttered."
4.
(Physics) The tendency of a mass of matter toward a center of attraction; esp., the tendency of a body toward the center of the earth; terrestrial gravitation.
5.
(Mus.) Lowness of tone; opposed to acuteness.
Center of gravity See under Center.
Gravity battery, See Battery, n., 4.
Specific gravity, the ratio of the weight of a body to the weight of an equal volume of some other body taken as the standard or unit. This standard is usually water for solids and liquids, and air for gases. Thus, 19, the specific gravity of gold, expresses the fact that, bulk for bulk, gold is nineteen times as heavy as water.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Gravity" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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



Words linked to "Gravity" :   feeling, natural philosophy, earnestness, stodginess, gravitation, gravity gradient, soberness, attractive force, sincerity, attraction, centre of gravity, physics, somberness, sobriety, gravitate, sombreness, graveness, gravitational attraction, center of gravity, serious-mindedness, solar gravity, levity



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com