"Overbalance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moment, my dear marquis, on this proposal, which I hope is yet in your power. Think you, that conscious rectitude, that the exultation of your heart when you recollect the temptation you have escaped, and the noble turn you have given it, will not infinitely overbalance the sordid and fleeting pleasure you are able to attain? Imagine to yourself that you see her offspring growing up under the care of a blameless mother, and coming forward to thank you for the benefit you bestowed upon them before ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... suffrages of their fellow-citizens, to stations of great pre-eminence and power, may find compensations for betraying their trust, which, to any but minds animated and guided by superior virtue, may appear to exceed the proportion of interest they have in the common stock, and to overbalance the obligations of duty. Hence it is that history furnishes us with so many mortifying examples of the prevalency of foreign corruption in republican governments. How much this contributed to the ruin of the ...
— The Federalist Papers
... Bishop Butler, "constituted so as to condemn falsehood, unprovoked violence, injustice, and to approve of benevolence to some preferably to others, abstracted from all consideration, which conduct is likeliest to produce an overbalance of happiness or misery." [Footnote: Dissertations appended to the "Analogy," II, Of the Nature of Virtue. Cf. DUGALD STEWART, Outlines of Moral Philosophy, Part ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... saint-like men in England—how am I to view my position? What am I witnessing to? What, if need be, is one to suffer for? A man has no leaning towards Rome, does not feel, as others do, the strength of her exclusive claims to allegiance, the perfection of her system, its right so to overbalance all the good found in ours as to make ours absolutely untrustworthy for a Christian to rest in, notwithstanding all circumstances of habit, position, and national character; has such doubts on the Roman theory of the Church, the Ultramontane, and such instincts not only against many ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... to hold her until his horse slackened speed, or would they both overbalance and hurtle to the ground together? Would there be time to stop the horse, or would they all be ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... of the credulity of these two ecclesiastics, there can be no ground for charging them with acting otherwise than conscientiously, and they had claims on the gratitude of their countrymen sufficient to overbalance their error of judgment on this occasion. Their books relating to the terrible witchcraft delusion at Salem have now become very rare in the original editions, and their interest, as remarkable ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... even in cities Nature is more kind to man than he is to himself, and dulls his faculties against the deformities and discords of his own creating. From the sense of feeling it is probable we receive more pain than pleasure, but by no means so much more as to overbalance the great preponderance of delights coming through the other avenues: a great part of such pain is cautionary, and much can be avoided by voluntary action; and the stimulus thus given by the wise severity of Nature begets that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... take 'im through the streets in this state." She turned upon the boy. "Here, you just kneel down—so—with your face over the water, an' as near as you can manage." He obeyed in silence. He was still trembling. "That's right, on'y take care you don't overbalance." She knelt beside him, dipped both hands in the water, and began to work the soap into a lather. "What's the 'andiest way to the Good Samaritan?" she asked, speaking over ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... intuitions; he considers him as looking upon this complex scene of ideas and sensations, and finding everywhere objects that immediately excite in him sympathies which, from the necessities of his nature, are accompanied by an overbalance of enjoyment. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... five miles above that city. Mr. Grimley was accompanied by Harry Byram of the Pittsburg Dispatch. Two things regulate the force of impact in a balloon descent—the strength of the surface-current and the amount of ballast the aeronaut has with which to overbalance the weight in excess of equilibrium causing the descent. Both were against our adventurers. Most of their ballast had been expended in getting into the air, and while they had found almost a calm at an elevation of forty-five hundred feet, the surface-current was terrific. The balloon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... improvements, those substantial ties that were binding the West to the East and turning the traffic from New Orleans to Philadelphia and New York, they viewed with alarm. Free homesteads from the public lands, which tended to overbalance the South by building free states, became to them a measure dangerous to their interests. Thus national economic policies, which could not by any twist or turn be confined to state control, drew the slave system and its defenders into the political conflict ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... tranquillity of private families, that there should be public women. Who can fairly estimate the extent of the mischief which they produce, or of that which they obviate? Who can accurately determine the best means for bringing the good to overbalance the evil? But, supposing the necessity of the measure, would it not be proper to prevent, as much as possible, that complete mixture by which virtuous females ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... end attained is important enough to warrant it. In every case, then, the question must arise: Is the end to be attained worth the cost? To justify means that are intrinsically bad, it must be shown that the end attained is so good as to overbalance this evil. WAS the advancement of the Church worth the cost in human suffering, estrangement, and bitterness that the Jesuits exacted? IS the advancement of labor interests worth the destruction of property and life, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... if the Portuguese could be driven from Malacca, they would have to renounce trade on the Coromandel coast; for they would have no safe course, should they wish to get cloth, and they could gain nothing, for the expense would overbalance the profit. Consequently, I believe that all the commerce of the Portuguese in the East Indies depends on Malacca, and that, in order to cut it, ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... packs so they could not slip and overbalance us; we measured and re-measured with our eyes just where those steps would fall; we took a deep breath—and we hustled. Behind us the fine shale slid sullenly in a miniature avalanche that cascaded over the edge. Our "weight ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... higher, son," Gerontides laughed. "If you were made of gold, to Genoa you go. I've a bigger stake in a quick landing at Genoa than any sum you could name would overbalance. Best ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the beach starts to shelve, turn off radar and motor and start crawling. Eternal slow reach out, grab, shove, haul, with my heart in my mouth; then suddenly the nose breaks water and I am hauling myself out with a last wave doing its best to overbalance me. ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... a profile is often one of great beauty, only here the variety is apt to overbalance the unity or run of the line. The most beautiful profiles are usually those in which variety is subordinated to the unity of the contour. I fancy the Greeks felt this when they did away with the ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... laughed. "What happens when you two overbalance and don't happen to be near enough to catch each other?... Does the dinner come in and find you both sprawling on ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... honour, love, and a quiet mind, for what in the eternal countings is of no more consideration than the dust of the highroad. Not what a man has, but what he is,—this is the sole concern of Divine Equity. Earthly ideas of justice are in direct opposition to this law, but the finite can never overbalance the infinite. We may, if we so please, honour a king as king,—but with God there are no kings. There are only Souls, "made in His image." And whosoever defaces that Divine Image, whether he be base-born churl or crowned potentate, must answer for the wicked deed. How many of us view our social ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... previous sanction. Her majesty's government are satisfied that, although the late operations in the Canton River were attended with immediate success, the risk of a second attempt of the same kind would far overbalance any advantage to be derived from such a step. If the conduct of the Chinese authorities should, unfortunately, render another appeal to arms inevitable, it will be necessary that it should be made after due preparation, and with the employment of such an amount of force as may afford ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... see all these drawbacks and then decide for yourselves whether the advantages of Christmas overbalance the drawbacks. For my part I believe that they do and I enjoy the day and the season. But don't take my word for it. ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... self-sacrifice, and all those principles of manliness and unselfishness which are inspired through war and react so beneficially on the morals of a race. There are some, however, who contend that these compensations do not overbalance the pain, the heart-rending, the horrors, brutalities and debasements which come from war. Viewed in the most favorable light, with all its glories, benefits and compensations, war is still far ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... be uttered, Cilly threw bags and rods into an inside car, and pushed her cousin after them, chattering all the time, to poor Horatia's distraction. 'Oh! delicious! A cross between a baker's cart and a Van Amburgh. A little more and it would overbalance and carry the horse head over heels! Take care, Rashe; you'll pound me into dust if you ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... possesses were likely to be applied to the practical operation of the scheme, the evils which are dreaded and foreseen might be mitigated and avoided; but this is very far from the case, and the evils will, in all probability, more than overbalance the good which humanity aims at effecting; nor is it possible to view the settlement (as it is called, for all changes are settlements now-a-days) of this question without a misgiving that it will only produce some other great topic for public agitation, some great interest ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... grit, which occasion excessive friction, wear out the wheels of a machine. Overwork and worry have both to be guarded against. For over-brain-work is strain-work; and it is exhausting and destructive according as it is in excess of nature. And the brain-worker may exhaust and overbalance his mind by excess, just as the athlete may overstrain his muscles and break his back by attempting feats beyond the ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... great degree its own reward; and though it is the fashion to talk and write much of the griefs of intellect, I believe human sorrow is more equally divided than we acknowledge, and that the joys resulting from high gifts far overbalance their trials." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... mortality in the shape of special annoyances belonging to itself in its train. "On the whole," said the Rector, who was subject to fits of disgust with things in general, "I am tempted to think it was a mistake coming to Carlingford; the drawbacks quite overbalance the advantages. I did hesitate, I remember—it must have been my better angel: that is, my dear," he continued, recollecting himself, "I would have hesitated had it not been ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... city of Cebu, to act as flagship; another, a galizabra, still in the shipyard—which was launched a few days before the departure—called "San Bartolome," to act as almiranta; and a Portuguese patache [26] which had come from Malaca—with artillery, men, and munitions sufficient to overbalance the greater strength of the enemy. Doctor Antonio de Morga, auditor of this royal Audiencia, was appointed captain-general of this fleet, an appointment which highly displeased the old captains, because in their opinion ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... now set free from her husband, he, probably, imagined likely to treat with great tenderness the child that had contributed to so pleasing an event. It is not, indeed, easy to discover what motives could be found to overbalance that natural affection of a parent, or what interest could be promoted by neglect or cruelty. The dread of shame or of poverty, by which some wretches have been incited to abandon or to murder their children, cannot be supposed to have affected a woman who had proclaimed her ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... agin' her, it was the joy of every other person as met her as it was agin her 'n' not agin them, for it was a well-known fact as Mr. Kimball had said hunderds of times as if he had that nose an' leaned over a bridge 'n' see it in the water he 'd be willin' to let it overbalance him then 'n' there 'n' be drowned forever. He got pretty meek at that, for it showed as I was in earnest, 'n' he went on to say as it was large, but he said as afore she took to that way of kind o' shrinkin' ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... come another hour of darkness. The little strength, just born of higher principles, was to be sorely tried. Gold was in one scale, and the heavenly riches that are without wings in the other. Which was to overbalance? ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... moved with a jerking motion, as if his limbs were worked by a string like a child's toy, with dun-coloured hair lying thin and soft at the back and sides of his head; his forehead was so large it seemed to overbalance the rest of his face, which had, indeed, lost its natural contour by the absence of all the teeth. The eyes absolutely gleamed with intelligence; so keen, so observant, you felt as if they were almost wizard-like. Indeed, the whole room looked not unlike a wizard's dwelling. Instead ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... association, which previously contributed to actuate them. This sensorial power of association therefore becomes accumulated, and by its superabundance contributes to actuate the link next in association, which has thus acquired so great a degree of associability, as to overbalance the less quantity of the excitement of it by the torpid action of the previous or first associate link. This happens to the capillaries, when the heart and arteries are affected as above by the torpor of the stomach, when it is occasioned by previous ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... feeling of intimacy and mutual contentment growing stronger at every moment. The ground was full of ruts and inequalities, and ever and anon a misstep or an overbalance would cause them involuntarily to tighten their hold upon each other; involuntarily, but with a secret sensation of pleasure that made them hope there were more rough places farther on. They did their ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... suggested, and gave directions for executing them. He found the different corps in good order, considering the irregular materials of which they were composed, in great force of numbers and high confidence and spirits. And so much did military experience at that moment overbalance all other claims to consequence, that even old Edie, instead of being left, like Diogenes at Sinope, to roll his tub when all around were preparing for defence, had the duty assigned him of superintending ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... traveller is safe. The saddle will certainly not fit, such is the imperfection of our transitory life; it will assuredly topple and tend to overset; but there are stones on every roadside, and a man soon learns the art of correcting any tendency to overbalance with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... genius of Charlemagne held them together; and upon his death the huge fabric he had reared naturally fell to pieces. The Spanish Empire is but another instance showing that geographical and other elements of disconnection must not overbalance those which relate remote sections to each other, and bind them together in a common interest, else dissolution will be the result. In respect to the United States, all these conditions are reversed. Every interest in the natural course of development ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... hope he was mad. What, indeed, is more probable? It is always a great good, when the crimes of a fellow-creature can be traced to madness; to some fault of the temperament or organization; some "jangle of the sweet bells;" some overbalance in the desired equipoise of the faculties, originating, perhaps in accident or misfortune. It does not subject us the more to their results. On the contrary, it sets us on our guard against them. And, meantime, it diminishes one of the saddest, most injurious, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... studied discords, or affected to break his lines and vary his pauses. But though he was thus careful of his versification, he did not oppress his powers with superfluous rigour. He seems to have thought with Boileau that the practice of writing might be refined till the difficulty should overbalance the advantage. The construction of the language is not always strictly grammatical; with those rhymes which prescription had conjoined he contented himself, without regard to Swift's remonstrances, though there ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... stand on either side of it. One, who has drawn back in the attitude of striking, looks as if he could fell an ox with a single blow of his powerful arm. The other is a more lithe and agile figure, and there is a quick fire in his countenance which might overbalance the massive strength ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... have been to strangers, extremely ludicrous. Frank, however, could not look upon it with levity. He understood his brother's character and foibles too well, and feared that notwithstanding his many admirable qualities, his vanity and want of firmness, or, in other words, of self-dependence, might overbalance ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... depend more upon the hands to which they are entrusted than upon any other cause, and that you hope he will well consider those whose appointment to high and important situations he sanctions, and that he will not suffer claims of connection or of support to overbalance a due regard for your Majesty's service and the welfare of the country." Such an expression of your Majesty's opinion may possibly be a support to Sir Robert Peel against pretensions which he would be otherwise unable to resist; but this is entirely submitted to your Majesty's ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... getting the best of them, for the beating on the head maddened him. He began to climb up the edge of the canoe, and his great weight was beginning to overbalance it. I called to them, but as I do not speak the white man's language, they did not understand. Fear gripped at their hearts, and, as the bear climbed into the canoe, they leaped into the river and swam for shore, while the ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... requires us to feel; while opening the deepest fountains of the heart, he at the same time unfolds the highest energies of the head. Nay, with such consummate art does he manage the fiercest tempests of our being, that in a healthy mind the witnessing of them is always attended with an overbalance of pleasure. With the very whirlwinds of passion he so blends the softening and alleviating influences of poetry, that they relish of nothing but sweetness and health.... He is not wont to exhibit either utterly ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... German leaders have failed to realize that the destruction of men and materials in war is always a great national loss. In the case of a long war, the losses from these causes may, even for the victors, overbalance any advantage which may be secured in the way of territory or money from the ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... thought Blake. "Will he come back when he knows of the wrecking charge that may be made against him? Even the prospect of seeing Joe may not overbalance that. Yet, I suppose he could send for Joe. They couldn't make any charge against him over in China. But it's ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... temperament, which are too often of the melancholic or overcholeric type, our wonder grows that we are not doomed to defeat at birth. Were it not for the possibilities in the germ-plasm of choosing the much of good also in our heredity, often enough to overbalance the bad, and for the proved power of environment and training to modify or even altogether overcome the harmful parts of our birthright, there would be little ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... a dismission of the representative to his constituents, with such a testimony against him, as his sentence may comprise; and that, if his constituents, notwithstanding the censure of the house, thinking his case hard, his fault trifling, or his excellencies such as overbalance it, should again choose him, as still worthy of their trust, the house cannot refuse him, for his punishment has purged his fault, and the right of electors must not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... next year was spent, and there was no present prospect of replacing it. Her mother was now home from the hospital and fully on the road to recovery, and Migwan tried to make her happiness over this fact overbalance her disappointment at her own loss. None of her stories or picture plays had been accepted, and of late she had had to give up writing, for with her mother sick most of the housework fell on her shoulders. Although she maintained a bright and cheery exterior, she ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... impressions of greater or less intensity and duration. That is called good which produces pleasure; that is called evil which produces pain. These are general names, applicable to every class of causes, from which an overbalance of pain or pleasure may result. But when a human being is the active instrument of generating or diffusing happiness, the principle through which it is most effectually instrumental to that purpose, is called virtue. And benevolence, or the ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... spite of philosophy, I am rather ashamed of this unceremonious exsiccation of your financial river. But indeed, my dear friend, the gratitude which I owe you for your society and attachment ought so far to overbalance this consideration as to leave me nothing but that. I must, however, pay ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... friends. I did not keep girls quite out of my thoughts, I had spells now and then when I would read about them in novels, papers and magazines, anything I could lay hands on. I would read hungrily, at times almost wistfully. But all the stories that I read, however romantic, could never quite overbalance for me that giggling ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... satisfied my mind, and I think the minds of the American people, that the mischief and dangers which flow from a national bank far overbalance all its ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... disarranged, or removed. But they are also open to the objection that they obstruct the prompt service of the books, by just the amount of time it takes to open the doors or screens, and close them again. This trouble and delay may overbalance the supposed advantages. Certainly they must do so in all large libraries, where the frequentation is great, and where every moment's delay in the book service works disadvantage to numerous readers. While private libraries, or quite small public ones, can indulge in the luxury of glass cases, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... it projects in man, instead of being lifted up as a "hock." It is this which enables him, in descending declivities, to depress and adjust the weight of his hinder portions, which would otherwise overbalance and force him headlong.[1] It is by the same arrangement that he is enabled, on uneven ground, to lift his feet, which are tender and sensitive, with delicacy, and plant them with such precision as to ensure his own safety as well as that ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... savage customs connected with so unsettled a life. They gained also in political privileges, chiefly through the immunity from military service which their new relations enabled them to obtain. These were circumstances of advantage and gain. But one great disadvantage there was, amply to overbalance all other possible gain; the chances were lost or were removed to an incalculable distance for their conversion to Christianity, without which in these times there is no absolute advance possible on the path ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... in itself alone a match for the enemy, then a favourable result is hardly to be expected from this second combat: but if it is so strong that it can undertake the second combat without regard to the first, then it may be able by a favourable issue to compensate or even overbalance the first combat, but never to make it ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... ideas. He had been advised to draw his councillors from all directions, and his naturally moderate spirit approved a policy of judicious selection. But the noteworthy feature in the line of action which he ultimately followed was that he allowed his diplomatic instincts to overbalance the advice imposed on him by the British ministry. {144} In selecting individuals for his councils, he almost unconsciously followed the wishes of Baldwin and his party, until, at the end, he found himself in ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... gratitude; for so singularly benevolent have those parental intentions been, that where barrenness of soil or severity of climate prevail, there she has implanted in the heart of man, sentiments which overbalance every misery, and supply the place of every want. She has given to the inhabitants of these regions, an attachment to their savage rocks and wild shores, unknown to those who inhabit the fertile fields of the temperate zone. Yet if we attentively view this globe, will it not ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... school, on the street, and in his various associations, your child will be exposed to the evil of hearing impure language from vile lips; and if he be not warned, who can blame him for listening? Your home teaching must overbalance ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... them; but, on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt, so, on the other, it is possible that, if it did, the benefit resulting to others from the record of an experience purchased at so heavy a price might compensate, by a vast overbalance, for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed, and justify a breach of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not of necessity imply guilt. They approach or recede from shades of that dark ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... influence in proportion to property, completely abrogated:—and it is in vain to suppose that if even such a change was desirable, it could possibly be effected without producing a train of incalculable miseries that would much more than overbalance any partial good which could reasonably be ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... distinguished from the brute animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense: but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect;—for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his natural power of action. Now one of Shakspeare's modes of creating characters is, to conceive any one intellectual or moral faculty in morbid excess, and then to place himself, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... were not always right in hiding—the goddess in a well; witness the light which Bacon has thrown upon philosophy; witness the principles of our divine faith—that moral mechanism by which the simplicity of a child may overbalance the wisdom of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... something indescribably fascinating yet terrible attracts me to her; it is an evil attraction, I know, but I cannot resist it. There is something wicked in every man's nature; I am conscious enough that there is something detestably wicked in mine, and I have not sufficient goodness to overbalance it. And this woman,—this silent, gliding, glittering-eyed creature that has suddenly taken possession of my fancy—she overcomes me in spite of myself; she makes havoc of all the good intentions of my life. ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... secure the maximum general safety in the locality than to have guarded tracts alternating with fire traps. Moreover attention to individual tracts does not improve surrounding conditions, and the latter may easily become so bad as to make the cost of individual patrol, as well as the risk, far overbalance any financial disadvantage at present ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... features with devouring eyes, and thoughts of the wrongs committed by Lablache against her and hers teemed through his brain and set his blood surging through his veins in a manner that threatened to overbalance his usual cool judgment. He forced himself to an outward calmness, however, and the lazy tones of his voice ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... twenty minutes the combat continued. Back and forth they ranged. Harry, although intensely excited, wanted to give the bull a shot, but the Professor restrained him. He felt that the youth of Apollo was enough to overbalance the strength ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... entire confidence, and at the head of affairs, the public, who envied him and did not like him, well remembering whence he had sprung, would consider the victim too illustrious; that the chastisement would overbalance the offence, and would be complained of; that violent resolutions, although necessary, should always have reason and appearances in their favour; that therefore I was against allowing punishment to follow too quickly upon the real offence, inasmuch ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... no lover of labour. What he thought sufficient, he did not stop to make better; and allowed himself to leave many parts unfinished, in confidence that the good lines would overbalance the bad. What he had once written, he dismissed from his thoughts; and, I believe, there is no example to be found of any correction or improvement made by him after publication. The hastiness of his productions might ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... reasons in favor of that, and reasons against it," he said, thoughtfully. "I am inclined, however, to think that the arguments in favor overbalance the objections; still, the serious objection is, that a faithful teacher wants little personal talks with her pupils, and will contrive to be personal in a way that she cannot do so well in a ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... with her dark lightnings, yet visibly subject to him under the spell of the news he had artfully lengthened out to excite and overbalance her:—and her enthusiasm was all pointed to his share in the altered situation, as he well knew ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... suppose Mrs Miller received this account with great thankfulness, and no less pleasure; but so uncommon was her friendship to Jones, that I am not certain whether the uneasiness she suffered for his sake did not overbalance her satisfaction at hearing a piece of news tending so much to the happiness of her own family; nor whether even this very news, as it reminded her of the obligations she had to Jones, did not hurt as well as please her; when ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... America as a method of solution of our vexed race problem. At most, even if the government were to provide the means, but a few hundred thousand could be transported each year. The yearly increase in population would more than overbalance the number transplanted. Even if it did not, the time required to get rid of the Negro by this method would perhaps be fifty or seventy-five years. The idea ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... word, colour, could not be applied to the mixed and evanescent dyes with which this soft and estimable material clothed itself withal. It was, so to speak, invertebrate—it had no backbone. Besides this lack of colour stanchness, it had another fault which helped to overbalance its many virtues. It was fatally attractive to fire. Its soft, fluffy surface seemed to reach out toward flame, and the contact once made, there ensued one flash of instantaneous blaze, and the whole surface, no matter if it were a table-cover, a hanging, or the wall covering a ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... formidable opposition to the break-up of these unnatural alliances between east and west, between Democracy and Autocracy, between the twentieth century and the Dark Ages, will not come from the Balancers of Power. They are not really Balance of Power alliances: in fact, they are tending to an enormous overbalance of power in favor of the east as against the west and in favor of Militarist Autocracy as against Democracy. They are at root absolutely unpatriotic, even absolutely conscienceless products of commercial finance; and the Balance of Power theories are only the attempts of our diplomats ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... quid pro,quo; bribe, hush money; amends &c. (atonement) 952; counterbalance, counterclaim; cross-debt, cross-demand. V. make compensation; compensate, compense[obs3]; indemnify; counteract, countervail, counterpoise; balance; outbalance[obs3], overbalance, counterbalance; set off; hedge, square, give and take; make up for, lee way; cover, fill up, neutralize, nullify; equalize &c. 27; make good; redeem &c. (atone) 952. Adj. compensating, compensatory; countervailing ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... be little question in any man's mind, that eventually he would win his way to a solitary throne, by a policy so full of caution and subtlety. He was sure to risk nothing which could be had on easier terms; and nothing, unless for a great overbalance of gain in prospect; to lose nothing which he had once gained; and in no case to miss an advantage, or sacrifice an opportunity, by any consideration of generosity. No modern insurance office but would have ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... feeling of fatigue, and the other showing the advancement of impotence on the part of the bodily processes, the two curves would not at all coincide. Stated another way, fatigue is a complex thing, a product of ideas, feelings and sensations, and sometimes the ideas overbalance the sensations and we think we are more tired then we are objectively. It is this fact that accounts for our too rapid giving up when we are engaged in ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... that something important was taking place in his soul; that his inner life was on a wavering scale, which could by the slightest effort be made to overbalance to one side or the other. And he made that effort, calling on that God whom the other day he felt in his soul, and God immediately came to his aid. He resolved to ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... of safety in time of storm, an opening may be left at the apex of the angle which is closed by a door kept shut through the tension of a spring. When the wind rises to such a speed as to overbalance the force of the spring each door opens and lets the blast pass through. One collateral advantage of this type of windmill is that it may be made to act virtually as its own stand, the only necessity in its erection being that it should have a collar fitting round the topmost ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... been made out of odd materials that never could have fitted, is a proved fact. But surely there can be no attraction about a blotched and bloated skin and a "bay window" thrown out to an extent threatening to overbalance the whole structure. Yet what else can be expected, when the youngster starts his beer-drinking with a "Fruhschoppen" at 10 a.m., and closes it with a "Kneipe" at ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... these cases Rashi's authority carries great weight; so much so, in fact, as to overbalance that of Alfasi and Maimonides. Frequent appeal was made to it by casuists of a later date, and it would have been invoked still oftener had his Decisions been gathered together, like those of the Spanish and German rabbis, instead of having been scattered through ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... what had really been, and a black heap of ruins where the familiar house had stood for so long confirmed their fears for their own property; but to see the village content and smiling, except for a poor building or two, was joy enough to overbalance the personal loss. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... fountain, rightly conceived, so that its sculpture does not overbalance its use in the play of water, and admirably in tune with the flowery grace of the court. Beauty, pouring water from a Greek amphora, sits lightly upon the ugly Beast. Why she wears a smart Paris hat no one has discovered. Four cheery pipers, ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... the work of Spiritualism would seem to indicate that the source from which it springs is far from good; but it is based upon a church dogma, firmly established through all Christendom, which in many minds is of sufficient weight to overbalance considerations that would otherwise be considered ample grounds for shunning or renouncing it. It is therefore the more necessary that the reader, in examining this question, should let the bonds that have heretofore bound him to ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... more than a year at Bath had but one memorable event, in its course, to me. I was looking one evening, at bedtime, over the banisters, from the upper story into the hall below, with tiptoe eagerness that caused me to overbalance myself and turn over the rail, to which I clung on the wrong side, suspended, like Victor Hugo's miserable priest to the gutter of Notre Dame, and then fell four stories down on the stone pavement of the hall. I was not killed, or apparently injured, but whether I was not ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... returned to the workmen. If any part of the fines is retained by the company, it is next to impossible to keep the workmen from believing that at least a part of the motive in fining them is to make money out of them; and this thought works so much harm as to more than overbalance the good effects of the system. If, however, all of the fines are in some way promptly returned to the men, they recognize it as purely a system of discipline, and it is so direct, effective and uniformly just that the best men soon appreciate its value and approve ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... stern, along its misty length. Should her brother's aimless footsteps stray thitherward, and he but bend, one moment, over the deep, black tide, would he not bethink himself that here was the sure refuge within his reach, and that, with a single step, or the slightest overbalance of his body, he might be forever beyond his kinsman's gripe? Oh, the temptation! To make of his ponderous sorrow a security! To sink, with its leaden weight upon ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance, in permanent evil, any partial or transient benefit which the use can, at any ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... some importance, words metrically arranged will long continue to impart such a pleasure to mankind as he who is sensible of the extent of that pleasure will be desirous to impart. The end of Poetry is to produce excitement in coexistence with an overbalance of pleasure. Now, by the supposition, excitement is an unusual and irregular state of the mind; ideas and feelings do not in that state succeed each other in accustomed order. But if the words by ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... it lately after an interval of many years, I find it to have some of the defects as well as the merits of the Benthamic modes of thought, and to contain, as I now think, many weak arguments, but with a great overbalance of sound ones, and much good material for a more completely philosophic and conclusive treatment of ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... greater value than it exports to that other, the former necessarily becomes indebted to the latter in a greater sum than the latter becomes indebted to it: the debts and credits of each do not compensate one another, and money must be sent out from that place of which the debts overbalance the credits. The ordinary course of exchange, therefore, being an indication of the ordinary state of debt and credit between two places, must likewise be an indication of the ordinary course of their exports and imports, as these necessarily ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... had anticipated; but in consequence of the mixed principles resulting from mixed marriages, or of other unforeseen causes, he may be so alarmed about the unsteady disposition of his children and their future prospects, that the pain which he feels on these accounts may overbalance the pleasure, which he acknowledges in the constant prudence, goodness, solicitude, and affection, of his wife. This may be so much the case, that all her consolatory offices may not be able to get the better of his grief. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... house giving on the road had been destroyed by a large shell. Over a gaping hole in the ceiling was a bed, its iron legs weirdly twisted, which threatened to overbalance at any minute and to come hurtling down into the hall beneath. Shattered picture frames still hung on the walls, and on the floor near at hand lay a rosary, the Crucifix crushed by some heedless boot. The furniture lay in heaps, and the front door was lying grotesquely across a broken mirror. ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... meet me. It was the first time that we had been reunited since I had put all my heart and my soul upon her. I cannot enlarge upon these matters, gentlemen. You will either be able to sympathize with and understand the emotions which overbalance a man at such a time, or you will not. If you have imagination, you will. If you have not, I can never hope to make you see more than the bare fact. That bare fact, placed in the baldest language, is that during this drive from Radchurch Junction to the village I was led into the ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... them better I found the good in them more than balancing the evil. Our mistake is in supposing that some men are 'good' and others 'bad,' and that a sharp line can be drawn between them. The truth is, that every man has both qualities in him and in very few does the evil overbalance the good. I marvel at the goodness I find in humanity, when I see the temptation and opportunity there is ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... importance than to be right. 'Change,' says Hooker, 'is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.' There is in constancy and stability a general and lasting advantage, which will always overbalance the slow improvements of gradual correction. Much less ought our written language to comply with the corruptions of oral utterance, or copy that which every variation of time or place makes different from itself, and imitate those ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... biographers of Declan and Mochuda. Dreamers and visionaries were of as frequent occurrence in Erin of ages ago as they are to-day. Then as now the supernatural and marvellous had a wondrous fascination for the Celtic mind. Sometimes the attraction becomes so strong as seemingly to overbalance the faculty of distinguishing fact from fancy. Of St. Bridget we are gravely told that to dry her wet cloak she hung in out on a sunbeam! Another Saint sailed away to a foreign land on a sod from his native hillside! More than once ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... of the exciting coils per se, an equality which holds good for all currents, then we shall have an almost perfect imitation of a tangent galvanometer with permanent magnets. But we can go a step further than this; we can overbalance the exciting coils by setting the deflecting coil at a greater angle than necessary for the mere elimination of the former, and thus attain that an increase of current results in a slight weakening of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... differ from one another. I do not deny that he has an inclination to display his children to advantage. This, however, is a foible which most fond parents will be inclined to pardon. I wish I had half his piety, energy of mind, and zeal for the cause of God. These excellencies, in my opinion, so far overbalance all his defects that I am constrained to consider him a Christian far above the common run. I must now close this defence of Brother Marshman by repeating that all matters of furniture, convenience, ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... incendiary proclamations of power to the working classes, the exaggerations are now, probably, operating with even more effect in an opposite direction upon the great body of the Catholic gentry. Cordially to unite this body with the government of Ireland would, by much, overbalance the fickle support of the peasantry, given for the moment to the cause of disaffection. That disaffection, under its present form, is already, perhaps, on the point of unlocking its union. It cannot ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... or no we shall have woes: if we forsake Him, we are not rid of woes; if we follow Him, we are not rid of woes—not yet, but later we become eased, and even rid, by means of Consolations, for God is able by His Consolations to entirely overbalance the woe and make it happy peace, though the cause of the woe remains. Remember this in the days of visitation, and follow Christ, no matter where He leads. Christ leads through the woe, because it is the shortest way. ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... negative argument arising from our ignorance of the true solution of such difficulties, as are, perhaps, insoluble because we are finite, can be no reply; and, secondly, such an amount of this evidence as shall fairly overbalance all the objections which we can appreciate. This is the condition to which God has obviously subjected us as inhabitants of this world; and it is on such evidence we are here perpetually acting. We now believe a thousand things we cannot fully comprehend. ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... Mary, had been rather a gay young man, and this, with some other things which had come to his ears, created a prejudice in the mind of Mr. Howland against him. As to what was good in Markland, and likely to overbalance defects, he did not inquire. The hue of his prejudice colored everything. Men like Mr. Howland, who seek to bend everything into forms suited to their own narrow range of ideas, are rarely successful ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... me, that if it were my desire that my Norton should be present at the ceremony, it would be complied with: that the pleasure I should receive from reconciling al my friends to me, and in their congratulations upon it, must needs overbalance, with such a one as me, the difference of persons, however preferable I might think the one man to the other: that love was a fleeting thing, little better than a name, where mortality and virtue did not distinguish the object of it: that a choice made by its dictates was ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... of 40,000 Caribou killed by native hunters. As the whites rarely enter the region, this is practically all the destruction by man. The annual increase of 30,000,000 Caribou must be several millions and would so far overbalance the hunter toll that the latter cannot make ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... far from it, that as Mr. Hume remarks, there is in Rymer's Foedera a proclamation of Richard, in which he accuses, not the lord Hastings, but the marquis Dorset, of connexion with Jane Shore. Mr. Hume thinks so authentic a paper not sufficient to overbalance the credit due to Sir Thomas More. What little credit was due to him appears from the course of this work in various and indubitable instances. The proclamation against the lord Dorset and Jane Shore is not dated till the 23rd. of October following. Is it credible that Richard ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... society and to their possessor. In many cases this is an affair liable to great controversy: doubts may arise; opposite interests may occur; and a preference must be given to one side, from very nice views, and a small overbalance of utility. This is particularly remarkable in questions with regard to justice; as is, indeed, natural to suppose, from that species of utility which attends this virtue [Footnote: See App. II.]. Were every ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... said he, "failure is impossible. The expedition is to start at once, tomorrow night. No man in it has now any ties or home or kin that overbalance his ties to me and to the esprit de corps ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... entertain false views of their power to change anything for the better. I concede, that all change may be only in appearance, and not make any real difference in the general amount of good and evil; that evil, to a certain invariable amount, may be necessary to the amount of good (the overbalance of which, with a most hearty and loving sincerity, I ever acknowledge); and finally, that all which the wisest of men could utter on any such subject, might possibly be nothing but a jargon,—the witless and puny ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... a good plan. Hollerith obviously wasn't sure of his own men any more—and neither would I have been, in his spot. But he had the advantage of surprise and superior arms; he was clearly hoping that would overbalance the lack of discipline, training and order in his force. Besides, there was nothing else he could do; he was outvoted, all the ...
— The Man Who Played to Lose • Laurence Mark Janifer
... "remember, my pet, that you are the protege of—of, as I may assert, of wealth and station, and though born I don't know where, and bred in the Poor-House, the fact that you have my protection is enough to overbalance that. You understand, Isabel—by the way, I think it best to call you Isabel Farnham now—with your beauty the thing will pass off without question; with that face, nothing would seem more natural than that I should be your real mamma; so, be a very ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... has been ordained that population should increase much faster than food. This general law (as it has appeared in the former parts of this Essay) undoubtedly produces much partial evil, but a little reflection may, perhaps, satisfy us, that it produces a great overbalance of good. Strong excitements seem necessary to create exertion, and to direct this exertion, and form the reasoning faculty, it seems absolutely necessary, that the Supreme Being should act always according to general laws. The constancy ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... flew across the room, struck the amateur acrobat in the back, and fell on the floor, but not much more quickly than my new friend went over backwards, the blow having made him overbalance so that his feet came with a crash on the desk, the ink flew out of two little leaden wells, and the performer rolled off on to the form, and then to the floor, with ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... reports, imports and exports, commerce and revenue—all flourishing, all splendid! Never was such a prosperous country as England under his administration! Let it be objected, that the agriculture of the country is, by the overbalance of commerce, and by various and complex causes, in such a state, that the country hangs as a pensioner for bread on its neighbours, and a bad season uniformly threatens us with famine. This (it is replied) is owing to our PROSPERITY,—all ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... county is Republican in politics generally, the rural districts being so strongly so as often to overbalance the normal Democratic plurality in Chicago. Thus another ground of jealousy is found In the distribution of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... on the point of being wrecked, and his splendid powers are dissipated by his inability to restrain his passions. The tragic fate which hovers over him from the moment of his birth is admirably hinted at, but not emphasized, in the sketch of his parents. The carnal overbalance, supplied by the blood of the Kurts, wellnigh neutralizes the mechanical genius which is hereditary in the blood of ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... happier; his son was a pride and pleasure to him, while Henry never thought upon his without lamenting his loss with bitterest anguish. But if the elder brother had in one instance the advantage, still Henry had a resource to overbalance this article. Henry, as he lay imprisoned in his dungeon, and when, his punishment being remitted, he was again allowed to wander, and seek his subsistence where he would, in all his tedious walks and solitary resting- places, during all his lonely days and mournful ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... boys had little time to observe it. Their attention was now fully occupied with beating off the infuriated mates of the dead birds, who beat the air about the aeroplane with their huge wings until the air-storm created threatened to overbalance it. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... a heap of paltry metal Should overbalance manhood's noblest graces; A film of gold had gilt his worth and honor, Warming to smiles the coldness of their faces; Gentle to me, they rise in condemnation, And plead with me than words more powerfully. Oh! well I love them—but they have wealth and station To fill ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... for the nude, for the delicate curves of the body and the exquisite colors of flesh. Yet to overbalance this disregard of beautiful form was his strong predilection for finery. None ever loved better the play of light upon jewels and satin and armor, the rich effectiveness of Oriental stuffs and ecclesiastical vestments. Unable to gratify this ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... universality is represented to us by gravitation, and that of attachment or reduction into it, this and the other noble metals represented the units in which the latter tendency, namely, that of identity with the life of nature, subsisted in the greatest overbalance over the former. It is the form of unity with the least degree of ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there were certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence, the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to superstition; but to that sort of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... descending with our faces to the cliff. This had to be done with unusual caution, for the foothold was about as good as none, and our fingers slipped annoyingly on the smooth stone; besides the knapsacks and instruments kept a steady backward pull, tending to overbalance us. But we took pains to descend one at a time, and rest wherever the niches gave our feet a safe support. In this way we got down about eighty feet of smooth, nearly vertical wall, reaching the top of a rude granite stairway, which led to ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... by the vehemence of her appeal. He allowed himself to listen for a moment—to overbalance all his preconceived plans, but just then his past life, Jordan Morse, his own near approaching end, sank into his mind, and the fire in his eyes went out. There was finality in the shake ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... race-suicide, Art. Race-suicide through sheer fecundity. Leffingwell is right. The reproductive instinct, unchecked, will overbalance group survival in the end. How long has it been since you were out on ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... was carried some distance from the cliff; but, fortunately for him, the weight of his body overbalanced the resistance which the atmosphere offered to the broad surface of the kite; else he might have been carried much higher into the air. Equally fortunate was it, that the amount of overbalance was exceedingly slight—otherwise he might have been dashed with violence ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid |
