"Fluctuate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... party, wore gloves perpetually, for fear (they said) that they should be obliged to shake hands with the best of kings; while the republicans adopted coats without button-holes, lest they should be forced to hang red ribbons in them. The funds did not fluctuate in the least. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "However, I'll look after it for you. If necessary, I'll loan the bank enough additional securities as collateral to cover the loan. Don't let it disturb you, Miss Carwell. It is merely a small detail of business that often crops up. Securities in these days so often fluctuate that banks are forced to call for more, and different ones, to cover loans secured by them. I'll attend to the matter ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... almost every entry in the Captain's green volume dealt with Tristram's appetite. Nor did this fluctuate enough to make the record exciting. He was a slow, phlegmatic infant, with red cheeks and an exuberant crop of yellow curls. He slept all night and a good third of the day, and, beyond cutting ten teeth in as many months, exhibited no precocity. Nothing troubled him, if we except an insatiable ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... state that I was obsessed in some mysterious manner and went off like a rocket. I can assure you I feel like a stick this morning. You will forgive me, won't you? for you know that although my affections do fluctuate for some people, they never ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and talents on tiny meetings in Paddington or Streatham, the London group system has never been a permanent success. What has kept the Society together is the series of fortnightly meetings carried on regularly from the first, which themselves fluctuate in popularity, but ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... interest and a pleasure that did not concord with his appearance. For there was nothing in his appearance to indicate that his intelligence was on a higher plane than that of the mess-room. His appearance seemed to fluctuate between the mess-room and the company promoter's office. He was a good-looking solicitor, he was a good- looking officer; the eyes were attractive; the nose was too large, but it was well-shaped; a heavy military moustache curled ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... then famous Gothic architect Mr. George Gwilt. He did his work most carefully and conscientiously, adhering as far as possible to the original, though hampered throughout his progress by contradictory instructions from the managing committee, who, like most bodies of that kind, were apt to fluctuate between motives of economy and a sense of what was due to the ancient fabric. The Gothic revival was then in an incipient stage, and Mr. Gwilt, or his committee, must be held responsible for the removal of the old east gable, with its five-light Tudor window, erected by ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... was holding on to the land there. This speculation soothed him, moving between the high hedges slowly, so as not to get overheated, though the day was chill enough. After all was said and done there was something real about land, it didn't shift. Land, and good pictures! The values might fluctuate a bit, but on the whole they were always going up—worth holding on to, in a world where there was such a lot of unreality, cheap building, changing fashions, such a "Here to-day and gone to-morrow" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... about 50 years of age, complained of great tension and pain across the abdomen, and of loss of appetite; his urine, he thought, was less than usual, but the difference was so trifling he could speak with no certainty: his belly seemed to fluctuate. Among other things he tried the Foxglove leaves dried, twice a day; and, although it appeared to afford him relief, yet the effect ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... one attitude is the other. It is correct to say that the one attitude may follow the other. But it is to be misled by language to say that the one attitude becomes the other. It is possible for one and the same man to fluctuate between the two attitudes, to alternate between them—possible, though inconsistent. The child, or even that larger child, the man, may beg and scold, almost in the same breath. The savage, as is well known, will treat ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... you going to divine where the "companion" ends and the bandit begins? The Anarchists themselves are not always sure, as was proved by the controversy caused in their ranks by the Ravachol affair. Thus the better among them, those whose honesty is absolutely unquestionable, constantly fluctuate in their views of the "propaganda ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... promenading Patriot, this Sunday; and sees his own grim care reflected on the face of another. Groups, in spite of Patrollotism, which is not so alert as usual, fluctuate deliberative: groups on the Bridges, on the Quais, at the patriotic Cafes. And ever as any black cockade may emerge, rises the many-voiced growl and bark: A bas, Down! All black cockades are ruthlessly plucked off: one individual picks his up again; kisses it, attempts to refix ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... and if, after having thus fixed our conception, we never vary from it, never include in the class any thing which has not those common properties, nor exclude from it any thing which has. A clear conception means a determinate conception; one which does not fluctuate, which is not one thing to-day and another to-morrow, but remains fixed and invariable, except when, from the progress of our knowledge, or the correction of some error, we consciously add to it or alter it. A person of clear ideas is a person who always ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind; These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, And filled each pause the nightingale had made. But now the sounds of population fail, No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale, No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread, For all the blooming flush of life is fled. All but yon widowed, solitary thing, That feebly bends beside the plashy spring; She, wretched matron—forced in age, for bread, ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... in one place, will only pass for 6 bars, will in others fluctuate to 10; hence the trader must form an average standard, to reduce his assortment to ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... for ballast the clear conception of duty, if it is not to fluctuate between levity ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... undergone his metamorphosis into the clerical form. Rather a paradoxical specimen, if you observe him narrowly: a sort of cross between a sycophant and a psalmist, a poet whose imagination is alternately fired by the "Last Day" and by a creation of peers, who fluctuate between rhapsodic applause of King George and rhapsodic applause of Jehovah. After spending "a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets," after being a hanger-on of the profligate Duke of Wharton, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... whirl, revolve, rotate, turn, gyrate, spin, trundle, circumgyrate; inwrap, infold, convolve; wallow, welter; rock, sway, lurch, titubate, fluctuate. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... have done the arithmetic, what does it mean? Of course in actual life the two-child and the five-child groups will intermarry. And even if each marries its own kind, the number of children will fluctuate. Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence of three great tendencies. First, certain kinds of families tend to be small or large as the case may be. Second, each kind tends to marry into its own kind more often than into the other. And finally, people who grew up in large families generally like ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... discussing each of them on its own merits; and yet, although theoretically they may be easily distinguished, it will be found that practically they are often conjoined, since the same mind will often fluctuate between the two, and shift its ground by betaking itself alternately to the one or the other, according to the exigencies of the argument. Assail the Dogmatic Atheist with the unanswerable statement of John ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... UAE has an open economy with one of the world's highest per capita incomes and with a sizable annual trade surplus. Its wealth is based on oil and gas output (about 33% of GDP), and the fortunes of the economy fluctuate with the prices of those commodities. Since 1973, the UAE has undergone a profound transformation from an impoverished region of small desert principalities to a modern state with a high standard of living. At present levels of production, oil and gas reserves ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... language is of questionable advantage. It at once destroys all permanent improvement in a tongue through elegance of style, sonorous periods, or delicacy of expression, and the life of the language itself is weakened when its forms are left to fluctuate uncontrolled. Written poetry, grammar, rhetoric, all are impossible to the student who draws his knowledge ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... Dave's vague plans changed a dozen times as he found each idea unworkable. His emotional balance was also erratic—though that was natural, since the stars were completely berserk in what was left of the sky. He seemed to fluctuate between bitter sureness of doom and a stupidly optimistic belief that something could be done to avert that doom. But whatever his mood, he went on working and scheming furiously. Maybe it was the desperate need to keep himself ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... all illuminations on painted glass of fine periods depends primarily on the expedients used to make the colours palpitate and fluctuate; inequality of brilliancy being the condition of brilliancy, just as inequality of accent is the condition of power and loveliness in sound. The skill with which the thirteenth century illuminators ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... cause the engine speed to fluctuate through more or less regular periods from high to low speeds; the engine will seem to be mis-firing and there will be noticeable a strong odor, as well as, usually, a heavy black smoke ...
— Marvel Carbureter and Heat Control - As Used on Series 691 Nash Sixes Booklet S • Anonymous
... it. Hail, to the ancient farmer, Naught to him the fall of stocks that turns pale the speculator, Naught to him the changes of trade, wrinkling the brow of the merchant, Naught to him, the light weight, or exorbitant price of the baker; Sure was his bread, howsoe'er the markets might fluctuate, Sweet loaves of a rich brown, plentifully graced his table, Made by the neat hand of wife or daughter, happy in healthful toil. Skilfully wrought the same hands, amid the treasures of the dairy, Rich cheeses, and masses of golden butter, and bowls of fragrant ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... focus, while the previous tenant is pushed to the margin. Thus we see that it is a tendency of the mind to be forever changing. If left to itself, it would be in ceaseless fluctuation, the whim of every passing fancy. This tendency to fluctuate comes with more or less regularity, some psychologists say every second or two. True, we do not always yield to the fluctuating tendency, nevertheless we are recurrently tempted, and we must exercise continuous effort to keep a particular object at the focus. The power to exert effort and to regulate ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... "you here? Well, this is strange news, isn't it? For my part, I advise you not to take it too seriously. Your stock will go down, of course, like lead this morning. But it'll rise to-morrow, mark my words, and fluctuate every hour till the discovery's proved or disproved for certain. There's a fine time coming for operators, I feel sure. Reports this way and that. Rumours, rumours, rumours. And nobody will know which way to believe till Sir ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... the misgivings which fluctuate in, and irritate the minds of a very large proportion of the Americans; and such is the decided conviction of a portion who retire into obscurity and are silent; and every year adds to the number of both these parties. They remind one of a husband who, having married for love, and supposed ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... persistently with his arm, pulled and gnawed at the wires which were in his way, and occasionally picked up and gnawed or pounded with the sticks in the cage. His attention every now and then would come back to the food, but it tended to fluctuate rather rapidly, and in the regular period of observation, thirty minutes, it is unlikely that he attended to the bait itself for as much as five minutes. In this respect as well as many others, Skirrl's behavior contrasts sharply with that of ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... practically all our products. An exchange medium is therefore imperative; and we must have some gauge like cash by which to measure, or else we shall lose on all transactions; for all the prices of both exports and imports fluctuate very rapidly, and besides this, we had then practically no way to find out what prices were maintaining ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... payment of specie was refused by the banks and the community tacitly agreed to dispense with its employment. Their place was supplied by a currency exclusively of paper, and in many cases of the worst description. Already are the bank notes now in circulation greatly depreciated, and they fluctuate in value between one place and another, thus diminishing and making uncertain the worth of property and the price of labor, and failing to subserve, except at a heavy loss, the purposes of business. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... the cause of the rise or fall be visible, and its continuance in any degree probable. Average estimates are never just but when the object fluctuates, and no reason can be assigned why it should not continue still to fluctuate. The author chooses to allow nothing at all for this: he has taken an average of six years of the war. He knew, for everybody knows, that the first three years were on the whole rather unsuccessful; and that, in consequence ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... principles lying at the root of human life which are invincible to all doubt. We can demonstrate many things; but there are natural realities beyond our power of demonstration. On the side of sense, all things seem to fluctuate and waver in uncertainty; on the side of mere intellect we soon cross the limit of our powers. But Humanity is more than either sense or intellect. There is, as he believes, a primitive endowment ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... democrats never could approve. All through the organic laws of the Nation and the States there are to be found restraints on numbers, as if the leading idea of the Constitution-makers of America were aversion to mere majorities, things that fluctuate from year to year,—almost from day to day,—and therefore are not to be trusted. We are stating the fact, and it does not concern our purpose to discuss the wisdom of what has here been done. How happened it, then, that our polity was so generally ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I fluctuate between the peril of sensuous pleasure and the proof of wholesomeness, and am more inclined (though I would not offer an irrevocable judgement) to approve of the use of singing in the Church, that, by ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... waft you pleasurably upward to the line again, unless you should be so unfortunate as to meet one of the devastating meteors known as "cyclones" in its gyration across the Indian Ocean. After losing the trade, which signals your approach to the line once more, your guides fluctuate muchly with the time of year. But it may be broadly put that the change of the monsoon in the Bay of Bengal is beastliness unadulterated, and the south-west monsoon itself, though a fair wind for getting to your destination, is worse, if possible. Still, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... she said, with a sigh. "I shall fluctuate to the end, I suppose; one day better, the next worse. Val, I think sometimes it is not far ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... kind of magical colouring, which may be mere trickery or may be a genuine illumination, but which, whilst we are not too exacting, brings out pleasant and perplexing effects. The lights and shadows fluctuate, and solid forms melt provokingly into mist; but we must learn to enjoy the uncertain twilight which prevails on the border-land between romance and reality, if we would enjoy the ambiguities and the ironies and the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... instinct is it that this noble animal, the horse, will at once perceive the slightest change in his rider's physical temperament, and allow himself so to be influenced by it, that, according as his master's spirits fluctuate, will his own energies rise ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... forgive them, as their own worst enemies. They know nothing of the luxury of doing good, and when they are called to make up their last account, they will mourn that they have no investments in those funds that never fluctuate—in that bank "where moth and rust doth not corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal." Let such remember, moreover, that as they brought nothing into world, so they can carry nothing out of it. And let it also be remembered, in the language of another, that were there as many worlds ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... trust, subsided, and that with time these ailments will gradually leave her. But my father shakes his head and speaks of others of our family once similarly afflicted, for whom he likewise persisted in hoping against hope, and who are now removed where hope and fear fluctuate no more. There were, however, differences between their case and hers—important differences I think. I must cling to the expectation of her recovery, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... would facilitate England's neutrality, but that the conditions would inevitably change in the event of Germany and France being involved. Public opinion in England, which after the assassination was very favourable to Austria, was now beginning to fluctuate, as it was ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... and fell constantly; but still a fall disturbed us little, because a thousand dollars a foot was our figure, and so we were content to let it fluctuate as much as it pleased till it reached it. My pile of stock was not all given to me by people who wished their claims "noticed." At least half of it was given me by persons who had no thought of such a thing, and looked for nothing more than a simple verbal "thank you;" and you were not even ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... age, when an intelligent girl is said to fluctuate between childhood and womanhood. Let me add that these seeming fluctuations depend much on the company she is in: the budding virgin is princess of chameleons; and, to confine ourselves to her two most piquant contrasts, by her mother's side she is always more or less childlike; but, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... manifold because he quickly loses the scent of happiness in every way he falls into and therefore must turn to another. And thus men are never at any solid setting about this great business, never resolute wherein this happiness consists, nor peremptory to follow it, but they fluctuate upon uncertain apprehensions, and diverse affections, until the time and date of salvation expire, and then they must know certainly and surely the inevitable danger and irrecoverable loss they have brought themselves, to, who would not take notice of the sure way, both of escaping wrath and ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... protection. What the manufacturer wants is uniformity and permanency, that he may feel a confidence that he is not to be ruined by sudden changes. But to make a tariff uniform and permanent it is not only necessary that the laws should not be altered, but that the duty should not fluctuate. To effect this all duties should be specific wherever the nature of the article is such as to admit of it. Ad valorem duties fluctuate with the price and offer strong temptations to fraud and perjury. Specific duties, on the contrary, are equal and uniform in all ports and at all ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... to liability at which the Bank should aim; but he does not say whether he regards a third as the minimum below which the reserve in the Banking Department should never be, or as a fair average, about which the reserve may fluctuate, sometimes being greater, ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... Englishman (which, taken in a political and extensive sense, are usually called their liberties) as they are founded on nature and reason, so they are coeval with our form of government; though subject at times to fluctuate and change: their establishment (excellent as it is) being still human. At some times we have seen them depressed by overbearing and tyrannical princes; at others so luxuriant as even to tend to anarchy, a worse state than tyranny itself, as any government is better than none at all. ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... always strike me, Stratton, as not realizing that women are weak things. We've got to take care of them. You don't seem to feel that as I do. Their moods—fluctuate—more than ours do. If you hold 'em to what they say in the same way you hold a ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land, your laboring population will be far more at ease than the laboring population of the Old World; but the time will come when wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as much, with you as with us. Then your institutions will fairly be brought to the test. Distress everywhere makes the laborer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to listen with eagerness to agitators who tell him that it is a monstrous iniquity ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... and sixty, two hundred, and two hundred and forty pounds a year. I must confess that the income of eighty pounds has somewhat baffled me, and the others are not so exact as I could wish; for the price of washing varies largely in foreign countries, and the different cokes, coals and firewoods fluctuate surprisingly. I will read my researches, and I hope you won't scruple to point out to me any little errors that I may have committed either from oversight or ignorance. I will begin, gentlemen, with the income ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... is anchored and stationary in my dreams; but great storms and driving mists cause him to fluctuate uncertainly, or even to retire altogether, like his gloomy counterpart the shy Phantom of the Brocken—and to assume new features or strange features, as in dreams always there is a power not contented with reproduction, but which absolutely creates or transforms. This dark being ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... to hear, in vain still wait, Of that sweet enemy I love so well: What now to think or say I cannot tell, 'Twixt hope and fear my feelings fluctuate: The beautiful are still the marks of fate; And sure her worth and beauty most excel: What if her God have call'd her hence, to dwell Where virtue finds a more congenial state? If so, she will illuminate that sphere Even as a sun: but I—'tis done with me! I then am nothing, have ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... spite of similar obstacles, they face the same enemies, they are affected by the same dangers, and the history of the last thirty years shows quite clearly that their power of influencing public affairs and of commanding national attention fluctuate together. Together they are elevated, together they are depressed, and any Tory reaction which swept the Liberal Party out of power would assuredly work at least proportionate havoc in the ranks of Labour. That may not be a very palatable truth, but ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... of the trust company is to make large loans on long-time securities. The deposits of trust companies consist largely of undisturbed sums such as might be set aside by administrators, executors, trustees, committees, societies, or from private estates. They are such as are not likely to fluctuate greatly in amount. From the very nature of their deposits trust companies find it convenient and profitable to make larger loans and at longer periods than do ordinary banks. Trust companies not only receive moneys upon deposit subject to cheque and for savings, and ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... fire. {91b} Flicht and wary, fluctuate and change. {92b} Frawfull fary, froward tumult. {152c} Fyke, fuss. {30} Fytte, a song, canto. First English, fit, a song. When Wisdom "thas fitte asungen haefde" had sung this song. King ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... to say—I fluctuate. At times, I feel as though I should drop insensible on the earth, and then I feel better than I have done for ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... to fluctuate during the time of sterilizing, such as running the pressure up to fifteen, back to seven or eight ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... price will be determined largely by the cost of production and transportation. If events or circumstances operate to increase or curtail either the sugar supply or the number of buyers, and such events or circumstances follow one after the other alternately, the price will fluctuate. ...
— About sugar buying for Jobbers - How you can lessen business risks by trading in refined sugar futures • B. W. Dyer
... England. Funds are down nearly to eighty. The Government have given up the income tax and people are very glad of it. I am not. With respect to the funds, if I were to sell out I should not know what to do with the money. J. says they will rise. I do not think they will, they may, however, fluctuate a little.—Keep up your spirits, my heart's dearest, and ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... (this is but a phrase; for a lawyer is always in his novitiate) to have been, at the Cambridge Law School, a pupil of Mr. Justice Story; and thus to have drank at the very fountain head of constitutional law—that branch of our national jurisprudence which can least fluctuate. Judges of a day and not of a generation, or crazy legislators with spasmodic wisdom, may alter, and overturn, and mystify by simplification, the laws and usages of every-day life; but it is scarcely to be apprehended that the current of our constitutional law will ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... that form the modern style of music: but you meet them in some few pieces that are the growth of wild unvitiated taste; you discover them in the swelling sounds that wrap us in imaginary grandeur; in those plaintive notes that make us in love with woe; in the tones that utter the lover's sighs, and fluctuate the breast with gentle pain; in the noble strokes that coil up the courage and fury of the soul, or that lull it in confused visions of joy; in short, in those affecting strains that find their way to the inmost recesses of ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... although I knew it to be he, to separate him from his dress; and tried to call him, I remember, PILOT. After another interval of total unconsciousness, I found he had gone, and recognised another figure in its place. It seemed to wave and fluctuate before me as though I saw it reflected in an unsteady looking-glass; but I knew it for the captain; and such was the cheerful influence of his face, that I tried to smile: yes, even then I tried to smile. I saw by his gestures that he addressed ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... impressive silence, "I greatly fear that you have allowed zeal, my dear Sir, to outrun discretion. Robin Lyth is a young, and in many ways highly respected, parishioner of mine. He may have been guilty of casual breaches of the laws concerning importation—laws which fluctuate from year to year, and require deep knowledge of legislation both to observe and to administer. I heartily trust that you may not suffer from having discharged your duty in a manner most truly exemplary, if only the example had been the right ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... part, I know not what to think of the death of Edward the Fifth: I can neither entirely acquit Richard of it, nor condemn him; because there are no proofs on either side; and though a court of justice would, from that defect of evidence, absolve him; opinion may fluctuate backward and forwards, and at last remain ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... in the north and south say that they have 12 1/2 subdivisions and that the half subcaste comprises the descendants of illicit unions. Of course the twelve subdivisions are as a rule mythical, the number of subcastes being always liable to fluctuate as fresh endogamous groups are formed by migration or slight changes in the caste calling. Other castes have a Lohri Sen or degraded group which corresponds to the half caste. In other cases the illegitimate branch has a special name; thus the Niche Pat Bundelas of Saugor and Chhoti ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... farewell we fluctuate sharply between the very distant and the close and homely: and even in memory the fluctuation occurs, the grander scene casting us back on the modestly nestling, and that, when it has refreshed us, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... character. But then, on the other hand, his own personal situation must be so embarrassed: there is so much danger of an imputation of pride, and a factious desire of keeping alive differences, that my opinions fluctuate almost from hour to hour. I am still, however, inclined to believe that they will not make the experiment, though the conversation upon it, and the general persuasion of its being intended, make it more difficult for them to avoid doing something of ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... cities—pauperism is almost unknown—the people are on farms—the style of living is less costly by half, but greatly superior in quality and comfort—according to the census, there is but little crime—almost all have homes—the amount of agricultural labor does not fluctuate—the farms are not cultivated by the spade and hoe, but are large enough to justify a system of enlarged agricultural operations by the aid of horse power. The result is that more is saved, and the proceeds more equally ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... know what to say to you about the subject which now interests me the most keenly of anything in this world, for, in truth, I hardly know what to think myself. Hope and fear fluctuate daily. The pain in her side and chest is better; the cough, the shortness of breath, the extreme emaciation continue. I have endured, however, such tortures of uncertainty on this subject that, at length, I could endure it no longer; and as her repugnance to seeing a medical man continues immutable,—as ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... this can generally be demonstrated. Other differences in an ordinary population are recognized as due to different genetic (hereditary) combinations. No one will dispute this statement. But is all the variability accounted for in these two ways? May not a factor itself fluctuate? Is it not a priori probable that factors do fluctuate? Why, in a word, should we regard factors as inviolate when we see that everything else in organisms is more or less in amount? I do not know of any a priori reason why a factor may not ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan
... change, and the public affections fluctuate with respect to others, with respect to him, they have, in war and in peace, in public and in private life, been as steady as his own firm mind, and as constant ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... The number of organisms found in milk depends upon (1) the original amount of contamination, (2) the age of the milk, and (3) the temperature at which it has been held. These factors all fluctuate greatly in different cases; consequently, the germ life is subject to exceedingly wide variations. Here in America, milk reaches the consumer with less bacteria than in Europe, although it may often be older. This is due largely to the more wide-spread use of ice for chilling ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... fluctuate, v. vacillate, waver, oscillate, whiffle, swerve. Antonyms: continue, persist, adhere, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... spectrograph have had histories with so many identities that we are coming to look upon them as standard products of evolutionary processes. These stars usually rise to maximum brilliancy in a few days: some of the most noted ones increased in brightness ten-thousand-fold in two or three days. All of them fluctuate in brightness irregularly, and usually in short periods of time. Several novae have become invisible to the naked eye at the end of a few weeks. With two or three exceptions, all have become invisible ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... difficulties to be surmounted, when the commander in chief had resolved on forcing the passage of the Sound, represented the enterprise as more practicable, and less hazardous, by the circuitous passage of the Great Belt. Though Lord Nelson's mind could not be thus induced to fluctuate, and was decidedly for the immediate passage of the Sound, when the Great Belt appeared to be preferred—"Let us, then, go by the Great Belt!" said the hero. Impatient for action, he was desirous of proceeding by any way which might soonest lead to ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... method can be used to solve this important problem. My plan is this: It is well known that many variable stars, such as Algol, [sigma] Librae, U Coronae, and the remarkable variable D.M. 1.3408, discovered by Mr. E.F. Sawyer, fluctuate at regular intervals. Now, I believe it is possible to determine very accurately the intervals between these changes, and, by noting the change of time in these intervals, when the earth is in different points of its orbit, we ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... of such decisive influence in European politics were at stake, it was inevitable that the rival nations, in peace as well as in open war, should carry their ambitions to the scene; and the unceasing struggle for the mastery would fluctuate with the control of the waters, which, as in all maritime regions, must depend mainly upon naval preponderance, but also in part upon possession of those determining positions, of whose tenure Napoleon said that "war is a business ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... consistent with the fact of an absolute fall, the question at issue being whether the fall of prices under the Trust was as great as it would have been under free competition. Moreover, a comparison of dates appears to indicate that the Trust's prices, as we saw in the Standard Oil Company, fluctuate with the degree of their monopoly, falling rapidly under the pressure of actual or threatened competition, rising when the danger is past. Finally, opponents of the Trust allude to certain Trusts ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... Types having been once introduced, little room was left for improvement, beyond the slight variations in the form of the Letters, which, as a matter of taste, would always be liable to fluctuate: a comparison of works, printed at ...
— The Author's Printing and Publishing Assistant • Frederick Saunders
... automatically and invariably which will in fact be profoundly modified in societies differently organised and composed of individuals differing in character. The very fundamental assumptions as to the elasticity of population, and the accumulation of capital as wages and profits fluctuate, are clearly not absolute truths. An increase of the capitalist's share, for example, at the expense of wages, may lead to the lowered efficiency of the labourer; and, instead of the compensating process supposed to result from the stimulus to accumulation, the actual result may be a general ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... always called Israel in his subsequent history. His new name was a name of character and of spiritual standing, and that might fluctuate, and the old self resume its power; so he is still called by the former appellation, just as, at certain points in his life, the apostle forfeits the right to be 'Peter,' and has to hear from Christ's lips the old name, the use of which is more poignant than many reproachful ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... Cabot, " I have come now to the point I was aiming at. You cannot prove to yourself that you love God by examining your feelings towards Him. They are indefinite and they fluctuate. But just as far as you obey Him, just so far, depend upon it, you love Him. It is not natural to us sinful, ungrateful human beings to prefer His pleasure to our own, or to follow His way instead of our own way, and nothing, nothing but love ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... specimens of Russian enamel, which naturally one supposes to be more inexpensive in the country which creates them, but to our distress we discovered Avenue de l'Opera prices on everything we wished. Each time that we went back the price was different. The market seemed to fluctuate. One blue enamelled belt, upon which I had set my heart, varied in price from one to three dollars each time I looked at it. Finally, one day I hit upon a plan. I asked my friend, Mile, de Falk, to follow me into this shop and not speak to me, but to notice ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... Aponal. Of no interest. Some say that Bianca Cappello fled from it; but the tradition seems to fluctuate between the various houses belonging to ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... lend money. The second rule is the most difficult, and decides whether you are a gambler or not. I make a rule always to leave off when I have won a certain sum—or even before, if the chances of my game fluctuate. There is the difficulty; it appears very foolish not to follow up luck, but the fact is, fortune is so capricious, that if you trust her more than an hour, she will desert you. This is my mode of play, and with me it answers; but it does not follow ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... outside wave for me. Thanks. Now I've got our dinky sending station set on the same wave length at a different frequency. It's adjusted so that as I keep in touch through this tuning coil, our wave will fluctuate over the same path as the other. It should take six or eight hours to overcome the effect on her, I judge. Here we go. June, you'd better get yourself and your dad some food. Doctor, you examine the kid from time to time. In an hour or so ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... reading will be found in the women's manuals; where it is held wrong for women to uncover the face, it will be laid down in these manuals as a sin. But ethics are ethics: the great principles of morals, as proclaimed either by science or by religion, do not fluctuate for sex; their basis is in the very ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... hardly fail to mislead the decision. The same process must be repeated in every member of which the body is constituted; and the execution of the plans, framed by the councils of the whole, will always fluctuate on the discretion of the ill-informed and prejudiced opinion of every part. Those who have been conversant in the proceedings of popular assemblies; who have seen how difficult it often is, where there is no exterior pressure of circumstances, to bring them to ...
— The Federalist Papers
... pulled the trigger may have been a series of pictures in the mind aroused by printed or spoken words. These pictures fade and are hard to keep steady; their contours and their pulse fluctuate. Gradually the process sets in of knowing what you feel without being entirely certain why you feel it. The fading pictures are displaced by other pictures, and then by names or symbols. But the emotion goes on, capable now of being aroused by the substituted ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... remote horizon, rear themselves silently and swiftly, then stalking forward towards the affected caravan like a phantom phantasmagoria, approach, manoeuvre, overshadow, and then as suddenly recede, collapse, fluctuate, again to remould into other combinations and to alarm other travellers—have passed. This vast structure of Central Europe had been abandoned by all the greater tribes; they had crossed the vast barriers of Western Europe—the Alps, the Vosges, the Pyrenees, the ocean—these were ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... time only; because it is not stigmatized by public opinion, and creates no permanent inequality between the servant and the master. But whilst the transition from one social condition to another is going on, there is almost always a time when men's minds fluctuate between the aristocratic notion of subjection and the democratic notion of obedience. Obedience then loses its moral importance in the eyes of him who obeys; he no longer considers it as a species of divine obligation, and he does not ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... feeble and unstable minds of men! How quickly our intentions fluctuate! All thoughts we lightly change, but mostly when These from some lover's quarrel take their date. But now, so wroth I saw that Saracen With woman, so outrageous in his hate, I weened not only he would ill assuage, But never more would calm, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... of the Goths determined several tribes or nations that seemed to fluctuate between the Huns and the Romans. The indefatigable diligence of the patrician gradually collected the troops of Gaul and Germany, who had formerly acknowledged themselves the subjects or soldiers of the republic, but who now claimed the rewards of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... found himself in one of those difficult situations, in which prepossession, being compelled to fluctuate in uncertainty between several points at once, has no sooner determined and fixed upon one side, than it removes ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... language abounds in classical insipidities, epithets that describe nothing, and generalities at second hand from older poets, who may once, perhaps, have written with their "eyes upon the object." Blushing Flora paints the enameled ground; cheerful murmurs fluctuate on the gale; Eridanus through flowery meadows strays; gay gilded[32] scenes and shining prospects rise; while everywhere are balmy zephyrs, sylvan shades, winding vales, vocal shores, silver floods, crystal springs, feathered quires, and Phoebus and Philomel ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... from the unsettled state of our Government will be acknowledged by all. Commercial intercourse is impeded, capital is in constant peril, public securities fluctuate in value, peace itself is not secure, and the sense of moral and political duty is impaired. To avert these calamities from our country it is imperatively required that we should immediately decide upon ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... at the extremity of the Mediterranean, in one of the nations of Europe, a prodigious movement—such as when a violent sedition arises in a vast city—a numberless people, rushing in all directions, pour through the streets and fluctuate like waves in the public places. My ear, struck with the cries which resounded to the heavens, distinguished ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c. 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers[obs3]; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c. 111[obs3]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, shake, totter, tremble, vacillate, wamble[obs3], turn and turn about, ring the changes; sway to and fro, shift to and fro; change and change about; waffle, blow with the wind (irresolute) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... more appropriate than the different rendezvous you have sent me a copy of; your change of position must fluctuate according to the sudden changes of the weather, which are to be looked for soon. I repose such unbounded confidence in your zeal and judgment that I sleep as soundly as if I had the key of ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... Sancho! The fortunes of war fluctuate, that's all." And then he added his suspicion that the same Sage Friston, the magician who had carried off his room of books, had turned the giants into windmills so that he would be unable to boast of having conquered them—all out of sheer envy and thirst ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the beginning of my recovered faith; and how at this time I am moved, not with the singing, but with the things sung, when they are sung with a clear voice and modulation most suitable, I acknowledge the great use of this institution. Thus I fluctuate between peril of pleasure and approved wholesomeness; inclined the rather (though not as pronouncing an irrevocable opinion) to approve of the usage of singing in the church; that so by the delight of the ears the ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... agree at the commencement of the season to fish for a stated price, or they might allow it to fluctuate from week to week?-They might do either; or they might agree to be settled with at the end of their six weeks' fishing, in a similar manner to what they do at the herring fishing, when they settle with the men immediately ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... The beauty of this simile will be lost to those who have never been at sea during a calm. The water is then not quite motionless, but swells gently in smooth waves, which fluctuate in a balancing motion, until a rising wind gives them a certain determination. Every circumstance of the comparison is just, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... gold fluctuate and grow vague before the small interests of everyday living. Casey hadn't the money just then to quit his job of stage driving and go Indian stalking. It would take money,—a few hundred at least. Casey at that time lacked the price of a ticket to Round Butte. ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... like the face of old days," said Richard in his cordial voice, and taking my hand with the brotherly regard which nothing ever changed, "that I can't make pretences with her. I fluctuate a little; that's the truth. Sometimes I hope, my dear, and sometimes I—don't quite despair, but nearly. I get," said Richard, relinquishing my hand gently and walking ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... of esteem and pleasure; pity is composed of sorrow and contempt: the mind may for some time fluctuate between them, but it can never entertain ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... the Piraeus are more attached to a popular government than those who live in the city properly so called; for as the interposition of a rivulet, however small, will occasion the line of the phalanx to fluctuate, so any trifling disagreement will be the cause of seditions; but they will not so soon flow from anything else as from the disagreement between virtue and vice, and next to that between poverty and riches, and so on in order, one cause having more influence than another; ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... the roily mess of the Ohio, and for several miles exerts a considerable influence in clarification. The Lower Wabash, flowing through a soft clay bottom, runs an erratic course, and its mouth is a variable location, so that the bounds of Illinois and Indiana, hereabout, fluctuate east and west according to the exigencies of the floods. The far-reaching bottom itself, however, is apparently of slight value, giving evidence, in the dreary clumps of dead timber, of ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... formed ere it began to fluctuate, when he reflected upon the fittest manner of carrying it into execution. To show himself at a distance, might give the lady an opportunity of turning back and avoiding the interview which he had determined upon—to hide himself till the moment when her horse, in rapid motion, should pass his lurking-place, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... able, active, and zealous partisan of those changes with which the country was at present threatened. The principles of the noble earl were principles by which any man might safely abide; the principles of Mr. Canning fluctuate daily, and depend upon transitory reasons of temporary expediency. These are the conscientious reasons of my resignation." As for the absurd calumny, that he had threatened the king with his resignation unless he was made prime minister, the duke said ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... offered under the supervision of the Association in some of the colleges. The men in eleven colleges attend the mission study classes and number three hundred nine. The women have such provisions in two colleges with a membership of eighteen. The numbers in these classes fluctuate from year to year depending largely on two factors, the leaders of the respective association and the leaders of the classes. The personnel of the student body is also a factor. It is among the things natural that from time to time changes ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... Quakers and others with moral scruples against war; and finally, sincere legalists to whom the Conscription Act appeared unconstitutional. In the spring of 1863 the issue of conscription drew the line fairly sharply between the two political coalitions, though each continued to fluctuate, more or less, to the end of ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... corpse-lights, or will-o'-the-wisps, called expectations. Ever since the squire's grandfather had left him—then in short clothes—a legacy of L500, the captain had peopled the future with expectations! He talked of his expectations as a man talks of shares in a Tontine; they might fluctuate a little,—be now up and now down,—but it was morally impossible, if he lived on, but that he should be a millionnaire one of these days. Now, though Miss Jemima was a good fifteen years younger than himself, yet she always stood ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rugxega. Florin floreno. Florist floristo. Flotilla sxipareto. Flour faruno. Flourish (brandish) svingi. Flow flui. Flow (of blood) sangversxo. Flow away deflui. Flower flori. Flower-bed florbedo. Flower-garden florejo. Fluctuate sxanceligxi. Flue kamentubo. Fluent elokventa, fluanta. Fluid fluajxo. Fluid flua. Flute fluto. Flutter flugeti, flirti. Flux alfluo. Fly flugi. Fly musxo. Fly away forflugi. Foal cxevalido—ino. Foam sxauxmi. Foam sxauxmo—ajxo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... gravities fluctuate between .91 and .93. When heated, fats assume a dark color, and boil between 482 deg. and 572 deg. Fahr., but the boiling-point continuously rises, while an uninterrupted decomposition proceeds. From oxide of glycyl ensues acroline; oleic acid affords a fatty acid, and among the decomposition ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... figure was the center of interest until the entrance of the bridal party. She must have guessed how the tongues were wagging but her color did not fluctuate under the ordeal. At last Annabel had come to the point of assisting nature. The carmine had been applied with artistic restraint, and she had never looked lovelier, but her happiness in her beauty had vanished. To retain the admiration which ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... superfluous, fluid, influx, flush (rush of water), fluctuate; (2) confluent, mellifluous, flux, reflux, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... of our caravan will of course fluctuate throughout the whole line of route; but I may as well mention the most important personages who were to start with me from Tripoli. Setting aside my colleagues, Barth and Overweg, there was, in the first place, the interpreter, Yusuf Moknee, a man really of some ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... pleasurable senstations. On the very contrary, Mrs. Morgan and her sister will bear witness so far as to say that the longer I abstained the higher my spirits were, the keener my enjoyments, till the moment, the direful moment arrived when my pulse began to fluctuate, my heart to palpitate, and such falling abroad as it were of my whole frame, such intolerable restlessness and incipient bewilderment, that in the last of my several attempts to abandon the dire poison I exclaimed in agony, which I now repeat in seriousness and solemnity, "I am too poor to ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... indifferent to, and never intentionally selects, any modification in the skeleton. External characters, if not attended to by man, such as the number of the tail and wing feathers and their relative lengths, which in wild birds are generally constant,—fluctuate in our domestic fowls in the same manner as the several parts of the skeleton. An additional toe is a "point" in Dorkings, and has become a fixed character, but is variable in Cochins and Silk fowls. The colour of the plumage and the form of the comb are in most ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... intervals. The use of plant and premises is continuous, the processes of malting being equally well performed during the summer months. The further advantage of this is that brewers secure entire uniformity in age of malt. By the English system the stocks of finished malt necessarily fluctuate largely. All grain is subjected to the same conditions of surrounding air, exposure, and temperature. The volume of air supplied to the germinating corn is entirely under control, as are also its temperature and humidity. When germination ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... now to the question of changes in the appearance of bright stars. It seems pretty certain that more than one per cent of these bodies fluctuate to a greater or less extent in their light. Observations of these fluctuations, in the case of at least the brighter stars, may be carried on without any instrument more expensive than a good opera-glass—in fact, in the case of stars visible to the naked eye, with ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... favor of these other lords with the court of England induced him to recollect that he might rule as the unrivaled friend of Bruce, should that prince live; or, in case of his death, he might have it in his own power to assume the Scottish throne untrammeled. These thoughts made him fluctuate, and his country found him as undetermined in treason as ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... wet earth, rising mists, and shafts of pure, warm sunlight, made her sing like the forest birds all about her, but even on the coldest and blackest of winter nights, when the storm made the lamp-light fluctuate alarmingly, and trees creaked over the cabin, she would look up from the piano to say contentedly: "Well, I'd rather be here than ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... Thus does science fluctuate! Now Homer knows in practice none but light round bucklers, dating from about 700 B.C.; again, he does not know them at all, though they were habitually used in the period at which the later parts of his Epic were composed. We shall have to ask, how did small round bucklers ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... zone, practically no canal irrigation. The well irrigation is unimportant and in most parts consists of a few acres round each well intensively cultivated with market-gardening crops. The dry crops are generally very precarious. In Mianwali the Indus valley is a fine tract, but the harvests fluctuate greatly with the extent of the floods. The Thal in Mianwali to the south of the Sind Sagar railway is really a part of the ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... on with artless grace, And on a javelin's quivering length reclined: To exalt her mien she bade no splendour blaze, Nor pomp of vesture fluctuate on the wind. ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... property of the same kind, and John's device had been to tap the wealthy neighbour's store by running a little adit from the worthless shaft into the rich one. It was not an unheard-of thing for the value of such properties to fluctuate. A rich mine would pay out, and a poor one at a distance would become suddenly enriched; and these changes were, no doubt rightly, in the common instance attributed to the capricious operations of Nature. If the owner of the tapped sources of the cousins' wealth suspected anything to begin with ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... silent in my turn. What could I say? I was confident that reason in this contest would be impotent. I must owe my safety to his own suggestions. Whatever purpose brought him hither, he had changed it. Why then did he remain? His resolutions might fluctuate, and the pause of a few minutes restore ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... deeply with the quiet it beholds! The sleep of a desert would not so affect it; it is Beauty that makes the difference—that attracts spirit to matter, while spirit becomes not thereby materialised—but matter spiritualised; and we fluctuate in the air-boat of imagination between earth and heaven. In most and in all great instances there is apprehension, dim and faint, or more distinct, of pervasion of a spirit throughout that which we conceive Beautiful. Stars, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... heights had dwindled to a speck, and the loud carols of the fishermen returning home from their day's sport, had sunk into a faint, undistinguished whisper. Our vessel's course for the first hour or so was delightful. Towards night, the weather, which had hitherto proved so serene, began to fluctuate; the wind shifted, and gradually a heavy swell came rolling in from the north-east towards us. As the hour advanced, a storm seemed advancing with it; and a hundred symptoms appeared, the least of which was fully sufficient to certify the coming on of a tremendous hurricane. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... was better than doubt. The love of truth and the consciousness of that certainty would raise me above hatred and slander. I should then have some kind of principle by which to regulate my conduct; I should then know on what foundation to build. To fluctuate, to waver, to postpone inquiry, was more criminal than any kind of opinion candidly investigated and firmly adopted, and would more effectually debar me from happiness. At my age, with my talents and inducements, it was sordid, it was ignoble, it was culpable, to allow indifference ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... good-sized island with ample vegetable and insect food, but no other competing or destructive birds or quadrupeds—their numbers would amount to more than twenty millions. But we know very well that our bird population is no greater, on the average, now than it was ten years ago. Year by year it may fluctuate a little according as the winters are more or less severe, or from other causes, but on the whole there is no increase. What, then, becomes of the enormous surplus population annually produced? It is evident they must all die or be killed, somehow; and as the increase is, on the average, about five ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... stomachs and emaciated limbs after and during famines. They are then, also, compelled to wander much, and, as I was assured in Australia, their infants perish in large numbers. As famines are periodical, depending chiefly on extreme seasons, all tribes must fluctuate in number. They cannot steadily and regularly increase, as there is no artificial increase in the supply of food. Savages, when hard pressed, encroach on each other's territories, and war is the result; ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... But the crops fluctuate from year to year, and a less favorable season for 1860, accompanied by an increase of at least ten per cent. in spindles, leaves the supply barely equal to the demand, while the diminished crop, and the cry of Secession ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... a corn rent, it is to be observed, however, varies much less from century to century than that of a money rent, it varies much more from year to year. The money price of labour, as I shall endeavour to shew hereafter, does not fluctuate from year to year with the money price of corn, but seems to be everywhere accommodated, not to the temporary or occasional, but to the average or ordinary price of that necessary of life. The average or ordinary price of corn, again is regulated, as I shall likewise endeavour to shew ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... of above-mentioned fact, the market is easily overstocked at any given point, and hence prices often fluctuate widely. ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... in suppuration the matter generally can be felt to fluctuate in the groin, or near the top of the thigh. In this circumstance, my friend Mr. Bent, Surgeon near Newcastle in Staffordshire, proposes to tap the abscess by means of a trocar, and thus as often as ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... self-love. But we, who look on, may sometimes doubt whether they WERE pearls thus ineffectually thrown; and always doubt the judiciousness of strewing pearls before swine. The prosperity of a book lies in the minds of readers. Public knowledge and public taste fluctuate; and there come times when works which were once capable of instructing and delighting thousands lose their power, and works, before neglected, emerge into renown. A small minority to whom these works appealed has gradually become a large minority, and in the evolution ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... in a scrap of MS. found amongst his papers) various and opposite qualities—all the great and all the little passions unfavourable to public tranquillity united in the breast of one man, and of that man, unhappily, whose personal caprice can scarce fluctuate for an hour without affecting the destiny of Europe. I see the inward workings of fear struggling with pride in an ardent, enterprising, and tumultuous mind. I see all the captious jealousy of ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... would be unjust to blame the soil for bad seed and poor culture. Every advertiser gets exactly the same number of readers from a publisher and the same readers—after that it's up to him—the results fluctuate in accordance with the intelligence and the pulling power of the copy which ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman
... of gathering the industry under the paternal care of the government, of relieving it from the exigencies of private enterprise which must of necessity fluctuate, of keeping the art in dignified prosperity, and of devoting to its uses the highest talent of ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... observed and commented on the instability of the illusion. Auerbach[11] says, in his investigation of the quantitative variations of the illusion, that concentration of attention diminishes the illusion. In the Zoellner figure, for instance, I have been able to notice the illusion fluctuate through a wide range, without eye-movements and without definitely attending to any point, during the fluctuation of the attention. My experiments with the tactual illusion have led me to the conclusion that it fluctuates even more than the optical illusion. Any deliberation in ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... tears, still are tears found {to flow}. Just as the ship, which the wind and a tide running contrary to the wind, seize, is sensible of the double assault, and unsteadily obeys them both; no otherwise does the daughter of Thestius fluctuate between {two} varying affections, and in turn lays by her anger, and rouses it again, {when thus} laid by. Still, the sister begins to get the better of the parent; and that, with blood she may appease the shades of her relations, in her unnatural ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... holding of this amount of specie by the bank which issued the notes was designed by Sir Robert Peel to cause the circulating medium of the country, being partly of notes and partly of specie, to fluctuate in the same manner as if it had been a metallic circulation only. The specie held in Scotland and Ireland against the note-issue is not a special security for the note circulation, but is placed in the banks there for this purpose. The influence ascribed to the working of the note ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... distinct hard swelling in two parts, separated by a resonant area, was noted to the left of the umbilicus and in the left iliac fossa. The abdomen moved fairly, and there was little tenderness over the swelling. During the next week the swelling appeared to increase and to fluctuate; at the same time the temperature again began to rise to 100 deg. and 101 deg. at eve. The swelling was taken to be a localised peritoneal suppuration, and an incision was made over it; but this led down to a free peritoneal ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... be made under the best conditions, the temperature of the water used and of the extract after it is made should not fluctuate. In the pumping percolator, as in the steeping method, the temperature varies greatly from the time the extraction is started to the completion of the operation. This is deleterious. Also, local overheating ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers |
