"Balancing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... privet leaves and holding her skirts close in, so that they might not be touched by the whitewash on each edge. Once outside, she straightened herself up with the lithe grace of a young willow, released her skirts, and balancing herself on the point of her parasol, closed the gate with her toe: she was ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... cup of boon companionship. The reader will imagine the two men very different from each other in form and aspect; the one short, dry, fragile, and betraying a love of ease in his unbuttoned vest, and a certain lolling, see-sawing method of balancing his body upon his chair; the other, erect and solemn, and as steady on his seat as if he were nailed to it. It was a fine, tranquil balmy evening; the sun had just set, and the clouds still retained the rosy tints ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... appliances for his real work. He had known what it was to lack books and instruments; and "The Vital Thing" was the magic wand which summoned them to his aid. For some time he had been feeling his way along the edge of a discovery: balancing himself with professional skill on a plank of hypothesis flung across an abyss of uncertainty. The conjecture was the result of years of patient gathering of facts: its corroboration would take months more ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... her absent cousin. How sick she was, and how high the fever ran, and how strangely she talked, as he sat there watching her with a terrible fear in his heart, and a constant prayer for the dear life which seemed balancing so evenly in the scale for the next two or three days, during which he was with her all the time he could spare from his Aunt Lucy, who never suspected why he seemed so abstracted and sad, or that the fever was in the hotel where he was staying. He knew how much afraid she was of it, and how anxious ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... out in the menagerie tent. They whooped their unbridled approval when the wild Indian chief, after shooting down a stuffed coon with a bow and arrow from somewhere up near the top of the centre pole while balancing himself jauntily erect upon the haunches of a coursing white charger, suddenly flung off his feathered headdress, his wig and his fringed leather garments, and revealed himself in pink fleshings as the ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... poor, was a dead leveller; and that, on the other hand, the life to come would raise the poor to the level of the rich. It was a pity that there was no phrase in the language to justify him in carrying out the antithesis, and so balancing his sentence like a rope-walker, by saying that life was a live leveller. The sermon ended with a solemn warning: "Those who neglect the gospel-scheme, and never think of death and judgment — be they rich or poor, be they wise or ignorant — whether they dwell in the palace or the ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... into a series of treaties with the UK during the 19th century that made Bahrain a British protectorate. The archipelago attained its independence in 1971. Bahrain's small size and central location among Persian Gulf countries require it to play a delicate balancing act in foreign affairs among its larger neighbors. Facing declining oil reserves, Bahrain has turned to petroleum processing and refining and has transformed itself into an international banking center. King HAMAD bin Isa al-Khalifa, after coming to power in 1999, pushed economic ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of rooks, tenants of the adjacent grove, were hovering about the ruin, and balancing themselves upon ever airy projection, and looked down with curious eye and cawed as the ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... emphasizing his denial, raised his foot and sent the mat flying along the passage. Honor satisfied, he returned to the door-post and, looking idly out on the street again, exchanged a few desultory remarks with Mr. Joe Brown, who, with his hands in his pockets, was balancing himself with great skill on the edge of ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... fours, don't you find it a bit tricky to stand on your hind legs again?" remarked Arbery. "Want a balancing-pole, don't you?" ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... coffee and, lighting a cigarette, tipped back his chair, balancing himself with one hand on ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... supposed that the style of Johnson, perhaps without conscious intent, was founded upon that of Browne. A tone of oracular authority, an academic Latinism sometimes disregarding the limitations of the unlearned reader, an elaborate balancing of antitheses in the same period,—these are qualities which the two writers have in common. But the resemblance, such as it is, is skin-deep. Johnson is a polemic by nature, and at his best cogent and triumphant in argument. His thought is carefully kept level with the apprehension ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... he says," he suggested anxiously. But his mother did not heed him. She stood balancing ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... covered with a hot bath, but, balancing his revolver in his right hand, he felt a queer touch of joy and pride at finding his nerve still unshaken. He raised the weapon, covered their bodies, and then something like an invisible hand forced down the muzzle of his gun. He ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... waiters rushed back and forth, balancing their great trays on their finger-tips in a reckless way that made Gay dodge every time ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... numeri. This proverb applies as aptly to the moral and political, as to the sidereal and molecular, world. The elements of justice are identical with those of algebra; legislation and government are simply the arts of classifying and balancing powers; all jurisprudence falls within the rules of arithmetic. This chapter and the next will serve to lay the foundations of this extraordinary doctrine. Then will be unfolded to the reader's vision an immense and novel career; then shall we commence to see in numerical ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... friend; but the friend ministers to our weakness, and exalts our strength. He sympathizes gently with our self-love, he magnifies every excellence. He is perpetually charmed, alike with the novelty and the similarity of our experience, and unwearied in comparing thoughts and balancing opinions. All, and more, that he gives us, he receives; and so an incipient friendship is one of the most intoxicating delights of life. What long leaps in acquaintance we took during our first hour, and while Mr. Remington still walked up-hill ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... brightly shining when Herrera entered the town. At that early hour the streets had few occupants besides the market people, who walked briskly along, balancing their vegetable stores upon their heads, and chattering noisely in the Basque tongue; at a stable-door some Andalusian dragoons groomed their horses, gaily singing in chorus one of the lively seguidillas ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... the Japs were organized, as soon as they felt there was going to be a row, they kept their eyes on the Russians all the time they were in the ring doing their pole balancing, and the little Jap up on the bamboo pole, with a fan, kept jabbering to the fellows down on the ground, and I could see that trouble was coming. When their act was over the Japs bowed to the audience, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... hiding-place from the world. The limb reached out free of the other branches, and the wind caught the sailorman fairly and spun him like a dancing dervish. Then it tired of him, and went off to try to drown the Chapman boy, leaving the sailorman motionless with his arms outstretched, balancing in each hand a tiny oar and ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... afternoon before they could get away. Blink insisted on putting up a lunch, and it took some time to make enough sandwiches for the Cowardly Lion. But at last it was ready and packed into an old hat box belonging to Mops, the Scarecrow's cook. Then Dorothy, balancing the box carefully on her lap, climbed on the Cowardly Lion's back, and assuring Blink that they would return in a few days with his master, they bade him farewell. Blink almost spoiled things by bursting into tears, but he managed ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... motion. The spread of his wings is more than twice the length of his body, and every feather of those long, silvery-pearly, crescent fans seems instinct with the passion and the skill of flight. He rises and falls without an effort; he swings and turns from side to side with balancing motions like a skater; he hangs suspended in the air immovable as if he were held there by some secret force of levitation; he dives suddenly head foremost and skims along the water, feet dangling and wings flapping, ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... duty, he condescends to come once a week to his mother's house, is entitled to say whatever he pleases, and should on no account be contradicted by any one. Lucy no doubt had a lover,—an authorised lover; but perhaps that fact could not be taken as more than a balancing weight against the inferiority of her position as a governess. Lady Fawn was of course obliged to take her son's part, and would scold Lucy. Lucy must be scolded very seriously. But it would be a thing so desirable if Lucy could be induced to accept ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... ground herself, but, through the languor and unsteadiness of her pursuits, and from her aiming through commerce at naval force which she never could attain without losing more on one side than she could gain on the other, three great powers, each of them (as military states) capable of balancing her, had grown up on the Continent. Russia and Prussia had been created almost within memory; and Austria, though not a new power, and even curtailed in territory, was, by the very collision in which she lost that territory, greatly improved in her ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... awaiting some national economic issue before it would manifest its ugly self. The emancipation plans which had been adopted by the Northern States were emphasising slavery as a sectional issue. It would make even more difficult the task of balancing the two sections. So rapidly had public sentiment accepted the inevitable in the matter of sections, that by 1820 it was easy to repeat the fearful phrase, "preserving the balance ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... close, and for some moments they stood looking vacantly at the landscape. Overhead the sky was a blue dome, and so still was the air that the smoke-clouds trailed like the wings of gigantic birds slowly balancing themselves. And waves of white light rolled up the valley as if jealous of the red, flashing furnaces. An odour of iron and cinders poisoned the air, and after some moments of contemplation which seemed to draw them closer together, Mr. ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... think that, then you haven't understood Max—or his love for you," retorted Olga vehemently. "Oh! How can I make you see it? You keep on balancing this against that—what you can give, what Max can believe—weighing out love as though it were sold by the ounce! Max loves you—loves you! And there aren't any limitations to love!" She broke off abruptly, her voice shaking. "Can't ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... direction. In the midst of all this the little earth, single and alone, would obstinately and wilfully withstand such force—a supposition which, it appears to me, has much against it. I could also not explain why the earth, a freely poised body, balancing itself about its centre, and surrounded on all sides by a fluid medium, should not be affected by the universal rotation. Such difficulties, however, do not confront us if we attribute motion to the earth—such a small, insignificant body in comparison with the whole universe, and which ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... darted forward only to be caught back by Mac. An avalanche of sound swept in—a mighty howling and snarling and cracking of whips, and underneath the higher clamour, human voices—and in dashes the Boy, powdered with snow, laughing and balancing carefully in his mittened hands a little Yukon spruce, every needle diamond-pointed, every sturdy branch white with frost crystals and soft woolly snow, and bearing its little harvest of curious fruit—sweet-cake rings and stars and two gingerbread ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... unfavorable. The secretary of this state [Dallas] possessed great influence in the popular society of Philadelphia, which in its turn influenced those of other states; of course he merited attention. It appears that these men, with others unknown to me, were balancing to decide on their party. Two or three days before the proclamation was published, and of course before the cabinet had resolved on its measures, Mr. Randolph came to me with an air of great eagerness, and made to me the overtures ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... would have failed, if it had not been that he was on the edge of a part of the trench which the turtles had not had time to fill up. The weight of the creature caused a fore-leg to break off part of the edge, and over it went, slowly, on its side,—almost balancing thus, and flapping as it went. To expedite the process Quashy seized it by the neck and gave another heave and howl. Unfortunately, the edge of the trench again gave way under one of his own feet, and he fell into it with a cry of distress, for the turtle fell on the top of him, crushing ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... a pleasant knack of simplifying matters, 'those knights of old,'" replied Freddy; "but it's not a line of business that would have suited me at all; in balancing their accounts, the kicks always appear to have obtained a very uncomfortable preponderance over the halfpence; besides, the causa belli was a point on which their ideas were generally in a deplorable state of confusion: when one kills a man, it's as well to have some slight notion why ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... difficulty in balancing himself on a branch, but presently he remembered the way, and fell asleep. He awoke long before morning, shivering, and saying to himself, "I never was out in such a cold night;" he had really been out in colder nights when he was a bird, but, of course, as everybody ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... not imagine that George had often driven my father out,' said Aubrey, again looking lazily up from balancing his spoon. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The balancing of a flyer may seem, at first thought, to be a very simple matter, yet almost every experimenter had found in this one point which he could not satisfactorily master. Many different methods were tried. Some experimenters placed ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... science lifts its modern type, History her pot, divinity her pipe, While proud philosophy repines to show, Dishonest sight! his breeches rent below; Embrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley[364] stands, Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands. 200 How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue! How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung! Still break the benches, Henley! with thy strain, While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson[365] preach in vain. O great restorer of the good old stage, Preacher at once, and zany of thy ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... was exhaustedly trifling with my meridian meal, and balancing the gratification against the trouble of eating lumpy tapioca pudding, a muffled, rolling thud broke upon my ears, making the window and floor vibrate slightly. It seemed so distant and unimportant ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... the moment, one foot on the gunwale, the other on the planking behind me, carelessly balancing myself while I stared across the sea in search of some object which he—this man that I trusted so thoroughly and in whose company I had spent so many pleasant hours that afternoon, and who was standing behind me at the moment—professed to see in the distance, when he suddenly ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... him. Nearly all the marriageable individuals in society were recommended to this priest, who professed no political preferences, who mixed with every one, and who was admirably placed for bringing families together, for uniting houses, arranging matches of expediency or balancing social positions, pairing off money with money, or joining an ancient title to a newly made fortune. It was as though marriages in Paris had an occult Providence in the person of this rare sort of man in whom were blended the priest and the lawyer, the apostle and the diplomatist—Fenelon ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... the case of Barbarossa not to be thought of; the bridge of Endarlasa was broken—a most contorted specimen of artistic dilapidation. To be sure, one could manage to creep to the other side by the submerged coping of the parapet, if endowed with the balancing powers of a rope-walker and the lustihood of the navvy. But Barbarossa was not a Blondin, and had not a physical constitution proof against a wetting. I had got across that bridge once, holding on by my teeth and nails, and retained recollection of it in a fit of the cold shivers; but I did ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... the boughs were put aside by a pair of long arms, and the next instant a huge hairy creature, with a hideous countenance, appeared in sight, advancing slowly into the open; I could distinguish its fierce eyes glowing at us, the face black and wrinkled, and distorted with rage, as it came forward balancing its monstrous body with its long arms, while at every few seconds it stopped and beat its breast, at the same time throwing back its head to give utterance to one of its tremendous roars. We might have been excused had we really taken ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... the audience was the little swaying of gay-coloured fans like the balancing of butterflies about to light. Occasionally there would be a vast rustling like the sound of wind in a forest, as the holders of librettos turned the ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... sorrow in such an unfeeling manner. To cover my embarrassment and still further struggles with the laugh that never seemed to be able to have itself out, I bent and hugged up one of the toddlers, who were balancing against the Crag's legs, with truly ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... after Molly, who ran as she had never run before, carrying the sword over her shoulder. And he ran, and she ran, and they both ran, until they came to the Bridge of One Hair. Then she fled over it light-footed, balancing the sword, but he couldn't. So he stopped, foaming at the mouth with ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... Jimmie had come excitedly leading home the quaintest of all the babies of the Mexican village, Vicente Garcia's little sister. He had found her balancing on her stomach on the bank of the ditch. Three years old, she was, and slim and straight, with enormous eyes and a great tangle of sunburned brown curls. Her dress made her quainter still, for it was low-necked and sleeveless, and came to her tiny ankles so that she looked like ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... asked any inconvenient questions as to previous knowledge of Blackstone; and after such an experience, shall one shrink from wrecking a steamer or two in the cause of the nation? So I placidly accepted my naval establishment, as if it were a new form of boat-club, and looked over the charts, balancing between one river and another, as if deciding whether to pull up or down Lake Quinsigamond. If military life ever contemplated the exercise of the virtue of humility under any circumstances this would perhaps have been a good opportunity to begin its practice. ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... limited, and we perceive only the irregularities of the minute surface, and single shrubs which appear arbitrarily scattered. But our view at length extending and becoming more comprehensive, we begin to see parterres balancing each other, trees, statues, and arbours placed symmetrically, and that the whole is an assemblage of parts mutually reflective. It can scarcely be necessary to point to the inference hence arising with regard to the origination of nature in some Power, of which man's mind is a faint ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... the young Cantab sitting over his beer at the Cafe des Westens in Berlin, the Cambridge villages seemed precious and fair indeed. Balancing between genuine homesickness for the green pools of the Cam, and a humorous whim in his rhymed comment on the outlying villages, Brooke wrote the Grantchester poem; and probably when the fleeting pang of nostalgia was over enjoyed the evening in Berlin hugely. But the verses are more than of merely ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... Chase one question then." She gathered some of the cheese upon her fork, and, balancing it midway to her mouth, went on with a gloating clearness of enunciation. "Please tell us why you came to the afternoon concert at the Chico Normal School this summer in a colored shirt and your dress suit, and why you did not sing your part ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... issues which divided the Protestant denominations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries still vital enough to justify the continuance of the divisions? Summarize the evils of the divisions and their counter-balancing good. ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... provided they can do so in secret. I lend myself to no such acts. I have given my piece to the public, to amuse, and not to instruct, not to give any compounding prudes the pleasure of going to admire it in a private box, and balancing their account with conscience by censuring it in company. To indulge in the pleasure of vice and assume the credit of virtue is the hypocrisy of the age. My piece is not of a doubtful nature; it must be patronised ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and took out the letters, intending to tear them into a hundred pieces. But as I did so I realized that to destroy United States mail not merely entailed criminal liability, but was off color morally. I faltered, balancing the outwitting of Camp against State's prison, the doing my best for Madge against the wrong of it. I think I'm as honest a fellow as the average, but I have to confess that I couldn't decide to do right till I thought that Madge wouldn't want me to ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... sir," he said, smoothing and patting the letter, and handing it to his captain, before balancing himself on one leg to replace ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... in a future work to do this. For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question; and this ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... slightly browned, nervous complexion, all well given in the best current photographs, were united to a figure slightly bent in the shoulders, of more respiratory than digestive breadth, in outlines almost equally balancing ruggedness and grace, of compactness wrought by the pressure of perhaps few more than fifty summers, not above medium height, but composed throughout of silk and steel. A certain similarity between the decorations of the parlor and the character of the owner, perhaps more fanciful than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... to the door. Spencer was standing in a reflective attitude, with his hands behind his back, gently balancing himself upon his toes. ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the oaks three black-and-white cows looked with mild, approving eyes upon their three tiny black-and-white calves. With the pictured memory unfading, Helen's eyes were momentarily held by an eagle balancing against the sky; the great bird, as though he were conscious that he held briefly centre stage, folded his wings and dropped like a falling stone; a ground squirrel shrilled its terror through the still afternoon and went racing with jerking tail toward safety; the great bird saw the frantic ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... which sounds from all the bells of the town, falls sadly into the pale night of the sick. The hospital is silent, lit only by the night-lamps suspended from the ceiling. Great running shadows flit over the beds and bare walls in a perpetual balancing, which seems to image the heavy respiration of ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... man came in balancing a straw upon his nose, and the audience were clapping their hands in all the raptures of applause.' The Citizen of the World, Letter xxi. According to Davis (Life of Garrick, i. 113), 'in one year, after paying all expenses, 11,000 were the produce of Mr. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... splatterings, he would depress his glossy crest, slant his shining tail to the level of his body, until he looked most like some bright venomous snake, daunting them with shrill abuse and feint of battle. Then suddenly he would go tilting and balancing down the gully in fine disdain, only to return in a day or two to make sure the foolish ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... doing a great work, like Mlle. Javal, I could meet her quite easily through some member of her committee; but when Frenchwomen of this class, which in its almost terrified exclusiveness reminds me only of our own social groups balancing on the very tip of the pyramid and clutching one another lest some intruder topple them off, or cast the faintest shadow on their hard-won prestige, are working in small groups composed of their own ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... hair flying and his hand on the tiller, seemed to be part of the boat, like horse and man at the time of the centaurs. Suddenly a terrible sight presented itself to their eyes. Within less than ten fathoms a floe was balancing on the waves; it fell and rose like the launch, threatening in its fall to crush it to atoms. But to this danger of being plunged into the abyss was added another no less terrible; for this drifting floe was covered with white bears, crowded ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... money I was to have for the Meistersinger by agreement, I had counted upon finishing my work in peace with the remainder of the sum stipulated. But since then Schott had put me off with vain promises about a fixed date for balancing accounts with the bookseller. I had already been put to great straits, and now everything seemed to depend on my being able to hand over a complete act of the Meistersinger to Schott quickly. I had got as far as ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... pushed her body aside, as a thing not to be taken into account. She sang like a bird for very gladsomeness. It was impossible for her to be still, and as she went about her room with little dancing, balancing movements of her hands and feet, Antonia knew that they were keeping their happy rhythmic motion to the melody ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... to Richmond this irrepressible desire to amuse himself got the better of him more than once or twice. Through Kensington he attracted a certain amount of attention by balancing the horn upon his nose. At Kew he stopped the coach to request of a young ladies' boarding school change for sixpence. At the foot of Richmond Hill he caused a crowd to assemble while trying to persuade a deaf old gentleman in a Bath-chair ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Affairs speaks of the danger to France of the formation of a strong monarchy at the foot of the Alps, that would tend to assimilate the rest of Italy, adding the significant words: 'We could admit the unity of Italy on the principle and in the form of a federation of independent states, each balancing the other, but never a unity which placed the whole of Italy under the dominion ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... ask her. And then Mrs. Gresham began to bethink herself of two other questions. Would it be well that her uncle should marry Miss Dunstable? and if so, would it be possible to induce him to make such a proposition? After the consideration of many pros and cons, and the balancing of very various arguments, Mrs. Gresham thought that the arrangement on the whole might not be a bad one. For Miss Dunstable she herself had a sincere affection, which was shared by her husband. She had often grieved at the sacrifices Miss Dunstable made to the world, thinking that her friend ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... man standing on the shoulders of another as tall would quite fail to touch the upper edge of the stone. If we give this marvelous monument the same age as the Fermanagh circles, as we well may, this raising of a single boulder of one hundred tons, and balancing it in the air on the crest of massive pillars may give us some insight into the engineering skill of the men of ten ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... peculiar. They go barefoot, and strut, rather than walk, without bending the knee, with chest and stomach pompously projected. From this gait results a certain balancing of the body and a movement to the hips, which gives to the women a bold, and to the men a pretentious air. Most of the women hide their faces when a stranger heaves in sight; but it must not be supposed from this that they are either modest or retiring, on the contrary, for young girls ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... joins hands with the others, which closes the circle; they all lift their hands, as joined together, up and down six times, keeping time with the words as the Most Excellent Master repeats them—one, two, three; one, two, three. This is masonically called balancing. They then rise, disengage their hands, and lift them up above their heads with a moderate and somewhat graceful motion; cast up their eyes, turning, at the same time, to the right, they extend their arms and then suffer them to fall loose ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... lead for ball for their muskets and matchlocks; the lead, indeed, and a quantity of gun-locks, their friends within the city contrived to smuggle to them; and their guns were supplied in the following manner. In each engenho, there was an old gun or two for the purpose of balancing some part of the machinery; these were at once sent to Cachoeira, where, being cleaned and bushed by an ingenious blacksmith, they were rendered serviceable; and the patriots ventured to take the field against ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... spice of fear in it all: was that Pa coming back? No, a carpenter or scene-shifter, perhaps, or else the Martellos, brother and sister, going to practise slack-wire, head and hand balancing. Their father, old Martello, a famous name, lived in London, it appeared, alone with his Bambinis, mere babes still. His other children and his apprentices had all run away, to escape his horsewhip, and the brother ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... balancing over every step which we took worthy of a diplomatist, we finally stood upon the drawbridge of the castle. Here the savage customs of the rude days in which it was built immediately impress the beholder. Traces remain of the ponderous iron portcullis, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... and many other appointments was forcibly illustrated on a subsequent occasion, when I earnestly protested against the appointment of an incompetent and unworthy man as Commissioner of Patents. "There is much force in what you say," said he, "but, in the balancing of matters, I guess I shall have to appoint him." This "balancing of matters" was a source of infinite vexation during his administration, as it has been to every one of his successors; and its most deplorable results ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... rushing sluices of the Pocomoke, and kept along them, the trail being now a mere ditch and chain of floating logs where no vehicle could pass, and the man himself seemed frightened as he led the way from trunk to float and puddle to corduroy, sometimes balancing himself on a revolving log, or again plunging nearly to his waist in vegetable muck; but the light-footed girl behind had the footstep of a bird, and hopped as if from twig to twig, and seemed to slide where he would sink; and the man often turned ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... might have vanished from the book forever. In fact, the unfortunate young man, excited and tossed to and fro by a variety of unusual impulses, was got into a bad way, and was likely enough to go mad, unless the balancing portion of his mind proved to be of greater volume and effect than as yet appeared to be ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... order to excuse himself at the expense of his son. "Good God!" exclaimed the young man, "how can he use me so? I will go at once to the President, and put the saddle on the right horse." In spite of this provocation, he did not, however, reveal his father's treachery; whilst Lord Lovat was balancing between hopes and fears, and irresolute which side to choose, the Master at last entreated, with tears in his eyes, that "he might no longer be made a tool of—but might have such orders as his father might ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... U.S. relationships with Iran and Syria involve difficult issues that must be resolved. Diplomatic talks should be extensive and substantive, and they will require a balancing of interests. The United States has diplomatic, economic, and military disincentives available in approaches to both Iran and Syria. However, the United States should also consider incentives to try to engage them constructively, much as it did ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... "not a single element." He seated himself defiantly in the club window facing Gatewood and began to button his gloves. When he had finished he settled his new straw hat more comfortably on his head, and, leaning forward and balancing his malacca walking stick across his knees, gazed at ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... sails are rendered ludicrously squat and disproportioned; and not only so, but ships are often seen with their images inverted over their own masts, so that to the observer it appears as if one ship were balancing another upside down—mast-head to mast-head. Land and icebergs assume the same curious appearances—peaks touching peaks, one set pointing upwards, the other set pointing down, while the broad bases are elevated in ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... indifference. It is the certainty that you will drown if you do not swim which gives zest to the exercise. I climb along yonder jutting cornice of the cliff with eagerness, and pluck my simples with a hand that trembles more from joy than fear, precisely because the strain of balancing the nerves, and the certainty of suffering as the result of carelessness, knit my sensations together into an exaltation which is not exactly pleasure, perhaps, but which is not to be distinguished from it ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... when the sun goes to bide behind the bell-tower, flooding the cloudless, luminous blue-green heavens with orange and gold, when pastures and the shadows of trees merged in a fairy tinted blue haze unite in wondrous harmony - when the milkers come home with heavy tread, balancing at their sides the pails of cobalt blue - when all that sounds is harmonious from the striking of the clock on the tower to the rattling of a homeward driving cart, and all that breathes from the coarse Hollanders to the dull cows seems wrapped in this selfsame peaceful, ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... in life, this eternal balancing of accounts, see-saw, is the most sickening of all things, except it would be the taking the inventory of your stock, when you're reduced to invent the stock itself;—then that's the most lowering to a man of all things! But there's one comfort ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... the earl of Halifax was properly that of an artful and active statesman, employed in balancing parties, contriving expedients, and combating opposition, and exposed to the vicissitudes of advancement and degradation; but, in this collection, poetical merit is the claim to attention; and the account which is here to be expected may properly ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... a circle round the parrot's cage and gazed with interest at its occupant. She (Evangeline) was balancing easily on one leg, while with the other leg and her beak she tried to peel a monkey-nut. There are some of us who hate to be watched at meals, particularly when dealing with the dessert, but Evangeline is ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... Hope. There is the difference between earthly hopes and Christian people's hopes. Our hopes, apart from the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, are but the balancing of probabilities, and the scale is often dragged down by the clutch of eager desires. But all is baseless and uncertain, unless our hopes are the outcome of our faith. Which, being translated into other words, is just this, that the one basis on which men can rest—ay! ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... the rod, i, upward is thus arranged: The inclined plate, p, on which the ball drops, is carried by the upper horizontal arm of an angular lever turning on the axis, x, and counterpoised by the balancing weight, x'. By the falling ball this arm is pressed downward, and the lower horizontal arm, w, of the lever is also moved. On a second horizontal axis the lever, v, partly concealed, moves, restricted as to its length of swing by the screws, n. As long as the concealed arm is not moved, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... call the following week, and on doing so, found himself in the midst of one of those English-speaking coteries, which spring up in all large, continental towns. Foreigners were not excluded—Maurice discovered two or three of his German friends, awkwardly balancing their cups on their knees. In order, however, to gain access to the circle, it was necessary for them to have a smattering of English; they had also to be flint against any open or covert fun that might be made ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... steamboat, but Christopher firmly and good-naturedly refused to listen. Whatever she had done, her life had been a hundred times finer and nobler than his. Not that he had any great burden on his conscience, but—well—With a chivalrous idea of balancing scores, he mentioned that there had been one or two ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... and failures, they stood, balancing themselves painfully on the ropes, clinging to each other's hands, and apparently ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Deliberating always carries the idea of slowness; consulting is compatible with haste; we can speak of a hasty consultation, not of a hasty deliberation. Debate implies opposing views; deliberate, simply a gathering and balancing of all facts and reasons. We consider or deliberate with a view to action, while meditation may ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... a gesture to Tricasse, Jack led Lorraine down the slope, past the spring, and on through the forest, three "Terrors" leading, rifles poised, Tricasse and the others following, alert and balancing their cocked rifles. ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... looked up with sparkling eyes. Under the name of "Phyllis" she had earned, ere her limbs were stiffened by age, great applause by her dainty egg-dance and all sorts of feats with the balancing pole. The manager of the band had finally given her the position of crier to support herself and her blind boy. This had made her voice so hollow and hoarse that it was difficult to understand her as, with fervid eloquence, vainly striving to be heard by absent-minded Kuni, she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... table as one sees in country towns in Hungary. How odd! to see the Servians, who here all wear the old Turkish costume, except the turban—immersed in the tactics of carambolage, skipping most gaily and un-orientally around the table, then balancing themselves on one leg, enveloped in enormous inexpressibles, bending low, and cocking the eye to ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... the contortions of a tortured worm. In ordinary plants, all sides being equally sensitive contraction takes place on all directions with resulting neutral effect. Another striking experiment was to show how ordinary plants could be made sensitive by the mere process of amputation of the balancing half? Further experiments were shown demonstrating the effects of light, of warmth and other stimuli on the plant. Warmth worked antagonistically to light. The numerous permutations brought about by two changing variations were shown by ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... balancing the exploded shell between his fingers during most of the interview. As Warrington concluded, ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... taken possession of our mansion we strolled out to see what was going forward. We could not help stopping to watch the feats of a juggler. First, he jumped upon a pole six feet from the ground, on which he placed a cross bar, and balancing himself on it made prodigious leaps from side to side. He had a companion, who assisted him in his feats, but how they were done it seemed impossible to discover. After leaping along to some distance, he returned to the centre of the admiring circle of spectators. Steadying himself on his ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Guy remarked, balancing a fragment of fried sole on his fork as he spoke, "I'm not going all that way down to Chetwood merely to swell Mrs. ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... statue till he saw there was a real chance of her falling back on him; then he slipped his right foot quickly out of the stirrup, and stood with his left toe in the iron, balancing himself till she was quieter; then he once more threw his leg across the saddle, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... over commerce, and be enabled to make its strength felt on the seas and in Europe. In these views Samuel Adams shared so thoroughly that his attitude toward the Constitution at this moment was really that of a waverer rather than an opponent. Amid balancing considerations he found it for some time hard to make up ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... the Vatican, in dealing with this conflict, either in Ireland or in America, is troubling itself about the balancing of political acrobats, British or American, upon the tight-rope of "Home Rule," is as absurd as it would have been to suppose that in 1885 the Vatican concerned itself with the subterranean intrigues which there is reason to believe the Irish Nationalists then sought to carry on with the wire-pullers ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... godly and the ungodly in this world. He sees no reason to correct his estimate, upon this point. He lets it stand. So far as this merely physical existence is concerned, the wicked man has the advantage. It is only when the Psalmist looks beyond this life, that he sees the compensation, and the balancing again of the scales of eternal right and justice. "When I thought to know this,"—when I reflected upon this inequality, and apparent injustice, in the treatment of the friends and the enemies of God,—"it was too painful for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God,"—until ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... was in the balancing control of their machine that the Wrights showed such great ingenuity. Running from the edges of the lower plane were some wires which met at a point where the pilot could control them. The edges of the plane were flexible; that is, they could ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... them in turn. He places a cake of camphor on the tray and sets light to it; and as the clear flame bursts forth in front of the Mother, the whole congregation rises and shouts "Devi ki Jaya" (Victory to the Goddess). Then Moti takes the tray and, balancing it on her head, dances slowly with long swinging stride round the Mother, while the music bursts out with renewed vigour, urging the other women, the human tabernacles of the cholera deities, to follow suit. Thereafter the camphor-cake is handed round to both women and men in turn who plunge ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... lawless, cattle-lifting and slave-dealing Bajaus and Illanuns. He, with the able assistance of Mr. F. X. WITTI, an ex-Naval officer of the Austrian Service, who subsequently lost his life while exploring in the interior, and by balancing one tribe against another, managed to retain his position without coming to blows, and, on his relinquishing the service a few months afterwards, the arduous task of representing the Government without the command of any ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... Polly, balancing herself on the arm of his chair. "Mrs. Jocelyn bought lots of things for me to give to people. We bade out a list—or she did. She let ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... "Life's just balancing one adventure against another," Uncle Matthew said at last, without raising his head from the pillow. "The good against the bad. And the happy man is him that can set off a lot of good adventures against bad ones, and have a balance of good ones in his favour. But it takes courage to have ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... sports, but one or two of this afternoon's events had the advantage of novelty. A flower-gathering race, for instance, the object of which was to see how many varieties of wild flowers each competitor could gather in a given time, and a Roman water-carrier event, which consisted in balancing the hot-water jug on one's head and seeing how far one could walk without spilling its tepid contents over neck and shoulders. Plain Hannah was the only one of the girls who took part in this event, and to her joy succeeded in travelling a longer distance than any of the male competitors. ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the Emperor is mad, and it is better to disarm than to arm a madman. I tell you that two nations like France and England ought to be inseparable friends or relentless enemies; friends, they are the poles of the world, balancing its movements with perfect equilibrium; enemies, one must destroy the other and ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Turks, splendid of dress and arrogant of demeanour, and there were humble Cololies, Kabyles and Biscaries. Here a water-seller, laden with his goatskin vessel, tinkled his little bell; there an orange-hawker, balancing a basket of the golden fruit upon his ragged turban, bawled his wares. There were men on foot and men on mules, men on donkeys and men on slim Arab horses, an ever-shifting medley of colours, all jostling, laughing, cursing in the ardent African sunshine under ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... become thoroughly used to balancing in the boat, and they now rode this wild colt of a dingey like circus men. The correspondent thought that he had been drenched to the skin, but happening to feel in the top pocket of his coat, he found therein eight cigars. Four of them ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... that his fastidious sensibilities would not be likely to suffer outrage at my hands. In every other respect our moods and tempers were utterly unlike. I thought him dull, very frequently, when he was only balancing between jealous and sensitive tastes;—and ignorant of the actual, when, in fact, his ignorance simply arose from the decided preference which he gave to the foreign and abstract. He was contemplative—an idealist; I was impetuous ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Chippewa of pure blood and name looked habitually as he did into those whirlpools called the chutes, where the slip of a paddle meant death. Yet nobody feared the rapids. It was common for boys and girls to flit around near shore in birch canoes, balancing themselves and ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of decay, was my diagnosis of old Dewey's ailment. He moved with a premeditation which nine times out of ten amounted to standing still; rest resulted from two opposing forces, Mrs. Dewey's beseeching and threats colliding with his will traveling against her purpose with counter-balancing velocity and mass. A hired man would have left her long ago under such tongue-lashing, but old Dewey could not leave, because to leave is an act. There were no verbs in his vocabulary comprehending possibilities of usefulness within range ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... The warring and balancing of sectional, partial, and immediate interests will always have their claims; but the next clearest step in civilization is to learn the political habit of acting also for the social whole. Social ...
— The Conflict between Private Monopoly and Good Citizenship • John Graham Brooks
... a man: the safest way in general to take off the force of the wish, is for the party wish'd at, instantly to get upon his legs—and wish the wisher something in return, of pretty near the same value,—so balancing the account upon the spot, you stand as you were—nay sometimes gain the advantage of the ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne |
