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Reverse   /rɪvˈərs/  /rivˈərs/   Listen
Reverse

noun
1.
A relation of direct opposition.  Synonyms: contrary, opposite.
2.
The gears by which the motion of a machine can be reversed.  Synonym: reverse gear.
3.
An unfortunate happening that hinders or impedes; something that is thwarting or frustrating.  Synonyms: black eye, blow, reversal, setback.
4.
The side of a coin or medal that does not bear the principal design.  Synonym: verso.
5.
(American football) a running play in which a back running in one direction hands the ball to a back running in the opposite direction.
6.
Turning in the opposite direction.  Synonyms: reversal, reversion, turnabout, turnaround.



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"Reverse" Quotes from Famous Books



... elected Pope as of being elected member for the City; and the statement roused his mettle. He was pitted against a candidate from Northampton, and the latter was brought forward with the powerful support of the Registration Association of the City of London, and in a fashion which was the reverse of complimentary to ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... French examples first took form. It is perhaps not essential that such an arrangement be made in order to give an effect of loftiness, which might not otherwise exist; indeed, it is a question if the reverse is not actually the case, though the effect is undeniably one of grandeur. Soissons, too, may rightly enough be included in the group, though the points of resemblance in this case are confined to the rising steps to either transept, coupled ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... to open the mine, to reverse the fan and start it. That will draw out the smoke and gases, and ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... successful in action than the volunteers, whose only school was actual practice in the field. And look at our Senate and House of Representatives, sir; are the most distinguished statesmen there graduates of colleges? Quite the reverse. I do not wish to be so irreverent as to disparage schools and colleges, sir, I only wish to be so just as to exalt talent, industry, and perseverance to their ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... family, much as it existed among the Hebrew patriarchs, and as it exists to-day, was primeval and universal is very deeply rooted. This is not surprising. To reverse the gaze of men from themselves is no easy task. The predominance of the male over the female, of the man over the woman and of the father over the mother, has been accepted, almost without question, in a civilisation built up on the recognition of male values and male standards ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... drift towards social and political anarchy, which is now beginning to alarm all the lovers of order and "progress," tend to widen its range and accelerate its movement. For though the current idea of achieving salvation through "success" is a comfortable doctrine for the successful few, it is the reverse of comfortable for the unsuccessful many, among whom the idea is gaining ground that as salvation is the reward, not of virtue, but of a judicious blend of cleverness, unscrupulousness, selfishness, and greed, there is no reason, in the moral ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... Inglis would have taken the poor fellow to the Grange, but for the reflection that it would only be a great shock to Mrs Inglis, and the ends of humanity would not in any way be served, for assistance could not be obtained a bit sooner, but rather the reverse. ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... velvets, but everything plain, and very handsome; nor did he wear large chains of gold, but a small one of fine workmanship bearing the image of Our Lady the Blessed Virgin with her precious Son in her arms, and a Latin motto; and on the reverse, St. John the Baptist with another motto. He wore on his finger a ring with a very fine diamond, and in his cap, which according to the fashion of that day was of velvet, he bore a medal, the head and motto of which I do not recollect; ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... of the night's work was the silence on the hillside. Everybody knew that the Gulla Kutta Mullah had his outpost huts on the reverse side of the hill, and everybody expected by the time that the Major had sworn himself into a state of quiet that the watchmen there would open fire. When nothing occurred, they said that the gusts of ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... school at Albany, and three years later entered Yale. But he had the true woodland spirit; he preferred the open air to the lecture-room, and was so careless in his attendance at classes that, in his third year, he was dismissed from college. There is some question whether this was a blessing or the reverse. No doubt a thorough college training would have made Cooper incapable of the loose and turgid style which characterizes all his novels; but, on the other hand, he left college to enter the navy, and there gained that knowledge of seamanship and of the ocean which ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... in monkeys which are active during the night and resting during the day, the body temperature is highest at night and lowest through the day. They then made observations on the temperature of animals and birds of nocturnal habit, where the periods of rest and activity are naturally the reverse of the ordinary through habit and not from outside interference. They found that in nocturnal birds the temperature is highest during the natural period of activity (night) and lowest during the period of rest (day), but that the mean temperature ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... irreverence, but because of the over-towering importance of the book, that the best scholars (devout, prayerful scholars, as well as the reverse) have given the best of their lives to the study of its text, its history, its ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes

... with it. Briefly, no judge would charge, no jury convict, on such evidence. When I add that the young girl is of legal age, that there is no evidence of any previous undue influence, but rather of the reverse, on the part of the bridegroom, and that I was content, as a magistrate, to perform the ceremony, I think you will be satisfied to give your promise, for the sake of the bride, and drink a happy life ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... Fair Cynthia, persuades you this and that. With like collusion shalt thou now blind me; But for abusing both the moon and me Long shalt thou be eclipsed by the moon, And long in darkness live and see no light— Away with him, his doom hath no reverse! ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... John Robin Ross-Ellison (and still more Mir Ilderim Dost Mahommed Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan), obsessed with the belief that a different and more terrible 1857 would dawn with the first big reverse in England's final war with her systematic, slow, sure, and certain rival, her deliberate, scientific, implacable rival, gave all his thoughts, abilities and time to the enthralling, engrossing ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... through which fresh (drinkable) water becomes salt (undrinkable) water; hence, desalination is the reverse process; also involves the accumulation of salts in topsoil caused by evaporation of excessive irrigation water, a process that can eventually render ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... that his friend only received his advice with a lip of disgust, as if it were some bitter drug, he said no more on the point, for fear of angering him, deeming it wise to trust to time, which will change men's hearts and reverse the ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... the law of necessity as storms are, and as waters are? These creatures do as God desires; is it so as regards man? The condemnation that each passes on himself is the best answer. Man may transgress, but God by virtue of His absolute sovereignty has appointed the penalty, and no one can reverse His decree. ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace

... went until Frank conceived a notion that they were near enough to the earth; but when he tried to reverse the lever and ascend again, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish

... charms. Nor was it from any lack of intelligence, nor from any defective social quality; for her precocity was astounding, and her good-humored frankness alarming. Neither do I think it could be said that a slight deafness, which might impart an embarrassing publicity to any statement—the reverse of our general feeling—that might be confided by any one to her private ear, was a sufficient reason; for it was pointed out that she always understood everything that Tom Sparrell told her in his ordinary tone of voice. Briefly, it was very possible that Delaware—the youngest Miss ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... the higher court will reverse the verdict of the lower. The stonemasons may look a stone over and conclude that it will not fit into the building; but the architect may have reserved that stone for the head of the corner. The prophet rarely lives to see his own historical ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... receiving instruction from the best of fathers, alas, with but too little fruit."[7] This did little to implant the needed impressions of the actual world. Rousseau's first training continued to be in an excessive degree the exact reverse of our common method; this stirs the imagination too little, and shuts the young too narrowly within the strait pen of present and visible reality. The reader of Plutarch at the age of ten actually conceived himself a Greek ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... agree with the period of the planet Jupiter's revolution around the sun, that during eight consecutive spot-periods the spots were most numerous when Jupiter was farthest from the sun, and it is only by going back to the periods preceding these eight that we find a time when the reverse happened, the spots being most numerous when Jupiter was nearest to the sun. So with various other periods which the ingenuity of Messrs. De la Rue and Balfour Stewart has detected, and which, under the closest ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... well, meant nothing at all—or rather, it need not. And when the movement passed again through all the reverse motions, sinking at last into complete stillness, he was conscious of disappointment. A moment later, however, as he glanced up again at the medium in the cabinet, he drew his breath sharply, and Mr. Jamieson, at the sound, wheeled his ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... after a warm discussion, of returning home in a passion, and then writing the character of a person. But as his feelings were warm, it is probable he might have often practised the reverse. An anecdote of the times is preserved in "The Memoirs of Grub-street," vol. ii. p. 291. "A noble peer now living declares he stood with a very ill grace in the history, till he had an opportunity put into his hands of obliging the bishop, by granting a favour ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... argument is to be unanswerable, the place of honour certainly belongs to the religious argument. Any one who really believes that an international language is an impious attempt to reverse the judgment of Babel will continue firm in his faith, though one speak with the tongues of ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark

... recovered it, and finally set it upon a corner of the table. "No, she is not worse. In fact, she is the reverse. ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne

... for pursuing pleasure, on the ground that the direct pursuit of pleasure is self-defeating. But Epicurus never makes that mistake. He says that pleasure, or 'sweetness of life', is the good; but he never counsels the direct pursuit of it. Quite the reverse. He says that if you conquer your desires and fears, and live simply and love those about you, the natural sweetness of life will ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... and expression. And if talking high and tired, and living excitedly and hurriedly, would only enable us to do more by the way, even while breaking us down in the end, it would be different. There would be some compensation, some excuse, for going on so. But the exact reverse is the case. It is your relaxed and easy worker, who is in no hurry, and quite thoughtless most of the while of consequences, who is your efficient worker; and tension and anxiety, and present and future, all mixed up together in our mind at once, are the surest ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... kinds of sperm was impossible, since in these birds there is only one type of sperm—two of eggs—as to the sex chromosome. For instance, by overworking females at egg-production, the same birds which had been producing more males than females were made to reverse that relation. ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... any man call a duke or a dutchess who wears it well-bred? or are they not more justly entitled to those inhuman names which they themselves allot to the lowest vulgar? But behold a more pleasing picture on the reverse. See the earl of C——, noble in his birth, splendid in his fortune, and embellished with every endowment of mind; how affable! how condescending! himself the only one who seems ignorant that he is every way the greatest person in ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... the Governor of the State an' I've got the Supreme Court right here in my holster, so I reckon I can reverse his official acts an' fill his legal opinions full of holes," the stranger replied, laughing heartily. "Bartender, will you help me play a little joke on His Honore, the Town,—just a little ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... the aggressor. One by one, so swiftly that they formed a continuous movement, he tried all the tricks which instinct or ingenuity suggested. He bucked, his hind-quarters in the air until it seemed he would reverse. He reared up until his front feet were on the level of a man's head, until Scotty held his breath for fear the animal would lose his balance backward; but when he resumed the normal he found the man, ever ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge

... (see page 13). Sudden changes in our tariff rates have unvaryingly been followed by financial panics within a short period. Changes to lower rates have not brought panics so quickly as changes in the reverse direction. ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar

... lady will avoid familiarity in her deportment towards gentlemen. A young lady should not permit her gentlemen friends to address her by her home name, and the reverse is true. Use the ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... to avenge the disasters of the Varian legions. The forest folk eluded the invading host, which now sought to return to headquarters; but ere they had completed the journey they were assailed and suffered a severe reverse. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... gentlemen, in fashionable array; and the consternation was not relieved by a glimpse of Mr Marcus Welles, radiant in blue and gold, through a vista of plumes, lace lappets, and fans. Betty was there, making herself generally useful and agreeable; and Molly, making herself the reverse of both. Phoebe scanned the brilliant crowd earnestly for Gatty. But Gatty ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... sweeping over the Ridge from the cover of the reverse slope in counter-attacks, only to be whipped by machine gun fire, lashed by shrapnel and crushed by high explosives—themselves mixed with the ruins of the windmill. At last they gave up the effort. It was not in German discipline to ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... merely from a visit to its capital or its chief seaport. These travellers of the second category can give us most interesting and valuable information about quaint little belated cities; about backward country folk, kindly or the reverse, who show a mixture of the ideas of savagery with the ideas of an ancient peasantry; and about rough old highways of travel which in comfort do not differ much from those of mediaeval Europe. The travellers who go up or down the highway rivers that have been travelled for from one to four ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... Horace's sense, not his words. I believe, with Ritter, that the alternative is between the pipe as accompanying the vox acuta, and the cithara or lyre as accompanying the vox gravis. Horace has specified the vox acuta, and left the vox gravis to be inferred; I have done just the reverse. ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... slowly out of the house. At the front door he found his horse, and, mounting it, rode back into Exeter. As he did so he began to inquire of himself whether this step which the girl had determined to take was really a misfortune to him or the reverse. He had hardly as yet asked himself any such question since the day on which he had first become engaged to her. He had long thought of marrying, and one girl after another had been rejected by him as he had passed them in review through his thoughts. Then had come Cecilia's ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope

... being mindful of me; but he has always died or gone elsewhere before the event has taken place.... But with a disposition to be happy, it is neither this place nor the other that can render us the reverse. In short each man's happiness depends upon himself, and his ability for doing with little.' He turned more particularly to Somerset, and added with an impressive smile: 'I hope you cultivate the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... of the Athenaeum Club to cross the street. A trolley car was coming rapidly, but the old gentleman, his head bent in thought and unused as he was to modern inventions and modern bursts of speed, paid no attention and moved in front of it. The motorman threw off his current, tried to reverse, and rang his gong furiously, but saw that he could not stop in time to avoid hitting the Doctor. I had bounded into the street, and when the car was only half a dozen feet off I was fortunately able to draw the old chap back and hold him clear ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump

... it be that the sneering reference made by that right honourable gentleman in the House of Commons to 'interested contractors and landjobbers' may be considered an adequate answer to a protest as moderate, as able, as truthful, and as necessary as Mr. Gladstone's remark was the reverse. In very truth, the position in which the British Premier had placed himself through his intemperate speeches in the Midlothian campaign, and his subsequent 'explaining away,' was an extremely unpleasant one. In Opposition ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... lump. Put this with a handful of meal upon a pastry-board, scattering meal upon it. Roll it out quickly with a rolling-pin; when as thick as a half-crown brush off all meal with some feathers or a pastry brush. Put another board upon the cake, reverse it, and brush it the other side. Slip it upon a hot girdle, cut it with a knife across and across so as to form triangular pieces. When they begin to curl up at the edges turn them on the girdle, keep them there till dry enough to lift, ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... inspired by the perception of those vices and inferiorities which his condition breeds in the slave. Ignorance, deceit, cowardice, are contemptible; and therefore men who know better fall into the way of despising those who are ignorant and cowardly instead of trying to help them become the reverse of all these things. In nearly every other nation—there are two exceptions that will readily occur to you—save our own, as soon as the slave's chains have been broken and the slave's vices eradicated, the emancipated man has been absorbed ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various

... however, 'easy to talk!'—one often hears that sexual jealousy is the most frightful of mental tortures: Men are more keenly affected by it than women, and the man whose wife has been unfaithful seems to suffer more acutely, even when he does not care for her, than the woman in the reverse circumstances. That is because his passions are stronger, a man will tell you, or because he looks up to the mother of his children as a being above the sins of the flesh. Probably the real reason is that man has generally had his own way since the menage in Eden, and he resents having ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... memorials of their predecessors. Such brasses are called palimpsests. By the carelessness of churchwardens, by fraud, or spoliation, brasses were taken from the churches, and acquired by some maker in the town. When a new one was required, the tradesman would take from his stock, and on the reverse engrave the figure of the individual whose memory he was called upon to perpetuate. Hence when brasses are taken up from the pavements, frequently the remains of a much earlier memorial are found on the reverse side. There is an example of this curious method ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... wide-spread distress. These results are unhappily too familiar in the United States, but the protectionists deny that the cause is correctly given. They aver indeed that a glut of manufactured articles is more frequently seen in England than in the United States, thus proving directly the reverse of the conclusion assumed by the free-traders, and establishing the conservative and restraining power of a protective tariff. The protectionists direct attention to the fact that the first three instances in our history in which financial panic ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... she now saw a queer creature coming toward her. She might have taken him for a young man, only ho was just the reverse of any young man Bredenbutta had ever seen. He stood upon his hands, which were clad in boots, and used his feet as we use our hands, seeming to be very handy with his toes. His teeth were in his ears, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum

... not in the least dispirited by this reverse, plan a fresh attack, and hearing that reinforcements are en route, in the persons of the drawing, dancing, and writing masters of the "Boarding School," cut off their march, and obtain a second entrance into the enemy's camp, under false colours; which their accomplishments enable them ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various

... reverse our journey and take the early morning train to the northward, on this Georgia State Railroad. In order to avoid suspicion, we must not all buy tickets for the same station. In point of fact we are only to go as far as Big Shanty station, near the foot of Kenesaw Mountain, a distance ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins

... concerning the necessity and utility of an assembly of estates amounts to the assumption that the people's deputies, nay, the people itself, best understand what would promote the common weal, and that they have indubitably the good will to promote it. As for the first point, the case is just the reverse. The people, in so far as this term signifies a special part of the citizens, stands precisely for the part that does not know what it wills. To know what one wills, and, what is more difficult, to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... Candage who hailed him when the tug eased herself against the ladder, her screw churning the sea in reverse. A stranger came out of the pilothouse of the Resolute, carrying a big leather suit-case. He was plainly the passenger who had chartered her. A deck-hand tossed a cast-line to the steamer's deck, and ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... expression which guided his master to the true meaning of his words, which might otherwise have been ambiguous. He did not mean that the fact of the lancers having been on the ground would prevent the Indians from occupying it, but exactly the reverse. It was, not "lancers no Indians," but "Indians no lancers," ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but—I know not how or why it was—its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed. By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... that is safe. A caracoa of soldiers from Zibu fought with this division, and some damage was inflicted on them; and some of the Camucones were killed, and some captured. On returning to their own country, the Camucones suffered a great reverse from a furious gale, while they were coasting along Panay. Three caracoas were driven ashore; and of those pirates who escaped alive, many are in galleys in this port. Having crossed over to the Calamyanes, while they were sailing in much confusion some Spaniards captured two caracoas there, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various

... car home after all, steering with one hand and taking the wheel off a buggy on the way. I sat beside her and changed the gears, and she blamed the buggy wheel on me, owing to my going into reverse when I meant to go ahead slowly. The result was that we began to back unexpectedly, and the man only saved his horse by jumping him ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... passing to the operations further west we are passing to an instance in which Lincoln felt it right to stand to the end by a decried commander, and that decried commander proved to possess the very qualities for which he had vainly looked in others. The reverse side of General Grant's fame is well enough known to the world. Before the war he had been living under a cloud. In the autumn of 1862, while his army lay between Corinth and Memphis, the cloud ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... anchoring ground from the north and the perspective elevations of the hilly country is given as seen from the decks of their ships, a common practice in those days, but one, which in this case, necessitated placing the south on top; for purposes of comparison, it will be necessary, therefore, to reverse the ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge

... the little road was a savior, to such a degree God-sent, that it seemed a sacrilege to let it halt. Moreover, since Brent came, she felt that the Colonel had been given fresh inspiration to imbibe. It had not occurred to her to reverse this indictment, which might have been done with an equal amount of truth. At any rate, she had lost patience with the good-looking engineer, while the Colonel was finding ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... to say that social distress creates political understanding that the truth is rather the reverse; social well-being creates political understanding. Political understanding is an intellectual quality and is given to him who already has, who lives in clover. Our "Prussian" should hear what a French political economist, M. Michel Chevalier, has to say ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... an end. Johnnie herself smiled, though her face was scarlet. She had no words to tell her tormentor that the borrowing trait in her tribe which had earned them the name of the borrowing Passmores proceeded not from avarice, which ate into Pap Himes's very marrow, but from its reverse trait of generosity. She knew vaguely that they would have shared with a neighbour their last bite or dollar, and had thus never any doubt of being shared with nor any ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... Hannah constituted an exception to the rule that women are rendered additionally attractive through being extraordinary. Had she been less extraordinary she would have been more lovable. As it was she came near, at this time, to being the reverse of lovable, or so it struck me when, upon my endeavour to talk calmly and rationally to her after hearing all that Jack Osborne had just told us, and striving to induce her to listen to reason, she remained ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux

... his official life depressing, but very much the reverse. He enjoyed dealing with affairs and with men. He used sometimes to wonder, half regretfully, half comfortably, at the fading of his old dreams, in which so much that was beautiful was mingled with so much that was uneasy. He began indeed to be somewhat impatient of sentiment ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... gods not to leave him long in Ptolemy's debt, but to let him have an early chance of doing the like to him. He took his disaster, also, with the temper not of a boy defeated in his attempt, but of an old and long-tried general, familiar with reverse of fortune; he busied himself in collecting his men, replenishing his magazines, watching the allegiance of the cities, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... to proselytise; and the postmaster's daughter used to argue with me by the half-hour about my heresy, until she grew quite flushed. I have heard the reverse process going on between a Scotswoman and a French girl; and the arguments in the two cases were identical. Each apostle based her claim on the superior virtue and attainments of her clergy, and clenched the business with a threat of hell-fire. 'Pas ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... how any woman, situated as Mrs. Adams was, could have objected to a plan so evidently for her advantage and the advantage of her family; but she was one of those who never like to think of the possibility of a reverse of fortune—who thrust care off as long as they can, and who feel more pleasure in being lavish as to the present than in saving for ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... where substance is not. Many stories fall below first rank in the opinion of the Committee through failure to achieve by artistic economy the desired end. The comment "Overwritten" appeared again and again on the margins of such stories. The reverse of this policy, as practised by other editors, is that of chopping the tail or, worse, of cutting out sections from the body of the narrative, then roughly piecing together the parts to fit a smaller ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... awoke in the bottom of a ravine with a shattered arm, a dead horse, and a ruined log-sled. Bill's foot was mashed by a rolling log; and last, and most far-reaching in its effect, the cook contracted spotted fever and died in a reverse curve. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... The hair lies downwards, on the limbs of all walking mammals, from the shoulder to the toes, but in the orang-utan it is directed from the shoulder to the elbow, and again from the wrist to the elbow, in a reverse direction. This corresponds to the habits of the animal, which, when resting, holds its long arms upwards over its head, or clasping a branch above it, so that the rain would flow down both the arm and fore-arm to the long hair which meets at the elbow. ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... he had been heard to mutter incoherently at the Club, and, strangest of all, to answer questions THAT WERE NEVER ASKED! This was so awkward in that Branch of the Civil Department of which he was a high official—where the rule was exactly the reverse—that he was presently invalided on full pay! Then he disappeared. Clever people said it was because the Department was afraid he had still much to answer for; stupid people ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte

... simple—and poetic." Fred's voice seemed to be wandering about in the thickening dusk. "You won't play much. You won't, perhaps, love many times." He paused. "And you did love me, you know. Your railroad friend would have understood me. I COULD have thrown you back. The reverse was there,—it stared me in the face,—but I couldn't pull it. I let you drive ahead." He threw out his hands. What Thea noticed, oddly enough, was the flash of the firelight on his cuff link. He turned again. "And you'll always drive ahead," he muttered. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... in the world, but just the reverse. Whatever may come of this, my wish is that the truth should be told scrupulously on all sides; the truth, the whole truth, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... below the point, A, was the instrument; a forked "shore" is now placed, with the fork, against the point, A, and the other end against the car sill; press down on the lever and you bend the hanger at A; lower the lever to a point just below B, reverse the process, and you have the bend at B; the whole thing taking less than two minutes per hanger. A new bolt hole, of course, has been bored in the brake beam 11/2 in. inside the old hole. It takes but a short time ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... for more? Wishing, of all employments, is the worst; Philosophy's reverse and health's decay. Night Thoughts, Night ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... Douglas said last night that before the decision he might advance his opinion, and it might be contrary to the decision when it was made; but after it was made he would abide by it until it was reversed. Just so! We let this property abide by the decision, but we will try to reverse that decision. We will try to put it where Judge Douglas would not object, for he says he will obey it until it is reversed. Somebody has to reverse that decision, since it is made, and we mean to reverse it, and we ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... people grow sad when they look at the water of the lake is perhaps that the lake offers them an escape from the tawdry, nagging little responsibilities of the day that go with being a citizen and a breadwinner. Not that it invites to suicide. Quite the reverse; it invites to living. To doing something that has a sweep to it; that has a swagger to it. To setting sail for strange ports where strange ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... her invitation, thinking from her Christian mildness of speech in the church that she indeed wished to be reconciled to them; item, the abbess promised to come, holding that compliance brings grace, but harshness disfavour; but here the reverse was ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... of the favourite Somerset and his beautiful but infamous wife, she was herself pure and untainted by the dark and criminal dispositions of her parents. Not even a suspicion of their real character had ever crossed her mind; she knew that they had met with some reverse of fortune,—for she had heard her father regret, for her sake, his altered estate. She knew this, but nothing more: her father's enemies, who would gladly have added to his wretchedness, by making ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various

... religion and their business, they might have lived through this dispute in enviable ease, and none would have molested them. The common phrase with these people is, 'Our principles are peace.' To which may be replied, and your practices are the reverse; for never did the conduct of men oppose their own doctrine more notoriously than the present race of the Quakers. They have artfully changed themselves into a different sort of people to what they used to be, and yet have the address to persuade each other that ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... and for a moment looked very attentively at Mr. Blyth—then, with the most uncharacteristic readiness and docility, began his story at once, without requiring another word of persuasion. In general, the very reverse of tedious when he related any experiences of his own, he seemed, on this occasion, perversely bent on letting his narrative ooze out to the most interminable length. Instead of adhering to the abridged account of his terrible ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... must have expressed myself atrociously; I meant to say exactly the reverse of what you have understood. F. Jenkin argued in the North British Review[76] against single variations ever being perpetuated, and has convinced me, though not in quite so broad a manner as here put. I always ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... done, the wind had been somewhat on the Pequod's quarter, so that now being pointed in the reverse direction, the braced ship sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream in her own ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... himself into a buffalo, a bear, a fish or a bird. He is called the Anti-natural God or Spirit. In summer he shivers with cold, in winter he suffers from heat; he cries when he laughs and he laughs when he cries, etc. He is the reverse of nature in all things. Heyoka is universally feared and reverenced by the Dakotas, but so severe is the ordeal that the Heyoka Wacipee (the dance to Heyoka) is now rarely celebrated. It is said that the "Medicine-men" use a secret preparation which enables them to handle ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... concentrating upon people of whom nothing is told. Thus, Arthur is made utterly impersonal because all legends are lies, but somebody of the type of Hengist is made quite an important personality, merely because nobody thought him important enough to lie about. Now this is to reverse all common sense. A great many witty sayings are attributed to Talleyrand which were really said by somebody else. But they would not be so attributed if Talleyrand had been a fool, still less if he had been a fable. That fictitious stories are told about a person is, nine times out of ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... wheels which impart motion to many mill-stones and many thousand spindles, beyond the possibility of denial;—and since the great landed proprietors have expressed nothing unfriendly to the project, but, if any thing, the reverse, at this moment of national difficulties and distress, highly to their credit and understanding;—and since the all-wise hand of Providence hath permitted an unceasing demand in one place, and a never-failing supply ...
— Report of the Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee • Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee

... weak prince, th' Eternal Cause, Prone for his favourites to reverse his laws? Shall burning AEtna, if a sage requires, Forget to thunder, and recall her fires? On air or sea new motions be impress'd, O blameless Bethel![91] to relieve thy breast? When the loose mountain trembles from on high, Shall gravitation cease, if you go by? Or some ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... of which none exceed the fifth magnitude, and is limited to a small number of red stars. The strongly marked bands in their spectra are sharply defined and dark on the red side, while they fade away gradually towards the violet, exactly the reverse of what we see in the spectra of III.a. These bands appear to arise from the absorption due to hydrocarbon vapours present in the atmospheres of these stars; but there are also some lines visible which ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... breaking its laws. There may be some exceptions to this general impression, such as Pliny's discovery of the innocent and virtuous rule of life adopted by the Christians of Pontus; but this only proves that Christianity was not in fact the infamous religion which the heathen thought it; it did not reverse their general ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... plants grow before their seeds, if all the phosphoric acid, potash, and lime available in the soil is consumed before the organization of the seeds begin, from what source is nature to draw her supply of these ingredients to form a good crop of wheat? If the farmer could reverse the order of nature, and grow a good supply of seeds first, and make straw afterwards, then many a one would harvest more wheat and less straw. But the cultivator must grow the stems, roots, and leaves of wheat, corn, and cotton, before nature will begin to form the seeds of these several ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... exquisite odors were stored." That is true, so far as the satyr is concerned; for a more weazened, unlovely personality would be hard to find. The only question in the comparison is in regard to the character of the odors, and that is a matter of taste. In his work he is the reverse of Smollett, the latter being given over to coarse vulgarities, which are often mistaken for realism; the former to whims and vagaries and sentimental tears, which frequently only disguise a sneer at ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... dungeon, with no prospect of deliverance before her to the end of her days. The annals even of royalty, filled as they are with examples of overwhelming calamity, can perhaps furnish no other instance of so total and terrible reverse of fortune as this. ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... my new home, where the excellent principles of high thinking and plain living were highly recommended for all who could not reverse the precept, struck me, a neophyte, as for all the world like that of a cathedral town in England, except that these visiting patrons of religion and learning were treated with a reverence and respect found only in America. Surely it must have amused them, had they not been so used to it; for ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... during easterly winds, which is one only of the many curious facts connected with the differing natures of easterly and westerly currents of air throughout the world, which remain unchanged, whether they blow from sea to land, or the reverse.[2] ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy

... assuming it, as you say, to mean not delivery, but acting, I understand why your debut as an orator was not successful. Your delivery was excellent, your acting defective. An orator should please, conciliate, persuade, prepossess. You did the reverse of all this; and though you produced a great effect, the effect was so decidedly to your disadvantage that it would have lost you an election on any ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... monarch who was the happiest of men, making answer that no one could be called happy before his death. And we may call to mind in confirmation the history of Cyrus, of Hannibal, of Mithridates, of Belisarius, of Bajazet, of Napoleon. But these Tartars finished a prosperous course without reverse; they died indeed and went to judgment, but, as far as the visible scene of their glory is concerned, they underwent no change. Attila was summoned suddenly, but the summons found him a triumphant king; and the case is the same ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... attributed good luck to the possession of a certain silver sixpence with a hole in it, which somebody had given him years before, with an injunction to take good care of it, as everything would go well with him so long as he did, and the reverse if he happened to lose it. The promised prosperity attended him for many years, whilst he held the sixpence fast; but having at length, in an evil hour, unfortunately given it by mistake to a hackney-coachman, a complete reverse of his previous good fortune ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... itself and whose expression is not restrained. It irks them to grapple with problems capable of none save a tragic solution. And when Mr. Meredith goes digging in a very bad temper with things in general into the deeper strata, the primitive deposits, of human nature, the public is the reverse of profoundly interested in the outcome of his exploration and the results of his labour. But for them whose eye is for real literature and such literary essentials as character largely seen and largely presented and as passion ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... classics are the books everybody praises—and nobody reads." Let us hope that this is an overstatement and not the exact truth; but whatever the proportion of verity in Mark Twain's saying, there is no doubt that we are running no great risk if we reverse it and say that when they were first produced the classics were books that everybody read—and that nobody praised. Shakspere to-day is the prey of the commentators and of the criticasters, but in his own time Shakspere was the most popular of ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... quickly. It is hard to tell whether he felt glad or the reverse at this meeting with the boy whom ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger

... long as it was constantly carried on, would sufficiently mark the style of Tacitus. Accordingly he has all kinds of alliterations, except the right ones, for they are quite different from, and, indeed, the very reverse of those of Tacitus; sometimes they are twofold (I. 6); sometimes threefold (I. 5); sometimes even four together—"posita, puerili praetexta principes" (I. 8);—from which last Tacitus would have shrunk with horror ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... almost wish that these letters had never come to light. A single grand passion has always a strong hold upon the imagination and the sympathies, but two passions contending for the mastery verge upon something quite the reverse of heroic. The note of heart-breaking despair is tragic enough, but there is a touch of comedy behind it. Though her words have the fire, the devotion, the abandon of Heloise, they leave a certain sense of disproportion. ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... found that the stomach has the power of gradually accommodating indigestive powers to the food it habitually receives. Thus, animals which live on vegetables can gradually become accustomed to animal food; and the reverse is equally true. Thus, too, the human stomach can eventually accomplish the digestion of some kinds of food, which, at ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... directors' rooms of the various banks with which we dealt, and lay our entire position before their boards. I felt that this could result in nothing discreditable to us. No one interested in our business had lived extravagantly. Our manner of life had been the very reverse of this. No money had been withdrawn from the business to build costly homes, and, above all, not one of us had made speculative ventures upon the stock exchange, or invested in any other enterprises than those ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... never have produced the effect he felt but for the startling crisis of that day, this acute consciousness of a personal and fierce hatred bred suddenly in Artois a new sensation of something that was not hatred, that was the reverse of hatred. Vere had once compared him to a sleepy lion. The lion was ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... Dutchman, now becomes more important, more essential, than ever. Many an old Italian opera may be heard without the hearer knowing in the least what it is about; indeed, in many cases the less one knows of the plot, the more one enjoys the music. But the reverse is true of Wagner. Certain portions of Tannhaeuser, for example, can be listened to with pleasure simply as noble or beautiful music: the overture, Tannhaeuser's Song to Venus, the Pilgrims' Marching Chorus, Wolfram's "O ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... The reverse of the last leaf but one is occupied by Latin verses, in capital letters of gold, at the top of which, in two lines, we make out—" Qualiter uiuian monachus sci martini consecrat hanc bibliam Karolo ipatorj," &c. The ensuing and last leaf is probably, in the eye of an antiquarian ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... he knew, had played for big stakes. Damaris, he felt intuitively, young though she was, played and would play for them likewise. He looked at her with awakened speculation, awakened curiosity. What, he wondered, would come of it. Did it make her attractive or the reverse? Really he wasn't at all sure. Whereat he grew restive, the claims of inherent masculine superiority, let alone those of public school, university and an honourable profession, asserting themselves. He began to question whether this young lady did not take up an ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... to reverse his thinking, and he should be told this in so many words. Where he formerly thought of keeping his tools sharp, he should now let them grow dull; surfaces that formerly were lubricated now should be sanded; normally diligent, he should now be lazy ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services

... day in reading, eating, and walking, and in converse grave and gay. I could not see, however, that my suit had progressed, as far as the events of the morning seemed to indicate. She wanted to reverse the medal of Aristippus, who said, in speaking of Lois, "I possess her, but she does not possess me." She wanted to be my mistress, without my being her master. I ventured to bewail my fate a little, but that did not seem to advance ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... of the same (or more likely, less of the same) becomes an almost irresistible outcome. While the JCS or OSD or CINCs may have genuine need for jointly packaged forces that are rapidly deployable irrespective of Army, Navy, Marine, or Air Force labels, the services cannot be expected to reverse the years of viewing the world through service- specific ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... oblique on count "four"; step right foot back behind left foot on count "five"; step left foot to left oblique back, count "six"; step right foot across to left oblique, count "seven"; hop on right foot, extend left foot in air right oblique back, count of "eight." Now reverse this entire movement to other side. These two steps are done in four measures of 4/4 tempo in ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... with the customs of the country, no opportunity was allowed him to do so; for whereas in England, or America, a suitor must win the favor of his lady before he asks that of her parents, in France the process is precisely the reverse of all this, and the lover must have the sanction of the father or mother, or both, before he may dare to woo the daughter; and this rule of etiquette holds good in all cases except in those of stolen marriages, ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... bravery in war and intrepidity in peace, even his highly strung nerves, excitability, and obliging readiness at all times for a fight, raise him high above history as the genius of the American race. The reverse side of the national character we owe to the greatest of his rivals; as will ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... the courtesy imaginable, he behaved in return not only like one who has forgotten all honour, but as one who has never had it in his heart. For he sought, in dishonourable and unlawful love, his comrade's wife, who was in no sort attractive to lust but rather the reverse, and was moreover as virtuous a woman as any in the town in which she lived. When she perceived the man's evil intent, she thought it better to employ dissimulation in order to bring his viciousness to light, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... at Fox's Gap. The whole of Anderson's brigade retreated further along the crest toward the Mountain House. Meanwhile the Twelfth Ohio, also changing front, had thridded its way in the same direction through laurel thickets on the reverse slope of the mountain, and attacking suddenly the force at Wise's as the other two regiments charged it in front, completed the rout and brought off two hundred prisoners. Bondurant's battery was again driven hurriedly off ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... the following morning I saw half of you, I believe, with your heads bound up, looking in the field of battle for your dead and wounded comrades. I saw you also, when the enemy had taken your baggage, with a cheerful heart and ready hand, willing to redeem what was considered to be a reverse, when I asked you to do it, and to make the enemy and the world know that you were equal to all trials. The Duke of Wellington has often talked to me about this regiment of dragoons, who have frequently distinguished ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... wish to reverse your decision about this day's pleasure. Seeing Daisy has had her lesson, do you not think she might be indulged with the play ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner

... which kept up its plodding, patient march through the land during many, many years. Each tourist took notes, and went home and published a book—a book which was usually calm, truthful, reasonable, kind; but which seemed just the reverse to our tender-footed progenitors. A glance at these tourist-books shows us that in certain of its aspects the Mississippi has undergone no change since those strangers visited it, but remains to-day about as it was then. The emotions produced in those foreign breasts by these aspects ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... trait in our Lord Jesus was the other side of this—His positive goodness. I mean the presence in Him of all that should be there. This is the exact reverse or complement of the purity. It is the other half that must go with that to make a perfect character. I like to use the word "holiness" in the sense of whole-ness. He had and developed a whole life. It was fully ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... Vivian Grey had apparently no claims to admiration, on the score of her personal qualifications. Her complexion was bad, and her features were indifferent, and these characteristics were not rendered less uninterestingly conspicuous by, what makes an otherwise ugly woman quite the reverse, namely, a pair of expressive eyes; for certainly this epithet could not be applied to those of Mrs. Felix Lorraine, which gazed in all the vacancy ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... make amends.... You're not looking at all well. There's a big change in you. Monte Carlo does you no good—the reverse in fact. Why not see a doctor and get him to prescribe you a tonic and a quiet place to build up your health in? We'll go there together and start our ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... their pleasures! There is only one limit to their fortune—that of time; and a spendthrift with only a few crowns is the Emperor of Rome until they are spent. For such a person to lose his money is to suffer the most shocking reverse, and fall from heaven to hell, from all to nothing, in a breath. And all the more if he has put his head in the halter for it; if he may be hanged to-morrow for that same purse so dearly earned, so foolishly departed! Villon stood and cursed; he threw the two whites into the street; he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the reverse would rightly characterize the heart of youth and the heart of age. Age is not slow in its mental motions; it is hurried and anxious, with that awful mystical apprehension of the swift-coming moment when time shall ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... from the proffered hospitality. In the first place, as I have never posed as a social champion I had no reputation at stake and I was horribly afraid. Secondly, while my reading of Socialist and Anti-Socialist literature is the reverse of extensive, I am very sure that nothing can be said for or against Socialism which has not already been said many times, and so well said that a fair collection of Anti-Socialist literature would make a punching-bag solid enough to absorb the force of the most energetic ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams

... the metropolis. During the night a throng of fugitives was continually entering the city, wounded and bleeding. In the early morning, the king assembled the citizens in the public square, and urged them to a desperate resistance. But they, disheartened by the awful reverse, exclaimed: ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... baskets, his body wound round with "tapa" till it stuck out many feet from his body. The crowd broke silence with an ear-piercing yell. He then spoke, and was interrupted from time to time with cries of approval or the reverse, and sometimes loud laughter, while the "Buli," sitting by me, every now and then shouted out, or broke into a childish giggle. Then the speaker uttered a lot of short sentences very fast, and every one present said "Venaka" (good) at the end of each sentence. Then the old man ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker

... suspicious that all that wealth could not have been honestly acquired. He watched her, and very soon surprised her with her lover. It must be said that the husband was but a jealous fellow. He flew into a temper, and gained nothing by it, but very much the reverse. For the amorous couple, plagued by his wrangling, swore to get rid of him. M. Mariette had no little influence. He got a lettre de cachet in the name of that unhappy Quonion. On a certain day the perfidious woman said to ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... family, Mr. T. Jordan Sprowle, called affectionately and elegantly "Geordie," voted himself "stunnin'"; and even the small youth who had borne Mr. Bernard's invitation was effective in a new jacket and trousers, buttony in front, and baggy in the reverse aspect, as is wont to be the case with the home-made garments of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... differ with him in matters of taste or opinion; that he must be rude with those he does not like. It is too largely his superstition that because he likes a thing it is good, and because he dislikes a thing it is bad; the reverse is quite possibly the case, but he is yet indefinitely far from knowing that in affairs of taste his personal preference enters very little. Commonly he has no principles, but only an assortment of prepossessions for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the masses of Austria and Russia were advancing in hot haste, which, with the rallied remains of Prussia, and the indomitable perseverance and uncompromising hostility of England, quickened by a reverse of her arms, would have presented an array against which he could have had no chance of success. The hour of utter ruin would only have been procrastinated, involving still greater waste of life, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... passing, and conduct of teams on the road; and it is more important that there should be some well established and understood rules on the subject than what the rules are. In England the rules are somewhat different, and some of them are the reverse of what they are in this country. But the rules and the law relating thereto in this country are about the same in every State of the Union. Our statutes provide that when persons meet each other on a bridge or road, travelling with carriages or ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter

... existence, of course, was at stake, and there was no public to appeal to. A part of the legal army that rushed to the aid of our adversaries spent the afternoon and most of the night organizing all those who could be induced by one means or another to reverse their sentiments, and in searching for the few who had grievances against the existing power. The following morning a motion was introduced to reconsider; and in the debate that followed, Krebs, still defiant, took an active part. But the resolution ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... forces, but only one, as being the cause of all things; the difference between good and evil resulting simply from the direction in which this force is made to flow. It is a universal law that if we reverse the action of a cause we at the same time reverse the effect. With the same apparatus we can commence by mechanical motion which will generate electricity, or we can commence with electricity which will ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... assign to dust is just the reverse, to prevent one who is gripped from getting loose. After learning in the clay to retain their hold on the elusive, they are accustomed in turn to escape themselves even from a firm grasp. Also, we believe the dust forms a plaster that keeps ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... proportion is a keener recognition of the want. But this want must be found first in ourselves, not in others. There is the inclination to regard our own life as bigger and more important than the life of any one about us; or the reverse attitude of bewailing its lack of importance, which is quite the same. In either case our own life is dwelt upon first. Then there is the immediate family, after that our own especial friends,—all assuming a gigantic size which puts quite out of the question ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call

... centuries of woman since sex began were eloquent in her eyes. And he measured her in a careless way, and knew, bold now, that she would begin to retreat, coyly and delicately, as he pursued, ever ready to reverse the game should he turn fainthearted. And, too, he was human, and could feel the draw of her, while his ego could not but appreciate the flattery of her kindness. Oh, he knew it all, and knew them well, from A to Z. Good, as goodness might be measured in their particular ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London



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