"Variability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man the climate of Washington would be almost tropical. Nevertheless, it participates of American meteorological variability, ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... is compared with Spohr, may be interesting: "Spohr is of colossal stature, and looks more like an ancient Roman than a Brunswicker; Sivori is the antithesis of Spohr in stature. Spohr has the severe phlegmatic Teutonic aspect; Sivori has the flashing Italian eye and variability of feature. Spohr stands firm and still; Sivori's body is all on the swing, he tears the notes, as it were, from his instrument. Spohr's refinement and polish have been the characteristics of his playing; in Sivori it is wild energy—the soul in arms—the determination to be up ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... for its raw material the various modifications of voice which are the physiological results of excited feelings, intensifies, combines, and complicates them—if it exaggerates the loudness, the resonance, the pitch, the intervals, and the variability, which, in virtue of an organic law, are the characteristics of passionate speech—if, by carrying out these further, more consistently, more unitedly, and more sustainedly, it produces an idealised language of emotion; ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... they will always be under the influence of the exciting causes of the moment. They are like the leaves which a tempest whirls up and scatters in every direction and then allows to fall. When studying later on certain revolutionary crowds we shall give some examples of the variability ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... goods that it buys—chiefly as a stick wherewith to beat the Gold Standard. He shows, very easily and truly, that it is absurd to suppose that the value of the monetary gold standard is invariable. Thereby he is only beating a dead horse, for no such argument is nowadays put forward. The variability of the gold standard of value is acknowledged, whenever a fluctuation in the general level of commodity prices is recorded. But gold is the basis of our credit system, and of those of all the economically civilised countries of the world, ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... traditional view that variability in mental traits becomes more marked during adolescence is here contradicted, as far as intelligence is concerned, for the distribution of I Q's is practically the same at each age from 5 to 14. For example, 6-year-olds differ from one ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... watching a little group of stars in the Milky Way, in one of which his chief had seen or fancied a remarkable colour variability. It was not a part of the regular work for which the establishment existed, and for that reason perhaps Woodhouse was deeply interested. He must have forgotten things terrestrial. All his attention was concentrated upon the great blue circle of the telescope field—a circle powdered, so it ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... comparison, can it be an adequate objection, that the twistings of the town are always the same, and those of human nature subject to variation. The grand points of human nature are the same to-day they were a thousand years ago. The only variability in them is in expression, not ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... toil and struggle no matter how hopeless it may be. While we are persistent and resistant, we are so made that we fit ourselves to the most diverse conditions. Will the Indian, the Negro, or the Mongol ever conquer the Teuton? Surely not! The Indian has persistence without variability; if he does not modify he dies, if he does try to modify he dies anyway. The Negro has adaptability, but he is servile and must be led. As for the Chinese, they are permanent. All that the other races are not, the Anglo-Saxon, or Teuton if you please, is. All that ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... "Variability," snapped the older man. "To be effective, the charge of explosive at the moment of impact must match, within very close limits, the activity of the vortex itself. Too small a charge scatters it around, in vortices ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... to be great variability in the degree and manner in which chloroform renders the glands insensible to the subsequent action of meat. In the plant last referred to, which had been exposed for 2 m. to three drops of chloroform, some few tentacles ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... how to define a species, but even to determine whether it has any real existence in nature, or is a mere abstraction of the human intellect, some contending that it is constant within certain narrow and impassable limits of variability, others that it is capable of ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... obvious:—The dry ore has a constant composition, and the results of all assays of it will be the same, no matter when made; the moisture, however, may vary from day to day, and would be influenced by a passing shower of rain. It is well to limit this variability to the moisture by considering it apart, and thus avoid having the percentage, say, of copper rising and falling under the influence of ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... doubts which disturbed him, and prevented him from executing his designs, for he knew the youth and character of his wife, and he felt sure that if he were absent she would not be able to control herself; and he considered also the mutability and variability of the feminine character, and that the young gallants were accustomed to pass in front of his house to see his wife, even when he was at home,—whence he imagined that in his absence they might come closer, and peradventure ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... that he was in such a madcap mood that it was as well there were none but married people with him,—the subject being of a 'Gampish' nature. But he was not always full of spirits or even-tempered,—indeed, I was sometimes puzzled by the variability of his moods." ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... was so intense that when he came to see his father in Baltimore the latter had him committed to the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital.[3] He remained there for one year and eight months, during which time his mood showed great variability. At times he would be elated, again depressed or anxious, often silly with irrelevant laughter. Towards the end of his admission he had quite long intervals when he appeared normal. Eight months after his discharge he began to have monthly attacks lasting from one to two weeks. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the ground with their fore-paws. Again, some of them charge home with a ferocious resolution which their extreme tenacity of life renders especially dangerous; while others can be turned or driven back even by a shot which is not mortal. They show the same variability in their behavior when wounded. Often a big bear, especially if charging, will receive a bullet in perfect silence, without flinching or seeming to pay any heed to it; while another will cry out and tumble about, and if charging, even though it may not abandon the attack, will pause for a ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... place the patient maintained she was unable to urinate, but at the same time strongly resisted catheterization. From the variability of her complaint it was found it could not be caused by a local condition, and examination showed no reason for the difficulty. Analysis of her symptoms undertaken at this time led to several stories, ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... dates of flowering of the two original trees over a 10-year period, and of these young orchard trees over a 3-year period, show that there is great variability in time of flowering, depending upon the sequence of weather events each season. Fertilizer treatments have had no measureable effect. The trees have shed pollen as early as January and as late as April, and stigma receptivity sometimes ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... women have a maternal instinct does not nullify the fact that a small number have none whatever. One of the facts of life, not taken into account with a fraction of its true significance and importance, is the variability of the race, the wide range of abilities, instincts, emotions, aspirations, and tastes. A quality is said to be normal when the majority of the group possess it, but it may be utterly lacking in a smaller number who ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... containing these remains are singular from the extreme variability of their mineralogical composition. Every intermediate form is present, between flinty-slate, clay-slate passing into grey wacke, pure limestone, sandstone, and porcellanic rock; and some of the beds can only be described as ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... characteristic of a new country and the common desire for tangible investments of a popularly sanctioned sort. All staple producers were engaged in a venturesome business. Crops were highly uncertain, and staple prices even more so. The variability of earnings inured men to the taking of risks and spurred them to borrow money and buy more of both lands and slaves even at inflated prices in the hope of striking it rich with a few years' crops. On the other hand when profits actually accrued, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... to 1767, or over a period of fourteen years. Butler, in his Evolution, Old and New, effectually disposes of Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire's statement that at the beginning of his work (tome iv., 1753) he affirms the fixity of species, while from 1761 to 1766 he declares for variability. But Butler asserts from his reading of the first edition that "from the very first chapter onward he leant strongly to mutability, even if he did not openly avow his belief in it.... The reader who turns to Buffon himself will find that the idea that Buffon took a less advanced position in his ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... to his youthful listener—to whom he had been communicating his views on the world in general. In the company of these elders, with such or kindred opinions, Goethe was early familiarised with the variability of human judgments on fundamental questions. And he laid the experience to heart, for on no point in the conduct of life does he insist with greater emphasis than the folly of expecting ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... head and laughed. She had charming white teeth—small and sharp and with enough irregularity to carry out her general suggestion of variability. "Yes, I shall like that, when it comes," she said; "But the chances ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... Wolverine go along with little variation. Probably the Coon does the same; the enormous rise in 1867 from an average of 3,500 per annum. to 24,000 was most likely a result of accidental accumulation and not representative of any special abundance. Finally, each and every line manifests extraordinary variability in the '30's. It is not to be supposed that the population fluctuated so enormously from one year to another, but rather that the facilities for export ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... have an illustration of the variability of the progeny of a nut in this collection of chestnuts by Mr. Riehl out in Illinois. This is a parent nut, the Rochester, and these others are seedlings from the Rochester, except where marked otherwise, some showing a tendency to revert to the parent, and some promising to be improvements ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... add to Entz's characterization of this species, which is found both in fresh and salt water. The variability of the cup and stalk is quite noticeable in the ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... that there had been a primitive black race in Micronesia and Polynesia; in his opinion we have here to do with a single race. The color of the Polynesians may be out and out from natural causes different, "their entire physical appearance indicates the greatest variability." Herein the whole question of the domain of variation is sprung with imperfect satisfaction on the part of those travelers who give their attention more to transitions than to types. Among these are not a few who have returned from the South Sea with the conviction that all criteria for the diagnosis ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... Some of the most remarkable anticipations of modern science were made by Cardan. He believed that inorganic matter was animated, and that all nature was a progressive evolution. Thus his statement that all animals were originally worms implies the indefinite variability of species, just as his remark that inferior metals were unsuccessful attempts of nature to produce gold, might seem to foreshadow the idea of the transmutation of metals under the influence of radioactivity. It must be remembered that ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... greater philosophical question offer itself to the inquiries of mankind. Laplace attacked it with boldness, perseverance, and success. The profound and long-continued researches of the illustrious geometer completely established the perpetual variability of the planetary ellipses. He demonstrated that the extremities of their major axes make the circuit of the heavens; that independent of oscillation, the planes of their orbits undergo displacements by which their intersections with ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... started from the port of Palos, first for the Canary Islands. These he left on the 6th September, and steered due west. On the 13th of that month, Columbus observed that the needle of the compass pointed due north, and thus drew attention to the variability of the compass. By the 21st September his men became mutinous and tried to force him to return. He induced them to continue, and four days afterwards the cry of "Land! land!" was heard, which kept up their spirits for several days, till, on the 1st October, large numbers of birds ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... most plants which have been long cultivated for the flower-garden, no character is more variable than that of colour, excepting perhaps that of height. From the consideration of these cases we may infer that the variability of cultivated plants in the above respects is due, firstly, to their being subjected to somewhat diversified conditions, and, secondly, to their being often intercrossed, as would follow from the free access of insects. I do not see ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... individual. The concern of evolutionists, therefore, is with the man who is so constituted that the mental effects of alcohol acting directly on the brain are pleasing, and we must show that there is a congenital variability in this mental quality, ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... osseous, &c.,) which invest the thoracic walls. Uniformity of sound must, owing to these facts, be as materially interrupted, as it certainly is, in consequence of the variable contents of the cavity. The variability of the healthy thoracic sounds will, therefore, be too often likely to be mistaken for that of disease, if we forget to admit these facts, as instanced in the former state. Considering the form of the thoracic space ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... Given variability, which is natural and to be expected, and given the absence of detail about the "residential portion" of other houses than that of Odysseus in the poems, it does not seem to us that this house is conspicuously "late," still less that it is the house of historical Greece. ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang |
