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Attraction   /ətrˈækʃən/   Listen
Attraction

noun
1.
The force by which one object attracts another.  Synonym: attractive force.
2.
An entertainment that is offered to the public.
3.
The quality of arousing interest; being attractive or something that attracts.  Synonym: attractiveness.
4.
A characteristic that provides pleasure and attracts.  Synonyms: attracter, attractive feature, attractor, magnet.
5.
An entertainer who attracts large audiences.  Synonyms: attracter, attractor, draw, drawing card.



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"Attraction" Quotes from Famous Books



... must say!" observed Harry, grinning, for he understood what an attraction that pretty sister ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach

... calix, to the half- blown flower, ready to emerge from its watery prison, and in all its virgin beauty expand its snowy bosom to the sun and genial air. Nor is the beauty of the flower its sole attraction: when unfolded it gives out a rich perfume not unlike the smell of fresh lemons. The leaves are also worthy of attention: at first they are of a fine dark green, but as the flower decays, the leaf changes its hue ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... he knows the character of this nobleman, may, perhaps, conclude that his seeing Booth alone was a lucky circumstance, for he was so passionate an admirer of women, that he could scarce have escaped the attraction of Amelia's beauty. And few men, as I have observed, have such disinterested generosity as to serve a husband the better because they are in love with his wife, unless she will condescend to pay a price beyond the reach ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... trades, professions, and employments have as great attraction for Chinese as for American children. A country boy looks forward to the time when he can stand up in the cart and drive the team. Children seeing a battalion of soldiers at once "organize a company." This was amusingly illustrated by a group ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland

... your capacity to appreciate William Linkhorn and the glory of his "great flaming beard." To me, unhappily, William was an uncouth rustic, just that and very little else; but he possessed some mysterious attraction for women; so, at any rate, Mrs. HENRY DUDENEY tells me, though she does not explain to my satisfaction what it was. Phoebe-Louisa married him partly because she wanted a man to help in her greengrocery; but what charm he had for her soon waned, and she ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various

... the construction of this canal, and the perpetuity of the Union is closely identified with its completion. It is for the nation's benefit, and should be the nation's work. It will give new outlets to the Mississippi, through the lakes, to the ocean, and neutralize that too exclusive attraction of Western commerce to the Gulf, which has so often menaced the integrity of the Union. We must make the access from the Mississippi, through the lakes, to the ocean, as cheap, and easy, and eventually as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... poem on America. The New Englanders who removed to the Western Reserve went there to better themselves; and their children found themselves the owners of broad acres of virgin soil in place of the stony hill pastures of Berkshire and Litchfield. There was an attraction, too, about the wild, free life of the frontiersman, with all its perils and discomforts. The life of Daniel Boone, the pioneer of Kentucky—that "dark and bloody ground"—is a genuine romance. Hardly less picturesque was the old river ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... seventeen months, the family returned to Paris in November 1650. There we still read of the pious labours and devotion of Jacqueline—little or nothing of her brother. How far the leisure of country life may have weaned him from his old pursuits, how far the world had begun to exercise a new attraction over him, we learn nothing. It is evident from his letter to M. Périer on his father’s death, nearly a year after this, that he still cherished strongly his religious convictions. Yet there is nothing in all this time to tell of his religious profession; and Madame ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... to a political talk, the loveliest spring evenings have no attraction for me—no more than warm water, offered me in place of fine cooling wine, would have. No, let us stay where we are. What is the matter with this pipe? (ANNA signs that she will put it right for him, but he ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... introduced confusion into these subjects, to be silent[97]. Again, Antiochus, who in the dialectical dialogue is rejected, is in the De Legibus spoken of with considerable favour[98]. All ethical systems which seemed to afford stability to moral principles had an attraction for Cicero. He was fascinated by the Stoics almost beyond the power of resistance. In respect of their ethical and religious ideas he calls them "great and famous philosophers[99]," and he frequently speaks with something like shame of the treatment they had received at the hands of Arcesilas and ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... so. The very mystery which enshrouds all our actions makes them so. We have had a few traitors, of course; but as none of them has ever survived his treachery by twenty-four hours, a bribe has lost its attraction for ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... in the invitation list by general consent. His half-humorous, resigned air of chronic boredom had a peculiar attraction for all the Midshipmen; in the case of the Midshipman of his turret it amounted ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... virtues, is Mr. JUSTIN MCCARTHY, M.P., whom if it be JUSTIN Pater (not JUSTIN MARTYR), we should like to have seen in spectacles in the Tavern Scene, as Francis the Drawer,—a drawer would have been an immense attraction. If JUSTIN Junior could play the other Drawer, the attraction would be doubled. "Sure such a pair!" But we must not jest in too Shakspearian a manner. We hope the Actors' Benevolent will benefit largely by the acting of the Benevolent Amateurs. Let the Benevolent Public too go and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various

... fire was under control the sun had come through the clouds and was shining brightly. Picnics, however, were not to be considered when an attraction like this was to be had. When the boys finally came straggling back the fire was nearly out, the crowd had dispersed, and only the picnic party was left on ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice

... the institutions of the established Church had grown up a people loyal to it, for, as an old cathedral city, the charm of antiquity attached itself to Norwich; while Mrs. Opie and others known to literature, exercised an attraction and stimulus in their circles, consequent upon the possession of high intellectual powers and good social position. It was in the midst of such surroundings, and with a mind formed by such influences, that Elizabeth ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... faults, I loved the glorious Navy of England: I perhaps scarcely knew myself, till the sensations which the suggestion conjured up in my bosom told me. Even the idea of quitting the sea and following some occupation on shore had not the attraction for me which might have been supposed. Still I had resolved to adopt the latter alternative if her father would bestow her hand on me. He had been absent for some time, attending to public affairs. At length he returned. ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... of paper, cotton, thread, hair, etc., remain in the trap, and a part of the paper, etc., projects into the lumen of the pipe, a part of the water will be withdrawn by capillary attraction from the trap and may unseal it. To guard against unsealing of traps by capillary attraction, traps should be of a uniform diameter, without nooks and corners, and of not too large a size, and should also be well flushed, so that nothing but ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various

... rather to restlessly pervade the air with a vacillating alienation from all the laws of gravitation. Elusive fascinations of thought were liberated with the shining crystalline aerial pulsation; some mysterious attraction dwelt down long vistas amongst the bare trees; their fine fibrous grace of branch and twig was accented by the snow, which lay upon them with exquisite lightness, despite the aggregated bulk, not the densely ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... metaphysic of the human mind. Its apparent clearness, our impatient desire to find it true, the enthusiasm with which so many excellent minds accept it without proof—all the seductions, in short, that it exercises on our thought, should put us on our guard against it. The attraction it has for us proves well enough that it gives satisfaction to an innate inclination. But, as will be seen further on, the intellectual tendencies innate to-day, which life must have created in the course of its evolution, are not at all meant ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... capital with malice aforethought. Usually the seat of government is established in some important town from the force of circumstances. Some cities have an attraction too powerful for the court to resist. There is no capital of England possible but London. Paris is the heart of France. Rome is the predestined capital of Italy in spite of the wandering flirtations its varying governments in different centuries have carried on with Ravenna, or ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... best, that is to say, the latest, accounts a luminous or fiery body, of a prodigious magnitude, from which this world is driven by a centrifugal or repelling power, and to which it is drawn by a centripetal or attractive force; otherwise called the attraction of gravitation; the combination, or rather the counteraction, of these two opposing impulses producing a circular and annual revolution. Hence result the different seasons of the year—viz., spring, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... and pomegranate lips, and witchery in a supple figure, the act would have been a commonplace of human weakness. But in the case of poor Blanquette, squat and coarse, her heavy features only redeemed from ugliness by youth, honesty and clean teeth, the eternal attraction of sex ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... insignificant noses, but impossible not to feel some contempt for them at the same time. Mouth—well, of a girl or woman, not a suckling—not the facial disfigurement called a rose-bud mouth, which has as little attraction for me as the Connemara or even the Zulu mouth. But how describe it, since the poets have not taught me? The painters manage these things better; but even their prince, Rossetti, has nothing on his canvases to compare with this delicate feature. Hair, golden-brown, very bright; for ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... group of explorers on the poop singing 'For she's got bells on her fingers and rings on her toes, elephants to ride upon wherever she goes,' and so on at the top of their voices to an admiring group of Adelie penguins. Meares is the greatest attraction; he has a full voice which is musical but always very flat. He declares that 'God save the King' will always send them to the water, and certainly it is often successful. [Dr. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... time Bonaparte had joined the group which had formed around Talma after dinner, as well as before. Remarkable men are always the centre of attraction. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... up for their neighbours' deficiencies, had two pair—the upper slit up the side of the leg, Mexican fashion. All had large hats, with silver or bead rolls, and every tinge of dark complexion, from the pure Indian, upwards. Some dresses were entirely composed of rags, clinging together by the attraction of cohesion; others had only a few holes to let in the air. All were crowding, jostling, and nearly throwing each other into the water, and gazing with faces ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... shall be counted, measured and verified every three months by a certificate, and each year by an examination; at these examinations there shall be no optional matters, no estimate of collateral studies or those of complimentary or superior importance. The student finds no attraction or benefit in studies outside of the programme, and, in this programme he finds only official texts, explained by the bill of fare, one by one, with subtlety, and patched together as well as may be by means of distinctions ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... impostor, it was his business to have flattered the prevailing hopes, because these hopes were to be the instruments of his attraction and success. ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... Nineveh—to permit of strict watch being kept for any sign of disaffection, and they could be promptly recalled to order if they attempted to throw off the yoke. These provinces were, moreover, of moderate area and sparsely populated: once drawn within the orbit of Assyria's attraction, they were unable to escape from its influence by their own unaided efforts; on the contrary, they gradually lost their individuality, and ended by becoming merged in the body of the nation. The Aramaean tribes of the Khabur ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... A strong attachment had likewise existed between her and Friend Hopper's wife; and during her frequent visits to the house, it was her pleasure to volunteer assistance in the numerous household cares. The fact that his Sarah had great esteem for her, was doubtless a strong attraction to the widower. His suit was favorably received, and they were married on the fourth of the second month, (February) 1824. She was considerably younger than her bridegroom; but vigorous health and elastic spirits had preserved ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... the [A]ryas are the most rapidly increasing of the new Indian sects. In 1901 they numbered 92,419, an increase in the decade of 131 per cent. What ideas have such an attraction for the educated middle class, for to that class the [A]ryas almost exclusively belong? In certain parts of the United Provinces and the Punjab, it seems as much a matter of course that one who has received a modern education ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... partly from the interest which had been awakened in me by Northmour's guests, and partly because of his own murderous attack. As to the former, I fear I was disingenuous, and led her to regard herself as having been an attraction to me from the first moment that I saw her on the links. It relieves my heart to make this confession even now, when my wife is with God, and already knows all things, and the honesty of my purpose even in this; for while she lived, although it often ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... not know this part of the country, it has, for me, every sort of attraction—historical as well as picturesque. Its historical interest is rather for the student than the tourist, and I love it none ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich

... I believe that ere his destined hour A mortal may descend into the gulf Of Hades? What attraction ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine

... chest which I could not explore and, like all forbidden things, it possessed a great attraction for me. It stood away back in a dusty, cobwebbed corner, a strong, high wooden box, painted blue. From some words which I had heard Grandmother let fall I was sure it had a history; it was the one ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... much patronized in those days was in Nassau Street, where early in the evening unlimited Loo, never under "three and three," sometimes "six and six," might be indulged in, while a little later Roulette formed the attraction of an adjacent room, and still later at night all flocked down-stairs to the hot supper and rattling English Hazard. For one or two seasons St Stephen's Green lent one of its lordly mansions, formerly the residence of ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... the nave, west front, and cloister. The fifth and last change is the introduction of Perpendicular work, chiefly noticeable in the chapter house, the west screen, and the great east window. The day of the great builders was waning fast. The old faith that inspired them was dwindling, the attraction of national concerns was too great for local effort. Moreover, the desire to make intricately beautiful, right enough in itself, had vitiated, as it was bound to do, the taste of architect and builder. The ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw

... Owing to the attraction of the heat by the black color, asphaltum would increase the injury by absorption of more heat. Some white coating is altogether best for sunburn injuries, because it will reflect and not absorb heat, and a durable whitewash ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... effect which her royal visit was expected to produce with smiles, and most graciously acknowledged the simple but significant gift. The bird was held out by her majesty to the royal children, to whom it at once became an object of attraction. The Prince of Wales soon obtained possession of the bird, which seemed to absorb his attention. In the evening Dublin was illuminated, and maintained its ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... two being antagonistic at times, the latter is sure to be the stronger, and not unfrequently carries its victim into dissolute extremes. Riches, however, will always weigh heavy in the scale; their possession sways,—the charm of gold is precious and powerful. And, too, the colonel had another attraction-very much esteemed among slave-dealers and owners—he had a military title, though no one knew how he came ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... towns fall for this: 'Manager Soandso is to be congratulated upon securing for his next week's attraction Mr. Suchandsuch's elaborate production of the great London success, 'The Rancid Prune,' with the following all-star cast of metropolitan favorites.' And some of ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... part in this story, it is not the only element of attraction. While appealing to the natural normal tastes of boys for fun and interest in the national game, the book, without preaching, lays emphasis on ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... passion. I might even call it a love meter. Love might seem to be a subject which could not be investigated. But even love can be attributed to electrical forces, or, perhaps better, is expressed by the generation of an electric current, as though the attraction between men and women were the giving off of electrons or radiations of one to the other. I have seen this galvanometer stationary during the ordinary meeting of men and women, yet exhibit all sorts of strange vibrations when true ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... "that is rather an account of the general process of Experience than of the special one of Knowledge. No doubt there is an attraction in all activity—Ellis has already expounded it; and all experience involves a kind of Knowledge; but what we wanted to get at was the special attraction of scientific activity; and that seems to be, so far as I can see, simply the discovery ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson

... few half-lights of life, and no spiritual twilights connected her sleeping and waking hours. She opened her eyes and looked around the room, and remembered how she had run away and how her mother was not there, and she remembered the strange lady with that same odd combination of terror and attraction and docility with which she had regarded her the night before. It was a very cold morning, and there was a delicate film of frost on the windows between the sweeps of the muslin curtains, and the morning ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... of her brother's sudden change of address with mingled annoyance and anxiety. It was not pleasant to have him quit the lodgings she had found for him after so short a trial, and she could not help feeling that there was some very strong attraction drawing him to town. Mrs. Benn, that uncompromising "Son of Temperance," had come over herself to explain matters to Jimmy's sister, and had taken the opportunity to enlarge on the number of bottles she had found in her lodger's room, omitting to state, however, that these had included the best ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... is a remarkable attraction to me in this place," said Matthew Kendrick, walking beside Roberta with hands clasped behind his back and head well up. "It has a homelike look, in spite of its deserted state, which appeals to me. I wonder that the remnant of the family does not ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond

... Federal City, but which was destined to take the name of that great patriot himself, a large number of negroes were found there. As a town, Washington has made wonderful strides since the close of the Civil War. The schools or colleges for coloured students, which are provided, of course have attraction for negroes, while other characteristics of the city also have strong fascination for such susceptible folk. If we may say so, in connection with a Republic, Washington is the seat of the Court ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike

... and sweetest which does not find here negation. It is a calm blank, a rest, indeed, but from every struggle of thought, will, and emotion. This is the consummation which India has for many centuries held aloft as an attraction to its ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... an attraction of their own which many miss, are the Botanical Gardens hard by Magdalen Bridge. Their situation on the brink of the River Cherwell, and almost under the shadow of Magdalen Tower, is what probably appeals most strongly to the ordinary observer, while ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How

... delightful bevy of tutors and scholars presented to us just nineteen years ago, by T. W. Robertson, who, inspired by a German original, gave us not only Bella and Naomi Tighe, but a 'rosebud garden of girls,' of which the attraction has by no means yet departed. Mr. Ruskin has sneered at Bella as 'an amiable governess who, for the general encouragement of virtue in governesses, is rewarded by marrying a lord.' But for all that, ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... want he had of her, but she found he had spoken truth when he said that that was a quality which grew with having. For fewer men are bored with satiety than kept by a custom that becomes necessity, and his habit for her would in itself be an attraction for him. But Killigrew, for all his cleverness, was not the man to know, if any could have, how passionate her withholding had been, how ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... The extraordinary attraction [he writes] I felt towards the intricacies of living structure proved nearly fatal to me at the outset. I was a mere boy—I think between thirteen and fourteen years of age—when I was taken by some older ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... but even there the cessation of industry was not universal. And, after all, how should it be otherwise? Where were the people to go? What could they do? There is no Park. There are no suburbs accessible without a severe struggle with the attraction of gravitation. There are no theatres fit to attend. There is no "Museum," no menagerie, no gallery of art, no public gardens, no Fifth Avenue to stroll in, no steamboat excursion, no Hoboken. There ought to be in Cincinnati a most exceptionally good and high ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... exercise of control and coercion over the population from which the class draws its sustenance. This discipline, as well as the incidents of practice which give it its content, therefore has some attraction for the class apart from all questions of cognition. All this holds true wherever and so long as the governmental office continues, in form or in substance, to be a proprietary office; and it holds true beyond that limit, in so far as ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... had not used such language! And since you so much object to the simple industry by which I live, let me give you a friendly hint. If you will not consent to support your daughter, I shall be constrained to place that lady behind my counter, where I doubt not she would prove a great attraction; and your son-in-law shall have a livery and run the errands. With such young blood my business might be doubled, and I might be bound in common gratitude to place the name of Luxmore ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... discord—the poverty of criticism. Swift's opinion of the power of six geniuses united[618]. That union scarce possible. His remarks just; man a social, not steady nature. Drawn to man by words, repelled by passions. Orb drawn by attraction rep. [repelled] ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... of frequent occurrence at Tette, and the crops suffer severely. This may arise partly from the position of the town between the ranges of hills north and south, which appear to have a strong attraction for the rain-clouds. It is often seen to rain on these hills when not a drop falls at Tette. Our first season was one of drought. Thrice had the women planted their gardens in vain, the seed, after just vegetating, was killed by the intense dry heat. ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... man, who knew better than to wait on my convenience. I see, Miss Elsie, you are wondering that the like of me, that never was what you would call well-favoured, should speak of offers, and sweet-hearts, and such like; but in Australia it's the busy hand and careful eye that is the great attraction for a working man. I never had much daffing or nonsense about me, and did not like any of it in other folk, but I had lots of sweethearts. But I'll tell you the whole story, as neither of you look the least sleepy, and if I am owre long about ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... to live a new life in the body, more or less unconscious of its past existences, but containing within itself the "essence" or results of its past lives, which experiences go to make up its new "character," or "personality." It is usually held that the rebirth is governed by the law of attraction, under one name or another, and which law operates in accordance with strict justice, in the direction of attracting the reincarnating soul to a body, and conditions, in accordance with the tendencies of the past life, the ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson

... side of our possessions, together with the probable accession of the populations already existing in other parts of our hemisphere, which within the period in question will feel with yearly increasing force the natural attraction of so vast, powerful, and prosperous a confederation of self-governing republics and will seek the privilege of being admitted within its safe and happy bosom, transferring with themselves, by a peaceful and healthy process of incorporation, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... forget herself in seeing to the welfare of her small charges, who one and all regarded her with admiring eyes; she enjoyed the sensation of being the centre of attraction and graciously accepted their homage, although the majority were "nobodies" whom she ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne

... diamonds amid its golden sands. Attractions everywhere, without end! This nature, all astir with a life and gladness like that of childhood, scarcely able to contain the impulses and sap of June, possessed a fatal attraction for the darkened gaze of the invalid. He drew the blinds of his carriage windows, and ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... thought went beyond lovemaking to marriage, she believed that she could have him if she wanted him. Her father's money counted in this; she divined that Beaton was poor; but that made no difference; she would have enough for both; the money would have counted as an irresistible attraction if ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... historical facts, and they serve at the same time as a symbol of the light imprisoned in matter, and as a typical expression of the suffering, poured out over the whole of nature (especially in the plant-world), of the great physical weltschmerz. Christ, through his teaching and power of attraction, began the deliverance of the light, so that one can truly say that the salvation of the world proceeds from rays which stream from the Cross; as, however, his teachings were conceived by the apostles in a Jewish sense, and the Gospels were disfigured, Mani appeared as the comforter ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... this attraction which has heretofore drawn to a point so advantageous, the greater part of the savages, in this country driven away by fear of the Iroquois. The three tribes at present living on the Baye des Puans (Green Bay) as strangers, formerly dwelt on the main land near the middle of this island—some ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... the continual movement of one part supposes and carries with it the movement of the whole, in such a way that the attraction of the posterior parts is consequent upon the repulsion of the anterior parts; thus the movement of the superior parts results of necessity from that of the inferior, and from the raising of one opposite power, follows the depression of the other ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... appeared as if, like bright planets, they could almost cast a shadow; and dimples, before concealed, would show themselves when she indulged in her silvery laugh. Although her form was commanding, still she was very feminine: there was great attraction in her face, even when in repose—she ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... the library, either historical or scientific, or an art gallery, may be made a source of attraction, and of much educational value. The collecting of antiquities, or natural history specimens, or rare bindings, or ancient books or manuscripts, is generally taken up by societies organized for such purposes. The library should try to bring these collections into such relations with itself as to ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana

... such persons in the next generation. In other words, natural selection is at work again here, with alcohol as its agent. By killing off the worst drunkards in each generation, nature provides that the following generation shall contain fewer people who lack the power to resist the attraction of the effect of alcohol, or who have a tendency to use it to such an extent as to injure their minds and bodies. And it must be obvious that the speed and efficacy of this ruthless temperance reform movement are proportionate to the abundance and ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... on the other, in those whose hopes are disappointed, to a destroying negligence and sensuality. Nor is it to be denied, that the unsanctified literature of antiquity, and many of the productions of our own times, which have the greatest power of attraction over the minds of youth, cannot be assiduously cultivated without danger of corrupting the moral sentiments, and ministering strength to the wrong affections of the mind. Against these evils, and others, more immediately pernicious, which are incident to numerous associations of ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... was then ruling the principality, which contained less than a million inhabitants. He it was who said in his curious and witty Memoirs: "How easy it would have been to secure the allegiance of the Germans, who are unable to withstand the attraction of military glory, for whom an oath of allegiance is a mere nothing, and who felt for France an affection which we cruelly drove out of them!... Germany, which always admires the marvellous, long preserved ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... abyss and the azure cope with an intense distinctness that sears the gazer's eyeballs. The Divina Commedia, with a wonderful truth, also reflects the feeling of the age when it was written in this respect, that there is a grappling force of attraction, a compelling realism, about its "Purgatory" and "Hell" which are to be sought in vain in the delineations of its "Paradise." The mediaval belief in a future life had for its central thought the day of judgment, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... I have learned that when I did return the hall that was filled before was entirely too big for the audience! The editors of America—God bless them! They are always trying to boost a home enterprise—not for the sake of the imported attraction but for the sake of the ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette

... writers, we have to take the great writer at his best and forget his worst. It is a melancholy reflection that we so often find a man of genius working himself out to an unworthy close, it is too often feared, in the thirst of success and even the attraction of gain. But at his best Charles Kingsley left some fine and abiding influences behind him, and achieved some brilliant things. Would that we always had men of his dauntless spirit, of his restless energy, of his burning sympathy, of his keen imagination! He reminds us somewhat of ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... that it had much to do with forming his political character, and in laying the foundation of the sturdy inflexibility with which he held to his political principles. One of his early friends says, "He liked the Weekly Dispatch. The politics, being racy, had a great attraction for him, and he used to drink ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... phrases as the "shriek of the storm," or "the roar of the waves," as poetical hyperboles; whereas they are very literal and expressive renderings of the sounds of horror incessant throughout a gale at sea. Our cabin, though very nice and comfortable in other respects, possessed an extraordinary attraction for any stray wave which might be wandering about the saloon: once or twice I have been in the cuddy when a sea found its way down the companion, and I have watched with horrible anxiety a ton or so of water hesitating which cabin it should enter and deluge, and ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... Union and not an empty name. The Englishman and the Dutchman must join hands and sink differences, not only for the common good, but the common safety. So when Diana's practical spirit perceived how great and real an attraction van Hert had for her, she did not try to put it from her and struggle against it because he was a Dutchman. The moment she was sure, and the course was clear, she let herself go fearlessly; not as an act of sacrifice at all, she was far too practical to have much faith ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... troops here, prior to the battle of Edgehill, the spot being long known as "The King's Standing." The mill-dams at Sutton burst their banks July 24, 1668, and many houses were swept away. The population is about 8,000, and the rateable value is put at L50,000, but as, through the attraction of the park, the town is a very popular resort, and is rapidly increasing, it may ultimately become a place of importance, worthy of municipal honours, which are even now being sought. The number of visitors to the park ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... with that thy gentle hand Seisd mine, I yeilded, and from that time see How beauty is excelld by manly grace 490 And wisdom, which alone is truly fair. So spake our general Mother, and with eyes Of conjugal attraction unreprov'd, And meek surrender, half imbracing leand On our first Father, half her swelling Breast Naked met his under the flowing Gold Of her loose tresses hid: he in delight Both of her Beauty and submissive Charms Smil'd with superior Love, as ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... loves but one gets careless toward ... I know Antrim has always had an immense attraction for ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... father and intrusting to the unchanged Glafira Petrovna the management of his estate and superintendence of his bailiffs, young Lavretsky went to Moscow, whither he felt drawn by a vague but strong attraction. He recognised the defects of his education, and formed the resolution, as far as possible, to regain lost ground. In the last five years he had read much and seen something; he had many stray ideas in his head; any professor ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... comported with the aspect of sky and earth, and weariness, the fast ally of despondency, aided in giving a leaden hue to the future and a leaden weight, to his thoughts. The prospect of trudging a mile or more through the drenching rain to his previous squalid resting-place at No. 13, whose only attraction consisted in the fact that no questions were asked, was so depressing that he decided to ask Mr. Growther for permission to sleep in ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... such an exaggerated value on your appearance? Why will you never allow that three-quarters at least of your attraction ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... Hannah's still face. Now and then she asked a question, and once cried out that, after all, why wasn't it the way to live? Peace and self-sacrifice and love! "Oh," she said, turning to her husband, "can't you feel the attraction of it? I should think even you ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland

... the table, their eyes wandering from the six tempting-looking money-bags to the countenance of Nisida, and then back to the little sacks; but Stephano studied more the countenance than the other objects of attraction; for Nisida's face once more expressed firm resolution and her haughty, imperious, determined aspect, combined with her extraordinary beauty, fired ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... impatiently to the voices beneath. At sight of Helen, she drew back; but she smiled exultingly when she saw that all the splendour of beauty she had so lately beheld and dreaded was flown. Her unadorned garments gave no particular attraction to the simple lines of her form; the effulgence of her complexion was gone; her cheek was pale, and the tremulous motion of her step deprived her of the elastic grace which was usually the charm of her ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... immediately in front of Witch Hill, to catch a view of the convicts as they approached the place selected for their execution, offered their dying prayers, and hung suspended high in air. Such scenes always draw together great multitudes. None have possessed a deeper, stronger, or stranger attraction; and never has the dread spectacle been held out to view over a wider area, or from so conspicuous a spot. The assembling of such multitudes so often, for such a length of time, and from such remote quarters, must have been accompanied and followed by wasteful, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... that the wick is constantly bringing up oil by capillary attraction, whether it is lighted or unlighted, lamps in which the wicks have not been cared are kept continually greasy. In fact, a lamp that is greasy or that gives out a bad odor is one that has not been properly cared. With due attention, ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... work by Mr. Brande: it is not avowedly so, although everyone familiar with his valuable Manual of Chemistry will soon identify the authorship. The present is only the first Part of this petite system, containing Attraction, Heat, Light, and Electricity. It is, as the author intended it to be, "less learned and elaborate than the usual systematic works, and at the same time more detailed, connected, and explicit than the 'Conversations' ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various

... brake to stop a wheel from rotating. It comprises a shoe, or sometimes a ring, which by electro-magnetic attraction is drawn against the rotating wheel, thus preventing it from turning, or tending to bring it to rest. (See ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... it with positives. Do not lumber up your plan. Centralize it. Modify it. Create it as a necessity. Form into it the indispensable. Then embody yourself into it. See that nothing about you defeats, or neutralizes attraction. Have a burning interest in your proposition. Look for fulfillment. Anticipate success. Make the world feel that you know you are right. Stop asking folks if they think you will succeed. Of course they do not, because they have not. Hold your mind relaxed in Silence. Make your desire active. ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft

... his life. A clever, ambitious, active boy of his own standing, whom he had long secretly admired, took a pronounced fancy to him. He was a boy, Hugh saw afterwards, with a deeply jealous disposition; and the first attraction of Hugh's friendship had been the fact that Hugh threatened his supremacy in no department whatever. Hugh was the only boy of the set who had never done better than he in anything. But then there came in a more generous feeling. Hugh's ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... known to us which does not come entirely from the sun is that of the tides. The tidal wave is raised and carried round the earth mainly by the attraction of the moon. The sun, though immensely larger than the moon, is so much farther off that it attracts the waters of the earth much less than the moon does. A tide-mill, which gets its motive power from the rise ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... innate means for determining the truth. But such reminiscences being, in their nature, imperfect and uncertain, we never can attain to absolute truth. With Plato, the Beautiful is the perfect image of the true. Love is the desire of the soul for Beauty, the attraction of like for like, the longing of the divinity within us for the divinity beyond us; and the Good, which is beauty, truth, justice, is God—God in ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... could have been laid on my shoulders fell to my lot five years later, when the mysterious attraction by which I had been drawn towards her as a boy had grown into the most absorbing affection—a love that ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... he was the leading attraction at the trial of Ambrose Doane, and that the humming crowd which filled every corner of the court-room had come for the express purpose of hearing him, the famous advocate from the East, ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... smiled at those cases of spontaneous combustion which, like fusing the component parts of a seidlitz powder, unite two people in a bubbling and ephemeral ecstasy. But surely there is possible, with but a single meeting, an attraction so great, a community of mind and interest so strong, that between that first meeting and the next the bond may grow into something stronger. This is especially true, I fancy, of people with temperament, the modern substitute for imagination. It is a nice question whether lovers begin to love when ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... become quite at ease. This energetic woman had little attraction for her. She saw the characteristics which made Virginia enthusiastic, but feared rather than admired them. To put herself in Miss Nunn's hands might possibly result in a worse form of bondage than she suffered ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... an absolute beginning; on the other hand, it never delivers a finished work; the history of inventions sufficiently proves this. Furthermore, one may pass beyond it; many creations long in preparation seem without a crisis, strictly so called; such as Newton's law of attraction, Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper," and the "Mona Lisa." Finally, many have felt themselves really inspired without producing anything ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... things between them. They both wanted to go to America, and they were not in a hurry, so that the prospect of a pleasant party, with all the liberty and home feeling there is on board of a yacht, was an immense attraction. Barker, of course, was amused and interested by his scheme for making Claudius and the Countess fall in love with each other, and he depended on the dark lady for his show. Claudius would not have been easily induced to leave Europe by argument or persuasion, but there was little ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... was displeased to see that Gaius and Lucius, who were being brought up in the lap of sovereignty, did not carefully imitate his ways. They not only lived too luxuriously, but showed unseemly audacity. Lucius once entered the theatre by himself and became the center of attraction of the whole population; some merely let him engross their thoughts and others openly paid court to him. This treatment made him more arrogant, and among his other doings he proposed for consul Gaius, who was not yet a iuvenis. His ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio

... demonstration, that the sun is almost a million times larger than the earth? and that, although so remote from us, that a cannon ball shot directly towards it, and maintaining its full speed, would be twenty years in reaching it, it yet affects the earth by its attraction in an inappreciable instant of time?—Who would not ask for demonstration, when told that a gnat's wing, in its ordinary flight, beats many hundred times in a second? or that there exist animated and regularly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various

... do so. Sylvia was a born coquette, and most dangerous in that her power of attraction was natural, and as a rule she appealed to the better and more chivalrous feelings of her victims. Fragile, and delicately pretty, she looked as if she needed some one to shelter and defend her from all troubles. Bland decided that, although she rarely said anything brilliant, and he ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... was said in the presence of my mother, who, being by nature as quiet a body as ever lived, was by no means pleased to know that her house was, as it were, to be made a centre of attraction. And when Mr. Lindsey and the police had gone away, and she began getting some breakfast ready for me before my going to meet Chisholm at the station, she set on to bewail our misfortune in ever taking Gilverthwaite into the ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... sympathy; but in this version of the tale the fatal love-philtre operates only for a period of three years; Iseut, with Tristan's consent, returns to her husband, King Marc; and then a second passion is born in their hearts, a passion which is the offspring not of magic but of natural attraction, and at a critical moment of peril the fragment closes. About twenty years later (1170) the tale was again sung by an Anglo-Norman named THOMAS. Here—again in a fragment—we read of Tristan's marriage, a marriage only in name, to the white-handed ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... that our summers, instead of being passed among the hills near Pisa, should be spent on the shores of the sea. It was very difficult to find a spot. We shrank from Naples from a fear that the heats would disagree with Percy: Leghorn had lost its only attraction, since our friends who had resided there were returned to England; and, Monte Nero being the resort of many English, we did not wish to find ourselves in the midst of a colony of chance travellers. No ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley

... and in death, with a sort of halo of superstitious fear. Thus, for example, it is thought that if a Gilyak falls in combat with a bear, his soul transmigrates into the body of the beast. Nevertheless his flesh has an irresistible attraction for the Gilyak palate, especially when the animal has been kept in captivity for some time and fattened on fish, which gives the flesh, in the opinion of the Gilyaks, a peculiarly delicious flavour. But in order to enjoy this dainty with impunity they deem it needful to perform a long series ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... and the goodness of Faraki, who has implanted an unconscious mutual attraction between the sexes that constantly draws them towards each other. It is this mutual love, these invisible ties, that make the world brighter, cheerier, happier. It has been truly said that those who selfishly cut themselves away from these ties, ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... they were torn from the ends of the earth by the irresistible attraction of the seventh circle, they were whirling round the center in a double ring, a ring of young men round a ring of girls; and then, as by some mysterious compulsion, they divided and cast themselves off in rows of two couples, man and girl by man and girl, linked with arms on each other's shoulders, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... proportions. During his stay in Paris, Frederick had lived in a state of constant fever, and his yearning for his idol had risen to an unendurable degree. About the image of little Ingigerd Hahlstroem, a heavenly aureole had laid itself, so compelling in its attraction that Frederick's mental vision was literally blinded to everything else. That illusion had suddenly vanished. He felt ashamed of himself. "I'm a ridiculous fool," he thought, and when he arose to go on deck, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... apron-string, and his greatest pleasure was in being with Trevor. I think Trevor's own influence never did any harm. Poor Joel Lea had trained him well, and he was a conscientious, good boy, who often hindered Alured from insubordination; but the attraction to Spinney Lawn was a mischievous thing—for there was no doubt that the heads of the family would set him ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge

... resentment in that country, which is subjected to the most formidable competition from foreign and colonial foodstuffs, but whose great competition in manufactured goods is Great Britain herself. The one Irish industry which might favour it is the linen industry of the North. It would have no attraction for the shipbuilding industry, which in no part of the British Isles has anything to gain by Protection, as I believe all parties to the controversy agree. Other small manufacturing industries would complain that they gained nothing; while the agricultural ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... the floor of the cabin," Tom went on. "As I sit here I have before me three buttons. They control the magnets that hold the bombs in place. If I press one of the buttons it breaks the electrical current, the magnet no longer has any attraction, and it releases the explosive. Now look down. I am going to try and drop a chalk bomb near ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton

... little vexed and a good deal surprised at what was to her so new an experience. She had not dreamed that any one could object to teaching a child those blessed gospel truths which will shed either on life or on death the truest light. But while she felt a strong interest in and attraction towards her cousin Sophy, she instinctively felt that on such subjects ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar

... popular and almost historic Fassifern farm a great many times in my short career, but for the life of me I cannot understand what attraction it possesses that could induce people to go there for luncheon and then spend a whole afternoon lolling about the place. But that seems to have been precisely what the Countess and his lordship did on the day of my arrival at the Homestead. The "other ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon



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