"Equipoise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... added to France. Thus the number of the Germanies was suddenly reduced from more than three hundred to less than one hundred, and the German states which mainly benefited, along with Prussia, were the southern states of Bavaria, Wuerttemberg, and Baden, which Napoleon desired to use as an equipoise against both Austria and Prussia. In this ambition he was not disappointed, for in the War of the Third Coalition (1805) he received important assistance from these three states, all of which were in turn liberally rewarded for their ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the most speed, but their apparatus seems the most delicate and consummate. Apparently a fine play of muscle, a subtle shifting of the power along the outstretched wings, a perpetual loss and a perpetual recovery of the equipoise, sustains them and bears them along. With them flying is a luxury, a fine art; not merely a quicker and safer means of transit from one point to another, but a gift so free and spontaneous that work ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... friendliness and unfriendliness in early tribes we find more commonly between the two a middle ground of self-regarding equipoise. The savage, the half-civilized man, and the peasant often deal with superhuman Powers in a purely selfish commercial spirit, courting or neglecting them as they seem likely to be useful or not. The Central Australian (who may be credited with a dim sense of the ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... each His secret won; to each God's secret told: He touched them, and they lived. In each, the flesh Subdued to soul, the affections, vassals proud By conscience ruled, and conscience lit by Christ, The whole man stood, planet full-orbed of powers In equipoise, Image restored of God. A nation of such men his portion was; That nation's Patriarch he. No wrangler loud; No sophist; lesser victories knew he none: No triumph his of sect, or camp, or court; The Saint his great soul flung upon the world, And took the people ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... the size of the family to 3.6 children.[100] It should be added that in all the Australasian colonies the birth-rate reached its lowest point some years ago, and may now be regarded as in a state of normal equipoise with a slight tendency to rise. The case of New Zealand is specially interesting. New Zealand once had the highest birth-rate of all the Australasian colonies; it is without doubt the most advanced of all in social and legislative matters; ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... as he sat with Kate, often dangled in the line of his vision; he saw them, large and black, while he talked or listened, take, in the bright air, singular positions. Sometimes the right was down and sometimes the left; never a happy equipoise—one or the other always kicking the beam. Thus was kept before him the question of whether it were more ignoble to ask a woman to take her chance with you, or to accept it from one's conscience that her chance could be at the ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... finger of a master. It liked to be lulled, at other times, into half-slumber; and the soft and even monotonies of Pope's pastorals and "Windsor Forest" effected this end. It loved to be suspended in a state of semi-doubt, swung to and fro in agreeable equipoise; and the "Essay on Man" was precisely such a swing. It was fond of a mixture of strong English sense with French graces and charms of manner; and Pope supplied it. It was fond of keen, yet artfully managed satire; and Pope furnished it in abundance. It loved nothing ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... it's hung by a chain from a lever, and balanced by an equipoise. You shall see it nearer. Else, of course, there'd be no way of getting fuel into the thing. Every now and then the cone dips, and out ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... after two pleasurable months in that city, when I found myself at the stage where the road divided—one road going to Mme. de Larnage, the other to Les Charmettes—I balanced love against pleasure, and finding an equipoise, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... that vision of the world new formed, Which on the childhood of the Northern mind Like endless twilight lay;—spaces immense; Unmeasured energies of fire and flood; Great Nature's forces, terrible yet blind, In ceaseless strife alternately supreme, Or breast to breast with dreadful equipoise In conflict pressed. Once more o'er those that heard He hung that old world's low, funereal sky: Before their eyes he caused its cloud to stream Shadowing infinitude. He spake no word Like Heida of that war 'twixt Good and Ill; That peace which crowns the just; that ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... to go on for a twelvemonth and never think of, or care to please, or desire to be near, the object that he loved? And inasmuch as, deep down at the bottom of our moral being, there is no such thing possible as indifference and a perfect equipoise in reference to God, it is clear enough, I think, that—although the word must not be pressed as if it meant conscious and active antagonism,—where there is no ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... pushed the youth, who had already lost his mental equipoise, into the midst of the gulf, ere he had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... brought upon Europe during so many ages. Unfortunately, the inroad of the Scandinavians, following closely on the death of its great founder, introduced feudalism as better known to us, interfered with the institution which Charlemagne had established in such admirable equipoise, and added to it many barbarous adjuncts, which for a long time entered into the idea of nobility itself. Thus the titles of feudal lords were retained—duce, comites, equites, milites—with, all the paraphernalia of brute force which the harsh mind of northern despotism ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... completion, wherewith crowned, Love unconsumed shall chant in his own furnace-fire. How many trampled and deciduous joys Enrich thy soul for joys deciduous still, Before the distance shall fulfil Cyclic unrest with solemn equipoise! Happiness is the shadow of things past, Which fools still take for that which is to be! And not all foolishly: For all the past, read true, is prophecy, And all the firsts are hauntings of some Last, And all the ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... circumjacent buildings, promise, in few years, to afford something like an equipoise to the boasted Palace-group of Paris. If the plan already acted upon is steadily pursued, it will present a union of rural and architectural beauty on a scale of greater magnificence than can be found in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... which are abundantly in the hands of the Court, and which will be applied as long as these means of corruption, and the disposition to be corrupted, have existence amongst us. Our Constitution stands on a nice equipoise, with steep precipices and deep waters upon all sides of it. In removing it from a dangerous leaning towards one side, there may be a risk of oversetting it on the other. Every project of a material change in a Government so complicated as ours, ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... figure used therein as an equipoise to "the hindward charms" satirises perfectly the style of writing characterised by inflated thought and imagery. It may be doubted if there exists anything more comical; but each of the companion sonnets is good in ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... listened to you; you shall listen to me!" She spoke sharply. Now she displayed the equipoise of one who had learned much from self-reliant contact with men. "I'll not argue with you about what you call love. But there's something which love must have, and that's self-respect. If your folly on account of me takes you away from your honest duty you'll despise me ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... least noticeable; and while thus engaged she was startled by a loud ringing of the door-bell. For a moment her face was panic-stricken, and she stood staring, then she realized that Russell would not arrive for another hour, at the earliest, and recovering her equipoise, went ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... structions on this question. Christian Science demands both law and gospel, in order to demonstrate healing, and I have taught them both in its demonstration, and with signs following. They are a unit in restoring the equipoise of mind and body, and balancing man's ac- [25] count with his Maker. The sequence proves that strict adherence to one is inadequate to compensate for the absence of the other, since both constitute the divine ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... or degree.] Equality. — N. equality, parity, coextension[obs3], symmetry, balance, poise; evenness, monotony, level. equivalence; equipollence[obs3], equipoise, equilibrium, equiponderance[obs3]; par, quits, a wash; not a pin to choose; distinction without a difference, six of one and half a dozen of the other; tweedle dee and tweedle dum[Lat]; identity &c. 13; similarity &c. 17. equalization, equation; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... high in the air and carried it to the huge weighing machine. Onucz bade them place both bride and platter in the scale that it might weigh the heavier. Then they piled up into the other scale as many of the sacks of ducats sealed with the seal of Onucz as were necessary to establish an absolute equipoise between the two scales, and then while both the girl and the gold, balancing each other were floating in the air, old Onucz, his face beaming with triumph, poked Fatia Negra in the side with his elbows and said: "And ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... led men in the past, have you?" Mr. Converse fired the question at him. But he did not jump Walker Farr from his equipoise. The young man took ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... Roderigo Borgia, Alexander VI. It was felt at once that the old order of things had somehow ended, and that a new era, the destinies of which as yet remained incalculable, was opening for Italy. The chief Italian powers, hitherto kept in equipoise by the diplomacy of Lorenzo de' Medici, were these—the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Florence, the Papacy, and the Kingdom of Naples. Minor states, such as the republics of Genoa and Siena, the duchies of Urbino and ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... worm has not to trouble about hydrostatics when building its scabbard. In spite of the incongruity of its work, in which the bulky and less dense portions seem to balance the more solid, concentrated part, it is not called upon to contrive an equipoise between the light and the heavy. It has other artifices whereby to rise to the surface, to float and to dive down again. The ascent is made by the ladder of the water weeds. The average density of the sheath is of no importance, so long as the burden to be dragged is not beyond ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... had no difficulty in understanding him, and for the second time in this extraordinary interview, he gave evidences of agitation and of a mind shaken from its equipoise. But only for an instant. He did not shun the other's gaze or even maintain more than a momentary silence. Indeed, he found strength to smile, in a curious, ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... figures, it is impossible to justify the statement that he could expect nothing in future from New England and Pennsylvania, but would look to the South for support for the presidency.[392] On the contrary, one would say that his strong New England following would act as an equipoise, preventing too great a dip toward the Southern end of the scales. Besides, Douglas's hold on his own constituents and the West was contingent upon the favor of the strong New England element in the Northwest. If this convention taught ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... what a lesson thou dost teach me! The life which is, and that which is to come, Suspended hang in such nice equipoise A breath disturbs the balance; and that scale In which we throw our hearts preponderates, And the other, like an empty one, flies up, And is accounted vanity and air! To me the thought of death is terrible, Having such hold on life. ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to keep the sum total of the world's population in a state of perpetual equipoise, whereas it is a]**[Footnote: well-known fact that the said sum total is constantly on the increase. I would therefore take the liberty of suggesting that, in the next edition of your excellent poem, the erroneous calculation ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... decisions, and, at the same time, putting that due and necessary check to the power invested in their delegates, which shall prevent their making an improper use of it. The great point to arrive at, is the exact measure and weight of their controlling influences, so as to arrive at the just equipoise; nor can these proportions be always the same, but must be continually added to or reduced, according to the invariable progressions or recessions which must ever take place in this world, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... was the story that Waring maintained from first to last. "Pills" ventured a query as to whether the amount of Krug and Clicquot consumed might not have overthrown his mental equipoise. No, Sam declared, he drank very little. "The only bacchanalian thing I did was to join in a jovial chorus from a new French opera which Lascelles's friend piped up and I had heard in ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... and savors of the trees; it is an encampment among the maples. Before the bud swells, before the grass springs, before the plow is started, comes the sugar harvest. It is the sequel of the bitter frost; a sap-run is the sweet good-by of winter. It denotes a certain equipoise of the season; the heat of the day fully balances the frost of the night. In New York and New England, the time of the sap hovers about the vernal equinox, beginning a week or ten days before, and continuing a week or ten days after. As the days ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... equipoise which were never disturbed under the most trying circumstances, and a graciousness of manner which broke down all barriers, giving to the humblest as well as to the highest the assurance of his friendly consideration, and a mind well disciplined by education ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... not used sneeringly, is a world short of our word 'religious.' This condition of language we need not wonder at: the language of life must naturally receive, as in a mirror, the realities of life. Difficult it is to maintain a just equipoise in any moral habits, but in none so much as in habits of religious demeanor under a Pagan [that is, a degrading] religion. To be a coward, is base: to be a sycophant, is base: but to be a sycophant in the service of cowardice, is the perfection of baseness: and yet this was the brief analysis ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey |
