"Centre of gravity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... investigate," said Roberto, "just how far poverty has served as centre of gravity for ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... retreat; but I was confoundedly mistaken; for at the very moment I thought myself victorious, the enemy attacked my rear, and having got a reasonably good mouthful out of it, was fully prepared to take another before I was rescued. Egad, I thought for a time the beast had devoured my entire centre of gravity, and that I should never go on a steady perpendicular again." "Upon my word," said Sir Jonah Barrington, to whom Curran related this story, "the mastiff may have left you your centre, but he could not have left much gravity ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... conclusion that there was no connection of the force with attractive or repulsive influences.' With the most refined ingenuity he shows that, under certain circumstances, the magne-crystallic force can cause the centre of gravity of a highly magnetic body to retreat from the poles, and the centre of gravity of a highly diamagnetic body to approach them. His experiments root his mind more and more firmly in the conclusion that 'neither attraction nor repulsion causes the set, ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... as a building is, and yet for a time keep upright by dead habit. But a new perception, a sudden emotional shock, or an occasion which lays bare the organic alteration, will make the whole fabric fall together; and then the centre of gravity sinks into an attitude more stable, for the new ideas that reach the centre in the rearrangement seem now to be locked there, and the new structure ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the charge, is responsible for its driving force. In the days of real intellectual leadership the mastery of ideas prevailed and Public Opinion was considered as the triumph of an idea. But in our days of so called democratic equality the centre of gravity of this power has shifted from the leader to the multitude. De Tocqueville in his book "Democracy in America" [1] has a remarkable page, illustrating this point. "The nearer the people," he writes, "are drawn to a common level of an equal and similar ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... minutes and a half since we started," he remarked in an absent manner. Suddenly the vacant face brightened; the old man had an idea. "My boy!" he shouted, bringing his hand down upon Norman's shoulder so suddenly as for a moment to transfer his centre of gravity beyond the ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... emptily) My centre of gravity is displaced. I have forgotten the trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Struggle for life is the law of existence but but human philirenists, notably the tsar and the king of England, have invented arbitration. (He taps his brow) But in here it is I must kill the priest ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... not easy for a large person who is lying on her back, with her foot doubled up under her, to find her centre of gravity. It was several minutes before she could be helped to a sitting position. She was very pale, ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... the use of the conical cavity, made in a rocket at the time it is charged, or bored out after it is charged? How do cases charged with composition impart motion to wheels, and other pieces of fireworks? What is understood by the rocket principle? What is the rocket stick and its use? Is the centre of gravity fixed, or is it shifting in the flight of rockets? How are rockets discharged? What is the head of a rocket? What is usually put in the head? Are all rockets furnished with a head? What is understood by the furniture of a rocket? How are the serpents, stars, fire-rain, ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... as the swing of the pendulum: if it goes beyond the centre of gravity on one side, it must go as far beyond on the other. It is only after a time that it finds the true point of rest ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... only was an enormous mass of matter, before lying over the poles, removed nearer to the equator, and many mountain-chains relieved of the ice of thousands and tens of thousands of years, but that there must have been an actual change in the earth's centre of gravity. All our experience shows that the ice was more developed on some meridians than others; probably nowhere in the whole world did it lie so thick as along the American continents; and everywhere it must have been greater over ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... various ways, with now and then the addition of new strata. Of the composite periods there are four, which arrange themselves either according to hegemonies, the countries in which at given times lay the centre of gravity of the scattered Jewish people, or according to the ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... cuffing each other on the wing in a kind of playful skirmish; and when they move from one place to another, frequently turn on their backs with a loud croak, and seem to be falling on the ground. When this odd gesture betides them, they are scratching themselves with one foot, and thus lose the centre of gravity. Rooks sometimes dive and tumble in a frolicsome manner; crows and daws swagger in their walk; woodpeckers fly with an undulating motion, opening and closing their wings at every stroke, and so are always rising and falling in curves. All of ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... involved in turning a wheel has a wonderful tendency to benumb the mind. It is a sort of attenuated variety of Ixion's punishment, and contributes a dismal chapter to the history of gaols. The brain gets muddled, the head grows heavy, and the body's centre of gravity seems to settle by degrees in a leaden lump somewhere between the eyebrows and the crown. Bathsheba felt the unpleasant symptoms after two or ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... tombs, the subject is occasionally indicated by only two or three rapid strokes of the reed (fig. 178). Elsewhere, the outline is fully made out, and the figures only await the arrival of the sculptor. Some designers took pains to determine the position of the shoulders, and the centre of gravity of the bodies, by vertical and horizontal lines, upon which, by means of a dot, they noted the height of the knee, the hips, and other parts (fig. 179). Others again, more self-reliant, attacked their subject at once, and drew in the figures ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... America. The relations of the Old World to the New were then constructive and fundamental to a degree not true of earlier or of later times. Before the fifteenth century events were only distantly preparing the way; after the seventeenth the centre of gravity of American history was transferred ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... says, "an elephant descending a bank of too acute an angle to admit of his walking down it direct, (which, were he to attempt, his huge tody, soon disarranging the centre of gravity, would certainly topple over,) proceeds thus. His first manoeuvre is to kneel down close to the edge of the declivity, placing his chest to the ground: one fore-leg is then cautiously passed a short way down the slope; and if there is no natural protection ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... which appears to me truly significant. After the repeal of the Stamp Act, "the colonies fell," says this assembly, "into their ancient state of unsuspecting confidence in the mother country." This unsuspecting confidence is the true centre of gravity amongst mankind, about which all the parts are at rest. It is this unsuspecting confidence that removes all difficulties, and reconciles all the contradictions which occur in the complexity of all ancient puzzled political establishments. Happy ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... particles which now constitute the earth, to have been originally disseminated throughout a vast space, and to have approached their common centre of gravity by the force of mutual attraction; the consideration thus caused would have produced the state of intense heat that is now kept up within by pressure; and the conducting power of the bodies would have propagated the heat nearly equal throughout the mass. The surface ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... an example, Newton points out, that though the gravity of bodies arises from their gravitation towards several parts of the earth; yet, because this power acts always towards the centre of gravity of the earth, it is ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... in and an unlimited admiration of himself form the centre of gravity upon which the other qualities of Kalkbrenner's character balance themselves. He prided himself on being the pattern of a fine gentleman, and took upon him to teach even his oldest friends how to conduct themselves in society and at table. In his gait he was dignified, in his manners ceremonious, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... laugh, and such a swing of her unwieldy body, that one might well have apprehended her downfall. But, no such thing. She maintained the equilibrium; for, renowned as she had been all her life at producing havoc among plates, and cups, and bowls, she was never known to be thrown off her own centre of gravity. Another hearty shake of the hand followed, and the major quitted the table. As was usual on all great and joyous occasions in the family, when the emotions reached the kitchen, that evening was remarkable for a "smash," in which ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... a perfect freedom of motion, but also a firmness of step, or constant steady bearing of the centre of gravity over the base. It is usually possessed by those who live in the country, and according to nature, as it is called, and who take much and varied exercise. What a contrast is there between the gait of the active mountaineer, rejoicing in the consciousness of perfect nature, and of the mechanic ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... Provincial Parliaments followed the Parliament of Paris. After this the King had no alternative but to try the experiment of calling the States-General. They met on May 4, 1789, and instantly an administrative system, which no longer rested upon a social centre of gravity, crumbled, carrying the judiciary with it. At first the three estates sat separately. If this usage had continued, the Clergy and the Nobles combined would have annulled every measure voted by the Commons. For six weeks the Commons waited. Then on June 10, the Abbe Sieyes said, "Let us cut the cable. ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... water-plane has to be set higher than that of a land aeroplane, so that it may not come into contact with the waves. This tends to tip the craft forwards, and thus make the nose of the float dig in the water. To overcome this the float is set well forward of the centre of gravity, and though this counteracts the thrust when the craft "taxies" along the waves, it endangers its fore-and-aft ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... quick-firing guns; it must certainly take the strain of recoil off the centre of the axle, which recoil we found cracked our axles as we used them (once in my own guns) so badly that the whole thing had to be shifted and replaced. Another advantage it has is to lower the whole gun and mounting, and the centre of gravity of the weight of it and carriage, and therefore the gun is much harder to upset on rocky ground or going up steep precipices, as we had to do in Natal. This detail of wheels and axle is, I think, the most important one almost in a field carriage. The axle I mention ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... that 'he prophesies of times that are far off'? Yes! and No! Yes! it is true, and it is the great glory of Christianity that it shifts the centre of gravity, so to speak, from this poor, transient, contemptible present, and sets it away out yonder in an august and infinite future. It brings to us not only knowledge of the future, but certitude, and takes the conception of another life out of the region of perhapses, possibilities, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of seamen, under the shelter of a garden wall, crouching, or sitting, or standing (or whatever may be the attitude, acquired by much voyaging and experience of bad weather, which can not be solved, as to centre of gravity, even by the man who does it), and these men were so taken with the Major's manifesto, clinched at once and clarified to them by strong, short language, that they gave him a loud "hurrah," which flew on the wings of the wind over ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... box containing several hundred leaves of figures and calculations by Hariot. A large bundle of Hariot's papers. They are arranged in packets by Professor Rigaud. Spots on the Sun. Comets of 1607 and 1618. The Moon. Jupiter's Satellites. Projectiles, Centre of Gravity, Reflection of bodies. Triangles. Snell's Eratosthenes Batavus. Geometry. Calendar. Conic Sections. De Stella Martis. Drawings of Constellations, papers on Chemistry and Miscellaneous Calculations. Collections from Observations ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... doctrine of Aristippus, the Cyrenaic, the errant disciple of Socrates. He made pleasure the end of life, and taught that it might be sought without a greater regard to customary morality than was made prudent by the penalties to be feared as a consequence of its violation. Where the centre of gravity of the system of the Cyrenaics falls is evident from their holding that "corporeal pleasures are superior to mental ones," and that "a friend is desirable for the use which we can make of him." [Footnote: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... with the tears in her eyes; 'you are our Angel of Patience. Don't ever call yourself useless, dear, you are the centre of gravity for Stephen and me.' ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... MACVEAGH still has some difficulty in realising that the Irish centre of gravity has shifted from Westminster to Dublin. He indignantly refused to accept an answer to one of his questions from little Mr. PRATT, and loudly demanded the corporeal presence of the CHIEF SECRETARY. Mr. MACPHERSON, however, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... belts,—Caina, Antenora, Ptolemaea, and Judecca, where are punished, respectively, the Betrayers of their kindred, of their country, of their friends and guests, and of their benefactors. At the bottom of the pit is Lucifer, half above the ice and half below it, the centre of his body being the centre of gravity. ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb |
