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More "Gravity" Quotes from Famous Books



... generally neat and comely in appearance, and the pappooses that peer from the bags hung on either side of the ponies are bright-eyed, round-faced youngsters, who never cry and seldom cause any trouble. They seem to be born with a certain amount of gravity, and a capacity for patient endurance that forbids them to lift up their voices at every slight provocation after the manner of white babies. The Indian ponies too are models of endurance. The squaws tie their purchases in blankets and hang them across ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... sat rigid, with so grave a look on his face that his extra gravity passed on to me; and in its enlightening perturbation I began to realise more than I had yet done the strangeness of the case in which I was now so deeply concerned. When once this thought had begun there was no end to it. Indeed it grew, and blossomed, and reproduced itself in a thousand ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... by our Army engineers. They went farther afield. They found a group of spring-heads in an absolutely clean gathering ground on the hills yielding some 14,000 gallons an hour, and this water which was running to waste is lifted to the top of a hill from which it flows by gravity through a long pipe-line to Jerusalem, where a reservoir has been built on a high point on the outskirts of the city. Supplies of this beautiful water run direct to the hospitals, and at standpipes all over the city ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey

... Bill?" he demanded again and again; and Jackson, drunk as he, nodded in like maudlin gravity. He himself began to chant. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... taking his old place on the rug slowly demolished it, qualifying every morsel with such ridiculous correlative remarks, allusions, and propositions,—that it was beyond the power of either Mrs. Derrick or Faith to retain her gravity. But the moment the door closed upon ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... impatient, yet shy of asking. At length I called out, 'What news from Louisbourg?' To which the master simply replied, and with some gravity, 'Nothing strange.' This threw us all into great consternation, and some of us even turned away. But one of our soldiers called out with some warmth 'Damn you, Pumpkin, isn't Louisbourg taken yet?' The poor New England man then ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... breasts, roared with laughter, and Will knew that his bold act had brought him a certain measure of public favor. Heraka with a sharp word or two sent all the women and children flying, and then said in tones of great gravity to Will: ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... standing out; in spite of the temptation of watching this comical parody on that manly exercise, rendered doubly amusing by the scientific manner in which little Sam stood at his wicket, the perfect gravity of the fieldsman in petticoats, and the serious air with which these two worthies called Susan to order whenever she transgressed any rule of the game:—Sam will certainly be a great player some day or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various

... stroked his whiskers, and asked me if I had found any benefit from taking the waters. He afterward spoke in great praise of the charming scenery in the neighborhood of Maplesworth, and then, turning away, addressed his next words to my aunt. Mr. Varleigh took his place. Speaking with perfect gravity, and with no whiskers to ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... and her features were perfectly irregular. Her mouth was large, fortunately for the principal grace of her physiognomy was her smile, which displayed itself with magnificent amplitude. Rowland, indeed, had not yet seen her smile, but something assured him that her rigid gravity had a radiant counterpart. She wore a scanty white dress, and had a nameless rustic air which would have led one to speak of her less as a young lady than as a young woman. She was evidently a girl of a great personal ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... tent 'towards' Sodom; next time we hear of him, he is living in the city, and mixed up inextricably with its people. The first false step leads on to connections unforeseen, from which the man would have shrunk in horror, if he had been told that he would make them. Once on the incline, time and gravity will settle how far down we go. We shall see, in subsequent sections, how far Lot's own moral character suffered from his choice. But we may so far anticipate the future narrative as to point out that it affords a plain instance of the great truth that the sure way to lose the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... Advancement of Science (see Nature, September 2, 1920). He points out that the old contraction hypothesis, according to which the source of solar and stellar heat was supposed to reside in the slow condensation of a radiating mass of gas under the action of gravity, is wholly inadequate to explain the observed phenomena. If the old view were correct, the earlier history of a star, from the giant stage of a cool and diaphanous gas to the period of highest temperature, would be run through within ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale

... would soon be arriving in Alcira; and the presence of Rafael was indispensable. Cupido himself, with sudden gravity, advised him to ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... every morning before breakfast, that I will be prepared with a decent stock of good-nature and forbearance, and not laugh at my friend L.'s absurdities; but in vain are my amiable intentions: his blunders and his follies surpass all anticipation, as they defy all powers of gravity. I console myself with the conviction that such is his slowness of perception, he does not see that he is the butt of every party; and such his obtuseness of feeling, that if he did see it, he would not mind it; but he is the heir to twenty-five thousand a year, and ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... thought the smaller class steamboats could not live on it; and on Lake Superior, the waves almost rival those of the far-famed Cape of Storms, while the ground-swell, owing to the comparative shallowness, or little specific gravity of the fresh water, is such as to make the oldest sailor sick. Whether the water in the lowest depths of Lakes Superior and Ontario be salt or fresh, we can not ascertain; for the greater density of the former may keep it always below, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... twenty miles around. This time there was no need of handbills—there were none. No effort was required to bring together the multitude that quietly but anxiously awaited the outcome of the meeting. The gravity of the situation was universally felt. Immediate action was necessary, as the twenty days allowed for clearance terminated that night. Then the revenue officials could take possession, and under cover of the naval force land the tea, and opposition to this ...
— Tea Leaves • Various

... compartment like a box, about seven feet long, with a pair of sliding doors at the side. It was balanced on a pole, with braces above and below it. It appeared to be so poised, with the pole above the centre of gravity, that it could not be turned over. The four bearers were coolies, with bare legs, cotton turbans on their heads, and not otherwise overloaded with clothing; but they were dressed like all the coolies about the streets and in the ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... the huge landlord, with the utmost gravity, "show the gentleman into number seven that he may wash his ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... design. He is cold, deadly cold, but correct ever. Fabulous and absurd, delicious and abominable as he may be, his spirit sits critically aloft, never smiling. Impersonal as a toxicologist, he handles his poisonous acids with the gravity of a philosopher and the indifference of a destroying angel. There is a diabolic spleen more strongly developed in Rops than in any of his contemporaries, with the sole exception of Baudelaire, who inspired and spurred him on to astounding atrocities of the needle ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... gentle gravity; then a little smile curving her red lips, she added: "Christian Science, Prof. Seabrook, is a religion of Love, and I will simply try to ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... convict the world of sin.' The outstanding first characteristic of the whole Gospel message is the new gravity which it attaches to the fact of sin, the deeper meaning which it gives to the word, and the larger scope which it shows its blighting influences to have had in humanity. Apart from the conviction of sin by the Spirit using the word proclaimed by disciples, the world has scarcely a notion of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... beauty yields itself to no words. I wish that I had the sister art and could draw in my margin something that escapes description. There was a sort of gravity in her eyes. There was something, a matter of the minutest difference, about her upper lip so that her mouth closed sweetly and broke very sweetly to a ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... cover of a cigar-box, scraping it smooth afterward with a bit of glass. The winding of his clock was quite an occurrence in the course of the day, something to be looked forward to. The mixing of his tobacco was a positive event and undertaken with all gravity, while the task of keeping it moist and ripe in the blue china jar, with the sponge attachment, that always stood on the bamboo tea-table by the Japanese screen, was a wearing anxiety ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... qualified critical reader by its mingled gravity and whimsicality. It is not all sugar-plums; there are nice little bits of satire in which the Rev. Harry Jones ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld

... lords, whom, by the chancellor, the little King saluted, and spake to them his mind at large by means of another's tongue." It was declared that during this scene in Parliament the baby King conducted himself with marvellous quietness and gravity. Henry VI. had been already proclaimed King of France, at Paris, before even he thus held his first Parliament on his mother's lap. For as soon as the last service had been performed over the dead body of Charles VI., and the body lowered into the vault belonging ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... breakfast, when Brooke Burgess was gone out to call upon his uncle,—which he insisted upon doing openly, and not under the rose, in spite of Miss Stanbury's great gravity on the occasion,—there was a very serious conversation, and poor Dorothy had found herself to be almost silenced. She did argue for a time; but her arguments seemed, even to herself, to amount to so little! ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... break their unpremeditated jests, in the intervals of business, with that sort of undress freedom that contrasts amusingly with the solemn and even tragic seriousness with which they appear in turn upon the boards. They have one face for the public, rife with the saws and learned gravity of the profession, and another for themselves, replete with broad mirth, sprightly wit, and gay thoughtlessness. The intense mental toil and fatigue of business give them a peculiar relish for the enjoyment of their hours of relaxation, and, in the same degree, incapacitate them ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by his saber. Only ten paces divided them. Dolokhov lowered his head to the snow, greedily bit at it, again raised his head, adjusted himself, drew in his legs and sat up, seeking a firm center of gravity. He sucked and swallowed the cold snow, his lips quivered but his eyes, still smiling, glittered with effort and exasperation as he mustered his remaining strength. He raised ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... which continues is necessarily like a machine in movement which accelerates its motion. We shall therefore find that the results of this mentality will become yet more important. It is betrayed from time to time by incidents whose gravity is daily increasing—railway strikes, postmen's strikes, explosions on board ironclads, &c. A propos of the destruction of the Liberte, which cost more than two million pounds and slew two hundred ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... be true, for three impossibilities would follow: a. Water would move upwards as well as downwards; b. Water and Earth would move downwards in different directions; c. Gravity would be taught ambiguously of the ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton

... perplexed, looking with blue-eyed gravity from one to the other. "The loydy said I was Doyvy," said he, in a slightly injured tone. He did not at all like the suggestion that he had been ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... pouch-like expansions of tracheal tubes in heavy insects, capable of inflation and supposed to lessen specific gravity. ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... perpetual smile had brightened his dark aspect like flowers in a shady place: now the smile was gone as completely as yesterday; the lines of his face were firm; his dark eyes and whiskers were overspread with gravity; and, as he gazed upon Swithin from the repose of his stable figure it was like an evangelized King of Spades come to have it out with ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... the bar, and a more honester feller never breathed," said a rough voice in the gallery. The officers of the court looked aghast, and the strangers tittered with ill-suppressed laughter. "Who are you?" said the Judge, looking suddenly up, but with imperturbable gravity. The court was convulsed; the titter broke out into a laugh, and it was several minutes before silence and decorum could be restored. When the Ushers recovered their self-possession, they made diligent search for the profane transgressor; but he was not to be found. Nobody knew ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... go just as far in the first second as the body will go plus the force of gravity and that's equal to twice what the body ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... floor ten or twelve men were gathered in a circle. Some, Howat thought, were surprisingly young for the evident authority in their manner, pronouncements; others were grey, weatherworn, men with immobile faces often lost, in the middle of a gay period, in a sudden gravity of thought, silent calculation. He saw the smooth, deft hands of draughtsmen, and scarred, powerful hands that, like James Polder's, had laboured through apprenticeship in pit and ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... you perpetually of some animal, be it bird or beast! Well, this chasseur (as I will call him for want of a better name) was exceedingly like the great Tom-cat that you have seen so often in my chambers, and laughed at almost as often for his uncanny gravity of demeanour. Grey whiskers has my Tom—grey whiskers had the chasseur: grey hair overshadows the upper lip of my Tom—grey mustachios hid that of the chasseur. The pupils of Tom's eyes dilate and contract as I had thought cats' pupils only could do, until I saw those of the chasseur. ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... Violent dances, and other emotional and sensual stimulations, led to a state of exaltation during which the line of morality was overstepped. But there was nevertheless, as Dr. Schechter has shown, considerable spiritual worth and beauty in Chassidism. It transferred the centre of gravity from thinking to feeling; it led away from the worship of Scripture to the love of God. The fresh air of religion was breathed once more, the stars and the open sky replaced the midnight lamp and ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams

... and loss of interest in life will come of feeling all at once that you have nothing at all to do. And so it is a great blessing, if your vocation be one which is a dignified and befitting one for an old man to be engaged in, one that beseems his gravity—and his long experience, one that beseems even his slow movements and his white hairs. It is a pleasant thing to see an old man a judge; his years become the judgment-seat. But then the old man can hold such an office only while he retains strength of body and mind efficiently to perform ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... showed what kind of rock it was—iron and basalt. And I'd made borings which checked. We'd tested the speed of escape which was a good push so we had to be careful, and its force of gravity, which wasn't much. And then I'd discovered that the balance in the lab had a habit of being 25 per cent wrong one way or the other every time I ...
— The Minus Woman • Russell Robert Winterbotham

... a little as he went on smoking; the old carelessness, mutability, and indolent philosophies were with him still, and were still inclined to thrust away and glide from all pain, as it arose. Though much of gravity and of thoughtfulness had stolen on him, much of insouciance remained; and there were times when there was not a more reckless or a more nonchalant lion in all the battalions than "Bel-a-faire-peur." ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... every room. By the aid of a ladder she reached up to the spot whence the light came, found the pill of immortality, and ate it. She suddenly felt that she was freed from the operation of the laws of gravity and as if she had wings, and was just essaying her first flight when Shen I returned. He went to look for his pill, and, not finding it, asked Heng ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... thereof." To simple-minded people who believed in Romanism and the legends of the saints, the natural explanation of such a marvel was, that she must be possessed either by the Holy Ghost or by the devil. The archbishop's bailiff, not feeling himself able to decide in a case of so much gravity, called in the advice of the parish priest, one Richard Masters; and together they observed carefully all that fell from her. The girl had been well disposed, as the priest probably knew. She had been brought up religiously; and her mind running upon what was most familiar to it, "she spake words ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... visit was paid, and afforded pleasure to all parties. The knight was pleased with the manners of the merchant, who, owing to his visit to Italy, had little of the formal gravity of his craft, while there was a heartiness and straightforwardness in his speech that well suited the bluff knight. The ladies were no less pleased with each other, and Dame Agatha found herself, to her surprise, chatting ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... long, and in the lowest part upwards of forty feet high. Our guide favored us at every turn with some new story or legend, repeated in a sing-song, nasal tone, ludicrously contrasting with the extravagance of the tales themselves. Yet he recited all alike with the most immovable gravity. It was a lively waltz of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... is now very much employed in recording human expressions, and might possibly be adapted to Algebraical Expressions, a small photographic room would be desirable, both for general use and for representing the various phenomena of Gravity, Disturbance of Equilibrium, Resolution, &c., which affect the ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... quoique je ne vous ai jamais vu. Sir, you have made me tremble although I never saw you before." And when I smiled and assured him that I was just a simple traveller, he shook his head; but said, he had very authentick information concerning me. He then told me with great gravity, "That while I travelled in Corsica, I was drest in scarlet and gold; but when I payed my respects to the Supreme Council at Corte, I appeared in a full suit of black." These important truths I fairly owned to him, and he seemed ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... his meal, he nearly always made his toilet, which consisted in brushing his palpi and mandibles, both inside and out, with his front tarsi. After that, he resumed his air of motionless gravity. The evening and the night were his time for taking his walks abroad. I often heard him scratching the paper of the bag. These habits confirm the opinion, which I have already expressed elsewhere, that most Spiders have the faculty of seeing by ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... this may raise a smile in some of my readers, in others something like indignation or contempt. But as long as such legends remain in these hermit lives, told with as much gravity as any other portion of the biography, and eloquently lauded, as this deed is, by Bishop Theodoret, as proofs of the holiness and humanity of the saint, an honest author is bound to notice some of them at least, and not to give an alluring and ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... temptations were of the kind that betray rather than assault, all faults of the flesh seemed of equal gravity—a man's gluttony or drunkenness, or a woman's misdemeanour. The one did not shock her more than the other. She thought of her old friend, the grandmother who had brought up the girls, denying herself sleep and ease that they might not run wild as many girls ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone

... but just time to wheel round and salute His Majesty, who seemed much amused at seeing two of his Ministers amongst all the little children who were running by his carriage, and the Chancellor, so lately in all the gravity of his official robes, mounted on a little white New Forest pony of Lady Lyndhurst's. I rode on to Roehampton, dined there, and ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)

... himself a dram, and swallowed it with a gravity which would have done honor to a more solemn occasion, after bowing low to his principal and saying earnestly, "Colonel, your very ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... been reading the Litany," said John, shaking his head with a look of drunken gravity, and having only caught one word of the Major's address to him; "life is short, sir; we are flowers of the field, sir—hiccup—and lilies of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... that a bright sun and a relatively dark sun might revolve around a common centre of gravity may at first sight seem improbable. The fact is, however, that imperfect as our observations on the stars really are, we know many instances in which this kind of revolution of one star about another takes place. In some cases these stars are of the same brilliancy, ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... could not possibly have foreseen the overpowering feeling that came over him. Weightlessness he had experienced for brief periods during training, but nothing could match the heady impression of continuous freedom from gravity. ...
— Egocentric Orbit • John Cory

... tinge. The internal cones are of very regular shape, and most of them look as if their fires had only just gone out, with their sides fiercely red, and their central cavities lined with layers of black ash. They are all composed of cinders of light specific gravity, and much of the ash is tinged with the hydrated oxide of iron. Very few of the usual volcanic products are present. {335} Small quantities of sulphur, in a very impure form, exist here and there, but there are no sulphur or steam-cracks, or hot springs on any part of the mountain. With its ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... return to this district—perhaps to this district alone—of the city he loved it is hard to see what he would note afresh, save the results of natural decay and the shifting of the social centre of gravity. ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... air was candid and amused. There was an underlying gravity beneath the smile, and for people who had believed in him as devoutly as his two listeners it was hard ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... will naturally enough be ashamed of his shyness. It is something which others believe, and perhaps he himself thinks, he might overcome. But in the case of Maurice Kirkwood there was no room for doubt as to the reality and gravity of the long enduring effects of his first convulsive terror. He had accepted the fact as he would have accepted the calamity of losing his sight or his hearing. When he was questioned by the experts to whom his case was submitted, he ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... he would not have failed to fling it in the face of Madame des Ursins. That the Marquis de Saint Philippe, who was upon the spot, a man so religious, and who could not endure Madame des Ursins, should say not one word, without fear of derogating from his customary gravity, of that impious scandal, of such a Vandalism as had revolted all Madrid! We think that if M. Duclos had better informed himself upon the point and of the source whence he derived it, he, too, would have complained of exaggeration, and would ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... imagine, Philippin', the cook didn't come to-day, so I thought I would try my own hand," said Dorothea with glib gravity, "but I don't know, the soup meat is still as hard as a rock. Won't you come and see what's the matter?" She took Philippina ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... dashed toward Blondet through the water, calling out with the gravity that country people retain in the midst ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... that this should read "The 8th of July." Champlain could hardly have found it necessary to remain at Tadoussac from the 6th of July to the 8th of August for favorable weather to sail. If he had been detained by any other cause, it would probably nave been deemed of sufficient gravity to be ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain

... the air ship," Thorwald replied, "by which any required weight could be taken into the air, and carried with ease and certainty by currents of air or force of gravity. ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... my despondency was incurable, that I would neither listen to any advice nor leave my room, he took the matter seriously. I saw him enter one evening with an expression of gravity on his face; he spoke of my mistress and continued in his tone of sadness, saying all manner of evil of women. While he was speaking I was leaning on my elbow, and, rising in ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... gravity, feared that he was not being sufficiently quaint to amuse the old lady, and screamed down the table at him to tell the Duchess the story of the jibbing pony at the Irish race meeting. The ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... this book, we have only assumed it, as being unable to find any other which can so well define this recital, which has none of the pretensions of history, and therefore should not affect its gravity. It is an intermediate labour between history and memoirs. Events do not herein occupy so much space as men and ideas. It is full of private details, and details are the physiognomy of characters, and by them they engrave themselves ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... where it served as a connecting link between the young Greek colony and the mother country. Hestia is generally represented standing, and in accordance with the dignity and sanctity of her character, always appears fully draped. Her countenance is distinguished by a serene gravity of ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... with gravity. But a boy in years, the many stern scenes through which he had passed and his natural instinct for the wilderness made him see far. He was thinking of the thousand miles, every one with its dangers, that they must travel before they could unload their ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... presence,—as, moreover, the count kept an open table every day, it made, in the moderately sized house, arranged only for a family, and with but one open staircase running from top to bottom, a movement and a buzzing like that in a beehive; although every thing was managed with moderation, gravity, and severity. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... surroundings as the smaller Rose. Everything seemed to suit the little maid exactly. She made a delightful playfellow for the babies, telling them fairy stories by the dozen, and teaching them new games, and washing and dressing Phillida with all the gravity and decorum of an old nurse. They followed her about like two little dogs, and never left her side for a moment if they could possibly help it. All was fish that came to her happy little net, whether it was playing with little Geoff, going on excursions with the elders, ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... mathematics there in the school of Euclid. He not only distinguished himself as a pure mathematician and astronomer, and as the founder of the theory of statics, but he discovered the law of specific gravity, and constructed some of the most useful machines in the mechanic arts, such as the pulley and the hydraulic screw. His works are written in the Doric dialect. Apollonius of Perga (221-204 B.C.) distinguished ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... come for my lecture, or whatever you have laid up in store for me," she announced with mock gravity and a slight tremble of pretended ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... France in her hour of danger with hearty spontaneity. Flags of different nations were filing by, of all tints of the rainbow, and behind them were the Russians with bright and mystical eyes; the English, with heads uncovered, intoning songs of religious gravity; the Greeks and Roumanians of aquiline profile; the Scandinavians, white and red; the North Americans, with the noisiness of a somewhat puerile enthusiasm; the Hebrews without a country, friends of the nation of socialistic revolutions; the Italians, as spirited ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... a layman—a citizen who has not experienced the test of action and danger in battle—to understand or appreciate our feelings that night. It is hard to describe them, to paint with mere words the intense seriousness and gravity of the situation. You can imagine a dark night at sea—a night so black that the senses feel oppressed. You can add to these a thrill of impending danger and a vision of capture by a cruel enemy and the thought that the very next ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... Connecticut clergy. The purport of the paper was to signify that the signers were doubtful of the validity, or persuaded of the invalidity, of presbyterial as distinguished from episcopal ordination. The matter was considered with the gravity which it merited, and a month later, at the time of the meeting of the colonial legislature, was made the subject of a public discussion, presided over with great dignity and amenity by Governor ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... hearts of the throng of ocean warriors who had gathered to bid a last long, sad farewell to their fallen comrades, and to consign them with all honour to a sailor's grave. The bronzed and bearded faces of the listeners wore an expression of gravity well suited to the most solemn ceremonial of the Christian faith, and as the impressive service proceeded, more than one of the stalwart seamen, who had a few hours before fought side by side with those who now ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... side, and in three steps was directly before the Lieutenant-Governor. As he interrupted him, his fingers closed upon the lapels of the other's coat, and he punctuated his words with little tugs at these, his knuckles coming together with tiny muffled thuds. He spoke with a gravity that was vibrant with suppressed anger and slow with ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... and found that the trifle weighed over half a pound. Considering its very small bulk, this worked out to be a specific gravity of 192.6 or almost ten times as heavy as the same bulk of pure gold. And gold ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... not seem to understand," said the man, with so much bewilderment in his manner that Sylvia longed to laugh, but managed to pull herself together and to maintain a decent gravity of expression. ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant

... kissed her father's and her mother's hands with great reverence and turned to leave the room. Her gravity forsook her, however, before ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... anything to look at I kept out of the way. I can not tell precisely, therefore, what the incidents were that contributed to make Mr. Tottenham, on our return from these expeditions, so thoughtful, with a thoughtfulness which increased, towards the end of them, to a positive gravity. This would disappear during dinner under the influence of food and drink. He would talk nightly with new enthusiasm and fresh hope—or did I imagine it?—of the loveliness he had arranged to reveal on the following day. If again my imagination did not ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... hurt that the boarder should have forgone his usual careful politeness to receive the exposition of her idea with ridicule. She contemplated him gravely till he stopped laughing and gazed with an apologetic, anxious gravity in his protruding, extraordinarily speaking eyes back at her. Then she turned from him to ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... shut houses; so completely did they behold with a sort of veneration men sitting in the porches of the palaces, who besides their ornaments and apparel more august than human, bore a striking resemblance to gods, in the majesty which their looks and the gravity of their countenance displayed. Whilst they stood gazing on these as on statues, it is said that Marcus Papirius, one of them, roused the anger of a Gaul by striking him on the head with his ivory, while he was stroking his beard, which was then ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... and Aloysia were tossed on a sea of trial which cast a baneful shadow over their future destinies. Tears had cast the halo of their own peculiar beauty over their delicate features; mourning and sombre costume wrapt around them the gravity of sorrow and the adulation of a universal sympathy, pretended or real, supplied the attentions that flattered and pleased when they led the giddy world of fashion. The silence of grief hung around the magnificent saloons, once so gay; ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... or touch, or look. The odd shape of his head, she fancied, figured the outline and proportions of his intelligence, which was, as it were, pyramidal, standing upon a base so broad and firm as to place the centre of its ponderous gravity far beyond her reach to disturb. There was certainly no other being of material reality that could have made Unorna start and turn ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... nook of the hills and sea-shore. A pleasanter companion could not be found; observant and tranquil, tinged with a gravity beyond his years—a gravity due to certain family troubles—and with uncommon sweetness of disposition. He has evidently been ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... Lanceys had in honour of Sir Henry Clinton. Our Excellency says it is a pity we had not captured the fair writer. That is as near to a jest as he ever comes, but he can enjoy our staff nonsense for all his gravity. I leave you the letter; you may like some day to deliver it. I hope we shall move soon. This camp life is devilish dull. And here is the British mouse in a hole and won't come out, and our serious old cat a-watching. Lord, the patience of the man! Come over and see us soon, Mr. Warder, and you ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... was so bespattered with mud that his features were hardly recognizable. Mrs. Caspar was laughing and crying at the same time, while both she and the young man were talking at once. Near them, and regarding this tableau with the utmost gravity, was a powerful-looking bull-dog, who would evidently be pure ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe

... circumference at breast-height, one hundred twenty-five feet in height and having a spread of one hundred fifty feet. The wood of the pecan is similar to that of the hickory in both toughness and specific gravity, although for practical purposes, such as being used for tool handles, the shagbark hickory is enough harder and tougher to make it the superior of ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke

... assistant was a coarse Scotsman, full of pretension and conceit, who assured us that if any of us should have occasion to have our legs or arms amputated he could do it without any pain. He used to feel our pulses after dinner with ridiculous gravity, and after examining our tongues tell us we should take great care and not eat salt junk too quickly, for it seldom digested well on young stomachs, and, added he with great consequence, "I have a specific for sair heeds if ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... systematic part of their industry, and were of great size and variety. It took a great deal of engineering skill to construct immense ditches necessary to control the violent floods of the Euphrates and the Tigris. So far as evidence goes, the irrigation was carried on by the gravity system, by which canals were built from intakes from the river and extended throughout the cultivated district. In Egypt for a long time the periodical overflow of the Nile brought in the silt for fertilizer and water for moisture. When the flood subsided, seed was planted ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... place of this abomination, a cap covered with glazed leather surmounted his martial brow. When we met, I lowered my umbrella and offered my card, with the office pasteboard. He took them with great gravity, read the names, and requested me to fall back to the rear and await orders. Then rejoining his gun, he was driven slowly towards the house,—my peaceful ambulance following at a respectful distance. When I reached the door, the six-pounder had disappeared behind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... She had no thwarts, and the paddlers were therefore compelled to squat tailor- fashion in the bottom of her, looking forward. This was, so far, fortunate; since she was so frightfully crank that, with such unaccustomed canoeists as ourselves, it was only by keeping our centres of gravity low down that we prevented her capsizing the moment we stepped into her. Pedro, worthy soul, detained us about twenty minutes whilst he explained the peculiarities of the craft and the proper mode of handling the paddles; and then, with ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... before a bench of magistrates, a short time ago, told the bench, with great gravity, "That he had two witnesses in court, in behalf of his client, and they would be sure to speak the truth; for he had had no opportunity to communicate ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... general drowsiness that brooded over the whole chamber. Everything was sleeping, night-lamp and furniture alike; on the table, near an extinguished lamp, some woman's handiwork was disposed also in slumber. Helene in her sleep retained her air of gravity and kindliness. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... deposit at his feet a heavy carpet-bag he was carrying, it became obvious, from partially developed legends and inscriptions, that the material with which his trousers had been patched had been originally intended for a less ambitious covering. Yet he advanced with great gravity, and after shaking the hand of each person in the room with labored cordiality, he wiped his serious, perplexed face on a red bandanna handkerchief, a shade lighter than his complexion, laid his powerful hand upon the ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte

... The gravity held the animal as though I had pinned it by a pole. From the distance of a few feet I heaved the boulder. The palpitating head mashed against the wall. The body and the pulp of the head and the boulder sank to the floor when ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings

... two hundred cubic miles of this dust, now compacted into somewhat coherent rocks and interpolated between sheets of lava. Everywhere this dust-formed rock is exceedingly light. Much of it has a specific gravity so low that it will float on water. Above the sheets of lava and above the beds of volcanic dust great volcanic cones rise, and the whole upper region is covered with forests interspersed with beautiful prairies. ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... possessed of a vivid sense of humour which at times embarrassed him sorely. If it had not been that his bigness of heart kept his love of fun in order he would have had great difficulty, now and then, in comporting himself with necessary gravity. ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond

... rocket at the time it is charged, or bored out after it is charged? How do cases charged with composition impart motion to wheels, and other pieces of fireworks? What is understood by the rocket principle? What is the rocket stick and its use? Is the centre of gravity fixed, or is it shifting in the flight of rockets? How are rockets discharged? What is the head of a rocket? What is usually put in the head? Are all rockets furnished with a head? What is understood by the furniture of a rocket? ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith

... object toward it. If it were possible to get outside the air and out of reach of the pull of the earth, we might fling a ball off into space, and it would go on in a straight line until something pulled it to itself by the force of gravity. ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton

... of. And this work I have not set forth either with elegancy of discourse or stile, nor with any other ornament whereby to captivate the reader, as others use, because I would not have it gain its esteem from elsewhere than from the truth of the matter, and the gravity of the subject. Nor can this be thought presumption, if a man of humble and low condition venture to dilate and discourse upon the governments of Princes; for even as they that with their pensils designe ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... notwithstanding, to listen with the most open-minded interest to whatever was said. Her manner to Lady Ogram was marked with deference, at times with something like affectionate gentleness; to Miss Bride she paid the compliment of amiable gravity; and towards Lashmar she could not have borne herself more respectfully—at all events in language—if he had been a member of the Cabinet; every word which fell from him she found suggestive, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... of my surprise, and of the difficulty I had in keeping my gravity at the reading of the paragraph, in which so much untruth was blended with so little that was real, I managed to keep a serious countenance, and I told the prelate that the Casanova spoken of in the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... are of that rare hazel, that soft golden brown, so rarely seen, so beautiful wherever they are seen. These eyes are unvarying in their colour; it is only the expression of them that varies with every emotion, but in repose they have a mournful earnestness in their look, a pensive gravity that seems to tell of a life in which there has been much shadow. The hair, parted above the most beautiful brow I ever looked upon, is of exactly the same colour as the eyes, and has a natural ripple in it. For the rest of the features ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... There was a new gravity in Roy's tone. "As I said, she probably knows all about it. That's her way. She understandeth one's thoughts long before." The last in a lower tone—his eyes dwelling on her portrait above the mantelpiece: the one in ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... impression at the time, that they had sat still and silent on the tops of the trees all through the Sabbath day, and I felt like one who should unawares disturb an assembly of worshippers. A crow, however, has no real pretensions to religion, in spite of his gravity of mien and black attire. Crows are certainly thieves, and probably infidels. Nevertheless, their voices yesterday were in admirable accordance with the influences of the quiet, sunny, warm, yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... of you therefore, brethren, bless God in his proper station, with a good conscience, and with all gravity, not exceeding the rule of his service ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... he spent his Saturday afternoons as a discussion on the canals of Mars. Now and again, in moments of political excitement, he had taken sides and adopted newspaper phrases as his own, declaring with an enormous gravity which he did not really feel that "The German Fleet was a deliberate menace to our naval supremacy," or joining in the chorus of "We want eight and we won't wait," or expressing his utter contempt for "all this militarism," and his belief in the "international solidarity" ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... to bed, but he was up at noon, and in the afternoon he went to the House of Burgesses to hear the governor make a speech to the members on the war and its emergencies. Dinwiddie, like Shirley, the governor of Massachusetts, appreciated the extreme gravity of the crisis, and his address was solemn ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... comedy to watch in a little town. The warning gravity of the advocate for the Crown, the emotional eloquence of the advocate for the defence. The court sat listening to what appeared to be its duty in regard to the case of a girl named Barbro, and the ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... companions seemed to place implicit confidence in the superior diplomatic powers of their Gascon comrade, and to have been seriously impressed by the gravity of his statement concerning the thrust of Nevers, so death-dealing, so unwardable, so almost magically fatal, for they readily agreed to his proposition. Places were rapidly found for Cocardasse and Passepoil at the table. AEsop returned ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... for a time which kept his guests in torture of suspense. Then, "I'm here all night. But scrape the county with a tooth-comb," he said, and hung up the receiver. Swinging his chair round, he faced the two men, and spoke with gravity. ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming

... quizzing-glass, which, I confess, that I had brought with me more for ornament than use—having eyes like a hawk—than I pathetically exclaimed to Lucy—'Behold, my love, the history of our fates!' Lucy said, 'Tuts, Toby Tims,' and gave a giggle; but I went on in solemn gravity, before a circle ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various

... half guessed what was coming, but he found Grell's ways disconcerting and could form no certain judgment. Certainly Grell did not behave like a guilty man—that is, a man guilty of murder. But neither did he behave like an innocent man. He was too totally unconcerned with the gravity of ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... writer by the character of the epistles. Her father, knowing her intellectual superiority, looked to her as his secretary to reply to all these letters. She consequently wrote the answers, which her father carefully copied, and sent in his own name. She was often amused with the gravity with which she, as the father of herself, with parental prudence discussed her own interests. In subsequent years she wrote to kings and to cabinets in the name of her husband; and the sentiments which flowed from her pen, adopted by the ministry of France ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... essence of gravity is design, and consequently deceit; a taught trick to gain credit with the world for more sense and knowledge ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... upon those ladies—those ladies and men twirling round at the end in a mad galop, after which everybody bows and the quaint rite is celebrated. Without the music we can't understand that comic dance of the last century—its strange gravity and gaiety, its decorum or its indecorum. It has a jargon of its own quite unlike life; a sort of moral of its own quite unlike life too. I'm afraid it's a heathen mystery, symbolizing a Pagan doctrine; ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... got into talk with this couple, and Mary, watching him fondly, could not but be struck by his animation. His eyes lit up, he laughed and chatted, made merry repartee: she was carried back to the time when she had known him first. In those days his natural gravity was often cut through by a mood of high spirits, of boyish jollity, which, if only by way of contrast, rendered him a delightful companion. She grew a little wistful, as she sat comparing present with past. And loath though she was to dig deep, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... just said haughtily, "I'll be much obliged to you, Stella, not to disturb me;" at which Stella, with mock gravity, put her finger ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar

... to maneuvering without gravity; he'd been taught it in Cadets, of course, but that was years ago and parsecs away. When the pseudograv generators had gone out, he'd retched all over the place, but now his stomach was empty, and the nausea ...
— The Measure of a Man • Randall Garrett

... the first edition of Milton's "Juvenile Poems," observed in a note on the lady's speech, in Comus, verse 177, that "it is owing to the Puritans ever since Cromwell's time that Sunday has been made in England a day of gravity and severity: and many a staunch observer of the rites of the Church of England little suspects that he is conforming to the Calvinism of an English Sunday." It is probable this gave unjust offence ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... hand on her shoulder. She turned and looked at him. There was a gravity in his eyes, ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... Grating krado. Grating noise akra sono. Gratis senpage. Gratitude dankeco. Gratuitous senpaga. Gratuitously senpage. Gratuity (tip) trinkmono. Grave tombo. Grave grava. Gravel sxtonetajxo. Graver gravurilo. Gravity graveco. Gravy suko. Gray griza. Graze (rub slightly) tusxeti. Graze cattle pasxti. Grazing ground pasxtejo. Grease graso. Grease sxmiri. Great granda. Greatcoat palto. Great-grandfather praavo. Greatness ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... Elizabeth, with sudden gravity and paleness in her face. "I think it was wicked in me to jest about such a sacred ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various

... proceeded to take some tobacco, and give it to Sieur du Pont Grave of St. Malo, myself, and some other Sagamores, who were near him. After a long smoke, he began to make his address to all, speaking with gravity, stopping at times a little, and then resuming and saying, that they truly ought to be very glad in having his Majesty for a great friend. They all answered with one voice, Ho, ho, ho, that is to say yes, yes. He continuing his address said that he should be very ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... well have been the edge of the dock as the curb; that's what I mean," said Mr. Wheeler, with a gravity befitting ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... far as we had developed it, was distinguished by a portion of gravity and steadiness, which our subsequent acquaintance with his countrymen by no means led us to conclude a national characteristic. In that daring, enterprising frame of mind, which, when combined with genius, ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... tribunes of the people; and the country was loud in applauding their zeal, their talents, and their courage. Other writers of a more lively class stung the emigrants to the quick by sarcasms and satire, and brought down the chastisement of contempt and ridicule upon those who had been spared by the gravity ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... This is undoubtedly so, and the references to these manifestations were not accidental, for they serve to indicate the real bearings of our subject. The relationships of love and pain constitute a subject at once of so much gravity and so much psychological significance that it was well to devote to them a special study. But pain, as we have here to understand it, largely constitutes a special case of what we shall later learn to know as erotic symbolism: that is to say, the psychic condition in which a part ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... waiting to dance with him, according to her maid's prediction, but was performing a waltz in exceeding gravity, assisted, as Dick could not help observing, with a certain satisfaction, by the ugliest man in the room. The look she gave him when their eyes met at last sent this shortsighted young gentleman up to the seventh heaven. It ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... the Nautilus floated in the midst of this shoal of molluscs. Then I know not what sudden fright they took. But as if at a signal every sail was furled, the arms folded, the body drawn in, the shells turned over, changing their centre of gravity, and the whole fleet disappeared under the waves. Never did the ships of a squadron manoeuvre with ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... historical monuments. I have been commissioned to investigate closely the candidate's titles. I hastened with all possible speed to the chief town of this artistic department, where I effected my entrance with the important gravity of a man who holds within his hands the life or the death of a monument dear to the country. I made some inquiries at the hotel; great was my mortification when I discovered that no one seemed to suspect that such a thing as Rozel Abbey existed within a circuit of a hundred leagues. I ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet

... talked to her as the generality of real brothers talk to their sisters, using great plainness of speech. He withered all her poor little trumpery array of hothouse flowers of sentiment, by treating them as so much garbage, as all men know they are. He set before her the gravity and dignity of marriage, and her duties to her husband. Last, and most unkind of all, he professed his admiration of Rose Ferguson, his unworthiness of her, and his determination to win her by a nobler and better life; and then showed himself to be a stupid blunderer ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... expression in the face of the old man as he endeavoured to suppress, before Amine and her husband, the joy which he felt at Philip's departure. Gradually he subdued his features into gravity, and said— ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... my attempts to walk resulted in a variety of hops which took me clear of the ground a couple of feet at each step and landed me sprawling upon my face or back at the end of each second or third hop. My muscles, perfectly attuned and accustomed to the force of gravity on Earth, played the mischief with me in attempting for the first time to cope with the lesser gravitation and lower air ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... be plenty of animals to be found with more brilliant abilities and livelier imagination than the Snail, but for gravity of demeanour and calmness of nerve who is his equal? And if a sound judgment be not behind such outward signs, there is no faith to be put ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... made out the Throg ship, not swinging now in serene indifference to Warlock's gravity, but whirling end over end across the sky as might a leaf tossed in a gust of wind. Its rim caught against a rust-red cliff, it rebounded and crumpled. Then it came down, smashing perhaps half a mile away from the smoking crater in which lay the mangled ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... us scarcely anything at all. Sometimes a brilliant breaks in on the surrounding night (2Kings ix. x.), but after it we grope in the dark again. Only so much of the old tradition has been preserved as those of a later age held to be of religious value: it has lost its original centre of gravity, and assumed an attitude which it certainly had not at first. It may have been the case in Judah that the temple was of more importance than the kingdom, but there can be no doubt that the history of Israel was not entirely, not even principally, the ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... wonder. It seemed to her an interesting and highly creditable history, seeing that Bridgie had had the better of the butcher, and maintained the family credit in the eyes of the neighbourhood. She could not understand Margaret's gravity, and the half-amused, half- pitiful glances of the ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... see," observed Richard with a fine gravity, "your acquaintance with Senators Gruff and Dice and Loot and others, and your study of those statesmen, have encouraged an ambition to make ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... waved round the person of the emperor. Constantius sat alone in a lofty car, resplendent with gold and precious gems; and, except when he bowed his head to pass under the gates of the cities, he affected a stately demeanor of inflexible, and, as it might seem, of insensible gravity. The severe discipline of the Persian youth had been introduced by the eunuchs into the Imperial palace; and such were the habits of patience which they had inculcated, that during a slow and sultry march, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... what it will be like to get back to high gravity?" Rip mused. The centrifugal force of the spinning platform acted as artificial gravity, but it ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage

... The Crown, the cabinet, the legislature, and the people, have respectively certain rights and powers which, when properly and constitutionally brought into operation, give strength and elasticity to our system of government. Dismissal of a ministry by the Crown under conditions of gravity, or resignation of a ministry defeated in the popular House, bring into play the prerogatives of the Crown. In all cases there must be a ministry to advise the Crown, assume responsibility for its acts, and obtain the support of the people and ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... East or West. Now, under these circumstances, I am forced to the conclusion, in a case in which the proof is so clear and the facts are so flagrant, it is the duty of the court to fix a penalty which shall in some degree be commensurate with the gravity of the offense. As between the two defendants, in my opinion, the principal penalty should be imposed on the corporation. The traffic manager in this case, presumably, acted without any advantage to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... the Confederate States, he was far in advance of the Constitutional Convention and the Provisional Congress, and, as I believe, of any man in it, in his views of the gravity of the situation and the probable extent and duration of the war, and of the provision which should be made for the defense of the seceding States. Before secession, Mr. Davis thought war would result from it; and, after secession, he expressed ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... execution of his charge, beginning from the time he left the Court. His discourse was framed with so much eloquence, and spoken so gracefully, that it was admired by all present. It appeared matter of astonishment that a youth of sixteen should reason with all the gravity and powers of an orator of ripe years. The comeliness of his person, which at all times pleads powerfully in favour of a speaker, was in him set off by the laurels obtained in two victories. In short, it was difficult to say which most contributed ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... to know?" replied Matilda. "Thy first words bespoke a prudent and becoming gravity. Dost thou come hither to pry into the secrets of Manfred? Adieu. I have been mistaken in thee." Saying these words she shut the casement hastily, without giving the young ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole

... was now one Joseph, young in age, but of great reputation among the people of Jerusalem, for gravity, prudence, and justice. His father's name was Tobias; and his mother was the sister of Onias the high priest, who informed him of the coming of the ambassador; for he was then sojourning at a village named Phicol, [13] where he was born. Hereupon he came to the city [Jerusalem], and reproved ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... without a division, and carried up by the whole House to Kensington. At the palace the loyalty of the crowd of gentlemen showed itself in a way which would now be thought hardly consistent with senatorial gravity. When refreshments were handed round in the antechamber, the Speaker filled his glass, and proposed two toasts, the health of King William, and confusion to King Lewis; and both were drunk with loud acclamations. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the young sinner up before him. But he was able neither to touch the child's heart, nor to make him see the gravity of what he had done: never being allowed inside the surgery, John could now not take his eyes off the wonderful display of gold and purple and red moths, which were pinned, with outstretched wings, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... has discovered that the lady likes the proposal no better than you do," suggested Paolina, with a wise look of child- like gravity ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... no need of the weak answering nod. He'd treated such cases several times in the past. The disease was usually caused by the absence of gravity out in space, but it could be brought on later from abuse of the weakened internal organs, such as the intake of too much bad liquor. The man must have been frequenting ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey

... which, to his stunned ears, seemed more alarming than a combination of the most dismal and melancholy sounds that could be imagined. "Who art thou?" said the giant, compressing his savage and exaggerated features into a sort of forced gravity, while they were occasionally agitated by the convulsion of the laughter which he seemed ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... eyes, for I see ruin, infamy and subversion of the whole dignity and estimation of the See Apostolic if this course is persisted in. You see in what dangerous times we are. If the Pope will consider the gravity of this cause, and how much the safety of the nation depends upon it, he will see that the course he now pursues will drive the King to adopt remedies which are injurious to the Pope, and are frequently instilled into the King's mind."[586] On one occasion Clement ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... Wallace, hesitating and considering. "We don't desire to see in boys the sedateness and gravity of demeanor that we like to see in men. We like to see them playful and joyous ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott

... Warren, in mock gravity, "now there is a touch of tragedy in your words. Must we all hold our breaths till ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... silently as I packed up the camera, and I felt that they looked upon me as a man whose fate was settled. They did not acknowledge my farewell, and, had I been in the least superstitious, might have made me thoroughly uncomfortable with their solemn, stolid gravity. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... children began this great business of making a snow-image that should run about; while their mother, who was sitting at the window and overheard some of their talk, could not help smiling at the gravity with which they set about it. They really seemed to imagine that there would be no difficulty whatever in creating a live little ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... of office tenure are now generally recognized. In the resolutions of the great parties, in the reports of Departments, in the debates and proceedings of Congress, in the messages of Executives, the gravity of these evils has been pointed out and the need of their reform ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes

... with his mother-tongue at its outset, said:—"Why didn't it hurted Dolly, I wonder?" and them illuminated:—"Oh—I see! It balances Dolly's account. Dolly was the loser by not seeing the fire-engine, but she escaped the accident. Of course!" Whereupon the ogress said with gravity, after due reflection: "I think you are right, ma'am." She then pointed out to Dave that well-regulated circles sit still at their suppers, whereas he had allowed his feelings, on hearing his intelligibility confirmed, to break out in his legs and kick those of the table. He appeared ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... position of political affairs in France, as well as of the attitude of the faction known as the Importants, who were then most active in opposing the government of Mazarin, in order to understand clearly the gravity of an incident which otherwise in itself might seem ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... direct and central highway for its great inland commerce, according to the best estimates (those of Poor), cannot fall short of fifteen millions, and most probably exceeds that number. It is now conclusively established that the centre of gravity of our national population has crossed the Appalachian chain. Professor Hilgard of the Coast Survey prepared a year ago, at the request of the Hon. J. A. Garfield of Ohio, a series of calculations to ascertain this centre of gravity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... Just so. Written a novel, and want help to get it into print," returned the Chieftain slowly. He had drawn down his lips into an expression of preternatural gravity, but the hard look had disappeared. The murder was out, and he was not angry; he might pretend to be, but Margot was too sharp-witted to ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... of Mr. Partridge dozing in his chair; and then, to see Flossie struggling to keep a polite little smile hovering on a mouth too tiny to support it; to see her give up the effort and suddenly become grave; to see her turn away to hide her gravity with all the precautions another woman takes to conceal her merriment; to see her sitting there, absolutely unmoved by the diverting behaviour of Mr. Partridge in his slumber, was ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... comes to have as much moral weight as the most loudly vaunted certainty. And meantime, apart from and beneath the strife of tongues, there is the still small voice which whispers to a man and bids him, in no superstitious sense but with the gravity and humility which befits a Christian, to 'work out his own salvation with fear ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... compound, sell or offer for sale for illuminating purposes in any mine any oil other than oil composed of not less than eighty-two per cent, of pure animal or vegetable oil, or both, and not more than eighteen per cent, pure mineral oil. The gravity of such animal or vegetable oil shall not be less than twenty-one and one-half, and not more than twenty-two and one-half degrees Baume scale, measured by Tagliabue or other standard hydrometer, at a temperature of sixty degrees Fahrenheit; ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous

... sacrifice everything comforting, holy, healing, all hope, all faith in hidden harmonies, in future blessedness and justice? Was it not necessary to sacrifice God himself, and out of cruelty to themselves to worship stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, nothingness? To sacrifice God for nothingness—this paradoxical mystery of the ultimate cruelty has been reserved for the rising generation; we ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... consented to join the excursion. At tea, Walter asked Henderson if he'd come with them, and he, being just then in a phase of nonsense which made him speak of everything in a manner intended to be Homeric, answered with oracular gravity...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... farther. His bibulous friend, with apprehensive disapproval, offered a few diplomatic suggestions involving the retirement of the young man to his room, which the latter accepted with an unbalanced gravity that administered its reproof even through the callous ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... much depends not only on the form of the weapon, but on the skill of the thrower. But it is known that the form of the boomerang, and the fact that one of its limbs is longer and heavier than the other, gives its centre of gravity a very peculiar situation; and when the weapon is thrown by one end, it has naturally a tendency to rotate, and the manner of this rotation is determined by the peculiar impetus given it by the hand of the man who ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... a soul from without," she answered, as he tenderly pressed the hand he had taken—"But, Ronayne," she pursued, with melancholy gravity—"a sudden light dawns upon me—my heart tells me that some misfortune or other has happened, or is about to happen—you say you would speak about my father. You are the bearer of ill-news in regard to him. Yes, I know it is so; tell me, Harry," and she ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson

... an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have other tie upon one another, but by our word. If we did but discover the horror and gravity of it, we should pursue it with fire and sword, and more justly than other crimes. I see that parents commonly, and with indiscretion enough, correct their children for little innocent faults, and torment them for wanton tricks, that have neither ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... cut me short, and laying his hand on my shoulder, he looked me full in the face, while, with a struggle to recover his gravity ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... aristocratic rgime, an anti-Imperialist—'Imperialism' was a democratic craze at Athens—and never lost an opportunity of throwing scorn on Cleon the demagogue, his political bte nore and personal enemy, Cleon's henchmen of the popular faction, and the War party generally. Gravity, solemnity, seriousness, are conspicuous by their absence; even that 'restraint' which is the salient characteristic of Greek expression in literature no less than in Art, is largely relaxed in the rough-and-tumble, informal, miscellaneous modern ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... sir," said Dival quietly, "to govern your activities, once outside: free from the gravity pads of the ship, on a body of such small size, an ordinary step will probably cause a leap of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... different places, and is no sure test of age; because in some parts of the swamps, especially near the river, the peat is often so fluid that heavy substances may sink through it, carried down by their own gravity. In one case, however, M. Boucher de Perthes observed several large flat dishes of Roman pottery, lying in a horizontal position in the peat, the shape of which must have prevented them from sinking or penetrating through ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... in connection with the question under reply that "An English F.T.S." should know that the "Adepts" of the Good Law reject gravity as at present explained. They deny that the so-called "impact theory" is the only one that is tenable in the gravitation hypothesis. They say, that if all efforts made by the physicists to connect it with ether, in order to explain electric and magnetic ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... young men gave it, Julian with a strong gravity, Valentine with a light smile. Julian had by no means recovered his usual gaiety. The events of the night had seriously affected him. He was excited and emotional, and now he grasped Valentine by the ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... and looked with a certain gravity at this wind-swept, desolate spot, around which lay the wide, unwinking desert. About us were the ruins of what had been a notable settlement in its day, but which now had passed ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough

... planets, too, must be round or they could not exist, and so they also had this same quality of gravity in common with the Earth—a drawing in of everything toward the center. Here was clearly a positive discovery—this similarity of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... he, as we have seen, was quite unfriendly to the proposition as she could be; and the Corporal, with a good deal of comical gravity, vowed that, as he could not be satisfied in his dearest wishes, he would take to drinking for a consolation: ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... for a few moments, and it seemed to him as though, in the fearless gravity of her regard, somehow, somewhere, perhaps in the curled corners of her lips, perhaps in her pretty and unusual eyes, there lurked a little demon of laughter. Yet it could not be so; there were only serenity and a child's direct sweetness ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers

... the short distance to the Hall; and they set out, Falconer with his precious violin in its case under his arm, and Dick smoking a cigarette. They were all rather silent as they approached the great house, and Dick, looking up at it, said with a gravity ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... the hazy distinction between great sins and little ones? An overt act of rebellion is of the same gravity, whatsoever may be its form. The man that lifts his sword against the sovereign, and the man behind him that holds his horse, are equally criminal. And when once you let in the notion that in all our actions we have to do with a Person, to whom we are bound to be obedient, then ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... tombs of Andrea Franchi and of Filippo Lazzeri the humanist—this made by Rossellino in 1494. Pistoja is a city of churches; one wanders into them and out again always with new delight; and indeed, they lend a sort of gravity to a place that is light-hearted and alluring beyond almost any other in this part of Tuscany certainly. Thinking thus of her present sweetness, one is glad to find that one poet at least has thought Dante too hard with men. It is strange that it should ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... will make a stronger bow at given dimensions than others. The finer the grain and the greater the specific gravity, the more resilient and active the ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... did not feel himself "altogether disqualified for it by nature."[23] "I have refrained, as much as human frailty will permit, from all satirical composition,"[24] he said. For satire he seems to have substituted that kind of "serious banter, a style hovering between affected gravity and satirical slyness," which has been pointed out as characteristic of him.[25] Washington Irving noticed a similar tone in all his familiar conversations about local traditions ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... the beam into the air. The apparitions lost contact with their invisible mountain peaks. And with sudden solidity, the gravity of our world pulled at them. They fell. Solid men's bodies, falling with the moonlight on them. Dark blobs turning end over end; plunging into the rivers and the harbor with little splashes of white to mark their fall; and yet others ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings

... rather funny, rather worthy of himself, but the child answered with ruthless gravity and a touch of disdain (for he was a disdainful ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... things. Mass is the characteristic of a quantity of matter; it depends neither on the geographical position one occupies nor on the altitude to which one may rise; it remains invariable so long as nothing material is added or taken away. Weight is the action which gravity has upon the body under consideration; this action does not depend solely on the body, but on the earth as well; and when it is changed from one spot to another, the weight changes, because gravity ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... had deprived the child of all her gravity. If you ask me how this was effected, I answer: In the easiest way in the world. She had only to destroy gravitation. And the princess was a philosopher, and knew all the ins and outs of the laws of gravitation ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... who bore the interruption with gravity, nodded courteous assent. "Si. Si. Under circumstances. . . . Precisely. They can do an infinite deal of mischief sometimes in quite unexpected ways. For who could have imagined that a young girl, daughter of a ruined Royalist whose life was held only ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... speceis I have never seen but Capt. Clark who saw it on the coast towards the Killamucks informed me that it resembled a large pumpkin, it is solid and it's specific gravity reather greater than the water, tho it is sometimes thrown out by the waves. it is of a yellowis brown colour. the rhind smooth and consistence harder than that of a pumpkin tho easily cut with a knife. there are some dark brown ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... your promised patronage," returned Mr. Clinton, with a bow of mock gravity; "but suppose we discuss the matter moving;" and rising, he led ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa

... resistance to heat and in weight, are not haphazard, but are so regularly progressive that they can be arranged in a series of regularly progressive increasing intervals. Most marvellous of all, however, when these differences in specific gravity are examined, we find that they bear a close resemblance to the arrangement of the planets in progressive distances from the sun. "There appears to be one law for atoms ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... the writers: (By books a man may guess at the inditers.) Some will again of that which never was, Nor will be, feign (and that without a cause) Such matter, raise such mountains, tell such things Of men, of laws, of countries, and of kings; And in their story seem to be so sage, And with such gravity clothe every page, That though their frontispiece says all is vain, Yet to their way disciples they obtain. But, readers, I have somewhat else to do, Than with vain stories thus to trouble you. What here I say, some men do know so well, They can with tears and joy the story tell. The ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... my Quaker, seeing there was no hanging back, goes to her immediately, but put all the gravity upon her countenance that she was mistress of, and that ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... added to the man's stately foppishness, (and he actually took snuff between every three words) when I looked around at Lord Orville, I saw such extreme surprise in his face,-the cause of which appeared so absurd, that I could not for my life preserve my gravity. ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... advocates and counsel that plead. Patience and gravity of hearing, is an essential part of justice; and an overspeaking judge is no well-tuned cymbal. It is no grace to a judge, first to find that, which he might have heard in due time from the bar; or to ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... inwardly grateful to the newly married couple for their gravity. Noisy joy would have wounded the poor mother. In her mind, her son was there, invisible, handing Therese over ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... publications, for it will be sure, then, to contain acid; but if the two liquids be brought continually into contact by the motion described, the affinity between ether and gold is so strong as to overcome the obstacle of gravity, and it will hold the gold in solution. The ethereal solution may also ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young

... heard such gravity in a young woman's voice. Her words overpowered me almost by the weight of prescient meaning she gave them. They reached me as from some solemn ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... men. Why was it worth while for Mr. Jowett, the other day, to give us a new translation of Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War? And why is it worth your while, at least to dip in a serious spirit into its pages? Partly, because the gravity and concision of Thucydides are of specially wholesome example in these days of over-coloured and over-voluminous narrative; partly, because he knows how to invest the wreck and overthrow of those small states with the pathos and dignity of mighty imperial fall; but most of ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... sang Pereo, with infinite gravity. His horse's hoofs seemed to keep time with the refrain, and he occasionally waved in the air the long leather ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... of a load depends upon the attraction of the earth. Suppose the attraction of the earth were removed? A ton on some other planet, where the attraction of gravity is less, does not weigh half a ton. Now Christianity removes the attraction of the earth; and this is one way in which it diminishes man's burden. It makes them citizens of another world. What was a ton yesterday is not half a ton today. So without changing one's circumstances, merely ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond

... expecting something very different, but nevertheless he replied with all due gravity and self-possession. "It is my painful duty to tell you, madame, that there is scarcely any hope, and that I expect a fatal termination within twenty-four hours, unless ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... said the words, a powerfully made and very noble looking man passed so near as to brush the person of the mechanic with the folds of his toga. His face, which was strongly marked, was stern certainly; but it was with the sternness of gravity and deep thought, coupled perhaps with something of melancholy—for it might be that he despaired at times of man's condition in this world, and of his prospects in the next—not of austerity or pride. His garb was plain in the extreme, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... vessels, the Erebus, Captain Ross, and the Terror, Captain Crozier, and left England on the 29th of September, 1839. During the outward voyage to Australia, scientific observation was daily and sedulously attended to; experiments were made on the temperature and specific gravity of the sea; geological and geographical investigations were made at all available points, especially at Kerguelen's Land; and both here, as well as during the expedition, magnetic observation and experiment formed ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... practical matters of life. If pigments are not used in accordance with the laws governing their chemical composition, they will not stand. If the laws of proportion are not observed in composition, the picture will not balance. The laws of color harmony are as mathematically fixed as the law of gravity. So, too, the relations of size, which give the impression of nearness or distance to objects, rest on the laws of optics. You have infinite scope for individual expression inside of those laws, but you cannot go outside ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... is only the discoverer; they are in a perpetual motion in vacuity, and by means of the empty space; for the vacuum itself is infinite, and the bodies that move in it are infinite. Those bodies acknowledge these three accidents, figure, magnitude, and gravity. Democritus acknowledged but two, magnitude and figure. Epicurus added the third, to wit, gravity; for he pronounced that it is necessary that bodies receive their motion from that impression which ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... the velocity with which water issues from a cistern is the same that would be acquired by a body falling from the level of the head to the level of the issuing point; which indeed is an obvious law, since every particle of water descends and issues by virtue of its gravity, and is in its descent subject to the ordinary laws of falling bodies. Air rushing into a vacuum is only another example of the same general principle: the velocity of each particle will be that due ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... gentlemen," interrupted Jasper, with much gravity, "I know of no such person as Miss ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne

... mention'd to vindicate Tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which in the account of many it undergoes at this day with other common Interludes; hap'ning through the Poets error of intermixing Comic stuff with Tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and vulgar persons, which by all judicious hath bin counted absurd; and brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratifie the people. And though antient Tragedy use no Prologue, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... observed in a leading article that the gravity of the fact in question, the violation of private correspondence in the Post Office, was not affected by the merits or demerits of Mr Mazzini, of whom it professed to 'know nothing,' Thomas Carlyle wrote ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... Tribune,—[November 9, 1860.]—after weakly conceding, on his own part, the right of peaceable Secession, said: "But while we thus uphold the practical liberty, if not the abstract right, of Secession, we must insist that the step be taken, if it ever shall be, with the deliberation and gravity befitting so momentous an issue. Let ample time be given for reflection; let the subject be fully canvassed before the People; and let a popular vote be taken in every case, before Secession is decreed." Other leading papers of the Northern ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... afterwards by two of the basket boys or porters, and a blind man. Neither spoke a word to the other, but all began to walk up and down in the court. No long time elapsed before there also came in two old men clothed in black serge, and with spectacles on their noses, which gave them an air of much gravity, and made them look highly respectable: each held in his hand a rosary, the beads of which made a ringing sound. Behind these men came an old woman wearing a long and ample gown, who, without uttering a word, proceeded at once to the room wherein ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... modes of thinking, the rules of conduct, and the prevailing manners of any people, is to examine what sort of education they give their children; how they treat them at home, and what they are taught in their places of public worship. At home their tender minds must be early struck with the gravity, the serious though cheerful deportment of their parents; they are inured to a principle of subordination, arising neither from sudden passions nor inconsiderate pleasure; they are gently held by an uniform silk cord, which unites softness and strength. A perfect equanimity prevails in most ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... in retaining hold of my hand and gazing with a mock air of gravity and interrogation at all around her, curiosity was soon aroused, and a ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy

... her go, this time. Easy, cat-like for all his dry gravity, he sauntered after her, and with a fine ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... no answer on hearing this, but an expression of deep gravity seemed to settle on ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... one time or another by the wit of our school. The favourite imitation of all was supposed to be one of the Dialogues of Plato, "omitted by some strange over-sight in, the edition which graces the library of our learned and respected doctor," Weston would say with profound gravity. The Dialogue was between Dr. Jessop and Silly Billy—the idiot already referred to—and the apposite Latin quotations of the head-master and his pompous English, with the inapposite replies of the organ-blower, given in the local dialect and Billy's own peculiar jabber, ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... said, slowly, with an earnest gravity darkening in his eyes—"I should not be your true friend if I were otherwise! But if I tell you what I thought—and what I may say I know from long experience all honest Englishmen think when they see a woman smoking—you ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... Pipelet fell back on his chair, raising his hands to heaven in the attitude of mute imprecation. Miss Dimpleton left the room suddenly; her desire to laugh almost stifled her, and she could no longer restrain herself. Rudolph himself had with difficulty preserved his gravity. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... see you about, Jack, is this:" here he settled his fat back into the chair. "All the ore in that section of the county,—so our experts say, dips to the east. They've located the vein and they think a horizontal shaft and gravity will get the stuff to tide water much cheaper than a vertical shaft and hoist. Now if the ore should peter out—and the devil himself can't tell always about that—we've got to get some ore somewhere round there to brace up and make good our prospectus, even if it does cost a little more, and ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... thy vote as thou thinkest best," said Caius Nepos with calm urbanity. And those who were sufficiently sober nodded approval with solemn gravity. ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... with work, and have abstained from indulging in festivities. Parents in old age, divested of power over sons, have been forced to beg their food of the latter. Amongst them, even persons of wisdom, conversant with the Vedas, and resembling the ocean itself in gravity of deportment, have begun to betake themselves to agriculture and such other pursuits. Persons who are illiterate and ignorant have begun to be fed at Sraddhas.[864] Every morning, disciples, instead of approaching preceptors for making dutiful enquiries ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... there are some men who never can be satisfied; give them what you will, they will always be craving after more."—"True, sir," said Umrao Sing, looking me steadily in the face, and with the greatest possible gravity, "there are some people who never can be satisfied, give them what you will. Give them the whole of Hindoostan, and they will go off ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... Atlantic Monthly, vol. 88, pp. 286, 858.] How we shall retain this beauty to enrich our lives while avoiding the overstimulation of an already dangerously dominant instinct, is a problem whose gravity we can but indicate without presuming to offer ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... dinners were apt to be late upon ironing-days. I concluded that, if the soup were punctual, and not too hot, I could leave myself ten or perhaps fifteen unoccupied minutes before one o'clock. It strikes me as curious now, the gravity with which this thought underran the fever and pain and dread ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... boot of the new pair he then wore was not quite comfortable in the toes. The manager simply could not understand it, just as he simply could not have understood a failure in the working of the law of gravity. And if God had not told him he would not have believed it. He knelt and felt. He would send for the boots. He would make the boots comfortable or he would make a new pair. Expense was nothing. Trouble was nothing. Incidentally he remarked with a sigh that the enormous demand ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... round her; sat down at her feet; looked up into her face for one trace of her old self; listened for one note of her old pleasant voice. He flitted round the child: so wan, so prematurely old, so dreadful in its gravity, so plaintive in its feeble, mournful, miserable wail. He almost worshiped it. He clung to it as her only safeguard; as the last unbroken link that bound her to endurance. He set his father's hope and trust on the frail baby; watched her every look upon it as she held it ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... jerked up. To the trained eye of Cluff, swift to interpret physical indications, it seemed that Perkins's weight had almost imperceptibly shifted its center of gravity. ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... along with their bright, intelligent answer to the moment's impression, and also a certain innocent outlook, which was very captivating. And then, at a moment's notice, Dolly's face from being grave and thoughtful, would dimple all up with some flash of fun, and make you watch its change back to gravity again, with an intensified sense both of its merry and of its serious charm. She smiled at Mrs. Jersey now as she came in, but the housekeeper saw that the eyes had more care in their thoughtfulness than she was accustomed to see ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... monks from the monastery of St. Jago were assembled upon the occasion, to sing requiems for his soul; and the scene was truly solemn and impressive. We met these ministers of religion at dinner, but how changed from that gravity of demeanor which distinguished them in their acts of external worship. The governor's excellent Madeira was taken in the most genuine spirit of devotion, accompanied by fervent exclamations upon ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... He had lived in a tent for twenty years, so took his tent to Germany, and went on living in it. In that, with complete gravity, he received the Grand Duke of Baden, and several uniformed high officials, who wore plumed headgear and incredibly high collars, and glittering boots of patent leather. Folded superbly in cloaks of milky blue, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... times a smile very singularly mingled, and which (in my eyes) appeared both bitter and pathetic. But the Master still bore himself erect, although perhaps with effort; his brow barred about the centre with imperious lines, his mouth set as for command. He had all the gravity and something of the splendour of Satan in the "Paradise Lost." I could not help but see the man with admiration, and was only surprised that I saw him with so ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... but had said nothing about Madeline. Augustus was not in his father's confidence in this matter, and had nothing to do but to look grave. On that very morning, moreover, some cause had been given to himself for gravity of demeanour. ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... the praise you have given him. If he desires to profit by what is left of our honest Abbes in the absence of the court, he will be treated like a man you esteem. I read him your letter with spectacles, of course, but they did me no harm, for I preserved my gravity all the time. If he is amorous of that merit which is called here "distinguished," perhaps your wish will be accomplished, for every day, I meet with this fine phrase as a ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... asleep, as the high back of her chair was turned toward her. Nobody sleeps in a very imposing manner, but the old lady's profile, with her false front awry, was so comical that it was too much for her niece's gravity. The desire to laugh was, for the moment, stronger than respect for melancholy; and Clemence, through that necessity for sympathy peculiar to acute merriment, glanced involuntarily at Octave, who was also smiling. Although there was nothing sentimental ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... school was confident of it. But "The Colonel's" face was curiously grave. He smiled and joked; now and then he tossed some gay piece of derision into the crowd of woe-begone stay-at-homes. But the gravity remained in the eyes all the while. Harrington saw it, and it occurred to him that it was natural that the Captain of The Towers football team should feel the weight of a great responsibility; he was quite sure that "Colonel" Burton ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... three o'clock this afternoon. I have merely come to leave my letters of presentation. So much I think a proper etiquette may allow. But it would never do for me to be paying visits upon ladies so soon after an affair of so deplorable a gravity. Besides I have to be buried at seven in the morning, and if I chanced not to be back in time, I should certainly acquire a reputation for levity, which since I am unknown in the county, I am unwilling to incur," and, leaving the butler stupefied in the hall, he ran ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... appeal, he flew into a fiery rage. "What!" he exclaimed. "How could a case of such gravity have taken place as the murder of a man, and the culprits have been allowed to run away scot-free, without being arrested? Issue warrants, and despatch constables to at once lay hold of the relatives of the bloodstained criminals and bring them to be examined ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... a full half-hour after he had found an usher so condescending as to inform the god who presided over that shrine of Justice that a lawyer from Gavrillac humbly begged an audience on an affair of gravity. ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... important, of all the lesser punishments, however, is flogging. It is that which has most effect on the people, and it is certainly by far the most painful. It is carried out in many ways, according to the gravity of the crime committed. The simpler and milder form is with a small bamboo rod, the strokes being administered on the hands, on the bare back or on the thighs, a punishment mostly for young people. Next in severity, is ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... stopped, as after making a communication of great gravity. Mrs. Hawthorne, listening with breathless interest, made no sound that urged him to go on. The fact he had announced seemed solemn to both alike, with the vision floating between them of Brenda's white-rose ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... specific gravity of the air he seems to be amusingly uncertain,—making it first 833 times and afterwards 770 times less than that of water; and in the same connection he says, in chosen phrase, that 'density, or closeness, is another quality of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... eyes a moment; and then, with considerable gravity, "I think the European pension system in many respects remarkable, and in some satisfactory. But of the friendships that we have formed, few have been contracted ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James

... Tucker was ordered to carry the Hon. John Adams to France, as envoy from the United States. The voyage was full of incidents. Feeling impressed with the gravity of the charge laid upon him, Capt. Tucker chose a course which he hoped would enable him to steer clear of the horde of British men-of-war which then infested the American coast. But in so doing he fell in with a natural ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... right and spoke a few words, and received a reply. Then turning to another, he did the same, and thus continued to address each personally, until all had been consulted. At intervals there were long pauses, indicative, as I judged, of the gravity of the matter to be considered. At the end of an hour the Council had completed its work. The Chief then arose in a very dignified manner, but without ostentation, and, calling to his aid an interpreter, proceeded to reply to the opening address. ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... us. Gootes coursed the kitchenfloor like a puzzled yet anxious hound. "Damn it, it's got to be stopped." He halfway extracted his pack of cards, then hastily withdrew his hand as though guarding the moment's gravity. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... been the constant policy of this paper to avoid controversy of any kind, both because the matters it deals with are best examined as intellectual propositions and because the increasing gravity of the time is ill-suited for domestic quarrel. I none the less owe it to my readers to take some notice of the very violent personal attack delivered by the Harmsworth Press some ten days ago upon my work in this journal. I owe it to them because ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... to the end of his life the teacher of a congregation, and no reader of his works can doubt his fidelity or diligence. In the pulpit, though his low stature, which very little exceeded five feet, graced him with no advantages of appearance, yet the gravity and propriety of his utterance made his discourses very efficacious. I once mentioned the reputation which Mr. Foster had gained by his proper delivery to my friend Dr. Hawkesworth, who told me, that in the art of pronunciation he was far inferior ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... at once that abuses and panics have constantly occurred. Can we note a difference in the frequency and gravity of the casualties, according to whether we observe them working under the former or the new (the National Bank) system, inaugurated during the War of the Secession in 1864, when the machinery for the issue of bank notes was insufficient for ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar

... and was gazing up into Seth's face with all the bland innocence of childhood in her wide open eyes. The gravity ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... in the room, broken only by the snapping of the stove and the faint moaning of the bitter wind about the lonely building, while Miss Schuyler sat somewhat uncomfortably on the arm of Hetty's chair with the little dusky head pressed against her shoulder. Hetty could not see her face or its gravity might have astonished her. Miss Schuyler had not spoken quite the truth when, though she had only met him three times, she admitted that Hetty knew Larry Grant better than she did. In various places and different guises Flora Schuyler had seen the type of ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... of the District Attorney, but not of the Chief Inspector. He had advanced to the desk where Mr. Roberts was still sitting, and remarked with a gravity exceeding any ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... minion of pleasure, and had never learnt to bear the assaults of calamity. This man's hurt was ominous of the carnage that was to follow at the feast. Right well did Starkad's spirit, heedful of sternness, hold with stubborn gravity to steadfast revenge; for he was as much disgusted at the lute as others were delighted, and repaid the unwelcome service by insultingly flinging a bone; thus avowing that he owed a greater debt to the glorious dust ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... distinct and exactly-limited relation to gravity."—Hasler's Astronomy, p 219. "But in cases which would give too much of the hissing sound, the omission takes place even in prose."—Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 175. "After o it [the w] is sometimes not sounded at all; sometimes like a single u."—Lowth's Gram., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown









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