"Pivot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the condition essential to skating. In the first place, the skate no longer rests on a solid. It rests on a liquid. You are aware how in cases where we want to reduce friction—say at the bearing of a wheel or under a pivot—we introduce a liquid. Look at the bearings of a steam engine. A continuous stream of oil is fed in to interpose itself between the solid surfaces. I need not illustrate so well-known a principle by experiment. Solid friction disappears when ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... piece is regulated in similar fashion, being made firm, by a screw, at the required width, thus allowing various sized frames to be used in the same stand. The frame is fixed in place by metal clamps, and a wooden pivot is arranged so as to permit the stretched work to be inclined at any angle convenient. Both stand and frame should be well made and of good wood, for they must be able to stand strain and be perfectly firm and true when ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... frenzy descends upon us; and then for three days we dress our town in bunting and bang starting guns and finishing guns, and put on fancy dresses, and march in procession with Japanese lanterns, and dance, and stare at pyrotechnical displays. But the centre, the pivot, the axis of our revelry is always the ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Comte's religion has a cultus, so also it has a clergy, who are the pivot of his entire social and political system. Their nature and office will be best shown by describing his ideal of political society in its normal state, with the various classes of which it ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... day to ours, there came an utterance from Mount Sinai that anticipated and answered these questions once for all, and for one and all. In that august revelation of the Divine Mind, every command of the Decalogue swung open upon the pivot of a not, except one; and that one referred to man's duty to man, and the promise attached to its fulfilment was only an earthly enjoyment. All the rest were restrictive; to curb this appetite, to bar that passion, to hedge this impulse, to check ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... supplies en route. He had to do the same with the store-rooms, and managed so well that he succeeded in laying in provisions enough for two years. There was abundance of money at his command, and enough remained to buy a cannon, on a pivot carriage, which he mounted on the forecastle. There was no knowing what might happen, and it is always well to be able to send a good round ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... marked in this point. There is not one Greek lyric devoted to what we should designate love, with perhaps something like an exception in Alcman. In fact, while moderns rarely make a tragedy or comedy, a poem or novel, without some love-concern which is the pivot of the whole, all the great poems and dramas of the ancients revolve on entirely different passions. Love, such as we speak of, was of rather rare occurrence. Women were in such a low position, that it was a condescension to notice them,—there was no chivalrous feeling in regard to them; they were ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... a sigh, she dismissed the matter from her mind until such time as opportunity served. Meanwhile she must put in an appearance at Mrs. John Day's house. Mrs. John Day was the social pivot of Rocky Springs, and, to disobey her summons, Helen knew would be to risk a displeasure which would find reflection in ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... done by setting the centres of the slots true to the lines passing through the axis) and set the pivots as follows: Place the pencil-point G so that it coincides with one of the points as C, and place the pivot E so that it comes directly at the point of intersection of the two slots, and fasten it there. Then turn the arm so that the pencil-point G coincides with one of the points of the minor axis as D, the arm lying parallel to B D, and place the pivot F over the centre of the trammel and ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... a happy basis for our future concord. I do not quite think that, my uncle; neither do I quite believe that a word of it is true. In our happy valley, nine-tenths of what is said is false; and you were always wont to argue that true and false are but a blind turned upon a pivot. Without any failure of respect for your character, good uncle, I decline politely to believe a word of what you have told me. And even if it were proved to me, all I can say is this, if my John will have me, I am his ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Caxtons will remember the description, in that charming novel, of the gradual growth of Augustine Caxton's great work "The History of Human Error,'' and how, in fact, the existence of that work forms the pivot round which the incidents turn. It was modestly expected to extend to five quarto volumes, but only the first seven sheets were printed by Uncle Jack's Anti-Publishers' Society, "with sundry unfinished plates depicting the various developments ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... Dedlock, Baronet, it's altogether impossible. What I have got to say is about her ladyship. She is the pivot it all turns on." ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... struggle, open or secret," between Authority and Liberty; though his judgment that neither "can ever absolutely prevail," shows us rather that we are on the threshold of laissez-faire than that Hume really understood the problem of freedom. He realized that the House of Commons had become the pivot of the State; though he looked with dread upon the onset of popular government. He saw the inevitability of parties, as also their tendency to persist in terms of men instead of principles. He was convinced of the necessity of liberty ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... prepared to go forward again. From what had just taken place, he supposed the troops now with him would strike the American line first. It was therefore arranged that when he became fully engaged, Frazer was to charge the American flank, and crush it, making the centre division his pivot. With his right, Burgoyne meant to ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... shrank away. There was a vague, unreal feel about her. And nobody else mattered. There was one place in the world that stood solid and did not melt into unreality: the place where his mother was. Everybody else could grow shadowy, almost non-existent to him, but she could not. It was as if the pivot and pole of his life, from which he could not escape, was ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... seat holds two people, the seats are placed in front of one another on both sides the whole length of the carriage or car, except a certain space at either end, of which presently. When the passengers are seated they thus all face the engine, but the back of each seat works on a pivot at its foot, so that the said back can be placed on either side of the seat. In other words, you can thus sit either with your face or back to the engine. This is a great convenience, for, if the carriage is not crowded and two people can ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... finished Gertrude's portrait, and he afterwards transferred to canvas the features of many members of that circle of which it may be said that he had become for the time the pivot and the centre. I am afraid it must be confessed that he was a decidedly flattering painter, and that he imparted to his models a romantic grace which seemed easily and cheaply acquired by the payment of a hundred ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... serpent was so splendid," Mrs. Greyson laughed, twirling the stand yet faster upon its pivot. "Would I do for ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... and the luggage carts. The journey was uneventful, and the sun was setting in a cloudless west when the mouth of the valley was reached. It was Cousin Peligros' happy lot to consider herself the centre of any party and the pivot upon which social events must turn. She bowed graciously to Captain Zeneta when he came ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... full length and spinning round and round like a wagon wheel upon its nave. They revolve with great rapidity, using their humped shoulders as a pivot, and their legs as levers. They sometimes continue this motion for half-an-hour at a time. No doubt they do this, as has been said, to scratch themselves; for, notwithstanding their thick hides and hair, they are much annoyed by insect-parasites. They do it, too, for amusement, or to give ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... be locked up in cases, nor placed on high or remote shelves. There should be in every library what may be termed a central bureau of reference. Here should be assembled, whether on circular cases made to revolve on a pivot, or on a rectangular case, with volumes covering both sides, or in a central alcove forming a portion of the shelves of the main library, all those books of reference, and volumes incessantly needed by students in pursuit of their various ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... other,—for I had got up when she came in,—and I must say the unknown seemed as much surprised as I was. Then all at once she began to walk round and round me; and as I didn't want her to get behind me, I kept turning too,—just as if I'd been on a pivot; I believe I was fascinated by those big eyes glaring at me through the ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... dug his paddle into the stream, and held hard with stiffened arms, his body thrown forward. The water gurgled aloud; and suddenly the long straight reach seemed to pivot on its centre, the forests swung in a semicircle, and the slanting beams of sunset touched the broadside of the canoe with a fiery glow, throwing the slender and distorted shadows of its crew upon the streaked ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... General Sebastiani, at the head of two divisions, was defeating the army of Estremadura at Ciudad Real, and driving it back to the entrance of the Sierra Morena. There they awaited the movement ordered in the instructions given to Soult, the pivot of the whole campaign, projected by Napoleon before his departure for Paris. It was in Germany, just after the battle of Essling, that the emperor learned of the check caused to all his combinations by Soult's immobility at Oporto. Obstinate in directing himself the operations ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... stout gentleman swung round as if on a pivot, as Audrey moved gracefully by.) "You don't mean to say so? ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... new effort, and that effort was the conversion of manufacturing Britain into a network of arsenals for the making of deadly implements of war. Again he made his special endeavor to appear as if they were the pivot of future victory. Forgotten for the time was finance. "Silver bullets" were no longer mentioned. "Shells, shells, shells!" was the cry of Lloyd George now, and the country echoed it. Enthusiastically he proceeded with his new task, and within a few days he had sketched a general scheme ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... when Richard pointed out a landmark to her, or called her attention to the flowers. At first, things were new and arresting, but the novelty soon wore off; and as they went on and on, and still on, it began to seem to Polly, who had never been farther afield than a couple of miles north of the "Pivot City," as if they were driving away from all the rest of mankind, right into the very heart of nowhere. The road grew rougher, too—became scored with ridges and furrows which threw them violently from side to side. Unused to bush driving, Polly was sure at each fresh ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... argue, it would not be easy to persuade them to obey Queen Victoria, or anything else. Effectual arguments to convince the people who need convincing are wanting. Just so, an immense system of credit, founded on the Bank of England as its pivot and its basis, now exists. The English people, and foreigners too, trust it implicitly. Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone: but what we have requires no proof. The whole rests on an instinctive ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... a hollow machine, like a small tower, which they Call a mill, in which you can bruise the useful fruit of the Roasted bean and crush it with frequent rubbing; A revolving pivot in the middle, on an easy wheel turning, Twists its metal joints on a creaking stem. The top of the wheel, you know, is pierced with an ivory handle Which will have to be turned by hand, through a thousand revolutions, And through a thousand circles it moves the pivot. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Yet Rodin can chisel a smooth nymph for you if he so wills, but her flesh will ripple and run in the sunlight. His art is one of accents. He works by profile in depth, not by surfaces. He swears by what he calls "cubic truth"; his pattern is a mathematical figure; the pivot of art is balance, i.e., the oppositions of volume produced by movement. Unity haunts him. He is a believer in the correspondences of things, of the continuity in nature; a mystic as well as a geometrician. Yet such a realist ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... attracted the attention of primeval man, and the first boats were doubtless the trunks of such trees roughly squared and then hollowed out with the help of fire. Later experience led to the addition of a prow which would more easily cleave the water, and a stern which would serve as a pivot. These canoes, if such a name may be already given to them, were at first guided by branches stripped of their leaves, or with long poles. Then oars or paddles were introduced, which are better for beating the water, and in later barks traces have been made out of what is ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... he let the golden moments escape. In a state of strong excitement, he at length quitted his daughter's presence, to seek that solitude in which his perturbed mind might become sufficiently calm to form a judgment which must be as the pivot upon which his whole future life would turn. Pollux left Zarah still on her knees, nor did she rise when he had torn himself from her clinging arms and left the apartment. When the daughter could no longer plead with, she pleaded for, her father—she implored that grace ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... re-embarked, leaving seventeen dead men, besides his own inanimate remains, to be buried by the people in the fort. Michillimackinac was not yet, however, quite safe. There were on the lake two American armed vessels, the Tigress and Scorpion, each carrying a long twenty-four pounder gun, on a pivot, and manned by thirty-two men, which intercepted the supplies intended for the garrison. It was most necessary to destroy or get hold of them, and this not unimportant business was entrusted to Lieutenant Worsley, of the Royal Navy, and Lieutenant Bulger, of the Royal Newfoundland ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... instance, when the fleeting sense of the absurd passed, Jose knew that he was facing a crisis. Something told him that resistance now would be useless. True, Rosendo might have opposed arrest with violence, and perhaps have escaped. But that would have accomplished nothing for Carmen, the pivot upon which events were turning. Jose had reasoned that it were better to let the Alcalde play his hand first, in the small hope that as the cards fell he might more than match his opponent's strength ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... through which I was enabled to make signals by sounding a bell, (Fig. 7.) The mechanical arrangement for effecting this object was simply a steel bar, permanently magnetized, of about ten inches in length, supported on a pivot, and placed with its north end between the two arms of a horseshoe magnet. When the latter was excited by the current, the end of the bar thus placed was attracted by one arm of the horseshoe, and repelled by the other, and was thus caused to move in a horizontal ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... lower step—as Smith, bringing all his weight to bear upon the ring, turned the huge stone slab upon its hidden pivot, so that it fell back upon the stair with a ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... collect a great deal of important information on the subject from the funereal and religious works which have come down to us, especially concerning the great central idea of immortality, which existed unchanged for thousands of years, and formed the pivot upon which the religious and social life of the ancient Egyptians actually turned. From the beginning to the end of his life the Egyptian's chief thought was of the life beyond the grave, and the hewing of his tomb in the rock, and the providing of its furniture, every detail ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... reversed and backed to the full extent of their power, and the port battery run in to bring the ship on an even keel. After working for thirty-five minutes it was found impossible to get her off. The port battery and pivot gun were then ordered to be thrown overboard, but before that was done Captain Smith decided that the ship would have to be abandoned, as three batteries had her range ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... youth," says the professor. "An electrical current passing through a coil of wire makes a magnet of a bar of iron lying within it, but not touching it. So a woman is turned into a love-magnet, by a tingling current of life running round her. I should like to see one of them balanced on a pivot properly adjusted, and watch if she did not turn so as to point north and south, as she would if the love-currents are like those ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the coxswain, with admirable dignity and self-possession; and the Zephyr, acted upon by this maneuver, came about as though upon a pivot, without ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... back of the lock clanked open. Joe tried to walk toward it. He discovered his astounding clumsiness. To walk in magnetic-soled shoes in weightlessness requires a knack. When Joe lifted one foot and tried to swing the other forward, his body tried to pivot. When he lifted his right foot, he had to turn his left slightly inward. His arms tried to float absurdly upward. When he was in motion and essayed to pause, his whole body tended to continue forward with a sedate toppling motion that brought ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... is the pivot of a magazine. On him everything turns. If his gauge of the public is correct, readers will come: they cannot help coming to the man who has something to say himself, or who presents writers who have. And if the reader comes, the advertiser must come. He must go where his ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... March—Greene made them pay so dearly for their victory that Tarleton called it "the pledge of ultimate defeat"; and, three days later, Cornwallis was retreating towards Wilmington. In a sense, then, King's Mountain was the pivot of the war's revolving stage, which swung the British from their succession of victories towards the surrender ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... of the march, were again ordered to change front. The Grenadiers, which was a pivot regiment, did not slacken their pace and, consequently, the centre were greatly exhausted in trying to keep up with it, and were certainly in no condition to take part in the battle ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... except a few wounded men were safely on board a large scow attached to a tug boat which hauled into American waters. Here they were hailed by the tug Harrison, belonging to the U.S. steamer Michigan, having on board one 12-pounder pivot gun, which fired across their bows and threatened to sink them unless they hauled to and surrendered. With this request they complied; not because they feared the 12-pounder, or the still more powerful guns of the Michigan, which lay close by, but because they respected the authority ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... arena could have surpassed this fight. The elephant was mad with rage, and nevertheless he seemed to know that the object of the hunters was to get behind him. This he avoided with great dexterity, turning as it were upon a pivot with extreme quickness, and charging headlong, first at one, and then at another of his assailants, while he blew clouds of sand in the air with his trunk, and screamed with fury. Nimble as monkeys, nevertheless the aggageers could not get behind him. In the folly of excitement ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... adopted. The shed is mounted upon a double turn-table, there being two circular tracks the one near the centre of the shed and the other towards its extremities. The shed is mounted upon a centre pivot and wheels engaged with these inner and outer tracks. In this manner the shed may be swung round to the most favourable point of the compass ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... deeper sense than the poet meant it, 'Through the ages an increasing purpose runs,' and that binds the epochs of humanity together—'the purpose of God in Christ Jesus.' The philosophy of history lies there, and it is a true instinct that makes the cradle at Bethlehem the pivot around which the world's chronology revolves. For the deepest thing about all the ages on the further side of it is that they are 'Before Christ,' and the formative fact for all the ages after it is that they are ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... collet, and a pair of tweezers for holding jewels while cleaning, etc., etc. As to lathes, I have found that there is a necessity of about two lathes; one a Swiss, light running lathe for cementing any pivot work, and I prefer these because they run much lighter and easier than those heavier American lathes; and yet if confined to but one lathe, I would use a small sized American lathe, with a good assortment of split chucks, particularly those with the smaller sized holes, for holding balance staffs, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... came to a standstill. It was turning as if on a pivot. It had been caught in one of the numerous eddies at the mouth of a small tributary stream. Vigorously he strove to gain the channel. He hugged the bank, hoping to free himself from the whirlpool, but his outrigger became ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... its muffled depth, in the way it quakes up through one's pillow so as to be felt rather than heard. It is simply the pounding of the ponderous pestle of the kometsuki, the cleaner of rice—a sort of colossal wooden mallet with a handle about fifteen feet long horizontally balanced on a pivot. By treading with all his force on the end of the handle, the naked kometsuki elevates the pestle, which is then allowed to fall back by its own weight into the rice-tub. The measured muffled echoing of its fall seems to me the most pathetic ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... drawing-rooms as Mme. de St. Cyr's are less and less frequent. Yet, though the delightful spell of the last century daily dissipates itself, and we are not now what we were twenty years ago, still Paris is, and will be till the end of time, for a cosmopolitan, the pivot ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... story has a relish denied to the painful industry of Minot. Our events seem to fall short of that colossal proportion which befits the monumental style. Look grave as we will, there is something ludicrous in Counsellor Keane's pig being the pivot of a revolution. We are of yesterday, and it is to no purpose that our political augurs divine from the flight of our eagles that to-morrow shall be ours, and flatter us with an all-hail hereafter. Things do really gain in greatness by being acted on a great and cosmopolitan ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... different bolts drawn back, and then there was a pause. He thought he heard whispering, so he resumed his thunder. Almost at once there followed the unmistakable squeak of a big beam turning on its pivot, and the door opened about ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... upright strong pine-planks, the interstices of which were filled with yak-dung; and they sometimes rest on a low foundation wall: the door was generally at the gable end; it opened with a latch and string; and turned on a wooden pivot; the only window was a slit closed by a shutter; and the roofs were very low-pitched, covered with shingles kept down by stones. The paths were narrow and filthy; and the only public buildings besides the convents were Manis and Mendongs; of these the former are square-roofed temples, containing ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... always be the central pivot of a whirlpool of excitement? God knows he loved peace even if Fate never permitted him to sample it. He laid the whole thing unconditionally at Brian's door. Let Brian, instead of shirking his usual numismatic responsibilities in some indefinite green world of peace and ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... an urgent whisper, and drew them to a little distance. I saw him say something, saw them pivot to look at me, shrug their shoulders and walk away. I didn't in the least grasp the ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... hour. As soon as her course had been changed, so as to bring the wind forward of the beam, which was her best point of sailing, the men were sent to the guns; the first mate placing himself at a long eighteen pounder, which was mounted as a pivot gun aft, a similar weapon being in her bows. All this took but four or five minutes, and shot after shot from ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... fanaticisms, all those superstitions—maladies to which religion is subject at certain epochs; to the longing to "make playthings of all these men," as Hamlet says. To set in array about and below Cromwell, himself the centre and pivot of that court, of that people, of that little world, which attracts all to his cause and inspires all with his vigour, that twofold conspiracy devised by two factions which detest each other, but join hands to overthrow the man who blocks their path, but which unite simply without ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... with the thought, "That will put him out of business," pulled the trigger. The bullet, driving with momentum sufficient to perforate a man's body a mile distant, struck Tudor with such force as to pivot him, whirling him half around by the shock of its impact and knocking ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... up without doing more than hammer her hard and start a few rivets. Closing in at top speed—barely six knots—the Merrimac gave the Congress a broadside before ramming the Cumberland and opening a hole "wide enough to drive in a horse and cart." Backing clear and turning the after-pivot gun, the Merrimac then got in three raking shells against the Congress, which grounded when trying to escape. Meanwhile the Cumberland was listing over and rapidly filling, though she kept ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... I donned it when it arrived, and on my way to him transfixed the Rue des Saladiers with awe and wonder. Upstairs, Paragot twirled me slowly round as if I were a mannequin on a pivot, and called Blanquette to admire, and uttered strange oaths in the dozen languages of which he was ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... precious evidence from his breast before escaping? In the latter case, it had, undoubtedly, ere this, been destroyed; in the former, it would, presumably, soon be transferred to the police agent's employer. To regain the paper, if it existed, would be no light task; yet it was the pivot upon which John Steele's fortunes hung. The principal signer was, in all likelihood, making his way out of London now; he would, in a few hours, reach the sea, and after that disappear from the case. At any rate, ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... done by tracing the independence of America to the measure which Allen so boldly projected, as he walked his lonely chamber, on the eventful night we have described. The independence of the colonies was, at that dark crisis, balancing, as on a pivot; and the success of Burgoyne must seemingly have turned the scale against us. The success of Burgoyne, at the same time, hung on a pivot also; and the victory of Bennington, with all its numberless direct and ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... bulb is reflected in a mirror which is moved by the moving needle. When the sound is loudest the two horns are at right angles to the direction whence it comes. So it is only necessary to twist the phonometer about on its pivot until the sound is received most loudly in the horns and the band of light is greatest. I know then that the horns are at right angles to the direction from which the sound proceeds, and that, as I lift my head, I am looking straight toward the ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... to be desired. It consists of an apparatus of copper ribbons, leading from a Voltaic battery placed beneath the stage, attached to the conductor's desk, and terminating in a movable stick fastened at one end on a pivot before a board at a certain distance from the orchestral conductor. To this latter's desk is affixed a key of copper, something like the ivory key of a pianoforte; it is elastic, and provided on the interior ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... Hundred Sixty-six, and died in Fifteen Hundred Thirty-six. No thinker of his time influenced the world more. He stood at a pivotal point, and some say he himself was the intellectual pivot of the Renaissance. ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... them, though he did not move. Sebastiano looked up at him uneasily from time to time, but Ruggiero gazed steadily at the sea with the affectation of proud indifference to scrutiny, which is becoming in a boy of twelve years. At last the old man stirred, turned slowly as on a pivot and ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... bullock stood fast, but by the time Dexter was within half a dozen yards, he flung his cap right in the animal's face, and, with a loud snort, it turned as on a pivot, and dashed off toward the upper part of the field, now driving the whole of the rest ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... in arranging a bill of fare and harmonizing the peculiarities of the various dishes, as there is in preparing the colors for a painting; the soup represents the pivot upon ...
— Fifty Soups • Thomas J. Murrey
... every clime, and whose beauty was as famous as her wealth and importance. How often Alexander had stared at the blue line of the hills above her! Forty miles away, within the range of his vision, was a bit of the great world, the very pivot of maritime trade, and one cause and another had prevented him from so much as putting his foot on a sloop ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... stand, or box, a bracket for one or more pots on either side of the window, about one-third or half-way up, will be desirable. The bracket should turn on a basal hinge or pivot, to admit of swinging it forward or backward. These bracket plants usually suffer for moisture, and are rather ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... load, and then the earth will be overwhelmed by a deluge. Another legend tells us that when the gods and demons took Mount Mandara for a churning-stick and churned the ocean to make ambrosia, the god Vishnu took on the form of a tortoise and lay at the bottom of the sea, as a pivot for the whirling mountain to rest upon. But these versions of the myth are not primitive. In the original conception the world is itself a gigantic tortoise swimming in a boundless ocean; the flat surface of ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... channel e, oppose enough resistance to the peat to effect its compression. In order to regulate this resistance according to the varying quality of the peat, the piece of metal g, which hangs on a pivot at o, is depressed or raised, by the screw i, so as to contract or enlarge the channel. At each stroke of the plunger a block is formed, and when the channel e is once filled, the peats fall continuously ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... the river is bridged by four huge structures—The Redheugh Bridge, the new King Edward VII. bridge, the High Level, and Swing Bridges,—all connecting Newcastle with the sister town of Gateshead. An interesting sight it is to see the Swing Bridge gradually turning on its central pivot, until it lies in a straight line up and down the stream, allowing some huge liner to pass, or some new battleship, fresh from Elswick, to sail down the river, on its way to make its trial trip over the "measured mile" in the open sea at the mouth of the ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... Troilus and Cressida, the same subject is worked over very fully and is indeed the main pivot of the drama, in which Achilles is substantially deposed from his heroship and replaced by Ulysses. The contest between mind and might or skill and courage, is what the English poet took from his ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... Britain a spider-web, when our population is about one-fifth of hers and our ultimate authority in democratic government comes from Downing Street. Yet there are prophets among us who predict that we shall yet be the pivot of the Empire. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... search of. He was much fascinated, for instance, by the doctrine of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," and for its sake swallowed for a time, though not without wry faces, the dogmas, that self-interest is the true pivot of all social action, that population has a perpetual tendency to outstrip the means of living, and that to establish a preventive check on population is the duty of all good citizens. And so he lived on for some time in a dreary uncomfortable state, fearing for the future ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Greece served the future badly enough. Consider what might have been. The pivot of the Mediterranean world, in the sixth century, was not Athens, but in Magna Graecia: at Croton, where Pythagoras had built his school. But the mob wrecked Croton, and smashed the Pythagorean Movement as an organization; ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... speak now from my own observation) stand, as it were, upon a pivot. The touch of a feather would turn them any way. They have looked down the Mississippi, until the Spaniards, very impolitically, I think for themselves, threw difficulties in their way; and they looked that way for no other reason, than ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... came to close bearing under the ribs d. The railings and the wedges at the foot of the ribs were then removed, leaving the ribs hanging on the timber c. This timber was then jacked down to clear the lining and the ribs rotated horizontally on the point of suspension as a pivot until their ends swung in over the platform. The car was then moved ahead to where the centers were to be used again; the ribs were rotated back to their normal position across tunnel; the timber c was jacked up, and the wedges and ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... dear Sir John! I do not remember to have been employed, for some years, in a more interesting litigation. Now this cause, which, no doubt, you think is drawing to a close, has just reached its pivot, or turning-point; and I see every prospect of extricating our client with ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... foramen being situated entirely at the base of the cranium of man and not carried up behind, as in the other vertebrates, causes his head to be posed at the extremity of the vertebral column as on a pivot, not bowed down forward, his face not looking towards the ground. This position of the head of man, who can easily turn it to different sides, enables him to see better a larger number of objects at one time, than the much ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... the fleet of little gunboats were now visible from the battery, advancing against the Cumberland and Congress. The former opened fire upon her at a distance of a mile with the heavy pivot guns, but the Merrimac, without replying, continued her slow and steady course toward them. She first approached the Congress, and as she did so a puff of smoke burst, from the forward end of her pent-house, and the ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... skilful in the antique language of the drama must at once perceive, turned on the same pivot as in the old minstrel tales of the Drinking Horn of King Arthur, and the Mantle made Amiss. But the audience were neither learned nor critical enough to challenge its want of originality. The potent relic was, after such grimace and buffoonery as befitted ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... peals of laughter, and her ladyship laughed as heartily as any of them. When somewhat composed again, she looked across the table to Mr. Clerk, and offered to let him see it. "It is now set on the pivot of my watch, and a' the warks gae round the flech in place of turning ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe. Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin. But after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or heavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to grow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as if, when the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept him so ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... attention upon it or even to sit still. Her hand still burned where M. Raoul's lips had touched it. She recalled Endymion's prophecy that these entertainments would throw the domestic mechanism—always more delicately poised on Sundays than on weekdays—completely oft its pivot. She had pledged herself to prevent this, and had made a private appeal to the maidservants with whose Sunday-out they interfered. ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... properly; and if our book were a "Guide to Cornwall," we should feel bound to describe it with much particularity, referring to its size, form, weight, and rocking quality, besides enlarging on the memorable incident in its career, when a wild officer of the navy displaced it from its pivot by means of seamen and crowbars, and was thereafter ordered to replace it (a herculean task, which he accomplished at great cost) on pain of we know not what penalties. But, as we make no pretensions to the important office of a guide, ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... actual centre of the picture and pass a vertical and horizontal line through it. The vertical division is the more important, as the natural balance is on the lateral sides of a central support. It will be found that the actual centre of the canvas is also the actual pivot or centre of the picture, and around such a point the various components group themselves, pulling and hauling and warring in their claim for attention, the satisfactory picture showing as much design of balance on one side of the centre as the other, and the picture complete in ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... the better you can afford to go on being right. What is it that we all live upon but self-esteem? When we want praise it is only because praise enables us to think well of ourselves. Every one to himself is the centre and pivot ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... fixtures suggestive of the stage; a big tin-lined box with half a dozen powerful tungsten lamps in it, and grooves in the mouth of it for the reception of colored slides. And a sort of search-light that swung on a pivot. There was a high cutting-table with a deep indentation in it, in which Rose could stand with her work all around her. On a shelf in a corner he noticed two or three little figures twelve inches high or so that he'd have thought of as dolls had it not been that their ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Hugh signalled to his familiar. Like a response, a thin breeze tickled the roots of his hair. He swung around with the pivot of a definite purpose. With an economy of movement that would have contented an efficiency expert he set a straight fiddle-backed chair squarely in front of Uncle Hugh's girl and settled himself in it with his back ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... inside the other. And two rings will take care of any motion in three dimensions. These rings were pivoted, too, so that an unbelievably intricate series of motions could be given to the solenoid within them all. But the device was broken, now. A pivot had given away, and shaft and socket alike had vanished. Tommy became absorbed. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... wanted, whatever the sacrifice involved, Carol stood ready to fill the bill. Not for kindness,—oh, dear no,—Carol staunchly disclaimed any such niceness as that. She did it for fun, pure and simple. She said she liked to show off. She insisted that she liked to feel that she was the pivot on which little old Mount Mark turned. But this was only when she was found out. As far as she could she kept her little "seeds of fun" carefully up her sleeve, and it was only when the indiscreet adoration of her friends brought the budding plants to light, that ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... in the two cases being this—namely, that in the sails of the ship, the axis of inclination, represented by the mast, is vertical, creating horizontal movement; while, in the wings of the air-ship, the axis of inclination—the pivot on which they turn—is horizontal, creating vertical movement. Were there but one pair of screws, acting upon one set of inclined wings, a slight retrograde horizontal movement would be produced in addition to the vertical ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... fairly common is having the axes of the hinges out of alignment. Especially is this the case when three hinges are used to hang a wardrobe or other large door. It is absolutely necessary in all cases that the exact centres of the pivot-pins of the hinges should ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... the rake arm, E', to a loose collar, c, on reel shaft, B, by means of a pivot, d', carrying an arm, f, in combination with the jointed connecting rod, h, ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... the tributaries of the Ohio, if the trade and allegiance of the people of Kentucky were to be secured to Virginia and to the Union. "The western States," he wrote to Governor Harrison of Virginia, "stand as it were upon a pivot. The touch of a feather would turn them any way." The situation in Kentucky became more acute as intimations reached the people that John Jay was proposing to renounce the free ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... your Houses of Parliament! They legislate day and night, yet leave our lives unmodified. For our lives revolve on the pivot of custom, and our everyday movements are not political. The real ruler of England is the small boy of the streets! And, in truth, is it not so? By the unphilosophic regarded as akin to vermin, existing for the greater confusion of theologians, the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... moment of irresolute delay; on that hinge hung Eternity. The gate swung upon its pivot, that should shut ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... philosophical means which were used in early times for the purpose of making the Gospel intelligible have been fused with the contents of the Gospel and raised to dogma. This dogma, next to the Church, has become a real world power, the pivot in the history of the Christian religion. The transformation of the Christian faith into dogma is indeed no accident, but has its reason in the spiritual character of the Christian religion, which at ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... broadside was set nearer to the rock, which was now within fifty feet of them. The fore-chains were past the point, though little hope remained of clearing it abaft. A ship turns on her centre of gravity as on a pivot, the two ends inclining in opposite directions; and Captain Truck hoped that as the bows were past the danger, it might be possible to throw the after-part of the vessel up to the wind, by keeping away, and thus clear ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... whose cool head made him a good man at that pivot of the field; he was an able assistant to the right-field, a ready back-stop to the short-stop, and a perfect spider for taking into his web all the wild throws that came slashing from the home plate to cut off those who dared to try to steal ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... 1543 the bold and firm hand of Copernicus overthrew the greater part of the venerable scaffolding which had propped the illusions and the pride of many generations. The earth ceased to be the centre, the pivot, of celestial movements. Henceforward it ranged itself modestly among the other planets, its relative importance as one member of the solar system reduced almost to that of a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... followed closely after me. Then I ran round and round the stove, crying aloud for help. But my mother and the woman seemed not to know my danger. They sat still, looking quietly upon the devil's chase after me. At last I grew dizzy. My head revolved as on a hidden pivot. My knees became numb, and doubled under my weight like a pair of knife blades without a spring. Beside my mother's chair I fell in a heap. Just as the devil stooped over me with outstretched claws my mother awoke from her quiet indifference, and lifted me on her lap. Whereupon the devil vanished, ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... the turning-point, the pivot of circumstance that swings us to higher levels. It may not be financial success, it may not be fame; it may be new draughts of spiritual, moral or mental inspiration that will change us for all the later years of our life. Life is ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... of the chamber, a great rock in the ground slowly turned, as though on a pivot. They watched, fascinated. Even then Wu did not forget the precious ring, but as the rock turned, reached down quickly and recovered it from the ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... kids swings like they was on a pivot, and piles in after him. There wasn't anything to do then but stop under the gate, seein' as the club-house was a hundred yards or so off. I snaked Woodie out, though, and made him help me range the youngsters under the middle of the roof; and when ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... the storm redoubling its violence, the hanged man revolved on his own pivot, turning every way at once towards the swarm, as if he wished to run after the birds; his teeth seemed to try and bite them. The wind was for him, the chain against him. It was as if black deities were mixing themselves up in the fray. The hurricane was in the battle. As the dead ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... tool, made from a square bar of steel ground diagonally so as to give it two similar cutting edges. This tool is perhaps more generally useful than any of the others. The manner of using it is shown in Fig. 23; it is placed on the tool rest and dexterously moved on the rest as a pivot, causing the point to travel in a circular path along the metal in the lathe. Of course only a small distance is traveled over before the tool is moved along on the rest. After a little experience it will be found that by exercising care a good job in plain ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... one returned the nod and passed on to the inner room. The general manager, a sallow, heavy-visaged man who might have passed in a platform gathering for a retired manufacturer or a senator from the Middle West, swung in his pivot-chair to ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... had taken with him his unrivaled and intimate knowledge of the works; for, and in spite of all the dictates of prudence, it seemed impossible to think of the vast enterprise at St. Marys without its central pivot. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... the [accused] been present, still the denial of the constitutional right ought not to be condoned. * * * Nor ought this Court to convert the inquiry from one as to the denial of the right into one as to the prejudice suffered by the denial. To pivot affirmance on the question of the amount of harm done the accused is to beg the constitutional question involved. * * * The guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment is not that a just result shall have been obtained, but that the result, whatever ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... matter of the scene pretty fully roughed-out before details of furniture, properties, and position are arranged.[14] It may happen, indeed, that some natural phenomenon, some property or piece of furniture, is the very pivot of the scene; in which case it must, of course, be posited from the first. From the very moment of his conceiving the fourth act of Le Tartufe, Moliere must have had clearly in view the table under which Orgon hides; and Sheridan ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer |
