"Oscillate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the carriages are said to oscillate, from being too heavy at the top, let a few copies of "Martinuzzi" be placed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... external considerations by which the mind guides itself in its decisions on matters of conduct. Do our moral opinions merely vary, or do they grow? Is there any progress to be traced in morality, or does it simply oscillate, within certain limits, round a fixed point? If some 'simple' and 'innate' idea of right, or some universal sense, were the test of morality, then we might expect that the moral decisions of all men would be uniform, or, at least, approximately uniform; if, on the other hand, there ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... and recitation of the French oscillate between two opposite extremes, the first of which is occasioned by the prevailing tone of the piece, while the second seems rather to be at variance with it,— between measured formality and extravagant boisterousness. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... or voice. All this may be of interest as a matter of research, but must one go into such minutiae in order to teach singing? I think the answer must ever be in the negative. You might as well talk to a gold-fish in a bowl-and say: 'If you desire to proceed laterally to the right, kindly oscillate gently your sinister dorsal fin, and you will achieve the desired result.' Oh, Art, what sins are committed in ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... $75—about 50 per cent less than cost. Some of them, if not worn long, have been worn much; they are jagged under the arms and at the bottom of the skirt, stains are on the lining, and other objections present themselves to those who oscillate between the dresses and dollars, 'notwithstanding they have been worn by Madam Lincoln,' as a lady who looked from behind a pair of gold spectacles remarked. Other dresses, however, have scarcely been worn—one, perhaps, while Mrs. Lincoln sat for her picture, and from one the basting ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... one of those odd types that oscillate between remote country towns in England and the conduct of English Church services on mutual terms in enterprising hotels abroad, a tremulous, obstinate little being with sporadic hairs upon his face, spectacles, a red button nose, and ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... stage when they can no longer beat the records! There is a vast difference between one of the old New York brownstone houses and one of the fourteen-storied buildings near the river, but between this and the Times Square Building or the still more amazing Flat Iron Building, which is said to oscillate at the top—it is so far from the ground—there is very little difference. I hear that they are now beginning to build downwards into the earth, but this will not change the appearance of New ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... fixes his imagination in turn for weeks at a time on the foot of Brahma, then on his knee, on his thigh, on his navel, and so on, until, beneath the strain of this intense meditation, hallucinations appear, when all the forms of being, mingling together and transformed into each other, oscillate to and fro in this vertiginous brain until the motionless man, with suspended breath and fixed eyeballs, beholds the universe melting away like vapor over the vacant immensity of the Being in which he hopes for absorption. In this case the best of teachings would be a journey ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... unfavorable conditions of life suffer want and misery and give way to temptation, frequently falling into a life of vagabondage, drunkenness, and crime. In prison they often develop mental disorders, are looked upon as malingerers, and oscillate between prison and the insane asylum, only to begin the old game over again so soon as they again come ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... TYPE OF FORE AND AFT CONTROL.— Every aeroplane follows the type set by nature in the particular that the body is caused to oscillate on a vertical fore and aft plane while in flight. The bird has one important advantage, however, in structure. Its wing has a flexure at the joint, so that its body can so oscillate independently of the angle ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... the lunar tides, must have their ebb because they have their flow. The feelings do not so much advance like a river, as oscillate like a pendulum. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... shiver, totter, brandish, joggle, quaver, shudder, tremble, flap, jolt, quiver, sway, vibrate, fluctuate, jounce, reel, swing, wave, flutter, oscillate, rock, thrill, waver. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... to insinuate, "fashion" has really nothing to do with the question. People who disbelieve in written texts must, and do, oscillate between the theory of an Homeric "school" and the Wolfian theory that Pisistratus, or Solon, or somebody procured the making of the first written text at Athens in the sixth century—a theory which fails to account for the harmony of the picture of life in the ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... freight train and was shortly on his way again. But in the twenty-mile run to Gaston more time was lost by the lumbering freight locomotive, and it was twenty minutes past three o'clock when the county seat came in sight and Kent began to oscillate between two sharp-pointed horns of a ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... Mrs. Linton had picked it up from the ledge, beginning to oscillate it in front of her fair face, the nudging ceased. People looked at the thing with eyes wide with astonishment, ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... between which men oscillate, passing from one to the other with equal ease, according to the influences brought ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... themselves. The most remarkable fact, and one which I have observed in no other species of the genus, is that the filaments and the petioles of the young leaves, if they catch no object, after standing for some days in their original position, spontaneously and slowly oscillate a little from side to side, and then move towards the stem and clasp it. They likewise often become, after a time, in some degree spirally contracted. They therefore fully deserve to be called tendrils, as they are used for climbing, are sensitive to a touch, move spontaneously, ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... reaching the "inside" surface of the earth it would gradually diminish in speed, after passing the halfway point, finally pause and immediately fall back toward the "outside" surface, and continue thus to oscillate, like the swinging of a pendulum with the power removed, until it would finally rest at the magnetic center, or at that particular point exactly one-half the distance between the "outside" surface and the ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... roughly, two or three feet), and then stops short. His tail, which is broader than it looks, is bent slightly downwards; his wings beat the air, at the first glance, just as if he was progressing. Sometimes he seems to oscillate to one side, sometimes to the other; but these side movements do not amount to any appreciable change of position. If there be little or no wind (note this) he remains beating the air, to the eye at least perfectly stationary, perhaps as much as half a ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... fluctuations of the moon's orbit, which undergoes a continuous change in a period of nineteen years. Thus the efficiency with which the moon acts on the protuberant mass of the earth varies, and thus the pole is caused to oscillate. ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... never heard the name before, nevertheless my lips were forming the syllables almost before he spoke. As he flicked up his grey horse and the gig began to oscillate in more business-like fashion, I put him a fourth question—a question at ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... therefore, here, only external views of our conduct. They extract its intellectuality. But our conduct slips between them and extends much further. Once again, this does not mean that free action is capricious, unreasonable action. To behave according to caprice is to oscillate mechanically between two or more ready-made alternatives and at length to settle on one of them; it is no real maturing of an internal state, no real evolution; it is merely—however paradoxical the assertion may seem—bending the will to imitate the mechanism of the intellect. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... precisely the same specific formula of artifice. His diction is often inflated into fustian, and he indulges in exaggeration till it sometimes, unconsciously no doubt, amounts to falsehood. It is a common fault of those who strive at producing oratorical effects, to oscillate between commonplace and extravagance; and while studying Mr. Macaulay, one feels as if vibrating between facts that every one knows and consequences which nobody can believe. We are satisfied that whoever will take, as we have been obliged to do, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... bank of the St. Lawrence, a little below Montreal. They found the river completely frozen over, the cold being intense, but the ice-bridge had only just been formed, and the surface was rough and uneven, causing the sleigh to oscillate fearfully, threatening every moment to overturn. The storm had by this time increased to a perfect hurricane, and the drifting snow was driven with intense force into the faces of both men and horses, causing the latter to bound and gallop ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... two date-trees on an Arabian plain; or extend it diagonally from Moorish pillar to pillar, in the open marble Court of the Lions in Granada's Alhambra: let me swing it on a high bluff of the Mississippi—one swing in the pure ether for every swing over the green grass; or let me oscillate in it beneath the cool dome of St. Peter's; or drop me in it, as in a balloon, from the zenith, with the whole firmament to rock and expatiate in; and I would not exchange my coarse canvas hammock for the grand state-bed, like a stately coach-and-four, in which ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... disease being carefully detailed by Dr. Thorne. The laborer at the time of his going to work had a severe diarrhoea, and while in the tunnel was obliged to make use of the bucket, in which the excavated chalk was hauled to the top. He admitted that at times the bucket, in being hauled up, would oscillate in such a way as to spill part of its contents and thereby pollute the water of the well below. Two weeks from this accidental pollution the epidemic began, and there can be little doubt of the relation of this mild case of typhoid ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... the center of the pendulum. The plane of the oscillations remains fixed, but the Earth revolves beneath, from West to East. The fundamental principle of this experiment is that the plane in which any pendulum is made to oscillate remains invariable even when the point of suspension is turned. This demonstration enables us in some measure to see the Earth turning ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... to make it more plain by an illustration, here is a tuning-fork on the table before me. With a vigorous stroke of the bow I set it vibrating. The two prongs separate, oscillate rapidly, and a sound of a certain tone is heard. I connect this tuning-fork, by means of electric wires, with a Deprez recording apparatus which records the vibrations on the blackened surface of a revolving cylinder; and we ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... the Royal Institution tells me that he often craves for an absence of visual perceptions, they are so brilliant and persistent. The Rev. George Henslow speaks of their extreme restlessness; they oscillate, ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... structure merely as the background on which it can be most advantageously displayed. Others, of more austere taste, allow ornament only to emphasize the main lines of the design, or to conceal such inharmonious elements as nature or utility may prevent them from eliminating.[12] We may thus oscillate between decorative and structural motives, and only in one point, for each style, can we find the ideal equilibrium, in which the greatest strength and lucidity is combined ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... with the emotional attitude resulting from its associations. Visual images have no such extreme flexibility; they are too definite to be so easily influenced. Our feelings about the beauty of a flower cannot oscillate so easily or so far as may our feelings about the agreeableness of its odor. Our olfactory experiences thus institute a more or less continuous series of by-sensations accompanying us through life, of no great practical significance, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... remote from the spectators. Behind this are ranged, one behind the other, and at right angles to the screen, a row of lighted candles. Being all in the same line, they throw one shadow only on the screen. The figure is now made to oscillate slightly, so as to impart some little motion to the shadow. One of the candles is now removed from its place in the row, and waved gently about, now high, now low, the effect to the spectators being that a second shadow springs out of the first, and dances about ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... the different customs of foreign sailors when sailing, homeward bound. The French, for instance, rig up a dummy man and trice him up to the main top, where he is made to oscillate with a pendulum movement until he gains sufficient impetus to clear the side, when he is let go overboard amidst the cheering of the men. The Russians man yards, white caps in hand, which, after waving in the air ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... car may oscillate without altering its weight position under center of supporting plane, thus avoiding an involuntary alteration of speed or ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... were incessant. His disposition fluctuated between gaiety and melancholy, and Rousseau attracted him. Meanwhile his health declined until a long illness, which began with a hemorrhage, caused him to oscillate for days between life and death; and convalescence, generally so delightful, was marred by a serious tumor. His father's disposition was stern, and he could become passionate and bitter, and his mother's domesticity made her turn to religion, so that on coming home he formed ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... strict accordance with the language of the ring) the tide of opinion changed again. These changes were frequent, and they kept the minds of the public in such a state of continual vibration that I fear the habit thus acquired is confirmed, and that they will never more cease to oscillate. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... a moderate man like W. H. Draper, the attorney-general for Upper Canada in Sydenham's ministry, argued in favour of a policy almost identical. While his views tended to oscillate, now to this side, now to that, their general direction was clear. He felt that the ideal condition was one of union between the parties of Western Canada, which would "render the position of the government safer ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... of rocks jutting into the sea, on the summit of one of which is a large single mass of stone, weighing about sixty tons, resting on a sort of pivot, so near the centre that the whole block may be easily made to oscillate or log, to and fro. This logging stone has created astonishment amongst the illiterate, and given rise to many fabulous stories: whilst others have imagined it was placed here by the Druids, to overawe ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Slav Philology in the University of Jassy, said in 1912 that "the Serbs have just as many reasons for asserting that the Macedonian is a Serbian language as the Bulgars have to deny it." As it was in the Middle Ages, so it is now; the mediaeval language used to oscillate between the two, and it is sometimes impossible to tell whether an old Macedonian Slav document is Bulgarian or Serbian.... When we come to the ethnologists we find they have only written books which deal with certain parts of Macedonia. They have confessed ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... pretty vigorous youth in a quarter of a century; its inhabitants are so varied that the 'go slow' directions over its bridges are printed in three languages, and the religious services in its churches held in four; the thermometer, the barometer, the vane, the hygrometer, oscillate so rapidly, so frequently, so lawlessly, and through so wide a meteorological range, that the climate is simply indescribable, yet it is a growing resort for consumptives; it stands with all its gay prosperity just in ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... the end of the bullock-hide lariat round the tree to which he held, and began to oscillate it, so that the blazing bush might reach the ledge on which the daring convict sustained himself. The groan which preceded the fierce belching forth of the torrent was cast up to them ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... no!" cried the ancient gnome, in something between astonishment and horror. "No, Monsieur. 'Pas mon metier, ca!" He shook his head rapidly from side to side like one of those toys in a shop-window whose heads oscillate upon a pivot. But all at once a gleam of inspiration sparkled in his lone eye. "There is the old Justine!" he suggested. "Toujours sur les ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... day, and it appeared as if some of its powers of movement were thus expended. At 10 P.M. on June 7th, when the leaf depended vertically, its movements were observed by a mark being placed behind it, and the end of the attached filament was seen to oscillate slowly and slightly from side to side, as ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... the Greve now presented was a frightful one. The heads, leveled by the perspective, extended afar, thick and agitated as the ears of corn in a vast plain. From time to time a fresh report, or a distant rumor, made the heads oscillate and thousands of eyes flash. Now and then there were great movements. All those ears of corn bent, and became waves more agitated than those of the ocean, which rolled from the extremities to the center, and beat, like the tides, against the hedge of archers who surrounded the gibbets. Then ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... we can enjoy 'Coningsby' throughout; for we need not care whether we are laughing at the author or with him. We may heartily enjoy his admirable flashes of wit, and, when he takes a serious tone, may oscillate agreeably between the beliefs that he is in solemn earnest, or in his bitterest humour; only we must not quite forget that the farce has a touch in it of tragedy, and that there is a real mystery somewhere. Satire, pure and simple, becomes wearisome. If ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... rocks, which my brother measured in six long strides as being eighteen feet in length. The Logan or Swinging Stone was estimated to weigh about eighty tons, and although it was quite still when we reached it, we were easily able to set it moving. It was a block of granite, and continued to oscillate for some little time, but formerly it was said that it could not be moved from its axis by force. This led to a foolish bet being made by Lieutenant Goldsmith of the Royal Navy, who landed with his boat's crew on April 8th, 1824, and with the united ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... tendency to become foul after a few shots. A short light rifle, whether with a large or a small bore, is, I believe, utterly worthless. In the hands of a man trembling with running and with exhaustion, it shakes like a wand: the shorter the rifle, the more quickly does it oscillate, and of course, in the same proportion, is it difficult to catch the exact moment when the sights cover ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... in both shuttles and hooks offers an immediate solution of the old difficulty experienced with long shuttles. When the needle begins to rise, the shuttle commences to oscillate, through the loop, the motions so coinciding that the long beak, c, merely detains the loop until the eye of the needle has ascended above the cloth; then, and then only, does the envelopment of the shuttle commence, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... the indicator oscillate rapidly on the dial, and finally subside uncertainly at zero, he thanked heaven that they had indulged in no psychic ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... the proper time, are shown in fig. 11. A bracket bolted up to the side of cylinder forms a bearing for one end of the side shaft, and also carries a spindle at its lower end on which the levers oscillate, transmitting the motion imparted to them by the cams to the valves. The main cylinder casting and the bed need no description. In some cases the bed is in two portions, though now a great many makers are discarding the lower ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... perception accompanied by more complex elements of representation, then emotion, and that state of consciousness which surpasses sensations and perceptions. But Spencer has no suspicion of what art really is. His views oscillate between sensualism and moralism, and he sees little in the whole art of antiquity, of the Middle Ages, or of modern times, which can be looked upon ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... In reality M. Sagnac operated in the converse manner. He took two equal weights of a salt of radium and a salt of barium, which he made oscillate one after the other in a torsion balance. Had the durations of oscillation been different, it might be concluded that the mechanical mass is not the same ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... vigorous motion, assuming that every push catches it exactly on the rebound. The same effect would be produced more slowly if 6 or 9 second intervals were substituted. But if you strike it at 4, 5, or 7 second intervals it will gradually cease to oscillate, as the effect of one blow neutralizes that of another. The same phenomenon is witnessed when two tuning-forks of equal pitch are mounted near one another, and one is struck. The other soon picks up the note. But a fork of unequal pitch ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... gear to be employed, which is denominated the link motion, and which will be described hereafter. I I are the steam pipes leading to the steam trunnions K K, on which, and on the eduction trunnions connected with the pipe M, the cylinders oscillate. ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... with one knee thrown over the other, his hands folded; as his interest increased, however, he would get up, perhaps walk across the room, or stand before the fireplace, his hands behind his back; a large cigar, sometimes unlighted, at other times emitting huge clouds of smoke, would oscillate from one side of his mouth to the other; his talk would grow in earnestness, his voice grow louder, his words come faster and faster, until finally they would gush forth in ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... remarkable for their slowness, even to the unaided senses. Thus, at places more or less remote from the Riviera, the magnets would receive impulses at intervals approximating to their own periods of vibration, and they would then oscillate freely for ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... speech, saw the immense pile of volumes oscillate, then noiselessly divide, disclosing a ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... the sensible shock are by no means all that are present during an earthquake. The Indian earthquake, for instance, seemed to last about three or four minutes at Midnapur; but the movements of the bubble of a level showed that the ground continued to oscillate for at least five minutes longer (p. 280). Many of these unfelt waves are rendered manifest by seismographs, although there are still others that elude registration either from the extreme shortness or the ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... after this brief conversation, and within a quarter of an hour of the time at which the train was due at Rugby, when the carriage, which had rocked a good deal from the first, began to oscillate very violently. One meagre little elderly traveller turned rather pale, and looked nervously at his fellow-passengers; but the young man who had spoken to Henry Dunbar, and a bald-headed commercial-looking gentleman opposite to him, went on reading their newspapers ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... in? Upon earth, houses in the town or cottages in the country feel every shock upon the surface of the globe. At sea, ships, rocked by the waves, are in perpetual movement. In the air, balloons incessantly oscillate upon the fluid strata of different densities. This projectile alone, travelling in absolute void amidst absolute silence, offered ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, shake, totter, tremble, vacillate, wamble^, turn and turn about, ring the changes; sway to and fro, shift to and fro; change and change about; waffle, blow with the wind (irresolute) 605; oscillate &c 314; vibrate between, two extremes, oscillate between, two extremes; alternate; have as man phases as the moon. Adj. changeable, changeful; changing &c 140; mutable, variable, checkered, ever changing; protean, proteiform^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... all sat, scandalized, then shouted in spite of ourselves. In the midst of our confused hilarity, the table began to oscillate; it rose slowly several inches, then moved off, rattling, toward the sitting-room door! Our jolly visitor had it on his back and was crawling ponderously but carefully away with it on his hands and knees;—and the rest of us were getting ourselves and our chairs out of the way! In fact, ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... finished here (except four farewell nights in April), and begin four nights at Brooklyn, on the opposite side of the river, to-night; and thus oscillate between Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, and then cut into New England, and so work my way back to Boston for a fortnight, after which come Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit and Cleveland, and Buffalo, and then ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... was of the usual standard. He had seen everything worth seeing in London and in Paris, between which cities he seemed to oscillate with such frequency that he might be said to live in both places at once. He had his stall at Covent Garden, and his stall at the Grand Opera. He was a subscriber at the Theatre Francais. He had seen all the races at ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... attached to them, and different ordeals through which the tried individuals, whether devotees, criminals, or captives, had to pass. These judgment stones had been anciently very common." According to the number of times a stone oscillated or refused to oscillate, the Druids determined to convict or acquit ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... frictionless, as has generally been supposed, the Aether could not have any motive power at all, and therefore could not transmit heat from one body to another. Professor Tyndall[10] on this point says, referring to the cooling of a red-hot ball: "The atoms of the ball oscillate in a resisting medium, which accepts their motion and transmits it on all sides with inconceivable velocity." Now in the previous quotation given in this article from the same authority, he states that the atoms are immersed in the Aether. So that ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... a lever toward him and watched the pointers on a dial as the flier lifted. The red needle started to oscillate and he reached quickly to adjust a knob. The oscillation ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... been well had the discussion stopped here. In the heat of debate each pushed his argument beyond his own convictions. Colonel Bradshawe sat sipping his wine, listening with mock gravity and seeming to oscillate between the opinions of the disputants, but most of the company agreed with Lord Strathern; still L'Isle found several staunch backers for his mechanical theory. But when quoting facts in support of his views, he referred to ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... former pit, so that the recoil will make itself more felt in A than in B: accordingly, we found that the main currents alternated between A and C, with very slight disturbance in the neighbourhood of B. B will, however, play its part, and the weighty column of air contained in it will oscillate, though with smaller oscillations than in the case of A. Probably, when the sun has left A, while acting still upon C, the return current from C will be much slighter, and there will be a general settling of the atmosphere in the pits A and ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... whiskey enough to last the whole district more nor a year," says our worthy Jones, standing before them, and pointing his finger at the notice. They, as if doubting their own perceptibilities, draw nearer and nearer, straining their eyes, while their bodies oscillate ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... that natural active tendencies shall be fully enlisted in doing something, while seeing to it that the doing requires observation, the acquisition of information, and the use of a constructive imagination, is what most needs to be done to improve social conditions. To oscillate between drill exercises that strive to attain efficiency in outward doing without the use of intelligence, and an accumulation of knowledge that is supposed to be an ultimate end in itself, means that education accepts ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... emphasize this? Must this melancholy parallelism be yet more completely verified? Have you not indigent persons? Glance below. Have you not parasites? Glance up. Does not that hideous balance, whose two scales, pauperism and parasitism, so mournfully preserve their mutual equilibrium, oscillate before you as it does before us? Where is your army of schoolmasters, the only army which ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... nose. Still on it went. It seemed to move with greater freedom on the amber. It increased its rate of progress. It was actually touching the foremost feature on the smoker's countenance. I expected to see it grip the wretched Bob, when it began to oscillate from side to side. Its oscillations increased in violence. It fell to the floor. That same instant the narcotic prevailed. Bob slipped sideways from the chair, the pipe still held tightly ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... of this, we heard a strange rumbling noise under our feet, the ground beginning to oscillate violently, as if we were on board ship in a heavy sea; while, at the same time, a lot of earth and pieces of rock were thrown down on us from the heights above the little plateau where the cave was situated. The air, also, grew thick and heavy and dark, similarly to what ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... conduct! In what had she been wanting that Herbert's son could disgrace his father's name—and hate his mother? For of course he must hate her to shut her out of his life, and not tell her he was going to get married! Her mind seemed to oscillate between the abstraction of his dishonor and a more intimate and primitive pain,—the sense of personal slight. "Oh, my son, my son, my son," she said. She was bending over, her elbows on her knees, her furrowed forehead resting on ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... which oil and water slide over each other is agreeably seen if a phial be about half filled with equal parts of oil and water, and made to oscillate suspended by a string, the upper surface of the oil and the lower one of the water will always keep smooth; but the agitation of the surfaces where the oil and water meet, is curious; for their specific ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... journals themselves have fallen far too much into the hands of the Imperial University, whose literary style is a combination of the humor of the cider-cellars with the verbal fluency of Billingsgate. Under such auspices the ill-starred periodicals naturally oscillate between insipid propriety and labored coarseness. For a month or two the talented contributors go smoothly on in their career of untranslatable pleasantry, till some special atrocity calls forth the fatherly admonition of the police. Immediately a reaction ensues, filling the objectionable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... in the triumph was fairly unctuous. His jaw seemed to oscillate in oil as he mouthed his contempt of ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... is received does its work in making the electrons in that antenna oscillate back and forth. If the receiving antenna is tuned to the frequency which the sending station is producing, then the electrons in the receiving antenna oscillate back and forth most widely and there is a maximum current ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... was Sheldon becoming that the face and form of the other seemed to vibrate and oscillate before his eyes. Yet outwardly Sheldon was calm and apparently ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... of a tempest there passes through the forests a terrible gust of wind which makes the trees shudder, to which profound silence succeeds, so had Napoleon, in passing, shaken the world; kings felt their crowns oscillate in the storm, and, raising hands to steady them, found only their hair, bristling with terror. The Pope had travelled three hundred leagues to bless him in the name of God and to crown him with the diadem; but Napoleon ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... I am a vagrant really: or a migrant. I must migrate. Do you think a cuckoo in Africa and a cuckoo in Essex is one AND the same bird? Anyhow, I know I must oscillate between north and south, so oscillate I do. It's just my nature. All people ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... more. But with respect to the ancient Germans, there certainly was among them one very prevalent form of head, and even the varieties of feature which occur among the Marcomans—for example, on Marcus Aurelius' column—all seem to oscillate round ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... Camille is indignant, or angry, or rebellious. There, above all, as Talma once remarked, is seen depicted the anger or the irony of great minds. The immobility of the human nostril indicates a certain narrowness of soul; never did the nose of a miser oscillate; it contracts like the lips; he locks up his face ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... marked characteristic of the man was a secret dissatisfaction with all that he accomplished, making him restless and unhappy, and extremely sensitive to criticism. With this was united a tendency at times to oscillate to the other extreme of vaingloriousness. An example of this was a reply to Rossini one night at the opera when they were listening to "Robert le Diable." The "Swan of Pesaro" was a warm admirer of Meyerbeer, ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... the kind can be absolutely perfect, and, as a matter of fact, when everything is adjusted so as to display a particular stage, it will happen that in a succession of observations there is a certain variation in what is seen. Thus the configuration viewed may be said to oscillate slightly about the mean for which the apparatus is adjusted. Now this is due both to small imperfections in the timing apparatus and to the fact that the splashes themselves do actually vary within certain limits. ...
— The Splash of a Drop • A. M. Worthington
... necessary in order that two deals may be operated upon simultaneously, each division being devoted to a separate deal, and likewise to enable the connecting-rod which works the frame to pass up the center and oscillate on a pin near the top, thereby avoiding the deep excavations and costly foundations required where the rod is engaged with the pin at the bottom. The rack that advances the deals to the saws passes through a "bow" in the connecting-rod and the middle of the frame, the deals are placed on either ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... the most typical representative of petty bourgeois socialism. Now the "fate" of the petty bourgeois—in so far as he does not adopt the proletarian standpoint—is to constantly oscillate between Radicalism and Conservatism. To make more understandable what we have said, we must bear in mind what the plan of social organisation propounded ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... Bligh, of Oneonta, N. Y., have patented an improved power for churning and other purposes where little power is required. It consists in the combination of a drum and weight, a train of gearing, and a pallet wheel arranged to oscillate ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... look at the positive phase of things—we must consider what has actually been done; not merely what remains to be done. We must adopt proportionate standards, not the little measures of to-day and yesterday, in which the tides of human melioration may oscillate, and even seem to flow backward and at the best to make slight headway. But take up the cycle of history that preceded the advent of Christianity, and compare it with the present period; and is there not an entirely different expression ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... cheaper food, in turn, promotes marriage, and increases the population, until again there is a shortage of food; and this oscillation, though irregular, will always be found, and there will always be a tendency for the population to oscillate around the food limit. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... in its present aspects. So long as the existing mass of our crude and unassimilated colored population holds its present place in the body politic, we must expect that civilization and political rights will oscillate between alternate perils—the peril that comes from the white man when he places civilization, or sometimes his travesty of it, higher than the Negro's political rights, and the peril that comes from the black man when his political rights are placed by himself ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... the Middle Ages look on the world as a vale of tears, which Pope and Emperor are set to guard against the coming of Antichrist; while the fatalists of the Renaissance oscillate between seasons of overflowing energy and seasons of superstition or of stupid resignation) here, in this circle of chosen spirits, the doctrine is upheld that the visible world was created by God in love, that it is the copy of a ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... is sufficient to shake the resolution they build upon the solid basis of a legal principle, I would endeavor to fix that mercury by a positive law. If to please an administration the judges can go one way to-day, and to please the crowd they can go another to-morrow, if they will oscillate backward and forward between power and popularity, it is high time to fix the law in such a manner as to resemble, as it ought, the great Author of all law, in whom there is no ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... reared, and sit at its humble hearthstone at night, and in the firelight, play the humble rural tunes on the fiddle to my happy children, and bask in the smiles of my sweet wife, than to be the 'archangel of war,' with my hands stained with human blood, or to make the 'frontiers of kingdoms oscillate on the map of the world, and then, away from home and kindred and country, die at last in exile and ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... her chair, in indication that the repast was finished, Fougas arose without difficulty, gracefully offered his arm, and conducted his partner to the parlor. His gait was a little stiff and oppressively regular, but he went straight ahead, and did not oscillate the least bit. He took a couple of cups of coffee, and spirits in moderation, after which he began to talk in the most reasonable manner in the world. About ten o'clock, M. Martout, having expressed a wish to hear his history, he placed himself on a stool, collected his ideas for a moment, ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... indicators. From the front they looked like rows of little square compartments, tier on tier, about the size of ordinary post office boxes. Closer examination showed that each was equipped with a delicate needle arranged to oscillate backward and forward upon the very minutest interference with the electric current. Under the boxes, each of which bore a number, was a series of drops and buzzers numbered to ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... breakwaters from clashing against each other, they are united end to end in a very simple and ingenious manner. From each of them there starts a deeply inserted iron bar which terminates in a journal that permits the breakwater to oscillate. Between these two bars there is a sort of swivel, whose pieces, in playing upon one another, give the breakwaters elasticity, while always holding them apart (Fig. 4). From each side of the swivel start the branches of a stirrup iron to which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... to oxidation and reduction respectively. As it is natural for sulphur to be in the reduced state, and for phosphorus to be in the oxidized state, so it is in the nature of carbon to be related to both states and therefore to oscillate between them. By its readiness to change over from the oxidized to the reduced state, it can serve the plant in the assimilation of light, while by its readiness to make the reverse change it serves man and animal in the breathing process. We breathe in oxygen from the air; ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... at the frail board made the great stone, which was only balanced on a few inches of rock, oscillate in a most dreadful manner, and, to make matters worse, when he was half-way across the flying ray of lurid light suddenly went out, just as though a lamp had been extinguished in a curtained room, leaving the whole howling wilderness of ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... to be continuous and steady, is in fact pulsating, undulatory, rhythmic. There is everywhere intermittent action and rest. The flag blown by the breeze floats out in undulations; then the branches oscillate; then the trees begin to sway; everywhere there is action and pause, ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... sun, and resist to a considerable degree denudation by rain. Whether any further rise is caused by elevation from below is doubtful; there is no direct evidence of it, though slight earthquakes annually occur; and even when they have not been felt, the water of tanks has been seen to oscillate for three-quarters of an hour without intermission, from no discernible cause.* [The natives are familiar with this phenomenon, of which Dr. Baker remembers two instances, one in the cold season of 1834-5, the other in that of 1830-1. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... I am a man who understands life. Nothing evil can happen. All that appears evil really makes one's heart more joyful; only understand that a man who has started on that path will have to choose, and it sometimes happens that God's side and the Devil's weigh so equally that the scales oscillate, and it is then that the great choice has to be made. At that point any interference from outside is terribly dangerous and tormenting. It is as though a man were making such terrible efforts to draw a weight over a ridge that the slightest touch would cause him ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... the rivers lie on the highest part of the delta; not always the highest, but seldom the lowest. There is reason to believe that in the course of centuries they oscillate from side to side. For instance, four miles north of the Rakaia there is a terrace some twelve or fourteen feet high; the water in the river is nine feet above the top of this terrace. To the eye ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... conceive the peculiar actions of the tendrils of some climbing plants to have been produced by minute modifications? These, according to Mr. Darwin,[101] oscillate till they touch an object, and then embrace it. It is stated by that observer, "that a thread weighing no more than the thirty-second of a grain, if placed on the tendril of the Passiflora gracilis, ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart |
