"Gravity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... souls. Many of the Indians near Fort Snelling say they have lived before on earth. The jugglers remember many incidents that occurred during some former residence on earth, and they will tell them to you with all the gravity imaginable.] His friends believe that he may hold communion with Unk-ta-he,—that from that God he will learn the mysteries of the Earth and Water; and when he lives again in another form, he will instruct the Dahcotahs in their religion, and be ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... exaggerated, she said; and she made fun of his gravity, his clothes and his walk, which she mimicked till she drew a reluctant and protesting laugh from even her mother. Mrs. Madison was sure she "couldn't get through" this experience save for Cora, who was indeed the light ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... flying over the white flags of the prizes; and even when all had anchored, the same air of sadness reigned among these victorious mariners. The body was landed, with the usual forms; but the procession of warriors of the deep that followed it, was distinguished by a gravity that exceeded the ordinary aspects of mere form. Many of the captains, and Greenly in particular, had viewed the man[oe]uvring of Bluewater with surprise, and the latter not altogether without displeasure; but his subsequent conduct ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... infernal machines supposed to have been sent over from America by friends of the Royalists. Among the emissaries captured he read the name of Cedric Ruskin, an old schoolfellow and great-grandson to an art critic of that surname who flourished in former days by force of his own specific gravity. Pained at the intelligence, he sighed heavily, and was on the point of sitting down upon a rustic bench close at hand when a melodious, gladsome voice hallooing his name broke in upon his meditation. He looked up and perceived Miss Maggie ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... out: No, I beseech you, Sir, give me the Letter, I wou'd not for the World Isabella shou'd know of my theft, 'twou'd appear malicious in me:—Besides, Sir, it does not befit your Gravity to be concern'd in the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... generally neat and comely in appearance, and the pappooses that peer from the bags hung on either side of the ponies are bright-eyed, round-faced youngsters, who never cry and seldom cause any trouble. They seem to be born with a certain amount of gravity, and a capacity for patient endurance that forbids them to lift up their voices at every slight provocation after the manner of white babies. The Indian ponies too are models of endurance. The squaws tie their purchases in blankets and hang them across ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... sat rigid, with so grave a look on his face that his extra gravity passed on to me; and in its enlightening perturbation I began to realise more than I had yet done the strangeness of the case in which I was now so deeply concerned. When once this thought had begun there was no end to it. Indeed it grew, and blossomed, and reproduced itself in a thousand ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... by our Army engineers. They went farther afield. They found a group of spring-heads in an absolutely clean gathering ground on the hills yielding some 14,000 gallons an hour, and this water which was running to waste is lifted to the top of a hill from which it flows by gravity through a long pipe-line to Jerusalem, where a reservoir has been built on a high point on the outskirts of the city. Supplies of this beautiful water run direct to the hospitals, and at standpipes all over the city ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... Bill?" he demanded again and again; and Jackson, drunk as he, nodded in like maudlin gravity. He himself began to chant. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... taking his old place on the rug slowly demolished it, qualifying every morsel with such ridiculous correlative remarks, allusions, and propositions,—that it was beyond the power of either Mrs. Derrick or Faith to retain her gravity. But the moment the door closed upon ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... impatient, yet shy of asking. At length I called out, 'What news from Louisbourg?' To which the master simply replied, and with some gravity, 'Nothing strange.' This threw us all into great consternation, and some of us even turned away. But one of our soldiers called out with some warmth 'Damn you, Pumpkin, isn't Louisbourg taken yet?' The poor New England man then ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... breasts, roared with laughter, and Will knew that his bold act had brought him a certain measure of public favor. Heraka with a sharp word or two sent all the women and children flying, and then said in tones of great gravity to Will: ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... standing out; in spite of the temptation of watching this comical parody on that manly exercise, rendered doubly amusing by the scientific manner in which little Sam stood at his wicket, the perfect gravity of the fieldsman in petticoats, and the serious air with which these two worthies called Susan to order whenever she transgressed any rule of the game:—Sam will certainly be a great player some day or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various
... stroked his whiskers, and asked me if I had found any benefit from taking the waters. He afterward spoke in great praise of the charming scenery in the neighborhood of Maplesworth, and then, turning away, addressed his next words to my aunt. Mr. Varleigh took his place. Speaking with perfect gravity, and with no whiskers to ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... and her features were perfectly irregular. Her mouth was large, fortunately for the principal grace of her physiognomy was her smile, which displayed itself with magnificent amplitude. Rowland, indeed, had not yet seen her smile, but something assured him that her rigid gravity had a radiant counterpart. She wore a scanty white dress, and had a nameless rustic air which would have led one to speak of her less as a young lady than as a young woman. She was evidently a girl of a great personal ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... tent 'towards' Sodom; next time we hear of him, he is living in the city, and mixed up inextricably with its people. The first false step leads on to connections unforeseen, from which the man would have shrunk in horror, if he had been told that he would make them. Once on the incline, time and gravity will settle how far down we go. We shall see, in subsequent sections, how far Lot's own moral character suffered from his choice. But we may so far anticipate the future narrative as to point out that it affords a plain instance of the great truth that the sure way to lose the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... Advancement of Science (see Nature, September 2, 1920). He points out that the old contraction hypothesis, according to which the source of solar and stellar heat was supposed to reside in the slow condensation of a radiating mass of gas under the action of gravity, is wholly inadequate to explain the observed phenomena. If the old view were correct, the earlier history of a star, from the giant stage of a cool and diaphanous gas to the period of highest temperature, would be run through within ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... would soon be arriving in Alcira; and the presence of Rafael was indispensable. Cupido himself, with sudden gravity, advised him to ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... every morning before breakfast, that I will be prepared with a decent stock of good-nature and forbearance, and not laugh at my friend L.'s absurdities; but in vain are my amiable intentions: his blunders and his follies surpass all anticipation, as they defy all powers of gravity. I console myself with the conviction that such is his slowness of perception, he does not see that he is the butt of every party; and such his obtuseness of feeling, that if he did see it, he would not mind it; but he is the heir to twenty-five thousand a year, and ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... thought the smaller class steamboats could not live on it; and on Lake Superior, the waves almost rival those of the far-famed Cape of Storms, while the ground-swell, owing to the comparative shallowness, or little specific gravity of the fresh water, is such as to make the oldest sailor sick. Whether the water in the lowest depths of Lakes Superior and Ontario be salt or fresh, we can not ascertain; for the greater density of the former may keep it always below, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... twenty miles around. This time there was no need of handbills—there were none. No effort was required to bring together the multitude that quietly but anxiously awaited the outcome of the meeting. The gravity of the situation was universally felt. Immediate action was necessary, as the twenty days allowed for clearance terminated that night. Then the revenue officials could take possession, and under cover of the naval force land the tea, and opposition to this ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... compartment like a box, about seven feet long, with a pair of sliding doors at the side. It was balanced on a pole, with braces above and below it. It appeared to be so poised, with the pole above the centre of gravity, that it could not be turned over. The four bearers were coolies, with bare legs, cotton turbans on their heads, and not otherwise overloaded with clothing; but they were dressed like all the coolies about the streets and in the ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... the huge landlord, with the utmost gravity, "show the gentleman into number seven that he may wash his ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... design. He is cold, deadly cold, but correct ever. Fabulous and absurd, delicious and abominable as he may be, his spirit sits critically aloft, never smiling. Impersonal as a toxicologist, he handles his poisonous acids with the gravity of a philosopher and the indifference of a destroying angel. There is a diabolic spleen more strongly developed in Rops than in any of his contemporaries, with the sole exception of Baudelaire, who inspired and spurred him on to astounding atrocities of the needle ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... gentle gravity; then a little smile curving her red lips, she added: "Christian Science, Prof. Seabrook, is a religion of Love, and I will simply try to ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... convict the world of sin.' The outstanding first characteristic of the whole Gospel message is the new gravity which it attaches to the fact of sin, the deeper meaning which it gives to the word, and the larger scope which it shows its blighting influences to have had in humanity. Apart from the conviction of sin by the Spirit using the word proclaimed by disciples, the world has scarcely a notion of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... beauty yields itself to no words. I wish that I had the sister art and could draw in my margin something that escapes description. There was a sort of gravity in her eyes. There was something, a matter of the minutest difference, about her upper lip so that her mouth closed sweetly and broke very sweetly to a ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... cover of a cigar-box, scraping it smooth afterward with a bit of glass. The winding of his clock was quite an occurrence in the course of the day, something to be looked forward to. The mixing of his tobacco was a positive event and undertaken with all gravity, while the task of keeping it moist and ripe in the blue china jar, with the sponge attachment, that always stood on the bamboo tea-table by the Japanese screen, was a wearing anxiety ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... qualified critical reader by its mingled gravity and whimsicality. It is not all sugar-plums; there are nice little bits of satire in which the Rev. Harry Jones ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... lords, whom, by the chancellor, the little King saluted, and spake to them his mind at large by means of another's tongue." It was declared that during this scene in Parliament the baby King conducted himself with marvellous quietness and gravity. Henry VI. had been already proclaimed King of France, at Paris, before even he thus held his first Parliament on his mother's lap. For as soon as the last service had been performed over the dead body of Charles VI., and the body lowered into the vault belonging ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... breakfast, when Brooke Burgess was gone out to call upon his uncle,—which he insisted upon doing openly, and not under the rose, in spite of Miss Stanbury's great gravity on the occasion,—there was a very serious conversation, and poor Dorothy had found herself to be almost silenced. She did argue for a time; but her arguments seemed, even to herself, to amount to so little! ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... break their unpremeditated jests, in the intervals of business, with that sort of undress freedom that contrasts amusingly with the solemn and even tragic seriousness with which they appear in turn upon the boards. They have one face for the public, rife with the saws and learned gravity of the profession, and another for themselves, replete with broad mirth, sprightly wit, and gay thoughtlessness. The intense mental toil and fatigue of business give them a peculiar relish for the enjoyment of their hours of relaxation, and, in the same degree, incapacitate them ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by his saber. Only ten paces divided them. Dolokhov lowered his head to the snow, greedily bit at it, again raised his head, adjusted himself, drew in his legs and sat up, seeking a firm center of gravity. He sucked and swallowed the cold snow, his lips quivered but his eyes, still smiling, glittered with effort and exasperation as he mustered his remaining strength. He raised ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... which continues is necessarily like a machine in movement which accelerates its motion. We shall therefore find that the results of this mentality will become yet more important. It is betrayed from time to time by incidents whose gravity is daily increasing—railway strikes, postmen's strikes, explosions on board ironclads, &c. A propos of the destruction of the Liberte, which cost more than two million pounds and slew two hundred ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... be true, for three impossibilities would follow: a. Water would move upwards as well as downwards; b. Water and Earth would move downwards in different directions; c. Gravity would be taught ambiguously of the ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... perplexed, looking with blue-eyed gravity from one to the other. "The loydy said I was Doyvy," said he, in a slightly injured tone. He did not at all like the suggestion that he had been ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... pouch-like expansions of tracheal tubes in heavy insects, capable of inflation and supposed to lessen specific gravity. ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... perpetual smile had brightened his dark aspect like flowers in a shady place: now the smile was gone as completely as yesterday; the lines of his face were firm; his dark eyes and whiskers were overspread with gravity; and, as he gazed upon Swithin from the repose of his stable figure it was like an evangelized King of Spades come to have it out with ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... the bar, and a more honester feller never breathed," said a rough voice in the gallery. The officers of the court looked aghast, and the strangers tittered with ill-suppressed laughter. "Who are you?" said the Judge, looking suddenly up, but with imperturbable gravity. The court was convulsed; the titter broke out into a laugh, and it was several minutes before silence and decorum could be restored. When the Ushers recovered their self-possession, they made diligent search for the profane transgressor; but he was not to be found. Nobody knew ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... go just as far in the first second as the body will go plus the force of gravity and that's equal to twice what the body ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... floor ten or twelve men were gathered in a circle. Some, Howat thought, were surprisingly young for the evident authority in their manner, pronouncements; others were grey, weatherworn, men with immobile faces often lost, in the middle of a gay period, in a sudden gravity of thought, silent calculation. He saw the smooth, deft hands of draughtsmen, and scarred, powerful hands that, like James Polder's, had laboured through apprenticeship in pit and ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... you perpetually of some animal, be it bird or beast! Well, this chasseur (as I will call him for want of a better name) was exceedingly like the great Tom-cat that you have seen so often in my chambers, and laughed at almost as often for his uncanny gravity of demeanour. Grey whiskers has my Tom—grey whiskers had the chasseur: grey hair overshadows the upper lip of my Tom—grey mustachios hid that of the chasseur. The pupils of Tom's eyes dilate and contract as I had thought cats' pupils only could do, until I saw those of the chasseur. ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Violent dances, and other emotional and sensual stimulations, led to a state of exaltation during which the line of morality was overstepped. But there was nevertheless, as Dr. Schechter has shown, considerable spiritual worth and beauty in Chassidism. It transferred the centre of gravity from thinking to feeling; it led away from the worship of Scripture to the love of God. The fresh air of religion was breathed once more, the stars and the open sky replaced the midnight lamp and ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... and loss of interest in life will come of feeling all at once that you have nothing at all to do. And so it is a great blessing, if your vocation be one which is a dignified and befitting one for an old man to be engaged in, one that beseems his gravity—and his long experience, one that beseems even his slow movements and his white hairs. It is a pleasant thing to see an old man a judge; his years become the judgment-seat. But then the old man can hold such an office only while he retains strength of body and mind efficiently to perform ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... showed what kind of rock it was—iron and basalt. And I'd made borings which checked. We'd tested the speed of escape which was a good push so we had to be careful, and its force of gravity, which wasn't much. And then I'd discovered that the balance in the lab had a habit of being 25 per cent wrong one way or the other every time I ...
— The Minus Woman • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... a little as he went on smoking; the old carelessness, mutability, and indolent philosophies were with him still, and were still inclined to thrust away and glide from all pain, as it arose. Though much of gravity and of thoughtfulness had stolen on him, much of insouciance remained; and there were times when there was not a more reckless or a more nonchalant lion in all the battalions than "Bel-a-faire-peur." ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... every room. By the aid of a ladder she reached up to the spot whence the light came, found the pill of immortality, and ate it. She suddenly felt that she was freed from the operation of the laws of gravity and as if she had wings, and was just essaying her first flight when Shen I returned. He went to look for his pill, and, not finding it, asked Heng ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... thereof." To simple-minded people who believed in Romanism and the legends of the saints, the natural explanation of such a marvel was, that she must be possessed either by the Holy Ghost or by the devil. The archbishop's bailiff, not feeling himself able to decide in a case of so much gravity, called in the advice of the parish priest, one Richard Masters; and together they observed carefully all that fell from her. The girl had been well disposed, as the priest probably knew. She had been brought up religiously; and her mind running upon what was most familiar to it, "she spake words ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... visit was paid, and afforded pleasure to all parties. The knight was pleased with the manners of the merchant, who, owing to his visit to Italy, had little of the formal gravity of his craft, while there was a heartiness and straightforwardness in his speech that well suited the bluff knight. The ladies were no less pleased with each other, and Dame Agatha found herself, to her surprise, chatting ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... long, and in the lowest part upwards of forty feet high. Our guide favored us at every turn with some new story or legend, repeated in a sing-song, nasal tone, ludicrously contrasting with the extravagance of the tales themselves. Yet he recited all alike with the most immovable gravity. It was a lively waltz of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... is now very much employed in recording human expressions, and might possibly be adapted to Algebraical Expressions, a small photographic room would be desirable, both for general use and for representing the various phenomena of Gravity, Disturbance of Equilibrium, Resolution, &c., which affect the ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... quoique je ne vous ai jamais vu. Sir, you have made me tremble although I never saw you before." And when I smiled and assured him that I was just a simple traveller, he shook his head; but said, he had very authentick information concerning me. He then told me with great gravity, "That while I travelled in Corsica, I was drest in scarlet and gold; but when I payed my respects to the Supreme Council at Corte, I appeared in a full suit of black." These important truths I fairly owned to him, and he seemed ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... his meal, he nearly always made his toilet, which consisted in brushing his palpi and mandibles, both inside and out, with his front tarsi. After that, he resumed his air of motionless gravity. The evening and the night were his time for taking his walks abroad. I often heard him scratching the paper of the bag. These habits confirm the opinion, which I have already expressed elsewhere, that most Spiders have the faculty of seeing by ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... this may raise a smile in some of my readers, in others something like indignation or contempt. But as long as such legends remain in these hermit lives, told with as much gravity as any other portion of the biography, and eloquently lauded, as this deed is, by Bishop Theodoret, as proofs of the holiness and humanity of the saint, an honest author is bound to notice some of them at least, and not to give an alluring and ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... temptations were of the kind that betray rather than assault, all faults of the flesh seemed of equal gravity—a man's gluttony or drunkenness, or a woman's misdemeanour. The one did not shock her more than the other. She thought of her old friend, the grandmother who had brought up the girls, denying herself sleep and ease that they might not run wild as many girls ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... but just time to wheel round and salute His Majesty, who seemed much amused at seeing two of his Ministers amongst all the little children who were running by his carriage, and the Chancellor, so lately in all the gravity of his official robes, mounted on a little white New Forest pony of Lady Lyndhurst's. I rode on to Roehampton, dined there, and ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... himself a dram, and swallowed it with a gravity which would have done honor to a more solemn occasion, after bowing low to his principal and saying earnestly, "Colonel, your very ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... been reading the Litany," said John, shaking his head with a look of drunken gravity, and having only caught one word of the Major's address to him; "life is short, sir; we are flowers of the field, sir—hiccup—and lilies of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that a bright sun and a relatively dark sun might revolve around a common centre of gravity may at first sight seem improbable. The fact is, however, that imperfect as our observations on the stars really are, we know many instances in which this kind of revolution of one star about another takes place. In some cases these stars are of the same brilliancy, ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... could not possibly have foreseen the overpowering feeling that came over him. Weightlessness he had experienced for brief periods during training, but nothing could match the heady impression of continuous freedom from gravity. ...
— Egocentric Orbit • John Cory
... tinge. The internal cones are of very regular shape, and most of them look as if their fires had only just gone out, with their sides fiercely red, and their central cavities lined with layers of black ash. They are all composed of cinders of light specific gravity, and much of the ash is tinged with the hydrated oxide of iron. Very few of the usual volcanic products are present. {335} Small quantities of sulphur, in a very impure form, exist here and there, but there are no sulphur or steam-cracks, or hot springs on any part of the mountain. With its ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... return to this district—perhaps to this district alone—of the city he loved it is hard to see what he would note afresh, save the results of natural decay and the shifting of the social centre of gravity. ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... air was candid and amused. There was an underlying gravity beneath the smile, and for people who had believed in him as devoutly as his two listeners it was hard ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... will naturally enough be ashamed of his shyness. It is something which others believe, and perhaps he himself thinks, he might overcome. But in the case of Maurice Kirkwood there was no room for doubt as to the reality and gravity of the long enduring effects of his first convulsive terror. He had accepted the fact as he would have accepted the calamity of losing his sight or his hearing. When he was questioned by the experts to whom his case was submitted, he ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... he would not have failed to fling it in the face of Madame des Ursins. That the Marquis de Saint Philippe, who was upon the spot, a man so religious, and who could not endure Madame des Ursins, should say not one word, without fear of derogating from his customary gravity, of that impious scandal, of such a Vandalism as had revolted all Madrid! We think that if M. Duclos had better informed himself upon the point and of the source whence he derived it, he, too, would have complained of exaggeration, and would ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... imagine, Philippin', the cook didn't come to-day, so I thought I would try my own hand," said Dorothea with glib gravity, "but I don't know, the soup meat is still as hard as a rock. Won't you come and see what's the matter?" She took Philippina ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... dashed toward Blondet through the water, calling out with the gravity that country people retain in the midst ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... that this should read "The 8th of July." Champlain could hardly have found it necessary to remain at Tadoussac from the 6th of July to the 8th of August for favorable weather to sail. If he had been detained by any other cause, it would probably nave been deemed of sufficient gravity to be ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... the air ship," Thorwald replied, "by which any required weight could be taken into the air, and carried with ease and certainty by currents of air or force of gravity. ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... my despondency was incurable, that I would neither listen to any advice nor leave my room, he took the matter seriously. I saw him enter one evening with an expression of gravity on his face; he spoke of my mistress and continued in his tone of sadness, saying all manner of evil of women. While he was speaking I was leaning on my elbow, and, rising in ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... gravity, feared that he was not being sufficiently quaint to amuse the old lady, and screamed down the table at him to tell the Duchess the story of the jibbing pony at the Irish race meeting. The ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... this book, we have only assumed it, as being unable to find any other which can so well define this recital, which has none of the pretensions of history, and therefore should not affect its gravity. It is an intermediate labour between history and memoirs. Events do not herein occupy so much space as men and ideas. It is full of private details, and details are the physiognomy of characters, and by them they engrave themselves ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... where it served as a connecting link between the young Greek colony and the mother country. Hestia is generally represented standing, and in accordance with the dignity and sanctity of her character, always appears fully draped. Her countenance is distinguished by a serene gravity of ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... with gravity. But a boy in years, the many stern scenes through which he had passed and his natural instinct for the wilderness made him see far. He was thinking of the thousand miles, every one with its dangers, that they must travel before they could unload their ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... presence,—as, moreover, the count kept an open table every day, it made, in the moderately sized house, arranged only for a family, and with but one open staircase running from top to bottom, a movement and a buzzing like that in a beehive; although every thing was managed with moderation, gravity, and severity. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... surroundings as the smaller Rose. Everything seemed to suit the little maid exactly. She made a delightful playfellow for the babies, telling them fairy stories by the dozen, and teaching them new games, and washing and dressing Phillida with all the gravity and decorum of an old nurse. They followed her about like two little dogs, and never left her side for a moment if they could possibly help it. All was fish that came to her happy little net, whether it was playing with little Geoff, going on excursions with the elders, ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... mathematics there in the school of Euclid. He not only distinguished himself as a pure mathematician and astronomer, and as the founder of the theory of statics, but he discovered the law of specific gravity, and constructed some of the most useful machines in the mechanic arts, such as the pulley and the hydraulic screw. His works are written in the Doric dialect. Apollonius of Perga (221-204 B.C.) distinguished ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... come for my lecture, or whatever you have laid up in store for me," she announced with mock gravity and a slight tremble of pretended ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... France in her hour of danger with hearty spontaneity. Flags of different nations were filing by, of all tints of the rainbow, and behind them were the Russians with bright and mystical eyes; the English, with heads uncovered, intoning songs of religious gravity; the Greeks and Roumanians of aquiline profile; the Scandinavians, white and red; the North Americans, with the noisiness of a somewhat puerile enthusiasm; the Hebrews without a country, friends of the nation of socialistic revolutions; the Italians, as spirited ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... a layman—a citizen who has not experienced the test of action and danger in battle—to understand or appreciate our feelings that night. It is hard to describe them, to paint with mere words the intense seriousness and gravity of the situation. You can imagine a dark night at sea—a night so black that the senses feel oppressed. You can add to these a thrill of impending danger and a vision of capture by a cruel enemy and the thought that the very next ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... Connecticut clergy. The purport of the paper was to signify that the signers were doubtful of the validity, or persuaded of the invalidity, of presbyterial as distinguished from episcopal ordination. The matter was considered with the gravity which it merited, and a month later, at the time of the meeting of the colonial legislature, was made the subject of a public discussion, presided over with great dignity and amenity by Governor ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... hearts of the throng of ocean warriors who had gathered to bid a last long, sad farewell to their fallen comrades, and to consign them with all honour to a sailor's grave. The bronzed and bearded faces of the listeners wore an expression of gravity well suited to the most solemn ceremonial of the Christian faith, and as the impressive service proceeded, more than one of the stalwart seamen, who had a few hours before fought side by side with those who now ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... side, and in three steps was directly before the Lieutenant-Governor. As he interrupted him, his fingers closed upon the lapels of the other's coat, and he punctuated his words with little tugs at these, his knuckles coming together with tiny muffled thuds. He spoke with a gravity that was vibrant with suppressed anger and slow with ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... and found that the trifle weighed over half a pound. Considering its very small bulk, this worked out to be a specific gravity of 192.6 or almost ten times as heavy as the same bulk of pure gold. And gold ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... not seem to understand," said the man, with so much bewilderment in his manner that Sylvia longed to laugh, but managed to pull herself together and to maintain a decent gravity of expression. ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... kissed her father's and her mother's hands with great reverence and turned to leave the room. Her gravity forsook her, however, before ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... anything to look at I kept out of the way. I can not tell precisely, therefore, what the incidents were that contributed to make Mr. Tottenham, on our return from these expeditions, so thoughtful, with a thoughtfulness which increased, towards the end of them, to a positive gravity. This would disappear during dinner under the influence of food and drink. He would talk nightly with new enthusiasm and fresh hope—or did I imagine it?—of the loveliness he had arranged to reveal on the following day. If again my imagination did not ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... hurt that the boarder should have forgone his usual careful politeness to receive the exposition of her idea with ridicule. She contemplated him gravely till he stopped laughing and gazed with an apologetic, anxious gravity in his protruding, extraordinarily speaking eyes back at her. Then she turned from him to ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... shut houses; so completely did they behold with a sort of veneration men sitting in the porches of the palaces, who besides their ornaments and apparel more august than human, bore a striking resemblance to gods, in the majesty which their looks and the gravity of their countenance displayed. Whilst they stood gazing on these as on statues, it is said that Marcus Papirius, one of them, roused the anger of a Gaul by striking him on the head with his ivory, while he was stroking his beard, which was then ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... and Aloysia were tossed on a sea of trial which cast a baneful shadow over their future destinies. Tears had cast the halo of their own peculiar beauty over their delicate features; mourning and sombre costume wrapt around them the gravity of sorrow and the adulation of a universal sympathy, pretended or real, supplied the attentions that flattered and pleased when they led the giddy world of fashion. The silence of grief hung around the magnificent saloons, once so gay; ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... or touch, or look. The odd shape of his head, she fancied, figured the outline and proportions of his intelligence, which was, as it were, pyramidal, standing upon a base so broad and firm as to place the centre of its ponderous gravity far beyond her reach to disturb. There was certainly no other being of material reality that could have made Unorna start and turn ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... nook of the hills and sea-shore. A pleasanter companion could not be found; observant and tranquil, tinged with a gravity beyond his years—a gravity due to certain family troubles—and with uncommon sweetness of disposition. He has evidently been ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Lanceys had in honour of Sir Henry Clinton. Our Excellency says it is a pity we had not captured the fair writer. That is as near to a jest as he ever comes, but he can enjoy our staff nonsense for all his gravity. I leave you the letter; you may like some day to deliver it. I hope we shall move soon. This camp life is devilish dull. And here is the British mouse in a hole and won't come out, and our serious old cat a-watching. Lord, the patience of the man! Come over and see us soon, Mr. Warder, and you ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... was so bespattered with mud that his features were hardly recognizable. Mrs. Caspar was laughing and crying at the same time, while both she and the young man were talking at once. Near them, and regarding this tableau with the utmost gravity, was a powerful-looking bull-dog, who would evidently be pure ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... circumference at breast-height, one hundred twenty-five feet in height and having a spread of one hundred fifty feet. The wood of the pecan is similar to that of the hickory in both toughness and specific gravity, although for practical purposes, such as being used for tool handles, the shagbark hickory is enough harder and tougher to make it the superior of ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... assistant was a coarse Scotsman, full of pretension and conceit, who assured us that if any of us should have occasion to have our legs or arms amputated he could do it without any pain. He used to feel our pulses after dinner with ridiculous gravity, and after examining our tongues tell us we should take great care and not eat salt junk too quickly, for it seldom digested well on young stomachs, and, added he with great consequence, "I have a specific for sair heeds if ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... systematic part of their industry, and were of great size and variety. It took a great deal of engineering skill to construct immense ditches necessary to control the violent floods of the Euphrates and the Tigris. So far as evidence goes, the irrigation was carried on by the gravity system, by which canals were built from intakes from the river and extended throughout the cultivated district. In Egypt for a long time the periodical overflow of the Nile brought in the silt for fertilizer and water for moisture. When the flood subsided, seed was planted ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... place of this abomination, a cap covered with glazed leather surmounted his martial brow. When we met, I lowered my umbrella and offered my card, with the office pasteboard. He took them with great gravity, read the names, and requested me to fall back to the rear and await orders. Then rejoining his gun, he was driven slowly towards the house,—my peaceful ambulance following at a respectful distance. When I reached the door, the six-pounder had disappeared behind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... She had no thwarts, and the paddlers were therefore compelled to squat tailor- fashion in the bottom of her, looking forward. This was, so far, fortunate; since she was so frightfully crank that, with such unaccustomed canoeists as ourselves, it was only by keeping our centres of gravity low down that we prevented her capsizing the moment we stepped into her. Pedro, worthy soul, detained us about twenty minutes whilst he explained the peculiarities of the craft and the proper mode of handling the paddles; and then, with ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... before a bench of magistrates, a short time ago, told the bench, with great gravity, "That he had two witnesses in court, in behalf of his client, and they would be sure to speak the truth; for he had had no opportunity to communicate ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... general drowsiness that brooded over the whole chamber. Everything was sleeping, night-lamp and furniture alike; on the table, near an extinguished lamp, some woman's handiwork was disposed also in slumber. Helene in her sleep retained her air of gravity and kindliness. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... deposit at his feet a heavy carpet-bag he was carrying, it became obvious, from partially developed legends and inscriptions, that the material with which his trousers had been patched had been originally intended for a less ambitious covering. Yet he advanced with great gravity, and after shaking the hand of each person in the room with labored cordiality, he wiped his serious, perplexed face on a red bandanna handkerchief, a shade lighter than his complexion, laid his powerful hand upon the ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... The gravity held the animal as though I had pinned it by a pole. From the distance of a few feet I heaved the boulder. The palpitating head mashed against the wall. The body and the pulp of the head and the boulder sank to the floor when ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... two hundred cubic miles of this dust, now compacted into somewhat coherent rocks and interpolated between sheets of lava. Everywhere this dust-formed rock is exceedingly light. Much of it has a specific gravity so low that it will float on water. Above the sheets of lava and above the beds of volcanic dust great volcanic cones rise, and the whole upper region is covered with forests interspersed with beautiful prairies. ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... possessed of a vivid sense of humour which at times embarrassed him sorely. If it had not been that his bigness of heart kept his love of fun in order he would have had great difficulty, now and then, in comporting himself with necessary gravity. ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... rocket at the time it is charged, or bored out after it is charged? How do cases charged with composition impart motion to wheels, and other pieces of fireworks? What is understood by the rocket principle? What is the rocket stick and its use? Is the centre of gravity fixed, or is it shifting in the flight of rockets? How are rockets discharged? What is the head of a rocket? What is usually put in the head? Are all rockets furnished with a head? What is understood by the furniture of a rocket? ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... object toward it. If it were possible to get outside the air and out of reach of the pull of the earth, we might fling a ball off into space, and it would go on in a straight line until something pulled it to itself by the force of gravity. ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... of. And this work I have not set forth either with elegancy of discourse or stile, nor with any other ornament whereby to captivate the reader, as others use, because I would not have it gain its esteem from elsewhere than from the truth of the matter, and the gravity of the subject. Nor can this be thought presumption, if a man of humble and low condition venture to dilate and discourse upon the governments of Princes; for even as they that with their pensils designe ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... notwithstanding, to listen with the most open-minded interest to whatever was said. Her manner to Lady Ogram was marked with deference, at times with something like affectionate gentleness; to Miss Bride she paid the compliment of amiable gravity; and towards Lashmar she could not have borne herself more respectfully—at all events in language—if he had been a member of the Cabinet; every word which fell from him she found suggestive, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... of my surprise, and of the difficulty I had in keeping my gravity at the reading of the paragraph, in which so much untruth was blended with so little that was real, I managed to keep a serious countenance, and I told the prelate that the Casanova spoken of in the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... are of that rare hazel, that soft golden brown, so rarely seen, so beautiful wherever they are seen. These eyes are unvarying in their colour; it is only the expression of them that varies with every emotion, but in repose they have a mournful earnestness in their look, a pensive gravity that seems to tell of a life in which there has been much shadow. The hair, parted above the most beautiful brow I ever looked upon, is of exactly the same colour as the eyes, and has a natural ripple in it. For the rest of the features ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... There was a new gravity in Roy's tone. "As I said, she probably knows all about it. That's her way. She understandeth one's thoughts long before." The last in a lower tone—his eyes dwelling on her portrait above the mantelpiece: the one in ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... impression at the time, that they had sat still and silent on the tops of the trees all through the Sabbath day, and I felt like one who should unawares disturb an assembly of worshippers. A crow, however, has no real pretensions to religion, in spite of his gravity of mien and black attire. Crows are certainly thieves, and probably infidels. Nevertheless, their voices yesterday were in admirable accordance with the influences of the quiet, sunny, warm, yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... of you therefore, brethren, bless God in his proper station, with a good conscience, and with all gravity, not exceeding the rule of his service ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... he spent his Saturday afternoons as a discussion on the canals of Mars. Now and again, in moments of political excitement, he had taken sides and adopted newspaper phrases as his own, declaring with an enormous gravity which he did not really feel that "The German Fleet was a deliberate menace to our naval supremacy," or joining in the chorus of "We want eight and we won't wait," or expressing his utter contempt for "all this militarism," and his belief in the "international solidarity" ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... to bed, but he was up at noon, and in the afternoon he went to the House of Burgesses to hear the governor make a speech to the members on the war and its emergencies. Dinwiddie, like Shirley, the governor of Massachusetts, appreciated the extreme gravity of the crisis, and his address was solemn ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... comedy to watch in a little town. The warning gravity of the advocate for the Crown, the emotional eloquence of the advocate for the defence. The court sat listening to what appeared to be its duty in regard to the case of a girl named Barbro, and the ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... companions seemed to place implicit confidence in the superior diplomatic powers of their Gascon comrade, and to have been seriously impressed by the gravity of his statement concerning the thrust of Nevers, so death-dealing, so unwardable, so almost magically fatal, for they readily agreed to his proposition. Places were rapidly found for Cocardasse and Passepoil at the table. AEsop returned ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... for a time which kept his guests in torture of suspense. Then, "I'm here all night. But scrape the county with a tooth-comb," he said, and hung up the receiver. Swinging his chair round, he faced the two men, and spoke with gravity. ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... quizzing-glass, which, I confess, that I had brought with me more for ornament than use—having eyes like a hawk—than I pathetically exclaimed to Lucy—'Behold, my love, the history of our fates!' Lucy said, 'Tuts, Toby Tims,' and gave a giggle; but I went on in solemn gravity, before a circle ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various |
