"Fluctuate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Book XIV: 1. The beauty of this simile will be lost to those who have never been at sea during a calm. The water is then not quite motionless, but swells gently in smooth waves, which fluctuate in a balancing motion, until a rising wind gives them a certain determination. Every circumstance of the comparison is ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... UAE has an open economy with one of the world's highest incomes per capita and with a sizable annual trade surplus. Its wealth is based on oil and gas output (about 33% of GDP), and the fortunes of the economy fluctuate with the prices of those commodities. Since 1973, the UAE has undergone a profound transformation from an impoverished region of small desert principalities to a modern state with a high standard of living. At present levels of production, ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... dial from its setting, watched a slender thread of light within a transparent sphere above it fluctuate in breadth as the dial twisted. And when it was at its widest, she gambled that it indicated the broadest transmitting beam of ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... the engine speed to fluctuate through more or less regular periods from high to low speeds; the engine will seem to be mis-firing and there will be noticeable a strong odor, as well as, usually, a heavy ...
— Marvel Carbureter and Heat Control - As Used on Series 691 Nash Sixes Booklet S • Anonymous
... slight aching and burning pains, the part swells and is elevated some like a boil, except that it does not "point," but has a broad base rising like a cone and flattened at the top. It feels soft and spongy, and will appear to fluctuate, but if punctured, blood only flows. The pain and burning increases rapidly, and sooner or later several openings appear upon the top, varying from three or four to half a dozen or more, looking like the holes in a sponge, out of which ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... sport of mind and force Hast Thou made Thy universe, But as atmosphere and zone Of Thy loving heart alone. Man, who walketh in a show, Sees before him, to and fro, Shadow and illusion go; All things flow and fluctuate, Now contract and now dilate. In the welter of this sea, Nothing stable is but Thee; In this whirl of swooning trance, Thou alone art permanence; All without Thee only seems, All beside is choice of dreams. Never yet in darkest mood Doubted I that Thou wast good, Nor mistook my will for ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the line again, unless you should be so unfortunate as to meet one of the devastating meteors known as "cyclones" in its gyration across the Indian Ocean. After losing the trade, which signals your approach to the line once more, your guides fluctuate muchly with the time of year. But it may be broadly put that the change of the monsoon in the Bay of Bengal is beastliness unadulterated, and the south-west monsoon itself, though a fair wind for getting to your destination, is worse, if possible. Still, having got that ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... favor of local objects, which can hardly fail to mislead the decision. The same process must be repeated in every member of which the body is constituted; and the execution of the plans, framed by the councils of the whole, will always fluctuate on the discretion of the ill-informed and prejudiced opinion of every part. Those who have been conversant in the proceedings of popular assemblies; who have seen how difficult it often is, where there is no exterior pressure ...
— The Federalist Papers
... the income of eighty pounds has somewhat baffled me, and the others are not so exact as I could wish; for the price of washing varies largely in foreign countries, and the different cokes, coals and firewoods fluctuate surprisingly. I will read my researches, and I hope you won't scruple to point out to me any little errors that I may have committed either from oversight or ignorance. I will begin, gentlemen, with the income ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... drawing the food to him. Instead, he reached persistently with his arm, pulled and gnawed at the wires which were in his way, and occasionally picked up and gnawed or pounded with the sticks in the cage. His attention every now and then would come back to the food, but it tended to fluctuate rather rapidly, and in the regular period of observation, thirty minutes, it is unlikely that he attended to the bait itself for as much as five minutes. In this respect as well as many others, Skirrl's behavior contrasts sharply with that ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... the whisp'ring wind, And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind; These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made. But now the sounds of population fail, 125 No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale, No busy steps the grass-grown foot-way tread, For all the bloomy flush of life is fled. All but yon widow'd, solitary thing That feebly bends beside the plashy spring; 130 She, wretched matron, forc'd in age, for bread, To strip the brook with mantling ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... the latter. Investment securities are, and will be, a drug on the market. In other words, the rate of return to the investor will be high; the rate of interest on long-time loans will be high and stay high, that on short-time loans may fluctuate greatly. The rise in the rate of interest on long-time investments is one of the most vital and far-reaching effects of the war. At bottom, interest always arises from the exchange of present and future goods. The rate of interest, as I have tried ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... constantly; but still a fall disturbed us little, because a thousand dollars a foot was our figure, and so we were content to let it fluctuate as much as it pleased till it reached it. My pile of stock was not all given to me by people who wished their claims "noticed." At least half of it was given me by persons who had no thought of such ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... speculator, Naught to him the changes of trade, wrinkling the brow of the merchant, Naught to him, the light weight, or exorbitant price of the baker; Sure was his bread, howsoe'er the markets might fluctuate, Sweet loaves of a rich brown, plentifully graced his table, Made by the neat hand of wife or daughter, happy in healthful toil. Skilfully wrought the same hands, amid the treasures of the dairy, Rich cheeses, and masses of golden ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... other competing or destructive birds or quadrupeds—their numbers would amount to more than twenty millions. But we know very well that our bird population is no greater, on the average, now than it was ten years ago. Year by year it may fluctuate a little according as the winters are more or less severe, or from other causes, but on the whole there is no increase. What, then, becomes of the enormous surplus population annually produced? It is evident they must all ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... born of the superstitions of the learned Orient, magic and astrology always remained the hybrid daughters of sacerdotal culture. Their existence {194} was governed by two contrary principles, reason and faith, and they never ceased to fluctuate between these two poles of thought. Both were inspired by a belief in universal sympathy, according to which occult and powerful relations exist between human beings and dead objects, all possessing a mysterious life. The doctrine of sidereal influences, combined with a knowledge ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... and her sister will bear witness so far as to say that the longer I abstained the higher my spirits were, the keener my enjoyments, till the moment, the direful moment arrived when my pulse began to fluctuate, my heart to palpitate, and such falling abroad as it were of my whole frame, such intolerable restlessness and incipient bewilderment, that in the last of my several attempts to abandon the dire poison I exclaimed ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... forever continue to protect the prosperity of the prince and people. From these vague and indefinite expressions of piety, three suppositions may be deduced, of a different, but not of an incompatible nature. The mind of Constantine might fluctuate between the Pagan and the Christian religions. According to the loose and complying notions of Polytheism, he might acknowledge the God of the Christians as one of the many deities who compose the hierarchy of heaven. Or perhaps he might embrace the philosophic and pleasing ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... came out once more openly for the state, and went for it till the approach of Burgoyne emboldened me to risk another change, and go for my old master. But, being soon taken in arms, I must now untimely perish. It is, therefore, my advice to you all—never fluctuate as I have done; but you who are for the States, stick by the States; and you who are for the king, stick by ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... to say—I fluctuate. At times, I feel as though I should drop insensible on the earth, and then I feel better than I have done for some ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... conviction, still, any form of certainty was better than doubt. The love of truth and the consciousness of that certainty would raise me above hatred and slander. I should then have some kind of principle by which to regulate my conduct; I should then know on what foundation to build. To fluctuate, to waver, to postpone inquiry, was more criminal than any kind of opinion candidly investigated and firmly adopted, and would more effectually debar me from happiness. At my age, with my talents and inducements, it was sordid, it was ignoble, it was ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... by r1, r2, &c.; the excentricities of their orbits by e1, e2, &c.; and the obliquity of the planes of these orbits, reckoned from a single plane of reference or "invariable plane," by [theta]1, [theta]2, &c.; then all these quantities (except m) are liable to fluctuate; but, however much they change, an increase for one planet will be accompanied by a decrease for some others; so that, taking all the planets into account, the sum of a set of terms like these, m1e1^2 [square root]r1 m2e2^2 [square root]r2 ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... has comforted me much, if it can be called comfort to have one's uncertainty fluctuate to the better side. You make me hope that the Spaniards design on Lombardy ; my passion for Tuscany, and anxiety for you, make me eager to believe it; but alas! while I am in the belief of this, they may be in the act of conquest in Florence, and poor you retiring politically! How delightful ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... European democrats never could approve. All through the organic laws of the Nation and the States there are to be found restraints on numbers, as if the leading idea of the Constitution-makers of America were aversion to mere majorities, things that fluctuate from year to year,—almost from day to day,—and therefore are not to be trusted. We are stating the fact, and it does not concern our purpose to discuss the wisdom of what has here been done. How happened it, then, that our polity was so generally ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I fluctuate between the peril of sensuous pleasure and the proof of wholesomeness, and am more inclined (though I would not offer an irrevocable judgement) to approve of the use of singing in the Church, that, by the pleasure of the ear, weaker minds may rise to the emotion ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... Edward the Fifth: I can neither entirely acquit Richard of it, nor condemn him; because there are no proofs on either side; and though a court of justice would, from that defect of evidence, absolve him; opinion may fluctuate backward and forwards, and ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... consider those varieties, which vary in a much wider range than the ordinary ones, and seem to fluctuate between two opposite extremes, as for instance variegated leaves, cultivated varieties with variegated or striped flowers, double flowers and some other anomalies. They are eversporting and ever-returning from one type to the other. If however, we take the group of these extremes and their ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries |
