"Balancing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... better way, good sir? That corner needs balancing, and it is in my mind that the design should work up this way—" he illustrated with his burin—"and so ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... said the girl; she went down on her knees, and, finding she could not stir it, wondered if this also was kept in its place by a system of balancing. She was right; after a very little pressing the door moved aside, and Annie saw four or five rudely ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... Mathers and Nortons were noblemen,—should choose to neutralize so much of their ministers' lives, and destroy so much of their early training, by this undefined passion for seeing them in public. It springs from our balancing of sects. If a spirited Episcopalian takes an interest in the almshouse, and is put on the Poor Board, every other denomination must have a minister there, lest the poorhouse be changed into St. Paul's Cathedral. If a Sandemanian is chosen ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... benefactress, are truly the work of a friend. They are not the blasting depredations of a canker-toothed, caterpillar critic; nor are they the fair statement of cold impartiality, balancing with unfeeling exactitude the pro and con of an author's merits; they are the judicious observations of animated friendship, selecting the beauties of the piece. I am just arrived from Nithsdale, and will be here a fortnight. I was on horseback this ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... no answer, except by a sigh, half-suppressed. She sat motionless, with the exception of her foot, which kept balancing upward and downward the little slipper of blue satin, while the fresh breeze of the evening blowing in from the window, caused a gentle tremulous movement among the ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... in the room a parrot which he had not seen until now and which had no doubt been released by one of her low-browed henchmen behind the curtains, flew by Kendric's head and perched balancing upon an arm of her chair. Idly she put out her hand, stroking the bright feathers. From somewhere else, startling the man when he saw it gliding by him on its soft pads, a big puma, ran forward, threw up its head, snarling, its tail jerking back and forth restlessly. ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... customs. The ancient Greeks cast a side-light on this truth, for their word for private soldier was 'idiot.' And on account of this strange stupidity of soldiers, things that would be disgraceful in private life become glorious in war. Their one virtue is obedience, unqualified by any of the balancing virtues, and they wear liveries to show that they are servile. And then the foolish things they try to do! You are familiar with the Peace Conference—generals and admirals spending weeks in uniform with swords at their sides to determine how to ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... them had stoves in,) smoked intolerably; so much so, that when the wind was in some quarters the fires had to be put out in every room but the kitchen, which, as good luck would have it, smoked less—although it did smoke there—than the others. After balancing the matter in our own mind some time, whether we should pull down and rebuild the chimneys altogether, or attempt an alteration; as we had given but little thought to the subject of chimney draft, and to try an experiment ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... man, the grandest of God's creations, spending his life-time standing beside a machine for making screws. There is nothing to call out his individuality, his ingenuity, his powers of balancing, ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... I really can't tell any difference myself. It may be one, it may be the other. But whichever it is I think I deserve to be stuffed. Hey, Barrows!" he called suddenly, balancing himself on one cane and waving a summons with the other. "Come across! New lunger is here, young, good-looking. I saw her ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... took out from it a little pair of scales, some crystals, a blackstone, and a bottle full of a green liquid. Then he sat down again, drew the diamond gently from Elzevir's fingers, which were loth to part with it, and began using his scales; balancing the diamond carefully, now against a crystal, now against some small brass weights. I stood with my back to the sunset, watching the red light fall upon this old man as he weighed the diamond, rubbed it on the black-stone, or let fall on it a drop of the liquor, and so could see ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... spice of fear in it all: was that Pa coming back? No, a carpenter or scene-shifter, perhaps, or else the Martellos, brother and sister, going to practise slack-wire, head and hand balancing. Their father, old Martello, a famous name, lived in London, it appeared, alone with his Bambinis, mere babes still. His other children and his apprentices had all run away, to escape his horsewhip, and the brother in Mexico was continuing ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... within! Sunlight flooded the breakfast room,and a gay fire: and before the hearth the little lady of the house stood crimson-robed and pink-cheeked, and just now very contemplative. She was slowly balancing a great bunch of keys large keys and smallupon her pretty fingers. Such was the picture before the eyes of the new head of the house when he came in to breakfast. I think he liked it too well to be willing to break ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... pleasures—everything else ranking with the last murder and the last opera bouffe, under the head of things to talk about. Nevertheless, he was not indifferent to the prospect of being treated uncivilly by a beautiful woman, or to the counter-balancing fact that his present commission put into his hands an official power of humiliating her. He did not mean to use it needlessly; but there are some persons so gifted in relation to us that their "How do you do?" seems charged ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... but picked her up as if she had been a dressmaker's dummy, and set her on her feet, where, after swaying about, and some balancing with her hands, she presently steadied herself, and stood, dazed and empty-eyed. Her cheek was cut, her ear was bleeding; her hair was down, the red handkerchief uncoiled; her dusky skin was stained with dirt and ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... you make out their rig?" demanded the first luff, as he halted and directed his gaze aloft at the man on the main- royal-yard, who, half-way out to the yard-arm, was balancing himself upon the foot-rope, and steadying himself with one hand upon the yard as he gazed away to leeward under the shade ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... forward. The mate stood at the other side of the binnacle, looking at her, with one elbow resting on the house. There was just light enough from the cabin skylight for Owen to see the expression which came over his face as he watched the graceful figure balancing to the heave of the ship. It took on the same evil look which he had seen in his fall, while there was no mistaking the thought behind the gleam in his eyes. The mate looked up,—into Owen's face,—and saw something there ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... Blackstone; and after such an experience, shall one shrink from wrecking a steamer or two in the cause of the nation? So I placidly accepted my naval establishment, as if it were a new form of boat-club, and looked over the charts, balancing between one river and another, as if deciding whether to pull up or down Lake Quinsigamond. If military life ever contemplated the exercise of the virtue of humility under any circumstances this would ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... to ask you a few questions," said Tarling, and slipped a little notebook from his pocket, balancing it ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... splatterings, he would depress his glossy crest, slant his shining tail to the level of his body, until he looked most like some bright venomous snake, daunting them with shrill abuse and feint of battle. Then suddenly he would go tilting and balancing down the gully in fine disdain, only to return in a day or two to make sure the foolish bodies were ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... the penalty of death; though he might, and probably would, from length of time and circumstances in his favour, have received the king's pardon. Perhaps, however, on the whole, it was fortunate, that in balancing, as it is known this gallant officer did, between the sense of duty and the sense of feeling, the latter prevailed, and justice yielded to mercy. Had a Bligh or an Edwards been placed in his situation it is to be feared that, judging from their former conduct, ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... mind, which impelled him to break out hastily when anything was said that did not accord with his ideas. Persons who are obstinate till they can give up their notions with a safe conscience, are troublesome intimates. Often too the cold tardiness of decision is only the strict balancing of scepticism or candour, while obscurity as frequently may arise from the deficiency of previous knowledge in the listener. It was said that NEWTON in conversation did not seem to understand his own writings, and it was supposed that his memory had decayed. The ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... intentions, a more continual joy to nature than all the provision that can be made for security and repose,'—not reconciled to the part he was compelled to play in his own time,—his fine, keen sensibilities perpetually at war with it,—always balancing and reviewing the nice ethical questions it involved, and seeking always the 'nobler' solution. 'The one part have I suffered, the other will I do,'—demonstrating the possibility of making, even under such conditions, a ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... stood that same trusty staff that had been the companion of my wanderings, and now I reached, and took it up, balancing it in my hand. And all the time I watched that line of light upon the floor widening and widening, growing ever broader and more broad. The minutes dragged slowly by, while the line grew into a streak, and the streak into a lane, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... partly drawn, there was a scent of violets in the air, and a fire glowed warmly in the grate. He noted these things carefully, telling himself that a man should always be alertly sensible of his surroundings; then all at once the nice balancing of detail suddenly gave way. He forgot everything but the one circumstance that Eve was standing in the window—her back to the light, her face towards him. With his pulses beating faster and an unsteady sensation in his ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... such, for instance, as performances by a troupe of acrobats, in which a man walked a rope stretched from tower to tower across the square, an achievement which long inspired me with a passion for such feats of daring. Indeed, I got so far as to walk a rope fairly easily myself with the help of a balancing-pole. I had made the rope out of cords twisted together and stretched across the courtyard, and even now I still feel a desire to gratify my acrobatic instincts. The thing that attracted me most, however, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... of grouping. The wall, since it occupies one entire end of a long high building, is naturally less broad than lofty. The pictorial divisions are therefore horizontal in the main, though so combined and varied as to produce the effect of multiplied curves, balancing and antiphonally inverting their lines of sinuosity. The pendentive upon which the prophet Jonah sits, descends and breaks the surface at the top, leaving a semicircular compartment on each side of its corbel. Michelangelo filled these upper spaces ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... his hat, like a well-bred orator, and, balancing himself upon his legs in a way not ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... position by slipping the toe end of the shoe between the banisters on the back porch and nailing a cleat back of the heel end. When the ski was perfectly dry the toe strap was nailed on just back of the balancing point, and also another strap, to be secured about the ankle. Then a cleat was nailed onto the ski to fit against the heel of the shoe. In use we found it best to cut a groove in the bottom of the ski, so as ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... with indifference. It is the certainty that you will drown if you do not swim which gives zest to the exercise. I climb along yonder jutting cornice of the cliff with eagerness, and pluck my simples with a hand that trembles more from joy than fear, precisely because the strain of balancing the nerves, and the certainty of suffering as the result of carelessness, knit my sensations together into an exaltation which is not exactly pleasure, perhaps, but which is not to be distinguished from ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... chase,—Beauty and Wealth, both! I open a letter, and find success in one quarter to counterbalance failure in another. Bah! bah! each to his metier, Maltravers! For you, honour, melancholy, and, if it please you, repentance also! For me, the onward, rushing life, never looking back to the Past, never balancing the stepping-stones to the Future. Let us not envy each other; if you were not Diogenes, you would be Alexander. Adieu! our interview is over. Will you forget and forgive, and shake hands once more? You draw back, you frown! well, perhaps you are ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that the little rows of figures were as neat and accurate as ever, and caught a sigh of satisfaction when they were added together, and the change in the housekeeping purse was proved correct. Even in the midst of her distress, Maud was conscious of a distinct sense of satisfaction in balancing ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and his two elder children. Then commenced a variety of feats of strength. Baroni stretched forth his right arm, and Josephine, with a bound, instantly sprang upon his shoulder; while she thus remained, balancing herself only on her left leg, and looking like a flying Victory, her father stretched forth his left arm, and Francis sprang upon the shoulder opposite to his sister, and formed with her a group which might have crowned a vase. Infinite were the ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... interval. Then he brought them a long mug apiece made of glass, and frowned. By-and-by he stalked gloomily in with a hunch of bread apiece, and exit with an injured air. Expectation thus raised, the guests sat for nearly an hour balancing the wooden spoons, and with their own knives whittling the bread. Eventually, when hope was extinct, patience worn out, and hunger exhausted, a huge vessel was brought in with pomp, the lid was removed, a cloud ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... A Bald Man, balancing on a razor's edge, fleet of foot, his forehead covered with hair,[13] his body naked—if you have caught him, hold him fast; when he has once escaped, not Jupiter himself can overtake him: he is the ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... hermit demeaned himself much like a first-rate critic of the present day at a new opera. He reclined back upon his seat, with his eyes half shut; now, folding his hands and twisting his thumbs, he seemed absorbed in attention, and anon, balancing his expanded palms, he gently flourished them in time to the music. At one or two favourite cadences, he threw in a little assistance of his own, where the knight's voice seemed unable to carry the air ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... two articles in a socialist paper which was then balancing itself between contradictions; opposing the war, and at the same time voting for credits. You could see in its pages eloquent statements of internationalism side by side with the appeals of ministers who were preaching a nationalist policy. In this seesaw Clerambault's lightly lyrical pages, where ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... at home are proved to be as much a part of true bravery as fearlessness in battle. Since the soldier's part in the War has been held closely to everyone's attention, the reading of this story will supply a balancing view of the other side of war; and the pupils' perspective of the whole cannot ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... yet scarcely capable of balancing the scale against the sports—football, cricket, racing, pelota, bull-fighting—which, in Europe, impassion the common people, and draw most of their champions from the common people. In Europe the advertisement ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... perfectly independent of both. The current for the third circuit enters the two wires of one of the first circuits, divides, reunites, so to speak, at the other end, then returns through the wires of the second circuit, dividing and reuniting again, thus just balancing the two divisions of the current and not causing any effect on either of the two original circuits. ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... very hard work. It meant waiting here and there, jumping trenches, scrambling through entanglements, stumbling into shell-holes, and at times fairly hanging by my eyebrows to the edge of trenches, balancing my camera in a way that one would have deemed almost impossible. But I am gratified to think that I managed to keep up with the King, and I succeeded in recording every incident ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... trust, such a completely natural expression of a kind, genial character did it seem, that to any but an expert it would have appeared impossible that such an effect could be produced by the skilful balancing of half a dozen pairs of little muscles that manage the lips and the corners of the mouth. The tones of his voice were subdued into accord with the look of his features; his whole manner was fascinating, as far as any conscious effort could make it so. It was just one of those artificially pleasing ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... suggested, "like notin' but de judgment day." Presently they began to come from the houses also, with their little bundles on their heads; then with larger bundles. Old women, trotting on the narrow paths, would kneel to pray a little prayer, still balancing the bundle; and then would suddenly spring up, urged by the accumulating procession behind, and would move on till irresistibly compelled by thankfulness to dip down for another invocation. Reaching us, every human being ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... foot, the circumjacent objects become quite indistinct, as their distance increases their apparent motions; and this great velocity confounds both their forms, and their colours, as is seen in whirling round a many coloured wheel; he then loses his usual method of balancing himself by vision, and begins to stagger, and attempts to recover himself by his muscular feelings. This staggering adds to the instability of the visible objects by giving a vibratory motion besides their rotatory one. The child then drops upon the ground, and the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... strange lad clinging to a perilous seat on the truss rod. With one hand the newcomer was balancing himself, while with the other he was shaking out into plain view the noose trailing at the end of a line hanging from the ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Balancing the iron sphere in one hand, the learned professor began fingering it with the other, like Columbus illustrating the rotundity of the globe before the Royal ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... face with her, balancing the boat with the oars against the swift flowing of the river, with smiles coming and going on her face as rapidly as the shadows and the sunshine chasing each other over the ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... with a filling of dried cocoanut-husks, the sucking sound made by the ponies' hoofs was but a prelude to our final floundering in the mud. There was a narrow ridge on one side near a thorny hedge, and, balancing ourselves on this, we made slow progress, meanwhile tearing our clothes to shreds. Skim had considerable difficulty with his long legs, for he could have touched the ground on either side, but he could use them to advantage, when it came to ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... balancing the matter in my mind, when a hansom cab drove up to Briony Lodge, and a gentleman sprung out. He was a remarkably handsome man, dark, aquiline, and moustached—evidently the man of whom I had heard. He appeared to be in a great hurry, shouted to ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... what about?' said Farnborough. But he was much preoccupied at that moment in supplying Lady Sophia with bits of toast the exact size for balancing on the Bedlington's nose. For the benefit of his end of the table Paul Filey had begun to describe the new one-man show of caricatures of famous people just opened in Bond Street. The 'mordant genius,' as he called it, of this new man—an ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... the ocean rolled between them, and the spheres in which each moved were so widely separated and the years had come and gone, she was yet calculating and balancing the probabilities, that they might meet again and the wrong of ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... above assumed represented by Z, then if the mine be efficiently managed the value of the mine is A X Y Z. What actual amounts should be attached to X, Y, Z is a matter of judgment. There is no prescription for good judgment. Good judgment rests upon a proper balancing of evidence. The amount of risk in X, Y, Z is purely a question of how much these factors are required to represent in money,—in effect, how much more ore must be found, or how many feet the ore must extend in depth; ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... luxuriously: it was pleasant to be able to say, with an air of balancing relative advantages, "Really, on the baby's account I shall be almost sorry; but if we do go, there's Kate Erskine's house... she'll let us ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... meditations assist us. The daily habit of balancing and introspection enables a man to read and analyse his own heart, its strength and weakness. He becomes familiar with the springs and levers that move it, the storms that convulse and the sunshine that gladdens the mysterious world within his ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... think, descend from these high regions, where we are in danger of being lost in the clouds, to firm ground and clear light. Let us look at this question like legislators, and after fairly balancing conveniences and inconveniences, pronounce between the existing law of copyright, and the law now proposed to us. The question of copyright, Sir, like most questions of civil prudence, is neither black nor white, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... equal advantage of his fellows. Sailors sprang farther into the rigging or crawled out to the end of the bowsprits; the windows of the warehouses were thrown up, the clerks and employees standing on the sills, balancing themselves by the shutters; even the skylights were burst open, men and boys crawling out edging their way along the ridge-poles of the roofs or holding to the chimneys. Every inch of standing- ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and his knees chafed sore against the branches in the craft's bottom. There was, however, no respite—the moment they slackened their exertions they would drift to lee—and he held on, keeping awkward stroke with Jake, while Lisle swung the balancing ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... many loud voices. Through the iron lattice of the second door he saw the wondering, terrified countenances of the city guard, who were endeavoring to unloose the chains. With one bound Trenck was beside his door, balancing in his right hand a large stone, and in the left his broken knife. He cried ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... criminal wing of the I. W. W. stands for? ARE votes for women worth the similar evils which British suffragettes are drifting into? Sometimes a cause is so important that almost any act is justified in its advancement. But such cases are rare, at least in modern life. Always there must be a balancing of good and evil. And the trouble with the attitude of mind which we have illustrated is that the end sought is usually not so all-important as to warrant the grave evils which its seekers cause. When the Titanic was sinking, the boat's ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... no attention except to the singular card, which he continued to turn over and over, balancing it on his fingers and holding it now at arm's-length and then near his nose, with one eye squinted as if he were trying to look through a hole in ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... at the lion which assails him from behind, his body is naturally and gracefully bent, while his charioteer, being engaged in urging his horses forward, leans naturally in the opposite direction, thus contrasting with the main figure and balancing it. The lion immediately behind the chariot is outlined with great spirit and freedom; his head is masterly; the fillings up of the body, however, have too much conventionality. As he rises to attack the monarch, he conducts ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... who must have been as poor a manager as he had been an artiste. I gave a short performance for him at the Ambigu Theatre. The stage was only lighted by the wretched servante, a little transportable lamp. About a yard in front of me I could see M. Faille balancing himself on his chair, one hand on his waistcoat and the fingers of the other hand in his enormous nostrils. This disgusted me horribly. Lambert Thiboust was seated near him, his handsome face smiling as he ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... thrill of hope, she was hardly conscious of the suffocating smoke which now filled the cabin, stinging her eyes so that she could hardly see, or of the heat which with her exertions had sent the perspiration streaming down her face. For now, balancing herself with great care, she moved her tortured arms, half numb with pain, up and down against the rusty edges. A sharp pain and she bit her lips,—readjusting herself to her task. But she felt the saw cutting ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... make out what Jack was about, and seemed to have an idea that he had run away from his ship. Jack was not sorry to encourage this. The black was evidently balancing in his mind whether he should make most by giving him up and claiming a reward, or helping him to hide, and then getting possession of any wealth he might have about him. He, in the most friendly way, led Jack into his house. It was very neatly built ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... daybreak to the humming of wind; and looked forth on a leaden sky, on the river ruffled and clapping in small waves against a shrill north-easter, and on countless birds in flocks rising from the meadows and balancing their wings against it. Before breakfast-time the weather had turned to heavy rain. But this mattered nothing; she had a day's work indoors ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... ready for halos," Porter said, "and wings, but I can't see myself balancing a spike ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... plot, a tree had decayed and fallen several years before, and a young apple tree had been planted to take its place. This tree was now about five inches in diameter, and forked about five to six feet from the ground. In the crotch of this small tree, a foot dangling on either side, sat Ruth, balancing herself as best she could while Jerry, the new Southdown buck, was prancing back and forth, jumping alternately at one foot, then at the other, as she let them hang ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... woman. I don't want to go upstairs. I'm a free woman; tell me," she said, balancing herself with difficulty and staring at Esther with dull, fishy eyes, "tell me if I'm not a free woman? What do I want ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... Henry was within an inch of overturning his frail craft with the precious freight, but he persisted, and by skillfully balancing himself and the raft too he succeeded at last. Then he was compelled to lie perfectly still, with his arms outstretched and his feet in the water. He was flat upon his back and he could look at only the heavens, which offered to his ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... but I knew that both of us were glad when presently we rode into a steeper country, and among its folds and carvings lost all sight of the plain. He had not slept, I found. His explanation was that the packs needed better balancing, and after that he had gone up and down the stream on the chance of trout. But his haunted eyes gave me the real reason—they spoke of Steve, no matter what he spoke of; it was to be no ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... seeks another dwelling,—only to find its inmates asleep at noontide! Robust forms, with manly brow nodding on cushioned [15] chairs, their feet resting on footstools, or, flat on their backs, lie stretched on the floor, dreaming away the hours. Balancing on one foot, with eyes half open, the porter starts up in blank amazement and looks at the Stranger, calls out, rubs his eyes,—amazed beyond [20] measure that anybody is animated with a purpose, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... table that holds the coffee urn is the balancing point of your dinner. If the coffee is a "little off" for some reason or other—probably it's the coffee's own fault—things don't seem as good as they might; but when it is "up to taste" the meal is a pleasure from start to finish. If the "balancing point" ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the issues which divided the Protestant denominations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries still vital enough to justify the continuance of the divisions? Summarize the evils of the divisions and their counter-balancing good. ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... tension is utilized for balancing at every instant the weight of the ribbon unwound, and thus causing the float to immerse itself in the water to a constant degree. The ribbon, B, is provided throughout its length with equidistant apertures that exactly correspond to tappets ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... wasted in the preliminaries. When Falconnet saw us he dropped his second's arm and began to make ready. I gave my sword to Jennifer, and the seconds went apart together. There was some measuring and balancing of weapons, ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... help with hand and heart (And a kindness no balancing prudence bounds), Fed me and petted me, let me depart, And lent me at parting five hundred pounds. We started as if for an airing gay, No coachman or footman, not even Jane; The husband drove us the whole of the way, And saw me safe in the Liverpool train. The tears of my friend lie wet on my ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... other slaves looked at one another, stupefied: they had recognised Vaninka's voice. As for Ivan, he flung himself back in his chair, balancing himself ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... what the law of mine is. If a man were to present himself to me, I should rely on that instinct you so much despise, and I am certain that the balancing, see-saw method would be fatal. It would disclose a host of reasons against any conclusion, and I should ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... accursed bowl to his lips—put into such a hand the pencil, and it can sketch, as can no one else, the darkness, the fire, the wild terror, the headlong pitch, and the hell of those who have surrendered themselves to iniquity. While we dare only come near the edge, and, balancing ourselves a while, look off, and our head swims, and our breath catches,—those can tell the story best who have fallen to the depths with wilder dash than glacier from the top of a Swiss cliff, and stand, in their agony, looking up for a relief that comes not, and straining their ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... gate. This point of cessation was never twice in a week at the same spot; and Sabre found great interest in seeing every day exactly where it would be, and by intense wriggling of his front wheel and prodigious feats of balancing, squeezing out of the machine's momentum the last possible fraction of an inch. There was a magnificent distance record when, on one single occasion only, he had been deposited plumb in line with his own gate; and there was a divertingly lamentable shortage record, touched ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... actual Blougram offered tempting points of contact with that strenuous ideal of life which he was later to preach through the lips of "Rabbi ben Ezra." Even what was most problematic in him, his apparently sincere profession of an outworn creed, suggested the difficult feat of a gymnast balancing on a narrow edge, or forcibly ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... hugely. If the hill is steep enough they may even find themselves lying flat on their backs or standing on their heads! But no such luck. Presently they are standing as nearly upright as it is ever possible to stand, and the tank is balancing on the top of the slope. The driver is not expert as yet, and we go over with an awful jolt and tumble forward. This ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... then suddenly brightened. "Katy and Gertie haven't got a brother anyhow!" she said half aloud, balancing advantages. ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... the green sward in front of the dwellings of Amminadab and Naashon, herds were surrounded by pens, stakes and posts were driven into the hard ground, awnings were stretched, cows were fastened to ropes, cattle and sheep were led to water, fires were lighted, and long lines of women, balancing jars on their heads, with their slender, beautifully curved arms, went to the well behind the old sycamore or to the side of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Peirce told me it was always allowed for in the building of dams. Nay, for my own part, I would venture to affirm that not only metre but even rhyme itself was not without suggestion in outward nature. Look at the pine, how its branches, balancing each other, ray out from the tapering stem in stanza after stanza, how spray answers to spray in order, strophe, and antistrophe, till the perfect tree stands an embodied ode, Nature's triumphant vindication ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... plainly why mathematics cannot be a substitute for Logic, much less for Metaphysics—i.e. transcendental Logic, and why therefore Cambridge has produced so few men of genius and original power since the time of Newton.—Not only it does 'not' call forth the balancing and discriminating powers ('that' I saw long ago), but it requires only 'attention', not ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... were removed from their trestles and piled in a corner, and the hall cleared for the entertainments that frequently followed the dinner. These consisted of feats of conjuring by the "joculators," balancing and tumbling by the women who wandered about seeking a livelihood by such means, or dancing by the ladies of the household and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... eye than that of envy; among whom must be many who, for the smallest hope of the meanest dividend in plunder, would readily join in any attempts upon a body of wealth in which they could hardly look to have any share, except in a general scramble. Instead of balancing the power of the active chicaners in the other assembly, these curates must necessarily become the active coadjutors, or at best the passive instruments, of those by whom they had been habitually guided in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... balancing his half-smoked cigar between the fingers, as he blew a fragrant cloud to the cloudless ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... about a simple matter?" Only a man who knows Russia very well, and who has a genuine affection for the Russian character, could have written these chapters. And I am ready to admit that they are more useful than many miles of appreciation in the delicate balancing manner of, say, an ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... read. Bob had gone to bed; Malcolm and Dade were somewhere outside. Calumet had started to go with them, but had remained when Betty had told him quietly that she wanted to talk to him on a matter of importance. She sat opposite him now, unconcernedly balancing a knife on the edge of a coffee cup, while she waited for him to ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of her own picture—had lent herself in an unusual degree to the display of this false virtuosity. The picture was one of Jack's "strongest," as his admirers would have put it—it represented, on his part, a swelling of muscles, a congesting of veins, a balancing, straddling and straining, that reminded one of the circus-clown's ironic efforts to lift a feather. It met, in short, at every point the demand of lovely woman to be painted "strongly" because she was tired ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... from one foot to the other, his body balancing forward, his arms swinging limply in front of him. With his eyes, he seemed to undress the man, as though choosing ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... balancing herself dangerously with two cushions on the arm of a big rocker. Eveley called Kitty the one drone in her circle of friendship, for Kitty was born to golden spoons and lived a life of comfort and ease and freedom from ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... from being drawn into the earth. Last of all, the point in a body from which the attraction of gravitation acts, is not necessarily the centre of the body, but rather what is known as its centre of gravity, that is to say, the balancing point of all the matter ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... frequent than usual, but again there was a crunch of approaching feet. Again he leaned forward, and the sparks in his eyes enlarged, and faded, as two fat women wobbled over the unsteady stones, exclaiming and balancing themselves, oblivious to the ...
— The Blue Man - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... poor, was a dead leveller; and that, on the other hand, the life to come would raise the poor to the level of the rich. It was a pity that there was no phrase in the language to justify him in carrying out the antithesis, and so balancing his sentence like a rope-walker, by saying that life was a live leveller. The sermon ended with a solemn warning: "Those who neglect the gospel-scheme, and never think of death and judgment — be they rich or poor, be they wise or ignorant ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Blount was balancing the spoon on the edge of his coffee-cup and scowling abstractedly. It was the first little discord in the filial harmony—this evidence that the powers were at work; almost a breach of confidence. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... showed the most adventurous spirit and ardent ambition to excel his mates, to do deeds of skill and dexterity that others could not do. When still a child he was running up an unsupported eight-foot ladder, and balancing himself upon the topmost round in a way to startle the cleverest professional athletes. A little later, getting hold of any old rope, stretching it in any old way as a "slack-rope," he was busy perfecting himself as a slack-rope walker. Naturally, ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... easily account for the censures bestowed on the government of Sparta, by those who considered it merely on the side of its forms. It was not calculated to prevent the practice of crimes, by balancing against each other the selfish and partial dispositions of men; but to inspire the virtues of the soul, to procure innocence by the absence of criminal inclinations, and to derive its internal peace from the indifference of its ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... I said, balancing on the edge of the rain barrel, "is there something in this barn you do ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... argument which limits and narrows the domain of reason; which excludes dry, abstract, passionless reason—with its appeals to considerations remote from common experience, its demands for severe reflection, its balancing and long chains of thought—from pronouncing on what seems to belong to the flesh and blood realities of life as we know it. Against this tyrannical influence, which may be in a vulgar and popular as in a scientific form, which may be the dull result ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... was still scooting downward, its speed even greater than that of the broken flier. When the man saw it swinging past and below him, he instantly clambered, burden and all, to the edge of the cockpit. For a second he stood, balancing precariously; and then, half jumping, half diving, he ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... and had left no instructions about me. So for two hours I sat in the waiting-room, balancing my cap on my knee, and trying to work up the spots on the ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... and on the whole most frequent type of musical sentence or period consists of eight measures, subdivided into two balancing phrases of four measures[51] each—the component parts plainly indicated by various cadences and endings soon to be explained. These four-measure phrases are often, though not invariably, still further subdivided into two sections of two measures each. Let us now corroborate ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... reduced the value of Australia's net farm production, but rising world commodity prices are likely to boost commodity exports by 15% to $42.4 billion in 1995/96, according to government statistics. Short-term economic problems include a balancing of output growth and inflationary pressures and the stimulation of ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... battle and blow up our ships with their mines. We patiently destroy the mines which swim away from our neighbors' territorial waters and land upon our shores. In short, we perform a very difficult act of balancing as well as we can. But it seems to us that under difficult circumstances we are following the only correct road which can lead to the ultimate goal which we wish to reach—the lasting respect of all those who will judge us without prejudice ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... hard—very hard, if we were to reckon by the number of hours he spent in his own rooms over his books with his oak sported—hard, even though we should only reckon by results. For, though scarcely an hour passed that he was not balancing on the hind legs of his chair with a vacant look in his eyes, and thinking of anything but Greek roots or Latin constructions, yet on the whole he managed to get through a good deal, and one evening, for the first time since ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... foreign courts, and secured to her a controlling influence upon the traffic of the world; by developments of her military genius under the greatest of all the great generals of modern times; and by naval achievements that snatched into her hands the balancing trident of the seas,—to the place she still holds (how much longer she may hold it remains to be seen) as the leading power of the world. If she has to relinquish that position, it will only be to a power that is true to the spirit, and is not ashamed of the name, of a republic. The ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... below zero. Feeble-looking rabbits scud away over the snow, lithe and elastic, as if glorying in the frosty, sparkling weather and sure of their dinners. I have seen gray squirrels dragging ears of corn about as heavy as themselves out of our field through loose snow and up a tree, balancing them on limbs and eating in comfort with their dry, electric tails spread airily over their backs. Once I saw a fine hardy fellow go into a knot-hole. Thrusting in my hand I caught him and pulled him out. As soon as he guessed what I was up to, he took the end of my ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... hand, desired that a potato might be brought. The largest from the store was presented. It was then lashed with a piece of twine to the letters, now transposed into a tidy brown-paper parcel, which P——, balancing in the palm of his left hand, suggested was not of sufficient weight to reach the ship. We were not long at a loss, for the cook appeared, grim and smiling, with a tolerable-sized coal exposed to view and approbation, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... along in boats of bark no bigger than a cocked hat. These strips of bark are good for carriage and bad for carriage; I mean they are very easily carried on a man's back ashore, but they won't carry a man on the water so well, and sitting in them is like balancing on a straw. These absurd vehicles have come down to these blockheads from their fathers, so they won't burn them and build according to reason. They commonly paddle in companies of three; so then whenever one is purled the other two come on each side of him, each takes a hand and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... coal of fire with the tongs, and blew it fiercely, to light a lamp by. When it was alight, she set it on the chimney-shelf, revealing thereby a man at the back of the room, balancing his chair on two legs against the wail; his feet were on its highest round, and he twirled ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... was enveloped in reeds, and at a loss which way to go, the soft ripple of breaking waves struck my ear like sweet music. The sea was telling me of its proximity. Carefully balancing myself, I stood up in the cranky canoe, and peering over the grassy thickets, saw before me the broad waters of Helena Sound. The fresh salt breeze from the ocean struck upon my forehead, and nerved me to a renewal of my efforts to get within a region of higher land, and to a place ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... on the grating and, hands in pocket, balancing myself jauntily to the heave and roll of the plunging hull as I continued to gaze contemplatively at the windy sky away on ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... a knot were balancing themselves on the connecting beams of the box-cars. Warned by their officers, they laughed; begged by the conductors, they swore. Suddenly there was a jolt, the headway of the cars jammed them together, and three red-legged gentlemen were mashed between them—flat ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... monster laughed immoderately again,) at the pleasant thought of seeing them both headless, and that with so little trouble to himself, (uno suo nutu,) he could have both their throats cut. No doubt he was continually balancing the arguments for and against such little escapades; nor had any person a reason for security in the extraordinary obligations, whether of hospitality or of religious vows, which seemed to lay him under some peculiar restraints in that case above all others; for such circumstances ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... clamored for Erick's attention. He felt something under his nose from which came various odors. It was an enormous bunch of fire-red and yellow flowers, which Kaetheli held out to him, who with one foot on the step was balancing over the colonel, and called to Erick: "Here, Erick, you must take a nosegay from the garden with you, and when you come back, be sure you come and see ...
— Erick and Sally • Johanna Spyri
... of ankles, what an occasion to a truly chaste writer like ourself of touching that nice brink and yet never tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approximating something 'not quite proper,' while like a skilful posture master, balancing between decorums and their opposites, he keeps the line from which a hair's breadth deviation is destruction.... That conceit arrided us most at that time, and still tickles our midriff to remember where allusively to the flight of Astroea we pronounced—in reference to the stockings still—that ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... Perilous balancing feats and a high degree of skill were evidently demanded of him who would journey en cacolet. Requiring thus a special training, so to speak, as well as a nice equivalence in weight between passenger and driver difficult to always realize, its use is not likely to supersede that ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... success. Almost before the iron door had struck the floor of the corridor there leaped into the opening the burly figure of the turnkey. In one hand he held a revolver, in the other a lantern. Lifting the lantern above his head, he stood balancing himself upon the fallen grating. Hanging to his belt, Roddy saw a bunch of keys. The sight of the keys went to his head like swift poison. For them he suddenly felt himself capable of murder. The ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... exists that there were very skilful performers on the tight-rope (funambuli) among the ancient Romans. Modern rope-walkers (e.g. Blondin) or wire-dancers generally use a pole, loaded at the ends, or some such assistance in balancing, and by shifting this are enabled to maintain, or readily to recover, their ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and balancing over every step which we took worthy of a diplomatist, we finally stood upon the drawbridge of the castle. Here the savage customs of the rude days in which it was built immediately impress the beholder. Traces remain of the ponderous iron portcullis, heavy wooden bars, arrow-holes, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... set to work he recovered his equipoise. He never felt better than when he was engaged on some long work, methodically planned out beforehand, so many pages to so many hours every morning, and he compared this work to a balancing-pole, which enabled him to maintain his equilibrium in the midst of daily miseries, weaknesses, and mistakes. So that he attributed entirely to the idleness in which he had been living for some weeks past, the ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... sun goes to bide behind the bell-tower, flooding the cloudless, luminous blue-green heavens with orange and gold, when pastures and the shadows of trees merged in a fairy tinted blue haze unite in wondrous harmony - when the milkers come home with heavy tread, balancing at their sides the pails of cobalt blue - when all that sounds is harmonious from the striking of the clock on the tower to the rattling of a homeward driving cart, and all that breathes from the coarse ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... must be powerless to make or to unmake the marks that showed the cliffs to have once been one, and to have been violently torn apart. Next, heat (supposing frost to be the root-conception) was obviously used merely as a balancing phrase, and thunder simply as the inevitable rhyme to asunder. I have not seen this matter alluded to, though it may have been mentioned, and it is certainly not important enough to make any serious deduction from the pleasure afforded by a passage that is in other respects ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... living upon nothing whatever, of keeping out of the way of duns, and telling lies with aptness and outward gaiety. But a year of giving smart little dinners and going to smart big dinners ended in a condition somewhat akin to the feat of balancing oneself on the ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... grimace and shrugged his shoulders, yet left the insect quite as wonderful as it was before. Mother looked up from her knitting with a gentle smile and said, "Does it, darling? I hadn't noticed." Aunt Emily, balancing her parasol to keep the sun away, observed in an educational tone of voice, "My dear Tim, what foolish questions you ask! It's because its wings are so large compared to the rest of its body. It can't help itself, you see." ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... broad sill, Mr. Lindsay stepped out, established himself securely on the ladder, and, drawing the girl to the ledge, took her firmly in his arms, balancing himself with some difficulty as he ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... said Orne. "Government is a dubious glory. You pay for your power and wealth by balancing on the sharp edge of the blade. That great amorphous thing out there—the people—has turned and swallowed many governments. The only way you can stay in power is by giving good government. Otherwise—sooner on later—your turn comes. I can remember my mother making that point. It's one of the ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... dropped the ruler, which he had been idly balancing on his forefinger, with a crash, and shot a warning glance ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a barrel over a "teter plank" with her fore-feet, and Prince and Pope performed the difficult feat, and one which required mutual understanding and confidence, of see-sawing away up in air on the plank; first face to face, carefully balancing, and then the latter slowly turned on the space less than twenty inches wide, without disturbing the delicate poise. This he considers one of the most remarkable, because each horse must act with reference to the other, and the understanding between them must be so perfect that no fatal false ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... yard or so of Irish,—was suddenly dazzled, as I am, by a luxury wholly unforeseen and eagerly coveted,—a splendid lace veil, or a ravishing cashmere, or whatever else you ladies desiderate,—and while she was balancing between prudence and temptation, your foreman exclaimed: 'Don't stand shilly-shally'—come, I ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and therefore little chance for the garrulous corporal to study the face of his companion, even if he wished to do so. The risk was considerable; but Jen Galbraith was fired by that spirit of self- sacrifice which has held a world rocking to destruction on a balancing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... while directly after there was a heavy swirl just beneath her bows, followed by the sudden protrusion of the huge grinning head of a fierce crocodile, the monster bent on mischief, and receiving a most unexpected salute, for Joe Cross was standing balancing his boat-hook in his hands, ready to lay it down along the thwart, but, quick almost as lightning, he gave it a twirl as he rested one foot upon the gunwale and drove it, harpoon fashion, crash into ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... offered of these phenomena? To say that they exhibit a "nutritional relation" brought about by a "balancing of forces" is merely to give a new denomination to the unexplained fact. The changes are, of course, brought about by a "nutritional" process, and the symmetry is undoubtedly the result of a "balance ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... fully acquainted with the advances in surgery and pathology their American brethren have the credit of having made within the past few years. They will find it illustrated in the government buildings and elsewhere; and they have an ample quid pro quo to offer from their own researches. The balancing of opinions at the proposed medical congress and in private intercourse must tend to free medical science from what remnants of empiricism still disfigure it, to perfect diagnosis and to trace with precision the operation of all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... reading continued. The whole journey from door to door, in spite of the anguished care of every step, had consumed scarcely a minute. She was turning, the balancing arms outstretched. Deep down in her chest there was the beginning of a sensation, muscles relaxing, the promise of a long breath ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay |
