"Fulcrum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this windlass, lying as centres in right lines in its socket-pieces, and the handspikes inserted in its holes, make the load rise when the ends of the windlass revolve in a circle like a lathe. Just so, when an iron lever is applied to a weight which a great many hands cannot move, with the fulcrum, which the Greeks call [Greek: hupomochlion], lying as a centre in a right line under the lever, and with the tongue of the lever placed under the weight, one man's strength, bearing down upon the head of it, heaves up ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... worriedly as the meters wiggled their needles dangerously close to the overload mark. The thrumming of the ship as it fought its way up against the pull of Earth's gravity and through the Earth's magnetic field, using the fabric of space itself as the fulcrum against which it applied its power, was like the vibration of a note struck somewhere near the bottom of a piano keyboard, or the rumble of a ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... moment was that it was concluded at a time when the French Government had not yet recognized the organization of St. Domingo, and afterwards the power of the negroes. The liberty of the blacks acknowledged at St. Domingo, and legitimized by the French Government, would be for all time a fulcrum for the Republic in the New World. In that case the sceptre of the New World must sooner or later have fallen into the hands of the negroes; the shock resulting for England is incalculable, whereas the shock of the empire of the ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... rose uninjured though concussed by the impact, raised the latch of the area door by the exertion of force at its freely moving flange and by leverage of the first kind applied at its fulcrum, gained retarded access to the kitchen through the subadjacent scullery, ignited a lucifer match by friction, set free inflammable coal gas by turningon the ventcock, lit a high flame which, by regulating, he reduced to ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... grasping and arrogant. They began to discuss the question. A strong feeling pervaded the minds of many of the leading men of the day that a radical change was necessary for the well-being of the country, and they began to apply the lever of public opinion to the great fulcrum of agitation, in order to overturn the evils that had crept into the administration of public affairs. They demanded a government which should be responsible to the people, and not independent of them. They urged that the system of representation ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... a water-spout, evading the sentries, over the garden wall to freedom. After half an hour of mortar picking I got one end of the lowest iron bar out of its socket. Then I picked out the mortar from the other end, working the bar about like a lever, to grind the fulcrum into dust. Soon I had the bar so loose that I was able to thrust it to one side, leaving a passage ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... according to their custom, the jurists put themselves at the service of the new reign. And no dogma was better suited their to authoritative instinct; no axiom furnished them so convenient a fulcrum on which to set up and turn their logical wheel. This wheel, which they had latterly managed with care and caution under the ancient Regime, had suddenly in their hands turned with frightful speed and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... difference between understanding and learning the reasoning of others, and being able "to reason," between learning how an artist may see the external world according to his prevailing interest in color, harmony, and form, and actually seeing the external world about a fulcrum which sustains one's own aesthetical creation. In the mind of one who "learns the things of others" we may find, as in a sack of old clothes hanging over the shoulders of a hawker, solutions of the problems ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori |
