"Pivot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... marked in this point. There is not one Greek lyric devoted to what we should designate love, with perhaps something like an exception in Alcman. In fact, while moderns rarely make a tragedy or comedy, a poem or novel, without some love-concern which is the pivot of the whole, all the great poems and dramas of the ancients revolve on entirely different passions. Love, such as we speak of, was of rather rare occurrence. Women were in such a low position, that it was a condescension to notice them,—there ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... ever dead picture was or will be, over-powered the burgomaster with her eloquence and her feminine proof of Gerard's purity. His eyes and mouth opened, and remained open: in which state they kept turning, face and all as if on a pivot, from the picture to the women, and from the women to ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... woman most always does, but a man always does t'other way. And when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tiptoe and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can, and miss your rat about six or seven foot. Throw stiff-armed from the shoulder, like there was a pivot there for it to turn on, like a girl; not from the wrist and elbow, with your arm out to one side, like a boy. And, mind you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap she throws her knees apart; she don't clap them together, the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the march, were again ordered to change front. The Grenadiers, which was a pivot regiment, did not slacken their pace and, consequently, the centre were greatly exhausted in trying to keep up with it, and were certainly in no condition to take part in the battle ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... that he conspired. I do not know. I only know that by your orders, Count Eglamore, my playmate Tebaldeo was fastened to a cross, like that (pointing to the shrine). I know that his arms and legs were each broken in two places with an iron bar. I know that this cross was then set upon a pivot, so that it turned slowly. I know that my dear Tebaldeo died very slowly in the sunlit marketplace, while the cross turned, and turned, and turned. I know this was a public holiday; the shopkeepers took holiday ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... he always be the central pivot of a whirlpool of excitement? God knows he loved peace even if Fate never permitted him to sample it. He laid the whole thing unconditionally at Brian's door. Let Brian, instead of shirking his usual numismatic responsibilities ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... result; but soon after there was a snort, and a peculiar-looking animal came trotting down from the mountain, whisking its long tail from side to side and pointing its long ears forward. But as it came close up, it suddenly stopped, and spun round as if upon a pivot. ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... gentleman exhaled his grievance without looking to the right or to the left; at length, turning on his pivot, he perceived that the room was full of company, consisting of young Crotchet, and some visitors whom he had brought from London. The Reverend Doctor Folliott was introduced to Mr. Mac Quedy, the economist; Mr. Skionar, the ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... inevitably wane under the new conditions, and they set themselves strongly to defeat the measure. However, the ancient city lay too far east to remain the capital of the expanding territories, and with an almost exclusively French population it could not remain the political pivot of a British dependency. Opposition was overborne in due time, and the Act of Union shifted the national centre of ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... bush or hammer steel Facing and welding steel Pick steel Fork steel Pivot steel Gin saw steel Plane bit steel Granite wedge steel Quarry steel Gun barrel steel Razor steel Hack saw steel Roll turning steel High-speed tool steel Saw steel Hot-rolled sheet steel Scythe steel Lathe spindle steel Shear knife steel ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... his neck, screening his own body meanwhile from the bullet of the young rancher. Instead of doing so, however, he described a complete circle about Warren, coming back to his starting point, while Jack continued to move around, as if on a pivot, keeping his head always facing ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... hands, but that, too, was to be regained with the next rush. Yes, it was good to be at Verdun after Douaumont had been retaken, standing where you would have been in range of a German sniper a week before. Turning as on a pivot, you could identify through the glasses all the positions whose names are engraved on the French mind. Not high these circling hills, the keystone of a military arch, but taken together it was clear how, in this as in other wars, they were nature's bastion at the edge of the plain ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... qualifications above enumerated. These might be designated as the noisy sort—loud-talking, wise-looking men, self-constituted oracles and advice-givers, with a better opinion of their own wisdom than any one else was willing to endorse. Such men became "file-leaders," or "pivot-men," because the taciturn people of the west, though inclined to undervalue a mere talker, were simple-minded enough to accept a man's valuation of his own powers: or easy-tempered enough to spare themselves the trouble of ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... up over a crucifix, emitted a rending laugh, then cried to Docre, "Father, father!" A crone tore her hair, leapt, whirled around and around as on a pivot and fell over beside a young girl who, huddled to the wall, was writhing in convulsions, frothing at the mouth, weeping, and spitting out frightful blasphemies. And Durtal, terrified, saw through the fog ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... a desk, covered with papers in chaotic confusion, on a chair which moved on a pivot. His desk was against the wall, and when clients came to him, he turned himself sharp round, sticking out his dirty shoes, throwing himself back till his body was an inclined plane, with his hands thrust into his pockets. In this attitude he would ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... absolutely prevail," shows us rather that we are on the threshold of laissez-faire than that Hume really understood the problem of freedom. He realized that the House of Commons had become the pivot of the State; though he looked with dread upon the onset of popular government. He saw the inevitability of parties, as also their tendency to persist in terms of men instead of principles. He was convinced of the necessity of liberty to the progress of the arts and sciences; and no one, save ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... The pivot of the foreign policy of Christian III. was his alliance with the German Evangelical princes, as a counterpoise to the persistent hostility of Charles V., who was determined to support the hereditary claims of his nieces, the daughters of Christian II., to the Scandinavian kingdoms. War was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... the ax and it gave, swinging upward on a pivot. Then a minute later the door swung inward, yielding to ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... and solitary shop, a place of no amplitude at all, but as of an inveterate cheerful confidence, where, among a few artists' materials, an exhibited water-colour from some native and possibly then admired hand was changed but once in ever so long. That was perhaps after all the pivot of my revolution—the question of whether or no I should at a given moment find the old picture replaced. I made this, when I had the luck, pass for an event—yet an event which would have to have had for its scene ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... the mounting of these starkly beautiful weapons. They seemed to be fixed on a movable pivot set into the coal black rock itself. Like modern artillery, these curious pieces of ordnance bore a bronze shield to protect their crews, through which projected the long and very narrow barrels of the guns. ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... was expressed in his weary look as he gazed out of the window. I knew that the pivot on which all his emotions turned was the anxiety of uncertainty, and that beyond the bounds of conscious thought an unknown loom was weaving for him a shadowy thread of hope. He saw, he heard nothing, ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, a mast-pivot, 15 inches in length and weighing between seven and eight pounds, which had passed obliquely through the body of a sailor. The specimen is accompanied by a colored picture of the sufferer himself in two positions. The name of the sailor was ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... though he is, he feels the dignity of his calling, and bears himself royally. He advances with a long swinging stride, measuring his steps rhythmically as if beating time to inaudible music. His right arm moves to and fro, swinging from the shoulder as on a pivot, and describing the arc of ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... condescend to inform your cousin of. Your mother was different, Leon. Dame! I could never pass her door after your father died but she would stop my wagon and ask me for just five minutes' counsel. But you young ones are all alike: the world has got a new pivot, it seems, for this generation, and it will move round more easily when we graybeards are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... humming-top, turning round on his pivot, and facing the company, 'what did you think of Vauxhall the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... a general disruption of the little remaining ice took place: we made gentle and very cautious moves towards Barrow's Strait; and, at last, on August 11th, the ice, as if heartily tired of us, shot us out into Barrow's Strait, by turning itself fairly round on a pivot. We were at sea because we could not help it, and the navigable season was proclaimed to ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... uncle; neither do I quite believe that a word of it is true. In our happy valley, nine-tenths of what is said is false; and you were always wont to argue that true and false are but a blind turned upon a pivot. Without any failure of respect for your character, good uncle, I decline politely to believe a word of what you have told me. And even if it were proved to me, all I can say is this, if my John will have me, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... over the recovery of his near vision. So happy was he, indeed, in the new possession, that, instead of rising, he sat still in the middle of the floor, running his eyes with rapid scrutiny over the carpet near him. He sat here a long time—even forgetting his discomfort, while he turned as on a pivot as the search required. Though the missing articles did not promptly appear at his side, Bradley felt that he was having a good time, and so he was, comparatively. Of course he would find the glasses presently. He looked at his watch. What a joy to see its face! He would ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... space of an hour the dreadful chase went on, Graf Hermann rooted to the spot with horror, overcome by a sense of helplessness. There in the centre he stood, the pivot round which circled the infernal hunt, unable to stay the relentless riders as with bony hands rattling against their skeleton steeds they encouraged them to charge, gore, and trample the hapless stranger, whose cries of agony were ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... that, as she recovers from the dejection into which this last scurvy villany (which none but wretches of her own sex could have been guilty of) has thrown her, returning love will re-enter her time-pacified mind: her thoughts will then turn once more on the conjugal pivot: of course she will have livelier notions in her head; and these will make her perform all her circumvolutions with ease and pleasure; though not with so high a degree of either, as if the dear ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... two or three on the chest, which were called coups de grace, and which ended this horrible execution. It was only after death that the broken body was placed on a wheel, which was turned round on a pivot. Sometimes, however, the sentence ordered that the condemned should be strangled before being broken, which was done in such cases by the instantaneous twist of a ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... wider schemes were involved in the struggle, Ellesmere was the pivot on which arguments and contentions centred. In such a conflict, needless to say, all the old rivalries of "leviathan" interests, of which we have already heard so much, re-emerged. What was still called the "Montgomeryshire party"—the men who had brought the ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... staircase of the great tower, toilsomely turning and turning, and lowering [our] heads to avoid the stairs above, or the rough stone pivot around which they twist." About ninety steps bring us on to the roof of the Cathedral over the choir, and then, keeping along a passage by the parapet, we reach the belfry, and from thence go on by ladder to the bell-chamber, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... whose cool head made him a good man at that pivot of the field; he was an able assistant to the right-field, a ready back-stop to the short-stop, and a perfect spider for taking into his web all the wild throws that came slashing from the home plate to cut off those who dared to ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... grim death with both hands. Now they began to gyrate, slowly at first, then quicker, and yet more quick, till at last it seemed to Captain John Niel that time and space and the solid earth were nothing but a revolving vision fixed somewhere in the watches of the night. Above him, like a stationary pivot, towered the tall graceful neck, beneath him spun the top-like legs, and in front of him was a soft black and ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... again. From what had just taken place, he supposed the troops now with him would strike the American line first. It was therefore arranged that when he became fully engaged, Frazer was to charge the American flank, and crush it, making the centre division his pivot. With his right, Burgoyne meant ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... It made a whirring sound in the confined space of the tiny control room. Outside, the night began to pivot slowly. ...
— Turnover Point • Alfred Coppel
... west of the Mississippi, and Louisiana cordially be reunited to the Republic. With such a result, holding New Orleans and the mouth of the Mississippi and all the region west of that great stream, how could Tennessee or Mississippi remain in the Southern confederacy? The truth is, Missouri is the pivot upon which the rebellion turns. Had she gone with the South, and given to its cause a cordial support, it would have been difficult to subdue the rebellion. That she has gone with the Union is a momentous ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... regularly around another, describes an ellipse. Science has proved this incontestably. The satellites describe ellipses around the planets, the planets around the Sun, the Sun himself describes an ellipse around the unknown star that serves as a pivot for our whole solar system. How can our Baltimore Gun Club Projectile then ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... don't know what it is. It looks as if it was made of hard, smooth, baked white clay, and is something like a grindstone, only not half as thick. The grindstone stands up, but this lays flat, with its round side turned up, like the head of a barrel. And it's set on a pivot, like the needle of ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... dismissed the matter from her mind until such time as opportunity served. Meanwhile she must put in an appearance at Mrs. John Day's house. Mrs. John Day was the social pivot of Rocky Springs, and, to disobey her summons, Helen knew would be to risk a displeasure which would find reflection in every woman ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... it occurs after his engine is cut off and he has not the time to start it again, the machine tilts and slides down sideways. If it occurs higher up a vrille is the probable result. In this the plane plunges toward the ground spinning round and round with the corner of one wing as a pivot. In either case a serious ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... pair of scales on an upright support. I am now going to show that a great number of difficulties had to be overcome before our heads could be safely poised on our necks. The head had to be balanced in such a way that through the pivot or joint on which it rests a safe passageway could be secured for one of the most delicate and most important of all the parts or structures of the human machine. We have never found a good English ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... inquired whether its top can withstand the shock of projectiles from a 10 inch rifled mortar. It is designed for two 6 inch guns placed parallel. Its internal diameter is 191/2 feet, and the dome is 8 inches in thickness and has a radius of 161/2 feet. It rests upon a pivot, p, around which it revolves through the intermedium of rollers placed in a circle, r. The dome is of relatively small bulk—a bad feature as regards resistance to shock. To obviate this difficulty, the inventor partitions ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... the dilemma, either of which Mr. Roach may lay hold of, but he cannot swing on a pivot between them. If he accepts these figures, or anything approaching them,—and the fact that the ocean is covered by foreign built ships to the exclusion of his own is proof of their correctness,—he may go on asking for a bounty on every ton he ...
— Free Ships: The Restoration of the American Carrying Trade • John Codman
... burned where M. Raoul's lips had touched it. She recalled Endymion's prophecy that these entertainments would throw the domestic mechanism—always more delicately poised on Sundays than on weekdays—completely oft its pivot. She had pledged herself to prevent this, and had made a private appeal to the maidservants with whose Sunday-out they ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... court is admirably expressed in the phrase imputed to the empress who, pointing to the prince imperial, said, "This child will never reign unless we repair the misfortunes of Sadowa." Such was the ceaseless refrain. The word haunted French imaginations incessantly, and it was the pivot on which the imperial policy revolved; it exercised a spell scarcely less powerful and disastrous upon monarchists like Thiers and republicans like Gambetta. Long foreseen, the dread shock, like all grave calamities, came nevertheless as a surprise, even upon reflective minds. Statesmen ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... read that papa has seen and likes another house in Devonshire Place, and that he may take it, and we may be settled in it, before the year closes. I myself think of the whole business indifferently. My thoughts have turned so long on the subject of houses, that the pivot is broken—and now they won't turn any more. All that remains is, a sort of consciousness, that we should be more comfortable in a house with cleaner carpets, and taken for rather longer than a week at a time. Perhaps, after all, we are quite as well sur le tapis as it is. It is a thousand ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... easy for another kind of a person to get things wrong. Still—"not wanted"—they certainly sounded very plain. And they meant—Bobby gave a faint gasp, and suddenly his thoughts turned dizzily round and round one terrible pivot—"not wanted." He sprang away out of the nurse's hands and darted down the long, bright hall to his mother's room. She was being dressed for a ball, and the room was pitilessly light. She sat at a table with a little mirror before her. Suddenly ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... turn it that way. If the change were not effected when the plough was swung round, the furrow would be made opposite. Next he leans heavily on the handles, still standing on the same spot; this lifts the plough, so that it turns easily as if on a pivot. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... a current-bearing wire turns on its pivot and finally comes to rest at an angle with the current. The fact that the needle is deflected by the wire shows that the magnetic power of the wire ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... on the Austrian arms, and his identification in popular opinion with the cause of the detested foreigner, that obscured his lofty position as the moral bulwark and protector of the nation. For 1500 years the Holy See was the pivot of Italian history, and the source of the Italian influence in Europe. The nation and the See shared the same fortunes, and grew powerful or feeble together. It was not until the vices of Alexander VI. and his predecessors had destroyed the reverence which ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... The pivot round which the religious life, as we have traced it, revolves, is the interest of the individual in his private personal destiny. Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism. The gods believed in—whether by crude savages or ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... last of his loathsome secrets has been told, when he has nothing left either to gain or to conceal, then he rises up into a perfect bankrupt sublimity and makes the great avowal which is the whole pivot and meaning of the poem. He says in effect: "Now that my interest in deceit is utterly gone, now that I have admitted, to my own final infamy, the frauds that I have practised, now that I stand before you in a patent and open villainy which has something of the disinterestedness and independence ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... Cressida, the same subject is worked over very fully and is indeed the main pivot of the drama, in which Achilles is substantially deposed from his heroship and replaced by Ulysses. The contest between mind and might or skill and courage, is what the English poet took from his Greek elder brother in part and in part derived from later legend. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... were fallen across his path, one of which, as I afterwards measured, lay a clear eight feet above the sand. But he never hesitated nor broke his splendid stride. He would rush at a tree; rise light and swift till above it, where he turned as if on a pivot, with head thrown back to the wind, actually resting an instant in air at the very top of his jump; then shoot downward, not falling but driven still by the impulse of his great muscles. When he struck, all four feet were close together; and almost ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... defending himself with his antlers; while one of the dogs lay sprawling on the ground and howling with pain. The other still kept up the fight, endeavouring to seize the elk from behind; but the latter spun round, as though his knees were upon a pivot, and always presented his horny spikes in ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... in spite of the contests between us of resistance and defiance. But my feeling died or slumbered when I was beyond the limits of his personal influence. When in his presence I was so pervaded by it that whether I went contrary to the dictates of his will or not I moved as if under a pivot; when away my natural elasticity prevailed, and I held the same relation to others that I should have held if I had not known him. This continued till the secret was divined, and then his influence was ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... the only enlightened landlord on whom Mrs. Duncombe had been able to produce the slightest impression. He had owned a few small tenements in Water Lane, which he was about to rebuild, and which were evidently the pivot of operations. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... religion has a cultus, so also it has a clergy, who are the pivot of his entire social and political system. Their nature and office will be best shown by describing his ideal of political society in its normal state, with the various classes ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... was captured all six batteries were to move across No. 3 bridge and take up positions on the hill, whence they could prepare and support the further advance of Clery's Division, which, having crossed, was to move past Vaal Krantz, pivot to the left on it, and attack the Brakfontein position from its left flank. The 1st Cavalry Brigade under Burn-Murdoch (Royals, 13th and 14th Hussars, and A Battery R.H.A.) would also cross and run the gauntlet of Doornkloof ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... specially-built scows or "sturgeon-heads." Each runs forty to fifty feet with a twelve-foot beam and carries ten tons. The oars are twenty feet long. It takes a strong man to handle the forty-foot steering-sweep which is mounted with an iron pivot on the stern. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... we really mean the compass-needle. The little magnet may be almost any piece of magnetized steel, provided it is arranged so that it can easily swing around. There are several ways of supporting the compass-needle. It may rest upon a pivot, it may be hung from a fine thread, or it may be floated upon water with the aid of ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John
... last spurt. He could feel the hot breath of the grizzly and the padding feet were terribly near. Then, just as the beast was ready to hurl its huge bulk against him, Bert swung on his heel like a pivot, doubled in his tracks and flashed back past his pursuer, just escaping a lunge from the outstretched paw. But that marvelous swaying motion of the hips that had eluded so many tacklers on the football field stood him in stead, and he just grazed ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... He hesitated a moment, till he heard a word from Tomaso. Then he sprang once more upon the centre of the board, faced King, and backed up inch by inch towards the leopard till the latter began to descend. At this point of balance the white goat had one forefoot just on the pivot of the board. With a dainty, dancing motion, and a proud tossing of his head, he now threw his weight slowly backward and forward. The great teeter worked to perfection. Signor Tomaso was kept bowing to round after round of applause while the leopard, the goat, and King returned ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... lose all human instincts when they become detectives or newspaper reporters. Now the ordinary policeman ofttimes remains quite soft-hearted. For instance, Police Constable Farrow, though preening himself on being the pivot on which this case revolves, was much affected by Hilton Fenley's first heart-broken words to him. 'Poor young gentleman,' said Farrow, when we were discussing the affair this afternoon, 'he was cut up somethink orful. I didn't ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... one place in the world that stood solid and did not melt into unreality: the place where his mother was. Everybody else could grow shadowy, almost non-existent to him, but she could not. It was as if the pivot and pole of his life, from which he could not ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... a stone balanced on a pivot. "Yes," he said. "I am afraid we were not attentive enough. Will ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... as head of the colony. No other spot in the world commanded such a highway linking the inland waters with the sea. The French had always an eye for points of strategic value; and in holding Quebec they hoped to possess the pivot on which the destinies of North America should turn. For a long time it seemed, indeed, as if this glowing vision might become a reality. The imperial ideas which were working at Quebec were based upon the substantial realities ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... from a square bar of steel ground diagonally so as to give it two similar cutting edges. This tool is perhaps more generally useful than any of the others. The manner of using it is shown in Fig. 23; it is placed on the tool rest and dexterously moved on the rest as a pivot, causing the point to travel in a circular path along the metal in the lathe. Of course only a small distance is traveled over before the tool is moved along on the rest. After a little experience it will be found that by exercising care a good ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... which grinds the incomprehensible overture, perform a drama equally incomprehensible. At the left-hand corner is Daniel in the lion's den, the lion opening his mouth in six-eight time, and an angel with outspread wings, but securely transfixed through the loins by a revolving brass pivot, shutting it again to the same lively movement. To the right of Daniel is the Grand Turk, seated in his divan, and brandishing a dagger over a prostrate slave, who only ventures to rise when the dagger is withdrawn. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... on duty; and one, the Indian chief, which for so many years decked the Province House, is now the property of the Massachusetts Historical Society, in one of the rooms of which it is to be seen, still swinging on its original pivot. From the sole of his foot to the top of his plume, it is four feet, six inches; and from his elbow to tip of arrow, four feet; ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... would constitute the pivot of the league. They would be meetings of statesmen responsible to their own sovereign parliaments, and any decisions taken would therefore, as in the case of the various allied conferences during the ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... met with a fresh mishap, and came near ending his sufferings in a watery grave, only the water did not happen to be quite deep enough. Arising from the sharp-pointed rock that had served him for a pivot on which to eat his dinner, he stumbled, fell and rolled over and over down the bank, and into the river, with a ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... more rapidly. They turned; all around them was turning—the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors the bottom of Emma's dress ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the cupboards were lying all manner of telegraphic apparatus, lenses, crucibles, and pieces of his own inventions. A perfect tangle of telegraph wires coming from all parts of the Union were focussed at one end of the room. An ash-covered forge, a cabinet organ, a rusty stove with an old pivot chair, a bench well stained with oils and acids, completed the equipment of this curious den, into which the sunlight filtered through the chemical jars and fell in coloured patches ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... found in literature. Round this last one, the whole ode seems to turn as on a pivot, and it alone had been sufficient to stamp Smollett a man ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... when worn full front, as it was in Dr Johnson's time, and as we remember the household troops used to wear it—but when, by a daring innovation of revolutionary times, it came to be turned round on its human pivot, and lay gently athwart the line of vision. Thus it is that our generals wear it in this nineteenth century; thus it was that the Great Duke got all through Spain with it; though Napoleon, who greatly reduced its dimensions, always kept to the orthodox full-front; and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... a weight which floats upon the open surface of the mercury is attached to a string, having a nearly equal weight at the other extremity; the string is laid over a revolving pivot, to which the hand is fixed, and the friction of the string turns the hand as ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... an entry in the log-book, folded his hands and shut his eyes. The Leyden jars rattled in their mahogany sockets as the Vandalia climbed a wave, faltered, and sped into the hollow. Far removed from her pivot of gravity, the wireless house behaved after the manner of an express elevator. But the wireless house chair was ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... summers, beating on their swollen brows. O, such a battle! had we heard of serfs Driven to like hot conflict with the soil, Armies had march'd and navies swiftly sail'd To burst their gyves. But here's the little point— The polish'd di'mond pivot on which spins The wheel of Difference—they OWN'D the rugged soil, And fought for love—dear love of wealth and pow'r, And honest ease and fair esteem of men; One's blood heats at it!" "Yet you said such fields Were all inglorious," Katie, wondering, said. "Inglorious? yes; they make no ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... homely life, the sweet centre of her own bright little world, Dely passed the first year of her wedded life, and then the war came! Dreadful pivot of almost all our late lives! On it also this rude idyl turned. George enlisted for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... a long eighteen down in the hold, which will be mounted as a pivot as soon as she gets among the islands. The others are well enough when you come to close quarters, but the long gun generally keeps the pirates from getting there; they don't like being peppered before they come within fighting distance. I believe ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... now understand the reasons that led a man who had become the pivot of the financial machine of Limoges to repulse the various propositions of marriage which parents never ceased to make to him. The daughters of his partners, Messrs. Perret and Grossetete, were married before Graslin was in ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... crisis. Something told him that resistance now would be useless. True, Rosendo might have opposed arrest with violence, and perhaps have escaped. But that would have accomplished nothing for Carmen, the pivot upon which events were turning. Jose had reasoned that it were better to let the Alcalde play his hand first, in the small hope that as the cards fell he might more than match his opponent's ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Dniester. He would then be able to advance in line with the Germanic front that was pressing on from the west, and northward from the Carpathian range between Uzsok and the Jablonitza passes; otherwise his force would lag behind in the great drive, a mere stationary pivot. At that time he held about sixty miles of the Odessa-Stanislau railroad (which runs through the valley via Czernovice and Kolomea) with the Russians only twenty miles north of the line. If that position could be taken the Austrians would have the South Russian line of communications ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... upwards one fundamental institution whereupon the whole of society reposes; that fundamental institution is Slavery.... Our European ancestry, those men from whom we are descended and whose blood runs with little admixture in our veins, took slavery for granted, made of it the economic pivot upon which the production of wealth should turn, and never doubted but that it was normal ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... easy to consider fairly a question like this in the hour when vital personal interests pivot on the decision, as it is in a season of rest and safety; yet, if in a time of extremest peril the unvarying duty of truthfulness shines clearly through an atmosphere of sore temptation, that light may be accepted as diviner because of its very power ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... The pivot upon which all right-thinking conduct involving relations with other people turns is the Golden Rule, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." It is to the moral what the sun is to the physical world, and just ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... The editor is the pivot of a magazine. On him everything turns. If his gauge of the public is correct, readers will come: they cannot help coming to the man who has something to say himself, or who presents writers who have. And if the reader ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... reaching the trees I nosed up my machine with all my strength so that it would fall flat. There was a terrible shock! One tree higher than the rest broke my right wings, and made me turn as if I were on a pivot. I closed my eyes. There was a second shock, less violent than I could have hoped: the machine fell on its nose like a stone, at the foot of the tree which had stopped me. I unfastened my belt which, luckily, had not broken, and let ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... been reported a row at Ysabel Island, one of the Solomon group, eighteen months ago. This vessel, a screw steamer, ten guns and a large pivot gun, came to enquire, with orders from the Commodore of the station to call at Mota and see me, and request me to go with the vessel if I could find time to do so; adding that the vessel was to take me to any island which I might wish to be returned to. Now I have long wished to indoctrinate ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brick wall, pawed, stamped, snorted, and went off once more into furiously insane caperings—a new set—all the time circling, with the little, black-and-gray, erect figure of the surprised ratel as a pivot. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... dear sisters, that you are of this opinion? Do not you thoroughly understand that if love is absent from marriage it should, on the contrary, be its real pivot? To make one's self lovable is the main thing. Believe my white hairs that it is so, and let me give ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... watch. Here he thought it prudent to sheath his weapon, though he still followed the eunuch, as his only remaining chance of escape. Even here they were instantly admitted, and without any apparent hesitation. The door turned slowly on its pivot, and Cedric found himself in a richly-decorated chamber, where, by the light of a single lamp, and with the smell of perfumed vapour in his nostrils, he saw a figure in costly vestments reclining on a couch. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... objectionable is that it is a master work of that kind of fiction which makes vice alluring under the sophistical veil of innocence. Longus knew very well that nothing is so tempting to libertines as purity and ignorant innocence; hence he made purity and ignorant innocence the pivot of his prurient story. Professor Rohde (516) has rudely torn the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... be an Erasmicus, and, altogether, I hate those party names. We are all followers of Christ, and to His glory we all drudge, each for his part.' But he knows that now the question is: for or against him! From the brilliant latinist and the man of wit of his prime he had become the international pivot on which the civilization of his age hinged. He could not help beginning to feel himself the brain, the heart and the conscience of his times. It might even appear to him that he was called to speak the great redeeming word or, perhaps, that he had already spoken it. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... mechanically, pointing out to her the signs of the Zodiac, those of the planets, and other figures of occult significance engraved on the encircling, golden bands. Showed her how those same bands, turning on a pivot, formed a golden cradle, in which the crystal sphere reposed. He lifted it out from that cradle, moreover, and laid it in the softer cradle of her palm. And of necessity in the doing of all this, their heads—his ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... and though he could see nothing with his eyes, mentally he knew that one of the great time-bleached and weathered blocks of granite that helped to form the cyclopean face of the kopje wall had begun to turn as on a pivot. ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... it, in my agent's office I was fastened upon by a fellow fresh from Madagascar with a little scheme for a wonderful piece of business. It had something to do with cattle and cartridges and a Prince Ravonalo something; but the pivot of the whole affair was the stupidity of some admiral—Admiral Pierre, I think. Everything turned on that, and the chap couldn't find words strong enough to express his confidence. He had globular eyes ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... fortunate passage carried them in safety to Rio Janeiro, and on the 29th of March 1839, they were sailing from the Cape of Good Hope. A six weeks' passage brought them to Java Head, and on the 1st of June they reached that "pivot of the liberal system in the Archipelago," the island of Singapore. It was not until the 27th of July that Mr Brooke quitted Singapore. Five days afterwards, the Royalist was anchored off the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... passage in the Christian Scriptures: 'Those who obey not God, and believe not the Gospel of his Son, shall be punished with everlasting destruction.' This is the pivot upon which all religions turn:—they all assume that it is in our power to believe or not to believe; whereas the mind can only believe that which it thinks true. A human being can only be supposed accountable for those actions ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and about 2 o'clock A.M. on the morning of the 3d, all except a few wounded men were safely on board a large scow attached to a tug boat which hauled into American waters. Here they were hailed by the tug Harrison, belonging to the U.S. steamer Michigan, having on board one 12-pounder pivot gun, which fired across their bows and threatened to sink them unless they hauled to and surrendered. With this request they complied; not because they feared the 12-pounder, or the still more powerful guns of ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... entered into its formation. Seldom have more nicely calculated combinations entered into the plots of criminals, and never was a plot depending on so many chances more completely successful. Yet the pivot of the whole, as often in more extensive schemes of homicide, is to be found in the reckless daring and utter disregard of personal safety manifested throughout. For this alone she seems to have made no calculations and taken no precautions; her whole mind being ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... WALL PIVOT.—One foot is placed against a wall at about the height of the knee. The other foot is thrown over it, the body making a complete turn in the air, so that the free foot may touch the ground in time to sustain the weight before a tumble. Thus, if the right ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... third-baseman. No doubt Blake will play the bag. Graves is the only drag in Worry's baseball machine now, and he'll not last.... So, Peg, don't think any more about it. Mind you, the whole team circles round you. You're the pivot, and as sure as you're born you'll be Wayne's captain next year. That's something for you to keep in mind and work for. If Graves keeps after you—hand him one! That's not against rules. Punch him! If Worry knew the truth he would pat you on the back for slugging Graves. ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... always before seemed tinctured by the sun. She had a sensation of moving sidewise out of her own person; and then she saw the chief Pontiac standing on the edge of the cliff. Jenieve knew his back, and the feathers in his hair which the wind did not move. His head turned on a pivot, sweeping the horizon from St. Ignace, where the white man first set foot, to Round Island, where the shameful fires burned. His hard, set features were silver color rather than copper, as she saw his profile against the sky. His arms were folded in his ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... that overhung the river, or be fired into by the Indians who lurked in the woods. The cabin of the keel boat, therefore, was low, that it might glide under the trees, and the roof and sides were made as nearly bullet-proof as possible. The whole craft was steered by a huge oar mounted on a pivot at ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... a kind, forbearing, loving wife to set it before him. These would have given to his body and to his mind just what both needed, for the trials and temptations of the day; and they would have saved him, at least for the day, perhaps for life; for the pivot upon which the whole of a man's future destiny turns is ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... for these systems are egotistical; directly or indirectly they are anthropocentric, and inspired by the conceited notion that man, or human reason, or the human distinction between good and evil, is the centre and pivot of the universe. That is what the mountains and the woods should make you at last ashamed to assert. From what, indeed, does the society of nature liberate you, that you find it so sweet? It is hardly (is it?) that you wish ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... and fought like a lion. I saw him last as he was about to enter on business, in the twenty-first year of his age, an anxious young man with black hair in natural ringlets, a pale brow, gray eyes wide apart, and a narrow but wilful chin. He was ever on pivot, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... up-hill, I had some trouble to keep myself from slipping off over her tail. However, my rock took some effect, for the pig was so stunned that he dropped on his knees, and before he could recover himself Helen had turned round, still on her hind-legs, as on a pivot, and was plunging and jumping madly down the hill. I could not get back properly into my saddle, nor could I arrange the reins; so I had to stick on anyhow. It was not a case of fine riding at all; I merely clung like a monkey, and F——, who was coming as fast as he could to ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... described seven little circles of light sprang out. They gleamed, glimmered, grew brighter—shone. The gigantic slab before me glowed with them, silver wavelets of phosphorescence pulsed over its surface and then—it turned as though on a pivot, sighing softly ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... combatant prostrate on the ground and his assailant bending over, each intent on stabbing the other. See how the prostrate man plants his foot on the thigh of his enemy, and note the tremendous energy he exerts to keep off the foe, who, turning as upon a pivot, with his grip on the other's head, exerts no less force to keep the advantage gained. The significance of all these muscular strains and pressures is so rendered that we cannot help realising them; ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... to the Bois de Cambre," said Picton, "and pivot the troops on the road to Mont St. Jean. You will then wait for my ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... States, the beam of the latter has mounted into the thin air of Mr. Gourlay's vision. The greatest absurdity at present discoverable is in the ideas of unfortunate individuals, who imagine themselves placed near the pivot desired by the philosopher, and that they possess the lever which is to move the solid globe to any position into which it may suit ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... appear to have discovered that a needle, when rubbed with a lodestone, has the mysterious power of pointing to the north. The Arabs may have introduced this rude form of the compass among Mediterranean sailors. The instrument, improved by being balanced on a pivot so that it would not be affected by choppy seas, seems to have been generally used by Europeans as early as the thirteenth century. It greatly aided sailors by enabling them to find their bearings in murky weather ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... and the rapidity of the current proportionably great. I entertained hopes that the passage was clear, and that we should shoot down it without interruption; but in this I was disappointed. The boat struck with the fore-part of her keel on a sunken rock, and, swinging round as it were on a pivot, presented her bow to the rapid, while the skiff floated away into the strength of it. We had every reason to anticipate the loss of our whale-boat, whose build was so light, that had her side struck the rock, instead ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... injury were mixed with those of apprehension. How would the affair proceed after Clark had taken with him his unrivaled and intimate knowledge of the works; for, and in spite of all the dictates of prudence, it seemed impossible to think of the vast enterprise at St. Marys without its central pivot. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... the Carneadean theory of the [Greek: pithanon]; whereupon Hortensius showed, after the principles of Antiochus, that such a basis was provided by the older philosophy, which both Carneades and Philo had wrongly abandoned. Thus Philo becomes the central point or pivot of the discussion. With this arrangement none of the indications in the Lucullus clash. Even the demand made by Hortensius upon Catulus[254] need only imply such a bare statement on the part of the latter of the ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... been agreed between us for two or three days before this, that we were to rise early on the following morning for the sake of ascending the tower of the cathedral, and visiting the Giralda, as the iron figure is called, which turns upon a pivot on the extreme summit. We had often wandered together up and down the long dark gloomy aisle of the stupendous building, and had, together, seen its treasury of art; but as yet we had not performed ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... world had time to steel a highway with trackage for more rapid transit. What a living link was that old overland stage! To look upon an isolated and abandoned relic of earlier pioneerdom is like standing at the marble monument of some human pivot in the mighty march of man's progress. Before the bold and bustling railway noisily elbowed its way into the affections of travel and commerce and pushed aside the patient wagon of the nation-builders, the tens of thousands of hurried travelers ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... some Englishmen were already asleep in the corners. The large low room, with its white marble panels framed in gilt beading, was furnished with looking-glasses, which prolonged, in endless perspective, the long tables flanked by pivot-seats covered with red velvet. It was fit, indeed, to be the vast floating cosmopolitan dining hall, where the rich natives of two continents might eat in common. Its magnificent luxury was that of great hotels, and theaters, and public rooms; ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant |
