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Counterpoise

noun
1.
A weight that balances another weight.  Synonyms: balance, counterbalance, counterweight, equaliser, equalizer.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Counterpoise" Quotes from Famous Books



... was fair weather she went to them. But Madeline, without saying a word to any one, had adopted a plan of going out exactly at the same hour with exactly the same object, in all sorts of weather. All this made Lady Staveley uneasy; and then, by way of counterpoise, she talked of balls, and offered Madeline carte blanche as to a new dress for that special one which would grace the assizes. "I don't think I shall go," said Madeline; and thus Lady Staveley became really unhappy. ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... no protection against the enmity of the brothers. I must have some more certain reliance for the future. My husband loves Louis very much. If I can succeed in uniting my daughter to him, he will prove a strong counterpoise to the calumnies and persecutions of my brothers-in-law." These remarks were reported to Napoleon. He replied, "Josephine labors in vain. Duroc and Hortense love each other, and they shall be married. I am attached to Duroc. He is well born. ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott

... Tracy. "I see a song there that would light up all London. Unfortunately, the sentiment's dead Radical. It wouldn't so much matter if we were certain to do Camillus as well; because one would act as a counterpoise to the other, you know. Well, follow your own fancy. Camillus is strictly classical. I treat opera there as Alfieri conceived tragedy. Clelia is modern style. Cast the die for Camillus, and let's take horse. Only, we lose the love-business—exactly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... art is self-regulated, and no original art can be regulated from without; it carries its own counterpoise, and does not receive it ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... had set [Greek: ho deuteros anthropos]: against [Greek: ek ges]—[Greek: ex ouranou]: against [Greek: choikos]—[Greek: ho Kyrios]. Remove [Greek: ho Kyrios], and some substitute for it must be invented as a counterpoise to [Greek: choikos]. Taking a hint from what is found in ver. 48, some one (plausibly enough,) suggested [Greek: epouranios]: and this gloss so effectually recommended itself to Western Christendom, that having been adopted by Ambrose[555], by Jerome[556] (and later by Augustine[557],) ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... she laid on feeling and sentiment was a needed one, as a counterpoise to the exaggerations of rationalism. Man does live in his feelings more than in his reason. He is a being of sentiment, a creature of impulse, his social life is one of the affections. In all the ranges of his moral, religious ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... collision with French forces in the Low Countries (Philip II. being king of England); this led to complications between Scotland, as ally of France, and the English on the Borders. Border raids began; d'Oysel fortified Eyemouth, as a counterpoise to Berwick, war was declared in November, and the discontented Scots, such as Chatelherault, Huntly, Cassilis, and Argyll, mutinied and refused to cross Tweed. {74} Thus arose a breach between the Regent and ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... heavier and mightier to destroy him than is his righteousness to save him, how can it be that the Pharisee, that is not gracious, but a mere carnal man (somewhat reformed and painted over with a few lean and low formalities), should with his empty, partial, hypocritical righteousness counterpoise his great, mighty, and weighty sins, that have cleaved to him in every state and condition of his, to make him odious ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan

... hurl back the enemy, and fight hard on the very edge of Ausonia. As when in the depth of air adverse winds rise in battle with equal spirit and strength; not they, not clouds nor sea, yield one to another; long the battle is doubtful; all stands locked in counterpoise: even thus clash the ranks of Troy and ranks of Latium, foot fast on foot, and man ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... world to be bad is a bad thought, then it follows naturally that the world is good. As a rule, optimism may take things too easily. Schopenhauer's references to the colossal part which sorrow and evil play in the world are quite in their right place as a counterpoise; but every true philosophy is necessarily optimistic, as otherwise she hews down the branch on which she herself is sitting." If this refutation of Schopenhauer is not the same as that to which Strauss refers somewhere else as "the refutation loudly and jubilantly acclaimed ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... way, which throws the veil of a dazzling falsehood over crime and sorrow. Those who devour others are said to be the chosen people who work for God. The weight of sin, thrown into one of the scales of life, finds its counterpoise beyond in the dream where all wounds and sorrows are to be cured. The form of the beyond varies from people to people and from time to time, and these variations are called Progress, though it is always ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... unlimited, or at least a practically preponderant authority in the chief ruler of the dominant class. He alone has by his position an interest in raising and improving the mass, of whom he is not jealous, as a counterpoise to his associates, of whom he is; and if fortunate circumstances place beside him, not as controllers but as subordinates, a body representative of the superior caste, which, by its objections and questionings, and by its occasional outbreaks of spirit, keeps alive habits of collective resistance, ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... darkest of Christian centuries, was now bearing its fruit in the work of Bede, who was really the sign of a far more permanent intellectual movement than his own, and in that of Boniface, Wilbrord, and Willibald, who began to win for Christendom in Germany more than a counterpoise for her losses in the South and East, from Armenia ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... themselves, and thus reciprocally restrained each other; still, it must be confessed, the royal authority was too subordinate to popular power. It is never otherwise: sovereignty, from whatever source derived, gives itself a feeble counterpoise when it limits itself. A constituent assembly enfeebles royalty; a king who is a legislator limits the prerogatives of ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... sir, we will not go into all that again," said Sir Harry, interrupting him. "I explained to you before, sir, that I would have admitted your future rank as a counterpoise to her fortune, if I could have trusted your character. I cannot trust it. I do not know why you should thrust upon me the necessity of saying all this again. As I believe that you are in pecuniary distress, I made you an offer which I ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... object at once revealed the mystery of the trap-door. It formed a ponderous counterpoise attached to the smaller section of the stone slab, and so nearly equalised the weight on the hinge that, as we have seen, Softswan's weak arm was ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne

... by way of counterpoise to this of Silence, let me say that there are two kinds of ambition: one wholly blamable, the other laudable and inevitable. Nature has provided that the great silent Samuel shall not be silent too long. The selfish wish to shine over others, let it be accounted altogether ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... all that occurs in the United States the more shall we be persuaded that the lawyers as a body form the most powerful, if not the only, counterpoise to the democratic element. In that country we perceive how eminently the legal profession is qualified by its powers, and even by its defects, to neutralize the vices which are inherent in popular government. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... round face, with unfixed eyes and working lips,—in that unearthly gravity which has never yet been broken by a smile, and which gives to the earliest moon-year or two of an infant's life the character of a first old age, to counterpoise that second childhood which there is one chance in a dozen it may reach by and by. The boys had remembered the old man and young father at that tender period of his hard, dry life. There came to him a fair, silver goblet, embossed with classical figures, and bearing ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... it is necessary to encourage trade and industry vigorously and especially speculation, the function of which is to act as a counterpoise to industry.... It is necessary for industry to deplete the land both of laborers and capital, and, through speculation, transfer all the money of the world into our hands, thereby throwing the Gentiles into the ranks of the proletariat. ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein

... old ditty she had loved formerly, when her heart was full of sunshine and happiness, when her fancy used to indulge in the luxury of melancholic musings, as every happy, sensitive, and imaginative girl will do as a counterpoise to her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... regaining his lost influence with the King, recommended a Protestant marriage. He told Henry that Anne, daughter of John III., Duke of Cleves, was greatly extolled for her beauty and good sense, and that by marrying her he would acquire the friendship of the Princes of Germany, in counterpoise to the designs of France and Spain. Henry despatched Hans Holbein to take the lady's portrait, and, being delighted with the picture produced, soon concluded a treaty of marriage, and sent the Lord Admiral Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... having the demerits of aliens-wordiness, vanity, obscurity, shallowness, an empty glitter, the sin of posturing. A quick-witted woman exerting her wit is both a foreigner and potentially a criminal. She is incandescent to a breath of rumour. It accounted for her having detractors; a heavy counterpoise to her enthusiastic friends. It might account for her husband's discontent-the reduction of him to a state of mere masculine antagonism. What is the husband of a vanward woman? He feels himself but a diminished man. The English husband of a voluble woman ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... to whom he is to send his little present of tribute. Of course I feel extremely annoyed and disheartened to have a quarrel of this sort with the man who has the greatest influence in the country. But I must hold out, since my situation is not yet desperate. As something agreeable, in counterpoise, I may mention that Haj Ibrahim, on visiting the Sultan, found His Highness reclining on the carpet-rug which I gave him. His Highness said to the merchant, smiling with satisfaction, "See, this is what The Christian gave me." It is the present ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... Poland, drew forth no remonstrance from England; in itself it did not concern us, and its effect on the balance of power in Europe was regarded with complacency as lowering to France and as an aggrandisement of powers which would act as a counterpoise to the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... property of the Church. He bestowed freedom on slaves after six years of service. Some think he instituted trial by jury. Like Theodosius and Charlemagne, he gave peculiar privileges to the clergy as a counterpoise ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... method of falsifying the balance was by loading the counterpoising weight with lead, and by filing the crosspiece that acts as fulcrum. Another method which might be used with even true steelyards consisted in giving the counterpoise arm a downward tilt, after the abak fiber had been loaded on the other arm. This was usually done on the pretense of picking up the counterpoising weight which had been purposely ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... and those who received him in faith became sensible of this beginning; for the "apocalyptical" was not merely the unveiling of the future, but above all the revelation of God as the Father, and the "eschatological" received its counterpoise in the view of Jesus' work as Saviour, in the assurance of being certainly called to the kingdom, and in the conviction that life and future dominion is hid with God the Lord and preserved for believers by him. Consequently, we are following not only ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... former parties that have stood in counterpoise have fallen to pieces. And we are on the eve, and in the very act, of reconstructing our parties. One movement there is that calls itself American. Oh, that it were or or would be! Never was an opening ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... best wait, sir," shouted the man, as they were drawn up higher and higher, swinging gently like a counterpoise. "You see our weight eases it off like on the boat, and we may get ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn

... three to five in breadth. From whence I cannot but conclude, that our geographers of Europe are in a great error, by supposing nothing but sea between Japan and California; for it was ever my opinion, that there must be a balance of earth to counterpoise the great continent of Tartary; and therefore they ought to correct their maps and charts, by joining this vast tract of land to the northwest parts of America, wherein I shall be ready to ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... Corinne as merely a tedious and not at all brief subject for laughter. One solid claim which it possesses has been, and is still for a moment, definitely postponed; but in another point there is, if not exactly a defence, an immense counterpoise to the faults and follies just mentioned. Corinne to far too great an extent, and Oswald to an extent nearly but not quite fatal, are loaded (affubles, to use the word we borrowed formerly) with a mass of corporal and spiritual wiglomeration (as ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... the conception of the moral law deprives self-love of its influence, and self-conceit of its illusion, it lessens the obstacle to pure practical reason and produces the conception of the superiority of its objective law to the impulses of the sensibility; and thus, by removing the counterpoise, it gives relatively greater weight to the law in the judgement of reason (in the case of a will affected by the aforesaid impulses). Thus the respect for the law is not a motive to morality, but is morality itself subjectively considered as a motive, inasmuch as pure practical reason, by rejecting ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant

... virtue. For I knew that my eloquence would subject the people to me, and make them the willing instruments of all my desires; whereas the Areopagus had in it an authority and a dignity which I could not control. Thus by diminishing the counterpoise our Constitution had settled to moderate the excess of popular power, I augmented my own. But since my death I have been often reproached by the Shades of some of the most virtuous and wisest Athenians, who have fallen ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... table was removed, and Cuthbert having pressed the spring, which was at a distance from the stone and could not be discovered without a knowledge of its existence, the stone turned aside by means of a counterpoise, and a flight of steps was seen. Torches had been prepared. Cnut and a chosen band went first; Cuthbert followed, with Lady Margaret and her attendants; and the rest of the archers brought up the rear, a trusty man being left in charge at last with orders to swing ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty

... as much as is in their power, by their tendency towards the isolation of nations. By this means they render much more decided the differences existing in the conditions of production; they check the self-levelling power of industry, prevent fusion of interests, neutralize the counterpoise, and fence in each nation within its own peculiar ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... of the heart, which is sufficiently cogent and valid to counterpoise that of the mind; and which gives to "faith," or "hope," a firm foothold in the very face of the opposing "resistless" testimony ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... has been here taken, and yet it must needs meet with its fate also, according to the various capacities, tempers and dispositions of the readers (and why not censure if blame-worthy?): Yet it is hoped that the honesty, labour and diligence used therein, will counterpoise all other ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... was by no means lost; a Spartan army, to reach Messenia, whose independence was to be secured, must pass through the territory of Megalopolis, and even a second-rate city would answer as a guard. But not even Epaminondas could make of Arcadia a first-class power, and a sufficient counterpoise to Sparta. Megalopolis is now wholly deserted, and represented only by the little village of Sinanu, half a mile distant, where we stopped at a khan kept by an old soldier of Colocotroni, and ran, while dinner was preparing, to examine ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... plank, laid across a strong beam about ten feet high, with a sufficiently heavyweight at the other end, which balanced him, while he kept time, by the motions of his body and trunk, with the music, as well as the other elephant. The Hindoos, after having fastened on the counterpoise, had drawn the other end of the board down to the ground, and made the elephant get ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.

... proud and swelling resolutions to give battle to the Border robbers, in the style of their ancestors. Ever since the first announcement, they had been drilled by the Captain, whose loud command of voice, proud bearing, bent back (bent in self-defence against the counterpoise of his stomach), and martial strut, filled them with great awe of his power, and great confidence in his abilities. Many hundred people, "on horse and foote," (we use the language of our old chronicle), "were gathered together, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... which no modern skill can wholly counterpoise, are known and felt by the scholar alone. He has not failed, in the sweet and silent studies of his youth, to drink deep at those sacred fountains of all that is just and beautiful in ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... exist without supporting the labourer; the borrower and lender are knit by the closest ties of mutual advantage; and so with all the ranks and divisions of mankind, social, political, economic, or what you will. Balanced, one against the other, in delicate counterpoise, in subtlest interaction of part with part, they sweep on in one majestic system, an equilibrium for ever disturbed, yet ever recovering itself anew, created, it is true, and maintained by countless individual impulses, yet summing up and reflecting all of these in a single, perfect, all-harmonious ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson

... so-called brace-fastening, two little bronze pulleys which supported an iron upright fixed into a level platform, on which stood two angels fastened by their girdles. These angels were kept upright by a counterpoise of lead which they had under their feet, and by another that was under the platform on which they stood; and this also served to make them balanced one with another. The whole was covered with a quantity ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari

... the more assured in recounting Hegel a little freely here,[17] not only for offsetting the Carlylean letter and spirit-cutting it out all and several from the very roots, and below the roots—but to counterpoise, since the late death and deserv'd apotheosis of Darwin, the tenets of the evolutionists. Unspeakably precious as those are to biology, and henceforth indispensable to a right aim and estimate in study, they ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... by a very little more, and moderate labor, a family be maintained upon it with raiment, food and shelter. The luxurious and minute comforts of a city life are not yet to be had without effort disproportionate to their value. But, where there is so great, a counterpoise, cannot these be given up once for all? If the houses are imperfectly built, they can afford immense fires and plenty of covering; if they are small, who cares?—with such fields to roam in. In winter, it may be borne; in summer, is of no consequence. ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller

... he was over the ridge, looking down on Mike, who, instead of hauling in the rope as he came up, had let himself glide down like a counterpoise, and as soon as he saw his companion in safety, he drew himself in a crouching position and stared ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... watching the continual changes of the labour market here and abroad, and suggesting any measure which may be practicable, such as co-ordination and distribution of Government contracts and municipal work, so as to act as a counterpoise to the movement of the ordinary labour market, and it will also, we trust, be able to conduct examinations of schemes of public utility, so that such schemes can, if decided upon by the Government and the Treasury, be ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... force in fact must be an emotional and instinctive one, not a rational and deliberate one; and this must be our next endeavour, to see in what direction the counterpoise ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... had to endure its price and its counterpoise. Dante was alone—except in his visionary world, solitary and companionless. The blind Greek had his throng of listeners; the blind Englishman his home and the voices of his daughters; Shakespeare had his free associates of the stage; Goethe, his correspondents, a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... thought. At one, in a limited sense, with Bergson and William James in their protests against final or static "truth," de Gourmont's writings, when taken as a whole, form a most salutary and valuable counterpoise to the popular and vulgar implications of this modern mysticism. That dangerous and pernicious method of estimating the truth of things according to what James calls somewhere their "cash-value" receives blow after blow from his swift and ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... the air. The difficulty of keeping so great a mass of weighty metal in so volant an attitude, has been admirably overcome by the artist. The sweep of the tail, with the hinder parts of the horse, are interwoven with the curvatures of the expiring snake; and together compose a sufficient counterpoise to the figure ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various

... controversy to which his mind had often returned; and though he carefully disguised his vacillation from others, and, perhaps from himself, he had never been able to come to any precise line of decision on the subject. In fact, his natural sense had acted as a counterpoise to his controversial zeal. He was by no means pleased with the quiet and indifferent manner in which King William's government slurred over the errors of the times, when, far from restoring the Presbyterian kirk to its former supremacy, they passed an act of oblivion even to those who had been ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... brute in that he has the sovereign right to dispose of his person; take away this power of life and death over himself and he becomes the plaything of fate, the slave of other men. Rightly understood, this power of life and death is a sufficient counterpoise for all the ills of life; the same power when conferred upon another, upon his fellow-man, leads to tyranny of every kind. Man has no power whatever unless he has unlimited freedom of action. Suppose that he has been guilty of some ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... political complexion of affairs in the Mediterranean depended greatly upon the presence and readiness of the British fleet, and its efficiency therefore could not be risked, to any serious extent, except for the object of destroying the enemy's naval forces, to which it was then the counterpoise. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... was something of a saint and something of a scholar. Mrs. Woodburn had been born among the people, knew them, their family histories, and failings; was wise, tolerant, and liberal alike in purse and judgment. Her practical capacity made a good counterpoise to the other's benevolence ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... with adroitest skill. Was Caroline sure that it was not most dishonourable—most treacherous—to rob her own earliest friend of the patrimony that would otherwise return to Matilda with Darrell's pardon? This idea became exquisitely painful to the high-spirited Caroline, but it could not counterpoise the conviction of the greater pain she should occasion to the breast that so confided in her faith, if that faith were broken. Step by step the intrigue against the absent one proceeded. Mrs. Lyndsay thoroughly understood ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of counterpoise, there were admirable surprises in man. That cross-play of human tendencies determined from time to time in the forces of unique and irresistible character, "moving all together," pushing the world around it to phenomenal ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... thought that they were following the example of Socrates, (and Cicero appears to have thought so too,) when they reasoned against everything, and laid it down as a system, that against every affirmative position an equal force of negative argument could be brought as a counterpoise: now this view of Socrates is, in my judgment, not only partial, but incorrect. He entertained no such doubts of the powers of the mind to attain certainty. About physics he thought man could know nothing; but respecting ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... and to this, one end of the cord m m is attached. This cord passes back from d to a small pulley at the upper part of the board, and at the tower end of it a tassel, loaded so as to be an exact counterpoise to the card, is attached. By raising the tassel, the plate will of course fall over forward till it is stopped by the part b striking the board, when it will be in a horizontal position. On the other hand, by pulling down the ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... been designed as a counterpoise to the large and flourishing Young Men's Christian Association, which is comprised of earnest and active members of all orthodox denominations. The platform of the former may be determined from the following ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... sworde, Contrive, imagine and fully execute Matters of importe, aimed at by many, Yet understoode by none. For this, hath heaven engendred me of earth, For this, the earth sustaines my bodies weight, And with this wait Ile counterpoise a Crowne, Or with seditions weary all the worlde: For this, from Spaine the stately Catholic Sends Indian golde to coyne me French ecues: For this have I a largesse from the Pope, A pension and a dispensation too: And ...
— Massacre at Paris • Christopher Marlowe

... make a visit in the country, and I thought her wild good-humor would be a counterpoise to the poetry and romance ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... To evil and to good, with even hand Drawing straight justice for the lot of each. But had another held the goad as One in whose heart was guile and greediness, He had not kept the people back from strife. For had I granted, now what pleased the one, Then what their foes devised in counterpoise, Of many a man this state had been bereft. Therefore I showed my might on every side, Turning at bay like wolf ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle

... profound meaning in the answer. The man who has been educated, who not only can read, but has acquired a taste for reading, and for reading of a proper kind, is rarely driven into low and debasing crime. He has resources within himself, which are a counterpoise to the incitements of his animal nature. His awakened intellect and conscience also make him understand more clearly the danger and guilt of a life of crime. Many of the deeds which swell the records of ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... she said, "and yet it would appear to be too selfish in me, too much like to fraud, should I accept all that you offer me, such vast and personal advantage, and for which I bring you no equivalent, no dower, no estate; nothing to counterpoise the wide possessions that you will inherit;—nothing that may conciliate your family, rich in material things and heaped with honors,—save my ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... Irish vote as an anti-British force, then, is undoubtedly overrated in England; but it must be borne in mind that some of the other foreign elements in the population which on many questions may act as a counterpoise to the Irish are not themselves conspicuously friendly to England. If we hear too much of the Irish in America, we hear perhaps too little of some of the other peoples. And the point which I would impress on the ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... dwarf, she had been to him such a cruel step-mother, that he was in evil case indeed if he could find no father to give him fair play and a chance of the endurable. Was he so much to blame if he felt the annihilation offered by such theorists as George, not altogether a satisfactory counterpoise either to its existence or its loss? If, even, he were to fancy in his trouble that the old fable of an elder brother, something more humble than grand handsome George Bascombe and more ready to help his little brothers and sisters, might be true, seeing that an old story is not necessarily ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... conducted upon the above explanation. They provide external agents for what they call the centrifugal force. Some make the sun's rays keep the planets off, without a thought about what would become of our poor eyes if the push of the light which falls on the earth were a counterpoise to all its gravitation. The true explanation cannot be given here, for want ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... are brought into a common stock, and the associates, obtaining corporate privileges, are enabled to prosecute, under one superintending head, their business to better advantage. Nothing can be more essentially democratic or better devised to counterpoise the influence of individual wealth. In Kentucky, almost every manufactory known to me is in the hands of enterprising and self-made men, who have acquired whatever wealth they possess by patient and diligent labor. Comparisons are odious, and but in defence would not be made ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... professional, which was too well for a lady with no object in her singing except to please. But in manner and style, to mention neither beauty nor accomplishments, she would be a decided gain to the family, possessing even in herself a not inconsiderable counterpoise to the title. Then who could tell but this cousin—who seemed to have plenty of money, he parted with it so easily—might be moved by like noble feelings with her own to make a poor countess a rich one. The thing, I say, was settled, so far as ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... complications of European governments, and even by the gravitation of peculiar circumstances and events, has been constituted a separate political factor, a new and vast theater for the development of the human race, which will serve as a counterpoise to the great civilizations of the other hemisphere, and so maintain the equilibrium ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... become chancellor, he had yielded only to Henry's entreaties; he had held his office for two years and a half—and it would have been well for his memory if he had been constant in his refusal—for in his ineffectual struggles against the stream, he had attempted to counterpoise the attack upon the church by destroying the unhappy Protestants. At the close of the session, however, the acts of which we have just described, he felt that he must no longer countenance, by remaining in an office so near ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... stoical morality arose out of the condition of Rome when the scholar and the pious man could do nothing but simply strengthen his knees and back to bear an inevitable burden. He was forced to find some counterpoise for the misery of poverty and persecution, and he found it in the denial of their power to touch him. ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... estate she could not give him. On that at any rate she was fixed. She could not barter herself about from one to the other either as a make-weight or a counterpoise. All his pleading was in vain; all his generosity would fail in securing to him this one reward that he desired. And now she ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... the eternally and perfectly good, is supremely satisfactory to the pure justice of the Father of spirits! Not all the suffering that could be heaped upon the wicked could buy them a moment's respite, so little is their suffering a counterpoise to their wrong; in the working of this law of equivalents, this lex talionis, the suffering of millions of years could not equal the sin of a moment, could not pay off one farthing of the deep debt. But so much more valuable, precious, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... Socialists outside Parliament demonstrated continually in favour of universal, direct and equal suffrage. The claim for universal suffrage was recognized by granting to every male Belgian who had attained the age of twenty-five years the right to vote, but a counterpoise to so democratic a suffrage was sought in the granting of additional votes to electors possessing specified qualifications. A supplementary vote was awarded to every married man who had attained the age of thirty-five years and paid five francs in taxes on his dwelling. An additional ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... "A sort of counterpoise to the opposite weight, in fact, if I may be allowed to call it so. Now, I can sincerely affirm that I know no person, Mr Planner, in whom I could rely so entirely and unreservedly as yourself; and nothing would give me greater ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... the other sphincters of the body, that it is furnished with antagonist muscles, which are the radial fibres of the iris: no sooner does the circular muscle begin to relax, than these fibres, wanting their counterpoise, are forcibly drawn back, and open the pupil to a considerable wideness. But though we were not apprised of this, I believe any one will find, if he opens his eyes and makes an effort to see in a dark place, that a very perceivable pain ensues. And I have heard some ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune(d), here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany), there taxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as in France), afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, corner-stone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world's market, conquered for itself, ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx

... Blue Mountains; and the only road at present known to it, is down a pass so remarkably steep, that unless a better be discovered, the communication between it and the capital by land, will always be difficult and dangerous for waggons. This circumstance is a material counterpoise to its extraordinary fertility, and is the reason why it is at present unoccupied by any but large stockholders. Those parts, however, which are situated near Shoal Haven river, are highly eligible for agricultural purposes; since this river is navigable ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... and the white. Nor deem of any change, as less than vain, If the last bond be not within the new Included, as the quatre in the six. No satisfaction therefore can be paid For what so precious in the balance weighs, That all in counterpoise must kick the beam. Take then no vow at random: ta'en, with faith Preserve it; yet not bent, as Jephthah once, Blindly to execute a rash resolve, Whom better it had suited to exclaim, '1 have done ill,' than to redeem his pledge By doing worse or, not ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... which constitutes the knot, is not improbable, and in its tone harmonizes with the manners which are depicted. Still less am I disposed to agree with La Harpe, when he says that Tullia, to afford a fitting counterpoise to the republican virtues, ought to utter proud and heroic sentiments, like Emilia in Cinna. By what means can a noble youth be more easily seduced than by female tenderness and modesty? It is not, generally speaking, natural that a ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... about to give birth to her first- born. At Mrs. Allen's earnest request old nurse Barton had been engaged, who nursed Mrs. Allen when George came into the world, and loved him like her own child. As a counterpoise, Mrs. Broad, who had desired a nurse from a distance, whom she knew, installed herself with Priscilla. Nurse Barton had a great dislike to Mrs. Broad, although she attended Mr. Broad's ministrations at Tanner's Lane. ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... within the range of the engines, he placed upon their sterns, raising up their prows by throwing upon them an iron grapple, attached to a strong chain, by means of a tolleno which projected from the wall, and overhung them, having a heavy counterpoise of lead which forced back the lever to the ground; then the grapple being suddenly disengaged, the ship falling as it were from the wall, was, by these means, to the utter consternation of the mariners, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... must be admitted, that the chronicler who records the events of an earlier age has some obvious advantages in the store of manuscript materials at his command,—the statements of friends, rivals, and enemies, furnishing a wholesome counterpoise to each other; and also, in the general course of events, as they actually occurred, affording the best commentary on the true motives of the parties. The actor, engaged in the heat of the strife, finds his view bounded by the circle around him and his vision blinded by the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... character, which also it in its turn further strengthened, purified, and called out. And thus, though Latin came in upon us now faster than ever, and in a certain measure also Greek, yet this was not without its redress and counterpoise, in the cotemporaneous unfolding of the more fundamentally popular side of the language. Popular preaching and discussion, the necessity of dealing with truths the most transcendent in a way to be understood not by scholars ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... made some short time since to have an Emigrant's Home as a sort of Model Barrack, erected in one of the New Docks, so as to form a counterpoise to the frauds of emigration lodging-house keepers, but local jealousies defeated a plan which would have been equally advantageous to ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... nice equivalence in weight between passenger and driver difficult to always realize, its use is not likely to supersede that of wheeled vehicles. To take a ride en cacolet, one might have a long hunt before finding a driver who should be his proper counterpoise; and it would be often inconvenient, not to say impracticable, thus to have to order one's driver according ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... my dominions, should laugh and sing;—that good chear and hospitality flourish once more;—and that such weight and influence be put thereby into the hands of the Squirality of my kingdom, as should counterpoise what I perceive my Nobility are now ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... appears. As the argument stands it reminds one of Lowell's remark in relation to this style of criticism: "Scarce one but was satisfied that his ten finger tips were a sufficient key to those astronomic wonders of poise and counterpoise ... in his metres; scarce one but thought he could gauge like an ale-firkin that intuition whose edging shallows may have been sounded, but whose abysses, stretching down amid the sunless roots of Being and ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith

... interviews with this man, who was of a flighty and vainglorious character, and tried to restrain him from any act of open rebellion. Perceiving also that the Macedonian phalanx was grown very strong, and gave itself most insolent airs, he determined to raise up some counterpoise to it, in the shape of a force ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... from brilliant or witty, but who makes charming pictures of all who figure in the book. The good minister consents to receive a number of bright boys as pupil-boarders, and the two families make a suggestive counterpoise, with mutual advantage. Destiny came with the coming of the boys, and the story ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... while eating or writing. Being mounted upon casters, it can be readily moved about from one place to another. At the extremity of a wooden support, whose height may be varied at will, there is arranged a flexible fan whose handle is fixed near a pulley. A small piece of lead forms the counterpoise of the fan, which is thus completely balanced. Over the pulley runs a cord, each end of which is attached to a pedal. It will be seen that the alternate motion of these pedals must cause a rotation of the pulley in one direction or the other, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various

... lived in it as he did." He was perhaps not a man of extraordinary intellect, but his singularly healthy mind, with its union of resoluteness and candor, sound sense and lively fancy, gave the needed counterpoise to his moral qualities, keeping his enterprises within the domain of the useful and the practical, and thus saving him from the disappointments that too often checker the career of the philanthropist. This biography, written from long and intimate knowledge and admirable alike in spirit ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... half belief," said Emerson, "that the person is possible who can counterpoise all other persons. We believe that there may be a man who is a match for events,—one who never found his match,—against whom other men being dashed are broken,—one who can give you any ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... meanness, but without political experience, adroitness and knowledge of men, he aspired to a task which surpassed his strength.' —Ihne. 4-6. By the Sempronian Laws of C. Gracchus 123 B.C. exclusive judicial rights had been given to the Equites, as a counterpoise to the power of the Senate. The corruption of the Equites (as Judices) was flagrant, and Drusus proposed to transfer the judicial functions to a mixed body of 300 Senators and 300 Knights, the selected Knights to be included in the now attenuated ranks of the Senate. ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... from those of the Mekeo plains. There is not among the Mafulu, as there is in Mekeo, a large body of powerful professional sorcerers, who are a source of constant terror to the other people of their own villages, and are yet to a certain extent relied upon and desired by those people as a counterpoise to the powers of sorcerers of other villages; and a Mafulu native, unless prevented by a fear of outside hostility in no way connected with the supernatural, will travel alone outside his own community in a way in which fear of the sorcerers would make a Mekeo native unwilling ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... which bad habits, bad food, and the want of fresh air develop, needs the counterpoise of a fresh excitement—so a German, the opera, or a tragedy, occupies her evening hours. Three or four days in the week, at least, she is up till midnight, and rises just in time to get to school at nine. She never stands in the cool evening ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... that, if there were indeed any thing in it that could justly be complained of, our duty might still be to bear with the local evil, as correcting an opposite extreme in some other quarter of the Island;—as a counterpoise of some weight elsewhere pressing injuriously upon the springs of social order. How deplorable would be the ignorance, how pitiful the pride, that could prevent us from submitting to a partial evil for the sake of a general good! In fine, if a comprehensive survey enjoined no such sacrifice, and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... Villehardouin presents the views of an aristocrat and a diplomatist, the incidents of the same extraordinary adventure can be seen, as they struck a simple soldier, in the record of Robert de Clari, which may serve as a complement and a counterpoise to the chronicle of his more illustrious contemporary. The unfinished Histoire de l'Empereur Henri, which carries on the narrative of events for some years subsequent to those related by Villehardouin, the work of Henri de Valenciennes, is a prose redaction of what had ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... connected with the history of his town. Among his treasures above his bed, was the city executioner's sword, much notched. This sword was six feet long, with a huge handle, to be grasped with two hands, and with an iron ornamented knob as counterpoise at the end ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... it. If the moment has arrived in which this can no longer be done without ruinous disadvantage, then the advantage of the negative must be considered as exhausted, and then comes forward unchanged the effort for the destruction of the enemy's force, which was kept back by a counterpoise, ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... floor, which is made exceptionally strong, and supported upon great beams to bear the weight. The scales used to be hung from a beam overhead, and consisted of an iron bar, at each end of which a square board was slung with ropes—one board to pile up the cheese on, and the other for the counterpoise of weights. These rude and primitive scales are now generally superseded by modern and more accurate instruments, weighing to a much smaller fraction. Stone half-hundredweights and stone quarters were in common use not long since. A cheese-loft, when full, is a noble sight of its ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... to her against the well-known ill-will of the brothers of Bonaparte. She wanted some assurance for the future. She added that her husband was very fond of Louis, and that if she had the good fortune to unite him to her daughter this would be a counterpoise to the calumnies and persecutions of her other brothers-in-law. I answered her that she had concealed her intentions too long from me, and that I had promised my services to the young people, and the more willingly as I knew the favourable ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... provide a protoescapement, has done too much violence to the facts and turned away without good reason from the more simple and reasonable explanation. It is nevertheless still possible to adopt this simple interpretation and yet to have the system as part of a clock. If the left-hand counterpoise, conveniently raised higher than that on the right, is considered as a float fitting into a clepsydra jar, instead of as a simple weight, one would have a very suitable automatic system for turning the angel. On this explanation, the ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price

... steamer was passing through the bridge, came out in dense volumes. As soon, however, as the arch was cleared, the pipe was brought back into its place again by the force of great weights placed at the ends of the levers as a counterpoise. Thus the opening below was closed, and the smoke came out of the top of the pipe ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott

... would be gained. With Russia's cooeperation alone was this possible. Napoleon's present plan, therefore, was to secure France and the French Empire, as far as won, by compelling the world to a lasting peace through the immediate establishment of a counterpoise, the French and Russian empires against Great Britain, leaving time to do its perfect work of exasperating the rising naval power of the United States into open hostility ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... with what awful fear he had deprecated the success of his pursuit, and prayed that the Unpardonable Sin might never be revealed to him. Then ensued that vast intellectual development, which, in its progress, disturbed the counterpoise between his mind and heart. The Idea that possessed his life had operated as a means of education; it had gone on cultivating his powers to the highest point of which they were susceptible; it had raised him from the level of an unlettered laborer to stand on a star-lit eminence, whither ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... balance between parties: so at least those who knew James understood him. He had no intention of allowing Buckingham's fall, as the enemies of that nobleman wished, but he perhaps thought of finding a counterpoise for him: he did not wish to let him become lord and master of affairs. On the other hand Buckingham, by his connexion with the leading men of the Lower House, had already won an independent position, in which he was no longer at the mercy of the King. He may perhaps be set down as the first ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... convinced myself that I had no attack to fear, I lay down, turning myself into a counterpoise as Dost threw down the other end of his rope, and began rapidly ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn



Words linked to "Counterpoise" :   sash weight, oppose, weight, tare



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