"Fulcrum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tug-boat with its attached train of barges. By this simple mode of employing the power of a steam-engine for canal boat traction, all risk of injury to the banks would be avoided, as the chain and not the water of the canal was the fulcrum or resistance which the steam-engine on the tug-boat operated upon in thus warping its way along the chain; and thus effectually, without slip or other waste of power, dragging along the train of barges attached ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... of monstrous cruelty, the fact that FEAR is the only motive with which the slave is plied during his whole existence, would be sufficient to brand it with execration as the grand tormentor of man. The slave's susceptibility of pain is the sole fulcrum on which slavery works the lever that moves him. In this it plants all its stings; here it sinks its hot irons; cuts its deep gashes; flings its burning embers, and dashes its boiling brine and liquid ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the practical opportunity alone furnishes the fulcrum upon which the lever can rest, by means of which the moral will may multiply its strength and raise itself aloft. He who had no solid ground to press against will never get beyond the stage ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... he could not turn round found it impossible to break loose. His hands, however, were free and he gave Stormont's head another violent bump. Then Thirlwell, using his knee as a fulcrum, pulled the lad's shoulders back until he cried out with pain and let go. Thirlwell threw him off and stepped between the two before ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... the thumb is that of a pivot; a fulcrum. The bow is a lever resting thereon, and its pressure on the string is regulated by the first and second fingers on the one side and by the third and fourth on the other. It would thus appear that the best place for the thumb would be exactly between the second and third fingers. But ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... the Assyrian period, and that Deuteronomy belongs to its close. Moreover, however strongly I am convinced that the latter is to be dated in accordance with 2Kings xxii., I do not, like Graf, so use this position as to make it the fulcrum for my lever. Deuteronomy is the starting-point, not in the sense that without it it would be impossible to accomplish anything, but only because, when its position has been historically ascertained, we cannot decline to go on, but must demand that the position of the Priestly Code should also be ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... disclosed do not sustain his theory that the issue was essentially a conflict between capitalism and agrarianism. The assumption bill was lifted to its place on the statute book through the leverage exerted by Hamilton and Jefferson, with Washington's prestige as their fulcrum. The characters of these three men resist schemes of classification according to economic interest. The principal value of analysis of the economic elements of the struggle is to protect from undervaluation the ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... may be practical and efficient; to ignore the sentimentality of politics and subordinate them to conditions irrespective of party. He has found that "the mills of the gods grind slowly;" that the political lever needs for its fulcrum a foundation as solidly ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... doubt represents the decisive factor. The love of truth in the abstract is probably the weakest of human passions; but truth when attained ultimately gives the fulcrum for a reconstruction of the world. When a solid core of ascertained and verifiable truth has once been formed and applied to practical results it becomes the fixed pivot upon which all beliefs must ultimately turn. The influence, however, is often ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... their carrion food. Like all birds that soar, both over sea and land, when it is calm the vultures are obliged to flap their wings to fly; but when a breeze is blowing they are able to use their specific gravity as a fulcrum, by means of which they present their bodies and outstretched wings and tails at various angles to the wind, and literally sail. How often, when becalmed on southern seas, when not a breath of air was stirring and the sails idly flapped against the mast, have I seen the albatross, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... thought, for she had been accustomed to regard the Serapeum as the very heart of the universe—the centre and fulcrum on which the balance of the earth depended; to her, Serapis himself was inseparable from his temple and its atmosphere of magical and mystical power. Every prophecy, every Sibylline text, every oracle must ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... now placing all his individual strength to the task of heaving off this incubus from the breast of our body politic, but with small avail, for he has no lever to assist him—no fulcrum whereon to rest it; otherwise he might say with Archimedes, 'With these I could move a world.' He is unaided, this eagled-eyed prophet of ours, looking sorrowfully, sagaciously down into the ages! ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... his continual usage of the expression; and it is in accordance with facts. For it is not my love to Jesus, but His love to me, that brings the real moulding power into my life, and my love to Him is only the condition on which the true power acts upon me. To get the fulcrum and the lever which will heave a life up to the heights you have to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... delude them. Tacitus feared evil from the Germans; others from the Parthians.[122] The population of the Roman empire felt its inferiority to its ancestors. One thing after another gave way. Nothing could serve as a fulcrum for resisting decline, or producing recovery. In such a period despair wins control. The philosophy is pessimistic. The world is supposed to be coming to an end. Life is not valued. Ascetic practices fall in with the prevailing temper. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... comes to the front, it appears an interminable, unconquerable thing. But all the time there may be a change, positive as inexplicable, at the very door. How is it that a child begins to be good? Upon what fulcrum rests the knife-edge of alteration? As undistinguishable is the moment in which the turn takes place; equally perplexing to keenest investigation the part of the being in which the renovation commences. Who shall analyze repentance, as a force, or as a phenomenon! ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... help neither," said Bob. "I'm going to do it all myself scientifically, as Doctor Stacey calls it. This bar's a fulcrum." ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... hold of a big stone they wanted to lift over into line a little. They were tugging on it hopefully and with very red faces, and it did not budge. I picked up a small beam about five feet long on my side of the road, that I thought would do for a crowbar, stepped over to the boys, fixed a fulcrum for them, and went on with my walk. When I came back after my walk that night to the place where the boys had been playing, I found the boys had given up working on their house. And as I looked about, every big stone for yards around—every ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... future is for the flying machine. The air affords a solid fulcrum. If you will give a column of air an ascensional movement of forty-five meters a second, a man can support himself on the top of it if the soles of his boots have a superficies of only the eighth of a square meter. And if the speed be increased to ninety meters, he can walk on it ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... wires they tightened with the short iron bar, in the end of which a V-shaped cut had been made. While Pete caught the slack wire with this bar, and, using the post as a fulcrum, the bar as a lever, drew it taut, Conniston with hammer and staples made it secure. Now and again they found a rotten post which must be taken out, while a new one from a row which had been dumped from a wagon yesterday was ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... landed them upon hidden rocks and wrecked them pitilessly and in mid-career. He realized the danger. It took all his manhood to face it; but two lives were trembling in the balance, with nothing but his own past character and half of his inherited tendencies to act as a fulcrum. ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... cities and villages round about. They meet yearly, to deliberate upon the missionary enterprise. Some feel much, and humbly pray, and some say eloquent things about the glorious cause, and tell how they have found a fulcrum, where to place the lever of Archimides ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... an iron pin, to be driven into the ground to keep the machine from moving about while being used. To the pulley block is swiveled a hook, to be hooked into a loop, attached to the forward end of a lever. The rear end of the lever passes through a slot in the upper end of a fulcrum post, and has a notch formed in its lower side to receive a bolt or pin, attached to said post to serve as a fulcrum to said lever. Several notches are formed in the lever to receive the fulcrum bolt, to enable the position ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... plunged into the water in rowing. The force and effect in a great measure depends on the length of this part, when adequate force is applied. When long oars are used, the boat is generally single-banked, so that the fulcrum is removed further from the rower. Also, the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... evidently well understood, and in spite of the amount of force applied in front, it would have been difficult to give the first impetus to so great a mass, a lever was skilfully applied behind to raise the hind part of the sledge slightly, and so propel it forward, while to secure a sound and firm fulcrum, wedges of wood were inserted between the lever and the ground. The greater power of a lever at a distance from the fulcrum being known, ropes were attached to its upper end, which could not otherwise have been reached, and the lever was worked ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... said Cortlandt, "is that we should have no fulcrum. Straightening the axis is simple enough, for we have the attraction of the sun with which to work, and we have but to increase it at one end while decreasing it at the other, and change this as the poles change their inclination towards ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... the principle of the lever. This was known to Plato and Aristotle, but they had no real proof. The Aristotelian Mechanics merely 'refers' the lever 'to the circle', asserting that the force which acts at the greater distance from the fulcrum moves the system more easily because it describes a greater circle. Archimedes also finds the centre of gravity of a parallelogram, a triangle, a trapezium and finally (in Book II) of a parabolic segment ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... completely absorbed in the fascination of his work, was unaware of this hostility, as he was equally unaware of the amazed satisfaction of his employer. He went his way with naive and unconscious pleasure. It did not take long for his enemies to find a fulcrum for their chagrin. One evening, after closing, when he sat in the dressing room, with his feet in the usual tub of hot water, placidly reviewing the day's excitements and smoking his ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... sergeant's name, asks to see the cash-balance of each company-fund, and perplexes your best captain on forming from two ranks into one by the left flank. Yet it is just such unpleasant processes as these which are the salvation of an army; these petty mortifications are the fulcrum by which you can lift your whole regiment to a first-class rank, if you have only the sense to use them. So long as no inspecting officer needs twice to remind you of the same thing, you have no need to blush. But though ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... packsack from his shoulders, removed its protective outer shield and began to assemble the organic surveyor, an egg-shaped ball of white carponium secured to a segmented forty-foot rod. While Brandt and I raised the rod with the aid of an electric fulcrum, Mason carefully placed his control cabinet on a piece of outcropping rock and ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi
... chatting with Mme. Firmiani, one of the most charming women in Paris. A voice indeed cried, "Intellect is the lever by which to move the world," but another voice cried no less loudly that money was the fulcrum. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... amazing at first sight, from flattest denial to positivest assertion of causal power, becomes intelligible when he is seen immediately afterwards using his newly adopted creed as a fulcrum whereon to rest his argumentative lever in his assault upon Miracles. About that celebrated piece of reasoning, startling as the avowal may sound, there is, to my mind, nothing more remarkable than its celebrity, for, on close inspection, it will ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... The "fulcrum" upon which the whole issue depends, the "pivot" upon which it turns, is the existence of actual living souls filling the immense ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... wood applied as a fulcrum to a lever power. Also, a bit of canvas sewed into the centre of a sail near the head, with an eyelet-hole in the middle for the bunt-jigger or becket to go through. Glut used to prevent slipping, as sand and nippers ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... intellectual action is wholly unlike that of Ben Jonson or Beaumont and Fletcher. The latter see the totality of a sentence or passage, and then project it entire. Shakespeare goes on creating, and evolving B out of A, and C out of B, and so on, just as a serpent moves, which makes a fulcrum of its own body, and seems forever twisting and untwisting its own strength. "And here are a few axioms: 'The grandest efforts of poetry are where the imagination is called forth, not to produce a distinct form, but a strong working ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... theological students on their foundations for the service of the Church. It became in time the fashion to call them lay institutions: legally they may have been so, but judged by their statutes, they were nearly all of them as ecclesiastical as the Chapter of a Cathedral. And Oxford was the fulcrum from which the theological revival hoped to move the Church. It was therefore a shock and a challenge of no light kind, when not merely the proposal was made to abolish the matriculation subscription with the express ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... longer fear to enforce the law, as they would know that though they lost the votes of 5,000 whiskey-sellers and drinkers, they would gain those of 20,000 women. Miss Willard has a lever, but she has no fulcrum ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... order. Now in the first order, one end of the lever is applied to the point of resistance, which in the case just mentioned was the lid of the box. At the other end we apply our strength, force, or power. The edge of the box against which the chisel is worked serves as a fulcrum and lies between the handle where the power is applied and the bevelled edge which moves the resistance or weight. A pair of ordinary weighing scales also exemplifies the first order of levers. The knife edge on which the beam is balanced serves as a fulcrum; it is placed exactly in the ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... rose uninjured though concussed by the impact, raised the latch of the area door by the exertion of force at its freely moving flange and by leverage of the first kind applied at its fulcrum, gained retarded access to the kitchen through the subadjacent scullery, ignited a lucifer match by friction, set free inflammable coal gas by turningon the ventcock, lit a high flame which, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... stiffened by the wires being tensioned over them. This was the invention of Professor Roeder, recently deceased. The next step was the common counter scale, and then that form of letter scale in which one of the bands acts as a fulcrum and the other as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... the ether, be it substance or be it only dream-stuff, is serving an admirable purpose in furnishing a fulcrum for modern physics. Not alone to the student of energy has it proved invaluable, but to the student of matter itself as well. Out of its hypothetical mistiness has been reared the most tenable theory of the constitution of ponderable matter which has yet ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... and in a wheedling undertone, with a continual snaky writhing of her whole body, except her eye, which seemed, in the intense fixity of its glare, to act as a fulcrum for all her limbs; and from that eye, as long as it kept its mysterious hold, there ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... the lever F. The crank C upon the end of the shaft operates the oil pump. The speed of the turbine is controlled by admitting the steam in puffs of greater or less duration according to the load. The lever F, having its fulcrum in the collar surrounding the shaft, operates with each vibration of the eccentric the pilot valve. The valve is explained in ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... the Allied Powers and Sweden had a special reference thereto. The importance of such an acquisition to Russia is too obvious to be pointed out, and the jealous watchfulness of England is, therefore, easy to understand. But it is a singular thing that the conflicting forces of Europe find a fulcrum on a little corner of ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... exclaimed ARCHIMEDES, "a fulcrum, and I will raise the earth." "Give me," says the author of the Vestiges, "gravitation and development, and I will create a universe." ALEXANDER'S ambition was to conquer a world, our author's is to create one. But he is wrong in saying that his is the "first attempt to connect the natural ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... church and, state. Still there were, on the whole, the elements of a controlling constitutional party throughout the fifteen provinces The great bond of sympathy, however, between all the seventeen was their common hatred to the foreign soldiery. Upon this deeply imbedded, immovable fulcrum of an ancient national hatred, the sudden mutiny of the whole Spanish army served as a lever of incalculable power. The Prince seized it as from the hand of God. Thus armed, he proposed to himself the task of upturning the mass of oppression under which the old liberties of the country ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... them lay darkness, and the moor, a chaos, a carnival of wind and snow. Worst of all the snow on the road was not BINDING, and their feet felt as if walking on sand. As long as the footing is good, one can get on even in the face of a northerly storm; but to heave with a shifting fulcrum is hard. Nevertheless Cosmo, beholding with his mind's eye the wide waste around him, rejoiced; invisible through the snow, it was not the less a presence, and his young heart rushed to the contest. There was no fear of ghosts in such a storm! The ghosts might be there, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... above it, say half an inch in all; but it made an appreciable difference to the sounds within, as when you remove your foot from a piano's soft pedal. I could do no more, for there was no further fulcrum for the spike, and I dared not gamble away what I had ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... upon which we operate must not escape our grasp and slip through our hands, if we are to be able to work it. The constant, again, is the element of language, in which the word represents its inert permanence, in which it constitutes the solid fulcrum, the foundation and landmark of dialectic progress, being that which can be discarded by the mind, whose attention is thus free for other tasks. In this respect analysis by concepts is the natural method of common-sense. It consists in asking ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... see again, now, with you. I worked through a whole winter, seeing my head steam, and perceiving the atmosphere of my own moisture as we see that of horses on a frosty day. I do not know where a man finds the fulcrum that enables him to hold out against ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac
... countenance of an old man with a white beard and an apostolic head—a Saint Peter ready to hand; his chest, partly uncovered, showed salient muscles, the evidence of an iron constitution which had served him as a fulcrum to resist a whole poem of sorrows. There a young woman was suckling her youngest-born to keep it from crying, while another of about five stood between her knees. Her white bosom, gleaming amid rags, the baby with its transparent flesh-tints, and the brother, whose attitude ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... children get that beauty should be our aim, and they must get it in their own way. "Life in and with Nature and with the fair silent things of Nature, should be fostered by parents and others," Froebel tells us, "as a chief fulcrum of child-life, and this is accomplished chiefly in play, which is ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... and she did not mean it for "the one word," but Bobus caught at it as all he wanted. He meant it for the fulcrum on which to rest the strong lever of his will, and before Esther could add any qualification, he was overwhelming her with thanks and assurances so fervent that she could interpose no more doubts, and yielded to the sweetness of being able to make any one so happy, above all ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... proved so offensive to many thousand voters in New York. Indeed, it may be said with truth, that Seward's record on that one question did more to defeat him at Chicago than all his "irrepressible conflict" and "higher-law" declarations. It became the fulcrum of Curtin's and Lane's aggressive resistance, who claimed that, in the event of his nomination, the American or Know-Nothing element in Pennsylvania and Indiana would not only maintain its organisation, but largely increase its strength, because of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Moses, and finally in the Messiah or Christ. The author protests, in vehement language, against those Hellenists who, misled by their polytheistic associations, would elevate Jesus into a god. Nevertheless, his own hypothesis of pre-existence supplied at once the requisite fulcrum for those Gnostics who wished to reconcile a strict monotheism with the ascription of divine attributes to Jesus. Combining with this notion of pre-existence the pneumatic or spiritual quality attributed to Jesus in the writings of Paul, the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the field could be kept tight by supplying energy and we have plenty of that ... far more than we'd ever need. We supply the energy, but that's only a small part of it. The body emitting the gravitational force supplies the fulcrum that moves ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... force—both of these terms being "aspects" of God—and without a fulcrum no force can manifest itself; there is no heat without cold, and when it is summer in the northern hemisphere it is winter in the southern. There is no movement that does not depend upon a state of rest, no light without shadow, no pleasure without ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... Such is the case with the animal machine. It is not enough that it is put in motion by the noblest spirit or that it is nourished by the highest blood; every bone must have its just proportion; every muscle or tendon its proper pulley; every lever its proper length and fulcrum; every joint its most accurate adjustment and proper lubrication; all must have their relative proportions and strength, before the motions of the machine can be accurate, vigorous and durable. In every machine modifications are required according as the purposes vary to which it is ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... a free, self-governing community in which the individual realized his powers by living—and dying—with and for his fellows. This new type of human community was of the highest moment in the sequel. In many points it was a model to the Romans, and thus became a fulcrum for the upward movement of the Western world. In the works, too, of the Greek philosophers, especially of Plato and Aristotle, it inspired the earliest and some of the deepest reflections on the nature of social life and government. ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... little larger than the market ratio. This was done by establishing the mint ratio of 1 to 15.988, while the market ratio in 1834 was 1 to 15.73. Here, again, appeared the difficulty arising from the attempt to balance a ratio on a movable fulcrum. It will be seen that the act of 1834 set at work forces for another change in the coinage—forces of a similar kind, but working in exactly the opposite direction to those previous to 1834. A dollar of gold coin would now exchange for more grains of silver ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... the other vibrating, and turning on the bolt that confined them to the iron bar which extends across the front of the frame. The vibrating motion was given by connecting the back end of one shear to a bar—making the bolt the fulcrum—and which was attached to a crank, revolving by gear ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... National Era, while it furnished a most appropriate field for Dr. Bailey's talents, also marked an era in the antislavery history of the country. At the centres of all governments there is found a fulcrum whose value politicians have long since demonstrated by its use,—too frequently for the most unworthy purposes. There had always been organs for conservatism at Washington, but none for progress. There were numbers of bold thinkers throughout the country, who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... deception. The man who never doubts never thinks. He is like a straw in the wind or a waif on the sea. He is one of the helpless, docile, unquestioning millions, who keep the world in a state of stagnation, and serve as a fulcrum for the lever of despotism. The stupidity of the people, says Whitman, is always inviting the insolence ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... himself at all interested in the matter, or thinking it probable that he ever would. His reading, without the application we are here recommending, would never have led him to perceive the slightest similarity between the fulcrum of the lever, and the insertion of his jaw; or any connection between the lesson of the school, and the employment of the parlour:—But ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... produced a cotton shirt, which the youth tore up into long strips. Making a pad of one of these, he placed it under the boy's arm-pit despite of sobs and resistance. This pad acted as a fulcrum on which the arm rested as a lever. Pressing the elbow close to the boy's side he thus forced the shoulder outwards, and, with his left hand, set the bone with its two broken ends together. To secure it in this position he bound the arm pretty firmly to the boy's body, so that ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... attended. The next, and most common power applied for elevating buildings on large rocks, is the simple lever, commonly called a pry. This usually consists of a long straight beam or pole, one end of which is placed under the object to be raised, while a fulcrum consisting of a stone or block of wood, is placed under the lever, at a short distance from the object to be raised. The opposite extremity then being forced down by the weight of one or more of the workmen, a force is applied to the object to be raised, bearing the ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... men wish to raise a piece of stone, or to move it along, they seek for a fulcrum to use their lever from; and, this obtained, they can place the stone wheresoever they please. And world-perfections come into existence too slowly for men to reject all the teaching and experience of their predecessors: the labour of learning ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Pillars of Hercules marked earth's furthest bound. Beyond lay the mare tenebrosum, the Mysterious Sea, girding the level world. England was not then one of the first nations of the earth. She was not yet a maritime power, she had not begun the work of colonisation and empire: the fulcrum of Europe lay further south. But as our Tudor sovereigns were making secure dominion in "these isles," the Byzantine Empire was moving slowly to its end, and favouring circumstances were already making Italy the centre of the world's commerce and culture. ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... is its power to be directed? How bring it to bear upon the Duke of Sutherland? It is an all-potent lever, but it must be furnished with a fulcrum on which to rest, and a direction in which to bear. Let us remark, first, that no signal privilege or right was ever yet achieved for Britain, that was not preceded by some signal wrong. From the times of Magna Charta down to the times of the Revolution, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... implicitly obey the dictation of the mind? that this operating power, whatever its name, under certain limitations, exercises a sovereign dominion not only over our limbs, but over our intellectual pursuits? The mind of every man is evidently the fulcrum, the moving force,—which alike regulates all his limbs and actions: and in which example, we find a strong illustration of the subordinate nature of mere matter. That alone which gives direction to the organic parts of our nature, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... reach about the same stage of development as in a baboon when adult." (18. 'Die Grosshirnwindungen des Menschen,' 1868, s. 95.) The great toe, as Professor Owen remarks (19. 'Anatomy of Vertebrates,' vol. ii. p. 553.), "which forms the fulcrum when standing or walking, is perhaps the most characteristic peculiarity in the human structure;" but in an embryo, about an inch in length, Prof. Wyman (20. 'Proc. Soc. Nat. Hist.' Boston, 1863, vol. ix. p. 185.) found "that the great ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... indolence;—that man, to others, too often proves a cipher; though, to himself, his thoughts form an Infinite Series, indefinite, from its vastness; and incommunicable;—not for lack of power, but for lack of an omnipotent volition, to move his strength. His own world is full before him; the fulcrum set; but lever there is none. To such a man, the giving of any boor's resoluteness, with tendons braided, would be as hanging a claymore to Valor's side, before unarmed. Our minds are cunning, compound mechanisms; ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... integrations? The evidence seems to show that they are in some way dependent on community of function. The eight segments which coalesce to make the head of a centipede, jointly protect the cephalic ganglion, and afford a solid fulcrum for the jaws, &c. The many bones which unite to form a vertebral skull have like uses. In the consolidation of the several pieces which constitute a mammalian pelvis, and in the anchylosis of from ten to nineteen vertebrae in the sacrum of a bird, we have kindred instances of ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... internally is found a series of bones, representing those of the hinder limbs, but of course imperfectly developed; yet they are acted upon by powerful muscles, and can be so used as to form a sort of antagonist to the tail while grasping any object; they thus become a fulcrum giving additional force to the grasp, which secured thereby to a fixed point, giving double power to ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... temperance proved the fulcrum that had been wanting to the lever of improvement. Schools of art, concerts, lectures, choir preparation, recreation, occupation, and interests of all sorts were vigorously devised by the two Yollands; and, moreover, the "New ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... proper to upset some arrangements my mother had made, and then was more insolent than I should have thought even he could have been towards her. I suppose he had got into the habit with poor Aunt Alice. That made a fulcrum, and my father went at my uncle with a will. I never saw my father so roused in my life. I don't mean by the behaviour to his wife, but at what he knew of the fellow, and all the harm he had done and is doing. And actually my uncle ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it was Tim who stood close to Cameron and showed him all the tricks of pitching hay. It was Tim who showed him how to stand with his back to the wagon so as to get the load properly poised with the least expenditure of strength; it was Tim who taught him the cunning trick of using his thigh as a fulcrum in getting his load up, rather than doing it by "main strength and awkwardness"; it was Tim who demonstrated the method of lifting half a cock by running the end of the fork handle into the ground so that the whole earth might aid in the hoisting of the load. Of course in all this ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... brilliant Frenchman has touched the root of the matter. Ought women to learn the alphabet? There the whole question lies. Concede this little fulcrum, and Archimedea will move the world before she has done with it; it becomes merely a question of time. Resistance must be made here or nowhere. Obsta principiis. Woman must be a subject or an equal; there ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... district boards which were established as above stated, proved to be the fulcrum of balance between the local boards and the registrants. In practically every instance their members have been chosen from among the most able and conspicuous representatives of the legal and medical professions, and from the fields ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... You won't find many volunteers for that occupation, and that is the fulcrum of my whole plan. You must understand that gold dust in the mass is practically indistinguishable in appearance from brass filings. Let us suppose that we secretly sell some perfectly pure brass filings for gold dust, and ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... seized it, and whirled to fly, with the unwholesome bit in its mouth, up the peaceful Ayboljockameegus. But the lucky man, and he happened to be the novice, forgot, while giving the capturing jerk of his hook, that his fulcrum was not solid rock. The slight shell tilted, turned—over not quite, over enough to give everybody a start. One lesson teaches the docile. Caution thereafter presided over our fishing. She told us to sit low, keep cool, cast gently, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... sound Imperial policy. We cannot, it is true, effectually prevent the manufacture of demagogues without adopting measures which would render us false to our acknowledged principles of government and to our civilising mission. But we may govern in such a manner as to give the demagogue no fulcrum with which to move his credulous and ill-informed countrymen and co-religionists. The leading principle of a government of this nature should be that low taxation is the most potent instrument with which to conjure discontent. This is the policy which will tend more than any other ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... He knows what his note will sell for in the street. He knows to a feather's weight the influence of each of these items upon the mind of the seller of whom he wishes to make a purchase. Talk about diplomacy!—there's not a man in any court in Europe who knows his position, his fulcrum, and his lever, and the use he can make of them, as this man knows. He can unravel any combination, penetrate any disguise, surmount any obstacle. Beyond all other men, he knows when to talk, and when to refrain from talking,—how ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Archimedes lever, as opposed to that which Allen Sanford had heard his father give. To Gorham the power of the lever depended upon the strength of the imaginative ideals, and the "cold, hard cash" was simply the necessary fulcrum upon which the ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... chipped flint found, with some bones, in a bed of gravel, have been eagerly appealed to as a sufficient indication that the Creation of Man is to be referred to a period at least 10,000 years more remote than is fixed by the Chronology of the Bible.... Brick and flint! a precious fulcrum, truly, for a theory which ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... political constitutions is to counteract the selfishness of a governing class. Helvetius vaulted over this difficulty by imputing to a legislator that very quality of disinterestedness whose absence in the bulk of the human race he made the fulcrum of his whole ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... beam—a bar resting upon one support or fulcrum, or that portion of any beam projecting out of a wall or beyond a support. (See Fig. 16, ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... creature—its internal shell, I should rather say, for bone it has none. The form of the shell in this species is that of a feather, equally developed in the web on both sides. It gives rigidity to the body, and furnishes the muscles with a fulcrum; and we find it composed, like all other shells, of a mixture of animal matter and carbonate of lime. Such was the lesson taught me in a single walk; and I have recorded it at some length. The subject of it, the loligo, has been described by some of our more distinguished naturalists, such as ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller |
