"Evenness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... superstition if only the brainless head be atoned for by the sting of personal malignity in the tail," conveys a warning to writers that is not of an age but for all time. Coleridge may have exaggerated the "manly hilarity" and "evenness and sweetness of temper" of men of genius. But there is no denying that, the smaller the genius, the greater is the spite of wounded self-love. "Experience informs us," as Coleridge says, "that the first defence ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... for the Bar Association, whether he ever could have felt the secret, hot thrills I knew and did not identify with religion. His religion was real to him, though he failed utterly to make it comprehensible to me. The apparent calmness, evenness of his life awed me. A successful lawyer, a respected and trusted citizen, was he lacking somewhat in virility, vitality? I cannot judge him, even to-day. I never knew him. There were times in my youth when the curtain of his unfamiliar spirit ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... HAIR.—Straight, even, smooth, and glossy hair indicate strength, harmony, and evenness of character, and hearty, whole-souled affections, as well as a clear head and superior talents; while straight, stiff, black hair and beard indicate a ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... would now, with all their imperfections on their head, be thrust upon the world. On this account he deeply regretted having deferred to put his papers in a state of arrangement, as he was now incapable of the exertion.... The conversation," she adds, "was kept up with great evenness and animation on his side. I had seldom seen his mind greater or more collected. There was frequently a considerable degree of vivacity in his sallies, and they would probably have had a greater share, had not the concern and dejection ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... cats would not have torn Brenda's secret out of her friend's soul, and so she replied in a tone that was almost judicious in its evenness: ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... any means. The smooth, picturebook slope had become jagged and bruised while the regular, evenlyrounded apex had turned into a sort of phrygian cap with its pinnacle woundedly askew. The outlines which had been sharp were now blurred, its evenness had become scraggly. The placid surface was vexed; the attempt on its being had hurt. But not mortally, for even with outline altered, it ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... she gratified her mother-in-law by attending to her person and by covering her with robes and ornaments. And she gratified her father-in-law by worshipping him as a god and controlling her speech. And she pleased her husband by her honeyed speeches, her skill in every kind of work, the evenness of her temper, and by the indications of her love in private. And thus, O Bharata, living in the asylum of those pious dwellers of the forest, they continued for some time to practise ascetic austerities. But the words ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Law, taking snuff calmly and still keeping the evenness of his temper. "My own fortune, as I admit, I keep safe at the Green Lion. For the rest, I seek at the start only respectful footing with this maid herself. When first I saw her, I knew well enough how the end would ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... did not gauge the astonishment with which Karen came to realize these standards of his world. Her cheerful evenness of demeanour was a cloak, sometimes for indignation and sometimes for mirth. She could only face the fact that this world must, in a sense, be hers, by relegating it and all that it meant to the merest background in their lives. Her real ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Janet's sensitiveness she was constantly and painfully to be reckoned with in their common life. Lawrence Cardiff's moods were accountable to his daughter obviously by Elfrida's influence. She noted bitterly that his old evenness of temper, the gay placidity that made so delightful a basis for their joint happiness, had absolutely disappeared. Instead, she found her father either irritable or despondent, or inspired by a gaiety which she had no hand in producing, and which took no account of her. That was the ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... and a fine yield they had been. Corn had been here; yes, and here she would run her lines of early peas. Lois went to work. It was not very easy work, as you would know if you had ever tried to reduce ground that has been merely ploughed and harrowed, to the smooth evenness necessary for making shallow drills. Lois plied spade and rake with an earnest good-will, and thorough knowledge of her business. Do not imagine an untidy long skirt sweeping the soft soil and transferring large ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... possessed a simple and natural eloquence, saying always what she chose, and as she chose, and nothing more. Secret with regard to herself; faithful to the confidence of others; gifted with an exterior, nay, an interior, of gayety, good humor, and evenness of temper, which rendered her perfectly mistress of herself at all times and in all circumstances. Never did any woman possess more art without the appearance of art; never was a more fertile head, or superior knowledge of the human heart, and ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... have thought evenness was just what was wrong with him. A deadly evenness. That's why I read him here. The noise of this place breaks the rhythm. He's tolerable here.' Soames took up the book and glanced through the pages. He laughed. Soames' laugh was a short, single and mirthless sound from ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... of all the graces of elocution. The hand she wrote, for the neat and free cut of her letters, (like her mind, solid, and above all flourish,) for its fairness, evenness, and swiftness, distinguished her as much as the correctness of her orthography, and even punctuation, from the generality of her own sex; and left her none, among the most accurate of ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... detailed and less pleasant features of the scene. There were no causeways; the streets, as a rule, would just allow of the progress of one vehicle, though a few of the principal ones would permit the passage of two; and the pavements consisted of huge stones, not remarkable either for evenness or smoothness. A channel ran down the middle of the street, into which every housewife emptied her slops from the window, and along which dirty water, sewerage, straw, drowned rats, and mud, floated in profuse ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... shaded it with its healthy, luxuriant leaves, Clinton manifested the greatest interest in Miss Thusa's wheel, and the manufacture of her thread. He praised the beauty of its texture, the fineness and evenness of ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... labourers and masons to mend the ways and render the bridges at least temporarily secure. Of one of Queen Elizabeth's journeys it is said:— "It was marvellous for ease and expedition, for such is the perfect evenness of the new highway that Her Majesty left the coach only once, while the hinds and the folk of a base sort lifted it on with ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... he found under the edge of his plate; and Mavering laid the whole case before him. As he made no comment on it for a while, Dan was obliged to ask him what he thought of it. "Well," he said, with the smile that showed the evenness of his pretty teeth, "there's a kind of wild justice in it." He admitted this, with the object of meeting Dan's views in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... among the learned; to Sincerity and Justice, the confidence of his country, and the honorable employs it conferred upon him; and to the joint influence of the whole mass of the virtues,[71] even in the imperfect state he was able to acquire them, all that evenness of temper, and that cheerfulness in conversation, which makes his company still sought for, and agreeable even to his younger acquaintance. I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... flats lying at right angles to the road. Here I saw a herd of hartebeests, giraffes, and other animals, giving to the scene a truly African character. The tracks of elephants and different large beasts prove that this place is well tenanted in the season. The closeness of the jungle and evenness of the land prevented my taking any direct observations with the compass; but the mean oscillations of its card showed a course with northing again. This being a long stage, I lent my ass to a sick Beluch, and we accomplished the journey, notwithstanding ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... females arrive at womanhood in warm countries much sooner than in cold ones. Her person is tall, stout, and well proportioned, though it has not dignity sufficient to be commanding; her countenance is round and open, but dull and almost inexpressive; mildness of manners, evenness of temper, and inactivity of body also, might notwithstanding, I think be clearly defined in it; on the whole she has a perfect virginity of face, which betrays not the smallest symptoms of feeling. Her forehead is smooth and shining as polished ebony, but it is rather too low to be noble; ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... mind that this was the situation he would have to face, and played his last, his supreme, his desperate card. You could see that he himself felt that this was the kind of card he was playing from his look as he played it. There was outward calmness in the face, there was the same evenness of tone in the voice; he built up his case with the same unbroken command of his language and ideas as is his usual characteristic. His statement of his position was admirable in its lucidity, its ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... other bees, some are busy about meat, and some watch the coming of showers. And some behold concourse and meting of dues, and some make wax of flowers, and some make cells now round, now square with wonder binding and joining, and evenness. And yet nevertheless, among so diverse works none of them doth espy nor wait to take out of other's travail, neither taketh wrongfully, neither stealeth meat, but each seeketh and gathereth by his own flight and travail among herbs and flowers ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... incredible number of threads without getting them entangled,—he has all the qualities which bear that glorious flower, success. But he is never brilliant; he has outwearied many a deeper man by his indefatigable evenness and persistance; he is Giant Despair to the brilliant young men. Mr. Morphy is just the otherest from Staunton. Like him only in sustained and quiet power, he brings to the board that demon of his, Memory,—such a memory, too, as no other chess-player has ever possessed: add to this wonderful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... deep, slow, rhythmic, and through the nose, not through the mouth. A certain Oriental deep-breathing exercise is particularly valuable to insure slowness and evenness of the breath. It consists of pressing a finger on the side of the nose, so as to close one nostril, breathing in through the other nostril, breathing out of the first nostril in the same manner and then reversing the process. ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... called the curiously soft voice of Chloe, that had a different accent from the habitual evenness of the real Quaker tone. "Where ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... hard one to have to do with; and she never spared herself exertion or fatigue, at market or in the field, to make the most of her produce. She led the hay-makers with her swift, steady rake, and her noiseless evenness of motion. She was about among the earliest in the market, examining samples of oats, pricing them, and then turning with grim satisfaction to her own ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... film of glass, extremely thin, so that the actual metal is isolated between two glasses, and is thus impervious to such qualities in the air as would tarnish it or cause it to deteriorate. To prevent an uninteresting evenness of surface on which the sun's rays would glint in a trying manner, it was usual to lay the gold cubes in a slightly irregular manner, so that each facet, as it were, should reflect at a different angle, and the texture, especially in the gold grounds, never ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... bow which took in both of the women, and walked quickly toward the door. But he was arrested before he reached it by the voice of Mary, speaking again, still in that imperturbable evenness which so rasped his nerves, for all its mellow resonance. But this time there was a sting, of the sharpest, in ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... cabins, than of their own thin diet in their prince-like habitations and palaces." The timber houses were covered with tiles; the other sort with straw or reeds. The fairest houses were ceiled within with mortar and covered with plaster, the whiteness and evenness of which excited Harrison's admiration. The walls were hung with tapestry, arras-work, or painted cloth, whereon were divers histories, or herbs, or birds, or else ceiled with oak. Stoves had just begun to be used, and only in some houses of the gentry, "who build ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... had light I should have found, I thought, little difficulty in piling one upon another, and thus reaching the top; but in the dark this was a difficult and hazardous undertaking. I could scarcely expect to place them with sufficient evenness to make a firm structure, and they might, after I had got up some distance, topple down again with me under them, and perhaps an arm or a leg broken. Still I could think of no other way of getting out. I again felt about, and tried to lift some chests and bales, ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... into Essex to spend a day or two at Christmas, carrying with her the fitful spirit so foreign to her. The perfect health that had been hers hitherto was broken; and Mrs. Pascal, a confirmed invalid, to whom Phebe's physical vigor and evenness of temper had been a constant source of delight and invigoration, felt ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... phenomena around us. The discovery, however, of energy (energeia), as a principle of this description, is precisely what we wanted, and a momentary glance at the actual phenomena will show its perfect identity with the eidos, or form.[725] "For instance, what is a calm? It is evenness in the surface of the sea. Here the sea is the subject, that is, the matter in capacity, but the evenness is the energy or actuality;... energy is thus as form."[726] The form (or idea) is thus an ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... during this trial upon the temper of her guardian, was the frequent mention of many gentlemen, who had been her professed admirers, and the mention of them with partiality. Teased, if not tortured, by this, Lord Elmwood still behaved with a manly evenness of temper, and neither appeared provoked on the subject, nor insolently careless. In a single instance, however, this ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... making those dreadful faces which she had once thought charming and necessary. Her lower register, always her best, was almost perfect. Her middle register—the test part of a voice—was showing signs of strength and steadiness and evenness. And she was fast getting a real upper register, as distinguished from the forced and shrieky high notes that pass as an upper register with most singers, even opera singers. After a month of this marvelous ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Nothing cramped, nothing showy, nothing dim, grim, nor shabby-genteel enters into its proportions. It is finely expansive, airy, light, and well made. Goodness of build without gaudiness, sanctity without sadness, and evenness of finish without new-fangled intricacy, pervade it. It is fit for either beggars or plutocrats. There is not a better, not a plainer, neater, nor more respectable looking church in the town. And there is ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... the ice and snow that covered her, and she was anything but a lively spectacle. During these unoccupied hours the doctor put his travelling notes in order—the notes from which this history is taken; he was never idle, and the evenness of his humour remained the same, only he was very glad to see the tempest clearing off so as to allow him to set off hunting once more. On the 3rd of November, at six in the morning, with a temperature at 5 degrees below zero, he started, accompanied by Johnson and Bell; the plains of ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... camp, stationed himself near the tents, and eagerly listened to what was said of himself, while one magnified the imperial birth of his general, another his graceful person, very many his firmness, condescension, and the evenness of his temper, whether seriously occupied or in moments of relaxation; and they confessed that their sense of his merits should be shown in battle, protesting at the same time that those traitors and violators of peace should be made a sacrifice ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... dance it very quickly, with a great deal of motion, but render it elegant by slacking the pace every now and then. The Russians waltz so quietly, on the contrary, that they can go round the room holding a brimming glass of champagne without spilling a drop. This evenness in waltzing is very graceful, and can only be reached by long practice, a good ear for music, and a natural gracefulness. Young Americans, who, as a rule, are the best dancers in the world, achieve this step ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... and evenness of the dentition of the Anoplotherium, as contrasted with that of existing Artiodactyles, and the assumed nearer approach of the dentition of certain ancient Carnivores to the typical arrangement, have also been cited as exemplifications of a law of progressive ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... this very contrast, the absence of the true lyric in the meditative vein, frequent with Cesar Franck. The burst of melody blossoms ever fairer. In its later musing the tune browses in the bass. A waving phrase grows in the violins, which continues with strange evenness through the entrance of new song where we are surprised by the strange fitness of the Allegretto melody. And the second phase of the latter follows as if it belonged here. So, almost listless, without a hair of rhythmic change (les temps ont toujours la meme valeur), ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... 2.—POINT DE BRUXELLES OR BRUSSELS POINT.—Among the stitches most used in lace-making is Point de Bruxelles or Brussels point. It is simply a button-hole stitch worked loosely, and it must be done with regularity, as the beauty of the work depends almost wholly upon the evenness of the stitches. Brussels point is occasionally used as an edge, but is more frequently seen in rows worked back and forth to fill in spaces, or as a ground work. The illustrations clearly represent the method ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.
... charming, a thing of beauty? The wall is of beautiful, warm and strong colour, with moth holes, birds' nests, old nails on which the spider hangs his rose-window web, a thousand amusing things that break its evenness. The window is only a dormer, but from it protrude long poles on which all sorts of clothing, of all sorts of colours, hang and dry in the wind-white tatters, red rags, flags of poverty that give to the hut an air ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... composition of all the accomplishments that make a fine gentleman. The motive of a man's life is seen in all his actions; and such as have the beauteous boy for their inspirer have a simplicity of behaviour, and a certain evenness of desire, which burns like the lamp of life in their bosoms; while they who are instigated by the satyr are ever tortured by jealousies of the object of their wishes; often desire what they scorn, and as often consciously ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... edge in a tight weave. Gros de Tours is sometimes used, especially when cotton or wool filling is employed, with a view to lay two picks nicely side by side, whereas a thread entered two ply with the taffeta weave will always receive some twist, which may disturb the perfect evenness of the fabric. ...
— Theory Of Silk Weaving • Arnold Wolfensberger
... peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of recollection, the seat of meditation, the rest of our cares and the calm of our tempest: prayer is the issue of a quiet mind, of untroubled thoughts; it is the daughter of charity and the ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... on with a painful evenness of speech. "When I read those words, I had only one thought—to reach them; I ran down to the river, and chose out the lightest boat. Just as I was starting, Tor came running. 'You dropped this letter, sir,' he said. 'Two ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... do now but wait. Quonab sat placidly smoking, Rolf was sewing a rent in his coat, the storm hissed, and the wind-driven ice needles rattled through the trees to vary the crackle of the fire with a "siss" as they fell on the embers. The low monotony of sound was lulling in its evenness, when a faint crunch of a foot on the snow was heard. Rolf reached for his gun, the fir tree screen was shaken a little, and a minute later there bounded in upon them the snow covered form of little dog Skookum, expressing his good-will by excessive sign ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... picturesque charms. The land stretched in uniform flatness from the sluggish Suderelbe to the equally sleepy Seeve, and the Fuchsberg at Ronneburg, with its height of two hundred feet, was a giant of the Alps or Cordilleras, compared to the floor-like evenness of the country round about. From the platform of the tower which Paul had built on to his house, giving it quite a baronial appearance, one could see for miles across country, almost to Hamburg, the spires of which were plainly ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... in dealing personally with non-combatants of either sex was to avoid all controversy or discussion, to state with perfect frankness but courteously my own attitude and sense of duty, and to apply all such stringent rules as a state of war compels with an evenness of temper and tone of dispassionate government which should make as little chafing as possible. Most intelligent people, when they are not excited, are disposed to recognize the obligations imposed upon a military officer in such circumstances, and it ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... bird-like richness; he could scarce have extracted all the honey out of 'Cherry Ripe'; he did not fear—he even ostentatiously displayed and seemed to revel in he shrillness of the instrument; but in fire, speed, precision, evenness, and fluency; in linked agility of jimmy—a technical expression, by your leave, answering to warblers on the bagpipe; and perhaps, above all, in that inspiring side-glance of the eye, with which he followed the effect and (as by a human appeal) eked out the insufficiency of his performance: in ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... delicacies. Yet one's mind always pictured him as a rugged sort of person, opposing successful resistance to all influences that might seek to change his habits either of feeling or of action. His admirable health, his sober life, his regular walk twice a day, whatever might be the weather, his invariable evenness of mood and opinion, so that, when you once knew his range, he never disappointed you—all this was at variance with popular notions of the artistic temperament. He was indeed, a man of reason, no romancer, sentimentalist or dreamer, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... husband had been killed in the Civil War; Clara Taylor, wife of the leading young lawyer of the village; and, strangely enough, Mina Heinzman, the sixteen-year-old daughter of old Heinzman, the lumberman. Nothing was more indicative of the absolute divorce of business and social life than the unbroken evenness of Carroll's friendship for the younger girl. Though later the old German and Orde locked in serious struggle on the river, they continued to meet socially quite as usual; and the daughter of one and the wife of the other ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... slight change of expression. But the reader stood perfectly still, and the instant transition of the voice from the dramatic to the descriptive tone was unfailing and extraordinary. This was perfection of art. Nor was the evenness of the variety less striking. Every character was indicated with the same felicity. Of course the previous image in the hearer's mind must be considered in estimating the effect. The reader does not create the character, the writer has done that; and now he refreshes ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... end, and made perfectly level." "The coffer," said Professor Smyth in 1864, "exhibits to us a standard measure of 4000 years ago, with the tenacity and hardness of its substance unimpaired, and the polish and evenness of its surface untouched by nature through all that ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... it very smooth, making small Furrows all along, that in case Rain or other Waters should come in, it might drain away; for more Water now would endanger rotting the Corn. [Their manner of sowing.] And then they sow their Corn, which they do with very exact evenness, strewing it with their hands, just as we ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... the present condition in which he was; and could the tree do this, think you? Had the tree that command and government of the soul and sense of Christ, of the reason and feeling of the Lord Jesus, as to keep him in this bitter suffering, in that evenness and spotlessness in his torment, as to cause that he should come off this great work, without the least smell or tang[25] of imperfection? No, no; it was through the Eternal Spirit that he 'offered himself without spot ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... friend of the Americans thinks it better to awaken another passion, and tries to alarm our interest, or excite our veneration, by accounts of their greatness and their opulence, of the fertility of their land, and the splendour of their towns. We then begin to consider the question with more evenness of mind, are ready to conclude that those restrictions are not very oppressive, which have been found consistent with this speedy growth of prosperity; and begin to think it reasonable, that they who thus flourish under the protection of our government, should contribute something ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... are no less interesting, under Trollope's treatment, than are the murders and forgeries. Not only does he never offend the modesty of nature,—he encourages her to be prudish, and trains her to such evenness and severity of demeanor that we never know when we have had enough of her. His touch is eminently civilizing; everything, from the episodes to the sentences, moves without hitch or creak: we never have to read ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... anxiety was a latent but habitual element, leaving her as usual at ordinary times, but every now and then betraying itself by sudden sharp sighs or wanderings of thought. Neither brother nor sister, loving each other really as much as ever, had quite the same sweetness and evenness of temper as was natural to them; self-control became a duty, and the evening circle was duller than before, without any one being able to say why. Charles was more attentive to his mother; he no more brought his books into the drawing-room, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... of the path is presented in the designation 'paths of uprightness,' which seems to be equivalent to those which belong to, or perhaps which consist of, uprightness. The idea of straightness or evenness is the primary meaning of the word, and is, of course, appropriate to the image of a path. In the moral view, it suggests how much more simple and easy a course of rectitude is than one of sin. The one ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... over West Point hung a raw fog. Some of the officers who stood with bared heads by the heap of earth and the hole in the ground shivered a little. The young Chaplain read, solemnly, the solemn and grand words of the service, and the evenness of his voice was unnatural enough to show deep feeling. He remembered how, a year before, he had seen the hero of this scene playing football on just such a day, tumbling about and shouting, his hair wild and matted and his face filled with fresh color. Such a mere ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... evenness of temper in the time of danger, is certainly the highest mark of heroism; but some of the graver cast have been apt to say, this sedate composure somewhat differs from that levity of disposition, or frolic humour, that inclines a man to write a song. But, let us consider my lord's ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... editor's intention," in altering the narrative, "was to give what is not observed in the original, a regular series of facts; and through the whole a sort of evenness and simplicity of stile equally free from meanness and affectation. In short, to make the old and the new, as far as he could, uniform; that he might not appear to have sewed a piece of new cloth to an old garment, and made its condition ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... YOU TO TAKE IT," she said with superb evenness, masking anger by compassionate grief. "You're a big girl and a naughty girl. And if you will be ill ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... to Marry with the best Spaniard), which endeared him to them exceedingly. Otherwise it is death for any Stranger to visit these Caves and Bodies. The Corps are sew'd up in Goatskins with Thongs of the same, with very great curiosity, particularly in the incomparable exactness and evenness of the Seams; and the skins are made close and fit to the Corps, which for the most part are entire, the Eyes clos'd, Hair on their heads, Ears, Nose, Teeth, Lips, and Beards, all perfect, onely discolour'd and a little shrivell'd. He saw about three or four hundred ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... the lighter atmosphere. I wondered what kept these bubbles apart. Some repellent force with which they were charged? Something, at any rate, must be preventing them from coalescing into rain. Maybe it was merely the perfect evenness of their flow, for they gathered thickly enough on the twigs and the few dried leaves, on any obstacles in their way. And again I thought of the fact that the mist had seemed thinner when I came out on the marsh. This double flow explained it, of course. There ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... and unbroken surfaces, and, therefore, with few centres of glacial action, the phenomena were more widely and uniformly scattered than in Europe. But their special details, down to the closest minutiae, were the same, while their definite circumscription and evenness of distribution forbade the idea of currents or floods as the moving cause. Here, as elsewhere, Agassiz recognized at once the comprehensive scope of the phenomena. The whole history reconstructed itself in his mind, to the time ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... and, as Cicero calls it, Morum comitas, "a pleasantness of temper." If I were to give my opinion upon such an exhausted subject, I should join to these other qualifications a certain equability or evenness of behaviour. A man often contracts a friendship with one whom perhaps he does not find out till after a year's conversation; when on a sudden some latent ill-humour breaks out upon him, which he never discovered or suspected at his first entering into an intimacy with him. There ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... themselves are by no means imposing; our German members by powerful voices, which, however, owing to their insufficient training, do not produce half the effect they would if they had been subjected to the same amount of training. With the Italians great certainty and evenness throughout the role; with the Germans an unequal alternation of brilliant and mediocre moments, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... celebrated man was pleasant to the last, even when he had received the poison into his bowels, and truly foretold the death of that man whom he named when he drank the poison, and that death soon followed. Who that thinks death an evil, could approve of the evenness of temper in this great man at the instant of dying? Socrates came, a few years after, to the same prison and the same cup, by as great iniquity on the part of his judges as the tyrants displayed when they executed ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... now quite black with thronging undergraduates moving towards the Common. There was very little noise in it all; every now and again some voice would call aloud to some other voice and would be answered back; a murmur like the swelling of some stream, unlike, in its uniformity and curious evenness of note, any human conversation, seemed to cling to the old grey walls. All of it at present orderly enough but with sinister omen in its ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... their perfection, and, in their seasons of barrenness, an anxiety to rid themselves of it. They are subject to great variation: sometimes they do wonders, at other times they languish and decline. They have no evenness of conduct, because, as the greater part of their religion is in these natural sensibilities, whenever it happens that their sensibilities are dry, either from want of work on their part, or from a lack of correspondence on ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... American literature, by the union of his activity as a poet with his eminence as a citizen and an influential journalist, throughout an uncommonly long career. Two traits still further define the peculiarity of his position—his precocious development, and the evenness and sustained vigor of all his poetic work from the beginning to the end. He began writing verse at the age of eight; at ten he made contributions in this kind to the county gazette, and produced a finished and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... genius being held by the precarious tenure he had sketched, Rowland was at a loss to see whence he could borrow the authority to contradict him. He sighed to himself, and wished that his companion had a trifle more of little Sam Singleton's evenness of impulse. But then, was Singleton a man of genius? He answered that such reflections seemed to him unprofitable, not to say morbid; that the proof of the pudding was in the eating; that he did ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... in vogue for shooting suits and ladies' dresses. The pieces run from twenty to seventy yards long, and whole families are engaged on the work, which commands a ready sale at the wholesale depots, the price being regulated by the fineness, evenness of texture, and equality of tint throughout. The Nationalist advice to burn everything English except English coals, is as hollow as other patriotic utterances. But for England the Donegal peasantry would have no market for their goods. "It isn't fine enough for Irishmen," said Mr. Timony. "They ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... always the lines of the canvas. But the important thing about it is that the stitches must cross always in the same way; and, more than that, they must be worked in the same direction, or the mere fact that the stitches at the back of the work do not run in the same way will disturb the evenness of the surface. What looks like a seam on the sampler opposite is the result of filling up a gap in the ground with stitches necessarily worked in vertical, whereas the ground generally is in horizontal, lines. ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... Madame de Maintenon had played in France. But, though at least equal to her model in wit, information, and talents for intrigue, she had not that self-command, that patience, that imperturbable evenness of temper, which had raised the widow of a buffoon to be the consort of the proudest of kings. The Princess was more than fifty years old, but was still vain of her fine eyes, and her fine shape; she still dressed in the style of a girl; and she still carried ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is an equal duty, and a far more difficult task. So far we have only partially succeeded. In this difficulty lies the whole problem. Socialism, so far as it attempts to repress individualism, and reduce mankind to an evenness opposed to all natural laws, is suicidal of the best in favor of mediocrity. But so far as it attempts to protect that mediocrity and weakness from the superior minds of the best, it is only in line with the laws which protect us from murder and robbery. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... happened to sit by Sir Fretcheville Hollis, who is still full of his vain-glorious and prophane talk. Here we saw a prize fought between a soldier and a country-fellow, one Warrel, who promised the least in his looks, and performed the most of valour in his boldness and evenness of mind, and smiles in all he did, that ever I saw; and we were all both deceived and infinitely taken with him. He did soundly beat the soldier, and cut him over the head. Thence back to White Hall, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... heavy pail and balanced it on her head. But alas! in going up the smooth, slippery, treacherous rock, the encumbrance of her cloak—it might be such a trifle as her slung hat—something at any rate, took away her evenness of poise; the freshet had frozen on the slanting stone, and was one coat of ice; poor Nest fell, and put out her hip. No more flushing rosy color on that sweet face—no more look of beaming innocent happiness;—instead, there was ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Its narrowness, however, surprised me. It is scarcely eleven feet wide, clear of the footways raised on each side of it. The pavement is formed of a large sort of flattish-surfaced pebbles; not laid down with the greatest evenness or regularity. The sideways may be about a yard wide, each paved, irregularly enough, with small stones. There are guard stones at equal intervals, to defend the foot passengers from carriages and horses. I cannot say I found anything either elegant ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... hundred feet, was named Mount Markham. The latitude reached was 82 deg. 17' south, being the farthest distance south attained. On a subsequent journey a plateau of nine thousand feet elevation was reached, where the evenness of the ice surface for miles seemed scarcely broken. The length of this journey was ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... man, and a man who had at his command perfect evenness of temperament whenever it was not a question of his enthusiastic attachment to his brother-in-law. He had the power of observation habitual to persons whose sensitive amour propre has frequently been wounded. He therefore ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... parallel. Although this is not strictly true, they make an approach to parallelism, for the same reason that sediment is usually deposited at first in nearly horizontal layers. Such an arrangement can by no means be attributed to an original evenness or horizontality in the bed of the sea: for it is ascertained that in those places where no matter has been recently deposited, the bottom of the ocean is often as uneven as that of the dry land, having in like manner its hills, valleys, ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... higher latitudes sounds are conveyed to a long distance, owing partially to the peculiar properties of the atmosphere, the comparative evenness of the surface and to the absence of other confusing sounds, for under other conditions they would not be transmitted to any unusual distance. It used to be the custom in the early summer of 1880 for those who had been hunting upon the mainland to come to a point ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... very little ink in your pen, so as hardly to make any mark on the paper; and at last, where it is too dark, use the edge of your penknife very lightly, and for some time, to wear it softly into an even tone. You will find that the greatest difficulty consists in getting evenness: one bit will always look darker than another bit of your square; or there will be a granulated and sandy look over the whole. When you find your paper quite rough and in a mess, give it up and begin another square, but do not rest satisfied till you have ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... It would be difficult, indeed, to name a single quality which a general ought to have, and with which Marlborough was not eminently gifted. What principally attracted the notice of contemporaries, was the imperturbable evenness of his spirit. Voltaire [Siecle de Louis Quatorze.] says of him:— "He had, to a degree above all other generals of his time, that calm courage in the midst of tumult, that serenity of soul in danger, which the English call a COOL HEAD ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... slowly practised until it gets into step with the up and down motions; it matters very little whether one turn of the tool is given to one passage along the stone, or only one turn to many up and down rubbings. The main thing is evenness of rubbing all along the circular edge, as if one part gets more than its share the edge becomes wavy, which is a thing to be avoided as much as possible. When the outside has been cleanly rubbed up ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... crystal clear as to what they were doing. She wondered if Nancy Ellen would send Adam, 3d, with a parcel of cut-out sewing for her to work on. She resolved to sew quickly and with stitches of machine-like evenness, if it came. She wondered if Nancy Ellen would be compelled to put off her wedding and teach the home school in order that it might be taught by a Bates, as her father had demanded. She wondered if Nancy Ellen was forced to this uncongenial task, whether ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... to children who range in age from nine to eleven years, who are found in the fourth and fifth years of school-life, it may be observed that there is quite a marked increase in the evenness and firmness of their tones. It is quite possible, especially at the age of about eleven years, to extent the compass to G above the staff and to D or C below; but if it does no harm, it serves no particular good end either, and unless care is taken, the children will push the highest tones. All ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... which, in my opinion, can reasonably deprive us of this cheerfulness of heart. The first of these is the sense of guilt. A man who lives in a state of vice and impenitence, can have no title to that evenness and tranquillity of mind which is the health of the soul, and the natural effect of virtue and innocence. Cheerfulness in an ill man deserves a harder name than language can furnish us with, and is many degrees beyond what we commonly call ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... then that he noticed a deflection of the wood-road toward the north, and down over the brow of the plateau on which for a mile or two its evenness had been sustained. It was a new sign that it was tending toward some habitation. Half an hour ago he would have taken this to mean that he must dash into the forest again; but half an hour ago he had not been hungry. He did not say to himself that he would ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... Coleridge is within a month of her confinement, and I cannot, I ought not to leave her; especially as her surgeon is not a John Hunter, nor my house likely to perish from a plethora of comforts. Besides, there are other things that might disturb that evenness of benevolent feeling, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... resigned with regard to immediate reputation. Through all the works of Chaucer there reigns a cheerfulness, a manly hilarity which makes it almost impossible to doubt a correspondent habit of feeling in the author himself. Shakespeare's evenness and sweetness of temper were almost proverbial in his own age. That this did not arise from ignorance of his own comparative greatness, we have abundant proof in his Sonnets, which could scarcely have been known to Pope ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... succeeded him. It is true that American life presents less salient characteristics than that of Europe; that class distinctions are less marked; and that the energies of the nation are still so much confined to strictly utilitarian objects, that life moves along with unpicturesque sameness and evenness. But mankind remains equally complicated and equally interesting under whatever circumstances it may be placed. The vast extent of American territory and the infinite variety of its inhabitants afford material to the novelist which ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Where beauty is lacking, wit may brilliantly shine; where health is failing, a talent may console; where the family life is unhappy, the ambitions for a career may be fulfilled. Much inequality will thus result, but the chances for a certain evenness of human joy and sorrow will be the greater the more numerous the sources from which the joys and griefs of our days are springing. Add the inequalities of wealth, and you increase the chances that the emotional values ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... the order of primitive development are the arts of binding and weaving. The stone axe or arrow-head, for example, was bound to a wooden staff, and had to be lashed with perfect evenness,[3] and when in time the material and method of fastening changed, the geometrical forms of this careful binding continued to be engraved at the juncture of blade and handle of various implements. It should be noted, however, that these binding-patterns, in spite of their superfluous ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... with broad culture is evinced in the high intellectual level always maintained; and the evenness of quality that is always of the mountain top. He always knows his power, and its range. His song is ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... readers in a great measure unintelligible, and—where intelligible—repulsive. Men and women who, perhaps, naturally very calm, and with feelings moderate in degree, and little marked in kind, have been trained from their cradle to observe the utmost evenness of manner and guardedness of language, will hardly know what to make of the rough, strong utterance, the harshly manifested passions, the unbridled aversions, and headlong partialities of unlettered moorland hinds and rugged moorland squires, who have grown up untaught and unchecked, except by ...
— Charlotte Bronte's Notes on the pseudonyms used • Charlotte Bronte
... black or brown. Those which are flesh-coloured in this particular should be discarded, however good they may be in other respects. The density and pureness of colour, in both blacks and browns, is of great importance, but should not be permitted to outweigh the evenness of the distribution of spots on the body; no black patches, or even mingling of the spots, should meet with favour, any more than a ring-tail or a clumsy-looking, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... ought not to be known to any one. When you witness that which shall take place here to-night, you will understand." Her tone lost its evenness; it trembled and ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... agreeable as decision is, because it gives ideas of power and knowledge; but of two touches, as nearly as possible the same in other respects, the quickest will invariably be the best. Truth being supposed equally present in the shape and direction of both, there will be more evenness, grace and variety, in the quick one than in the slow one. It will be more agreeable to the eye as a touch or line, and will possess more of the qualities of the lines of nature—gradation, uncertainty, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... up some needlework, and was sufficiently amused in attending to what passed between Darcy and his companion. The perpetual commendations of the lady, either on his handwriting, or on the evenness of his lines, or on the length of his letter, with the perfect unconcern with which her praises were received, formed a curious dialogue, and was exactly in union ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... said he with calm, deliberate evenness of tone, "I have held forth in this tabernacle for many more years than I have got fingers and toes, and during that time I have known not guile, nor anger, nor any uncharitableness. As to Henry Barber, who put up this job on me, I judge him not lest I be judged. Let ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... her departure had disturbed Lorry. As she dressed for the opera that night she pondered on it, and back from it to the change she had noticed in the girl of late. She hadn't been like the old, easy-going Chrystie; her indolent evenness of mood had given place to a mercurial flightiness, her gay good-humor been broken by flashes of ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... of quantity 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; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... didn't know whether things would go, because he had had no time to practise. After an apologetic little preamble, he would sit down and play these rococo bits of trailing sound with fingers dipped in lightning, fingers that flashed over the keys in perfect evenness and with ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... truth is far stranger than fiction. It is because we men and women will conceal the realities of our lives from one another, and under the banner of an all-enduring pride, struggle for the privilege of living under a surface of smooth, unruffled evenness, that humanity has become susceptible of so many false and ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera" |
