"Leverage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was fully aware of the leverage these actions gave his committee, although he and his associates now had few illusions about the speedy end to the contest. "I know from the best authority within P&A," Kenworthy warned the committee, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... shop-girls did not read this fine flower of American democracy, nobody would, except those who wait eagerly and anxiously for their names to appear.) She perceived—not knowing that the advertising leverage of the Berthelin Loan Agency had forced those insecure portals of print for the entry of Mrs. Berthelin and her progeny—that she was in the presence of the Great. Capacity for awe was not in Mayme's independent ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... extensive coastlines on Persian Gulf and Red Sea provide great leverage on shipping (especially crude oil) through Persian ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... and placed it clear of the stern, athwart the fore-and-aft line of the ship. We had quite a job with it (weight, four and a half tons), using treble- and double- sheaved-blocks purchase, but with the endless-chain tackle from the engine-room, and plenty of 'beef' and leverage, we dragged it clear. All the pintles are gone at the fore part of the rudder; it is a clean break and bears witness to the terrific force exerted on the ship during the nip. I am glad to see the rudder upon the ice and clear of the propeller. The blade itself (which is solid ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... with connoisseurs. But I was struck with the figure of the amiable and brilliant inventor, who was depressed, and received the premature congratulations of his friends somewhat ruefully. We could see the curious 'swinging saloon' fitted into the vessel, with the ingenious hydraulic leverage by which it could be kept nicely balanced. But it was to be noted that the saloon was braced firmly to the sides of its containing vessel; in fact, it was given out that, owing to some defect in its mechanism, ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... soil had been brought about probably to the depth of one or two feet, when by means of a savage pulling at the end of each of the cords (these cords being attached to the tops of the stakes, and extending back from the edge of the cliff), a vast leverage power was obtained, capable of hurling the whole face of the hill, upon a given signal, into the bosom of the abyss below. The fate of our poor companions was no longer a matter of uncertainty. We alone had escaped from the tempest of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... wheel with 4 in. journal has a greater leverage wherewith to overcome the resistance of journal friction than the 38 in. wheel with the same journal, and even more than the 36 in. and 33 in. wheels with 33/4 in. and 31/2 in. journals respectively, but the fact remains that the same amount of work has to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... immunities of "Home Rule" to an extent and under guarantees never yet openly demanded for Ireland by any responsible legislator within the walls of the British Parliament. But so powerful was the leverage upon them of conflicting passions and interests beyond their own borders that these sovereign states, well organised, homogeneous, prosperous communities, much more populous and richer in the aggregate in 1861 ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... coaxed and worked back a short distance, when, with the 'leverage' thus gained, the feat was completed, and the steam man stood with his face turned, ready to speed backward the moment that ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... bowsprit went with the strain when she rose, having buried herself halfway up the waist; and the topmast snapped like a carrot, a moment later. That was the worst dive we made. There is no doubt that getting rid of the leverage of the bowsprit, right up in her eyes, eased her a good bit; and as the topmast was a pretty heavy spar, too, ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... pushed with all our strength—and the stone did not yield by so much as the breadth of a hair! And then rather a queer look came into Rayburn's face, and he said: "I think that I understand what is the matter. The point of leverage falls beyond the edge of the hole. From where we have a chance to push, we are working against the whole weight of the stone. We might as well try to lift the mountain itself!" And then he added, "I guess we'd better give this thing up ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... shakes the body, the others imitate him and push, but without combining their efforts in a given direction, for, after advancing a little towards the edge of the brick, the burden goes back again, returning to the point of departure. In the absence of any concerted understanding, their efforts of leverage are wasted. Nearly three hours are occupied by oscillations which mutually annul one another. The Mouse does not cross the little sand-hill heaped about it by the rakes of ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... they dug pits for the same purpose. They also built dams to throw large bodies of water along the west side of the canon so that an army would be forced to the east side; and here at the top of the cliff, great quantities of boulders were placed so that a slight leverage would suffice to hail them down upon the army as ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... Sound. Smeaton's lighthouse, modelled after the trunk of a sturdy oak in Windsor Park, became the model for all subsequent lighthouses. It is as firm to-day as when originally built, but the reef on which it rests has been undermined and shattered by the joint action of the waves and the leverage of the tall stone column, against which the seas strike with prodigious force, causing it to vibrate like the trunk of a tree in a storm. The foundation-stone of the new lighthouse was laid on a reef one hundred and twenty-seven feet south of the old one in 1878. It ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... deck swing and jerked his legs high in the air. He could not have broken that grip of his own strength, but the sway of the deck gave his movement a mighty leverage. The hand slipped from his neck, scraping skin away, as if a red-hot iron had been drawn across the flesh. But he was half loosed, and that twist of his body sent them both rolling one over the other to the scuppers of the ship—and it was McTee who crashed against the ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... in town that day, and Appleman had no difficulty in giving reasons for the lateness of his home-coming. Next day, though, he was a busy man. By the exercise of main strength, and the leverage afforded with a strong ironwood handspike, he succeeded in rolling both those barrels into the cave and uptilting them, and leaving them standing high and dry. The cave was as dry as a bone. He noted with satisfaction the overhanging clay bank above, and felt that if he were ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... the circular motion derived from a cylinder engine very irregular, in consequence of the unequal leverage of the crank at the ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... precipice, to examine some crab-apple trees, which, springing from a turret-like projection of the rock, far from gardens and nurseries, had every mark of being indigenous; and then, climbing up among the branches, I shook them in a manner that must have exerted no small leverage power on the outjet beneath, to possess myself of some of the fruit, as the native apples of Scotland. On my descent, I marked, without much thinking of the matter, an apparently recent crack running between the outjet and the body of the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Lights went out and when he came back to Earth he was lying the wrong way of his Bed with Blue Badges all over him, trying to swallow a Bath Towel, which he afterward discovered was his Tongue. By getting a Leverage under his Head he managed to pry it up and then he sat on the edge of the Bed and called himself Names. He had nothing left over except the Cards given to him by the Brothers from up State somewhere. ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... to the cross-stick, about nine inches on either side of the crossing-point. But if one half of the cross-stick shows a greater bend than the other, he places the longer arm of the bracing piece toward the side that bends the most, thus presenting a greater leverage against the wind on that side than on the other, and ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... went clear through his body. It must have struck a vital point for the monster gave one convulsive leap and fell back in its death flurry, lashing the water into yeast. Then it turned part way over and remained motionless, the leverage of the shaft preventing it from turning ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... The machinery could be so constructed that the horse would not be necessary; but for this arrangement much more space would be required. If even all the horses were disabled—a thing which hitherto has never occurred—the machinery could be kept in motion by manual power and leverage. ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... but at that time he was in some doubt about the canine teeth. At his request some of us gravely cracked nuts with him, and after the experiment we agreed that human beings more naturally crack nuts with the back teeth, where leverage is most powerful. A suspicion remained that our pointed fangs might have been ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... forward and the other tooth back; and this continually occurring, a continual rotary motion is given to the sheaves, in opposite directions, with a power which is proportioned to the number of the teeth, the throw of eccentric, and the leverage gained by the diameter of the hand wheel. The lifting chain is passed over the one sheave, then down, and up over the other, the two ends being attached to a powerful cross bar, to which is connected the lifting hook. By this means the weight is distributed over the two sheaves and ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... platforms, so to speak. These platforms enable the tank to overcome all obstacles as the caterpillar tread is curved up in the arc of a huge circle at the front which gives the vehicle its wonderful tractive powers. This large curvature acts as a huge wheel with a tremendously long leverage equal to the radius of the circlet or the spokes of the imaginary wheel of the same diameter. Only that portion of the assumed wheel which would come in contact with the ground acts as the lever, and it is just this portion that is reproduced in the front ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... before a wet and stormy south-wester. It was the merest routine to carry the painter ashore and twist the rotten rope round an exposed root of the great willow tree; for there was not the slightest chance of that ancient craft breaking adrift. All our strength and the leverage of the sculls could scarcely move her, so much had she settled. But we had determined to sail that lovely day to visit the island of Calypso, and had got all our arms and munitions of war aboard, besides being provisioned ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... acetabulum, thus affording a good illustration of a ball and socket joint. The Patella, or knee-pan, is the most complicated articulation of the body. It is of a round form, connects with the tibia by means of a strong ligament, and serves to protect the front of the joint, and to increase the leverage of the muscles attached to it, by causing them to act at a greater angle. The Tibia, or shin bone, is enlarged at each extremity and articulates with the femur above and the astragalus, the upper bone of the tarsus, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... ingenious device in this machine is the arrangement for automatically lengthening the throw of the feed while stitching around the eye of the button hole. It is effected by means of a cam, which imparts more or less leverage to the feed arm by the intervention of a "shipper" lever, hinged to the feed lever itself. The space of time at my disposal obliges me to recommend a personal examination of the machine itself, to fully understand its various motions ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... with the strength of a madman. I WAS a madman with rage and horror. For a minute or more I held the thing motionless. I knew that he was straining with all his force upon the handle, and that the leverage was sure to overcome me. I gave inch by inch, my feet sliding along the stones, and all the time I begged and prayed this inhuman monster to save me from this horrible death. I conjured him by his kinship. I reminded ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... without social organisation, which might fall a prey to oligarchs or despots. What remained of deeply rooted feuds or factions—animosities against the Grandi, hatred for the Ghibellines, jealousy of labour and capital—offered so many points of leverage for stirring the passions of the people and for covering personal ambition with a cloak of public zeal. The time was come for the Albizzi to attempt an oligarchy, and for the Medici to begin the enslavement ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... but not unwisely,—I said. Unless the will maintain a certain control over these movements, which it cannot stop, but can to some extent regulate, men are very apt to try to get at the machine by some indirect system of leverage or other. They clap on the brakes by means of opium; they change the maddening monotony of the rhythm by means of fermented liquors. It is because the brain is locked up and we cannot touch its movement directly, that we thrust these coarse tools in through any crevice, by which they ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... better than hunt for the grains of truth among their tricks and lies. Do you remember what I used to say in my lectures?—or were you asleep just then, or cutting your initials on the rail? (You see I can ask questions, my young friend.) Leverage is everything,—was what I used to say;—don't begin to pry till you have got the long arm ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... men was being flung into that mad labor. Sweat streamed into their eyes, half blinding them; they dashed it off, and struck again and again. The cement crumbled and gave; the heavy gold band commenced to bend; Rennes got his crowbar into an advantageous leverage and gave a ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... available is small, having no slab to assist it, as is the case within the middle section, where the compression is in the top. Over the supports, for the width of the column, there is abundant strength, for here the steel has a leverage equal to the depth of the column; but at the very edge and for at least one-tenth of the span out, conditions are serious. The usual method of strengthening this region is to subpose brackets, suitably proportioned, to increase the available compressive area to a ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... instrument which I had used for holding small slippery substances, such as minute spheres of glass, etc. This instrument was nothing more than a long slender hand-vice, with a very powerful grip, and a considerable leverage, which last was accidentally owing to the shape of the handle. Nothing was simpler than, when the key was in the lock, to seize the end of its stem in this vice, through the keyhole, from the outside, and so lock the door. Previously, however, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... apparently insignificant circumstance, Dr. Smith eventually educed and reduced to successful practice the method of reducing dislocations by the manoeuvre, a system as useful as it is simple, and as scientific as the principle of flexion and leverage on which it depends. Had this incident been related to a stupid man, he would have seen nothing in it, or to a skeptic, he would have discredited the whole account, but to a man of genius it furnished ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... combination of a toggle and springs and levers for operating a drag saw has been patented by Mr. Harvey Hughes, of Wheat Ridge, Ohio. The saw, while properly guided, is free to move up or down without affecting the leverage. ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... safety-valve is commonly employed (Fig. 11). The blowing-off point can be varied by shifting the weight along the arm so as to give it a greater or less leverage. On locomotive and marine boilers, where shocks and movements have to be reckoned with, weights are replaced by springs, set to a certain tension, and locked up so that they ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... portions of the same. The nearer the two bodies are together, the larger proportionally will be the differences in the distances of its various parts from the tide-producing body; and on this account the leverage, so to speak, of the action by which the tides are produced is increased. For instance, if the two bodies were brought within half their original distance of each other, the relative size of each body, as ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... offer the Leyden people beyond the personal and associate influence of its members, and the prestige of a name that had once been potential. In fact, the New Netherland Company was using the Leyden congregation as a leverage to pry for itself from the States General new advantages, larger than ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... Grey was as anxious as the rest; but officers of his rank seldom go aloft, and soon fall out of their catlike habits. He had done about six ratlines, when, instead of going hand over head, he spread his arms to seize a shroud on each side of him: by this he weakened his leverage, and the wind just then came fiercer, caught him, and flattened him against the rigging as tight as if Nature had caught up a mountain for a hammer and nailed him with a cedar; he was spread-eagled. The men accepted him at once as a new patent ratline with a fine resisting ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... a most threatening manner; but if we make still more hostile motions the creature retreats as hastily as it can, changing its method of progress to an all-fours, sloth-like gait, the long free thumb of each hand grasping wire after wire and doing most of the leverage, the hind legs ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... case of those people who have no personal resources to draw on. Their lives are so lacking in spiritual power, or so full of intellectual scepticism and distrust, that they cannot help themselves. They have no religious convictions or certainties by which to obtain leverage in their struggles. They have no firm philosophy of life on which they or those who would help them can lay hold. They are putty in the hands of the fears and forces ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... punch, just place the tips of the fingers of your left hand on the right side of his chest. Then bring down the heel of your left hand. There isn't a guy living that could stand up against that. The fingers give you a leverage to beat the band. The guy doubles up, and you upper-cut him with your right, and out he goes.' Now, I bet you never knew that before, Comrade Philpotts. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... leave the great stem; and thus each section of the tree would present a kind of magnified view of its own leaf, were it not for the interfering force of gravity on the masses of foliage. This force in proportion to their age, and the lateral leverage upon them, bears them downwards at the extremities, so that, as before noticed, the lower the bough grows on the stem, the more it droops (Fig. 17, p. 67); besides this, nearly all beautiful trees have a tendency to divide into two or more principal masses, which give a prettier and ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... Australia to Siberia by various tribes in one form or another. As they themselves had sometimes thrown a crab-apple from a stick in their younger days in the States, they could readily see that the greater length added to the arm gave greater leverage and power. ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... results—results on King Friedrich in particular, which were stronger than the Cannonade of Torgau! As will be seen. For within year and day,—Mauduit and Company making their noises from without, and the Butes and Hardwickes working incessantly with such rare power of leverage and screwage in the interior parts,—a certain Quasi-Olympian House, made of glass, will lie in sherds, and the ablest and noblest man in England see himself forbidden to do England any service farther: "Not ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... interchangeable. A permanent indicator is provided which shows the exact point of cut-off. The steam-port is exceptionally large, being one-fourth of the piston area. Reciprocating motion is entirely done away with. The steam is worked at the greatest leverage of the crank through the entire stroke. Among the other chief advantages claimed for this engine are direct connection to the machinery without belts, etc., impossibility of getting out of line, uniform crank leverage, capacity for working equally well slow or fast, etc. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... steady lay-clerk from York or Durham Cathedral would have done a little better, because he would have been no colder at heart, and more exact in time, and would have sung clean; whereas this gentleman set his windpipe trembling, all through the business, as if palsy were passion. By what system of leverage such a man came to be hoisted on to such a pinnacle of song as "Faust" puzzled our English friends in front as much as it did the Anglo-Danish artist at the wing; for English girls know ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... quarters, consisted in heeling the ship over, by heavy purchases attached to the top of the lower masts, until the keel, or at least so much of the side as was necessary, was out of water. As the leverage on the masts was extreme, almost everything had to be taken out of the ship, guns included, to lighten her to the utmost; and the spars themselves were heavily backed to bear the strain. The upper works, usually out of water, must on the down ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... with his mother and brothers and sisters to keep, learning carpentering, and bettering his wages—learning mason-work, picking up the way to manage machinery, inspiring men with confidence, and beginning to get the leverage of borrowed money, getting a good name at the bank, managing a little farm, contracting for building, contracting for hauling—onwards to a larger farm, larger buildings, big contracts in rising ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... last century) is perhaps the best thing ever written on the subject; and is particularly valuable nowadays when there is a certain tendency to undervalue Smollett in order to exalt Fielding, who certainly needs no such illegitimate and uncritical leverage. I do not think that he is, on the whole, unjust to Campbell; though his Gallican, or rather Napoleonic mania made him commit the literary crime of slighting "The Battle of the Baltic." But in all ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... not relax for an instant the exercise of every ounce of strength. I felt as though the life was being squeezed out of me by the grasp of those hairy arms; yet the very vice in which I was held yielded me leverage. The hatchet dropped to the deck, and both hands found lodgment under the jaw, the muscles of my arms strained to the utmost, as I forced back that horrid head. Little by little it gave way, the suffering brute whining in ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... in on the ground floor this time; though I may ask you to hold your hand until I have used my leverage. And if you'll go into it to stay, you sha'n't be alone. Giving the Argus precedence in any item of news, I'll engage to have every other opposition editor in the State ready ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... with nothing but brass and a pocket with nothing but copper in it, has a brilliant, if a short, career before him, and will be sure to gain the character of ability; for if ambition but find selfishness to work upon, it has that leverage which Archimedes wished for. But time makes sad havoc with this false greatness, with this reputation which passes for fame, and this adroitness which passes for wisdom, with merely acute minds. When Plausibility and Truth divided the world between them, the one chose To-day ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... the tongue and bars of a horse's mouth, and affording control without pain, is perfection of its kind." Of the double bridle he says:—"I need hardly explain to my reader that it loses none of the advantages belonging to the snaffle, while it gains in the powerful leverage of the curb a restraint few horses are resolute enough to defy. In skilful hands, varying, yet harmonising, the manipulation of both, as a musician plays treble and bass on the pianoforte, it would seem to connect the rider's thought with the horse's movement, as if an electric chain passed ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... legislature. Now he was out upon the stump, speaking in behalf of state policies like canals and railroads; and there was the question too of removing the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield, which might constitute a leverage for a vote for internal improvements. Douglas was in favor of both. While slave interests were seeking land for cotton, the agrarian interests in Illinois were awake to the need of transportation facilities and markets. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... tried to replace fear with courage. But in the circumstances, and without further knowledge, this was as impossible as it is for a man to lift himself by his own boot-straps. She had no point of contact with her real fear, as the man has no leverage contact with the earth from which ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... Gubin to the old horse which supplied the leverage power for the bucket; whereupon I seated myself upon the edge of the receptacle and went aloft, where everything was looking so bright and warm as to bear a ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... wealth hung over the men and the place, a crushing suggestion of vast enterprises, of engineering and railway building and the running of steamers, a subtle aroma of colossal fortunes, wrested from the world by the leverage of an initial half-crown. I have often gone to places with only half a crown in my pocket, but it never seemed to lead to anything. So I surveyed these men with blended reverence and bewilderment, wondering why they bothered themselves to make all that money, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill |
