"Fluctuate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... responsible for the outcome of unintelligent copy as it would be unjust to blame the soil for bad seed and poor culture. Every advertiser gets exactly the same number of readers from a publisher and the same readers—after that it's up to him—the results fluctuate in accordance with the intelligence and the pulling power of the copy which ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman
... idea nonsense; although, if we are permitted to speak of the harmony of the tones of a cloud, why not of the harmony produced by the consenting lines of a countenance, where every grace melts into another, and the various features and expressions fluctuate into a fine whole? Whatever, whether it be the beauty of the human face, or the quiet lustre of statuary, or the mild glory of moonlight, gives the effects of music, and, like that ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... concerning the Jews fluctuate and vacillate. And amidst these hesitations the thought of a complete removal of all the Jewish disabilities never died. Here is another historical excursion covering a century. The Committee of Jewish Affairs of the year ...
— The Shield • Various
... by the average amount of the note-issue for four weeks preceding. The object of the holding of this amount of specie by the bank which issued the notes was designed by Sir Robert Peel to cause the circulating medium of the country, being partly of notes and partly of specie, to fluctuate in the same manner as if it had been a metallic circulation only. The specie held in Scotland and Ireland against the note-issue is not a special security for the note circulation, but is placed in the banks there ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... influence the style of the fabric, and its selection must be according to the effect intended to be produced.[133] The fashions of the day, and the needs of the special manufacture, must greatly modify the choice of materials, which fluctuate, often disappear, and sometimes ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... most able, active, and zealous partisan of those changes with which the country was at present threatened. The principles of the noble earl were principles by which any man might safely abide; the principles of Mr. Canning fluctuate daily, and depend upon transitory reasons of temporary expediency. These are the conscientious reasons of my resignation." As for the absurd calumny, that he had threatened the king with his resignation unless ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... pigmentary type of feminine beauty. Such variation as exists seemingly involves a somewhat greater degree of darkness for the southern beauty in harmony with the greater racial darkness of the southerner, but the variations fluctuate within a narrow range; the extremely dark type is always excluded, and so it would seem probable is the extremely fair type, for blue eyes have not, on the whole, been considered to form part of the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... not always. For the price of sheep and wool could go down by leaps and bounds, as well as up; the progeny of the ewes bought for 30s. each in 1862 might have to go at 5s. each in 1868, and greasy wool might fluctuate in value as much as 6d. a lb. Two or three bad years would deliver over the poor squatter as bond-slave to some bank, mortgage company or merchant, to whom he had been paying at least 10 per cent. interest, plus 21/2 per cent. commission exacted twice a year, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... question of changes in the appearance of bright stars. It seems pretty certain that more than one per cent of these bodies fluctuate to a greater or less extent in their light. Observations of these fluctuations, in the case of at least the brighter stars, may be carried on without any instrument more expensive than a good opera-glass—in fact, in the ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... resolution was scarcely formed ere it began to fluctuate, when he reflected upon the fittest manner of carrying it into execution. To show himself at a distance, might give the lady an opportunity of turning back and avoiding the interview which he had determined ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... forgive them, as their own worst enemies. They know nothing of the luxury of doing good, and when they are called to make up their last account, they will mourn that they have no investments in those funds that never fluctuate—in that bank "where moth and rust doth not corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal." Let such remember, moreover, that as they brought nothing into world, so they can carry nothing out of it. ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... experiences, just as Binet showed in fetichisms. Now we are forced to the conclusion that there is indeed something congenital at the basis of perversions, but it is something which is congenital in all persons, which as a predisposition may fluctuate in intensity and is brought into prominence by influences of life. We deal here with congenital roots in the constitution of the sexual impulse which in one series of cases develop into real carriers of sexual activity (perverts); while in other ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... with her shabby slippers to the fire. An exquisite spring morning, with wet earth, rising mists, and shafts of pure, warm sunlight, made her sing like the forest birds all about her, but even on the coldest and blackest of winter nights, when the storm made the lamp-light fluctuate alarmingly, and trees creaked over the cabin, she would look up from the piano to say contentedly: "Well, I'd rather be here than anywhere ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... Funds are down nearly to eighty. The Government have given up the income tax and people are very glad of it. I am not. With respect to the funds, if I were to sell out I should not know what to do with the money. J. says they will rise. I do not think they will, they may, however, fluctuate a little.—Keep up your spirits, my heart's dearest, and kiss old ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... of the superstitions of the learned Orient, magic and astrology always remained the hybrid daughters of sacerdotal culture. Their existence {194} was governed by two contrary principles, reason and faith, and they never ceased to fluctuate between these two poles of thought. Both were inspired by a belief in universal sympathy, according to which occult and powerful relations exist between human beings and dead objects, all possessing a mysterious life. The doctrine of sidereal influences, combined ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... Schools fluctuate, you know, and it seems they had scarlet fever about six months ago. That might account for a slight decrease in the numbers: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... hours that followed, Dave's vague plans changed a dozen times as he found each idea unworkable. His emotional balance was also erratic—though that was natural, since the stars were completely berserk in what was left of the sky. He seemed to fluctuate between bitter sureness of doom and a stupidly optimistic belief that something could be done to avert that doom. But whatever his mood, he went on working and scheming furiously. Maybe it was the desperate need to keep himself occupied that drove him, or perhaps it was the ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... 1. The beauty of this simile will be lost to those who have never been at sea during a calm. The water is then not quite motionless, but swells gently in smooth waves, which fluctuate in a balancing motion, until a rising wind gives them a certain determination. Every circumstance of the comparison is just, as well ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... of the West, with an undulating surface, rolling prairies, as they are called, present to the unaccustomed eye a singular spectacle when the shadows of the clouds are passing rapidly over them. The face of the ground seems to fluctuate and toss like billows ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... Piraeus are more attached to a popular government than those who live in the city properly so called; for as the interposition of a rivulet, however small, will occasion the line of the phalanx to fluctuate, so any trifling disagreement will be the cause of seditions; but they will not so soon flow from anything else as from the disagreement between virtue and vice, and next to that between poverty and riches, and so on in order, one cause having ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... discovered in the moon. All at once the shaky speculators abroad, who must have money, begin to sell, below market price, of course, for their need is urgent; one sale is followed by others, prices fluctuate, speculators throw their goods upon the market in terror, the market is disordered, credit shaken, one house after another stops payments, bankruptcy follows bankruptcy, and the discovery is made ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... the sounds of population fail, No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale, No busy steps the grass-grown foot-way tread, For all the bloomy flush of life is fled. All but yon widowed, solitary thing, That feebly bends beside the plashy spring: She, wretched matron, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... a farewell we fluctuate sharply between the very distant and the close and homely: and even in memory the fluctuation occurs, the grander scene casting us back on the modestly nestling, and that, when it has refreshed us, conjuring imagination to embrace the splendour and wonder. But the wrench of an immediate division ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with a sigh. "I shall fluctuate to the end, I suppose; one day better, the next worse. Val, I think sometimes it ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Types having been once introduced, little room was left for improvement, beyond the slight variations in the form of the Letters, which, as a matter of taste, would always be liable to fluctuate: a comparison of works, printed at ...
— The Author's Printing and Publishing Assistant • Frederick Saunders
... the trigger may have been a series of pictures in the mind aroused by printed or spoken words. These pictures fade and are hard to keep steady; their contours and their pulse fluctuate. Gradually the process sets in of knowing what you feel without being entirely certain why you feel it. The fading pictures are displaced by other pictures, and then by names or symbols. But the emotion goes on, capable now of being aroused by the substituted images ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... kept within a certain limit. They are not to fluctuate, as they do in these books of yours. You must get rid of two or three women-servants. There are at least three too many. I am always seeing strange faces about upstairs. One might as well live in a hotel. Think it over, Trimmer, and make up your mind as to which you can best spare, and give ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... interest and a pleasure that did not concord with his appearance. For there was nothing in his appearance to indicate that his intelligence was on a higher plane than that of the mess-room. His appearance seemed to fluctuate between the mess-room and the company promoter's office. He was a good-looking solicitor, he was a good- looking officer; the eyes were attractive; the nose was too large, but it was well-shaped; a heavy military moustache curled over his cheeks, ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... A cyzicene stater twenty-eight silver drachmae of Attic money B.C. 335, in the time of Demosthenes; but, like the daric, this gold coin would fluctuate in value relatively to silver. It contained more grains ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... in one of those difficult situations, in which prepossession, being compelled to fluctuate in uncertainty between several points at once, has no sooner determined and fixed upon one side, than it removes ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... and her sister will bear witness so far as to say that the longer I abstained the higher my spirits were, the keener my enjoyments, till the moment, the direful moment arrived when my pulse began to fluctuate, my heart to palpitate, and such falling abroad as it were of my whole frame, such intolerable restlessness and incipient bewilderment, that in the last of my several attempts to abandon the dire poison I exclaimed in agony, which I now repeat in ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... have said before. Well, if it belongs to me, you might at least permit me to develop it as I would any other possession. I take it as an investment. It will probably fluctuate." ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... an open economy with one of the world's highest incomes per capita and with a sizable annual trade surplus. Its wealth is based on oil and gas output (about 40% of GDP), and the fortunes of the economy fluctuate with the prices of those commodities. Since 1973, the UAE has undergone a profound transformation from an impoverished region of small desert principalities to a modern state with a high standard of living. At present levels of production, crude oil reserves should last for over 100 ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... the state is not the proprietor, either for use or dominion, but the guardian only and the regulator. They have ordained that the provision of this establishment might be as stable as the earth on which it stands, and should not fluctuate with the Euripus of funds ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... pennies to keep soul and body together. And your Southern grandees, before the war, were not compelled to drudge for a subsistence; they had to take little thought for the morrow. Their vast landed estates and black slaves were things that did not fluctuate; under the effective supervision of the viperous slave-driver the black Samson rose before the coming of the sun, and the land, nature's own flower garden and man's inalienable heritage, brought forth golden corn ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... eve, my feelings have greatly changed in intensity, and I fluctuate beneath an emotion of oblivious delight. Alas! we young, weak women, try in vain to obstruct the gurgling of the bosom; for I perceive that even I am not proof against the arrows of the god Diana. My heart has thrilled, ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... age, when an intelligent girl is said to fluctuate between childhood and womanhood. Let me add that these seeming fluctuations depend much on the company she is in: the budding virgin is princess of chameleons; and, to confine ourselves to her two most piquant contrasts, by her mother's ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... of 1865—my spiritual studies underwent an entire change—they were studies—serious studies. I now kept a careful journal of all communications, which journal I continued for three years, so that I can trace all my fluctuations of opinion—for I did fluctuate—during that period. Now, too, it was necessary for me to consult those who had already gone deeply into the subject; and the record of my experiences would be both imperfect and ungracious if I did not here acknowledge the prompt kindness of the two gentlemen to whom I applied—Mr. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... alternation &c. (oscillation) 314. restlessness &x. adj. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c. 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers[obs3]; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c. 111[obs3]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, shake, totter, tremble, vacillate, wamble[obs3], turn and turn about, ring the changes; sway to and fro, shift to and fro; change and change about; waffle, blow with the wind (irresolute) 605; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... by those corpse-lights, or will-o'-the-wisps, called expectations. Ever since the Squire's grandfather had left him—then in short clothes—a legacy of L500, the Captain had peopled the future with expectations! He talked of his expectations as a man talks of shares in a Tontine; they might fluctuate a little—be now up and now down—but it was morally impossible, if he lived on, but that he should be a millionaire one of these days. Now, though Miss Jemima was a good fifteen years younger than himself, yet she always stood for a good round sum in the ghostly books of the Captain. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... knew it to be he, to separate him from his dress; and tried to call him, I remember, PILOT. After another interval of total unconsciousness, I found he had gone, and recognised another figure in its place. It seemed to wave and fluctuate before me as though I saw it reflected in an unsteady looking-glass; but I knew it for the captain; and such was the cheerful influence of his face, that I tried to smile: yes, even then I tried to smile. ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... third method can be used to solve this important problem. My plan is this: It is well known that many variable stars, such as Algol, [sigma] Librae, U Coronae, and the remarkable variable D.M. 1.3408, discovered by Mr. E.F. Sawyer, fluctuate at regular intervals. Now, I believe it is possible to determine very accurately the intervals between these changes, and, by noting the change of time in these intervals, when the earth is in different points of its ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... fluctuate between the peril of sensuous pleasure and the proof of wholesomeness, and am more inclined (though I would not offer an irrevocable judgement) to approve of the use of singing in the Church, that, by the ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... of drawing the food to him. Instead, he reached persistently with his arm, pulled and gnawed at the wires which were in his way, and occasionally picked up and gnawed or pounded with the sticks in the cage. His attention every now and then would come back to the food, but it tended to fluctuate rather rapidly, and in the regular period of observation, thirty minutes, it is unlikely that he attended to the bait itself for as much as five minutes. In this respect as well as many others, Skirrl's behavior contrasts sharply with that ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... certainty was better than doubt. The love of truth and the consciousness of that certainty would raise me above hatred and slander. I should then have some kind of principle by which to regulate my conduct; I should then know on what foundation to build. To fluctuate, to waver, to postpone inquiry, was more criminal than any kind of opinion candidly investigated and firmly adopted, and would more effectually debar me from happiness. At my age, with my talents and inducements, it was sordid, it ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... fluctuate! Now Homer knows in practice none but light round bucklers, dating from about 700 B.C.; again, he does not know them at all, though they were habitually used in the period at which the later parts of his Epic were ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... appear as a hot, painful swelling. If superficial, the skin feels tense and the contents fluctuate when pressed on. Later the fever subsides and no pain may occur when the abscess is pressed upon. Deep ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... price will be determined largely by the cost of production and transportation. If events or circumstances operate to increase or curtail either the sugar supply or the number of buyers, and such events or circumstances follow one after the other alternately, the price will fluctuate. ...
— About sugar buying for Jobbers - How you can lessen business risks by trading in refined sugar futures • B. W. Dyer
... waters play a painter's part in setting their splendid subject free. Two movements shake but do not scatter the still night: the bright flashing of constellations in the deep Weir-pool, and the dark flashes of the vague bats flying. The stars in the stream fluctuate with an alien motion. Reversed, estranged, isolated, every shape of large stars escapes and returns, escapes and returns. Fitful in the steady night, those constellations, so few, so whole, and so remote, have a suddenness ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell |
