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Poise   Listen
noun
Poise  n.  (Formerly written also peise)  
1.
Weight; gravity; that which causes a body to descend; heaviness. "Weights of an extraordinary poise."
2.
The weight, or mass of metal, used in weighing, to balance the substance weighed.
3.
The state of being balanced by equal weight or power; equipoise; balance; equilibrium; rest.
4.
That which causes a balance; a counterweight. "Men of unbounded imagination often want the poise of judgment."
5.
A dignified and self-confident manner; graceful composure and tact in handling difficult social situations.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Poise" Quotes from Famous Books



... He neither tore His wife's locks nor his own; but wisely weighing His own offence with hers in equal poise, And woman's weakness 'gainst the strength of man, Came to a calm and witty compromise. He coolly took his gay-faced widow home, Made her his second wife; and still the first Lost few or none of her prerogatives. The ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... blinking in a kind of befuddled astonishment. "You mean she really is a—" He stopped and brought his tenor voice to a squeaking halt, regained his professional poise, and began again. "I'd rather not discuss the patient in her presence, Mr. Malone," he said. "If you'll just come ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)

... day of trial, Let feuds and factions cease, Until above this howling storm We see the sign of Peace. Let Southern men, like brothers, In solid phalanx stand, And poise their spears, and lock their shields, To guard ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... Tish," I tried to soothe her. But she refused all consolation, and merely called Hannah and asked for some blackberry cordial. She drank fully half a tumbler full and she recovered her poise by the time Charlie Sands stuck his head ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Nels out toward the open jungle, which thrust a narrow triangular strip in toward the town. At intervals they heard shouts, far deeper in. The Great Dane was in his highest form, after weeks of care and training by Bhanah. He could well carry his poise in a walk like this; having his full exercise night and morning. A marvel thing, like nothing else—this dignity of Nels. . . . The two neared their own magic place—not the monkey glen; that was deeper in the jungle—the place where they had really found each other ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... I haven't got no sort of affection for the lady. My trouble is that she puts me out of countenance, and I can't fit her in as an antagonist. I guess we Americans haven't got the right poise for dealing with that kind of female. We've exalted our womenfolk into little tin gods, and at the same time left them out of the real business of life. Consequently, when we strike one playing the biggest kind of man's game ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... flutteringly and left them alone on the porch in the soft dusk, and at once he had plunged to his doom. There was no serene confidence about him this time, no snatching her into a short-breathed embrace; he was rather pathetically humble before her new poise ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... monuments the more when we realize that they are not the work of master sculptors but of ordinary paid craftsmen. We turn away praising the city that could produce such noble sculpture and call it mere handicraft, and praising also the calm poise of soul, uncomforted by revealed religion, which could make these monuments common expressions of the bitterest, deepest, most vital emotions which can ever come ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... perfect critic. Her ear is as carefully attuned to the correct balance of words as that of a skilled musician to harmony in music. She will detect instantly a weak spot in a sentence or a paragraph and never fail to suggest the exact word or phrase needed to give it poise ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... and I'll shoot you." In her tones there was none of the hysteria that usually spices feminine threats. She was angry, but her voice was grimly level. She had the poise of one who had learned to depend on her own resolute spirit. But she displayed something more than that. It was recklessness that was bravado. In the eyes of the State chairman, friend of Thornton, and accustomed to ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... with her same perfect, set smile, displaying to the utmost the sweet curves of her lips. Her cheeks retained their lovely brilliancy of color. Harry trembled, and his face looked pale and self-conscious, but Ida displayed no such weakness. She replied with the utmost self-poise to the congratulations which she received after the ceremony. There was an informal reception in the church vestry. Cake and ice-cream and coffee were served, and Ida and Harry and Maria stood together. Ida had her arm around Maria most of the time, but Maria felt as if it were an arm of ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the unrealities of their descendants' fears and hesitations. The anger of the heroes is plainly too great for words. How compressed the lips! How tense the attitude! The hands gripped in the angriest sort of impatience! Mark the subtle mingling of seaman and burgher in the poise and figures. Mark particularly Van Tromp's stiffened forefinger ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... so seriously that she blushed before she could recover her poise. He saw his advantage ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... halberdier. I never noticed him particularly. I remember he thought he was only a suit of armour. He had a perfect poise." ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... reasonable wits, knocked hard and again for readmission. There was little for a man of humble mind toward the sex to think of in the fact of a young lady's bending rather low to peep at him asleep, except that the poise of her slender figure, between an air of spying and of listening, vividly recalled his likening of her to the Mountain Echo. Man or maid sleeping in the open air provokes your tiptoe curiosity. Men, it is known, have in that state cruelly been kissed; and no rights ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... time Orde completely lost his poise and became fluently profane. He shook his fist against the menacing logs; he apostrophised the river, the high water, the jam, the deserters, Newmark and his illness, ending finally in a general anathema against any and all streams, ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... door behind him. He saw that they yet knew nothing—there had been no messenger, no telephone call, and the news was his to tell. He bowed to Mrs. Grayson, and then he felt a moment of embarrassment, but his long experience and natural poise came quickly ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... will be of that way of thinking, young woman.—Dick, there's a sort of murderous, viperine suggestion in the poise of the head that I don't understand,' ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... evening of the 9th, they reach the lake. Difficulty in crossing. Send for a scow. Seize a boat at anchor. Search, and find small row boats. Only eighty-three able to cross. Day is dawning when these reach the shore. Not prudent to wait. Allen orders all who will follow him to poise their firelocks. Every man responds. Nathan Beman, a lad, guides them to the fort. Sentinel snaps his gun at A. Misses fire. Sentinel retreats. They follow. Rush upon the parade ground. Form. Loud cheer. A. climbs the stairs. Orders La Place, it is said, in the name of the great Jehovah ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... enthusiasm. "The point carrying the detonators is loaded with lead. If properly handled, it is sure to fly with that end in front. You take it between your thumb and second finger, thus, and poise it by placing the tip of the first finger behind it, thus; but you must throw hard, and wait until the upper part of the door is smashed, and you can fling it clear, or three ounces of dynamite will explode in front of your nose, with disastrous effect. I will have a second bomb ready ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... features of a girl of twenty, a good profile of rather a Southern cast, and a certain poise of the head which marked her as one with generations of equally ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... place, that indefinable quality of taste, which means so much in portraiture. His was an unerring instinct for poise, drapery, color, and composition. Each of his figures seems to assume naturally an attitude of perfect grace; the draperies fall of their own ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... Carlisle had recaptured her poise: it was not her habit to confide her troubles to anybody, least of all to ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... famous Apollo cannot be fixed, but it is clearly a copy of a type belonging to the fourth century B.C. The poise of the figure is singular and, till its intent is grasped, unsatisfactory. Apollo is caught in swift motion but seems, as he stands delicately poised, to be about to fly rather than to run. He stands tiptoe and in a moment will have left ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... is what my duty bids me wish. Where a wide Empire's welfare is in poise, That welfare must be pondered, not my will. I ask of you, then, Chancellor Metternich, Straightway to beg the Emperor my father That he fulfil his duty to the realm, And quite subordinate thereto all thought Of how it ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... that impressed him most—solemnity and an air of expectation. Yet it was not mere expectation. There was a suggestion of the fundamental and the normal, as if perhaps movement and sound were, after all, no better than interruptions; as if this fixed poise of nature were something complete in itself; as if these trees hung out their leaves to listen to something that they could actually hear, as if these motionless creatures of the woodland were looking upon something ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... of the beautiful Jehane de Saint-Pol. Jehane of the Fair Girdle, the beloved of Richard Coeur de Lion, Richard Yea-and-Nay. Her eyes were gray green while yours are of the most wonderful blue, but there is something about your height and slenderness, your poise, the set of your head, the glory of your hair that suggests her. If Mother gives the fancy dress ball that she is threatening, please go as Jehane. I should ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... big book of photographs of school girls. Some turns of the head, some glances and a sound in the voice still puzzled her, but it was connected with something in the past. Few young girls made characteristic portraits. Ah, here was one who had just that poise, that eager ambitious expression. A Miss Mortimer who certainly possessed fine abilities, and a resonant voice. She had taken the lead in school entertainments, and then she had joined a theatrical troupe and married a third rate actor, to the ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... not ceased thinking of the girl with the tambourine, of her savage, sullen grace, her magnificent poise and strange glance. He had learned at his hotel that she was called "Debora la folle," and that she was the daughter of the still crazier Baki. Was she some sort of a gypsy, or a Continental version of Salvation Army lass? No one knew. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... that his mind had ceased to possess the natural poise which would enable him to manage his affairs in accordance with some wisely matured system of expenditure. In times of depression he would demand the most rigid economy, and again he would seem careless ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... the cobwebs, stooping beneath the ancient rafters, dodging crumbly bunches of pennyroyal and hyssop, hung there by hands that have been dust these fifty years, you poise and swing a forty-pound crowbar with a strong uplift against the roof-board, near where one of the old-time hand-made, hammer-pointed, wrought-iron nails enters the oak timber. The board lifts an inch and snaps back into place. ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... plain gray Mennonite dress and stiff black silk bonnet was, as usual, an attractive figure. Philip, grown to the dignity of long trousers, carried himself with all the poise of seventeen. He was now a student in the Lancaster High School and had he not learned to dress and act like city boys do! Uncle Amos, in his best Sunday suit of gray, his Mennonite hat in his hand, ambled along last as the little group went down the aisle of the Millersville ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... day,[228] returned he to Edinburgh, and so did the Cardinall from Hadingtoun. But the one being eschamed of the other, the brute of thare communicatioun came nott to publict audience. The King maid inventorie of his poise, of all his juwellis and other substance;[229] and tharefter, as eschamed to look any man in the face, secreatlie departed to Fyfe, and cuming to the Hall-yardis,[230] was humanlie receaved of the Ladye[231] ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... men than she could even remember, but never one anything like this particular specimen. To add to her quickened interest, he was not only positively good-looking, but every line of his face, the poise of his well-proportioned, upstanding figure, the tilt of his head and the squareness of his chin, all spoke of strength; of elemental strength, and of a purposeful, resolute character. And, too, she told herself that he had ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... men and set going, with Mr Curtiss at the steering wheel, esconced in the little boat-shaped car under the forward part of the frame. The four-winged craft, pointed somewhat across the wind, went skimming over the waveless, then automatically headed into the wind, rose in level poise, soared gracefully for 150 feet, and landed softly on the water near the shore. Mr Curtiss asserted that he could have flown farther, but, being unused to the machine, imagined that the left wings had more resistance than the right. The truth is that the aeroplane ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... increasing his speed now, slowing then, and getting more and more over with far less effort, and giving us no end of encouragement, as he at length reached the rocks, tumbled the load off his head—the load which had never seemed once to lose its poise—and finally we could see him seated facing us wiping his hot face with the front ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... know what to say. This was out of the ordinary, conspicuously so. There was little precedent by which to act in a case like this. So in order to appear that nothing could destroy his official poise, he let the two stand before his desk while he ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... heirloom given— Against the freedom of all lands they wield This—Neptune's trident; that—the Thund'rer's levin Gold to their scales each region must afford; And, as fierce Brennus in Gaul's early tale, The Frank casts in the iron of his sword, To poise the balance, where the right may fail— Like some huge Polypus, with arms that roam Outstretch'd for prey—the Briton spreads his reign; And, as the Ocean were his household home, Locks up the chambers of the liberal main. On to the Pole where shines, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... Blow back and forth in alternation strong, And, so to say, rallying charge again, And then repulsed retreat, on this account Earth oftener threatens than she brings to pass Collapses dire. For to one side she leans, Then back she sways; and after tottering Forward, recovers then her seats of poise. Thus, this is why whole houses rock, the roofs More than the middle stories, middle more Than lowest, and the lowest least ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... many prefer to walk to the polls, and they go in pairs, trios and quartettes, voting their little sentiments and calmly returning to their cookies and crazy quilts as though politics didn't jar their mental poise ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... world over will enjoy the opportunity of this glimpse of Mrs. Stevenson, however the limitations imposed by black and white may prevent a full realization of the great charm of this unusual woman, whose personality is so magnetic, so serene in its poise, so richly intellectual, that those who have had the opportunity of knowing her always remember her as one of the most interesting and ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... and speak, The man must act. The Stagyrite Says thus, and says extremely right; Strict justice is the sovereign guide, That o'er our actions should preside; This queen of virtue is confess'd To regulate and bind the rest. Thrice happy, if you can but find Her equal balance poise your mind: All diff'rent graces soon will enter, Like ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... was so closely enveloped that not a lap nor an edge flew free. She stretched forward strangely aslant, leaning from the upright poise of a runner. She cleared the ground at times by long bounds, gaining an increase of speed ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman

... speaking rapidly, in her singularly articulate tones. A reader of voices would have pronounced hers the physical record of unbroken health and constant, joyous poise. ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... cut off by a burst of fire from the base of the tower. The rope and hose parted and precipitated a number who were sliding back to the roof. Others leaped from the colossal torch. In an instant, it seemed, the whole pyre was swathed in flames. As it toppled, the last wretched form was seen to poise and plunge with it ...
— Official Views Of The World's Columbian Exposition • C. D. Arnold

... or herself unduly excited, or perhaps shocked, while reading some parts of what is here written, so that the heart beats too fast, or the hand trembles, it may be well to suspend the reading for a time, divert the mind into other channels for a while, and resume the reading after one has regained poise and mastery of one's self. That is, "keep your head" while you read these lessons, and you will be ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long

... an instant later he seemed in poise. He had clutched the thin, trailing branches as he fell; and as he sank a number of leaves which his motion had torn off floated out ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... Libra, House of Marriage; that all-important relation which may make or mar a life, the Balance is so easily disturbed in its equilibrium. To preserve its harmony, equality must reign, blending love and wisdom. It is the perfect poise of body, mind, and soul, achieved by loving obedience to the higher laws of our being and the true union of intuition ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... to the last, Full in the centre stands the Bull at bay, Mid wounds, and clinging darts, and lances brast,[92] And foes disabled in the brutal fray: And now the Matadores[93] around him play, Shake the red cloak, and poise the ready brand: Once more through all he bursts his thundering way— Vain rage! the mantle quits the conynge hand, Wraps his fierce eye—'tis past—he sinks upon ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... it is a study to see three or four of these air-kings at the head of the valley far up toward the mountain, balancing and oscillating upon the strong current; now quite stationary, except a slight tremulous motion like the poise of a rope-dancer, then rising and falling in long undulations, and seeming to resign themselves passively to the wind; or, again sailing high and level far above the mountain's peak, no bluster ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... and merriment, even though a few miles away there was war in its grimmest aspect But if one thought of that all the while, as Captain Black said, none would have the nerve and mental poise to face the guns and finally ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton

... his arm. De Mersch himself hardly counted. He had a way of glowing, but he paled ineffectual fires beside her maenadic glow. There was something overpowering in the sight of her, in the fire of her eyes, in the glow of her coils of hair, in the poise of her head. She wore some kind of early nineteenth-century dress, sweeping low from the waist with a tenderness of fold that affected one with delicate pathos, that had a virgin quality of almost poignant intensity. And beneath it ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... written in two parts. The first points to the need of Poise in daily life, indicates the obstacles to be overcome, and discusses the effects of Poise on personal efficiency. The second instructs the reader how to secure that evenness of temperament which is the chief characteristic of Poise. It includes, in ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke

... fingers of the right hand. It was thus he must have grasped the implement when he caused it to give out the sound that caught the ear of Fred Linden and Terry Clark. But at the moment the Irish lad saw him, and for some minutes after, he held the bell in such careful poise that it gave no ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... abused Charles Francis for his judgment. Naturally they never attempted to assign values to either; that was the children's affair; but the traits were real. Charles Francis Adams was singular for mental poise — absence of self-assertion or self-consciousness — the faculty of standing apart without seeming aware that he was alone — a balance of mind and temper that neither challenged nor avoided notice, nor admitted question of superiority or ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... out her white arm with the thin sleeve wrinkled over it, and helped herself again to water. In every gesture there was the poise and distinction of perfect self-command, a highly wrought self-consciousness, as far removed from pose as from Nature's simplicity. Natural she could never be again. No woman is natural who has a secret experience to guard, whether of grief or shame, her ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... floor, with his back to the chair Colonel Hampton had occupied, his injured leg stretched out in front of him. Albert was hovering over him with mother-hen solicitude. T. Barnwell Powell was finishing his whiskey and recovering a fraction of his normal poise. ...
— Dearest • Henry Beam Piper

... scrambled about the crags he seemed, she was wont to say, to climb straight out of them. The recollection of all this—the lesser and unspiritual maternal values, perchance, but essential—surged over her with bitterness; she lost her poise, and ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... inflexible will are required to keep the gaze unwavering, and a complete absence of self-consciousness. Thus Deveny knew he was standing in the presence of a man whose poise and self-control were marvelous; and he knew, too, that Harlan would be aware of the slightest move made by either of the three; more, he could detect any sign ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... most goodly of men, though you had for your model the most abject you must depend on him, and can depend on him for the structure of the human body, for its movement and poise. The proof of this is that Raphael used his pupils in his studies for the movements of the ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... to talk no more about her loss or her fears regarding the missing scenario. If it was gone, it was gone. That was all there was to it. She would no longer worry her friends and disturb her own mental poise by ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson

... the Himalaya I have watched an eagle circling overhead. I have sat on the mountain-side and watched it sail majestically along in graceful curves and circles, and with perfect ease and poise. Far above the earth it would range, and seemingly without exertion glide easily over tracts that we poor men could only enter by prodigious effort. Captivated by its grace of motion, and jealous of its freedom, I would for hours watch it. And this eagle I knew, ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... the secret of it is to be looked for in the amazing poise and self-possession of these women; a self-possession which is indicated in their moments of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... York for the granting of absolute divorce, of which hitherto the carefully nurtured girl had been in total ignorance. Cicily was at first astounded, and then dismayed. But, in the end, she regained her poise, and reverted with earnestness to the need of reform in the courts where such gross injustice could be. She surmised even that in this field she might find ultimately some outlet of a satisfactory ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... found—the Cavaliere was master of such arts. The Duchess's attitude was one of transport, as though heavenly airs fluttered her laces and the love-locks escaping from her coif. I saw how admirably the sculptor had caught the poise of her head, the tender slope of the shoulder; then I crossed over and looked into her face—it was a frozen horror. Never have hate, revolt and agony so ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... storm, reason reasserted itself in Joyce's mind. It brought no comfort with its restored poise; rather, it brought a realization of her true position. Her life was as utterly shattered and devastated as was the little home. Everything was gone. The future, with pitiful choice, was as densely black as the night that shut her in with her dull misery. With Jude, there could ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... thick-set, low-browed, impassive, silent country youth, with a face the colour of the soil. JINKS—An old soldier, red, lean, wrinkled, with very blue eyes. His face is rough-hewn, almost grotesque like a gargoyle. In his eyes there is a perpetual glint of humour, and in the poise of his head a certain ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey

... her. "Oh, no, you don't!" he said kindly. "But I see plainly that you're a self-willed young person. Association with me, and the study of my poise, will do a lot for you. By the way, you have only thirty ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan

... any other occasion when a few callers had thrown them off their balance. But of course this was different. He was a little flustered himself—a circumstance that dawned upon him with surprise. When the Gales had been shown to rooms, Mrs. Belding gained the poise momentarily lost; but Nell came rushing back, wilder than a deer, in a state of ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... was saying now with admirable poise, in answer to her question, "I haven't visited your wonderful Golden Gate, but I hope to go there some day—with you!" he added. His words were simple; the accent alone made them sound formidable; ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... long he clung there, but his white face and the poise of his strung-up figure impressed themselves indelibly on her memory. Strain was expressed in every line of his body and in his clutching hands. Then the strength and decision that was in her asserted itself, and she overcame the numbing horror that had ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... satisfied with her outlook here. The place she left need not be always desolate. There was a good maiden sister to keep the house, and Eben and the children would be but briefly sorry. They could recover their poise; he with the health of a simple mind, and they as children will. Yet he was truly stunned by the blow; and I hoped, on the day of the funeral, that he did not see what I did. When we went out to get our horse and wagon, I caught my foot in something which at once gave ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... that friend has given one thirty thousand francs a year income, one owes him some consideration. It seems to me that in Sainte-Beuve's place I should have said, "That displeases you, let us talk no more about it." He lacked manners and poise. What disgusted me a little, between ourselves, was the way he praised the emperor to me! yes, he praised Badinguet, to me!—And ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... man at the helm—a long, thin, weedy-looking figure, so far as I could make out in the ghostly starlight, but one who had evidently used the sea for some time, if one might judge by the easy, floating poise of his figure on the plunging deck as he stood on the weather side of the tiller, with the tiller rope lightly grasped in his right hand, swaying rhythmically to the leaps and plunges of the little hooker. As Dominguez followed me out on deck he stepped aft to the small, dimly ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... after an ill name, or some general imputation, though he knows it most unworthy. That opposes to reason, "thus men say;" and "thus most do;" and "thus the world goes;" and thinks this enough to poise the other. That worships men in place, and those only; and thinks all a great man speaks oracles. Much taken with my lord's jest, and repeats you it all to a syllable. One that justifies nothing out of fashion, nor any opinion out of the applauded way. ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... the paddle into the water. Reynolds was more intent upon watching the graceful poise of her body as it swayed to the rhythmic stroke of the paddle than he was in viewing the scenery. He could hardly believe it true that she was seated there before him, and that he was privileged to watch her to his heart's ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody

... both, Lest some ill-greeting touch attempt the person Of our unowned sister. ELD. BRO. I do not, brother, Infer as if I thought my sister's state Secure without all doubt or controversy; Yet, where an equal poise of hope and fear Does arbitrate the event, my nature is That I incline to hope rather than fear, And gladly banish squint suspicion. My sister is not so defenceless left As you imagine; she has a hidden strength, Which you remember not. SEC. BRO. What hidden strength, Unless the strength ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton

... turned away to the horses. Joan walked toward the little cabin. The strain of that encounter left her weak, but once from under his eyes, certain that she had carried her point, she quickly regained her poise. There might be, probably would be, infinitely more trying ordeals for her to meet than this one had been; she realized, however, that never again would she be so near betrayal of terror ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... of public exhibitions, made ludicrous as they are by the operators, should be condemned by all intelligent men and women, not from the danger of hypnotism itself so much as from the liability of the performers to disturb the mental poise of that large mass of ill-balanced individuals which makes up no inconsiderable part of society." In conclusion he says: "Patients have been injured by the misuse of hypnotism. * * * This is true of every remedial ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus

... early morning ride through the outskirts of the little city. Kate pulled her pony to a walk and glanced across at him. He had taken off his hat to catch the breeze, and the sun was picking out the golden lights in his curly brown hair. She found herself admiring the sure poise of the head, the flat straight back, the virile ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... his poise with one-half of his brain still given over to the hand he meant to play with Poker Face, merely sighed and ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory

... the girl's stately and exquisite poise forsook her. Her eyes wore a hunted look for a moment. She even felt obliged to laugh to cover ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... approached Cleggett. There was hesitation in the brown old man's feet, there was doubt upon his wrinkled brow, but there was the consciousness of duty in the poise of his shoulders, there was determination ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... feet of the baby beat across the grass The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind, They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water; And the sight of their white play among the grass Is like a little robin's song, winsome, Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower For a moment, then away with a ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... is painless at least, if fatal. Pursuing the conclusions drawn from his long experience, Dr. Brinkley has found that women derive more instant benefit from the glands than men with respect to their awakened enthusiasm, improved appearance, and recovery of the feeling of poise and well-being. Very noticeable is the change of figure which follows the implanting of the new ovaries in the case of a fat woman. The change is equally marked in the case of a fat man. A man of abnormal ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower

... thinks in this train, but must see the world, and its contemptible grandeurs, lessen before him at every thought? It is enough to make one remain stupefied in a poise of inaction, void of all desires, of all designs, of ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... stupid as I seem to be. She mustn't imagine she can "vamp" my Kaikobad with impunity. It's a case of any port in a storm, I suppose, for she has to practise on somebody. But I must say she looks well on horseback and can lay claim to a poise that always exacts its toll of respect. She rides hard, though I imagine she would be unwittingly cruel to her mount. Yet she has been more offhanded and friendly, the last two or three times she has dropped over to the shack, and she is ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... may have sufficient mental poise to be able to lecture on cookery and do the trick at the same time," supplemented Doctor Churchill, his eyes also on the chafing-dish. In fact, everybody's eyes ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond

... his feet, but the dory was already half-way across the little patch of comparatively smooth water in the cove. As he looked he saw it enter the first line of breakers, rise amid a shower of foam, poise on the crest, and slip over. The second line of roaring waves came surging on, higher and more threatening than the first. Captain Eri glanced over his shoulder, turned the dory's bow toward them ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... Holland listened, his eyes hardened, and at the conclusion, something very like an oath ground from his lips. Patty glanced at him in surprise—never before had she seen him out of poise. ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... all,' said the General, folding the thin letter reverently with hands that trembled; 'but I feel surer and surer—my heart tells me that the little boy Paul Fife must be my own flesh and blood. He is Miguel Sarreco's very image: the same haughty poise of the head, and lean, sinewy body; but when he speaks, the voice is my son's, and the curve of ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... perhaps have noticed that when he wings his way homeward towards nightfall, in a sedate and clerical company, two rooks will suddenly detach themselves from the rest, will retrace their flight for some distance, and will there poise and linger; conveying to mere men the fancy that it is of some occult importance to the body politic, that this artful couple should pretend to have renounced connection ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... to remember further having proved vain, Lollie, far from being embarrassed, bowed low again with the poise of one who has recited brilliantly, and took his seat amid ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... at her critically. She was a little over-slim, perhaps, but she was certainly wonderfully graceful. Even the poise of her head, the manner in which she leaned back in her chair, had its individuality. Her features, too, were good, though her mouth had grown a trifle hard. For the first time the dead pallor of her cheeks was relieved by a touch of color. ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... that ambitious age That thinks it all things knows, and all the while It nothing knows. And yet those smiles presage Some future fame, because your aim is high; As when one tries to shoot into the sky, If his rash arrow at the moon he aims, a bolder flight we see, Though vain, than if with level poise it safely reached the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... rises every morning at daybreak and sweeps clean every hole and corner of her dwelling; in spite of her wonderful sky, her life-giving air; in spite of the level head she keeps in her political affairs, and the miraculous poise she maintains between the antagonism of State and Church; in spite of her wise eclecticism in modern improvements; in spite of her admirable hygiene, which has constituted her one of the healthiest, if not ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... (Historia Imaginum restituta) and James Basnage (Hist. des Eglises Reformees, tom. ii. l. xxiiii. p. 1339-1385) are cast into the Iconoclast scale. With this mutual aid, and opposite tendency, it is easy for us to poise the balance with philosophic indifference. * Note: Compare Schlosser, Geschichte der Bilder-sturmender Kaiser, Frankfurt am-Main 1812 a book of research ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... destruction of the battle ship Maine while rightfully lying in the harbor of Havana on a mission of international courtesy and good will—a catastrophe the suspicious nature and horror of which stirred the nation's heart profoundly. It is a striking evidence of the poise and sturdy good sense distinguishing our national character that this shocking blow, falling upon a generous people already deeply touched by preceding events in Cuba, did not move them to an instant desperate resolve to tolerate no longer the existence of a condition of danger ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... houses which they build so large in Northern New England. They were all kept in scrupulous repair, though here and there the frost and thaw of many winters had heaved a fence out of plumb, and threatened the poise of the monumental urns of painted pine on the gate-posts. They had dark-green blinds, of a color harmonious with that of the funereal evergreens in their dooryards; and they themselves had taken the tone of the snowy landscape, as if by ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... speaks English like an Englishwoman, as well she may, for she is a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. She is also a descendant of the Romanoffs, for one of her grandfathers was Alexander III of Russia. In her manner she is more simple and democratic than many American women that I know, her poise and simplicity being in striking contrast to the manners of two of my countrywomen who had spent the night preceding our arrival at the castle and who were manifestly much impressed by this contact with the Lord's Anointed. When luncheon was announced her second daughter, ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... young friend, therefore, became a most peculiar one. He had been given an important preliminary advantage, if he chose to aspire to the love of the sweet one at his side; but he thought hard, and did not lose his self-poise or sense of honor. ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis

... passion, it's yours to resist it. You're letting this man you hate mould your character; you're letting him burn the kindness out of your soul. He's making you bitter and hard and unjust—and you're letting him. I thought you had more will—more poise. It isn't your affair what he is, even what he does, Dick—it's your affair to keep your own judgment unwarped, your own heart gentle, your own soul untainted by the poison of hatred. We are both churchmen, as you put it—loyalty is ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... moment she leaned over the table and stretched a hand to arrange something. The perfection of her poise, the beauty of her lines, the charm of her face seized Carnac, and, with an impulse, he ran his arm ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... one ever knew what passed between them in the endless moments of that last sad farewell; but Lincoln left the house with inexpressible agony written upon his face. He had been to that hour a man of marvelous poise and self-control, but the pain he now struggled with grew deeper and more deep, until, when they came and told him she was dead, his heart and will, and even his brain itself gave way. He was utterly without help or the knowledge of possible help in this world or beyond it. ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... firelight a girl leaned forward, her eyes fastened upon a drawing she held in her lap. One could see only vague outlines. The light danced over the figure of the girl, her bright, reddish-gold hair, cut short and held in place with an amber comb, her slender shoulders, the unconsciously graceful poise of her body. ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook

... They crawled stealthily along, bowling over bushes or small trees or flattening out wire entanglements. Steep banks or deep gulleys were taken or crossed with equal ease. As a tank would creep up the side of a ridge it seemed to poise momentarily on the crest, the front part extending out into space until the center of gravity was passed, when the whole tank plunged down headlong. We instinctively held our breath until we saw it crawling ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West

... had so strenuously disclaimed all reasonable motives for his visit. He quailed before this man who seemed to be a dangerous crank—for Farr's attire was out of the ordinary and his eyes were flashing and his poise was that of a man sure ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... poor George for a minute, during which Sally began to giggle violently, and flirt in her rustic fashion with the three rebels in a row. At length George, recovering his poise and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... he was mounted so disturbed the fine mental poise of the Happy Family that they left him jingling richly off by himself, while they rode closely grouped and ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower

... just sunrise on the 10th when Allen addressed his men with "We must this morning either quit our pretensions to valor, or possess ourselves of this fortress; and inasmuch as it is a desperate attempt, I do not urge it, contrary to your will. You that will undertake voluntarily, poise your firelocks!" The response was unanimous. The wicket of the stronghold was found open; the sentry snapped his gun at Allen, missed him, and was overpowered with a rush, together with the other guards. On the parade within, a hollow square was formed, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... the thing desired in a Japanese floral composition. It might be said that Western art, in general, and more particularly the decorative art of India, Persia and Greece—the last coming to Japan through India and with certain Hindu modifications—all aim at symmetry of poise; but that Japanese floral arrangement and decorative art in general have for their fundamental aim a symmetry by suggestion,—a balance, but a balance of inequalities. The ike-bana as conceived and practised in Japan is a science to which ladies, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... one who knew her, "to do any justice to her charms—the brilliance of her eyes, which dazzled and thrilled all on whom they fell; the glory of her black hair, rippling in a cascade to her knees; the classic purity of her Grecian profile, the wild-rose delicacy of her complexion, the proud, dainty poise of her head, and the exquisite modelling of the figure which ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... to meet Mr. Cameron, grandfather." Lily was rather pale, but she had the Cardew poise. "He was in the ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... complexion, and the fine poise of the man—the entire absence of "nerves," as often shown in the savage—seemed to carry out the idea that his was a peculiar pedigree. In his youth, when his hair was as black as the raven's wing and coarse as a horse-tail, and his complexion mahogany, the report ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... heart,—nothing at first wistful in the serene sense of well-being, stretching her rounded arms skyward in the unaccustomed luxury of a liberty which had become the naively unconscious licence of a child. The poise of sheer health stretched her to tiptoe; then the graceful tension relaxed, and her smooth fingers uncurled, tightened, and fell limp as her arms fell and her superb young figure straightened, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... set him into a glow. But by the time he had reached home and had stripped off his wet clothes and swathed himself in a rough blanket, his racked nerves reasserted themselves. He craved a drink—a number of drinks—to restore his wonted poise. Lighting the kitchen lamp, he set the whisky bottle on the table and put a thick tumbler alongside it. Chum was lying at his master's feet. In front of Ferris was a pint of good cheer. The lamplight made the kitchen bright and cozy. Link felt a sense of utter ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune

... clear, steady look into her eyes in place of the glassy shine of fever. It was beginning to fill out that hollow in her neck, so that it no longer showed the angular ends of her collar bones. It had put a resilient quality into her walk, firmness into the poise of her head. It had made it physically possible, for instance, for Helen May to trudge out into the wild to hunt nine goats that had ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... polite, or suavely cynical. It was a new experience to see him borne on a wave of rhetoric; yet not borne away, for he spoke with an ease, a self-command, which to older ears would have suggested skill rather than feeling. He had nothing of the ardour of youth; his poise and deliberation were quite in keeping with the two score years that subtly graved his visage; the passions in him were sportive, half-fantastical, as though, together with his brain, they had grown to a ripe worldliness. He inspired no distrust; his good nature seemed all-pervading; ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... all, she took out of a box a broad white straw hat, like an oyster shell, with a silver-grey ribbon, and a sweeping ostrich feather.. She looked at it a moment, blew on it, plucked at its ribbon, lifted it over her head, held it at poise there, dropped it gently on to her hair, stood back from the glass to see it, and finally tore it off and sent it skimming on ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... indifference or disloyalty is full grown, the employer has full on him acute and formidable labor diseases. The man who should stand at his shoulder faces him, instead, with a hostile poise. The mill full of people over whom he holds power, upon whom he depends for his success, and who, in turn, depend upon his initiative and capital for their bread and butter, is turned into an armed camp of plotting enemies, who, while they work, grumble, ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... approached. Now he was at number one—the rattle of the iron links sounded horribly. At last number sixty! Calm from despair, Ben-Hur held his oar at poise, and gave his foot to the officer. Then the tribune stirred—sat ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... the heavenly sun Shining upon thy breast! My scattered passions toward thee run, And poise to awful rest. ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... had fled from him at daylight, and how he had ever since been haunted by the fear of seeing the assassin again and being claimed by him as an acquaintance. When he had related this, with an emphasis and poise on the word, 'assassin,' peculiarly belonging to his own language, and which did not serve to render it less terrible to Clennam, he suddenly sprang to his feet, pounced upon the bill again, and with a vehemence that would have been absolute madness in any man of Northern origin, cried 'Behold ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... Reason this Form of Churches has been rejected by modern Architects abroad who use the better and Roman Art of Architecture.... Almost all the Cathedrals of the Gothick Form are weak and defective in the Poise of the Vault of the Aile."[60] On the other hand, he reckoned the dome "a form of church-building unknown in England, but of wonderful Grace," and, moreover, the dome wasted a minimum of space, whilst a mediaeval cathedral could accommodate only a small auditory in proportion ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock

... somewhat large, not a good shape either, and some people—who do not like me—say that they can easily detect a hard, cold expression which does not please them. But my profile is good in spite of my ill-featured mouth, and there is—generally acknowledged—a certain high-born, well-bred look about the poise of my shapely head which gains for me more than a mere passing notice. My manners are pronounced "charming," and by many—those who like me—charmingly faultless. So, after all, in spite of this lack of a positive style of beauty, I am what ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.

... about the poise of Rodriguez' young head which gave him an air not unlike that which the King himself sometimes wore when he went courting. It suited his noble sword and his merry plume. When la Garda saw him they were all politeness ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... to the breaking point before; but his alertness was now trebled, and, like a sensitive barometer, he felt the danger of Larry, the brute strength of Jeff, the cunning of Henry, the grave poise of Joe, to say nothing of Scottie—an unknown force. But Scottie was running on in his talk; he was telling of how he met the storekeeper in town; he was naming everything he saw; these fellows seemed ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand

... immediately, whether they sympathized with and were ready to help the cause of liberty, or favored a foreign rgime. He was still in Mrida when in a proclamation he spoke of avenging the victims, and threatened with war to death. But Bolvar was not only a man of genius but one of equanimity, poise, deep thought and attention. He did not want to carry out his threats immediately, but decided to think at length over the transcendent step he was considering. The night of the 14th of June was a night of torture for the Liberator. On the morning of the 15th he himself wrote the decree ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... England: there the work in hand was not the break-up of a social system, but only the mental evolution of new ideals, the struggle of an ethical revival, and the satisfaction of a livelier spirit of scruple. In face of all delirations, Emerson kept on his way of radiant sanity and perfect poise. Do not, he warned his enthusiasts, expend all energy on some accidental evil, and so lose sanity and power of benefit. 'It is of little moment that one or two or twenty errors of our social system be corrected, but of much that the man be in his senses. Society gains ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley

... happy in his cause, and more fortunate in the issues of his career. They are taught to see in him a soldier whose sword wrought only mercy and justice for mankind; a statesman who steadied a remarkable generation of public men by his mental poise and exalted them by his singleness of heart; and a ruler whose exercise of power established for the time on earth a righteous government ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... particular value to us, if it did not prove to us the source of disease, for when we look scientifically and psychologically at disease, we must see that it is simply disassociation between the psychic and the physical selves, and comes as the natural loss of poise, either ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.

... away, and despite the almost frenzied haste with which he presently fell to work, he saw always the light and gracious figure which had come to him along the red clay road. The fervour which had shone suddenly in her eyes, the quiver of her mouth as she turned away, the poise of her head, the gentle, outstretched hand he had repulsed, the delicate curve of her wrist beneath the falling sleeve, the very lace on her bosom fluttering in the still weather as if a light wind were blowing—these things ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... is a sudden arrest, rather than a satisfaction, of the poet's longing, for genuine satisfaction would kill the aspiration, and leave the poet heavy and phlegmatic. Inspiration, on the contrary, seems to give him a fictitious satisfaction; it is an arrest of his desire that affords him a delicate poise and repose, on tiptoe, so to speak. [Footnote: Compare Coleridge's statement that poetry is "a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order." Biographia Literaria, Vol. II, Chap. I, p. 14, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... very active. She liked to fly round among duties, and she liked to retire into her own mentality and think. She was all for equilibrium, for the right balancing of body and mind in a proper alternation of suitable action. Thus she attained poise,—she was one of the most poised women her friends knew, they told her. Also she had a warm heart, and liked both philanthropy and orphans. Especially if ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... of the character represented. The voice must be modulated to the vogue of the time. The habitual action of a rapier-bearing age is different to that of a mail-clad one—nay, the armor of a period ruled in real life the poise and bearing of the body; and all this must be reproduced on the stage, unless the intelligence of the audience, be they ever so little skilled in history, is to count ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving

... have you believe that I lost my intellectual poise and composure. Without, I may have appeared distraught; within, my brain continued its ordained functions. Indeed, my mind operated with a most unwonted celerity. Scarcely a minute passed that some new expedient did not flash into my ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... equally violent rush succeeded; and in its way toward the starboard quarter threw up a rolling wave thirty feet high, crowned by a blue square mass of many tons, resembling the entire side of a house, which, after hanging for some time in doubtful poise on the ridge, at length fell with a crash into the hollow, in which, as in a cavern, the after-part of the ship seemed embedded. It was, indeed, an awful crisis, rendered more frightful from the mistiness of the night and dimness ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... virtue is not the monopoly of any class or sex or race. By all the proprieties of nature, woman should have with man a voice in the enactment of laws and the administration of government. She is the complement of man, essential for the due poise, the right wisdom, and conduct in family, in neighborhood, in Church or in State. Sharing in civil government, she will be a redemptive agency for society in many ways little thought at present. And agitation and overturning shall ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... time in the sixteenth century, and had established itself in western Sussex, where the Manor House of Hurlstone is perhaps the oldest inhabited building in the county. Something of his birth place seemed to cling to the man, and I never looked at his pale, keen face or the poise of his head without associating him with gray archways and mullioned windows and all the venerable wreckage of a feudal keep. Once or twice we drifted into talk, and I can remember that more than once he expressed a keen interest in my methods of ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... effort of Jack to save himself from falling, and a stinging pain ran through his shoulder. His hot Kentucky blood was aflame, and the instant he could poise his body he drew his knife and rushed upon the Indian with the fury ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... was Miss Ethel Orne, a young lady who had flourished through a London season, and had refused any number of brilliant offers. She was a brunette, with most wonderful dark eyes, figure of perfect grace, and an expression of grave self-poise that awed the butterflies of fashion, but offered an irresistible attraction to people of sense, intellect, intelligence, esprit, and all that sort of thing—like you and ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... yellow tendrils of hair which were always slipping out from the fluffy braids which bound her head. She surely was fair to look upon, and when Steve had assisted her to mount in the old way,—holding out his hand and she stepping upon it in laughing ease,—she sat her pony with the graceful poise of the true Kentucky girl, making a picture which less partial observers than Steve could not have failed to find full of charm. They cantered off briskly down ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins

... trick which the camera has played means more and more as I still watch your picture, for there is present in that light not only blessedness, but holiness as well. The lightness of your movement and of your poise (as though you were blown like a blossom along the tops of the grass) is shone through, and your face, especially its ready and wondering laughter, is inspired, as though the Light had filled it from within; so that, looking thus, I ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... or participation in his Bohemian tastes. They were the sort of people who have a box at the opera and are patrons of the best and most exclusive functions of the highest society. Mrs. Schuyler, after the first shock, recovered her poise, and though now and then a tremor shook her slight frame, she bore herself with ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells

... from n, the nares sound, to the vowel sound of o, and returning to the nares sound of m. This is perhaps the best element to begin upon, because of its definiteness, but the same principle can be applied to other elements of speech, as Most-men-want-poise-and-more- royal-margin. Form each syllable with the utmost care. Concentrate the mind upon the ideal sound. First be sure that the pronunciation is accurately conceived. Then enunciate clearly and try each time to make the form more perfect. The principle of thinking is the ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick

... remained ahead. They hoped, however, that the worst was behind. They now carefully divided evenly among the boats the little stock of flour, so that, in case of disaster, all of it should not be lost at once. Notwithstanding all the difficulties and the dark outlook, Powell never failed in his wonderful poise of mind and balance of nerve. But he was anxious, and he sang sometimes as they sailed along till the men, he once told me, he believed thought he had gone crazy. Of course the singing was more or less a mask for his ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... absolute bitterness. That she, a mere girl, should rise and come forward with so conventional yet friendly a greeting, that neither her lip should tremble nor her cheek flush, was little short of intolerable. Nevertheless it helped to brace his own resolves yet more firmly. Such poise, after all that had been between them, could have its source only in the most ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... It was the supreme moment for Thaine Aydelot. He was only a private, but in that instant all the old dominant Cavalier blood of the Thaines, all the old fearless independence of the Huguenot Aydelots, all the calm poise and courage of the Quaker Penningtons throbbed again in his every pulse-beat. He threw aside his soldier obligation and stood up a man, guided alone by the light ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... all her life. The maiden's gown was soft as satin and fell about her in ample folds, while dainty lace-like traceries trimmed the bodice and sleeves. Her flesh was fine and smooth as polished ivory, and her poise expressed both ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... slightly Roman nose, his well-shaped head, his clear, bright eye, and his rosy cheeks flushed with excitement, rendered him an attractive figure among the bright faces and well-dressed figures. His superb physical poise lent a grace to all his movements, while he was self-possessed at the most ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis

... innocent, pleased wonder, as might be in a child's eyes, who had been told to leave studying and go pick violets. But as the Colonel ended he spoke, and the few words he said, the few questions he asked, were full of poise, of crisp directness. As the General volunteered a word or two, he turned to him and answered with a very charming deference, a respect that was yet full of gracious ease, the unconscious air of a man to whom generals are ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... get his impressions of it. This had happened so often that it had come to be a sort of joke between them. But now Fulkerson clearly meant business, and March had a struggle to maintain himself in a firm poise of refusal. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells



Words linked to "Poise" :   sang-froid, balance, equilibrise, equilibrize, equilibrate, set up, juggle, prepare, gear up, steel, lay, ready, position, assuredness, hover, pose, equanimity, brace, hold, set, bear, cool, unit of viscosity, carry, equilibrium, place, aplomb, calm



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