"Variable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my dear Augusta, [1] that your opinion of my meek mamma would coincide with mine; Her temper is so variable, and, when inflamed, so furious, that I dread our meeting; not but I dare say, that I am troublesome enough, but I always endeavour to be as dutiful as possible. She is so very strenuous, and so tormenting in her entreaties and commands, with regard ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... and less beloved, than the Jupiter of the Greeks and Romans; he was worshipped accordingly with more bloody sacrifices. But in all Europe, Western Asia and the northwestern coast of Africa, where the earth is uneven and the climate variable, their religion was more gloomy and their gods more ferocious ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... a painter, or a melo-drama. An English garden, adorned at every turn with statues of the heathen deities (although they were all but personifications of the various attributes of nature,) would be ridiculous. Setting aside the injury they must sustain from our damp, variable climate, they would be out of keeping with all around; here it is altogether different; the very air of Italy is embued with the spirit of ancient mythology; and though "the fair humanities of ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... discourses; nothing in him was extreme but the orator: the man was by no means so, neither was he at all cruel. Studious, but without imagination; copious, but without warmth, his intellect was mediocre, his mind honest, his will variable, his heart in the right place. His talent, which they affected to compare with Mirabeau's, was nothing more than a power of skilfully rivetting public attention. His habit of pleading gave him, with ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... sentences so loosely knit together that they seemed almost incoherent; now a burst of congratulation—now a falter of condolence—now words that seemed to supplicate as for pardon to an offence of his own—rapid transitions from enthusiasm to pity, from joy to grief—variable, with the stormy April of a ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Monument—long hours between each town as the local did its variable thirty-five miles an hour across the southern end of New Mexico. It was Pete's first experience in traveling by rail, and true to himself he made the most of it. He used his eyes, and came to the conclusion that they were aboard a very fast train—a train that ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... which, as a whole, they are guided. The county societies have been and are the chief means of influence and progress; but they have no power which can be systematically applied; their movements are variable, and their annual exhibitions do not always indicate the condition of agriculture in the districts represented. They have become, to a certain extent, localized in the vicinity of the towns where the fairs are held; and ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... fancy, and thus resting the basis of reality on the ever-changing and ever-shifting assumptions of the human mind. For the materialistic theories of to-day are not those of yesterday, nor is there any certainty that they will be those of to-morrow. They are almost as fantastic and variable as the forms of the kaleidoscope, although, as a general rule, they lack the symmetrical arrangements and ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... Tom, and spent some days prospecting with variable success—i.e., we found gold nearly everywhere, each shovelful of earth contained gold, but in quantities so generally infinitesimal as to be not worth the time spent in working for it. The land was impregnated with gold, but the difficulty was to find it ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... arrive at an accurate computation of the time it must have taken to form these coral islands, because we lack the necessary data; but we can form a rough calculation, which leads to very curious and striking results. The computations of the rate at which corals grow are so exceedingly variable, that we must allow the widest possible margin for error; and it is better in this case to make the allowance upon the side of excess. I think that anybody who knows anything about the matter will tell you that I am making a computation far in excess of what is probable, if I say that an ...
— Coral and Coral Reefs • Thomas H. Huxley
... varies from this norm, though not very often, the alteration usually taking the form of the loss of the first syllable, so that the half-line consists of three trochees. The second half is much more variable. Sometimes, in the same way as with the first, a syllable is dropped at the opening, and the half-line becomes similarly trochaic. Sometimes there is a double rhyme instead of a single, making seven syllables, though not altering the rhythm; and sometimes ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... before Helvetius, under the patronage of Louis XIV, succeeded in introducing it into practice in France; and, to the Queen of Charles II., we are indebted for the introduction of that popular beverage, tea, into England. Tobacco has suffered as many variable vicissitudes in its fame and character. It has been successively opposed and commended by physicians, condemned and praised by priests and kings, and proscribed and protected by governments, until, at length, this once insignificant production of a little island, has succeeded in propagating itself ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... abstract, hypothetical, and variable portions of the craft—or, if you will, of the science—depending on ten thousand varying and variable circumstances—depending on persons, passions, fancies, whims; caprices royal, national, parliamentary, and personal, is above theory, and beyond the reach of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... variable spelling and capitalisation has been preserved in the quoted material as printed. Asterisks are used instead of periods in ellipses. Minor punctuation errors have been repaired. Where the letter l (representing pounds) is preceded by a number, ...
— Captain Richard Ingle - The Maryland • Edward Ingle
... the radii are known and p and p be given, then deducing from the above equations the values T0 and T, and also the variable pressure px, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... been coincident with the departure of the stage that brought the travellers from "Town," but Chugg was late—a tardiness ascribed to indulgence in local lethe waters, for Lemuel Chugg had survived a romance and drank to forget that woman is a variable and a changeable thing. In consequence of which the sober stage-driver departed without the mails, leaving Mary Carmichael and the fat lady to scan the horizon for the delinquent Chugg, and incidentally to hear ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... the other hotly. "You have cast your damned ugly, black shadow over this place too long as it is! Miss Clairville is no child; she knows, has always known, her own mind, and I do not grudge her a slight flirtation or two with any one she fancies; it is her way, a safe outlet for her strong yet variable temperament. You take things too ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... centigrade scale, till one's head spins round with their inexplicable dissertations. What is the use of these interminable technicalities to the world at large? Do they enlighten the rheumatic as to how many coats they may put on, for the Midsummer days of this variable climate? Do their barometers tell us when to take an umbrella, or when to leave it at home? No. Who, we further ask, knows how hot it is when the mercury stands at 120 deg., or how cold it is when opposite 32 deg. of Fahrenheit? Only the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... January, all the monotonous incidents of the voyage were repeated; they advanced more slowly, and with much fatigue; their legs grew tired; the dogs dragged the sledge with difficulty; their diminished supply of food could not comfort men or beasts. The weather was very variable, changing from intense, dry cold ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... hard-boiled white of egg, granulated by rubbing through a wire sieve, is immersed in the liquid, and the whole kept at 98 to 130 F. for four hours, when the undissolved albumen is filtered off through muslin, and, after partial drying, is weighed to ascertain the amount dissolved. The variable numbers above quoted embrace various formul recommended ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... driven away. Lady Montbarry's variable humour changed again. With a low groan of misery, she threw herself back in the cab. Lost in her own dark thoughts, as careless of the woman whom she had bent to her iron will as if no such person sat by her side, she preserved a sinister ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... might give you an opportunity to work a strong Sub-Committee," suggested Disraeli. "One cannot calculate on the course of a man so variable and impulsive. He proposes to get rid of Aumerle, and make concessions to his set. It is an unhappy policy, and always unhappily applied, to imagine that men can be reconciled by partial concessions. I attribute much of Reckage's behaviour ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... more, I should 'bout ship and settle the difference with them in a less ceremonious manner in the harbour. This effectually stopped their tongues, and we again proceeded on the journey. After two entire days' sailing across the Gulf with variable and gentle breezes, we arrived at our destination, Kurrum, in safety, on the third evening, the 24th March, and at once sent some Government letters to the Akils, ordering their attendance, and to proclaim publicly ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... paddles, made by tearing up the lining of the boat, we assisted in moving ourselves slowly through the water, providentially the sea was comparatively smooth, or our overloaded boats would have swamped, and we should only have escaped the flames to have perished in the deep. The wind was light, but variable, and, acting on the sails, which, being drenched with the rain, did not soon take fire, drove the burning mass, in terrific grandeur, over the surface of the ocean, the darkness of which was only illuminated by the ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... by the Mertz Glacier on the east and delimited on the west by more or less compact ice, has been named the D'Urville Sea. We found subsequently that its freedom from obstruction by ice is due to the persistent gales which set off the land in that locality. To the north, pack-ice in variable amount is encountered before reaching the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... tissue (Figure XIII) is a general name for a group of tissues of very variable character. It is usually described as consisting typically in the mammals of three chief elements felted together; of comparatively unmodified corpuscles (c.c.), more or less amoeboid, and of fibres which are elongated, altered, and distorted cells. The fibres are of two kinds: yellow, ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... a little closer to what I'm trying to express, we have arithmetic and algebra. Suppose with our arithmetic minds with no slightest inkling of the existence of a variable, we run into an algebra mind? We might mistake it for something far removed from thinking or intelligence. We go on the assumption that anything that doesn't stomp up, give a salute, and solemnly announce ...
— The Unthinking Destroyer • Roger Phillips
... bearing all burdens, however great or small; and how thus early he offered himself for the mission field and was impatiently eager to enter it. Then look at the sovereign love of God, imparting to him in so eminent a degree the childlike spirit, teaching him to trust not his own variable moods of feeling, but the changeless word of His promise; teaching him to wait patiently on Him for orders, and not to look to human authority or direction; and so singularly releasing him from military service for life, and mysteriously ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... discovered evident symptoms of discontent; but their motions were slow and backward. The states, though terrified at the prospect of having their frontier exposed to so formidable a foe, saw no resource, no means of safety. England indeed seemed disposed to make opposition to the French; but the variable and impolitic conduct of Charles kept that republic from making him any open advances, by which she might lose the friendship of France, without acquiring any new ally. And though Lewis, dreading a combination of all Europe, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... inhuman because they are not human—as yet. They seem variable, treacherous, because a child's moral sense guiding a man's body and brain must so seem. They are not ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... The Fijians are in the main vegetarians, but the vegetables which they cultivate "contain a large proportion of starch and water, and are deficient in proteids. Moreover, the supply of the principal staples is irregular, being greatly affected by variable seasons, and the attacks of insects and vermin. Very few of them will bear keeping, and almost all of them must be eaten when ripe. As the food is of low nutritive value, a native always eats to repletion. In times of plenty a full-grown man will eat as much as ten pounds' weight of vegetables ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... morality are closely united; the morality of a people depends above all on the idea which it forms to itself of God. The conscience, in fact, at the same time that it is real and permanent in its bases, is variable in the degrees of its light. It is enlightened or obscured, according as the man's religious conceptions are pure or corrupted; and, on the other hand, when the religious worship is degraded beyond a certain limit by error and the passions, the ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... lose it; it has been with me in many moods—and my moods are many and very variable, as you know. I can't express it in words; but I feel no more doubt about Edward's well-being, no more inclination to fret or murmur, besides an all-embracing and pervading sense of satisfied content that penetrates everywhere ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to the Flemish coast this morning in twenty-five fathoms of water; but it was so calm that we made little progress. It was too cloudy to take the latitude. The wind was very variable, and we could not keep on S.W., or even south, and so drifted for the most part with ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... dismal and appalling, it was pathetic. The instrument became, as it were, the organ of sadness, it became eloquent with an inarticulate wo; it was a breast bursting with affliction, a voice broken with sorrow, a soul dissolving with emotions. Then the variable harmonies rose from pensiveness into frenzy, from frenzy into the noise and the shocks of a great battle; they swelled to the din of contending armies, to the storm and vicissitudes of warlike deeds, and soared at last into a paean such as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Italy; the most esteemed of all are those of Roquevaire; they are very large and very sweet. This sort is rarely eaten by any but the most wealthy. The dried Malaga, or Muscatel raisins, which come to this country packed in small boxes, and nicely preserved in bunches, are variable in their quality, but mostly of a rich flavour, when new, juicy, and ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the human race, the tension of grief is variable. Honora, closed in her stateroom, eased herself that night by writing a long, if somewhat undecipherable, letter to Chiltern; and was able, the next day, to read the greater portion of a novel. It was only ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... York or London. To every one in India falls naturally a little faithful company of assistants to oil the wheels of life—groom, gardener, butler and so forth—and a spacious dwelling-place to think of England in, and calculate the variable value of the rupee, and wonder why the dickens So-and-so got his knighthood. Agra seemed to me to be the most widespreading city of all; but very likely it is not. In itself it is far from being the most interesting, but it has one building ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... positions of the curves show certain things when properly understood. The curve secured by the method of Reproduction (not given in the figure) shows results which are least accurate, because most variable. The reason of this is that in drawing the squares to reproduce the one remembered, the student is influenced by the size of the paper he uses, by the varying accuracy of his control over his hand and arm (the results ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... society, but still Catholic and One.[67] The change, in this respect, between the opinions which prevailed, respectively, at the era of the first and that of the second Revolution, is at once striking and instructive. It shows how variable and vacillating is the wretched creed of Infidelity, and how the firm maintenance of truth will eventually compel the homage, even where it may not succeed in carrying the convictions, of speculative minds. That Religion in all its ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... twofold purpose of strengthening the whole financial structure and of arriving eventually at a medium of exchange which over the years will have less variable purchasing and debt paying power for our people than that of the past, I have used the authority granted me to purchase all American-produced gold and silver and to buy additional gold in the world markets. Careful investigation ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... 3-bracted whorls of 3, borne near the summit of a leafless scape 4 in. to 4 ft. tall. Calyx of 3 sepals; corolla of 3 rounded, spreading petals. Stamens and pistils numerous, the former yellow in upper flowers; usually absent or imperfect in lower pistillate flowers. Leaves: Exceedingly variable; those under water usually long and grass-like; upper ones sharply arrow-shaped or blunt and broad, spongy or leathery, on ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... in the formation of the maps, which have been carefully constructed from Burckhardt's materials, occasionally assisted and corrected by other extant authorities. One cannot easily decide, whether the errors in our traveller's bearings are chiefly to be attributed to the variable nature of the instrument, or to the circumstances of haste and concealment under which he was often obliged to take his observations, though it is sufficiently evident that be fell into the error, not uncommon with unexperienced travellers, of multiplying ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... scarcely visible. At noon, the general course had been E. by N. 80 miles; the latitude was found to be 43 deg. 41', and longitude by estimation (corrected) 168 deg. 3': the needle pointed here, true North. The land was in sight to the north-west, and the wind strong, but variable, from the northward. The ships steered westward for a short time; but the weather being too stormy to admit of approaching the land, they went upon the other tack; and kept as much to the northward., under easy sail, as ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... waves. Bleached, whitened. Tide, the regular rise and fall of the ocean which occurs twice in a little over twenty-four hours. 2. Scud, fly hastily. Shrouds, Winding sheets, dresses of the dead. Close'reefed, with sails contracted as much as possible. 3. Fit'ful, irregularly variable. Draper-y, garments. Scans, looks at care-fully. Stanch, firm. ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... May, yet the weather was temperate, variable, and cool enough, and people had still some hopes. That which encouraged them was that the city was healthy: the whole ninety-seven parishes buried but fifty-four, and we began to hope that, as it was chiefly among the people at that end of the town, it might go no farther; and the rather, because ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... fifty-eight cases of rise of temperature the rate of ordinary corrosion was increased in every instance except one, and that was only a feeble exception—the increase of corrosion from 60 deg. to 160 deg. F. with different metals was extremely variable, and was from 1.5 to 321.6 times. Whether a metal increased or decreased in thermo-electromotive force by being heated, it increased in rapidity of corrosion. The proportions in which the most corroded metal ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... two; there was nothing else in the room but the scholar in his age and the "Portrait of a Lady" in her youth. Jack saw the Doge's face, its many lines expressive as through a mist of time, its hills and valleys in the sun and the shadow of emotions as variable as the mother's in life, speaking personal resentment and wrong, admiration and tenderness, grievous inquiry and philosophy, while the only answer was the radiant, "I give! I give!" Finally, the Doge tightened the clasp of his hands, with ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... do not even know of the existence of this vehicle. We could not get right of way on the rails, so this gravity car was developed in secrecy. It is provided with variable repulsion energies that can be adjusted to keep it at a fixed distance from the inner surface of the copper shell. Thus it misses cross beams and braces. It is drawn forward by similar energies, or more exactly, by the component of a number of ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... Act of May 31, 1870, above cited, Congress has ordained, in legal effect, that if any person violates the penal Code of the State of New York, or any State, in respect of voting, he may be punished by the United States. And the offense is a variable quantity; what is a crime in one State under this Act, is a legal right and duty in another. A citizen of Rhode Island, for instance, who votes when not possessed in his own right, of an estate in fee simple—in fee tail, for life, or in reversion or remainder, of the value of $134 or ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... notes'. It is set up with a comma between each item and a hard return at the end of each definition. This means that this section could easily be cut and pasted into its own text file and imported into a database or spreadsheet as a comma separated variable file (.csv file). Failing that, you could do a search and replace for commas in this section (I have not used any commas in my words, definitions or notes) and replace the ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... of the Lozere is excessively variable. The traveller must always be provided with winter wraps and the lightest summer clothing. We had enjoyed almost tropic sunshine on the plateau of Sauveterre. Next day (September 19th), when half-way to St. Flour, the very blasts of Siberia seemed ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... a revised ideal of life. Look back through the past, or look abroad through the present, and we find that the ideal of life is variable and depends on social conditions. Everyone knows that to be a successful warrior was the highest aim among all ancient peoples of note, as it is still among many barbarous peoples. When we remember that in the Norseman's heaven, the time was to be passed in daily battles with magical healing of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... what it all meant, and what the revelation was between Nature and herself. Nature was so vast; she was so insignificant; changes in its motionless inorganic life were imperceptible save through the telescopes of years; but she, like the wind, the water, and the clouds, was variable, inconstant. Was there any real relation between the vast, imperturbable earth, its seas, its forests, its mountains and its plains, its life of tree and plant and flower and the men and women dotted on its surface? Did they belong to each ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... keeping the advantage with which he had started, despite Howe's skill. At nightfall both fleets were still steering to the southward, on the port tack, the French five or six miles in the rear of the British, with the wind variable at east. The same course was maintained throughout the night, the French gradually overhauling the British, and becoming visible at 3 A.M. of the 11th. By Howe's dispatch, they bore in the morning, at an hour not specified, ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... HF.—A solution in water may be purchased in gutta-percha or lead bottles. It is of variable strength and doubtful purity. It must always be examined quantitatively for the residue left on evaporation. It is used occasionally for the examination of silicates. It attacks silica, forming fluoride of silicon, which is a gas. When the introduction of another ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... motives, making up the system of impulses which is our will. Such has been the common outfit of motives in every age, and in every age its melee has been found insufficient in itself. It is a heterogeneous system, it does not form in any sense a completed or balanced system, its constituents are variable and compete amongst themselves. They are not so much arranged about one another as superposed and higgledy-piggledy. The senses and curiosity war with pride and one another, the motives suggested to us fall into conflict with this element or that of our intimate and habitual selves. ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... the wind is very variable; when it is scarcely felt, the velocity does not exceed a foot a second; but it is far otherwise in the cases of hurricanes and tornados, that sweep ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... cold-blooded during the winter when they hibernate; such are the hedgehog, bat and dormouse. John Hunter suggested that two groups should be known as "animals of permanent heat at all atmospheres" and "animals of a heat variable with every atmosphere," but later Bergmann suggested that they should be known as "homoiothermic" and "poikilothermic" animals. But it must be remembered there is no hard and fast line between the two groups. Also, from work recently done by J.O. Wakelin Barratt, it has been ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... mechanical representation of the whole physical world. Even were we disposed to admit the strangest solutions of the problem; to consent, for example, to be satisfied with the hidden systems devised by Helmholtz, whereby we ought to divide variable things into two classes, some accessible, and the others now and for ever unknown, we should never manage to construct an edifice to contain all the known facts. Even the very comprehensive mechanics of a Hertz fails where the classical ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... have cited to demonstrate that the return from the playlet is a most variable quantity. The small-time pays less than the big-time, and each individual act on both small- and big-time pays ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... the Prince of Wales in these childhood days vary greatly; probably in natural accordance with the variable temperament of his age. Lady Lyttelton who, perhaps, knew him best, described him to Mr. Greville in 1852—though that interesting litterateur is not always reliable—as being "extremely shy and timid, with very good principles and, particularly, an exact observer of truth." The ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... carved. The sailors aboard the Nigna took up the branch of a tree with red berries perfectly fresh. The clouds around the setting sun assumed a new appearance; the air was more mild and warm, and during night the wind became unequal and variable. From all these symptoms, Columbus was so confident of being near land, that on the evening of the eleventh of October, after public prayers for success, he ordered the sails to be furled, and the ships to ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... fundamental importance; and it is no exaggeration to say that only the individual who knows how to breathe knows how to sing effectually. A musical ear and sense of rhythm are innate in some individuals; in others they are not innate and can only be acquired to a variable degree of perfection by persevering efforts and practice. The most intelligent persons may never be able to sing in tune, or even time; the latter (sense of rhythm) is much more easily acquired by practice than the former (correct intonation). This is easily intelligible, for ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... latitude, at breakfast. Approaching the equator on a long slant. Those of us who have never seen the equator are a good deal excited. I think I would rather see it than any other thing in the world. We entered the "doldrums" last night—variable winds, bursts of rain, intervals of calm, with chopping seas and a wobbly and drunken motion to the ship—a condition of things findable in other regions sometimes, but present in the doldrums always. The globe-girdling ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... spoke of interest, not as fluctuating and variable, but steady and persistent. It contains also the elements of ease, pleasure, and needed employment; that is, in learning something that has a proper interest, there is greater ease and pleasure in the acquisition, ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... been made, the physicist of to-day has not yet been able to make anything like an exact determination of the total amount of heat received from the sun. The largest measurements are almost double the smallest. This is partly due to the atmosphere absorbing an unknown and variable fraction of the sun's rays which pass through it, and partly to the difficulty of distinguishing the heat radiated by the sun from ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... town of Woodstock there enters the River St. John, from the westward, a good sized tributary known as Eel River. It is a variable stream, flowing in the upper reaches with feeble current, over sandy shallows, with here and there deep pools, and at certain seasons almost lake-like expansions over adjoining swamps, but in the last twelve miles of its course it is transformed into a turbulent stream, broken by rapids ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... your sensible and disinterested advice to Mr. Bell, as you will see by my letter to him. As I approve entirely of his marrying again, you may readily ask me why I don't marry at all. My circumstances have hitherto been so variable and uncertain in this fluctuating world, as induce to keep me from engaging in such a state: and now, though they are more settled, and of late (which you will be glad to hear) considerably improved, I begin to ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... though I was beginning to get accustomed to the fact that she was a creature of variable moods, I was unprepared for this one. Her hauteur had disappeared; she was apparently in a sweet and gentle frame of mind. Her large dark eyes were soft and gentle, and though her red lips quivered, it was not with anger or disdain ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... probably amuse him more when he differs than when he agrees with them; at least they will do no harm, for nobody will follow my advice. But the last word is of more concern. Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness. They have been so tried among the inconstant squalls and currents, so often sailed for islands in the air or lain becalmed with burning heart, that they will risk all for solid ground below their feet. Desperate pilots, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spread out on its substratum becomes transformed into a sporangium, or it divides into a variable number of unequal and irregular pieces, each of which undergoes transformation. Such a sporangium lying flat on the substratum, more or less elongated and flexuous, often branched and reticulate, ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan
... transmitter. The simplest transmitter for this purpose is a plane mirror of flexible material, silvered mica or microscope glass. Against the back of this mirror my voice is directed. In the carbon transmitter of the telephone a variable electrical resistance is produced by the pressure on the diaphragm, based on the fact that carbon is not as good a conductor of electricity under pressure as when not. Here, the mouthpiece is just a shell supporting a thin metal diaphragm to which the mirror on the back is attached, an apparatus ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... and occasionally existing as a fluid, like the electric fluid gravitating amongst them, and that hence it may be propagated from the central fires of the earth to the whole mass, and contribute to preserve the mean heat of the earth, which in this country is about 48 degrees but variable from the greater or less effect of the sun's heat in different climates, so well explained in Mr. Kirwan's Treatise on the Temperature of different Latitudes. 1787, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... his start to Dad's camp until dusk, knowing the old man would prefer to take the road at night, after his mysterious way. He probably would hoof it over to Sullivan's and borrow a buckboard to make a figure in before the widow-lady upon whom he had anchored his variable heart. ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... the open at that temperature back East, nor would they attempt it on the Pacific Slope were the cold continuous. In the western half of British Columbia, however, long periods of severe weather are rare. It is a variable zone, swept now and then by damp, warm breezes, and men tell of sheltered valleys where flowers blow the year round, though very few of those who ramble up and down the Mountain Province ever chance ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... again been crushed. The Forward weighed anchor, and took up her uncertain march northward. As the Forward began to be weather-worn, the masts were unreeved, for they could no longer rely on the variable wind, and the sails were nearly useless in the winding channels. Large white marks appeared here and there on the sea like oil spots; they presaged an approaching frost; as soon as the breeze dropped the sea began to freeze immediately; but as soon as the wind got up again, the young ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... on first entering this city. The population is as variable as the breezes that blow over the ocean, for Newport has gained fame the world over as one of America's most fashionable watering places. As early as 1830 it began to attract health seekers and others ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... or three days, we reached a warmer temperature, when the wind falling light and becoming variable we crossed our topgallant and royal yards again, spreading all the sail we could so as to make the best of the breezes we got. These were now mingled with occasional showers of rain, as is customary with the south-west ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... saddle, which increased Lady Charlotte's liking for him and irritated her watchful forecasts. She rode with the young man after lunch, "to show him the country," and gave him a taste of what he took for her variable moods. He misjudged her. Like a swimmer going through warm and cold springs of certain lake waters, he thought her a capricious ladyship, dangerous for intimacy, alluring to the deeps and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to forms, colours, flavours, scents, sounds, fabrics, etc., what is agreeable to one being highly objectionable to another. The experience is to common to need illustration; but the conclusion to which we are led is that, in relation to the nervous system of man, every material body has a variable effect. And this clears the ground for a statement of our views in regard to the Crystal and its effects upon ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... punches are arranged side by side and parallel upon a shaft, B, a spring, b, holding them constantly against the circumference of the cam-wheels. In Fig. 2 only one of these details is shown. The punching arrangement consists of an ordinary punch, c, of variable diameter, screwed to the extremity of a tube, d, which is itself suspended from the end of the lever, p, but which can receive from it at the desired moment the pressure necessary to effect the cutting. The vertical ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... especially in Garland and Montgomery Counties, rock crystals are found lining cavities of variable size, and in one instance thirty tons of crystals were found in a single cavity. These crystals are mined by the farmers in their spare time and sold in the streets of Hot Springs, their value amounting to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... surf observable this morning, increasing until about 4 P.M.; the wind variable, settling for a short time in the south-east. I became anxious on account of my berth, which was represented to me as insecure, in case of a blow from seaward. I sent and got a pilot on board, but when he came he said he thought we should not have bad weather; and ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... to stand at the singing of psalms and anthems were for the most part 'stiff, morose, and saturnine votists.'[1125] In fact, High Churchmen insisted on the one posture, while Low Churchmen generally preferred the other; and so the custom remained very variable, until the High Church reaction of Queen Anne's time succeeded in establishing, in this particular, a rule which was henceforth generally recognised. In 1741, Secker speaks of sitting during the singing as if, though common enough, it were still a ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... band is founded on the basic of the Moebius strip," one student E was saying heatedly. "This little gadget sends out a field in the shape of such a strip, a band with a half twist before rejoined. Its width is as variable as we need it, up ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... coloured marbles have all been painted by Nature with one material only, variously proportioned and applied—the oxide of iron. The varieties of marble are mainly caused by the different degrees in which this substance has pervaded them. They are variable mixtures of the metamorphous carbonates of protoxide of iron and lime. And it is an interesting fact that there is a distinct relation between deposits of magnetic iron ore and the metamorphoses of limestones into marbles; so that this substance not only gives to the marbles their colouring, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... power. These different species do not affect the milk in the same way. All produce some acid, but they differ in the kind and the amount of acid, and especially in the other changes which are effected at the same time that the milk is soured, so that the resulting soured milk is quite variable. In spite of this variety, however, the most recent work tends to show that the majority of cases of spontaneous souring of milk are produced by bacteria which, though somewhat variable, probably constitute a single ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... after sun-set is succeeded by an agreeable land-breeze from the mountains. The sea-breeze from the eastward, however, is not so constant here, as in the West-Indies between the tropicks, because the sun, which produces it, is not so powerful. This country lies nearer the region of variable winds, and is surrounded by mountains, capes, and straights, which often influence the constitution and current of the air. About the winter solstice, the people of Nice expect wind and rain, which generally ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... break the windows of each with his sling. What idle fabricators of crazy systems will tell me that climate is the creator of genius? The climate of Austria is more regular and more temperate than ours, which I am inclined to believe is the most variable in the whole universe, subject, as you have perceived, to heavy fogs for two months in winter, and to a stifling heat, concentrated within the hills, for five more. Yet a single man of genius hath never appeared in the whole extent ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... in the moulding of life, then you cannot forecast what line conduct will take or predict what shape character will assume. The whole conception of Ethics as a science must, it is contended, fall to the ground, if we admit a variable and incalculable element ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... and when any of Wallace's officers approached, they separated, or withdrew to a greater distance. This strange conduct Wallace attributed to its right source, and thought of Bruce with a sigh, when he contemplated the variable substance of these men's minds. However, he was so convinced that nothing but the proclamation of Bruce, and that prince's personal exertions, could preserve his country from falling again into the snare from which he had just ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... which the strife as a memory assumes are as manifold as are the moods of involuntary meditation—moods variable, and at times widely at variance. Yielding instinctively, one after another, to feelings not inspired from any one source exclusively, and unmindful, without purposing to be, of consistency, I seem, in most of these verses, to have but placed a harp in a window, ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... difficulty as is met in gunnery and rifle-shooting. The sights and the object aimed at cannot be in focus together, and a great deal depends on the form of sight. Tycho Brahe invented, and applied to the pointers of his instruments, an aperture-sight of variable area, like the iris diaphragm used now in photography. This enabled him to get the best result with stars of different brightness. The telescope not having been invented, he could not use a telescopic-sight as we now do in gunnery. This not only removes ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... the 7th of June. He was in 28 degrees south latitude and 112 degrees west longitude, that is to say, he was in the immediate neighbourhood of Easter Island. It was still the depth of winter. The sea ran continually high, violent and variable winds, dull, foggy, and cold weather was accompanied by thunder, rain, and snow. No doubt it was owing to the great darkness, and to the thick fog, which hid the sun for several days, that Carteret failed to perceive Easter Island, for many signs, such as the number ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... blended,—that occasionally the force of two natures is represented in the derivative one by a diagonal of greater value than either original line of living movement,—that sometimes there is a loss of vitality hardly to be accounted for, and again a forward impulse of variable intensity in some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... having been ordained in the Reign of Henry the First, Son of William the Conquerer) avoiding the turbulent Licentiousness of a Democracy, the factious domineering Temper of Aristocracy, and the variable oppressive Sway of Arbitrary Monarchy; but including, by an harmonious Assemblage, the essential Virtues of those different Systems of Government; is unquestionably the best digested and wisest in the known World: Under which, the King ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... and Tenure. Remarks. Bursaries, variable Tuition fees and in number maintenance grant 1 year Awarded (to children of Bristol ratepayers only) according to qualification Vincent Stuckey Lean Interest on Science ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... the Craigwen Valley, instead of proving a dreary season of frost or fog, was apt to be as variable as April. Sheltered by the tall mountains, the climate was mild, and though snow would lie on the peaks of Penllwyd and Cwm Dinas it rarely rested on the lower levels. Very early in January the garden at The Woodlands could boast brave clumps of snowdrops and polyanthus, a venturous ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... his booted feet in the glow which poured from the stove, and looking across at his companion with admiration in his bold eyes. At another time she might have been offended by the look: or she might not. Women are variable. Now her fears lest Felix should be discovered dulled ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... differ far more in form than in substance. It is only the variable mentality of men that varies their effects. All the discussions as to various systems of government are really of no interest, for these have no special virtue of themselves. Their value will always depend on that of the people ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... however, is that human efficiency is a variable quantity which increases and decreases according to law. By the application of known physical laws the telephone and the telegraph have supplanted the messenger boy. By the laws of psychology applied to business equally ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... South Sandwich Islands variable, with mostly westerly winds throughout the year interspersed with periods of calm; nearly all precipitation falls ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... many of us are so limited in our capacity for "variable reaction" that there are so few good critics. But we are all, I think, more multiple-souled than we care to admit. It is our foolish pride of consistency, our absurd desire to be "constructive," that makes us so dull. A critic ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... abundant evidence in his own poems alone that at the time of, and for at least two or three years subsequently to, his marriage Coleridge's feeling towards his wife was one of profound and indeed of ardent attachment. It is of course quite possible that the passion of so variable, impulsive, and irresolute a temperament as his may have had its hot and cold fits, and that during one of the latter phases Southey may have imagined that his friend needed some such remonstrance as that referred to. But this is not nearly enough to support the assertion ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... science stepped in, fixed the law of language, and developed its rule, which was no longer determined on the basis of experience, but made the claim to determine experience. The endings of declension, which hitherto had in part been variable, were now to be once for all fixed; e. g. of the genitive and dative forms hitherto current side by side in the so-called fourth declension (-senatuis- and -senatus-, -senatui-, and -senatu-) Caesar recognized exclusively as valid the contracted forms (-us and -u). In orthography various ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... it does not absolutely result from a concourse of favorable incidents, but is an affection of the mind itself. I am frequently guilty of repetitions, but should be infinitely more so, did I repeat the same thing as often as it recurs with pleasure to my mind. When at length my variable mode of life was reduced to a more uniform course, the following was nearly the distribution of time which I adopted: I rose every morning before the sun, and passed through a neighboring orchard into ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... more just and catholic spirit. We translate the conclusion of the last article, in which Mr. Schmidt gives the result of his careful analysis of all the works of the author: "The novel, on account of its lax and variable form, and the caprice which it tolerates, is in my opinion not to be reckoned among those kinds of art, which, as classic, will endure to posterity. The authors who have been most read in modern times have already been checked in their popularity by the greater attraction ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... on the 23rd January. It has little elevation, and is scarcely possible to be seen at a greater distance than twelve leagues. The wind then became very variable; and, like Captain Cook, we met with currents, which carried us every day fifteen minutes south of our reckoning; so that we spent the whole of the 24th in plying in sight of Botany Bay, without being able to double Point Solander, which bore from us a league north. The ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... about two degrees in diameter, fixed immovably in the heavens overhead, and tipped on one of its edges with a crescent border of the most brilliant gold. No traces of land or water could be discovered, and the whole was clouded with variable spots, and belted with tropical ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... is obvious, that the most superficial characters are the most variable. Thus colour depends much upon light; thickness of hair upon heat; size upon abundance of food, &c. In wild animals, however, these varieties are greatly limited by the natural habits of the animal, which does not willingly migrate from the places where it finds, in sufficient quantity, ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... modes in which Nature produces variable curves on a large scale are very numerous, but may generally be resolved into the gradual increase or diminution of some given force. Thus, if a chain hangs between two points A and B, Fig. 95, the weight of chain sustained by any given link increases gradually from the central link ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... comparison of this letter with the foregoing records that the standard of evidence is a somewhat variable quantity in the Society for Psychical Research. In attempting to explain the matter, Mr. Myers wrote to Lord Bute, ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... of our passing these rocks until the evening of the 3d, we had very light airs and variable, but mostly from the south-west quarter, and every day found we were affected by a southerly current of 10 or 12 miles in 24 hours. The wind now sprung up from the northward, and we steered for the island ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... him alone, to use. BUT WHAT RULE HAVE WE, BY WHICH WE CAN DISTINGUISH THESE OBJECTS? Here we must have recourse to statutes, customs, precedents, analogies, and a hundred other circumstances; some of which are constant and inflexible, some variable and arbitrary. But the ultimate point, in which they all professedly terminate, is the interest and happiness of human society. Where this enters not into consideration, nothing can appear more whimsical, unnatural, and even superstitious, than all or most of the laws ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... timid pathos, more singular and mysterious. Whatever love of humour you have,—whatever sympathy with imperfect, but most subtle, feeling,—whatever perception of sublimity in conditions of fatal power, may here find fullest occupation: all these being joined, in the strong animal races, to a variable and fantastic beauty far beyond anything that merely formative art has yet conceived. I have placed in your Educational series a wing by Albert Duerer, which goes as far as art yet has reached in delineation of plumage; while for the simple action of the pinion ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... fastidiously on her way, with long gloves covering her arms, a white linen mask tied over her face to screen her complexion from tan, a sunbonnet sewed tightly on her head to keep it secure from the capricious winds of heaven and the more variable gusts of her own wilfulness; or on another picture of her—as a lonely little lass—begging to be taken to court, where she could marvel at her father, an awful judge in his wig and his robe of scarlet and black velvet; or on a third picture ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... something.... It is very difficult to imagine what is [Page 379] happening to the weather.... The clouds don't seem to come from anywhere, form and disperse without visible reason.... The meteorological conditions seem to point to an area of variable light winds, and that plot ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... are seen in any of the lower orders. Indeed, in one's lifetime one sees but very slight variation in any of the wild or domestic creatures, less in the wild than in the domestic because they are less under the influence of that most variable of animals, man. And man's variations are mainly mental and not physical. The higher we go in the scale of powers, the greater the variation and hence the more rapid the evolution. Probably man's body has not changed radically in vast cycles of time, but his mind has developed enormously since the ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... locutus est. That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion—which some whisper is, in the present case, very much the same thing as publican's opinion—has willed otherwise. The Heads may return to their wonted slumbers—at any rate for ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... to his natural height before the astonished gaze of the cherubs he is "the grisly King." Every fresh designation elaborates his character and history, emphasises the situation, and saves a sentence. So it is with all variable appellations of concrete objects; and even in the stricter and more conventional region of abstract ideas the same law runs. Let a word be changed or repeated, it brings in either case its contribution of emphasis, and ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... ourselves of a leading wind through the south-east trades, the course from the islands to Frio being southwesterly. This latter stretch was spanned on an easy bow-line; with nothing eventful to record. Thence our course was through variable winds to the River Plate, where a pampeiro was experienced that blew "great guns," and whistled a ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... kept as much as possible out of sight. Towards her, Mr. Stillinghast's manner was inconsistent, and variable in the extreme. At one time almost kind, at another, captious and surly. Sometimes he called on her for every thing, and perhaps the next moment threatened to throw whatever he had ordered, at her head. Once he told her, in bitter tones and language, that "but for wishing ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... stated, in this work, that dyspepsia is Protean in its symptoms, but single and uniform in its nature; the very reverse is the fact; its symptoms are of a single character, and of an uniform attack, while its nature is variable and inconstant. A dyspeptic will complain of a want of appetite, a degree of squeamishness and irritability, eructations, heart-burn, pain in the head, stomach, and bowels, with costiveness; his tongue will be furred, and his pulse a little increased in strength and quickness. ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... this family, I have promised to ride on Friday, wind and weather permitting; at present both are more variable than I can describe, the extreme changes of the temperature, and the suddenness of these, utterly surpassing all my experience. One day I have a large fire, and the next, windows and doors open in search of cool ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... serenity of the Misses Stone's domain, far from restoring Rose's composure, seemed to smite her by contrast with an intolerable sense of personal reproach, and to goad her into rebellion. Rose was conscious of her variable spirits—the heritage of her years—getting more and more uncertain, and of being wrought up to a perilously high-strung pitch. She felt as if she were panting for liberty to breathe, to express her discordant mood ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... bird, "Winged Fisher," as he has been happily called, is seen in places suited to his habits, throughout temperate North America, particularly about islands and along the seacoast. At Shelter Island, New York, they are exceedingly variable in the choice of a nesting place. On Gardiner's Island they all build in trees at a distance varying from ten to seventy-five feet from the ground; on Plum Island, where large numbers of them nest, many place their nests on the ground, some being built up to a height of four ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... colour at the touch of animation. She was a good vocalist; and, even in speech, her voice commanded a great range of changes, the low notes rich with tenor quality, the upper ringing, on the brink of laughter, into music. A gem of many facets and variable hues of fire; a woman who withheld the better portion of her beauty, and then, in a caressing second, flashed it like a weapon full on the beholder; now merely a tall figure and a sallow handsome face, with the evidences of a reckless temper; anon opening like a flower to life and colour, ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... well back, and his figure was very alert and lithe. He made great use of his lips in talking, and whatever he said seemed a little overdone in emphasis. His expression was eager, amiable, and sensitive, and it changed like the complexion of water in variable weather. He was a bit of a dandy in his way, too. His clothes showed his slim and elastic figure to the best advantage, and a bright-coloured neckerchief with loose flying ends helped out a certain air of festal rural opera which belonged ...
— Bulldog And Butterfly - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... that a portion of these exercises should be carried out on the drill ground in order to expedite this portion of the work. But all the more energetically must it be insisted on that the remainder of the programme—the greater part in regard to time—should be executed, as far as possible, in variable ground, and that all exercises of the larger formations should be confined to such ground as we shall have to work over in War; not alone are they by far the most important for the higher tactical education of the Arm, but they cannot be represented on drill grounds at all; ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... which is effected by various reasonings. These reasonings are like pieces of wood, which the fire inflames, and which thence burn: they are therefore like so much fuel, or so many combustible matters which give occasion to that spiritual flame, which is very variable. ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... finished at the end. Had I done so, this work would not have been so near to a close as, thank Heaven, it is at present. At times I have been gay, at others, sad; and I am obliged to write according to my humour, which, as variable as the wind, seldom continues in one direction. I have proceeded with this book as I should do if I had had to build a ship. The dimensions of every separate piece of timber I knew by the sheer-draught which ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... his time, he made his own telescopes; for it was his ambition to be not a mere star-gazer, but an earnest student of the heavens. By day, he and his brother and sister ground specula; by night he observed the heavens. His astronomical work includes a careful study of variable stars; an attempt to explain the relation of sun-spots to terrestrial phenomenae; the determination that the periods of rotation of various satellites, like the rotation of our own moon, are equal to the times of their revolutions about their primaries; and ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... desideratum, illustrating the utility of a senate, is the want of a due sense of national character. Without a select and stable member of the government, the esteem of foreign powers will not only be forfeited by an unenlightened and variable policy, proceeding from the causes already mentioned, but the national councils will not possess that sensibility to the opinion of the world, which is perhaps not less necessary in order to merit, than it is to obtain, its ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... Her mood was variable. Messages from Blaise and Martin came and went, and it became known that her intended shelter at Chollet, together with all the adjacent houses, had been closely searched by the younger Ribaumont in conjunction with the governor; so that it was plain ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... temperature of heate (which hauing any extremitie, as either of heate, or his contrary, breedeth disorder in the worke) as also in the framing of the Ost or furnace after many new moulds and fashions, as variable as mens wits and experiences, yet because innouations and incertainty doth rather perplexe then profit, I will shunne, as much as in me lyeth, from loading the memory of the studious Husbandman with those stratagems which disable ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... upon different occasions to have contained five, twelve, twenty, and forty pennies. Among the ancient Saxons, a shilling appears at one time to have contained only five pennies, and it is not improbable that it may have been as variable among them as among their neighbours, the ancient Franks. From the time of Charlemagne among the French, and from that of William the Conqueror among the English, the proportion between the pound, the shilling, and the penny, seems to have been uniformly the same ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... one of our coming characters, and was then turned into Robert, another of them. This revolving piece of statuary could not, however, be relied on as a vane, owing to the neighbouring hill, which formed variable currents in the wind. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... systems, speech habits of the two peoples. Yet the instinctive cries as such are practically identical for all humanity, just as the human skeleton or nervous system is to all intents and purposes a "fixed," that is, an only slightly and "accidentally" variable, ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir |
