"Diurnal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gently fanned our fevered temples and wafted to us a thousand delicate perfumes. The birds, glancing like living gems between the clumps of foliage, were saluting each other blithely as they set out upon their diurnal quest for food. The bees were already busy among the gorgeous flowers; butterflies—more lovely even than the delicate blossoms above which they poised themselves—flitted merrily about from bough to bough; all nature, in fact, was rejoicing at the advent of a new day. ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... wretchedness in their garb. In towns, the more respectable inhabitants were dressed in mourning, thus announcing, that the death of some relation gave them a deep private interest in the public sorrow. The unemployed manufacturers crowded the streets, eagerly perusing libellous pamphlets, or diurnal chronicles, disputing furiously on points which none could clearly explain or indeed comprehend, asking for news as if it were bread, and shewing by the lean ferocity of their faces, and the squalid negligence of their attire, that from unpitied poverty sprung all the virulent passions ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... shade, 180 And continents of sand, will turn his gaze To mark the windings of a scanty rill That murmurs at his feet? The high-born soul Disdains to rest her heaven-aspiring wing Beneath its native quarry. Tired of earth And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft Through fields of air; pursues the flying storm; Rides on the vollied lightning through the heavens; Or, yoked with whirlwinds and the northern blast, Sweeps the long tract of day. Then high she soars 190 The blue ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... of renunciation, and was as familiar with the wreck of each day's wishes as with the diurnal setting of the sun. If her earthly career had taught her few book philosophies it had at least well practised her in this. Yet her experience had consisted less in a series of pure disappointments than in a series of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... quotation read as follows—'judgement-seat in the interim, I should, year after year, quarter after quarter, month after month (not to mention sundry petty periodicals of still quicker revolution, 'or weekly or diurnal') have been for at least seventeen years consecutively dragged forth by these into the foremost rank of the proscribed, and forced to abide the brunt of abuse, for faults directly opposite, and which I certainly had not. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to themselves, and others, and instead of celebrating, censure their superiors. It is by a curious person, and industrious friend of mine, observ'd, that the sap of this tree rises and descends with the sun's diurnal course (which it visibly slackens in the night) and more plentifully at the root on the south side, though those roots cut on the north were larger, and less distant from the body of the tree; and not only distill'd from the ends, which were next the stem, but from those which were ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... on me, From Thy throne eternal; Make pure unto Thee This my hymn diurnal. I my grateful voice would blend, With nature's ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... detailing in precise biographical manner his experience with bourgeoisie and peasant, ecclesiastic and soldier. He recorded also minutely the incidents and popular events associated with travel, as study and the tide of time goaded him onward, the wave of diurnal events lying upon the open page of history, here dishevelled, here streaked with adverse episode, and here becalmed. The hour being late, a hearty vote of thanks was accorded the lecturer, and the hearing of the conclusion of a most ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... and exempt from seizure, seventy droll stories, in that reservoir of nature, his brain. By the gods! they are precious yarns, well rigged out with phrases, carefully furnished with catastrophes, amply clothed with original humour, rich in diurnal and nocturnal effects, nor lacking that plot which the human race has woven each minute, each hour, each week, month, and year of the great ecclesiastical computation, commenced at a time when the sun could scarcely see, and the moon waited to be shown her way. These seventy subjects, which he ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... McHenry, May 29th, he says: "I begin my diurnal course with the sun; if my hirelings are not in their places at that time, I send them messages of sorrow for their indisposition; having put these wheels in motion, I examine the state of things further. ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... of the weekly journals contrasts refreshingly with the license of their diurnal brethren. Sporting papers are nearly the same all the world over; but, in the rest of these placid periodicals, there is little of violence or virulence to be found. They are enthusiastic about the war, of course, and occasionally ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... methods employed allow the diurnal variations both of velocity and altitude to be successfully measured. The velocity observations confirm the results that have been obtained from mountain stations—that, though the general travel of the middle and higher clouds is much greater than ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... approximated so near to my nose, that I was burnt out of my reverie; I took the last save—all whiffs, tried to hit an old woman's cap with the end of it, as I tossed it into the street, and retreated to the diurnal labour of shaving—of all human miseries, certainly, the "unkindest cut of all"—especially when the maids have borrowed your razor, during your absence, to pare down the apex ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... nerves not from without, but from within, by the agency of a disordered brain. These the reason, hitherto unimpaired, combats at first, especially when they are nocturnal only; but being reproduced, and becoming diurnal, the judgment succumbs under the morbid impression produced so repeatedly. These are the ordinary antecedent symptoms characteristic of the incubation of insanity; to which are frequently added somatic exaltation, or, in popular language, physical excitability—a disposition ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... at first from giving more than a passing attention to the magnificent scene; but after a while, encouraged by the Brahmin's exhortation, and yet more by the example of his calm and assured air, I was able to take a more leisurely view of it. At first, as we partook of the diurnal motion of the earth, and our course was consequently oblique, the same portion of the globe from which we had set out, continued directly under us; and as the eye stretched in every direction over Asia and its seas, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... very important factor, and we must hasten to find it, and render it due homage. It should be added that its special immobility, in the prolongation of the Earth's axis, is merely an effect caused by the diurnal movements of our planet. Our readers are of course aware that it is the earth that turns and not the sky. But evidence of this will be given later on. In looking at the Pole-Star, the South is behind one, the East to the right, and ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... is not seemly in his aurelia state. This mutability is allowed to a foreign negotiator; but when a great politician condescends publicly to instruct his own countrymen on a matter which may fix their fate forever, his opinions ought not to be diurnal, or even weekly. These ephemerides of politics are not made for our slow and coarse understandings. Our appetite demands a piece of resistance. We require some food that will stick to the ribs. We call for sentiments to which we can attach ourselves,—sentiments ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... August 1534, is the date assigned for the trial, "befoir the Bishop of Ross, be ane commission of the Bischope of Sanctandrois," of Kirk and others. (Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 18.) Of these persons, Calderwood informs us, that Sir William Kirk, as his name denotes, was a priest; but "whether he compeared and abjured, or fled, we can find no certaintie;" that Adam Dayes, or Dease, was "a ship-wright that dwelt on the north side of the bridge ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... on the wing, never resting except in chimneys of houses, or hollow trees, where they nest. Tips of tail feathers with sharp spines, used as props. They show their kinship with the goatsuckers in their nocturnal as well as diurnal habits, their small bills and large mouths for catching insects on the wing, and their weak feet. Gregarious, especially at the nesting ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... greater dilatation, be likewise preserved, whether or not these modifications were strictly simultaneous? These individuals would subsequently intercross and blend their respective advantages. By such slight successive changes, the eye of a diurnal bird would be brought into the condition of that of an owl, which has often been advanced as an excellent instance of adaptation. Short-sight, which is often inherited, permits a person to see distinctly a minute object at so near a distance that it would be indistinct ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... form the centripetal force, which keeps us in ours. Let the eccentric will fly off at ever so wide a tangent for a time, back it must come to a regular diurnal path, or wander away into the "blackness of darkness." And if these daily duties and cares come to us robed in the shining livery of Law, should we not accept them as bearers of ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... general avoid danger. Its food seems to be vegetable, the only contents of the stomach being the roots of the haryalee grass. Its habits are solitary (except when the female is bringing up her young) and diurnal, feeding in the mornings and evenings." Dr. Jerdon says: "The Yanadees of Nellore catch this rat, surrounding the bush and seizing it as it issues forth, which its comparatively slow actions enable them ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... he was abroad by day. And inconsistent as it may seem with the hours of the night watch and the many references to the rising of the morning star, it is no singular exception. I could never find a case of another who had seen this ghost, diurnal and arboreal in its habits; but others have heard the fall of the tree, which seems the signal of its coming. Mr. Donat was once pearling on the uninhabited isle of Haraiki. It was a day without a breath of wind, such ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these, animal life seems most directly related; to the latter, the life of the vegetal orders. It is evident that the forms of animal life on the globe are necessarily determined by the periodic law of the Earth's diurnal rotation. This accounts for the alternations of waking and sleeping, working and resting, and so forth. In like manner the more inert vitality of the vegetable kingdom is determined by the periodic law of the Earth's annual revolution. When fanciful ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... displaying the word 'Office,' it was clear that Mr Ralph Nickleby did, or pretended to do, business of some kind; and the fact, if it required any further circumstantial evidence, was abundantly demonstrated by the diurnal attendance, between the hours of half-past nine and five, of a sallow-faced man in rusty brown, who sat upon an uncommonly hard stool in a species of butler's pantry at the end of the passage, and always had a pen behind his ear when he ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... they abound in every cave and subterranean passage, in the tunnels on the highways, in the galleries of the fortifications, in the roofs of the bungalows, and the ruins of every temple and building. At sunset they are seen issuing from their diurnal retreats to roam through the twilight in search of crepuscular insects, and as night approaches and the lights in the rooms attract the night-flying lepidoptera, the bats sweep round the dinner-table and carry off their tiny prey within the glitter of the lamps. Including ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... in times more favourable for a concentrated mind than in this age of scattered thoughts and of the fragments of genius, the custom long prevailed: and we their posterity are still reaping the benefit of their lonely hours and diurnal records. It is always pleasing to recollect the name of Alfred, and we have deeply to regret the loss of a manual which this monarch, so strict a manager of his time, yet found leisure to pursue: it would have interested us much more even than ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... men. The ethos of the satiric persona was something they could not understand. Although some of the Dunces knew their classics well and although all of them, we may presume, read the Roman satirists, one did not, typically, in Grub Street consult one's Horace with diurnal hand; one consulted the public. Literature to them was sold. They were not deeply concerned about absolute standards of right and wrong, about works of imagination which justify an entire civilization, about the problem of ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... exclaims "It may be impossible, but it happens every day. Shall I not believe my own senses?" The answer is, No, not if it can be explained how the senses are deceived. Otherwise, we should still believe, as, till some few centuries ago, the world did believe, that the diurnal motion was in the sun, and not in the earth. Otherwise we must subscribe to the philosophy of ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... Sexual Orgasm.—This is a very cumbrous rendering of the German Pollution. In English we greatly need a general term, first, to denote all involuntary emissions of semen, whether nocturnal or diurnal; and, secondly, to denote involuntary sexual orgasm in the female as well as in the male. In the case of the female, the term "seminal emission" is inapplicable; but the term "pollution" may be applied in English (as it is in German) to such phenomena in either sex. By American writers ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... disinter Kosinski, whom I felt pretty certain of finding at a certain coffee-stall where, at that advanced hour, he was in the habit of making his one and only diurnal, or rather nocturnal repast. This coffee-stall was situated at the corner of Tottenham Court Road and a side street, and there, sure enough, stood Kosinski, munching sardines on toast, and buns, and drinking coffee, ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... meridian, and vice versa. Declination is different for different places; it is at present west in Europe and Africa, and east in Asia and the greater part of North and South America. The declination is subject to (a) secular, (b) annual and (c) diurnal variations. These are classed as regular; others due to magnetic storms are transitory and are classed as irregular, (a) Secular variations. The following table shows the secular variations during some three hundred years at Paris. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... cruel firmament, With thy diurnal swegh that croudest ay, And hurtlest all from Est til Occident, That naturally wold ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... freshness that characterizes the air near a lake of cool water; the sweet serenity of my father's soul exhaled as a perfume from the dusty leaves I was unfolding. The journal of his life lay open before me; I could count the diurnal throbbings of that noble heart. I began to yield to the influence of a dream that was both sweet and profound, and in spite of the serious firmness of his character, I discovered an ineffable grace, the flower of kindness. While I read, the recollection of his death mingled with the ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... introductory pages include a rapid sketch of the methods of classifying Birds adopted by some of the most distinguished naturalists, in which their characteristics are stripped of the jargon of technicality and hard words: thus, "Diurnal" birds are explained as "preying in the day-time;" "Piscivorous, feeding upon fish;" "Passeres, or Sparrows;" "Columbae, or Pigeons," &c. An outline of Mr. Vigors's Quinary System, is also given, and the reader referred to proper sources for illustrations. The Editor then, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... thus that the decent burgess who, in 1572, kept The Diurnal of such daily events as he deemed important, cautiously records the death of the great Scottish Reformer. The sorrows, the "cumber" of which Knox was "alleged" to bear the blame, did not end with his death. They persisted in the conspiracies and rebellions of the earlier years of James VI.; they ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... at new, and in opposition at the full, an atmospheric spring-tide may be supposed to exist, and to exert some sort of influence. But the existence of any atmospheric tide at all is denied by some naturalists, and is at most very problematical; and the absence of regular diurnal fluctuations of the barometric pressure favours the negative of this proposition. But, granting that it were so, and that the moon, in what is conventionally called the beginning of its course, and again in the middle, at the full, did produce changes in the weather, surely the most sanguine ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... moments we stared at one another, then recovering myself I shouted, "Father—an owl!" For although I had never seen its like before I knew it was an owl. Not until that moment had I known any owl except the common burrowing-owl of the plain, a small grey-and-white bird, half diurnal in its habits, with a pretty dove-like voice when it hooted round the ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... 'Dialogues,' was so far from perceiving the mathematical relations from which Laplace deduced results so beautiful, so unequivocal, and so useful, that he taxed with frivolousness the vague idea which Kepler entertained of attributing to the moon's attraction a certain share in the production of the diurnal and periodical movements of the waters of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... several opinions touching the foundations of nature. Not for any exact truth that can be expected in those theories; for as the same phenomena in astronomy are satisfied by this received astronomy of the diurnal motion, and the proper motions of the planets, with their eccentrics and epicycles, and likewise by the theory of Copernicus, who supposed the earth to move, and the calculations are indifferently agreeable to both, so the ordinary face and view of experience ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... those exterior causes, which are competent to totally change its face, as the impulse of a comet may do, this globe contains within itself, a cause adequate to alter it entirely, since, besides the diurnal and sensible motion of the earth, it has one extremely slow, almost imperceptible, by which every thing must eventually be changed in it: this is the motion from whence depends the precession of the equinoctial points, observed by Hipparchus and ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... in this way, an object can be followed in its diurnal motion from east to west by turning on the polar axis alone. But if the greatest facility in use is required, this motion must be performed by clock-work. A telescope with this appendage will commonly cost one thousand dollars ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... proofs of its existence. Every thing that the Almighty has formed is practically useful; and is arranged in such a manner as to give the clearest indications, that it was designed to be turned to some useful purpose by man. The annual and diurnal motions of the earth in its orbit; the obliquity of its axis; the inequality of its surface, and the disposition and disruption of its strata, all shew the most consummate wisdom, and are severally ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... be tainted!" said her father to himself, but added, "—from her mother's side;" and his attacks upon her after this were at least diurnal. It was a relief to his feeling of having wronged her, to abuse her with justice. For a while she tried hard to convince him now that this now that that notion of her conduct, or of Gibbie's or Donal's, was mistaken: he would listen to nothing she said, continually ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... and sit and gaze awhile after our retreating visitors. They go from us silent as great white moths; but, silent themselves, they take, as they brought, all the noise and racket with them. Our revel is over; behind us the harbour lies almost deserted, and we row back to our diurnal peace. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Fromundus with great effect. It appears never to have occurred to him to test the matter by dropping a stone from the topmast of a ship. Bezenburg has mathematically demonstrated just such an aberration in falling bodies, as is mathematically required by the diurnal motion of the earth. See Jevons, Principles of Science, pp. 388, 389, second ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... and right good feeling to our diurnal and hebdomadal amusers and instructors, I cannot but consider that gazette and newspaper reviewers are insufficient and unsatisfactory judges of literature, if not indeed sometimes erring guides to the public taste; the main cause of this consisting ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... hobby and kestrel, and the peregrine and jet falcons. Many visitors from the country will be familiar with some of the sparrow-hawks in the next case (27). They may be often seen sweeping swiftly along near the earth, intent upon their prey. The last cases of diurnal birds of prey (28-30) contain the Harriers. These are birds of prey that meet their victims on the ground, and frequent bog-lands. The specimens here presented, include the secretary of the Cape of Good Hope; the chanting falcon from the same region; the ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... opposite of the c[a]rvaram tamas. The name of the moon-dog, and, by transfer, the dog of the night, is Cy[a]ma or Cy[a]va "black," not Cabala, nor Carvara. The association of the two dogs with day and night is the association of sun and moon with their respective diurnal divisions, and nothing more. Of Cimmerian gloom there can be nothing in the myth primarily, because it deals at the beginning with heaven, and not with hell; with an auspicious, and not a gloomy, ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... many experiments which firms with less space at their command would find it difficult to carry out on the same satisfactory scale. Such, for instance, is the system of racks in which the bottles repose while the wine undergoes its diurnal shaking. Instead of these racks being, as they commonly are, at almost upright angles, they are perfectly horizontal, which, in M. Werl's opinion, offers a material advantage, inasmuch as the bottles are all in readiness for disgorging at the same time instead of the ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... earth, part water, and being surrounded by the successive spheres of air and fire. Then follow in order the spheres of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the spheres of the fixed stars, and the outermost sphere embracing all and giving to the entire heaven the diurnal motion from east to west. He ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... succeed alternately; While the great mantle of the lights of night, Blanches the chariot of diurnal flames, As He who governs all, With everlasting laws, Puts down the high and raises up ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... dark-dispelling sun, Now thou art risen, and thy day begun. How shrink the shrouding mists before thy face, As up thou spring'st to thy diurnal race! How darkness chases darkness to the west, As shades of light on light rise radiant from thy crest! For thee, great source of strength, emblem of might, In hours of darkest gloom there is no night. Thou shinest on though clouds hide thee from sight, And ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... lying in a lull Between the mountains and the mountainous sea, I know not where, but which a dream diurnal Paints on my lids a moment till the hull Be lifted from the kernel And Slumber fed to me. Your foot-print is not there, Mnemosene, Though it would seem a ruined place and after Your lichenous heart, being full Of broken columns, caryatides Thrown ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... be admitted that the daily appearance and disappearance of the sun might very naturally be expressed by a myth of his death and resurrection; and writers who regard Osiris as the sun are careful to indicate that it is the diurnal, and not the annual, course of the sun to which they understand the myth to apply. Thus Renouf, who identified Osiris with the sun, admitted that the Egyptian sun could not with any show of reason be described as dead in winter. But if his daily ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... of getting off that marks the superiority of a hobby to a fad. The game that you feel obliged to play every day at the same hour ceases to amuse you as soon as you realize that it is a diurnal duty. Regular exercise is good for the muscles, but there must be a bit of pure fun mixed with the sport that ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... heart of the common life that he sang his rapturous lyrics of divine love. Here his works corroborate the traditional story of his life. Again and again he extols the life of home, the value and reality of diurnal existence, with its opportunities for love and renunciation; pouring contempt—upon the professional sanctity of the Yogi, who "has a great beard and matted locks, and looks like a goat," and on all who think it necessary to flee a world pervaded by ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... speaking, and what I rather desire for him is that he should produce the great book which he is generally pronounced capable of writing, and put his best self imperturbably on record for the advantage of society; because I should then have steady ground for bearing with his diurnal incalculableness, and could fix my gratitude as by a strong staple to that unvarying monumental service. Unhappily, Touchwood's great powers have been only so far manifested as to be believed in, not demonstrated. Everybody rates them highly, and ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... earth was so laid out by design, it was for some good reason. But what that reason may be, it will be difficult to shew. Perhaps this disposition may be of service to keep up a proper balance; or, it may assist toward the diurnal rotation of the earth, the free motions of the tides, &c.; or the water on one side may give a freer passage to the rays of the sun, and being convex and transparent, may concentrate, or at least condense, the solar rays internally, for some benefit to the land that lies on the other side."—This ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... the Park. Bears, as well as deer, adapt themselves to the exigencies of the situation; the grizzly, since the white man stole from him and the Indian the whole face of the earth, has become a night-ranging instead of a diurnal creature. The deer, we may safely rest assured, makes quite as close a study of humans as man does of the deer. It is a question of life and death with them that they should understand him and his methods. Both the deer ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... she now—no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, With rocks ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... turn; come round, come round again; beat, pulsate; alternate; intermit. Adj. periodic, periodical; serial, recurrent, cyclical, rhythmical; recurring &c. v.; intermittent, remittent; alternate, every other. hourly; diurnal, daily; quotidian, tertian, weekly; hebdomadal|, hebdomadary|; biweekly, fortnightly; bimonthly; catamenial|; monthly, menstrual; yearly, annual; biennial, triennial, &c.; centennial, secular; paschal, lenten, &c. regular, steady, punctual, regular as clockwork. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... changes. By the convergence and divergence of the lines of terrestrial magnetic force, he shows how the distribution of magnetism, in the earth's atmosphere, is effected. He applies his results to the explanation of the Annual and of the Diurnal Variation: he also considers irregular variations, including the action of magnetic storms. He discusses, at length, the observations at St. Petersburg, Greenwich, Hobarton, St. Helena, Toronto, and the Cape of Good Hope; believing that the facts, revealed by his experiments, furnish the key to ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... accepted definition, a day is local; it is limited to a single meridian. At some point on the earth's surface one day is always at its commencement and another always ending. Thus, while the earth makes one diurnal revolution, we have continually many days in different stages of progress ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... by a flat hub and eight radial spokes bent upward toward the ends at an angle of 45 deg.. The hub and spokes are supported by a vertical pivot, by means of which the operator is enabled to follow the diurnal motion of the sun, while a horizontal axle, secured to the upper end of the pivot, and held by appropriate bearings under the hub, enables him to regulate the inclination to correspond with the altitude of the luminary. The heater is composed of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... every village within three or four miles of the metropolis, may be remarked a tide of young men wending diurnal way to and from their respective desks and counters in the city, preceded by a ripple of errand-boys, and light porters, and followed by an ebb of plethoric elderly gentlemen in drab gaiters. Now these individuals compose—for the most part—that particular, yet indefinite class of people, who ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... the 29th came by the last mail, exactly, as heretofore, on the eighth day after the date of your last preceding. Whether it be invariably Sunday or not, at least it is always octo-diurnal. Pray get an eight-day clock, and then all family matters will move on in strict uniformity. Thank your husband for his letter ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... loss in Conversation among the Beau Monde next Winter, to send you an account of the present State of Wit in Town; which, without further Preface, I shall therefore endeavour to perform, and give you the Histories and Characters of all our Periodical Papers, whether Monthly, Weekly, or Diurnal, with the same freedom I used to send you our ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... Firmament, With thy diurnal sway that crowdest* aye, *pushest together, drivest And hurtlest all from East till Occident That naturally would hold another way; Thy crowding set the heav'n in such array At the beginning of this fierce voyage, That cruel Mars hath ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... lines, and, what is worse, often falls into contradiction and repetitions, which are almost unavoidable to all voluminous writers, and can only be forgiven to those retailers whose necessity compels them to diurnal scribbling, who load their meaning with epithets, and run into digressions, because (in the jockey phrase) it rids the ground, that is, covers a certain quantity of paper, to answer the demand of the day. A great part of Lord B.'s letters are designed to show his reading, which, indeed, appears ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... own diet every day, one thousand and one aspers, according to a former custom received from his ancestors; notwithstanding that otherwise his diurnal expense is very much, and not certainly known, which sum maketh sterling money by the year, two thousand one hundred and ninety-two pounds, three shillings, ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... new-made stars of mine Firm and secure for ever shine. Let these, my work, remain secure Long as the earth and heaven endure. This, all ye Gods, I crave: do you Allow the boon for which I sue." Then all the Gods their answer made: "So be it, Saint, as thou hast prayed. Beyond the sun's diurnal way Thy countless stars in heaven shall stay: And 'mid them hung, as one divine, Head downward shall Trisanku shine; And all thy stars shall ever fling Their rays attendant ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... increase of elevation, has a diurnal range, and depends upon the hour of the day, the changes being the greatest at mid-day and the early part of the afternoon, and decreasing to about sunset, when, with a clear sky, there is little or ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... the spirit of order contended against fearful odds. For Brodrick lived in his library, the long, book-lined, up-stairs room that ran half the length of the house on the north side. But even there, violate as he would his own sanctuary, the indestructible propriety renewed itself by a diurnal miracle. He found books restored to their place, papers sorted, everything an editor could want lying ready to his hand. For the spirit of order rose ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... nothing less than setting up a daily paper, on the plan of the "Times," but devoted entirely to Art, Literature, and Science,—Mental Progress, in short; I say on the plan of the "Times," for it was to imitate the mighty machinery of that diurnal illuminator. It was to be the Literary Salmoneus of the Political Jupiter, and rattle its thunder over the bridge of knowledge. It was to have correspondents in all parts of the globe; everything that ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... before breakfast, was accustomed to enter the room, and, with a word of greeting to his assembled family, perch his gold-rimmed glasses on his fine straight nose, and with the help of two book-markers find the places in the Bible and book of prayers to which the year in its diurnal course had brought him. The gong would sound, either immediately before or immediately after he had entered the room, the maids and the men who had been assembling in the hall would file in, he would throw a glance towards them over his glasses to see ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... the Archipelago; he flourished about 500 years before Christ, in the time of Tarquin, the last King of Rome. Pythagoras was the first among the Europeans who taught that the Earth and Planets turn round the Sun, which stands immovable in the centre;—that the diurnal motion of the Sun and Fixed Stars is not real, but apparent,—arising from the Earth's motion round its own axis, &c. After the time of ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... who to great learning, judgment, sagacity, and luminous fancy, joined unparalleled industry, gratified the British public for a long time with a diurnal paper wholly from his own pen, called "the Inspector." In the course of this work he gave some of the most admirable strictures upon the plays and players of his day. From that work we intend to give some select passages. The following is deserving of particular attention ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... patient is in greater spirits, or vivacity; because, as in drunkenness, the irritative motions are all increased, and a greater production of sensation is the consequence, which when in a certain degree, is pleasureable, as in the diurnal fever of weak ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Brown slept we do not know, but can imagine, for here is the Diurnal Record, made up in bed:—"December 29th, Saturday.—Dreamed Victoria Villa turned into a hydropathic establishment—that I was being frozen, thawed, and suffocated; did wake, this day, with an enlarged cheek—the influenza compelling me to keep ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... vertical sun is moved alternately from one tropic to the other, heat and cold, the original causes of evaporation and condensation, must be carried over all the globe, producing either annual seasons of rain or diurnal seasons of condensation and evaporation, or both these seasons, more or ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... and Stratoun were condemned and burned, "because, after great solicitation made by the king, they refused to abjure and recant" (Cattley's Foxe, iv. 579); but, on the other hand, the writer of the Diurnal of Occurrents (p. 18) and Bishop Lesley (History, 1830, p. 149) ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... mounting of the long-range guns which were to add to the safety of the place and the discomfiture of its besiegers. On the whole, the position was becoming somewhat serious, particularly for those whose nerves were unaccustomed to the uproar of diurnal thunderstorms. Lord Wolseley has somewhere said that "the effect of artillery fire is more moral than actual; it kills but very few, but its appalling noise, the way it tears down trees, knocks houses into small pieces, and mutilates the human frame when ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... agreed with her. On asking Paralis if there were any preparations to be made, he replied that it Would be necessary to pour a bottle of sea-water into each river a fortnight before the sacrifice, and that this ceremony was to be performed by Semiramis in person, at the first diurnal ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of those devoted persons who venture their lives in the deglutition of patent medicines (dolus latet in generalibus, there is deceit in the most of them) and thereafter are wonderfully preserved long enough to append their signatures to testimonials in the diurnal and hebdomadal prints. I say not this as covertly glancing at the authours of certain manuscripts which have been submitted to my literary judgment, (though an epick in twenty-four books on the "Taking of Jericho" might, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... instinct as ever I heard of, and likewise of adaptation in structure between two objects apparently so remote from each other in the scheme of nature as a crab and a cocoa-nut tree. The Birgos is diurnal in its habits; but every night it is said to pay a visit to the sea, no doubt for the purpose of moistening its branchiae. The young are likewise hatched, and live for some time, on the coast. These crabs inhabit deep burrows, which they ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... thieves and forgers, deserve a respectful record: "Moral light is as irresistible by the mind as physical by the eye. All attempts to impede its progress are vain. It will roll rapidly along, and as well may tyrants imagine that by placing their feet upon the earth they can stop its diurnal motion, as that they shall be able by efforts the most virulent and pertinacious to extinguish the light of reason and philosophy, which happily for mankind is everywhere spreading around us." ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... masses, then singly and in pairs or triplets, but all setting in one direction, probably to the waters of eastern Maryland. Toward night they begin to return, flying in the same manner, and directing their course to the wooded heights on the Potomac, west of the city. In spring these diurnal mass movements cease; the clan breaks up, the rookery is abandoned, and the birds scatter broadcast over the land. This seems to be the course everywhere pursued. One would think that, when food was scarcest, the policy of separating ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... seminal vesicles. Some continent men never have nocturnal emissions. The reason may be sought in one of two directions: (1) The usual cause of absence of nocturnal emissions is to be found in the fact that in the man in question the seminal vesicles are periodically drained by involuntary diurnal emissions, occurring usually when the individual is at stool. These emissions are likely to occur once in two to four weeks and take the place of the nocturnal emission. (2) Rarely we find virile, continent men whose vesicular secretion is so scanty that they ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... she now; no force, She neither hears nor sees, Roiled round in earth's diurnal course With ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... Oxford the head quarters of it, as the most proper sphere for his wit, learning and loyalty. Here he began a paper war with the opposite party, and wrote some smart satires against the Rebels, especially the Scots. His poem called the Mixt Assembly; his character of a London Diurnal, and a Committee-man, are thought to contain the true spirit of satire, and a just representation of the general confusion of the times. From Oxford he went to the garrison of Newark, where he acted as judge advocate till that garrison was surrendered, and by ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... of the afternoon tide varies from that of the morning tide; sometimes one is the higher and sometimes the other, according to the declination of the sun and moon. This is called the "diurnal inequality." The average difference between the night and morning tides is about 5 in on the east coast and about 8in on the west coast. When there is a considerable difference in the height of high water of two consecutive tides, the ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... prolific of heterogeneous offspring as a word-root. Just as we find the root spak, "to look," begetting words so various as sceptic, bishop, speculate, conspicsuous, species, and spice, we must expect to find a simple representation of the diurnal course of the sun, like those lyrically given in the Veda, branching off into stories as diversified as those of Oidipous, Herakles, Odysseus, and Siegfried. In fact, the types upon which stories are constructed are wonderfully few. Some clever playwright—I believe it was ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... worth Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or praise, Since the pale corpse-like birth Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays— Dullest of ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... likewise hot or temperate, as the clime doth give in Newfoundland: though I am of opinion that the sun's reflection is much cooled, and cannot be so forcible in Newfoundland, nor generally throughout America, as in Europe or Afric: by how much the sun in his diurnal course from east to west, passeth over, for the most part, dry land and sandy countries, before he arriveth at the west of Europe or Afric, whereby his motion increaseth heat, with little or no qualification by moist vapours. Whereas, ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... Lost to the cheerful commerce of mankind, The groaning captive wastes his life away, For ever exiled from the realms of day, Not half such pangs his bosom agonize When up to distant light he rolls his eyes! Where the broad sun, in his diurnal way 530 Imparts to all beside his vivid ray; While, all forlorn, the victim pines in vain For scenes he never shall possess again. V. But now Athenian mountains they descry, And o'er the surge Colonna frowns on high; Where marble columns, long by time defaced, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... action during those ensuing days fell on Larcher. Besides regular semi-diurnal calls on the young ladies and at Mrs. Haze's house, and regular consultations of police records, he made visits to every place he had ever known Davenport to frequent, and to every person he had ever known Davenport to be acquainted ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... winter is the time of year at which the larger birds of prey, both diurnal and nocturnal, rear up their broods. Throughout January the white-backed vultures are occupied in parental duties. The breeding season of these birds begins in October or November and ends in February or March. The nest, which is placed high up ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... by a motor-bus merely utters a curse and instructs his solicitor, but a man who has been knocked down by a motor-bus every day of the year will have begun to feel that he is taking part in an august and soul-cleansing ritual. He will await the diurnal stroke of fate with the same lowly and pious joy as animated the Hindoos awaiting Juggernaut. His bruises will be decorations, worn with the modest pride of the veteran. He will cry aloud, in the words of the late W.E. Henley, "My head is bloody but unbowed." He will add, "My ribs ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... of a future state," "metempsychosis of nature," "nefandous villanies," "diurnal and annual," "my visive faculty," "soul-transparent and diaphonous," "translucid ray," "terrene enjoyments," "our minds are clarified," "types both of the ante and post-diluvian world," "the tenuity thereof," "the aereal heavens," "effluxes of divine glory," "all aenigmas," "corruscations ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 66, February 1, 1851 • Various
... Lord Methuen could be heard banging as usual. In the early days, the halcyon days of optimism, the banging would have been exhilarating to a degree; but the march of events had compelled us to reason better. The day was uncommonly quiet; even the diurnal fling at Mr. Rhodes was omitted. Lies, rumours, sensations, fabrications were still rampant. A poster in all the paraphernalia of Official authority, proclaiming the relief of Mafeking—four months too soon!—adorned ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... as he only, who "in darkness, and with danger compassed round," soared "beyond this visible diurnal sphere," and whose song was of mercy and judgment, have men wisely resolved to dwell only on what is pure and high and cognate with their thoughts of heaven. Still, as we keep descending from height to height ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various |
