"Overbalance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bound he sprang out of bed, and seizing the fellow nearest him by the collar, he slung him through the open doorway. His brother rushed at him, but the young Devonshire man met him with such a facer that he dropped in a heap upon the ground. Unfortunately, the violence of the blow caused him to overbalance himself, and, tripping over his prostrate antagonist, he came down heavily upon his face. Before he could rise, the old hag sprang upon his back and clung to him, shrieking to her son to bring the poker. John managed to shake himself clear of them both, but before he could stand on his guard he ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... extremely prudent, ha, ha, ha! the world will say, Lard! who could have thought Mr Luckless had had so much prudence? This one action will overbalance all ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... 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 of the laws of nature, or the certainty with which we may expect ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... there is none. To such a man, the giving of any boor's resoluteness, with tendons braided, would be as hanging a claymore to Valor's side, before unarmed. Our minds are cunning, compound mechanisms; and one spring, or wheel, or axle wanting, the movement lags, or halts. Cerebrum must not overbalance cerebellum; our brains should be round as globes; and planted on capacious chests, inhaling mighty morning- inspirations. We have had vast developments of parts of men; but none of manly wholes. Before a full-developed man, Mardi would fall down and worship. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... permit him to study, under his instructions, the noble art in which he himself enjoyed such a deserved reputation, the mere hope that he might by-and-by be of some use to Mr. Gray in his business, would greatly overbalance every other consideration. Such a course of education, and such a use of professional knowledge when he had acquired it, would be a greater spur to his industry than the prospect even of becoming Town-clerk of ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... put on the staff to supply a column of verse a day. Occasionally some topical stanza which agrees with the editorial policy will be accepted from an outsider. It may be pointed out here that very often the humor or appropriateness of a production will overbalance faults in the rhyme and meter. In serious verse an exception of this sort will rarely be found and a thing must stand or ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... words and good deeds. If one carries out in his life this creed, then his good thoughts, good words and good deeds will be his intercessors on the great bridge that leads the spirit from death to the gates of paradise. If his evil deeds and thoughts and words overbalance the good, then he goes straight down to the place of darkness and torment. If his good and evil deeds and thoughts exactly balance, then he passes into ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... though Mr. Daniel Brewster had on many occasions treated him with a good deal of austerity, his simple soul was pleased at the thought of doing him a good turn, He had just completed his work and was stepping cautiously down, when a voice behind him nearly caused him to overbalance. ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... 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 ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... 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 ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... itself. He went across to Outwood's and found the two non-starters in the senior day-room, engaged in the intellectual pursuit of kicking the wall and marking the height of each kick with chalk. Adair's entrance coincided with a record effort by Stone, which caused the kicker to overbalance and stagger ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... without, and kindliness and good deeds; but there was nevertheless something fishy about Westlake's eyes, and Sam, in memory, cast over a list of maimed and wounded and crushed who had come in Westlake's business way. The logical candidate was Stevens. Stevens simply had to take enough stock to overbalance this thing, then he simply must vote his stock with Sam's! That was all there was to it! Sam did not pause to worry about how he was to gain over Stevens' consent, but he had an intuitive feeling that this was his ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... 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. Decide ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... little dreamed when he met this small, shabby lad, and passed him as he might have passed some way-side weed, what was in his mind. If people, when they meet, could know half the workings of one another's minds, the recoils from the shocks might overbalance creation. But Doctor Prescott never saw the phantom paupers slouching through his clover-fields, and Simon Basset never jostled Mindy Toggs on his threshold. However, Mindy Toggs had once lived in Simon ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... inductive action of the magnet on the steel, while the attraction is assisted by the same inductive action. Make this clear to your minds, and verify it by your experiments. In some cases you can actually make the attraction due to the temporary magnetism overbalance the repulsion due to the permanent magnetism, and thus cause two poles of the same kind apparently to attract each other. When, however, good hard magnets act on each other from a sufficient distance, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... 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
... McCloskey, climbing out of the tangle of crushed cars and bent and twisted iron-work to stand beside Lidgerwood on the main-line embankment. Then to the men who were making the snatch-hitch for the next pull: "A little farther back, boys; farther yet, so she won't overbalance on you; that's about ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... fascinated with a face, cut and gashed till it suggests having 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" ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 in attaining their ends. The principle ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... haughty in your resentments; and coarse and lowly in your connexions. I have blushed at the weakness of your conversation, and trembled at the errors of your conduct—yet, as I own you possess certain good qualities, which overbalance these defects, and distinguish you on this occasion as a person for whom I have the most perfect attachment and esteem, you have no cause to complain of the indelicacy with which your faults are reprehended. ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... 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
... we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... 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 ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... cheaper service rendered by English shippers. Internal 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 ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... nuns and priests had increased, and Father Murphy must hold that Ireland must become one vast monastery, and the laity ought to become extinct, or he must agree with Mr. Carmady that there was a point when a too numerous clergy would overbalance ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... 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 voice of what we take to be a mighty orb, but which, after all, is only ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... destruction to equal that of the 600 Indians, it is liberal, giving a total 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 any ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... fastening his teeth in the flesh of the left hand. Langton wrenched free and, as the man scrambled to his feet, dealt him with the same hand a smashing blow on the mouth—a blow that sent him reeling, to overbalance and pitch backward to the floor again ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... 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 strength of his ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... 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. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... 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 him, and ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 hollow above the nose, making the line of the ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... 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 alliance, in proportion to the probable motives ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... 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 all that ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... 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. Everywhere ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... 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 guaranteed an event depending ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... his arms round him, and, though the smaller boy of the two, extricated himself from the clutch of the bully, and sent him in turn staggering back. Livid with rage, Tom rushed at him; but Charlie eluded him, and left him to overbalance himself and fall sprawling on the paved floor. At this instant the doctor's door opened, and the head master ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... the civilized bonds of union; only the 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. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... and I think the minds of the American people, that the mischief and dangers which flow from a national bank far overbalance ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... that for the law to be KNOWN, is of more 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 changes, which will ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... beautifully-written letters, and more from women than from men; not that men are to be supposed less capable of writing good letters,—and, in fact, amongst all the celebrated letter writers of past or present times, a large overbalance happens to have been men,—but that more frequently women write from their hearts; and the very same cause operates to make female letters good which operated at one period to make the diction of Roman ladies more pure ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... "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. ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... insults might be, addressed to a cardinal, to a minister in possession of 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... climate. This is undoubtedly an object of contemplation which calls forth our warmest 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 ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... near daft that I cannot pretend to say; I only know that I shudder at the thought of going to New Orleans, and that my heart fails me when I think of the probable consequence to mother if I allow a mere outward sign of patriotism to overbalance what should be my first consideration—her health. For Clinton is growing no better rapidly. To be hungry is there an everyday occurrence. For ten days, mother writes, they have lived off just hominy enough to keep their bodies ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... habit", not only in the sense that they readily form habits, but in the sense that they find satisfaction in familiar ways and things. Here we see the germ of a "conservative" tendency in human nature, which balances, to a greater or less extent, and may decidedly overbalance, the ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... 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 ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... operation he has made necessary to our support, thereby making the enjoyment of pleasure one of the conditions of our existence. This is an unanswerable refutation of one of the most abominable doctrines of the atheists—the overbalance of evil; and as such, that wise and amiable divine, doctor Paley, has made use of it in his Natural Theology. It is true, that yielding to the tendency of our frail, overweening nature to push enjoyment of every kind to its utmost verge, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... that his experience 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 serving out of the ammunition, which ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... arrived; I am now indebted to you L30. In 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 you ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... of the monstrous delusion which I now go on to mention. The pretence of late put forward is, that the preponderant element in the American population is indeed derived from the British Islands, but by a vast overbalance from Ireland, and from the Celtic part of the Irish population. This monstrous delusion has recently received an extravagant sanction from the London Quarterly Review. Half a dozen other concurrent papers, in journals political and literary, hold the same language. And the upshot ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... and South Carolina the Delight of Buccaneers and Pyrates, Virginia may be justly esteemed the happy Retreat of true Britons and true Churchmen for the most Part." This "for the most part" paints the situation, for there existed an opposition, a minority, which might grow to balance, and overbalance. In the meantime the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg provided a School ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... 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 ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... 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, ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... community, by the 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 ...
— The Federalist Papers
... moral principles, that if they were left to their full swing they would carry men to the overturning of all morality. Moral laws are set as a curb and restraint to these exorbitant desires, which they cannot be but by rewards and punishments that will overbalance the satisfaction any one shall propose to himself in the breach of the law. If, therefore, anything be imprinted on the minds of all men as a law, all men must have a certain and unavoidable knowledge that certain and unavoidable punishment will ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... 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 of it ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... to, the story of 'Ada Reis' can only be got over by power of writing, beauty of sentiment, striking and effective situation, etc. If Mr. Gifford thinks there is in the first two volumes anything of excellence sufficient to overbalance their manifest faults, I still hope that he will press upon Lady Caroline the absolute necessity of carefully reconsidering and revising the third volume, and particularly the ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... 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 Man Who Played to Lose • Laurence Mark Janifer
... Occidental must look uncouth in such an Oriental setting; you feel you ought at least not to stand up in a place like that; I mean for aesthetic reasons—you overbalance the composition. ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... 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 2, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... whether it be necessary, for the 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 are often confounded ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... little 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. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Rome. Tigellinus, however, advises him to visit the city even for a time, since the people, yearning overmuch for his person (read 'for games and bread') may revolt. So I cannot tell how it will be. Should Achaea overbalance, we may want to see Egypt. I should insist with all my might on thy coming, for I think that in thy state of mind travelling and our amusements would be a medicine, but thou mightst not find us. Consider, then, whether in that case repose in thy Sicilian estates would not be preferable ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... our 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
... talent is necessarily in a 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
... narcotic poison, killing the soul by infusing a stupor or counterfeit peace of conscience. Where there are no sinkings of self-abasement, no griping sense of sin and worthlessness, but perhaps the contrary, reckless confidence and self-valuing for good qualities supposed an overbalance for the sins,—there it is not necessary. In short, these are not the truths, that can be preached [Greek: eukairos akairos], in season and out of season. In declining life, or at any time in the hour of sincere humiliation, these truths may be ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to shake Cocles' belief; the last month's payment had been made with the most scrupulous exactitude; Cocles had detected an overbalance of fourteen sous in his cash, and the same evening he had brought them to M. Morrel, who, with a melancholy smile, threw them into an almost empty ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ear-piercing shrieks, which in turn started birds of other kinds; the toucans hopping about from branch to branch uttering their singular barking cries, as they raised high their huge bills, which looked as if they would overbalance their bodies, but were as light as if made of paper ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... radiant 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 and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... 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
... overbalance the strong temptation to continue "The Philistine"—I consider it a duty to pay him the tribute of discontinuing the little Magazine ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... magnetic effect 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... forward to just that sort of thing, for I heard her rejoicing over it. That girl will be injured by Chautauqua; I know it as well as though I already saw it; and the question with me is, whether the amount of evil done will not overbalance the good. At the same time I am inconsistent enough to wish with all my heart that I could ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... of mountains, perhaps thrown up by some internal convulsion, from continually altering the position of the axis of the earth—and that to some considerable degree in a short time. The great protuberance of the earth under the Equator serves to overbalance the impetus of all other masses of earth, and thus to preserve the axis of the earth, so far as we can observe, in its present position. And yet this wise arrangement has been unthinkingly explained from the equilibrium of ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... 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, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... unfortunately, left him to the care of his mother, whom, as she was 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 ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... night are trusted to my care. I hold the day in my right hand and the night in my left; and I maintain the just equilibrium between them, for if either were to overbalance the other, the universe would either be consumed by the heat of the sun, or would perish with the cold of darkness.—Comte de Caylus, Oriental Tales ("History of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of connection are so strong that they overbalance all discrepancies of single passages, interpolations, and inconsistencies of detail. Still, if the mind of the critic refuses the general sweep, and insists upon prying asunder the joints, and upon looking through its microscope at the ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... tithes, gives no accounting of them, and has no responsibility for them, except to God and his own conscience. He is able to use this sum, in bulk, at any given point, with a weight of financial pressure that would overbalance any other such single power in the community. As "trustee in trust" for the Church, he has the added income from stocks and previous investments; and he has practical control of the wealth of all the leading men of the Church to assist ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... from the universal life, which 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 ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Monongahela River 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... beneficial consequences to 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 single instance of justice, like that of benevolence, useful to society; this would be a ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... 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 ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... a first-rate one on the same subject by an American, but may even be the means of suppressing it altogether. The intellectual position of an American is so favorable for the treatment of European history as to overbalance in some instances the disadvantages arising from want of access to original documents; yet an American author whose work was yet in manuscript could not possibly compete with an English rival, even of far inferior ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... may 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 her grateful heart said to her, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... of us spoke a word. She clung to my neck so I thought she must overbalance me and drag ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... review of Shakspeare's life, it becomes our duty to take a summary survey of his works, of his intellectual powers, and of his station in literature, a station which is now irrevocably settled, not so much (which happens in other cases) by a vast overbalance of favorable suffrages, as by acclamation; not so much by the voices of those who admire him up to the verge of idolatry, as by the acts of those who everywhere seek for his works among the primal necessities of life, demand them, and crave them as they do ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... 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 canoe drifted slowly ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... 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 woman I ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... that expulsion is only 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 ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... them utterance as faithfully as we can, for they may be a step in another's progress. But the thought of interfering with the design of God will be impious, insupportable. Our only method will be a perfect sincerity, which will indeed lead us to refrain from any attempt to overbalance or to divert ingenuous minds from their own chosen path. To accuse our fellow-men of stupidity or of prejudice is ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... experiments: to that side he inclines, with doubt and hesitation; and when at last he fixes his judgement, the evidence exceeds not what we properly call probability. All probability, then, supposes an opposition of experiments and observations, where the one side is found to overbalance the other, and to produce a degree of evidence, proportioned to the superiority. A hundred instances or experiments on one side, and fifty on another, afford a doubtful expectation of any event; though a hundred uniform experiments, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... 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 which this excitement is produced are in themselves ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... now 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
... 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
... Dexie, dear," he added presently, "something in that letter tells me that Hugh explained everything to Nina before he married her, and she could have refused him if she objected to the conditions. Hugh's money would overbalance many difficulties, and I have no doubt that Mrs. Gordon urged her daughter to accept him, with a full knowledge of his reasons for wishing to marry her. I feel sure that Nina is willing and anxious ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... going through a boggy wood, with rocks and slimy fallen trees, I slipped and plunged forward. Without the pack I could have saved myself; but the heavy roll, shooting ahead, was just enough to overbalance me and bring me down among the stumps and boulders. To protect my face I twisted as I fell. This brought the pack under me, my head was lower than my hips, the pack wedged in a hole, and I should have had difficulty in rising had not the boys yanked ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... if you like; but don't think. You have been fretting over some little personal troubles until you fancy them heavy enough to overbalance the world. But they won't. And I'm not going to try and persuade you into Haydon's house, either, now that you've been good to me; unless, of course, you fall in love with Margaret, and want to ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... interest. I may add that this interest benefited also by the mystery which invested the murders; mystery as to various points but especially as respected one important question, Had the murderer any accomplice? [Footnote: Upon a large overbalance of probabilities, it was, however, definitively agreed amongst amateurs that Williams must have been alone in these atrocities. Meantime, amongst the colorable presumptions on the other side was this:—Some hours after the last murder, a man was apprehended at Barnet (the first stage ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... ship's company was served with fresh beef; and we took on board about fifteen tons of water, which we brought off in the country boats, at the rate of about three shillings per ton. Ships are allowed to water with their own boats; but the many inconveniencies attending it, more than overbalance the expence of hiring shore-boats, which is the ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... my house, so I posted home and got a dish of meat for them. They staid with me all the afternoon, and went hence in the evening. Then I went with my wife, and left her at market, and went myself to the Coffee-house, and heard exceeding good argument against Mr. Harrington's assertion, that overbalance of propriety [i.e., property] was the foundation of government. Home, and wrote to Hinchinbroke, and sent that and my other letter that missed of going on Thursday ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... 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! ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... smell and a smudge of smoke told of 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
... inescapably near. The sense of its smooth softness, its yieldingness, and the danger lurking beneath the flowing surface was acute. She tried more desperately to sit exactly in the middle of the boat, so that she should not overbalance it. She closed her eyes, sitting very still, and heard the water saying plup-plup-plup all round her, and she was afraid. It meant soft death: she could not forget that. Jenny could not swim. She was stricken between terror and ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... is, that the benefits of law to the subject should overbalance its burdens—its protection more than compensate for its restraints and exactions—and its blessings altogether outweigh its inconveniences and evils—the former being numerous, positive, and permanent, the latter few, negative, and incidental. Totally the reverse of all this ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... 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 monuments of the history of superstition, make them ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... 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
... became aware 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
... Cook 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... affection of the mind, against the life of the prisoner, should we not give some weight to presumptions from parental love, an affection at least as strong in favor of life? If concealment of the fact is a presumptive evidence of murder, so strong as to overbalance all other evidence that may possibly be produced to take away the presumption, why not trust the force of this incontestable presumption to the jury, who are, in a regular course, to hear presumptive, as well as positive testimony? If ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... sagacity and resource which he 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 ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... what I should do. On the one hand, I shrank from disgracing Doctor West. On the other, I had a duty to the city. After a long struggle I decided that my responsibility to the people of Westville should overbalance any feeling I might have for any ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott |
