"Oscillate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... until a day or two later that a prolonged visit from the subject of these hesitations reminded her—perhaps more forcibly than before—that, however in his absence she might oscillate, in his actual presence a firm negative was, after all, the only answer which ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... old New York brownstone houses and one of the fourteen-storied buildings near the river, but between this and the Times Square Building or the still more amazing Flat Iron Building, which is said to oscillate at the top—it is so far from the ground—there is very little difference. I hear that they are now beginning to build downwards into the earth, but this will not change the appearance of New York ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... not have any motive power at all, and therefore could not transmit heat from one body to another. Professor Tyndall[10] on this point says, referring to the cooling of a red-hot ball: "The atoms of the ball oscillate in a resisting medium, which accepts their motion and transmits it on all sides with inconceivable velocity." Now in the previous quotation given in this article from the same authority, he states that the atoms are immersed in the Aether. So that evidently in his opinion the Aether and the resisting ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... consummate folly as for consummate success. Adopting such maxims, we can enjoy 'Coningsby' throughout; for we need not care whether we are laughing at the author or with him. We may heartily enjoy his admirable flashes of wit, and, when he takes a serious tone, may oscillate agreeably between the beliefs that he is in solemn earnest, or in his bitterest humour; only we must not quite forget that the farce has a touch in it of tragedy, and that there is a real mystery somewhere. Satire, pure and simple, becomes wearisome. If a latent sense of humour ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... fine threads or wires on the screen remote from the spectators. Behind this are ranged, one behind the other, and at right angles to the screen, a row of lighted candles. Being all in the same line, they throw one shadow only on the screen. The figure is now made to oscillate slightly, so as to impart some little motion to the shadow. One of the candles is now removed from its place in the row, and waved gently about, now high, now low, the effect to the spectators being that a second shadow springs out of the first, and dances about it on the screen. ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... was of the usual standard. He had seen everything worth seeing in London and in Paris, between which cities he seemed to oscillate with such frequency that he might be said to live in both places at once. He had his stall at Covent Garden, and his stall at the Grand Opera. He was a subscriber at the Theatre Francais. He had seen all the races at Longchamps and Chantilly, as well as at Sandown ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... up in three parallel lines on the east and three on the west. Then the search-lights again flashed out, filling the whole intermediate area of the sky with beams of brilliant coloured light, which were caused to oscillate sideways and overlap, producing a most gorgeous intermingling of glowing colours. The Martians certainly had a complete understanding of all the peculiarities connected ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... speaking collectedly, like a professor, "if I raise my pendulum till it reaches the point of Moderate Desires and then let it go, it will naturally swing to the point of Slight Troubles, and go no further. Then it will oscillate for some time in a more and more limited space on the line of Indifference, and finally it will stand still without any jerk on Dead Stop, Absolute Repose. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... to insinuate, "fashion" has really nothing to do with the question. People who disbelieve in written texts must, and do, oscillate between the theory of an Homeric "school" and the Wolfian theory that Pisistratus, or Solon, or somebody procured the making of the first written text at Athens in the sixth century—a theory which fails ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... what has actually been done; not merely what remains to be done. We must adopt proportionate standards, not the little measures of to-day and yesterday, in which the tides of human melioration may oscillate, and even seem to flow backward and at the best to make slight headway. But take up the cycle of history that preceded the advent of Christianity, and compare it with the present period; and is there not an entirely different expression on the face of things, so far ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... breakwaters from clashing against each other, they are united end to end in a very simple and ingenious manner. From each of them there starts a deeply inserted iron bar which terminates in a journal that permits the breakwater to oscillate. Between these two bars there is a sort of swivel, whose pieces, in playing upon one another, give the breakwaters elasticity, while always holding them apart (Fig. 4). From each side of the swivel start the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... to make it more plain by an illustration, here is a tuning-fork on the table before me. With a vigorous stroke of the bow I set it vibrating. The two prongs separate, oscillate rapidly, and a sound of a certain tone is heard. I connect this tuning-fork, by means of electric wires, with a Deprez recording apparatus which records the vibrations on the blackened surface of a revolving cylinder; and we can thus, by an examination ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... end of the bullock-hide lariat round the tree to which he held, and began to oscillate it, so that the blazing bush might reach the ledge on which the daring convict sustained himself. The groan which preceded the fierce belching forth of the torrent was cast ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... words, whether there are any reasons or external considerations by which the mind guides itself in its decisions on matters of conduct. Do our moral opinions merely vary, or do they grow? Is there any progress to be traced in morality, or does it simply oscillate, within certain limits, round a fixed point? If some 'simple' and 'innate' idea of right, or some universal sense, were the test of morality, then we might expect that the moral decisions of all men would be uniform, or, at least, approximately uniform; if, on the other hand, there were ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... is to ascertain what is the effect of all of them taken together, and then to eliminate this, which is the casual part of the effect, in reckoning up the results. If the results of frequent experiments, in which the constant cause is kept invariable, oscillate round one point, that average or middle point is due to the constant cause, and the variable remainder to chance; that is, to causes the coexistence of which with the constant cause was merely casual. The test ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... finished, Fougas arose without difficulty, gracefully offered his arm, and conducted his partner to the parlor. His gait was a little stiff and oppressively regular, but he went straight ahead, and did not oscillate the least bit. He took a couple of cups of coffee, and spirits in moderation, after which he began to talk in the most reasonable manner in the world. About ten o'clock, M. Martout, having expressed a wish to hear his history, he placed himself on a stool, collected ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... continued Mary, "it swings back and forth with a certain degree of rapidity. Now we want to know what this rapidity depends upon, and then we could make a pendulum so that it would oscillate faster or slower, ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... century; its inhabitants are so varied that the 'go slow' directions over its bridges are printed in three languages, and the religious services in its churches held in four; the thermometer, the barometer, the vane, the hygrometer, oscillate so rapidly, so frequently, so lawlessly, and through so wide a meteorological range, that the climate is simply indescribable, yet it is a growing resort for consumptives; it stands with all its gay prosperity just in the edge of a lonesome, untilled ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... not oscillate the saw as you draw it back and forth. This is unnecessary work, and shows impatience in the use of the tool. There is such an infinite variety of use for the different tools that there is no necessity for rendering ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... Tourgueneff, can believe; but the comic journals themselves have fallen far too much into the hands of the Imperial University, whose literary style is a combination of the humor of the cider-cellars with the verbal fluency of Billingsgate. Under such auspices the ill-starred periodicals naturally oscillate between insipid propriety and labored coarseness. For a month or two the talented contributors go smoothly on in their career of untranslatable pleasantry, till some special atrocity calls forth the fatherly admonition of the police. Immediately ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... two small disks on the machine bends toward the negative pole, becomes widened, and, at a certain point of electric intensity, commences to vibrate and oscillate, exhibiting a peculiar stratification. Since these phenomena are also least observed in flames rich in oxygen, it appears to be a general law that carbon and hydrogen are more strongly attracted by the negative pole, while oxygen is more attracted by the positive pole, probably ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... the "inside" surface of the earth it would gradually diminish in speed, after passing the halfway point, finally pause and immediately fall back toward the "outside" surface, and continue thus to oscillate, like the swinging of a pendulum with the power removed, until it would finally rest at the magnetic center, or at that particular point exactly one-half the distance between the "outside" surface and the ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... an observer placed at the center of the pendulum. The plane of the oscillations remains fixed, but the Earth revolves beneath, from West to East. The fundamental principle of this experiment is that the plane in which any pendulum is made to oscillate remains invariable even when the point of suspension is turned. This demonstration enables us in some measure to see the Earth turning ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... ignorant of the problems of family training; they oscillate between the wishy-washy sentimentality that permits anarchy in the home and the harsh, unthinking despotism that breeds hatred and rebellion. Fathers criticize the public schools but never take the time to go and look ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope |
