"Poise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will let me have some more stories, won't you? I shall count on them. Good-bye again—my warmest congratulations to you both," and he took his departure with a suddenness only saved from precipitation by the deliberate poise of his ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... flaying the air, while he loomed tall and unreal in such an attitude, the broncho hung for a moment in mid-poise, then dropped over sheer—as if ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... then, again revealed, winds through the vale, Shimmering in the early morning sun. A few white clouds float in the blue expanse, Their forms revealed in the clear lake beneath, Which bears upon its breast a bark canoe, Cautiously guided by a sinewy arm. High in the heavens, three eagles proudly poise, Keeping their mountain eyrie still in view, Although their flight has borne them far away. Upon the cliff which beetles o'er the pool, Two Indians, peering from the brink, appear, Clad in the gaudy dress their nature craves— Robes of bright ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... went away along the deck with a monkey-like spring that was curiously characteristic of him. There was nothing of the sailor's steady poise about him. ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... a shining roseate creature. Always beautiful, always exquisite—flawless features, perfect poise, now she pulsated with life. A new brightness glowed in her eyes. Of late across her cheeks color was wont to come and go like the shadow of clouds on a hillside on a windy day. Even her voice, usually steady and controlled, now and again trembled and broke with ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... angry the one who is calling becomes, no matter how profane he may be, no matter what he says, she must not answer back, and she must not slam the receiver down while he is talking. Perfect poise, an even temper, patience, and a pleasant voice under control—if she has these, and a vast number of the telephone girls have, she need not worry about the rules of courtesy. They will take ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... blushing and sensitive person, she was not what is commonly called a diffident girl;—her nerves had that healthy, steady poise which gave her presence of mind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... accounts. They are practically unanimous in praise of the taste and tact with which he acquitted himself. While neither shy nor aggressive, he impressed every one with his brilliance in conversation, his shrewdness in observation, and criticism, and his poise and common sense in his personal relations. One of the best descriptions of him was given by Sir Walter Scott to Lockhart. Scott as a boy of sixteen met Burns at the house of Doctor Adam ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... was recovering her poise. There was something irresistibly steadying in her husband's matter-of-fact statement, and in the sight of her niece sitting back on her heels and looking up at her with lovely, solicitous eyes. Treachery and deceit became meaningless terms in ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... poise and pretence of the girl was stripped from her. She was a ghastly, pitiable sight, as she stood there, her big eyes fixed on Dicky, her breath coming unevenly in ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... a theme which was thoroughly worthy of his powers. In the earlier part of the piece, and indeed indirectly throughout, he has in mind Wordsworth's famous Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, which is to be found in any complete edition of Wordsworth's poems, or in his poise writings, as edited ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... leave their children to sink or swim in this sea of race prejudice. They neither shield nor explain, but thrust them forth grimly into school or street and let them learn as they may from brutal fact. Out of this may come strength, poise, self-dependence, and out of it, too, may come bewilderment, cringing deception, and self-distrust. It is, all said, a brutal, unfair method, and in its way it is as bad as shielding and indulgence. Why not, rather, face the facts and tell the truth? ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... although her spirit does not quail, nor her determination falter for an instant, her vivid fancy conjures up one terrible apprehension after another, till gradually, and most naturally in such a mind once thrown off its poise, the horror rises to frenzy—her imagination realizes its own hideous creations, and she sees her ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... as trustful too, Augustus is, as the babe jest born. But like all noble nachers, Augustus is sensitive, an' he regyards them bats in the nose as insults. As I says, you-all should have seen him! He'd poise himse'f on his toes, erect the horn on his nose, same as one of these yere rhinoceroses of holy writ, an' then the way Augustus hooks an' harasses that offensive sardine box about the camp ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... neither thin nor fat, but beautifully modelled in an oval outline: the lips were clean-cut, with a look of passion in their curves; the nose came down in an aquiline sweep, ending in chiselled nostrils; the chin was firm and cloven, and the poise of the whole head was strangely youthful. It was a face of great generosity and sweetness, set at an angle between defiance and humility, but ecclesiastical from ear to ear and brow to chin; the forehead was slightly compressed at the temples, and beneath the white cap lay white hair. ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... unfathomable serenity, and hair almost as soft and creamy as her shoulders and her finger-tips. Her beauty was not marred to Jim Greely's eyes by the fact that she was chewing gum. Amongst animals the only social poise, the only true self-possession and absence of shyness is shown by the cud-chewing cow. She is diverted from fear and soothed from self-consciousness by having her nervous attention distracted. The smoking man has this release, the knitting woman has it. Girlie and Babe had ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... so sweet and adorable a creature in all her life. The maiden's gown was soft as satin and fell about her in ample folds, while dainty lace-like traceries trimmed the bodice and sleeves. Her flesh was fine and smooth as polished ivory, and her poise ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... Storm, and led him around to show his action, the connoisseurs took on a critical attitude, an attitude of judgment, exhibited not less in the poise of the head and the serious face than in the holding of the cane and the planting of legs wide apart. And the attitude had a refined nonchalance which professional horsemen scarcely ever attain. Storm could not have received more critical ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... British—British from the well-trimmed head of hair beneath his light-grey Homberg hat to the most elegant socks and tan shoes which adorned his feet. His walk was British, his stride the active, elastic, athletic stride of one of our young fellows; and the poise of his head, the erectness of his lithe figure, a symbol of what one is accustomed to in Britons wherever they are met. That one gathered from a mere casual glance; though a second glance—a more penetrating ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... man with the poise of twenty, a strange face of remarkable features, swarthy, of an Eastern cast, perhaps Indian; whatever the certainty of the man's age there was still a lingering suggestion of splendid youth. If one persisted ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... eyes fastened upon a drawing she held in her lap. One could see only vague outlines. The light danced over the figure of the girl, her bright, reddish-gold hair, cut short and held in place with an amber comb, her slender shoulders, the unconsciously graceful poise ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... Presidio Heights, one may see this panorama of the Exposition and catch the symmetry of arrangement in the walls of the palaces, in the graceful lines of the towers and in the impressive contour of the domes. The effect is largely due to the ground plan, distinguished for its balance and poise, which was designed by Mr. Willis Polk ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... distance, his tail is quite as conspicuous as his body; and, so far from appearing a burden, seems to contribute to his lightness and buoyancy. It softens the outline of his movements, and repeats or continues to the eye the ease and poise of his carriage. But, pursued by the hound on a wet, thawy day, it often becomes so heavy and bedraggled as to prove a serious inconvenience, and compels him to take refuge in his den. He is very loath to do this; both ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... had robbed it of its very name; but neither did the other horseman, well known to the people, keen and alive on his well-shaped, slate-coloured beast with a white eye, wear his heart on the sleeve of his English coat. His mind preserved its steady poise as if sheltered in the passionless stability of private and public decencies at home in Europe. He accepted with a like calm the shocking manner in which the Sulaco ladies smothered their faces with pearl powder till they looked like white plaster casts with beautiful living ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... the outskirts of the little city. Kate pulled her pony to a walk and glanced across at him. He had taken off his hat to catch the breeze, and the sun was picking out the golden lights in his curly brown hair. She found herself admiring the sure poise of the head, the flat straight back, the ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... quivers, convulses, and finally rolls over and expires; and only a vigorous leap and a sudden conversion of the fishing-rod into a balancing-pole save me from an ignominious bath. Weary of the world, and lost to shame, I gather all my remaining strength, wind the line about the rod, poise it on high, hurl it out into the deepest and most unobstructed part of the stream, climb up pugnis et calcibus on the back of an old boulder; coax, threaten, cajole, and intimidate my wet boots to come off; dip my handkerchief in the ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... close rate in a modestly priced watch is the balance wheel. This wheel requires careful adjustment for temperature error and for poise. Of these two disturbing factors poise is the most annoying to the owner because lack of it makes the watch a very erratic timekeeper. A watch in which the parts are not poised is subject to a different rate for every ...
— The Auburndale Watch Company - First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch • Edwin A. Battison
... like animals and plants, adapting themselves each to its own place in the universal order, they attain to beauty by force of being fit. That law of adaptation which shapes the wings of a swallow and prescribes the poise and elegance of the branches of trees is the same that demands symmetry in the corn-rick and convexity in the beer-barrel; the same that, exerting itself with matchless precision through the trained senses of haymakers and woodmen, gives the final curve to the handles of their ...
— Progress and History • Various
... loneliness of the place was broken by the appearance of a great steamship, making for the anchorage with a lofty bearing. She was no Diego craft. I knew the sheer, the model, and the poise. I threw out my flag, and directly saw the Stars and Stripes flung to the ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... massive, obstinate-looking, the Lord Nelson plowed aggressively through the seas. With every square sail tugging hard at her sturdy masts, she smote and over-rode the waves, and, beating them down, maintained an unvarying, stubborn poise. But although she refused to vacillate or shuffle to the wooing efforts of the uneasy waters, she progressed not without noise and pother; foamed and fumed mightily at the bow and left behind her a wake, receding ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... to my snows, I charm my glow to crimson—soothe to gray; And when the encircling shadow deeper grows, Poise, a lone cloud, beside the starry way. Then, while my realm is hushed from steep to shore, I yield my grandeur to divine repose, And ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... the Winde: Now swayes it that way, like the selfe-same Sea, Forc'd to retyre by furie of the Winde. Sometime, the Flood preuailes; and than the Winde: Now, one the better: then, another best; Both tugging to be Victors, brest to brest: Yet neither Conqueror, nor Conquered. So is the equall poise of this fell Warre. Heere on this Mole-hill will I sit me downe, To whom God will, there be the Victorie: For Margaret my Queene, and Clifford too Haue chid me from the Battell: Swearing both, They prosper best of all when I am thence. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... therefore, only in the present crisis that the preference is given to Minerva. The power of continence must establish the legitimacy of freedom, the power of self-poise ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... followed, to repeat the punishment, but the others stopped him. In an intoxication of ecstasy at the unexpected adjustment of his mental poise, he struck out again and again, and floored three or four of them before Jenkins ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... with him. At last he turned and came leisurely towards the tent. He paused at the door to speak to the Frenchman, a picturesque, barbaric figure, with flowing robes and great white cloak, the profile of his lean face clean cut against the evening sky, the haughty poise of his head emphasised by the attitude in which he was standing, arrogant, dominating. He moved his hands when he spoke with quick, expressive gestures, but his voice was slow and soft, pitched in a deep musical key, but ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... coming round a dangerous bend, had just missed him; and he stood covered with dust. Chandrapal saw and understood, and then, closing his eyes and making a mighty effort, shook the entanglements from his soul, and sank back swiftly upon the Centre of Poise. ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... "If the women of the United States, with their free schools and all their enlarged liberties, are not superior to women brought up under monarchical forms of government, then there is no good in liberty." It is because of this freedom that Europeans are always struck with the greater self-poise, self-control and independence of American women. These characteristics will be still more marked when we have mingled more with men in their various meetings. It is only by the friction of intellect with intellect that these desirable qualities ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... aside with a curved hand and gracefully separated fingers; it was a staccato movement and her body followed it after an instant's poise of hesitation, head thrust a little forward, eyes inquiring and a tentative smile, although she knew precisely who was there. You would have been aware at once that she was an actress. She entered the room with a little stride and then crossed it quickly, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... lightly as if she scarcely touched the ground, but like a bird rather than a cat. There was nothing in her of the feline grace of which we hear so much. Her movements were all direct and rapid; her feet seemed to skim, not to tread, the ground with an airy poise, which even when she stood still implied movement, always light, untiring, full of energy and impulse. Her eyes were gray—if it is possible to call by the name of the dullest of tints those two globes of light, now dark, now golden, now liquid ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... you are not suspected, and if we follow my program you are likely to walk the world in safety for the rest of your days. If I knew the circumstances I might become nervous and I must retain my poise or we perish. Your autobiography for the past week or so would make a ripping narrative, but you'd better learn to forget. Our yesterdays are as nothing; it's tomorrow we've got to think about. Those Congdons are rather a picturesque lot as I catch them in cinema flashes. It appears ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... part of his naturalness and lack of poise. It showed itself then, and always, in characteristic gestures, a tugging at the tie, the smoothing-down of the hair with the flat of the hand, the furious digging of fists into pockets, a clutching at coat lapels, and a touch ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... by time, and found to be valid for the conduct of life. By such teaching, if they have the heart to heed it, men become wise, learning how to be both brave and gentle, faithful and free; how to renounce superstition and yet retain faith; how to keep a fine poise of reason between the falsehood of extremes; how to accept the joys of life with glee, and endure its ills with patient valor; how to look upon the folly of man and not forget his nobility—in short, how to live cleanly, kindly, ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... model for this Madonna is Andrea del Sarto's abominable wife, but she looks very sweet and simple in the picture. The folds of Mary's garments are beautifully painted, so is the poise of her head, and all the details of the picture except the figure of the child. There is a line of stiffness there and it lacks the softness of many other ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... of ease. The trouble between his parents—which had always been much of a mystery to him—had forced him at a tender age to go out into the world and fight for existence. It had toughened him; it had trained his mind through experience; it had given him poise, persistence, tenacity—those rare mental qualities without which man ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... however, that the worst was behind. They now carefully divided evenly among the boats the little stock of flour, so that, in case of disaster, all of it should not be lost at once. Notwithstanding all the difficulties and the dark outlook, Powell never failed in his wonderful poise of mind and balance of nerve. But he was anxious, and he sang sometimes as they sailed along till the men, he once told me, he believed thought he had gone crazy. Of course the singing was more or less a mask ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... not, brother, Infer as if I thought my sister's state Secure without all doubt or controversy; Yet, where an equal poise of hope and fear 410 Does arbitrate the event, my nature is That I incline to hope rather than fear, And gladly banish squint suspicion. My sister is not so defenceless left As you imagine; she has a hidden ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... had dazed with his rapid-fire display of muscle had regained his poise, and was now again ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... notedly powerful stock on both sides, and having been physically educated from babyhood, Dam, with clean living and constant training, was a very uncommon specimen. There may have been one or two other men in the regiment as well developed, or nearly so; but when poise, rapidity, and skill were taken into account there was no one near him. Captain Chevalier said he was infinitely the quickest heavy-weight boxer he had ever seen—and Captain Chevalier was a pillar of the National Sporting Club and always knew the current professionals personally when ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... full and mellow, and the night air cooled Kate's flaming cheeks. The familiar stars, too, soothed her like the presence of old friends, but, more than anything, the accustomed motion of her horse, as it took its running walk, helped to restore her mental poise. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... had recovered her poise and posture, not to mention proclivities, and, taking to the better foot-hold on the clumps of grass along the bank, a little farther from the bridge, she managed to scamper after both her tormentors. Mary was also in the race, and on ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... while; his morning newspaper he would let lie untouched beside his plate for sufficiently long to check his natural inclination to glance hastily over the headlines of the first page. In everything he tried by self-imposed curbs to teach himself poise and patience and a quiet mind. He had been at it for years. By now he had himself well in hand; though, being exceedingly impetuous by nature, he ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... horse with the easy grace of a man whose life is mostly spent in the saddle. His loose shoulders and powerful frame swayed with that magical rhythm which gives most ease to both horse and rider. His was the seat of a horseman whose poise is the poise of perfect balance rather than the set attitude of ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... friend Kinglake about my mother and Hassan, and received the following letter: 'Can I, my dear Janet, how can I trust myself to speak of your dear mother's beauty in the phase it had reached when first I saw her? The classic form of her features, the noble poise of her head and neck, her stately height, her uncoloured yet pure complexion, caused some of the beholders at first to call her beauty statuesque, and others to call it majestic, some pronouncing it to be even imperious; but she was so intellectual, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... spring, a noiseless tread, A playful poise of the restless head, A sleepy song of sweet content, While slyly on schemes of mischief bent— 'Tis thus the days of my first ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... resistless hand First seized a ship on that contested strand; The same which dead Protesilaus bore,(242) The first that touch'd the unhappy Trojan shore: For this in arms the warring nations stood, And bathed their generous breasts with mutual blood. No room to poise the lance or bend the bow; But hand to hand, and man to man, they grow: Wounded, they wound; and seek each other's hearts With falchions, axes, swords, and shorten'd darts. The falchions ring, shields ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... this particular girl's attraction for him. She was capable and intelligent, too, without sacrificing one whit of her femininity—he was a simple enough male to remark on this; for that matter, he reflected with pride, there was not a woman in the room who was smarter. She had a poise and grace of movement that were a delight to the eye, and she was soignee to the finger-tips. A thoroughbred, he summed her up, and felt pleased with ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... sunlight on his shaggy red-brown hair, and the fine poise of the well-shaped head, as she ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... Achilles the most goodly of men, though you had for your model the most abject you must depend on him, and can depend on him for the structure of the human body, for its movement and poise. The proof of this is that Raphael used his pupils in his studies for the movements of the ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... or disloyalty is full grown, the employer has full on him acute and formidable labor diseases. The man who should stand at his shoulder faces him, instead, with a hostile poise. The mill full of people over whom he holds power, upon whom he depends for his success, and who, in turn, depend upon his initiative and capital for their bread and butter, is turned into an armed camp ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... Where an equal poise of hope and fear Does arbitrate the ——, my nature is That I incline to hope rather than fear, And gladly banish ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... who entered the room a few minutes later. Hers was a dark olive complexion, face of exquisite contour, great brown eyes with a wealth of hair to match them and the flush of a rose in her rounded cheeks. The poise of her girlish figure was gracious and dignified as the bearing ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... have the wagon to-night, and we will sleep underneath. I should love it!" cried Sylvia, clapping her hands and whirling round on the tips of her toes, bowing to an imaginary audience, then giving a sideway skip to show the lightness of her poise. ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... said Maxwell, not at all flattered from his poise by Hilary's apologies. "It's a bore to be interviewed; I know that from the bore it is ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... slope of the whole head; the powerful level brows, and beneath these the dark, deep eyes, so fun of shadowed fire; the Arabian complexion; the sharp-cut, intense lines of the face; the light, tall, erect stature; the quick, axial poise of the movement,—all these traits reveal the ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... first to free himself,—but he was held in the grip of a madman! Then did the turbid current of his blood begin to leap and tingle, and strange half-thoughts darted through his mind like deformed spectres, capering as they flew! The bulwark of his will was overthrown; he could not poise himself long enough to recover his self-sway. He was sliding headlong down a steep, the ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the well-known voice - Not new, not new the words you said. You touched me off that famous poise, That old effect, of neck and head. Dear, was it really you and I? In truth the riddle's ill to read, So many are the deaths we die Before we can ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... her body, a faintly delicious glow responded in her heart,—nothing at first wistful in the serene sense of well-being, stretching her rounded arms skyward in the unaccustomed luxury of a liberty which had become the naively unconscious licence of a child. The poise of sheer health stretched her to tiptoe; then the graceful tension relaxed, and her smooth fingers uncurled, tightened, and fell limp as her arms fell and her superb young figure straightened, confronting ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... not a poor man defending the cause of the poor. There was nothing of the dreamer in his make-up, the eccentric idealist. His big nose and mouth and Henry Clay forehead denied all of this. He sat in self-possession, in poise, clothed in the order of confident reason, unafraid, sure of himself but without vanity, in a wise detachment, on a vantage point of vision. His frock coat, rusty from dust and wear, did not fit him. The sleeves escaped ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... the shortest ejaculation, which, for a while, stills the tumult of passion. Mary's mind had been thrown off its poise; her devotion had been, perhaps, more fervent for some time past; but less regular. She forgot that happiness was not to be found on earth, and built a terrestrial paradise liable to be destroyed by ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Jacques de Wissant, Mayor of Falaise, stood in the morning sunlight, graceful with a proud, instinctive grace of poise and gesture, on a wind-blown path close to the edge of ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... storm, reason reasserted itself in Joyce's mind. It brought no comfort with its restored poise; rather, it brought a realization of her true position. Her life was as utterly shattered and devastated as was the little home. Everything was gone. The future, with pitiful choice, was as densely black as the night that ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... was something about this half veiled slave that stirred his recollection. Where had he seen that graceful poise? The clearness of the skin, though dark; the roundness of the throat and arms. . ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... Bagatelle (trifle) bagatelo. Baggage pakajxo. Bail garantiajxo. Bailiff (legal) jugxa persekutisto. Bait allogajxo. Bake baki. Baker panisto, bakisto. Balance (scales) pesilo. Balance (poise) balanci. Balance of a/c restajxo. Balance-sheet bilanco. Balcony balkono. Bald senhara. Baldness senhareco. Bale pakego. Baleful pereiga. Balk malhelpi. Ball (globe) globo. Ball (playing) pilko. Ball ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... "Principia." When an American author called upon Carlyle he found him in a very peevish mood. Through two hours he listened to this student of heroes and heroism pour forth a savage tirade against all men and things. Never again was the American poet able to associate with Carlyle that fine poise, sanity, and reserve power that belong to the greatest. In his books Carlyle gives his friends, not the peevishness of an evening, but the best moods of all his life, ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... but then there are rifts in the clouds when we behold the glorious deep blue of the sky. Not a day passes but that the birds sing in the branches, and the tree-tops poise backward and forward in restful, rhythmic harmony, and never an hour goes by but that hope bears us up on her wings as the eagle does her young. And ever just before the year dies and the frost ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... seemed happy, Tish," I tried to soothe her. But she refused all consolation, and merely called Hannah and asked for some blackberry cordial. She drank fully half a tumbler full and she recovered her poise by the time Charlie Sands stuck his ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and then to feel whether the bunch of leaves at their back is in place. They were certainly no beauties, but there was a charm in their light, soft step, in the swaying of their hips, in the dainty poise of their slim ankles and feet, and the softness and harmony of all their movements. And the light playing on their dark, velvety, shining bodies increased this charm, until one almost forgot the many defects, the dirt, the sores, the disease. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... frenzied haste with which he presently fell to work, he saw always the light and gracious figure which had come to him along the red clay road. The fervour which had shone suddenly in her eyes, the quiver of her mouth as she turned away, the poise of her head, the gentle, outstretched hand he had repulsed, the delicate curve of her wrist beneath the falling sleeve, the very lace on her bosom fluttering in the still weather as if a light wind were blowing—these things returned to torture him like the delirium ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... sturdy girl of twelve or thirteen, playing at ball with little Ned on the terrace, and coming with tardy steps to her daily task of spinning, had little of the princess about her; and yet when she sat down, and the management of distaff and thread threw her shoulders back, there was something in the poise of her small head and the gesture of her hand that forcibly recalled the Queen. Moreover, all the boys around were at her beck and call, not only Humfrey and poor Antony Babington, but Cavendishes, Pierrepoints, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... distinction and applying it to your daily life, you can at once set to work to acquire mental poise and practical self-mastery, ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... such a man as a sculptor would have loved to behold. Straight as a column he stood two inches over six feet, but of such proportions that seeing him alone, one would never have guessed his height. His head and neck rose above his square shoulders with perfect symmetry and poise. His dark face, tanned now to a bronze, with features clear-cut and strong, was lit by a pair of dark brown eyes, honest, fearless, and glowing with a slumbering fire that men would hesitate to stir to flame. The lines of his mouth told of self-control, and the cut of his chin proclaimed ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... mine of the general Will, Cannot my share in the sum of sources Bend a digit the poise of forces, And ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... for all. Wisdom or virtue is not the monopoly of any class or sex or race. By all the proprieties of nature, woman should have with man a voice in the enactment of laws and the administration of government. She is the complement of man, essential for the due poise, the right wisdom, and conduct in family, in neighborhood, in Church or in State. Sharing in civil government, she will be a redemptive agency for society in many ways little thought at present. And agitation and overturning shall not cease until the final realization is reached. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... a battlefield of conflicting emotions this evening. Just for a moment she had been shaken out of her usual poise, had spoken warmly, as a normal woman might have done; yet both Iris who loved her, and Anstice who had studied her, knew that this warmer manner, this apparent freedom of speech, was in reality the outward sign of some inward disturbance; and both guessed, vaguely, that the meeting ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... accompanied by the sword-bearer and Warden—"Please inform the Sovereign Master that the lines are formed waiting his pleasure." At the approach of the Council the trumpet sounds. M. C.—"Form avenue (the Council pass); the Sovereign Master passes uncovered; recover arms, poise arms!" Sovereign Master—"Attention, Sir Knights; give your attention to the several signs of Masonry; as I do, so do you." [The Sir Knights give the signs from the first to the seventh degree.] S. ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... as good-looking as he had imagined, but she was far younger—she was indeed little more than a girl. Her eyes were of a deep shade of hazel brown, her eyebrows were delicately marked, her features and poise admirable. Yet her skin was entirely colourless. She was as pale as one whose eyes have been closed in death. Her lips, although in no way highly coloured, were like streaks of scarlet blossom upon a marble image. The contrast between her appearance and that of her companion was curiously ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... moment, Mary had grown calm again. The wonted serene, balanced nature had found its habitual poise, and she looked up innocently, though with tears in her large, blue eyes, and said,—"No, mother,—I have nothing that I do not mean to tell you fully. This letter came from James Marvyn; he came here to see ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... frequently urged on grounds of health, since the wear and tear of too intense absorption in any pursuit is apt to wreck the nervous system. I urge it on the ground of mental sanity, since a man cannot maintain his mental poise if he follows the object of his devotion singly, without seeing it in relation to other objects. And I urge it also on the ground of spirituality, for a salient characteristic of spirituality is calmness, ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... something in the poise of the head and the shape of your chest and shoulders, that is like her, and it won't hurt you if I say she was an extremely handsome ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... was the fine poise with which she, Agatha, had held Rodney Lanyon and Harding Powell each by his own thread. Milly had compelled her to spin a stronger thread for Harding and, as it were, to multiply her threads, so as to hold him at all points. And because of this, because of giving more and more time to ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... Holland listened, his eyes hardened, and at the conclusion, something very like an oath ground from his lips. Patty glanced at him in surprise—never before had she seen him out of poise. ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... is like Fletcher's," how the struggle to overcome the difficulty of its novelty 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 Consciousness, ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... opinions are equally under the influence of novelty and restless vanity. The prejudices of the one are counterbalanced by the paradoxes of the other; and folly, 'putting in one scale a weight of ignorance, in that of pride,' might be said to 'smile delighted with the eternal poise.' A sincere and manly spirit of inquiry is neither blinded by example nor dazzled by sudden flashes of light. Nature is always the same, the storehouse of lasting truth, and teeming with inexhaustible variety; and he who looks at her with steady and ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Peter wondered. Couldn't one be happy in this lovable water-city, which had, after all, green ways of shadow and gloom between the peeling brick walls of ancient houses, and, beyond, the broad spaces of the sea? Couldn't one be happy here even if the babies did poise muddy feet on a table-cloth, not, after all, otherwise clean; and even if the poor boarders wouldn't pay their rent and the rich Jews would buy palaces and plaques? Bother the vice of the age, thought Peter, as he crossed the sun-bathed piazza and suddenly ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... handsome, for a Siamese; of medium stature, compact and symmetrical figure, and rather dark complexion. His conversation and deportment denoted the cultivation, delicacy, and graceful poise of an accomplished gentleman; and he delivered his English with a correctness and fluency very noticeably free from the peculiar spasmodic effort that marked his royal brother's exploits ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... build could outlive such assaults, when another equally violent rush succeeded; and in its way toward the starboard quarter threw up a rolling wave thirty feet high, crowned by a blue square mass of many tons, resembling the entire side of a house, which, after hanging for some time in doubtful poise on the ridge, at length fell with a crash into the hollow, in which, as in a cavern, the after-part of the ship seemed embedded. It was, indeed, an awful crisis, rendered more frightful from the mistiness of the night and ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... his natural height diminished, as is often the case with sailors, by a slight bending of the back and stooping of the shoulders; yet he possessed a well-knit, vigorous, and not ungraceful figure, whose careless poise, and the ease with which he maintained his position, with his hands clasped behind his back, in spite of the rather heavy roll and pitch of the ship, in the very strong breeze, indicated long ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... men stood eyeing each other Darrin noted that the young woman's annoyer was somewhat taller than himself, broader of shoulder and deeper of chest. He had the same confidence of athletic poise that Dave himself displayed. In a resort to force, it looked as though the stranger would have the ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... of a second it seemed to poise itself for flight. Then it moved, slowly at first, but gathering speed with every second, until it seemed to be flying like ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... laugh. Drawing strength and courage from one another, they gradually regained their poise—became the same as they used to be. They did not notice this, however, and thought that they had never changed at all. Suddenly Werner interrupted their laughter and ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... mortal suffering, soothed so many dying men who raved of unimaginable horrors, written so many pathetic last letters to mothers and wives and sweethearts, that the first mood of fury and hatred had long since passed. Her mind, normally clear, acute, just, regained its poise. Moreover, those five years preceding the war, during which she had learned to use her gifts for the benefit of her sex instead of for her own amusement and fame, played their ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... dislike; LINCOLN left America more beloved than ever by all the peoples of Europe. Palmerston was self-possessed and adroit in reconciling the conflicting factions of the aristocracy; LINCOLN, frank and ingenuous, knew how to poise himself on the ever-moving opinions of the masses. Palmerston was capable of insolence towards the weak, quick to the sense of honor, not heedful ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... doesn't!" said Margaret, tartly. "She says she's going to be a horse-breaker or a nurse, and all the while she kept making eyes at brother John, and he lost his poise entirely and smirked and blushed, and I shouldn't wonder a bit if he'd made up his mind to marry her, and if he ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... luminous eyes grew suddenly cold, while her head assumed its usual haughty poise; the brief spell was over, and ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... sorely against his grain. His struggle had not been easy. Her surrender to him was as complete and as unselfish as his own acquiescence seemed unmanly and weak. He rose and paced the little room to relieve his feelings. Days and weeks of almost constant dissipation had affected his mental poise quite as disastrously as the strain of the past twenty-four hours had told upon his physical control, and he was shaking nervously. He paused at the sideboard finally and poured ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... emotions, or in the absence of emotions. It is not a hallowed feeling that comes over us in church. It is not something that the preacher has in his voice. It is not in nature, or in poetry, or in music—though in all these there is soothing. It is the mind at leisure from itself. It is the perfect poise of the soul; the absolute adjustment of the inward man to the stress of all outward things; the preparedness against every emergency; the stability of assured convictions; the eternal calm of an invulnerable faith; the repose of a heart set deep in God. It is the ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... but Ironsyde himself appreciated the silence which fell upon her. His speech, indeed, showed lack of sensibility, yet it could hardly be blamed, since only through acceptation of realities might any hopeful action be taken. But the harm was done and the delicate poise of the situation between Abel's parents upset. Sabina said no more, and in the momentary silence that followed she rose and ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... glassy shine of fever. It was beginning to fill out that hollow in her neck, so that it no longer showed the angular ends of her collar bones. It had put a resilient quality into her walk, firmness into the poise of her head. It had made it physically possible, for instance, for Helen May to trudge out into the wild to hunt nine goats that had strayed from the ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... I said, pray, that you should jump to such a conclusion?" She had recovered her breath but not her poise. "No one could admire him more than I. About his private life I know little and care less. He lives on this ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... recks me not; I fear the dread events that dog them both, Lest some ill-greeting touch attempt the person Of our unowned sister. ELD. BRO. I do not, brother, Infer as if I thought my sister's state Secure without all doubt or controversy; Yet, where an equal poise of hope and fear Does arbitrate the event, my nature is That I incline to hope rather than fear, And gladly banish squint suspicion. My sister is not so defenceless left As you imagine; she has a ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... seemed to be the voice of all the strangers in the town. I looked up at her quickly. She was masked; yet the grey eyes seemed to gleam beyond the velvet, much as that woman's eyes had gleamed. Her mouth; her chin; the general poise of her body, all convinced me. She was the woman who had carried away the book from Longshore Jack. I was quite sure of it. I pretended not to understand her. I dropped my eyes, without stopping; she flicked me lightly with her whip ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... youth to go out and seek the world rather than vegetate in the nursery of childhood. It was all there written in his keen, blue eyes, in the set of his jaws of even white teeth. It was all there in the muscular set of his great neck, and in the poise of his handsome head, and in the upright carriage of his breadth of shoulder. Even his walk was a thing to mark him out from his fellows. It was bold, perhaps even there was a suggestion of arrogance in it. But it was only the result of the military ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... of any man, far less his; to whose pleasure and caprice, in return for any good he did me, my whole youth was sacrificed. It became between us two a fair exchange—a barter—and no more; and there is no such balance against me that I need throw in a mawkish forgiveness to poise the scale. He has forbidden all mention of me to you, I know,' he added ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... his voice and to manage it and his manner as to exactly suit himself to his duties as the instructor of the band, while they delivered finished discourses at the night services, many of them masterpieces of mission oratory. Their very poise and glance on the platform stilled the church, and their noble rhetoric clothed appeals to the intelligence and to the heart in most attractive garb. In Father Hecker you saw a man who wanted to persuade you because he was ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... of the outlaws, their fierce distrust of any intruder, the wildness of the country, Buck Johnson and his foreman inclined to the belief that the stranger had undertaken a task beyond the powers of any one man. Again, remembering the stranger's cool grey eye, the poise of his demeanour, the quickness of his movements, and the two guns with tied holsters to permit of easy withdrawal, they were almost persuaded ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... no hint of "raw haste, half-sister to delay," for long since she acquired the habit of serene mastery. She meets her manifold responsibilities with a smile and sings her way through them all. If clouds arise, she banishes them with the magic of her poise and amiability. She can say with Napoleon, "I do not permit myself to become a victim of circumstances; I make circumstances." Back in the school she learned order, system, method, and acquired the sense of responsibility. At first ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... their appearance in the rector's prim study. So the berries hung in their place, left to ripen, and he went on till a great dragon-fly came sailing along the moist lane to pause in the sunny openings, and poise itself in the clear air where its wings vibrated so rapidly that they looked like a patch ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... and La petite Elise. Grey drew back where she could not see her. Blecker peered through his glass at every line and motion, as she came out from the eternal castle in the back scene. Any gnawing power or gift she had had found vent, certainly, now. Every poise and inflection said, "Here I am what I am,—fully what God made me, at last: no more, no less." God had made her an actress. Why, He knows. The Great Spirit of Love says to the toad in your gutter,—"Thou, too, art my servant, in whom, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the soul needs on the nature of man. Wonderfully has Holman Hunt elaborated this truth in his picture "The Light of the World." The ideal humanity never had more beautiful expression than in that great sermon in color. The poise of the figure of Jesus indicates strength and self-control; the thorns on the brow tell their story of sorrow and pain; the hand at the door shows that one man at least is mindful of the welfare of His brother; the radiance on the face and the inspiration in the eyes are the outshining ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... sacrificed men, and even what should have been principles, to gain his ends. By the light of the same knowledge she realized how his meeting with her had disturbed him in his customary calmness of poise, and she argued from this fact how important it had been to him to gain his object of ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... frosty ache of the treatment, as she had borne up under worse things, and contrived as soon as possible to get out of the inharmonious room without being missed. The Scotchman seemed hardly the same Farfrae who had danced with her and walked with her in a delicate poise between love and friendship—that period in the history of a love when alone it can be said to be ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... pausing before a shop window in which an active young man of admirably mobile countenance is holding forth in dumb show. Your progress is slackened as you edge about the throng with the intention of proceeding on your way. As it were, you poise on the wing. Then, like a warming liquor stealing through the veins, the awakening of your interest in the artful antics of this young man makes fainter and fainter your will to proceed on your course, until it dies softly away. What is this ridiculous ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... her hair blowing, and her gilt-laced hat flying from the silken cord that held it to her shoulder. How grandly her black mare bore her—the slight, pale-faced figure sitting the saddle with such perfect grace and poise! ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... at her. "Oh, no, you don't!" he said kindly. "But I see plainly that you're a self-willed young person. Association with me, and the study of my poise, will do a lot for you. By the way, you ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... her age as twenty-eight—no older. Her beauty alone, the purity of her eyes, the freshness of her lips, and the slender girlishness of her figure, might have made him say twenty, but with those things he had found the maturer poise of the woman. It had been a flashlight picture, but one that he was ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky; in the reckless exuberance of spring; in the severe abstinence of grey winter; in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame; in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright; in living; in the exercise of all our powers; in the acquisition of knowledge; in fighting evils; in dying for gains we never can share. Joy is there everywhere; it is superfluous, unnecessary; ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... to meet Mr. Cameron, grandfather." Lily was rather pale, but she had the Cardew poise. "He was in ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... lantern-jawed, frock-coated gentleman of thirty-five, with an upward rolling forelock and an Adam's-apple that throbbed in his throat like a petrified pulse. He was climbing the political ladder, and he was carefully schooling himself into that dignity and poise and appearance of importance which should distinguish the deportment of ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... the apple in meditative indecision. From head to heels he was clothed in the most exquisite white flannel and buckskin tennis clothes, but for all their civilized worldliness he resembled nothing so much as a feeding king of the forest in the poise of his wonderful head and equally wonderful body. I glanced quickly at his face with its gentle, deep, comprehending lines, in positive fear of him, and I found reassurance in the smile that curled his strong red mouth and glinted at me from his brilliant eyes under dull gold. Then, after the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... habitual confusion of the kind spoken of is insanity; and the hypochondriac is tracked by the black dog of his own mind. Disease itself is, of course, in one sense natural, as being the result of natural causes; but if we assume health as the mean representing the normal poise of all the mental facilities, we must be content to call hypochondria subternatural, because the tone of the instrument is lowered, and to designate as supernatural only those ecstasies in which the mind, under intense but not unhealthy ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... admire these monuments the more when we realize that they are not the work of master sculptors but of ordinary paid craftsmen. We turn away praising the city that could produce such noble sculpture and call it mere handicraft, and praising also the calm poise of soul, uncomforted by revealed religion, which could make these monuments common expressions of the bitterest, deepest, most vital emotions which ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Hedda. She was—as you are. Just having friends. And she was as handsome as you are, too. She didn't have your head, your poise. She liked beauty, as you do. But this woman looked forward, as I don't think you do. She saw herself always going down. She saw herself in the end like the helmet-maker's daughter, in some archway of the city, seeking a couple of pence.... And she ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... these demonstrations, and sat for a good while quietly upon the edge of their nest. Then first one, and shortly after the other, flew out, and commenced sailing in circles, at the height of an hundred feet or so above the water. Nothing could be more graceful than their flight. Now they would poise themselves a moment in the air, then turn their bodies as if on a pivot, and glide off in ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... her room close, creaking. How could I sleep? I knew very well what the coming day would bring; I knew why Harry Tempest preferred to drive. I had need of something beside rest, for sleep was impossible; I needed calmness, quiet, enough poise to ask myself a momentous question, and be candidly answered. This quiet was not to be found in my room, I well knew; every bit of its furniture, its drapery, was haunted, and in any hour of emotion the latent ghosts came out upon me in swarms; the quaint mandarins ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... against the cushions with a feeling of greater ease and restfulness. Food had given her strength and under Mary's ministrations her mental poise had steadied. She would not let herself dwell on the question that must before long be settled, Miss Craven would be coming soon, and until she had been and gone no definite settlement could ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... will be of that way of thinking, young woman.—Dick, there's a sort of murderous, viperine suggestion in the poise of the head that I ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... a burst of fire from the base of the tower. The rope and hose parted and precipitated a number who were sliding back to the roof. Others leaped from the colossal torch. In an instant, it seemed, the whole pyre was swathed in flames. As it toppled, the last wretched form was seen to poise and plunge with it ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews |
