"Equipoise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he was compelled to do this. It is not, indeed, the whole of St. Paul's or its only important feature; for St. Paul's is not a Byzantine church in which the dome is practically not a part, but the whole. It is the most magnificent member of a magnificent building, and with its graceful equipoise and conscious evidence of stability stands alone and in a class by itself amongst the cathedral ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... there—those of the balustrade—are fugues, and there his art is allied to Bach in sonority and beautiful combination. Turner knew that a branch hung across the sun looked at separately was black, but he painted it light to maintain the equipoise of atmosphere. In the novel the characters are the voice, the deeds are the orchestra. But the English novelist takes 'Arry and 'Arriet, and without question allows them to achieve deeds; nor does he hesitate to ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... I would suggest is that very old commonplace one, so often forgotten, that after all, though you may change about as much as you like, there is a pretty substantial equipoise and identity in the amount of pain and pleasure in all external conditions. The total length of day and night all the year round is the same at the North Pole and at the Equator—half and half. Only, in the one place, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... it's hung by a chain from a lever, and balanced by an equipoise. You shall see it nearer. Else, of course, there'd be no way of getting fuel into the thing. Every now and then the cone dips, ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... very point of the sword. And, in no long time, it was feared, that with so general a principle of hatred to combine the populace, and so large a body of military students to head them, the balance of power, already approaching to an equipoise, would be turned against the Landgrave's government. And, in the best event, his highness could now look for nothing from their love. All might be reckoned for lost that could not be ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Henry. O Elsie! what a lesson thou dost teach me! The life which is, and that which is to come, Suspended hang in such nice equipoise A breath disturbs the balance; and that scale In which we throw our hearts preponderates, And the other, like an empty one, flies up, And is accounted vanity and air! To me the thought of death is terrible, Having such hold on life. To thee it is not So much even as the lifting of a latch; ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... possible for a man who loved God to go on for a twelvemonth and never think of, or care to please, or desire to be near, the object that he loved? And inasmuch as, deep down at the bottom of our moral being, there is no such thing possible as indifference and a perfect equipoise in reference to God, it is clear enough, I think, that—although the word must not be pressed as if it meant conscious and active antagonism,—where there is no ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... evidences of incipient paresis. The undue access of emotion frequently assumed a pathological character. The sight of a daisy, of a withered leaf or an upturned sod, seemed to disturb the poet's mental equipoise. Spring unnerved him. The lambs distressed him. The flowers made him cry. The daffodils made him laugh. Day ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... "In the huge and hideous cities, the awful problem of Industry lay like a bad dream; but Political Economy warned us off that ground. We were assured that the free play of competitive forces was bound to discover the true equipoise. No intervention could really affect the inevitable outcome. It could only hinder and disturb."[57] The Church, whose pride it had been in remoter ages to be the Handmaid of the Poor, was bidden to leave the ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... as, very grossly, in the common figure of the antithesis, or, with much greater subtlety, where an antithesis is first suggested and then deftly evaded. Each phrase, besides, is to be comely in itself; and between the implication and the evolution of the sentence there should be a satisfying equipoise of sound; for nothing more often disappoints the ear than a sentence solemnly and sonorously prepared, and hastily and weakly finished. Nor should the balance be too striking and exact, for the one rule is to be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sets the soul free to rise on the wings of religious faith. But reason breaks the spell; and the world of poetry, and religion—a world which to them is always beautiful and good with God's presence—becomes a system of inexorable laws, dead, mechanical, explicable in strict truth, as an equipoise of ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... Shakspere's equipoise of mind, placidity of conduct and control of passion rendered him invulnerable to the shafts of envy, malice and tyranny, making him always master of the human midgets or vultures that circled about ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... the youth, who had already lost his mental equipoise, into the midst of the gulf, ere he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... two great characteristics about the Party institutions of this country: the equipoise between them, and their almost incredible durability. We have only to look at the general elections of 1900 and 1906. I do not suppose any circumstances could be more depressing for a political Party than the circumstances in which the Liberal Party fought the election in 1900, except ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... should have been so mistaken! And then as she sat after dinner, eating five or six grapes, she felt that she was unable to recall her spirits and look and speak as she was wont to do: a thing had happened which had knocked the ground from under her—had thrown her from her equipoise, and now she lacked the strength to recover ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... of higher things. The man of letters lives by thought and expression, and his two powers may not be perfectly balanced. And, putting aside its effect on the reader, and through that, on the writer's pecuniary prosperity, the tragedy of want of equipoise lies in this. When the writer expresses his thought, it is immediately dead to him, however life-giving it may be to others; he pauses midway in his career, he looks back over his uttered past—brown desert to him, in which there is no sustenance—he looks ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... as fame goes, I have had my share: it has indeed been leavened by other human contingencies, and this in a greater degree than has occurred to most literary men of a decent rank in life; but, on the whole, I take it that such equipoise is the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... it might be, if Palmerston joined Derby and the government were reconstructed, and if Disraeli ceased to be leader, then his own relations with the government would be changed. Gladstone was so uneasy in his present position, so nice in the equipoise of his opinions that he wished to be, as he said, 'on the liberal side of the conservative party, rather than on the conservative side of the liberal party.' A little earlier than this, Lord Aberdeen and Graham agreed in thinking (August) that 'Disraeli's leadership was ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... is the life of gesture; it is the science of the equipoise of levers, it teaches the weight of the limbs and the extent of their development, in order to maintain the equilibrium of the body. Its criterion should be ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... He has taken the matter more to heart than I, and there has been a look in his eye in the last few weeks which showed he was not right; but I thought, when he found he was going back to his home again, he would almost instantly regain his mental equipoise. ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... to the family about 5.4. In 1901 the birth-rate had already fallen to 27.6 and the size of the family to 3.6 children.[100] It should be added that in all the Australasian colonies the birth-rate reached its lowest point some years ago, and may now be regarded as in a state of normal equipoise with a slight tendency to rise. The case of New Zealand is specially interesting. New Zealand once had the highest birth-rate of all the Australasian colonies; it is without doubt the most advanced of all in social and legislative matters; ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... woman, not recking of the human heart that throbs wildly out of sight. They see the foam-crest on the wave, and picture an Atlantic Ocean of froth, and not the solemn sea that stands below in eternal equipoise. You turn to them the luminous crescent of your life, and they call it the whole round globe; and so they love you with a love that is agate, not pearl, because what they love in you is something infinitely below the highest. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... reduced to those proportions most consistent with strength and beauty, and the intercolumnations were relatively greater than in Egyptian examples. It may truly be said that Greek architecture exhibits the perfect equality and equipoise of vertical and horizontal elements and these only, no other factor entering in. Its graphic symbol would therefore be composed of a vertical and a horizontal line (Illustration 3). The Romans, while retaining the column ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... sickness, exchanging the light wines of France, Italy, and Germany, for the black and loathsome potions of the Apothecaries' Hall, writhed by darting stitches, and burning with fiery fever, that he felt the full force of that sublunary equipoise that seems evermore to hang suspended over the attainment of long-sought and uncommon felicity, just as it is ripening ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... strenuous insistence upon the categorical imperative of duty. A man, he urges, must be free; and the slavery of duty is no better than any other slavery. Virtue is inclination to duty, and the ideal is to be found in the perfect equipoise of the sensuous and the rational nature; in other words, when 'thou shalt' and 'I would' pull steadily and harmoniously in the same direction. So he defines 'dignity' (Wuerde) as the expression of a lofty mind, just as winsomeness is the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... encampment among the maples. Before the bud swells, before the grass springs, before the plow is started, comes the sugar harvest. It is the sequel of the bitter frost; a sap-run is the sweet good-by of winter. It denotes a certain equipoise of the season; the heat of the day fully balances the frost of the night. In New York and New England, the time of the sap hovers about the vernal equinox, beginning a week or ten days before, and continuing a week or ten days after. As the days and nights get equal, the ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... towel-et, whose touch Haply may spare to chafe o'ermuch: A languid frame, from head to feet Prankt in the arduous prickle-heat: An erring fly, that here and there Enwraths the crimsoned sufferer: An upward toe, whose skill enjoys The slipper's curious equipoise: A punkah wantoning, whereby Papers do flow confoundedly: By such comportment, and th' offence Of thy fantastic eloquence, Dost thou, my WILLIAM, make it known That thou art warm, and ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... prosperous times. He does not dare to be hopeful, yet he will not give up beaten. There is an atmosphere of stern, though dignified determination about him, at this trying hour, which, in a man of his admirable equipoise, is a thing for an enemy to beware of. In a word, Washington driven into a corner was doubly dangerous. And it is evident that his mind, roused to unwonted activity by the gravity of the crisis, the knowledge ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... of the Scandinavians, following closely on the death of its great founder, introduced feudalism as better known to us, interfered with the institution which Charlemagne had established in such admirable equipoise, and added to it many barbarous adjuncts, which for a long time entered into the idea of nobility itself. Thus the titles of feudal lords were retained—duce, comites, equites, milites—with, all the paraphernalia of brute force which ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... a marvel that they could engage in so terrific a fight upon the ice-coated ledge and hold their balance there. But I saw that they were in equipoise, for they were bending all the tension of each muscle to the fight, so that they remained almost motionless, and, thigh to thigh, arm to arm, breast to breast, each sought to break the other's strength. And I saw that, when one was broken, he would not yield slowly, but, having ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... to this object he had originally composed the regency with a pretty equal distribution of power between the adherents of the two communions. But the suspicion, or disgust, which afterwards caused him to erase the name of Gardiner from the list, destroyed the equipoise, and rendered the scale of reformation decidedly preponderant. In vain did Wriothesley, a man of vigorous talents and aspiring mind, struggle with Hertford for the highest place in the administration; in vain did Tunstal bishop of Durham,—no bigot, but a firm papist,—check with all the authority ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... sagacious a counsellor, has been enabled to hold so positive a balance. Cabinet officers, legal functionaries, detectives, citizens—all have felt the wise, humane instincts, and the capacious brain of this marked man affecting and influencing for this fair equipoise and ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the right of property. Why do artists, like mechanics, find the means to live? Because society has made the fine arts, like the rudest industries, objects of consumption and exchange, governed consequently by all the laws of commerce and political economy. Now, the first of these laws is the equipoise of functions; that is, the equality ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... here, as we know that both Aeschylus and Sophocles produced a Niobe, and that Sophocles was also the author of a Laocon. In the group of the Laocon the efforts of the body in enduring, and of the mind in resisting, are balanced in admirable equipoise. The children calling for help, tender objects of compassion, not of admiration, recal our eyes to the father, who seems to be in vain uplifting his eyes to the gods. The wreathed serpents represent ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Count Henri leaned on the scull, not in a chosen attitude, but for positive support. He had thrown his force into the blow, to push off triumphantly, and leave his rival standing. It occurred that the boat's brief resistance and rocking away agitated his artificial equipoise, and, by the operation of inexorable laws, the longer he leaned across an extending surface the more was he dependent; so that when the measure of the water exceeded the length of his failing support on land, there was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... figure used therein as an equipoise to "the hindward charms" satirises perfectly the style of writing characterised by inflated thought and imagery. It may be doubted if there exists anything more comical; but each of the companion sonnets is good in its way. The egotism, which was a constant reproach urged by The Edinburgh ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... and turned his horse into an unfrequented road leading to the mountain and along its side. The air was filled with the subtle fragrance of growing and blooming things. He was as near insanity as a man can well be who still retains his mental equipoise. In this slow manner, his horse picking his way over fallen trees and mountain streams, he traversed several miles, and then, ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... features, and a tone of character in beautiful harmony with all that we know of the man, all that he was and did. Gravity and loftiness of soul, tempered by a mild and tender delicacy, depth of experience, resolution of purpose, native dignity, acquired wisdom, and an harmonious equipoise of the robust virtues and the winning graces have set their unmistakable tokens on those lineaments. That vignette, after renewing from month to month before our readers, for nearly four years, as gracious and fragrant a memory as can engage the love of a New-England heart, gave place, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... to you; you shall listen to me!" She spoke sharply. Now she displayed the equipoise of one who had learned much from self-reliant contact with men. "I'll not argue with you about what you call love. But there's something which love must have, and that's self-respect. If your folly on account of me takes you away from your honest duty you'll despise me ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... constitutes its essential nature in the causal state also. Now the effect, in our case, is made up of the three elements Goodness, Passion and Darkness; hence the cause is the Pradhana which consists in an equipoise of those three elements. And as in this Pradhana all distinctions are merged, so that it is pure Being, the Chandogya text refers to it as 'Being, one only, without a second.' This establishes the non-difference of effect and cause, and in this way the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... text; those are to be considered as in my opinion sufficiently supported; some I have rejected without mention, as evidently erroneous; some I have left in the notes without censure or approbation, as resting in equipoise between objection and defence; and some, which seemed specious but not right, I have inserted with a ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... coming and departure, in that so slight vibration of air caused by her advance and her retreat, swayed as a reed in the wind, stood for a moment seeking equipoise. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... times, into half-slumber; and the soft and even monotonies of Pope's pastorals and "Windsor Forest" effected this end. It loved to be suspended in a state of semi-doubt, swung to and fro in agreeable equipoise; and the "Essay on Man" was precisely such a swing. It was fond of a mixture of strong English sense with French graces and charms of manner; and Pope supplied it. It was fond of keen, yet artfully managed satire; ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... him with philogyny and bicycling deforms his face. We might just as well be dead and with Lucifer as believe these doctors, for life wouldn't be half worth the living if we heeded their laws. My brethren of the loaded capsule and sociable stethoscope are evidently off their equipoise. Babies flourish much better on the kiss micrococcus than on the slipper bacillus, few women will live with impotent husbands, and nearly every centenarian is a collocation of bad habits that, by all the laws of Hippocrates, should have buried him at the halfway house. It may seem ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... As a result of this just now in Europe, wisdom is not the arbiter; on the contrary, prejudices, passions, indiscretions, and follies on the part of all the antagonists preserve a certain dangerous equipoise. ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... British citizens and British subjects, rather than a book for students of political history. That the inner working of the unwritten constitution of the country; that some of the unrealised checks and balances; that the delicate equipoise of the component parts of our executive machinery, should stand revealed, was inevitable. We have thought it best, throughout, to abstain from unnecessary comment and illustration. The period is so recent, and has been so often traversed by historians and biographers, that ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... always a great good, when the crimes of a fellow-creature can be traced to madness; to some fault of the temperament or organization; some "jangle of the sweet bells;" some overbalance in the desired equipoise of the faculties, originating, perhaps in accident or misfortune. It does not subject us the more to their results. On the contrary, it sets us on our guard against them. And, meantime, it diminishes one of the saddest, most injurious, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... upon which he may desire to act, and thus give a determination to the course of the Balloon in the opposite direction. This will appear more clear as well as more certain when we consider, that the aerial vessel being in a state of perfect equipoise, as it ever must be when proceeding on the same level, the slightest alteration in its buoyancy is sufficient to send it to a considerable distance either up or down as the case may be: the rejection of a pound of ballast, or of an equivalent amount of ...
— A Project for Flying - In Earnest at Last! • Robert Hardley
... in the air and carried it to the huge weighing machine. Onucz bade them place both bride and platter in the scale that it might weigh the heavier. Then they piled up into the other scale as many of the sacks of ducats sealed with the seal of Onucz as were necessary to establish an absolute equipoise between the two scales, and then while both the girl and the gold, balancing each other were floating in the air, old Onucz, his face beaming with triumph, poked Fatia Negra in the side with his elbows and said: "And ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... those who understand my in- [20] structions on this question. Christian Science demands both law and gospel, in order to demonstrate healing, and I have taught them both in its demonstration, and with signs following. They are a unit in restoring the equipoise of mind and body, and balancing man's ac- [25] count with his Maker. The sequence proves that strict adherence to one is inadequate to compensate for the absence of the other, since both constitute the divine law ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... subjects; all authority implies obedience: to suppose in one the right to command what another has the right to refuse, is absurd and contradictory; a state, so constituted, must rest for ever in motionless equipoise, with equal attractions of contrary tendency, with equal weights of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... mistrustful of the solid earth: somewhere there was a fearful threat to his equipoise. "What you talkin' about?" he said with an effort to speak scornfully; but his sensitive voice ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... extending to a latteen yard above, and to a boom at the foot; in one word, it is like a whole mizzen, supposing the whole foot to be extended to a boom. The yard is slung nearly in the middle, or upon an equipoise. When they change tacks they throw the vessel up in the wind, ease off the sheet, and bring the heel or tack-end of the yard to the other end of the boat, and the sheet in like manner; there are notches, or sockets, at each end of the vessel ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... priests, touching the most powerful springs of savage conduct—hope and fear—must have had unbounded sway. An aristocracy, of course, is naturally the first form of government. But clashing interests soon losing their equipoise, a monarchy and hierarchy break out of the confusion of ambitious struggles, and the foundation of both is secured by feudal tenures. This appears to be the origin of monarchial and priestly power, and ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... mounted upon the battlements of its system, and proclaimed victory over all things. Of all tellers of marvels, Swedenborg alone is so absolutely free from a vulgar fanaticism, and so innocent of any appeal to passion, prejudice, or taste. With an equipoise of disposition which is almost provoking, Mr. Frothingham announces as dogmas speculations from whose sweep and immensity the human mind recoils. Having posited his principles, he confidently proceeds to deduce a system which shall include every spiritual and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... exist in an extraordinary degree. It seemed to be necessary that the gentleman should be supported by his attendant, standing before him with a hand placed on each shoulder, until, by gently swaying backward and forward, he had placed himself in equipoise; when, giving the word, he would start in a running pace, the attendant sliding from before him and running forward, being ready to receive him and prevent his falling, after his having run about ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... by an exhibition as though a ghost had suddenly appeared at the conventional midnight hour and demanded a hand, as he reached forth his rattling joints of bone. The men stared, even our hero for just one instant lost his equipoise, but he recovered when like a wink he asked, as though no one had entered ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... came near him. Unkind words these, with just, perhaps, those dregs of truth in them which make gossip so hard to bear patiently. Was it true, as Courtenay thinks, that jealousy of King William's attachment to Temple disturbed the episcopal equipoise of soul, rendering his Lordship slanderous, even ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... of ourselves.' In The Rambler, No. 5, he wrote:—'It may be laid down as a position which will seldom deceive, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong. He must fly from himself, either because he feels a tediousness in life from the equipoise of an empty mind ... or he must be afraid of the intrusion of some unpleasing ideas, and, perhaps, is struggling to escape from the remembrance of a loss, the fear of a calamity, or some other ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... estimation, I found my further progress intercepted by a fissure in the crag. It was not the width of this opening that disconcerted me, for it exceeded not ten feet; but I came upon it so unadvisedly, that, in attempting to check my forward motion, I had nearly lost my equipoise, and fallen into the abyss that now yawned before and on either side of me. To pause upon the danger, would, I felt, be to ensure it. Summoning all my dexterity into a single bound, I cleared the chasm; and with ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... the number of the Germanies was suddenly reduced from more than three hundred to less than one hundred, and the German states which mainly benefited, along with Prussia, were the southern states of Bavaria, Wuerttemberg, and Baden, which Napoleon desired to use as an equipoise against both Austria and Prussia. In this ambition he was not disappointed, for in the War of the Third Coalition (1805) he received important assistance from these three states, all of which were in turn liberally rewarded for their services, the rulers of Bavaria ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... which I have this moment read in Hayward's Appendix to Goethe's "Faust." When Goethe had to bear the death of his only son, he wrote to Zelter thus: "Here then can the mighty conception of duty alone hold us erect—I have no other care than to keep myself in equipoise. The body must, the spirit will, and he who sees a necessary path prescribed to his will has no need to ponder much." The first part of this is noble; but I am not going to do what I used to quarrel so much with you for doing—fill my letters with quotations, or even make ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... support his character required, the support he had been looking for all his life; her self-restraint and her gravity were the supports his character required, and these being thrown into the scale, life stood at equipoise. The women who had preceded Ellen were strange, fantastic women, counterparts of himself, but he had always aspired to a grave and well-mannered woman who ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... more out of such resolutions than contemporaries, for posterity is able to accept them in a more literal sense. Hilbrough's ascendency in the bank, and his appreciation of Millard, in spite of the latter's symmetrical way of parting his hair, the stylish cut he gave his beard, and the equipoise with which he bore his slender cane, procured the latter's promotion to the vacant cashiership without visible opposition. Meadows would have liked to oppose, but he found powerful motives to the contrary; for Meadows himself was more and more disliked by members of the ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... father to allow him to go to a Flying School to train as a pilot. Having obtained his certificate, he presented himself for enlistment and was turned down on the ground that he was lacking in a sense of equipoise. Being too young for any other branch of the service, he persuaded his family to allow him to try his luck in Canada. Somehow, by hook or by crook, he had to get into the war. The Royal Flying Corps accepted him with the proviso that he must take out his British ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... known him to be indignant, and never to lose his temper. He was the most sensitive of men, but he also possessed an indomitable will. It was only his terrible determination that could make his life a success. Emerson, who had little sympathy with him otherwise, always admired the perfect equipoise of his nature. A man could not be more thoroughly himself; but, such a reticent, unsociable character as Hawthorne could never be used as the main-spring of a drama, for he would continually impede the progress of the plot. A dramatic ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... he growled, "to let Brodie hammer him!" For a moment, it is true, his anger was divided, stood in equipoise, even dipped "Brodie-ward." "I've an account to sattle wi' him!" he thought grimly. "When I get my claw on his neck, I'll teach him better than to hit a Gourlay! I wonder," he mused, with a pride in which was ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... characteristic was Taste, an external quality, it is true, but one which is often the indication of more valuable ones lying deeper. In the conduct of life it insures tact, and in Art a certain gentlemanlike equipoise, incapable of what is deepest and highest, but secure also from the vulgar, the grotesque, and the extravagant. Leslie, we think, was more at home with Addison ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... word that best expresses Mr. Stokes' passage through life—he had drifted. He was one of the many millions who live without a fixed intention, without even knowing what they desire; and he had drifted because in him strength and weakness stood at equipoise; no defect was heavy enough for anchor, nor was there any quality large enough for sufficient sail; he had drifted from country to country, from profession to profession, whither winds and waves ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... however, we must add to that fullness of material the quality of mental equipoise or mastery, the power of grasping and managing it all. A man is to possess, and not to be 'possessed with,' his acquisitions. He wants an intellect decisive, incisive, and, if I might coin ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... so mercifully adjusted by destiny that each could find in the other some support—whether real or fancied does not matter. For illusions, if they last, form as good a working basis for life as reality, and in the Gore household, whether by imagination or not, the equipoise of life had been most skilfully adjusted. The amount of shining phantasies that had interwoven themselves into the woof of the family destiny had become so much a part of the real fabric that they ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... Asquith we recognise the speech of a man to whom all that is old and good is familiar, and in whom the art of finished expression has become a habit. No more elegantly balanced, no more delicately perceptive mind than his has appeared of recent times in our midst, and there is something in the equipoise of his own genius which points Mr. Asquith out as a judge peculiarly well fitted to sit in judgment upon rival ages. In his Romanes lecture there was but one thing to be regretted: the restricted space ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... is not right with him, who ill sustains Retirement's silent hours.—Himself he flies, Perchance from that insipid equipoise, Which always with the hapless mind remains That feels no native bias; never gains One energy of will, that does not rise From some external cause, to which he hies From his own blank inanity.—When reigns, With a strong, cultur'd mind, this wretched hate To commune with himself, from thought ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... crowns!" The minister had lost his equipoise in the face of the Englishman's great riches, of which hitherto he had held some doubts. Suddenly a vivid thought entered his confused brain. The paper cutter in his hand trembled. In the breathing space allowed him he began to calculate rapidly. The king ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... in which Dr. De Breen coolly surveyed him—for once the perverse glasses observing their proper function—he recovered something of his equipoise. ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... Zazen[FN12] and the breathing exercise remarkably improves one's physical condition is an established fact. And history proves that most Zen masters enjoyed a long life in spite of their extremely simple mode of living. Its mental discipline, however, is by far more fruitful, and keeps one's mind in equipoise, making one neither passionate nor dispassionate, neither sentimental nor unintelligent, neither nervous nor senseless. It is well known as a cure to all sorts of mental disease, occasioned by nervous disturbance, as a nourishment to the fatigued brain, and also as a stimulus ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... the name, and apparently to the profit, of the Hindoo princes. France and England had made peace; the English and French Companies in India had not laid down arms. Their power, as well as the importance of their establishments was as yet in equipoise. At Surat both Companies had places of business; on the coast of Malabar the English had Bombay, and the French Mahe; on the coast of Coromandel the former held Madras and Fort St. George, the latter Pondicherry and Karikal. The ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... he tried to persuade himself he could bear want himself with stoical indifference, and did care about it as little as most men, yet the body took its revenge for its uneasy feelings. The mind became soured and morose, and lost much of its equipoise. It was no longer elastic, as in the days of youth, or in times of comparative happiness; it ceased to hope. And it is hard to live on when ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... appears to be so much above the stile and manner of any thing else I have been able to paint in this book, that it could not have remained in it, without depreciating every other scene; and destroying at the same time that necessary equipoise and balance, (whether of good or bad) betwixt chapter and chapter, from whence the just proportions and harmony of the whole work results. For my own part, I am but just set up in the business, so know little about it—but, in my opinion, to write ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... Assembly composed of the most illustrious men of the country, a power of equipoise the guardian of the fundamental compact, and ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... her neighbor at the dinner-table. When the cousin glanced back over her succession of neighbors, she came to the conclusion that they had lost in sprightliness what they had gained in moral worth. Fink was rather profane, but very amusing; Anton had a certain equipoise of goodness and pleasantness; Baumann was the best of them all, but also the most silent. Her conversation with him, though edifying enough, was never exciting. On Mondays, indeed, they had a mutual interest in discussing the Sunday's ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... wounded under detention in Afghanistan, on the arrival at Peshawur of the Jellalabad brigade. The members of council, who in the long interval since the previous meeting had been gradually regaining their self-respect and mental equipoise, unanimously declined to accept the proposals tendered them by their commanding officer and his political ally; and a letter written by Monteath was accepted, which 'was not a ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... armaments, and of war. Consider for a moment. If you want a balance, you want to have it perfect. What is a perfect balance between two opposing weights or forces? It is one which the addition of a feather-weight to either scale will at once and completely upset. Now what will that equipoise produce? The ease with which the balance may be destroyed will produce either on one side the temptation to upset it, and on the other fear lest it be upset, or fear on both sides at once. What indeed was it but this even balance ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... argument in favour of the general sameness, in nature and action, of good and bad conductors (and all the bodies I refer to are conductors more or less), from the perfect equipoise in action of very different bodies when opposed to each other in magneto-electric inductive action, as formerly described (213.), but am anxious to be as brief as is consistent with the clear examination of the probable truth of ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... (and probably impossible) industrial community is that in which demand and supply are in exact equipoise. The ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... plainly observable in the previous pages, wherein the difficulties which had beset his various administrations, and which chiefly arose from the discordant passions of their members, are historically narrated. Burke rightly observes:—"Our constitution stands on a nice equipoise, with steep precipices and deep waters on all sides of it: in removing it from a dangerous leaning toward one side, there may be a risk of oversetting it on the other. Every project or a material change in a government so complicated, combined, at the same time, with external ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... no difficulty in understanding him, and for the second time in this extraordinary interview, he gave evidences of agitation and of a mind shaken from its equipoise. But only for an instant. He did not shun the other's gaze or even maintain more than a momentary silence. Indeed, he found strength to smile, in a curious, ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... chair, Roderigo Borgia, Alexander VI. It was felt at once that the old order of things had somehow ended, and that a new era, the destinies of which as yet remained incalculable, was opening for Italy. The chief Italian powers, hitherto kept in equipoise by the diplomacy of Lorenzo de' Medici, were these—the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Florence, the Papacy, and the Kingdom of Naples. Minor states, such as the republics of Genoa and Siena, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... mental harmony. She had an enthusiastic admiration for her friend, who, in return, found an unspeakable luxury in her society. Her angelic candor of soul, and the frosty purity which enveloped her as a shield, inspired the tenderest respect; while her happy equipoise calmed and refreshed the restless and expensive imagination of the renowned author. There could be no rivalry between them. Both had lofty and thoroughly sincere characters. They were partly the reflection, partly the complement, of each other; and their relation was a blessed one, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... As this son of a line of preachers brooded on this unlovely strife among men, he lost the equipoise of the scholar and student of modern history. He grew narrower and more intense. The burden of his responsibility as a preacher of Christ ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the equipoise of Reason and Faith, in the individual or the Nation, and the alternating preponderance cease, the result is, according as one or the other is permanent victor, Atheism or Superstition, disbelief or blind credulity; ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... And the ardor of her friends' affection proved the faithfulness of her love. Thus gradually the mist melted away, till I caught a glimpse of her real self. We were one evening talking of American literature,—she contrasting its boyish crudity, half boastful, half timid, with the tempered, manly equipoise of thorough-bred European writers, and I asserting that in its mingled practicality and aspiration might be read bright auguries; when, betrayed by sympathy, she laid bare her secret hope of what Woman might be and do, as an author, in our Republic. The sketch was an outline only, and dashed ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... again, by the lead deposited in their extremities. The mass of property has the same effect on our Constitution, and is a sort of ballast which will always right the vessel, to use a sailor's phrase, and bring it to its due equipoise. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... enthusiasm of her Puritan ancestors, she combined that grace which is so rare among their descendants,—a grace which fascinated the humblest, while it would have been just the same in the society of kings. And her person had the equipoise and symmetry of her mind. While abounding in separate points of beauty, each a source of distinct and peculiar pleasure,—as the outline of her temples, the white line that parted her night-black hair, the bend of her wrists, the moulding of her finger-tips,—yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... suppose that decision and fearlessness are always the attributes of strength. Angels will hover in the equipoise of indecision while clowns will make up their minds. Many a fool will rush in to woo and win a woman, who makes her after-life miserable by inconsiderate dealings with incongruous circumstance, in that very unbending temper of mind ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... independent state. Besides, let us suggest to you our apprehensions that your present union (in which we rejoice, and which we wish long to subsist) cannot always subsist without the authority and weight of this great and long respected body, to equipoise, and to preserve you amongst yourselves in a just and fair equality. It may not even be impossible that a long course of war with the administration of this country may be but a prelude to a series of wars and contentions among yourselves, to end at length (as such scenes have too often ended) ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... driving, and was something of a bulldozer himself, and sometimes—said to have been caused by fits of dyspepsia—was unreasonably irascible, and displayed a most violent temper towards superiors and inferiors. Notwithstanding this, he never lost his equipoise or acted upon impulse alone, and he never permitted mere appearances to move him. Nor could his superiors induce him to act against his judgment as to a particular military situation. It will be remembered that he was urged to fight Lee north of the Potomac after ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... freedom, and reinstatement in the management of his own property, to which was soon added that of his intended bride, who having died without male issue, her estates reverted to him, as heir of entail. But freedom and wealth were unable to restore the equipoise of his mind; to the former his grief made him indifferent—the latter only served him as far as it afforded him the means of indulging his strange and wayward fancy. He had renounced the Catholic religion, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... my decision! Carwin's plot owed its success to a coincidence of events scarcely credible. The balance was swayed from its equipoise by a hair. Had I even begun the conversation with an account of what befel me in my chamber, my previous interview with Wieland would have taught him to suspect me of imposture; yet, if I were discoursing with this ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... they parcelled out among themselves like so much butter. They honestly tried to lay the foundations of a permanent peace; but their method of doing so was not to satisfy the natural aspirations of the European nations and so leave them nothing to fight about, but to establish such an exact equipoise among the great States, by a nice distribution of the aforesaid butter in their respective scales, that they would be afraid to go to war with each other, lest they might upset the so-called "balance ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... her loose red hair, it seemed to him she was the most perfect thing he had ever known. Such a keen, fixed, enthroned mind. She was so capable, so splendid, and, like his own, her eyes were unafraid. Her spiritual equipoise ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... found an apologist in Mr. Windham, whose chivalry in the new cause he had espoused left Mr. Pitt himself at a wondering distance behind. His speeches in defence of Reeves, (which are among the proofs that remain of that want of equipoise observable in his fine, rather than solid, understanding,) have been with a judicious charity towards his memory, omitted in the authentic ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... the line which separated the Whigs and the Tories. In the House of Commons, which had been elected when the Whigs were triumphant, the Low Church party greatly preponderated. In the Lords there was an almost exact equipoise; and very slight circumstances sufficed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... equipoise which were never disturbed under the most trying circumstances, and a graciousness of manner which broke down all barriers, giving to the humblest as well as to the highest the assurance of his friendly consideration, and a mind well ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... by the thrice forbidden fruit, She'd lose her equipoise, And like a wayward Pleiad shoot Down ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... I, Baldy—you see that I too can take liberties,—else I should not have come. Your letter solved the difficulty, for, when I was at the very height of the struggle before mentioned—at equipoise so to speak,—and knew not whether to go to the right or to the left, that decided me. I regarded it as a ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... where hang in equipoise The night and day; and when unto my lips I put my trumpet, with its stress and noise Fly the white clouds like tattered sails of ships; The tree-tops lash the air with sounding whips; Southward the clamorous sea-fowl wing their flight; The hedges are all red with haws and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... need we blame the licensed joys, Though false to Nature's quiet equipoise: Frank are the sports, the stains ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... o'erflowed their beings. He from each His secret won; to each God's secret told: He touched them, and they lived. In each, the flesh Subdued to soul, the affections, vassals proud By conscience ruled, and conscience lit by Christ, The whole man stood, planet full-orbed of powers In equipoise, Image restored of God. A nation of such men his portion was; That nation's Patriarch he. No wrangler loud; No sophist; lesser victories knew he none: No triumph his of sect, or camp, or court; The Saint his great soul flung upon the world, And took the people with him ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... dissever them, and the obloquy attaching to the one seemed out of proportion altogether to its importance, while the other by no means justified the eulogy wherewith it was connected. Was there any immediate or even distant, effect on life caused by evil which was not instantly swung into equipoise by goodness? But these slender reflections troubled him only for a little time. He had little desire for any introspective quarryings. To feel so well was sufficient in itself. Why should thought be so apparent to us, ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... feeble whom they have despoiled; you compensate the miseries of the poor by the anxieties of the rich; you console the wretched, by opening to him a last asylum from distress; and you give to the soul that just equipoise of strength and sensibility which constitutes wisdom—the true science of life. Aware that all must return to you, the wise man loadeth not himself with the burdens of grandeur and of useless wealth: he restrains his desires ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... cries, "I'll pay them out! If girls will play with boys, There's got be Equality, So here's for equipoise!" ...
— The Adventure of Two Dutch Dolls and a 'Golliwogg' • Bertha Upton
... claws were turning with a screwlike motion, extending themselves, and slowly raising the interplanetary vessel until she looked like a great metal fish with metal legs ending with suckerlike disks. But already she was floating free as the softly purring engines held her in equipoise. Nat climbed the short ladder that led to her deck. Brent came ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... of social life. "From Rome," says Friedrich von Mueller, "from the midst of the richest and grandest life, dates the stern maxim of 'Renunciation' which governed his subsequent being and doing, and which furnished his only guarantee of mental equipoise and peace." ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... Liverpool; in other words, it is a struggle between a manufacturing and a commercial interest. Now, sir, what is called the balance of power in the British Constitution, meaning as it does the equipoise caused by conflicting interests and passions, is a principle which is not confined to constitutional forms, but works out throughout the whole body of society; and we find a gradual tendency in latter days to conflicts between classes, and classes ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby |
