"Poise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nature, and quickly recovered her poise. When she arrived at home she sent the nurse to Charles Town on an errand, then went directly to her bedroom, which was disconnected from the other rooms, and called her three devoted maids, Rebecca, Flora, and Esther. They came running at the sound of her voice, and she saw at once ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... The intense individuality of her nature set her apart from others. You felt that from the womb she must have been just what she was—a piece of the original granite on which the nation was built.... The force, the courage, the self-poise she exhibited in the ordinary concerns of our peaceful life would in a masculine frame have made, in times of national peril, a patriot of the most decided and energetic character—one able and willing to believe all things possible, and to make all ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... putting out a hand every now 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. This pleasant walk ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... rainbow hung over the city with all its shops,...and churches, from north to south, like a bridge of congregated lightning pieced by the masonry of heaven—like a balance in which the angel that distributes the coming hour was weighing that heavy one whose poise is now felt in the lightest hearts, before it bows the proudest heads under the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... And the poise of the man! When he lay stretched out beside me on the grass while I worked—an old bivouac attitude—he kept still; no twitching of legs or stretching of arms—lay as a big hound does, whose blood and breeding ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and had realised all Lady Kirkbank's expectations. The Society papers were unanimous in pronouncing Lord Maulevrier's sister the prettiest debutante of the season. They praised her classical features, the admirable poise of her head, her peerless complexion. They described her dress at the drawing-room; they described her 'frocks' in the Park and at Sandown. They expatiated on the impression she had made at great assemblies. They hinted at even Royal admiration. All this, frivolous fribble though it might ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... happened—what had been happening all the time a tall, shabby "foreigner" had lived in her dingy back sitting-room, and been closely watched lest he should go away without paying his rent, as shabby foreigners sometimes did. The Rat saw himself managing to poise himself very erect on his crutches while he told her that the shabby foreigner was—well, was at least the friend of a King, and had given him his crown—and would be made a prince and a Commander-in-Chief—and a Prime Minister—because ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... first judgment. In not many moments he had decided that her key-note was joy. But he was dissatisfied with both conclusions, and knew he had not put his finger on her. And then it came to him—pride. That was it! It was in her eye, in the poise of her head, in the curling tendrils of her hair, in her sensitive nostrils, in the mobile lips, in the very pitch and angle of the rounded chin, in her hands, small, muscular and veined, that he knew at sight to be the hard-worked hands of one who had spent long hours at the piano. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... young woman of white face and slender, stately figure. It was no time to note dress, yet I could not fail to observe the flowing white robe, draped from shoulders to feet, gracefully falling away from an extended arm, as she stood thus in regal poise looking down upon us. There was a suggestion of despotic power in both face and posture, and the ring of stern authority spoke in ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... you 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 don't understand," ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... appeal to her compassion, and for a moment it nearly unsettled the delicate poise of her sympathies, and sent them trembling in the direction of scorn and irony. Buteven as the impulse rose, it was stayed by another sensation. Once again, as so often in the past, she became aware of a fact which, in his absence, she always failed to reckon with—the fact of thedeep ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... me all this with simplicity. My voice had destroyed her poise—the suicide poise of her mind. Every act of ours, the most criminal, the most mad, presupposes a balance of thought, feeling and will, like a correct attitude for an effective stroke in a game. And I had destroyed it. She was no longer in proper form for the act. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... other's hands, Nina walked up and down outside on the Embankment, in the rain. She had said that she was more like a man than a woman; and with her stride that gave her garments recklessly to the rain, with her impetuous poise, and hooded, hungry eyes, she had the look of some lean and vehement adolescent, driven there by ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... admiration and reverence for her father, Mrs. Hopkins was in full sympathy with her. She lacked, indeed, that poetic fancy which belonged to the author of "Phantasmion;" nor did she possess her mental self-poise and firmness of will; but in other respects, even in physical organization and certain features of countenance, they were singularly alike. And they both died in the ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... another formed so fit, To poise, with solid sense, a sprightly wit? Were these both wanting, as they both abound, Where could ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... the circus to hear clowns, and see rare feats of horsemanship; but a bird may poise beneath the very sun, or flying downward, swoop from the high heaven; then flit with graceful ease hither and thither, pouring liquid song as if it were a perennial fountain of sound—no ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... nobility—hardening all her faults, and hammering the rivets of her strong self-will. To these little difficulties must be added the difference of religion; and though neither of them cared two pins for that, it was a matter for crossed daggers. A pound of feathers weighs as much as (and in some poise more than) a pound of lead, and the leaden-headed Squire and the feather-headed Madame swung always at opposite ends of the beam, until it broke between them. Tales of rough conflict, imprisonment, starvation, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... 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 rattle, axes sound, Swords flash in air, or glitter ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... down for a little on the churchyard wall, and watched the water-grasses trail and the fish poise. In that sweet corner of the churchyard, at a certain season of the year, grow white violets; they had dropped their blooms long ago; but they were just as much alive as when they were speaking aloud to the world ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... whose poise, if shaken at all, had returned, "certainly, you are right. It is not of my seeking, nor shall I be the one to keep it up. I am willing to let it pass. It is but a small matter ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... the beautiful women that I have seen in years, Jewish or Christian, there's not one can compare with Leah Mordecai—such hair and such eyes are seldom given to woman. Helen says that her hair measures four feet in length! What a queenly poise to that elegant head! ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... hat, which she had been carrying in her hand. I stood watching her deft white fingers flashing amongst the thick silky coils of her hair. The extreme slimness of her figure seemed accentuated by her backward poise. Yet perhaps I had never before properly ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... talking, Ruth's eyes rested with pleasure upon her hostess. She herself was tall, but Miss Ainslie towered above her. She was a woman of poise and magnificent bearing, and she had the composure which comes to some as a right and to others with long ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... recovered her poise, and she introduced the other girls by name. "I wrote the note, because ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... was the property of Mr. Bates. Standing near the side, he had observed Rex and Fair bring up a great pig of iron, erst used as part of the ballast of the brig, and poise it on the rail. Their intention was but too evident; and honest Bates, like a faithful watch-dog, barked to warn his master. Bloodthirsty Cheshire caught him by the throat, and Frere, unheeding, ran the boat alongside, under the very nose of the revengeful Rex. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... tall, stalwart man whose face was full of the serenity that comes from breadth and poise, but whose mind, as she herself knew well enough, was too habituated to the broad treatment of big matters to have any aptitude for repartee and chatter. She liked to disconcert him, and it was usually an easy thing to do. "And I wish, ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... Daughter regained her adolescent poise, which was considerable. "Well, he's still in there," she said. "I just tried the ...
— What's He Doing in There? • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... "always, my friend, you undervalue a little the English race. You undervalue their intelligence, their patriotism, their poise towards the serious matters of life. I know nothing of Mr. Francis Norgate save what I saw this morning. He is one of that type of Englishmen, clean-bred, well-born, full of reserve, taciturn, yet, I would swear, honourable. I know the type, and I do not ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... opinion, from such opportunities to observe and compare as my constant travel has given me, that the quiet work of this gracious woman of the old school, with her dignity that nothing ever invaded and her poise that nothing ever disturbed, is perhaps the most powerful single influence that has come into the lives of the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... dresser where it could easily be seen. As he stole quietly down the long hall, in an attempt not to awaken the household, he came suddenly upon Mademoiselle Ivanovitch seated in a chair drawn into a windowed recess. She started as he came upon her, but instantly recovered her calm poise of the ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... became still more darkly congested. Implacable prejudice glinted in his small eyes. Nor was his temper softened by the effrontery of this offender in giving back look for look with a calm poise that overshadowed his arrogance of ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... what rest she might, he left her, and she, following his straight, lank figure—so eloquent of strength—and the familiar poise of his left hand upon the pummel of his sword, felt proud indeed that he belonged to her, and secure in his protection. She sat herself at the window when he was gone, and whilst she awaited his return, she hummed a gay measure softly to herself. Her eyes were bright, ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... delicate little hands that he has, and the proud, dainty poise of his head. He is evidently in disguise; and what is equally plain, he does not relish our attempts at penetrating his identity." Upon the crest of a round hill, the guide stayed ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... regained her poise of mind and remembered that she had been at the point of writing a letter to her mother (to be mailed by the first vessel bound to a port) ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... 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 excitement, is snatched sometimes above itself, as in poets ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... 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 ...
— The Auburndale Watch Company - First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch • Edwin A. Battison
... priest, valet and maid. I saw the station-master bow them into the carriage, and stand, bareheaded, beside the door. I could not distinguish their faces; the platform was too dusk, and the glare from the engine fire too strong; but I recognised her stately figure, and the poise of her head. Had I not been told who she was, I should have known her by those traits alone. Then the guard's whistle shrilled out, and the station-master made his last bow; I turned the ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... black with the sparkle of passementerie and jet, and at her breast she wore a single red rose. As she stood for a moment on the threshold, despite the majesty of her slender poise it appeared to Blanco that her grace was rather that of something wild and free and that the Palace seemed to cage her. But that may have been because, as she paused, her hands went to her breast and a furrow came between her brows, while ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... gloom and despair, the new conditions of the rough country—even the irony of a fate that had set her at hard, uncongenial toil in the very place where she had sought culture. But she succeeded, and had not only held her own poise in the struggle, but had managed to permeate the family life with something ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... girls in reserve for such explosive occasions, and when the hands of any operator are seen to tremble, and she has a warning red spot on each cheek, she is taken off and given a recess until she recovers her poise. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... a rude land where life among the boys is One long glad round of cards and coffin juice, And any sort of intellectual poise is The constant butt of well-expressed abuse, And it is no disgrace To put a ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... sliding doors, guarded on their farther side by one of the amateur deputies he had impressed into service, Kennedy swung the stand of the arc he had used back into the place unaided. I noticed that Doctor Blake was nervously interested in spite of his professional poise. I certainly was bursting with curiosity to ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... and is apt to lose her keys when she is in the biggest hurry. She is also apt to lose her temper, and feels worse over this than she does when she loses her keys. She has to argue over prices; to fuss over the quality of charcoal consumed. She has to keep her poise when, after ordering something especially nice for dinner, the cook proudly passes around something quite different and not at all nice. She dare not even visit her own cook-house without coughing and making a noise, for fear that she will have a case of discipline on hands that may ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... has been made in the image of God, her poise should be erect and fearless. Nature bestowed the ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... up to the entrance porch, a woman came out of the house, and instantly the big, appraising eyes of the little newcomer felt that here was a type unknown to her. She was slender, not very tall, but with a poise and dignity of manner that compelled attention. Her eyes were gray; her lashes, brows and hair quite dark. There was a serenity and repose of manner about her—the Madonna expression of gentleness—but with ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... by them—as the miner lights Upon a vein of virgin ore, discovering That which avails him nothing: he hath found it, But 'tis not his—but some superior's, who Placed him to dig, but not divide the wealth Which sparkles at his feet; nor dare he lift Nor poise it, but must grovel on, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... impression of remarkable beauty and cosmopolitan culture as at first. There was a refined, easy poise in her bearing. Indeed he almost fancied that, to her mind, coming to Charleston was a sort of condescension, she had visited so many famous cities in the world. She greeted him cordially, and to a vain man her brilliant eyes would have expressed ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... a mental balance, but this was one of the exceptions to a rule of conduct where poise was essential. His eyes half-closed in their clash with the coldly antagonistic orbs of his host. His instinctive dislike of the man flamed into open anger and he ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... must have heard, for she turned slowly about and gazed at Olivetta—gazed at her steadily. And gradually, as she gazed, her whole appearance changed. The consternation on her face was succeeded by calm resolution. Poise and dignity returned. ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... attacked from an unexpected quarter, was thrown still more out of mental poise. "I never said he was one," she declared, wildly. "I only just said there was a—a—I don't know what I said. Anyhow I never said it, 'twas my control talkin'. I'll leave it to 'Phelia Beebe. You know I don't know what ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the fine poise of the man—the entire absence of "nerves," as often shown in the savage—seemed to carry out the idea that his was a peculiar pedigree. In his youth, when his hair was as black as the raven's wing and coarse as a horse-tail, and his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... had said, three warriors were in the canoe, two holding their rifles at a poise, as they knelt in readiness to aim the deadly weapons, and the other standing erect in the stern to wield the paddle. In this manner they left the shore, having had the precaution to haul the canoe, previously to entering ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... which thrust a narrow triangular strip in toward the town. At intervals they heard shouts, far deeper in. The Great Dane was in his highest form, after weeks of care and training by Bhanah. He could well carry his poise in a walk like this; having his full exercise night and morning. A marvel thing, like nothing else—this dignity of Nels. . . . The two neared their own magic place—not the monkey glen; that was deeper in the jungle—the place where they had really found each other as belonging, ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... river swiftly. He earned for himself in those days the name of "Dragon-fly," or its native equivalent, and the illustration was apt, for it seemed that the Zaire would poise, buzzing angrily, then dart off in unexpected directions, and the spirit of complacency which had settled upon the land gave place to one of apprehension, which, in the old days, followed the arrival of Sanders in a ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... helped both to a more perfect work and to a truer life. She gave poise and purpose to the "versatile, high-strung, somewhat wayward nature" of her husband, and she "restrained, raised, ennobled, and purified" his life and thought. He stimulated and directed her genius life into its true channel, cared for her business interests with untiring faithfulness, made it ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... frame, One gentle murmur from the tiny throat. The wife more bold, yet pausing oft to scan Her lord, adventurous strayed with timid steps, Unconscious all of aught to mar their joys. Just then with steady poise on outstretched wing A hungry falcon hovered over her, Resolved with one fell swoop to seize his prey, His talons bury in her tender flesh, Lift her away to some sequestered spot, There drink her blood in leisure undisturbed, And break her bones and her torn flesh ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... graceful exercise," he said, "and like the use of arms, it greatly improves the carriage and poise of the figure. Queen Elizabeth loves dancing, and none can say that she is not a good Protestant. Every youth should be taught to dance, if only he may know how to walk. I am not one of those who think that, because a man is a good Christian, he should necessarily ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... the actual material of these figures is marble, its coolness and massiveness suiting the growing severity of Greek thought, yet they have their reminiscences of work in bronze, in a certain slimness and tenuity, a certain dainty lightness of poise in their grouping, which [264] remains in the memory as a peculiar note of their style; the possibility of such easy and graceful balancing being one of the privileges or opportunities of statuary in cast metal, of that hollow casting in which ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... man at the helm—a long, thin, weedy-looking figure, so far as I could make out in the ghostly starlight, but one who had evidently used the sea for some time, if one might judge by the easy, floating poise of his figure on the plunging deck as he stood on the weather side of the tiller, with the tiller rope lightly grasped in his right hand, swaying rhythmically to the leaps and plunges of the little hooker. As Dominguez followed me out ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... he stood motionless, forgetting his locket but not forgetting to stare. Sarah, with her hands full of forks and spoons, began placing the silver in orderly array upon the table. She paid no heed to the lawyer, who gradually recovered his poise and watched her with newly awakened interest. Once or twice he opened his mouth to speak, and then decided not to. He was bewildered, perplexed, suspicious. In thought he began to review the manner of Sarah's coming to them, and her subsequent actions. She seemed a capable servant. Mrs. ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... men in Congress come to blows at something someone said, I always notice that it shows their blood is quick and red; But if two women disagree, with very little noise, It proves, and this seems strange to me, that women have no poise. ...
— Are Women People? • Alice Duer Miller
... him profoundly, and loved him dearly. I have often heard him speak at gatherings of old soldiers and on a variety of occasions; sometimes those of turbulence. I have marveled at his self-poise and reserved power. Never once did I hear him say ill of any man, nor allude to his own sufferings or deeds, nor utter words of bitterness. He took his lot as it came to him, as a man who does the best he can and leaves the rest to the Disposer of events. His conscience and his human sympathy, like ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... Saxon habiliments. It was like the creation of a man from a lay figure. The jerk at the kilt-belt buckle somehow seemed to brace the sluggish spirit; his shoulders found their old square set above a well-curved back; his feet—his knees—by an instinct took a graceful poise they had never learned in the mean immersement of breeches and Linlithgow boots. As he fastened his buckled brogues, he hummed the words ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... some time in the sixteenth century, and had established itself in western Sussex, where the Manor House of Hurlstone is perhaps the oldest inhabited building in the county. Something of his birth place seemed to cling to the man, and I never looked at his pale, keen face or the poise of his head without associating him with gray archways and mullioned windows and all the venerable wreckage of a feudal keep. Once or twice we drifted into talk, and I can remember that more than once he expressed ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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, calmly, open-eyed and unafraid in a sane world, ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... stood up to the plate! None except a natural hitter could have had his position. He might have been Wagner for all he showed of the tight suspense of that crisis. Yet there was a tense alert poise to his head and shoulders which proved he was ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... voice, the poise of her figure, the gesture with outstretched arms—it was all so nearly an invitation, so nearly a surrender of herself to him, that the man started forward impulsively. For the moment he forgot his work—he forgot everything—he was conscious only of the woman who stood before ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... form for throwing is with the left foot forward, the leg perfectly straight, body well back, its weight resting on the right leg. Now extend the left arm forward, in a line with the shoulder, and over the left leg; poise the spear horizontally in the right hand, holding at the centre of gravity by the forefinger and thumb. Bring the right arm backward until the hand ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... a strange pent stillness like the poise of earth and sky and beast and bird just before the breaking of a great and lowering storm. The quick clatter of the ducks' wings somehow alarmed me—the staring of the children, their eyes directed past us, sharpened my senses for a new focus. And glancing, I ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... of their streaming hair And, naked and bare, To feel the stress and the strain Of the wind and the reeling main, Whose roar Would remind them for evermore Of their native forest they should not see again. And everywhere The slender, graceful spars Poise aloft in the air, And at the mast head, White, blue, and red, A flag unrolls the stripes and stars, Ah! when the wanderer, lonely, friendless, In foreign harbours shall behold That flag unrolled, 'Twill be as a friendly hand ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... increasing his speed now, slowing then, and getting more and more over with far less effort, and giving us no end of encouragement, as he at length reached the rocks, tumbled the load off his head—the load which had never seemed once to lose its poise—and finally we could see him seated facing us wiping his hot face with the front ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... as we know, and as all truly superior minds have them, even though their main superiority happens to be in the practical order. But her visions were limited as a landscape set in a rigid frame; they had not the wings that soar and poise in the vague unbounded empyrean. And she was much too sensible to think that these moods were strong, or constant, or absorbing enough in her case to furnish material and companionship for a life from day to day and ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... oblivious of its advance—as the whale sometimes will—and Ahab was fairly within the smoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale's spout, curled round his great, Monadnock rump; he was even thus close to him; when, with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as if sucked into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed; spasmodically rolled his nigh flank against ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... much hope. He conceded the boyish cowpuncher a beautiful trim figure, with breadth of shoulder, grace of poise, and long, flowing muscles that rippled under the healthy skin like those of a panther in motion. But these would serve him little unless he was an experienced boxer. Harrison had tremendous strength and power; moreover, he knew the game from ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... true self-government. It involves the grace of self-denial and the spirit of a sound mind. It is that poise of spirit that holds us quiet, self-possessed, recollected, deliberate, and subject ever to the voice of God and the conviction of duty in every step we take. Many persons have not that poise and recollected spirit. They are drifting at the impulse of their own impressions, ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... away towards the door of an inner room. As he did so, there struck me something strangely familiar in his gait and figure. Conceal it as he might, there was still the stiff wooden movement of a Prussian general beneath his assumed swagger. The poise of his head still seemed to suggest the pointed helmet of the Prussian. I could without effort imagine a military cloak about his shoulders instead of ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... humanized him—the development of society into a infinitely various school of discipline and ordered skill. He has been made more human by schooling, by growing more self-possessed—less violent, less tumultuous; holding himself in hand, and moving always with a certain poise of spirit; not forever clapping his hand to the hilt of his sword, but preferring, rather, to play with a subtler skill upon the springs of action. This is our conception of the truly human man: a man in whom there is a just ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... 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
... "but the detail is not pursued to so remote an extremity in the Classic. The delicate poise of the analogy is what is chiefly dwelt upon, the sign for a needle harmonizing with that for official, and there being a similar ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... 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 in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... There was hesitation in the brown old man's feet, there was doubt upon his wrinkled brow, but there was the consciousness of duty in the poise of his shoulders, there ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... join Satyrs, and the throng of Pans mingles with the Spectres and battles with fierce visage. The Swart ones meet the Woodland Spirits, and the pestilent phantoms strive to share the path with the Witches. Furies poise themselves on the leap, and on them huddle the Phantoms, whom Foreboder (Fantua) joined to the Flatnoses (Satyrs), jostles. The path that the footfarer must tread brims with horror. It were safer to burden the back of the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... around, approached his chair and touched him on the shoulder. In his evening clothes the newcomer was no longer obtrusively American. He was dressed in severely English fashion, from the cut of his white waistcoat to the admirable poise of his white tie. He smiled as he patted Coulson upon ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... him, her gaze probing some unguessed abyss of thought. Kirkwood felt himself privileged to stare in wonder. Her naive aloofness of poise gripped his imagination powerfully,—the more so, perhaps, since it seemed eloquent of her intention to remain enigmatic,—but by no means more powerfully than the unaided appeal ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... with invitations to go), we found she had been there, but had been forwarded elsewhere. For weeks she was tossed about like this; then we traced her, and found her. But she was thoroughly cowed, and dared not show the least interest in us. It is often like that. Just at the point where the soul-poise is so delicate that the lightest touch affects it, something, someone, pushes it roughly, and it trembles a moment, then falls—on the ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... outran My halting footsteps seek and find— The flawless symmetry of man, The poise ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... with the coffee, and I once more praised the elegant poise of the neck, the extremely low-coiled mass of heavy hair, and the eyes that followed one, like those ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... a paralyzing affront to her consciousness of reverence by some strange, irresistible twist of thought wherein she saw this Bishop as a man. And the train of thought hurdled the rising, crying protests of that other self whose poise she had lost. It was not her Bishop who eyed her in curious measurement. It was a man who tramped into her presence without removing his hat, who had no greeting for her, who had no semblance of courtesy. In looks, as in action, he made her think of a bull stamping ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... "skips" and "manways" and "raises", which meant nothing to the man who yet must master them all, if he were to follow his ambition. Some ate with their knives, meeting the food halfway from their plates; some acted and spoke in a manner revealing a college education and the poise that it gives. But all were as one, all talking together; the operator no more enthusiastic than the man whose sole recompense was the five dollars a day he received for drilling powder holes; all happy, all optimistic, all engrossed in the hopes and ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... the dumb brutes; took Buffalo Bill, and all his scouts; took the garrison—to the last man; and in forty-eight hours the Indian encampment was hers, illustrious old Thunder-Bird and all. Do I seem to have lost my solemnity, my gravity, my poise, my dignity? You would lose your own, in my circumstances. Mother, you never saw such a winning little devil. She is all energy, and spirit, and sunshine, and interest in everybody and everything, and pours out her prodigal ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with his harmless drolleries. And no letter. It would not be true to say that he waited patiently, that he was resigned; he waited because he must wait. There had been a great shock, and she required time to recover her poise. Was there a woman in all the world like her? No. She was well worth waiting for. And so he would wait. She was free now; but would that really matter? There was no barrier; but could she love him? And might not her letter, when it did come, ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... his mental atmosphere acquired serenity and poise—the authority of the past declining—this matter of death increasingly engrossed him. For it trenches on paradox, surely, that the one absolutely certain event in every human career is also the most unexplored and practically incredible.—An everyday occurrence, a commonplace, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... worry will automatically raise man's threshold to the damaging activating stimuli causing the strong emotions, and will cause him to avoid dangerous strains of every kind. The individual thus protected will therefore rise to a plane of poise and efficiency far above that of his uncontrolled fellows, and by so much will his efficiency, health, ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... extreme brink. This shelf, formed by the flaking off of a fold of granite, is about three inches wide, just wide enough for a safe rest for one's heels. To me it seemed nerve-trying to slip to this narrow foothold and poise on the edge of such precipice so close to the confusing whirl of the waters; and after casting longing glances over the shining brow of the fall and listening to its sublime psalm, I concluded not to attempt to go nearer, ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... attention to it and teaches us to love it. No one can feel the spell of a landscape by Corot or Innes without delighting more deeply in such scenes in the outdoor world; no one can live long in the atmosphere of Greek art without longing for such a body and such a poise of spirit. We are not accustomed to look at nature, or at man, with observing eyes, to see the richness of color in sun-kissed meadows or humming city streets, the infinite variations of light and shade, the depth of distance, the charm ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... a hat in summer," and Dolly tossed back her golden curls and looked at the man steadily. Her sleep had refreshed her somewhat, and she had recovered her poise. Her determination was still unshaken and she had every intention of going on that six ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... than the tenth man. Coming of 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 ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... humor continued; his calmness was giving him a distinct advantage, and North, still shaken by the panic of a few moments before, was forced farther off his poise by realization of ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... black taffeta silk with a milliner's fold around the edge, Aunt Catherine is small, intensely black with finely cut features and thin lip. Her hand is finely molded, fingers long and slender. Her voice is soft and poise marks her personality. Sallie Martin, a ginger cake colored woman, sixty-five, has lived as a kind of caretaker with Aunt Catherine since 1934 and thereby gets her own roof and refreshment. For Aunt Catherine has gotten "relief" from ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... difficult balance, indeed, for us to hold, if it were left merely to our skill to poise; but the just point between poverty and profusion has been fixed for us accurately by the wise laws of Providence. If you carefully watch for all the genius you can detect, apply it to good service, and then reverently preserve what it produces, you will never have too little art; ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... Godefroy, the stern; Jean and I, the middle. A poise of the steel-shod steering pole, we grasped our paddles, a downward dip, quick followed by Godefroy at the stern, and out shot the canoe, swift, light, lithe, alert, like a racer to the bit, with a gurgling of waters below the gunwales, the keel athrob to the swirl of a turbulent current and a trail ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... it Eglantine who enters? There stands something for a moment a dead thing dressed in a bridegroom's splendour. It is as if some ice-cold hand had plucked at his heart. Yet he is calm; the poise remains true, the subtle artifice is there. But the crushing blow to his pride is in his pale face, and his voice rings bitterly when ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... Mrs Bronson, charmed him: "He found grace and beauty in the popolo whom he paints so well in the Goldoni sonnet. The poorest street children were pretty in his eyes. He would admire a carpenter or a painter, who chanced to be at work in the house, and say to me 'See the fine poise of the head ... those well-cut features. You might fancy that man in the crimson robe of a Senator as you see them ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... of a girl of twenty, a good profile of rather a Southern cast, and a certain poise of the head which marked her as one with generations of equally good features back ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... instant, a tiny hand was outstretched, and, seizing one of the fluttering arms, his poise was restored, and he stood firmly ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... changes which 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 ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... her animal over the invisible trail until she was beside him on the hard earth. It required no little skill on her part, for when she withdrew her foot from her stirrup, and was obliged not only to hold her own poise, but to take care of Dot, her task became delicate and difficult. But the little one behaved like a heroine. She did not speak or stir, through fear of disturbing her parent, and was as relieved as both when the current was ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... blue mull, drifted by in her young host's arms. She was flushed with dancing; her hair had escaped from its usual calm. He hardly recognized her. As he looked out toward the old garden, he caught a glimpse of a flowing white gown, a lace scarf thrown over a head whose fine poise he could ...
— The Courting Of Lady Jane • Josephine Daskam
... the real thing. No mere debate, but a fight. There was battle in the air, now blue with smoke and rank with the reek of tobacco. There was fight in the poise of the grizzled heads and rusty, yellow shoulders of the farmers who had now fallen into perfect silence. In looking over them one might have been reminded of a field ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... suicides are caused by insanity. Men lose their property. The fear of the future over powers them. Things lose proportion, they lose poise and balance, and in a flash, a gleam of frenzy, kill their selves. The disappointed in love, broken in heart—the light fading from their lives—seek the refuge of death. Those who take their lives in painful, barbarous ways—who mangle their throats with broken glass, dash themselves from ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... how bewitching she was! how her rose of a face glowed and dimpled! how enchanting was the velvet darkness of her eyes! how airy the poise of her little black head, with its brilliant flower tucked in at the side of the knot of curly hair! Jovita stared at her and made a queer half-internal sound of exclamation. It was not her way to express approval at all freely, and she had no opinion ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the Shining One, now motionless—and never was the thing more horrible than then, with the purely human suggestion of surprise plain in its poise—Larry ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt |
