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Magnet   Listen
noun
Magnet  n.  
1.
The loadstone; a species of iron ore (the ferrosoferric or magnetic ore, Fe3O4) which has the property of attracting iron and some of its ores, and, when freely suspended, of pointing to the poles; called also natural magnet. "Dinocrates began to make the arched roof of the temple of Arsinoe all of magnet, or this loadstone." "Two magnets, heaven and earth, allure to bliss, The larger loadstone that, the nearer this."
2.
(Physics) A bar or mass of steel or iron to which the peculiar properties of the loadstone have been imparted; called, in distinction from the loadstone, an artificial magnet. Note: An artificial magnet, produced by the action of an electrical current, is called an electro-magnet.
Field magnet (Physics & Elec.), a magnet used for producing and maintaining a magnetic field; used especially of the stationary or exciting magnet of a dynamo or electromotor in distinction from that of the moving portion or armature.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Magnet" Quotes from Famous Books



... liquor draws him hither," I remarked. "The attraction of your bar to his appetite is like that of the magnet to the needle. He ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur

... man down from Boston; and I carried him out to the farm, and he analysed it—made a regular Job of it. Well, sir, we built a kiln, and we kept a lot of that paint-ore red-hot for forty-eight hours; kept the Kanuck and his family up, firing. The presence of iron in the ore showed with the magnet from the start; and when he came to test it, he found out that it contained about seventy-five per cent. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... into business with him; but at that good man's death he had had sufficient enterprise, sufficient distaste, possibly, for his English position, to sell the business that was left in his hands, and affection drew him, as a loadstone a magnet, to his brother's neighbourhood. He brought with him securities of the small fortune they were to divide between them, and expected nothing but happiness in the meeting and prosperity in his future career. Unfortunately, ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... a bath, but Linda was scarcely ever in her own—her mother's lovely things, acting like a magnet, constantly drew her to their arrangement in the drawers. When the laundry came up, crisp and fragile webs heaped on the bed, Linda laid it away in a sort of ritual. Even with these publicly invisible garments a difference of choice ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... these, according to his opinion, the quality of the air, and of the other elements, was so altered that they set poisonous fluids in motion towards the inward parts of the body, in the same manner as the magnet attracts iron; whence there arose in the commencement fever and the spitting of blood; afterwards, however, a deposition in the form on glandular swellings and inflammatory boils. Herein the notion of an epidemic constitution was set forth clearly, and conformably to the spirit ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... seventeenth-century author. "No fire can be seen outside, but if you look underneath the alembic, if you place your hand on the hearts of women, in both places you will find a great furnace."[170] Or, as Marro has finely put it, the passivity of women in love is the passivity of the magnet, which in its apparent immobility is drawing the iron toward it. An intense energy lies behind such passivity, an absorbed preoccupation in the end ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... stories and plays. Eva Bland Black contributes poems and song lyrics to the magazines. She served her apprenticeship as reporter and city editor of the Journal and Evening News of Garnett and as associate editor of the Concordia "Magnet." Mrs. Isabel McArthur is a natural poet ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker

... to do, Was pleased to let the magnet wheedle, Till closer still the tempter drew, And off ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... was something outside their room that, like a magnet, drew them out of bed. They climbed on chairs, and gazed eagerly out of ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden

... long used to say of a fine action,—not falsely, but misleadingly,—"Thus it was in Count Manuel's time," and the tribute by and by has been accepted as a dating. So has chronology been hacked to make loftier his fame, and the glory of Dom Manuel has been a magnet that has drawn to itself the magnanimities ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... truth that the young man, during his convalescence, without his own knowledge, acted as a species of magnet which drew together persons who might not easily otherwise have met. Mr. Penzance and Mount Dunstan rode over to see him every few days, and their visits naturally established relations with Stornham Court much more intimate than could have formed themselves in the same ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... infinite value, and at the same instant of less value than the dust that floats in space; when there no longer appears any distinction between the finite and the eternal, between time and infinity; when the soul for that moment at least finds that rest that is the magnet and the end of all human striving; and that comfort ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... charming places, like the Tour d'Argent of Paris, Simpson's of the Strand,[1] and a dozen others that will spring to every traveller's memory, where the personality of the host, or of a chef, or even a waiter, is at once a magnet for the attraction of visitors and a reward for their coming. These, too, are many. In the interest to which I would draw attention, the hotel as a building or as an institution has little part. It is indeed a facade, a mise en scenebefore which play the actors that attract our attention ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... millionaire, Merton sauntered out to look at the river: running water drew him like a magnet. By the side of the stream, on a woodland path, he met Lady Bude. She took his hand silently in her right, and patted it with her left. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... it at once aggregates together into larger particles. It is not difficult to understand why this happens; each of the particles becomes polarized by induction, and they then cling together end to end, just like iron filings near a magnet. A feeble charge is often sufficient to start this coagulating action. And when the particles have grown into big ones, they easily and quickly fall. A stronger charge forcibly drives them on to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various

... the opposite direction." The last is a neat stroke of irony. Flinders strongly recommended that the Admiralty should appoint an inspector of compasses, that there should be at every dockyard an officer for re-touching compasses, and that a magnet for re-touching should be carried on each flagship. The recommendations may seem like a counsel of elementary precautions to-day, but they involved an important ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... place a thin sheet of cardboard or glass upon a magnet and scatter iron filings over it, we observe the iron to take certain positions and trace certain lines which Faraday has styled lines of magnetic force, or, more simply, lines of force. The figure, as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... and distinctive dressing make her a magnet for all eyes. If he happens to be too different in type to understand her naturalness and pure-mindedness in this he often suffers keenly. Sometimes he causes her to suffer for it ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... science tells us, the magnet controls, But she is a magnet to emigrant Poles, And folks with a mission that nobody knows Throng thickly about her as bees round a rose. She can fill up the carets in such, make their scope Converge to some focus of rational hope, And, with sympathies fresh ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... The phenomena are taken quite out of the realm of superstition. By means of delicate instruments of various kinds, called seismometers, the direction of earth-movements can be traced, and their force gauged, while by means of a simple magnet with a metal piece attached to it, an earthquake can be foretold. These instruments tell us that scarcely a day passes without an earthquake in some portion of the globe. The internal causes of these manifestations are ever active, ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... the magnet's force, The central motive scan, Lay bare Nile's hidden source, Earth's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various

... a very deep knowledge to follow the thread of my argument," he went on. "You know, of course, that the force of magnetic attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distances separating the magnet and the attracted particles, and also that each magnetized particle had two poles, a positive and a negative pole, or a north pole and a south pole, as they are ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... at the fallen boy. Zaidos lay on his back, arms spread wide, knees partly bent under him. Somehow he looked very young. Velo, once more conscious of the roar of guns, looked about him. The battle raged madly. As if drawn by a magnet, his gaze traveled back to the face of his victim. Sure enough, he had killed him. Zaidos was out of his way forever. He felt in his blouse where the precious papers were, then, moved by some strange impulse, ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske

... London. A white mist was crawling above the Thames; he could see a glimpse of the water here and there as the mist shredded. He turned to the west and looked towards Westminster, recollecting how his name and purposes had centred there as though drawn by a magnet. But in that clear morning light they seemed unreal and purposeless. One immediate responsibility invaded him, and, contrasted with that, his ambitions dwindled into vanities. He filled no place, he realised, ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... head must consequently be arranged as in a magnet—the positive pole above, the negative below—and they must be always connected with their opposite pole, because the strength and the nature of a magnet depend entirely upon such connection. Thus our heads, under normal conditions, are cool, and our feet warm, so long as positive ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... like a flower herself, not only in looks, but in delicacy of feeling and sentiment, and her sweet face, sheltered by a mourning-hat on Sunday at church, was a magnet that drew the eyes of many a village swain. The days and weeks of her new life as a teacher passed in uneventful procession until one by one the leaves had fallen from the two big elm trees in front of the desolate home, the meadows were but level fields ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... shrapnelled them, and they scattered, the prisoner, for all his broken leg, keeping his seat excellently and riding surprisingly fast. Luck had been with the battalion this day, and it now remained with them. Many had rifles hit. Fowke, who was a magnet for bullets, had his right shoulder's star flattened. But there were no casualties. The enemy, growing vindictive, chased small bodies of even three or four with shrapnel. He continued to pelt the station, throwing at least two hundred rounds on it in two hours. Mules and horses were hit, ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson

... were not well Satisfied with the Presents given them, they were much Surprised at the air gun and Several curiosities which were Shown them none more than the magnet, those people became extreemly troublesom to us begging Whisky & little articles. Sergt. Floyd was taken violently bad with the Beliose Cholick and is dangerously ill we attempt in Vain to releive him, I am much concerned for his Situation- we could get nothing to Stay ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... direction, and which they use instinctively. On mentioning the subject to my son George, who is a mathematician and knows something about magnetism, he suggested making a very thin needle into a magnet; then breaking it into very short pieces, which would still be magnetic, and fastening one of these pieces with some cement on the thorax of the insect ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... the magnet's attraction, by accident found, Taught man how the globe he could traverse around; New worlds brought to light, and new people to view, And by commerce connected Turk, Christian, and Jew. All ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... the wall of the room, and then the men brought in the magnetized key to ascertain if their invention would work in practice. Simpson was carrying the key. No sooner had he entered the door than something began to pull him toward the magnet. He walked sideways, like a crab, resistingly, and could not help himself; and then, just as he had nearly reached the bell-shaped keyhole, he was whirled around, as is the end child in a school playground when they are playing "crack-the-whip," ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... brick, flat topped, tower of St. Nicholas was the magnet which drew us to this dear sleepy old town, in the southwest corner of the Belgian littoral; and here, lodged in the historic hostel of the "Nobele Rose" we spent some golden days. The name of the town is variously ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards

... peculiarly shining transparent complexion, probably occasioned by constant oleaginous application; and his attractive hair, being cut short, and being grizzled, and standing straight up on end as if it in its turn were attracted by some invisible magnet above it, the top of his head was ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... of information concerning his condition these researches may have rescued, they can shed no light upon that infinite invention which is the concealed magnet of his attraction for us. We are very clumsy writers of history. We tell the chronicle of parentage, birth, birthplace, schooling, schoolmates, earning of money, marriage, publication of books, celebrity, death; and when we have ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... from his parochial car and tripped blithely up the glistening marble steps. Each and all, wrapping the skeleton of grief, greed, shame, or fear beneath swart broadcloth and shimmering silk, floated up those ghostly steps as if drawn by a tremendous magnet incarnate in the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... continent and isthmus of Boothia Felix, and a vast number of islands, rivers and lakes; the undeniable establishment that the north-east point of America extends to the 74th degree of north latitude; valuable observations of every kind, but particularly on the magnet; and to crown all, have had the honor of placing the illustrious name of our Most Gracious Sovereign William IV, on the true position of ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... nothing to do with her heart. There is no folly like the folly of supposing that it has: yet on this folly rest most of the accusations against her. Reduce her to a rational being, and you degrade her to the level of an inferior man. But she is not his inferior: she is his dream, his magnet, his force, his inspiration, and his fate. Take her away, and you annihilate him: Othello's occupation's gone. Nine-tenths of the great things done in the world have been done for a woman. Why? Exactly because ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain

... Compromise, which since the year 1820 had been the bulwark of the new territories against the encroachments of slavery. The whole anti-slavery sentiment of the North was thereby intensified, and as the establishment of north polarity at one end of the magnet excites south polarity at the other, so Southern feeling in favor of slavery was thereby increased. Up to a recent period Southern leaders had, as a rule, deprecated slavery, and hoped for its abolition; now they as generally advocated it as ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... back in a day or two. After he had disappeared among the tents—a conquering army that had forced its way far up the hill by now—the Colonel got up and went to the spring for a drink. He stood there a long time looking out wistfully, not towards the common magnet across the Klondyke, but quite in the other direction towards the ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... omelettes, and the all-conquering charms of Madame Poulard. The fog of doubt thickened as, day after day, the same scenes were enacted; when one beheld all sorts and conditions of men similarly affected; when, again and again, the potentiality in the human magnet was proved true. Doubt turned to conviction, at the last, that the holy shrine of St. Michael had, in truth, been, violated; that the Mont had been desecrated; that the latter exists now solely as a setting for a pearl of an inn; and that within the shrine—it is Madame Poulard herself ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... you good advice," said Napoleon, gravely; "I, therefore, pray you to remain. You must choose your servants more cautiously, madame; you must confide in them less and watch them better; for slavish souls are easily led astray, and money is a magnet they are unable to withstand. Your mistress of ceremonies is ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... as Malpas?" Sir Oliver's eyes narrowed, as was the trick with him. "I hear it whispered what magnet draws you thither," he said. "Be wary, boy. You ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... discover that the earth is a great magnet, and he not only gave the name of "pole" to the extremities of the magnetic needle, but also spoke of these "poles" as north and south pole, although he used these names in the opposite sense from that in which we now use them, his south pole being the extremity which pointed towards ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... Stevenson, at least during the earlier part of his life, as a lodestone attracts the magnet. To romance he brought the highest gifts, and he has left us not only essays of delicate humour" (should this not be "essays full of" or "characterised by"?) "and sensitive imagination, but stories also which ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... O the magnet! the flesh over and over! Go, mon cher! if need be, give up all else, and commence to-day to inure yourself to pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness, elevatedness, Rest not, till you rivet and publish ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... only a little self-conscious, only a shade embarrassed, when from among the men standing near the library door, for which she was directly making, there stepped out one to meet her, not unlike a slender needle darting toward a large, rounded magnet as ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... begin then— His face is Fancy's tablet, where the witch Paints, in her fine caprice, ever new forms, Making it apt all workings of the soul, All passions and their changes to display; His eye, attention's magnet, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... her tent to the fire, the wolf-cub in her arms, drawn as by a magnet, to gaze upon the man, in her eyes the love that art had never ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... Sturgeon by insulating its wire with silk thread, and by disposing the wire in several coils instead of one. Experiments with a large electro-magnet excited by nine distinct coils. Uses a battery so powerful that electro-magnets are produced one hundred times more energetic than those of Sturgeon. Arranges a telegraphic circuit more than a mile long and at that distance sounds a bell by ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... capital is located, drawn by the golden magnet, at Sacramento. The only conquest left for the dominating Americans, is the development of this rich landed domain. Here, where the Padres dreamed over their monkish breviaries, where the nomad native Californians lived only on the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... knew what our astrologers say of the coming age, and of our age, that has in it more history within a hundred years than all the world had in four thousand years before! Of the wonderful invention of printing and guns, and the use of the magnet, and how it all comes of Mercury, Mars, the ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... our service, and of making them perform the principal part of what, we must otherwise have wholly performed ourselves. In navigation is it possible to doubt that the powers of nature—the buoyancy of the water, the impulse of the wind, and the polarity of the magnet—contribute fully as much as the labours of the sailor to waft our ships from one hemisphere to another? In bleaching and fermentation the whole processes are carried on by natural agents. And it is to the effects of heat in softening and melting ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... brought the ship by the wind. He afterwards told me, in a half-whisper, that the second mate having been sharpening some harpoons, had unwittingly left them much too close to the binnacle; and that, in fact, the magnet had been attracted by them, so as to deceive the man at the wheel and himself, fully twenty degrees as to the real points of the compass. I must say this little occurrence greatly encouraged me, leaving no doubt about ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... restrained impetuosity that became him well: "There is a honey-wax which, being glazed about the heart, holdeth within it, forever, a song so sweet that the chanting of the sirens matters not; there is that precious stone which, as the magnet draweth the iron, so ever constraineth Honor, bidding him mount every breach, climb higher, higher, higher yet! there is that fragrant leaf which oft is fed with tears, and often sighing worn, yet, so worn, inspireth valor more heroical than that ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... be pretty comfortable in life if it wasn't for our pleasures? Well I could get along rather well in Japan were it not for the Merry Christmases. Such a terrible longing seizes me for my loved ones and for God's country that I feel like a needle near a magnet. But next Christmas! I just go right up in the air when I think ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... separate. Here it is easily observed that such properties can be discovered only through experience. Nobody, again, has the desire to deceive himself into believing that the force of burning powder or the attraction of a magnet could have been discovered a priori. But this truth does not seem to have the same validity with regard to such processes as we observed almost since breath began. With regard to them, it is supposed that the understanding, by its own activity, without the help of experience can discover causal ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... Our main job is to get Ivery back to Allied soil where we can handle him. And there's just the one magnet that can fetch him back. You aren't ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... where he was. He now and then took a turn down the long room, pausing in his walk to interchange greetings with other gentlemen in his own placeless predicament; but still he came back to the magnet, Shirley, bringing with him, each time he returned, observations it was necessary to whisper ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... clear voice, as she chattered to Molly, characteristically propounding half-a-dozen plans for the immediate future, floated across to Sara where she stood waiting on the lowest step, impatient to be gone. As though drawn by some invisible magnet, her eyes encountered Garth's, and the swift colour rushed into her ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... law and claims, the Lord "doth not thank that servant," from the side of love and of moral sympathy He will welcome him in with "Well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." And that holy "prize" does, and must, prove a magnet to the Christian's will and hopes. What is he looking for? Not an accession of personal dignity in heaven, but a word from his beloved Master's heart. There is nothing mercenary in this. True, it "has respect unto the recompense of reward." But the "reward" is what only love can give, and ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule

... the men pulling noiselessly, the boat glided towards the rock, like a needle to a magnet. The gulls had all clustered to windward, and not one could ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... mirror, hath it bit so deep? My love is coming, hark! O, say not grey, Sweet mirror! Tell, what time to cure it now? And he so near, so near! How shall I meet him? Why how but as the river leaps to sea, Steel to its magnet, child ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q

... Him that we are qualified to "go" to others. It's only Himself in us, only as much of Himself as is in us, that will be helpful to any one else, or will make any one else willing to break with his old way. He is the only magnet to draw men away from the old life ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... were already theirs. To hear them, you would think they had an exclusive option on the treasure-troves of the Klondike. Yet, before and behind us, were dozens of similar vessels, bearing just as eager a mob of fortune-hunters, all drawn irresistibly northward by the Golden Magnet. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... repentance will always have its value as indicating a discipline by which the human spirit is prepared for comprehending and appreciating Christ. I have already given the reason why I am not at present to touch on the preaching of Christ Himself, although the subject draws one's mind like a magnet. After Christ, the first great Christian preacher was St. Peter; and between him and St. Paul there are many subordinate figures, such as Stephen, Philip the Evangelist and Apollos, beside whom it would be both pleasant and profitable to linger. But we have ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... when I sailed from home, Lucy's image was seldom absent from my imagination, ten minutes at a time; I thought of her, sleeping and waking; in all my troubles; the interest of the sea-fight I had seen could not prevent this recurrence of my ideas to their polar star, their powerful magnet; but I do not remember to have thought of Lucy, even, once after Marble was thus carried away from my side. Neb, too, with his patient servitude, his virtues, his faults, his dauntless courage, his unbounded devotion to myself, had taken a strong hold ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... employed—in other words, that the machine was purely a machine and nothing else. Many, however maintained that the exhibiter himself regulated the movements of the figure by mechanical means operating through the feet of the box. Others again, spoke confidently of a magnet. Of the first of these opinions we shall say nothing at present more than we have already said. In relation to the second it is only necessary to repeat what we have before stated, that the machine is rolled about on castors, and will, at the request of a spectator, be moved to and fro ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... experiment in my own lighted drawing-room, as the psychic [the medium] was entering the room with myself, no other person being there, an easy-chair of great weight that was standing fourteen feet from us was suddenly lifted from the floor and drawn to him with great rapidity, precisely as a heavy magnet will attract ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... some time ago observed that, during a period of lethargy, the approach of a magnet produced in persons affected with hysterical hypnosis a series of modifications of the respiratory ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various

... glance of thy bonny black ee," were never better exemplified than in the couple before her. Really it is curious to watch them, and to see how gradually the attraction of this tantalizing vicinity becomes irresistible, and the rustic lover rushes to his pretty mistress like the needle to the magnet. On they go, trusting to the deepening twilight, to the little clerk's absence, to the good humour of the happy lads and lasses, who are passing and re-passing on all sides—or rather, perhaps, in a happy oblivion of the cross uncle, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various

... the yards unbend; 100 The boats then hoisted in are fix'd on board, And on the deck with fastening gripes secured. The watchful ruler of the helm no more With fix'd attention eyes the adjacent shore, But by the oracle of truth below, The wondrous magnet guides the wayward prow. The powerful sails, with steady breezes swell'd, Swift and more swift the yielding bark impell'd: Across her stem the parting waters run, As clouds, by tempests wafted, pass the sun. 110 Impatient thus ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... now give a description of Mr Knapton Thompson's interview with his daughter, on the same evening that Julia appeared to me. I have already said that the magnet which drew Mr Thompson to these seances was the opportunity given to him of meeting and talking to a daughter who had passed away ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... wealth, these boundless riches, in some cases insecurely guarded, in all temptingly displayed, is it any wonder, then, that this city should always have proved the paradise of thieves? The fact of its being the chief city of the New World, alone caused it to be the principal magnet of attraction for all the expert criminals of the Old World, in addition to those who ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... diseased resembled a gun; when loaded, it contains powder and ball, which, by the mere touch of a little spring, sets the whole machinery of the gun in motion, whereby the ball is expelled. So also the mere touch or outward contact of certain bodies or substances has power, like a magnet, to set in action the machinery of nature by which the disease is dispelled—sometimes slowly, but often suddenly like the bullet from the gun. Helmont had a little stone, which, by plunging in oil of almonds, imbued the oil with such ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... stories of Nick Carter's adventures, which are published exclusively in the NEW MAGNET LIBRARY, conceded to be among the best ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter

... Finding that there was nothing else for it, the dwarf now reluctantly brought forth his mighty treasure and surrendered it all, including the Helmet of Dread and a hauberk of gold, reserving only a ring which was gifted with miraculous powers, and which, like a magnet, attracted the precious ore. But the greedy Loki, catching sight of it, wrenched it from off the dwarf's finger and departed laughing, while his victim hurled angry curses after him, declaring that the ring would ever ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... the watch that had been long out of order, and the cause of its irregularity not to be discovered. At length, one watchmaker, more ingenious than the rest, suggested that a magnet might, by some chance, have touched the mainspring. This was ascertained by experiment to have been the case; the casual and temporary neighbourhood of a magnet had deranged the whole complicated machinery: and on equally imperceptible, often undiscoverable, trifles does the healthy movement ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... contained the earth or soil. This is mostly sand, but with it are rough fragments of rock which can be crumbled in the hand. The greater number of the little sand grains are quartz. Some of them are clear like glass, others are reddish. In this quartz sand are a few grains of iron which the magnet picks out, and a number of scales ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks

... the first principles of life as would that philosopher who should undertake to show the comparative power of the positive as against the negative electricity, of the centrifugal as against the centripetal force, the attraction of the north as against the south end of the magnet. These great natural forces must be perfectly balanced or the whole material world would relapse into chaos. Just so the masculine and feminine elements in humanity must be exactly balanced to redeem the moral and social world ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... not reveal his Gifts of Solomon promiscuously to all Mortals. They indeed seem strange to them, when they behold a Creature, from the occult Magnetick potency incited in it self, deduced into art by its own like; as for Example: In Iron is a Magnetick, ingenited, potential virtue from the Magnet: a Magnetick virtue in Gold from Mercury: a Magnetick virtue in Silver from Venus, or Copper: and so consequently in all Metals, Minerals, and Stones, Herbs, ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius

... have met him in the Argentine, or in any of the South American ports where British warships are constantly calling. He was a sailor. He left the Navy under no cloud. Hence, the presence of a British man-o'-war would draw him like a magnet. Do not come back here until you bring ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy

... satire upon the mutations of his nymph during the past twenty years seemed looming in the distance. A forsaking of the accomplished and well-connected Mrs. Pine-Avon for the little laundress, under the traction of some mystic magnet which had nothing to do with reason—surely that was ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... raw gold, Ellen!" he mused looking up at her with glowing dark eyes. "There's no greater magnet for a man in the world, little fellow—except the love of a woman," he added softly with the smile that had won his wife's heart ten years ago and made her happy in sharing his ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... teaching him botany, he must handle the plants and dissect the flowers for himself; in teaching him physics and chemistry, you must not be solicitous to fill him with information, but you must be careful that what he learns he knows of his own knowledge. Don't be satisfied with telling him that a magnet attracts iron. Let him see that it does; let him feel the pull of the one upon the other for himself. And, especially, tell him that it is his duty to doubt until he is compelled, by the absolute authority of Nature, to believe that ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... great main building, from the yards and the several outer sheds and structures they came. From furnace and engine and bench and machine they made their way toward that given point as scattered particles of steel filings are drawn toward a magnet. The converging paths of individuals touched, and two walked side by side. Other individuals joined the two and as quickly trios and quartets came together to form groups that united with other similar groups; while from the mass thus assembled, the thin line was formed that ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... the captain, as Ned, without coat or vest, rushed to his side, and gazed eagerly over the bow, "there it is, Ned,— California, at last! Yonder rise the golden mountains that have so suddenly become the world's magnet; and yonder, too, is the 'Golden Gate' of the harbour of San Francisco. Humph! much good ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... Norway and Sweden to the north, with Italy and Switzerland to the south, and of course Greece and Egypt would, from time to time, as crises came, fall inevitably into Germany's hand. Berlin, as the world capital, should by 1920 be the magnet, and the little particles of iron, named the Balkan States, would be drawn and held by this great German magnet ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis

... a fortnight the great fair at Montreal continued. A picturesque bazaar it must have been, this meeting of the two ends of civilization, for trade has been, in all ages, a mighty magnet to draw the ends of the earth together. When all the furs had been sold, the coureurs-de-bois took some goods along with them to be used partly in trade on their own account at the western posts and partly as presents from ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... like moths in her clear flame, and dying at her feet for love of her! The woman who can do these things is gifted with the charm which makes or ruins life,— few can resist her,—she draws sensitive souls as a magnet draws the needle,—and the odd part of it all is that she need not have any heart herself—she need not feel one pulse of the passion with which she inspires others—indeed it is better that she should not. The less she is moved herself, the greater is her fascination. Love clamours ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... tasks of every day. It ministers to him in times of greatest need. It teaches him how to relate himself to an Unseen Power and to the fellowship of human kind. The meeting-house is a community centre drawing to itself like a magnet family groups and individuals from miles around, overcoming their isolation and breaking into the daily monotony of their lives, and with its worship and its sermon awakening new thoughts and impulses for ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... stays with duty Here to work a sum or rider, Mother's magnet and her beauty Draw my soul to sit beside her! Ah, what luck if I were able There to play once more in flannels, Free from all this littered ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale

... as much as possible and recognised two of my old chums, but conversation was impossible; I was too weak. The next five days I spent at a hospital near Le Treport. My mother was wired for, and the offending piece of shell was abstracted by a magnet. It couldn't be done by knife, as it was too ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams

... with approval. That house was famous for its financial prominence—rivalling that of his own, and Messer Giacopo's three girls were noted for good looks and clever brains. Whether love, or money, was the magnet, or whether the two ran together in double harness, young "Giovannino" took tight hold upon the reins, and he and Maria Salviati were betrothed in the autumn ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... expressing my surprise to see him on foot at such a place. You know the man's sneer. 'A Frenchman so gallant as Monsieur de Liancourt,' said he, 'need not be surprised at much greater miracles; the iron moves to the magnet: I have a little adventure here. Pardon me if I ask you to ride on.' Of course I wished him good day; and a little farther up the road I saw a dark plain chariot, no coronet, no arms, no footman only the man on the box, but the beauty of the horses assured me ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... not her lover. "Patience!" the priest would say; "have faith, and thy prayer will be answered! Look at this vigorous plant that lifts its head from the meadow, See how its leaves are turned to the north, as true as the magnet; This is the compass-flower, that the finger of God has planted Here in the houseless wild, to direct the traveller's journey Over the sea-like, pathless, limitless waste of the desert. Such in the soul of man is faith. The blossoms of passion, Gay and luxuriant flowers, are brighter ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... round, disagreeably startled. It is only fair to explain that he had not come hither with any lover-like designs towards Miriam. Grace was the magnet that had drawn his steps to the Trednokes' garden, and the truth is that that enterprising young lady was not without a suspicion that he might turn up. Could this information have been imparted to Freeman, it would ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne

... been made of the corona during recent eclipses. Take, for instance, that of the eclipse of 1900. The sheaves of light emanating from the poles look precisely like the "lines of force'' surrounding the poles of a magnet. It will be noticed in this photograph that the corona appears to consist of two portions: one comprising the polar rays just spoken of, and the other consisting of the broader, longer, and less-defined masses of light extending out from the equatorial and middle-latitude zones. Yet even in this ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... he said, with a smile; "Verner's Pride never contained the magnet for me that it ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... there is a centripetal as well as a centrifugal force, a regulator as well as a spring, a law of attraction as well as of repulsion. The way to the West is the way also to the East; the north pole of the magnet cannot be divided from the south pole; two minus signs make a plus in Arithmetic and Algebra. Again, we may liken the successive layers of thought to the deposits of geological strata which were once fluid and are now solid, which were at one time uppermost in the ...
— Sophist • Plato

... be a blind, a mere excuse to avoid telling them too much. My very writing materials and books are to them weird things; and were I to choose to mystify them by a few simple experiments with lens and magnet, miracles without end would in a few years cluster about me; and future travellers, penetrating to Wanumbai, world h hardly believe that a poor English naturalist, who had resided a few months among them, could have been the original of the supernatural being ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... explained to Carnes. "It will receive vibrations to the lowest limit of waves that we have ever been able to measure. The X-ray is high on the scale and even the cosmic ray is far above its lower limit of detection. We are hunting for an electro-magnet, the largest and strangest electro-magnet that has ever been constructed. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we are seeking for a generator of magnetic force. It does not generate the ordinary magnetism which attracts ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... things looking at the sun when it grew dark in the daytime; and we had to try to explain eclipses. He asked us if we could tell him what made the water rise and fall twice a day, and we tried to explain that the sun and moon attracted the sea by showing how a magnet ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... his Curate were unmarried. Paul, whose proper place of Sabbath boredom was Ebenezer, was welcome as a proselyte, and had a seat in the family pew, and the rapture of walking homeward sometimes by the side of the feminine magnet. ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... consequents. The sense of Before and After becomes both intelligible and intellectual when, and only when, we contemplate the succession in the relations of Cause and Effect, which, like the two poles of the magnet manifest the being and unity of the one power by relative opposites, and give, as it were, a substratum of permanence, of identity, and therefore of reality, to the shadowy flux of Time. It is Eternity revealing itself in the phaenomena of Time: and the perception ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... few, whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness, Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt, or ocean of excess; The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain The shore to which their shiver'd sail shall never ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... magnet yoke is the electrical control governor, Fig. 4. It consists of one moving spindle on which are keyed a small soft iron bar, and also a double finger, T. There is also a spiral spring, X, attached at one end to the spindle, and at the other to an adjustable top head and clamping nut, Y. The ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... Fall, upwards again from its own foot, and downwards from the overhanging brink toward which the creek idles carelessly to the very step-off of its fearful leap, the Fall never loses for a moment its power to amaze. It draws and holds the eye as the magnet ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... the work of decoration was complete, and his mother left in charge, with minute directions about the care of his treasures. He had toiled with breathless haste, and managed after all to start earlier than he had expected. Once on the journey his northern magnet drew him with ever-increasing strength, and regardless of fatigue, he travelled for eight days in succession without stoppage or rest, and arrived ten days before his letter announcing his departure from ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... a soul by choice and conscience doth Throw out her full force on another soul, The conscience and the concentration both Make mere life love. For life in perfect whole And aim consummated is love in sooth, As nature's magnet heat rounds pole ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... threats he held over him, distressed by the snarling requests for money. No day passed that did not bring to David an almost irresistible impulse to escape this loathsome man by deserting the show. A single magnet held him: Christine. He endured torment and obloquy that he might always be there to defend her and the sad-eyed, broken woman who had ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... as we were left alone, the gipsy produced, out of her chest, a pack of cards, bearing signs of constant usage, a magnet, a dried chameleon, and a few other indispensable adjuncts of her art. Then she bade me cross my left hand with a silver coin, and the magic ceremonies duly began. It is unnecessary to chronicle her predictions, and as for the style of her performance, ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee

... do? Anguish succeeded anguish until he was at length drawn back again as irresistibly as the magnet is drawn to the north, to the woman he both loved and hated. He would throw himself at her feet. He, the proud, arrogant Don Felipe of former years, and bowed in the dust, implore forgiveness. Nothing was too hard. Any sacrifice she might demand of him, ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... and stealthily, as if drawn by some invisible force which she was powerless to withstand. It reminded me instantly of an experiment I had shown many times to a form of boys learning the elements of physics in a laboratory, in which a small magnet is made to float on a cork in a bowl of water and small steel objects placed on neighbouring pieces of cork are drawn up to the floating magnet by magnetic force. It reminded me, too, of seeing in my little boy's ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley

... few of the trifling mishaps which befall wagon travellers through the South African deserts, Dyke's return journey was peaceful and enjoyable, even if slow. He would often have liked to gallop forward to get nearer home; but the wagon held him as a magnet does its bar, and he thoroughly fulfilled the trust placed in him ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn

... the arts, and to have been foremost in all those inventions, which in their application have conduced so much to the amelioration and welfare of the human race. Eleven hundred and eight years before we commence to count our era (B. C. 1108,) the unerring magnet that points so steadily to the pole, was discovered by this ingenious people; and who may say what other progress may have been made in science and literature up to B. C. 220, when the cruel and ambitious Che-Hwang-te, who, having finished the Great Wall, ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... of the natural forces of bodies in order to produce their proper effects. Now in the physical order things have certain occult forces, the reason of which man is unable to assign; for instance that the magnet attracts iron, and many like instances, all of which Augustine enumerates (De Civ. Dei xxi, 5, 7). Therefore it would seem lawful to employ such like forces ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... the smile of the spring sun died behind a cloud and a rumor insinuatingly whispered itself about the floor. Magnet-wise it drew men from scattered points into focal groups and panic-wise it stamped a growing apprehension on faces that had ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... Ganimard. "The boldness of the scheme and the ingenuity of all its details are beyond criticism. But who is the detective whose name and fame served as a magnet to attract the baron and ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... when he saw that his words had not produced the desired result, "King James the Twelfth, on the memorable an' blood-soaked field of Trafalgar, gave men their rights. On that great day he signed the Magnet Charter, and proved himself as great a liberator as the sainted Lincoln. You, on this most auspicious occasion, hold in yore strong hand the destiny of this town—the women an' children in this cursed community will rise up an' bless you forever ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... find no accumulation. Light and heat have neither been piled up to the sky, nor have they become annihilated. Their essential element has only changed form, and proceeded on its busy way, turning earth into a magnet, vivifying and operating all organisms, travelling upon all currents, gathering up and utilizing all the fragments and waste of its workshop, transmitting and conserving its energy en route to the poles. And finally, the same element that signalized ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers

... those words "well known," because on the Continent everybody knows what you mean by a Hughes' electromagnet. In England scarcely anyone knows what you mean. Englishmen do not even know that Professor Hughes has invented a special form of electromagnet. Hughes' special form is this: A permanent steel magnet, generally a compound one, having soft iron pole pieces, and a couple of coils on the pole pieces only. As I have to speak of Hughes' special contrivance among the mechanisms that will occupy our attention later on, I only now refer to this magnet in one ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various

... eternally. He thought that the monotony of it would strike them unfavourably. But no! He thought that they would revolt against doing what every one had done. But no! Hundreds of persons arrived fresh from the railway station every day, and they all appeared to be drawn to that lifeboat as to a magnet. They all seemed to know instantly and instinctively that to be correct in Llandudno they must make at least ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... we only need a current of electricity flowing round and round in a whirl. A vortex or whirlpool of electricity is in fact a magnet; and vice versa. And these whirls have the power of directing and attracting other previously existing whirls according to certain laws, called the laws of magnetism. And, moreover, they have the power of exciting fresh whirls in neighboring conductors, and of repelling ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... I, Leonardo the Florentine, at the court of the most Illustrious Prince Signor Lodovic." And what the Moro was to Leonardo that he showed himself to other artists and men of letters. In the poet's words, he was the magnet who drew men of genius (virtuosi) from all parts of the world to Milan. He might be an exacting and critical master, he was certainly never satisfied with any work short of the best—even Leonardo, we have seen, did not always find ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... the giants could move the iron, yet Tom had no difficulty in doing so. Of course my readers have already guessed how the trick was done. It was worked by a strong magnet, hidden in the floor. At a signal from Tom, Ned would switch on the current. The iron would be held fast and immovable, but when Tom himself went to raise it Ned would cut off the electricity and the bar was lifted as easily as an ordinary piece ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton



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