"Poise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quill in his great wings vibrated in his strong, level flight. I watched him as long as my eye could hold him. When he was fairly clear of the mountain he began that sweeping spiral movement in which he climbs the sky. Up and up he went without once breaking his majestic poise till he appeared to sight some far-off alien geography, when he bent his course thitherward, and gradually vanished in the blue depths. The eagle is a bird of large ideas, he embraces long distances; the continent is his home. I never look upon one without ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... the world is for their heirloom given— Against the freedom of all lands they wield This—Neptune's trident; that—the Thund'rer's levin. Gold to their scales each region must afford; And, as fierce Brennus in Gaul's early tale, The Frank casts in the iron of his sword, To poise the balance, where the right may fail— Like some huge Polypus, with arms that roam Outstretch'd for prey—the Briton spreads his reign; And, as the Ocean were his household home, Locks up the chambers of the liberal main. Where on the Pole scarce gleams the faintest star, Onward his restless course ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... quality which stirs youth to go out and seek the world rather than vegetate in the nursery of childhood. It was all there written in his keen, blue eyes, in the set of his jaws of even white teeth. It was all there in the muscular set of his great neck, and in the poise of his handsome head, and in the upright carriage of his breadth of shoulder. Even his walk was a thing to mark him out from his fellows. It was bold, perhaps even there was a suggestion of arrogance in it. But it was only the result of the military straightness ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... with the Celt, and the Norman forces the twain to do what the one would not dream of doing and what the other would dream beyond and never do. Do you catch me? Her most salient charm, is I think, her perfect poise, her exquisite adjustment. ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... girl's small head was thrown back, and in the poise of her slim young body there was a mingling of challenge and appealing self-defence. She looked like some ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... contested strand; The same which dead Protesilaus bore,(242) The first that touch'd the unhappy Trojan shore: For this in arms the warring nations stood, And bathed their generous breasts with mutual blood. No room to poise the lance or bend the bow; But hand to hand, and man to man, they grow: Wounded, they wound; and seek each other's hearts With falchions, axes, swords, and shorten'd darts. The falchions ring, shields rattle, axes sound, Swords ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... very curious experiment to poise a needle so, upon a piece of cork,—even without the magnetism. And he watched it as it slowly moved about, with a face full of interest ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... learning, passion, and credulity. The Protestant labors of Frederick Spanheim (Historia Imaginum restituta) and James Basnage (Hist. des Eglises Reformees, tom. ii. l. xxiiii. p. 1339-1385) are cast into the Iconoclast scale. With this mutual aid, and opposite tendency, it is easy for us to poise the balance with philosophic indifference. * Note: Compare Schlosser, Geschichte der Bilder-sturmender Kaiser, Frankfurt am-Main 1812 a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... myself go admiring her as though I had been a mere slave of aesthetics: the perfect grace, the amazing poise of that venerable head, the assured as if royal—yes, royal even flow of the voice. . . . But what was it she was talking about now? These were no longer considerations about fatal women. She was talking about her ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... poor youth might be, however undecided and timid in the forest, he seemed to be a new person on the water. There was a self-reliance about him, a poise and a certain ability that he seemed to have acquired suddenly. Without a trace of hesitation he guided the boat through the winding course of the creek that ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... he was at number one—the rattle of the iron links sounded horribly. At last number sixty! Calm from despair, Ben-Hur held his oar at poise, and gave his foot to the officer. Then the tribune stirred—sat ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... charming existence in an old and picturesque villa at Scarboro, in the north of England. Although her husband had been dead for several years, she still clung to the outward symbols of mourning. It added a softness to the patrician line of her features and a touch of distinction to her manner and poise. She had an illustrious example of a life-long sorrow, and, being ever loyal, Mrs. Chichester retained the weeds of widowhood and the crepe of ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... come nature will find a way to tickle our sense of humor when we are angry, discouraged, or otherwise mentally discomfitted and will thus help us thru laughter to throw off the soul chill and to regain spiritual poise. ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... mother," returned the girl quietly. She had the sexual self-poise of the Virginia woman, and she weighed the implied compliment at its due value. Had he declared he would die for her once a week, she would have received the assurance with much the ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... that holds the seeds of all life. He felt it between his toes, patted it with his palms, and joint by joint, sighing luxuriously, laid him down full length along in the shadow of the wooden-pinned cart. And Mother Earth was as faithful as the Sahiba. She breathed through him to restore the poise he had lost lying so long on a cot cut off from her good currents. His head lay powerless upon her breast, and his opened hands surrendered to her strength. The many-rooted tree above him, and even the dead manhandled wood beside, knew what he sought, as he himself did not know. Hour ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... immediate and habitual confusion of the kind spoken of is insanity; and the hypochondriac is tracked by the black dog of his own mind. Disease itself is, of course, in one sense natural, as being the result of natural causes; but if we assume health as the mean representing the normal poise of all the mental facilities, we must be content to call hypochondria subternatural, because the tone of the instrument is lowered, and to designate as supernatural only those ecstasies in which the mind, under intense but not unhealthy excitement, is snatched sometimes above itself, as in poets ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the plain road to the top.) Self Mastery. (How to centralize attention.) Training the Will. (A mighty force at your disposal.) Mental Poise. (How to command conditions.) Business Success. (How to coordinate forces by concentration.) Attaining Wealth. (How to attract money bringing factors.) How Courage is Gained. (Use of concentration to drive out fear.) Memory by Concentration. (A very ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... in the morning, she was on the tennis-court. Brazenly she engaged in light conversation across the net with no other than Thomas Hollins, Junior. She did not look up as the car passed the court, though he knew that she knew. Something in the poise of her head ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... the baby beat across the grass The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind, They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water; And the sight of their white play among the grass Is like a little robin's song, winsome, Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower For a moment, then away with a ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... gustily and which was the ostensible cause of her preparations, pressed her thin dress to her form and showed with sportive candour the fine modelling of bosom and limbs. Chiefly, however, I was attracted by the superb disdain in the poise of the head. It was a dark head, coiled heavily with black hair and set back in the hollow of the shoulders. Her face may be called dark too, the black eye-brows and olive skin being unrelieved by colour in the cheeks. Her whole expression was, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... no sort of affection for the lady. My trouble is that she puts me out of countenance, and I can't fit her in as an antagonist. I guess we Americans haven't got the right poise for dealing with that kind of female. We've exalted our womenfolk into little tin gods, and at the same time left them out of the real business of life. Consequently, when we strike one playing the biggest kind of man's game we can't place her. We aren't used ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... virtue of Michael. Michael's heredity, rigidly selected for ages by man, was chiefly composed of fierceness and faithfulness. And fierceness and faithfulness, together, invariably produce pride. And pride cannot exist without honour, nor can honour without poise. ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... indications of changing its tint. Its tendency was unmistakably toward brown. This was temporarily unfavourable, but a brightening of the blue eyes and a newly acquired poise of the head, with a step toward self-confidence in manner, ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... admire these monuments the more when we realize that they are not the work of master sculptors but of ordinary paid craftsmen. We turn away praising the city that could produce such noble sculpture and call it mere handicraft, and praising also the calm poise of soul, uncomforted by revealed religion, which could make these monuments common expressions of the bitterest, deepest, most vital emotions which can ever ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... reputation—something unsavoury enough, in all conscience!— had seen him only once, and then from a distance, before that conference in the rue Chaptal. And now he was becoming sensitive to a personality uncommonly insinuating: Wertheimer was displaying all the poise of an Englishman of the better caste More than anybody in the underworld that Lanyard had ever known this blackmailer had an air of one acquainted with his own respect. And his nonchalance, the good nature with which he accepted Lanyard's pardonable distrust, ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... grew a good five miles from the windfall. Suma had covered half the distance when a sharp odor in the air caused her to stop and, standing like an exquisitely chiselled statue, with tensed muscles and alert poise, to drink deeply the scent-laden air. The vision of a peccary dinner left her instantly and her pink tongue stole out gently until it touched her moist, black nose in anticipation of a far more ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... soldiers admired the height and shoulders of our first military samples. The British soldier approves of a greyhound trimness in the belt zone. He likes to look on carriage and poise. He appreciates a steady eye and stiff jaw. He is attracted by a voice that rings sharp and firm. The British soldier calls such ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... type—fair-skinned, blue-eyed, golden-haired—her hair had a darker gleam of bronze in it in certain lights—exquisitely moulded features which seemed capable of every sort of expression within a few changing moments, and a poise of head and carriage of body which only perfect health and the most scientific physical training can produce. In a word, she was one of those miraculous developments of femininity which Nature seems to have made a speciality for the particular benefit of the younger branch of the Anglo-Saxon ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... was that Jennie had divined, under the girl's well-bred poise, the desperation which was now terrifying him. It was no nightmare then of his own overwrought imagination. Jennie had perceived the emergency—the actual life-or-death emergency—and with courageous inspiration had done, unhesitatingly, the one thing that could possibly meet the case. She ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the poise of her figure, the gesture with outstretched arms—it was all so nearly an invitation, so nearly a surrender of herself to him, that the man started forward impulsively. For the moment he forgot his work—he forgot everything—he was conscious only ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... dreading perpetually some fatal accident in his distempered government, seeing nothing around him but treacherous friends or enraged enemies, possessing the confidence of no party, resting his title on no principle, civil or religious, he found his power to depend on so delicate a poise of factions and interests, as the smallest event was able, without any preparation, in a moment to overturn. Death, too, which with such signal intrepidity he had braved in the field, being incessantly threatened by the poniards of fanatical or interested assassins, was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... you will be of that way of thinking, young woman.—Dick, there's a sort of murderous, viperine suggestion in the poise of the head that I don't understand,' ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... a shining roseate creature. Always beautiful, always exquisite—flawless features, perfect poise, now she pulsated with life. A new brightness glowed in her eyes. Of late across her cheeks color was wont to come and go like the shadow of clouds on a hillside on a windy day. Even her voice, usually steady and controlled, now and again trembled and broke with ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... held out to the blind, even more than to the seeing, from the very beginning. It is not enough that the blind man or woman shall have physical strength, but his training must be so well balanced as to give him poise as well as vigor. It does not suffice that the blind man shall be as well educated as his fellow who sees. Handicapped by the loss of the most important of his special senses, he must supplement this deficiency ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... succeeded; and in its way toward the starboard quarter threw up a rolling wave thirty feet high, crowned by a blue square mass of many tons, resembling the entire side of a house, which, after hanging for some time in doubtful poise on the ridge, at length fell with a crash into the hollow, in which, as in a cavern, the after-part of the ship seemed embedded. It was, indeed, an awful crisis, rendered more frightful from the mistiness of the night and ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... station clock, and on the very stroke she hurried on to the platform. How could he have strained his eyes after other women, as if a second glance were ever needed when it was really she! The perfectly graceful figure, the trimness and neatness of it, the beautiful womanly poise of the head, the quick elastic step, he could have sworn to her among ten thousand. His heart gave a bound at the sight of her, but he had the English aversion to giving himself away, and so he walked quickly forward to meet her with ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... knew what the girl'd try to do once she got out of their sight! But where the intellectual and argumentative Smythe had failed, what could be expected of these simple mountain folk, who for all their sturdy independence were not a little awed by the superior poise and distinction of their visitor? Moreover, Marion was at this moment entirely honest in her assurance that she intended to go no farther than timber line. If the idea that lay deep in the back of her mind ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... set of the shoulders, in the swing of them as the man walked away, in the poise of the head, that had impressed Harriet Burrell as being vaguely familiar. Something of this must have been reflected in the Meadow-Brook Girl's face, judging from the guardian's ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... satisfaction, and believed he was paying his suit to the woman he would make his wife in an eminently proper way. but now that he was merely trying to obtain a young girl's friendship, the cool and masterful poise which he had then been able to maintain, was apparently deserting him. He might have asked himself if he ever remembered being such an enthusiastic friend before. He might have considered how often he had kept awake and counted the hours till he should meet a friend from whom ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... of the world appeared a narrow streak of ruddy light, like burnished copper beneath the blackness above. Blazing forth with the glory of a conqueror, the sun appeared within it, and seemed to poise immovable for an instant 'twixt heaven and earth, while its dazzling rays turned the living waters to molten gold. Then it slowly sank from sight, and, like wraiths of the dying day, the night-shadows began to creep out from the shore, deeper and deeper, nearer and nearer, until they engulfed the ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... ear still recognized no difference in him. There were days when he was as good-looking as ever, and much of the old fascination remained: but to one who knew him well, as Harding did, there was no doubt that his life had passed its meridian. The day was no longer at poise, but was quietly sinking; and though the skies were full of light, the buoyancy and blitheness that the hours bear in their ascension were missing; lassitude and moodiness ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... exhibitions, made ludicrous as they are by the operators, should be condemned by all intelligent men and women, not from the danger of hypnotism itself so much as from the liability of the performers to disturb the mental poise of that large mass of ill-balanced individuals which makes up no inconsiderable part of society." In conclusion he says: "Patients have been injured by the misuse of hypnotism. * * * This is true of every remedial agent ever employed for the relief of man. Every article we eat, if ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... adorable a creature in all her life. The maiden's gown was soft as satin and fell about her in ample folds, while dainty lace-like traceries trimmed the bodice and sleeves. Her flesh was fine and smooth as polished ivory, and her poise ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... fresh beauty was lost on him; the smooth curve of her soft white throat, the alluring charm of her warm sensuous lips, the tiny dimple that came and went when she smiled, the graceful pliant lines of her figure, the rare poise of her small head—his glance observed all. For better or for worse he loved her with whatever of the man there was in him; he might hate her in some sudden burst of fierce anger because of her shallowness, her greed, her utter selfishness; but he loved her always, ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... spring, everywhere confronting him, was in that face also; the joy of a life as yet pure, untainted, and untrammelled. It was like looking into the faces of the spring flowers which reflect only the sunshine, the purity and the sweetness of earth. There was a touch of womanly dignity, too, in the poise of the head, but the beautiful eyes, though lighted with the faint dawn of coming womanhood, were the same as those that had appealed to him the night ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... shown, through his Rhythmic Gymnastics, the extraordinary effect that rhythmic movements can have, not only on physical health, but on mental and moral poise. For highly nervous children some such work is of especial benefit, but for all children it is of great value. It should be supplemented in the ear-training class by constant practice in beating time to tunes. The teacher begins by ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... was a tolerably shrewd judge of humankind. To be sure, the Tyro was of a species new to him. Hence he had gone cautiously, testing him for temper and poise. At this point he determined upon what he would ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sea abeam you must simply paddle straight ahead. The adjustment is to be accomplished entirely by the poise of the body. You must prevent the capsize of your canoe when clinging to the angle of a wave by leaning to one side. The crucial moment, of course, is that during which the peak of the wave slips under you. In case of a breaking comber, thrust the flat ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... first looked on her face, Mabel Lee Had seemed to his self sated nature to be, On life's troubled ocean, a beacon of light, To guide him safe out from the rocks and the night. Her calm soothed his passion; her peace gave him poise; She seemed like a silence in life's vulgar noise. He bathed in the light which her purity cast, And felt half absolved from the sins of the past. He longed in her mantle of goodness to hide And forget the whole world. By the incoming tide He talked with his heart as one talks ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... destruction of the battle ship Maine while rightfully lying in the harbor of Havana on a mission of international courtesy and good will—a catastrophe the suspicious nature and horror of which stirred the nation's heart profoundly. It is a striking evidence of the poise and sturdy good sense distinguishing our national character that this shocking blow, falling upon a generous people already deeply touched by preceding events in Cuba, did not move them to an instant desperate resolve ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... from his perch, and was hanging head downward, fast asleep, still clinging to the line. Another evening, being discomposed by somebody coming to the towel-line after he had settled himself, he fluttered off; but so sleepy that he had not discretion to poise himself again, and was found clinging, like a little bunch of green floss silk, to the ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... increasing his speed now, slowing then, and getting more and more over with far less effort, and giving us no end of encouragement, as he at length reached the rocks, tumbled the load off his head—the load which had never seemed once to lose its poise—and finally we could see him seated facing us wiping his hot face with the ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... keynote, was his first judgment. In not many moments he had decided that her key-note was joy. But he was dissatisfied with both conclusions, and knew he had not put his finger on her. And then it came to him—pride. That was it! It was in her eye, in the poise of her head, in the curling tendrils of her hair, in her sensitive nostrils, in the mobile lips, in the very pitch and angle of the rounded chin, in her hands, small, muscular and veined, that he knew at sight to be the hard-worked hands of one who had spent long ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the children came in,—two boys and a girl. The elder boy was eight, with his mother's fair hair, blue eyes, and fine features, and the same suggestion of race in the narrow high brow, the upward poise of the head. His younger brother was nondescript, with dark hair and full lips. Margaret observed her children with a curiously detached air, Isabelle thought. Was she looking for signs of Larry in that second son? Alas, she ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... its dangers; and with a sigh she looked back to bygone days in which her past dragged along flatly and monotonously, a thin, black thread. Imperceptibly she grew conscious of her usefulness in this new life—a consciousness that gave her poise and assurance. She had never before felt herself necessary to anybody. When she had lived with her husband, she knew that if she died he would marry another woman. It was all the same to him whether a dark-haired or a ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... attacked from an unexpected quarter, was thrown still more out of mental poise. "I never said he was one," she declared, wildly. "I only just said there was a—a—I don't know what I said. Anyhow I never said it, 'twas my control talkin'. I'll leave it to 'Phelia Beebe. You know I don't know what ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a light skiff, in which a girl, clad in white jersey and white flannel skirt, with a white Tam o' Shanter pinned on her head, was sculling leisurely towards the town. From the swing of her body, the poise of her head and shoulders, and the smoothness with which her sculls dropped in the water and left it, it was plain that she was a perfect mistress of the art; wherefore the two men ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... seek for praise, Vain-glory's nothing worth in gospel days. Sincerity seeks not an open place, To do, tho' it does all with open face; It loves no guises, nor disfigurations. 'Tis plain, 'tis simple, hates equivocations. Sincerity's that grace by which we poise, And keep our duties even: nor but toys Are all we do, if no sincerity Attend our works, lift it up ne'er so high. Sincerity makes heav'n upon us smile, Lo, here's a man in whom there is no guile! Nathaniel, an Israelite indeed!' With duties he sincerely doth proceed; ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Mersch himself hardly counted. He had a way of glowing, but he paled ineffectual fires beside her maenadic glow. There was something overpowering in the sight of her, in the fire of her eyes, in the glow of her coils of hair, in the poise of her head. She wore some kind of early nineteenth-century dress, sweeping low from the waist with a tenderness of fold that affected one with delicate pathos, that had a virgin quality of almost poignant intensity. And beneath it she stepped with the buoyancy—the long steps—of ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... of reaching maturity varies with climate and ancestral origin. Yet, from a theoretical standpoint, children before or during the adolescent period should be limited to the use of a rather small amount of tea and coffee as beverages, as their poise and nerve control have not reached a stage of development sufficient to warrant the stimulation incident to the consumption of an ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... in other arts, the best artists grow from the complex to the simple, the tortuous to the direct, from pose to poise, from tradition to truth, from artifice to reality. Kedzie was beginning to understand this and to ape what she ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... perfect poise that comes-from self-control, The poetry of action, rhythmic, sweet— The unvexed music of the body and soul That the Greeks dreamed of, made at last complete. Our stumbling lives attain not such a bliss; ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... of happiness; it was in her one child, Master Johnny Temple, now just passed his third year. With considerable likeness to his father, this child possessed the hereditary beauty of the St. Legers, with that peculiar, queenly poise of the head that had distinguished ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... back at her. "I owe you that much revenge, at least. But seriously, I'd like it immensely and we fit like Grace and Poise. Look at that mirror. Did you ever see a better-matched couple? Will you give me a ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... I know not, but they never fired that volley. Our muskets seemed to poise and discharge themselves of their own volition, and a score of the villains, white and red, tumbled before us. Gardenier's men had recovered their senses as well, and, pouring in a deadly fusillade, dashed furiously forward with clubbed muskets upon the unmasked foe. These ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... look and speak, The man must act. The Stagyrite Says thus, and says extremely right; Strict justice is the sovereign guide, That o'er our actions should preside; This queen of virtue is confess'd To regulate and bind the rest. Thrice happy, if you can but find Her equal balance poise your mind: All diff'rent graces soon will enter, Like lines concurrent ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... to absolute bitterness. That she, a mere girl, should rise and come forward with so conventional yet friendly a greeting, that neither her lip should tremble nor her cheek flush, was little short of intolerable. Nevertheless it helped to brace his own resolves yet more firmly. Such poise, after all that had been between them, could have its source only in the most ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... I should succeed so quickly, so easily, even with the help of one so powerful as Helen Merival. It is my fate to work for what I get." And with this return of his belief that to himself alone he must look for victory, his self-poise ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the oracles of Delphi were no more terrifying to them than the coming of the word of God was to the prophets of Israel. They were accustomed to these messages, which were almost every-day affairs. It was all a part of that marvellous poise of nature which made the every-day mortal Greek almost as calm as the unperturbed imperturbable faces of their gods as their great sculptors ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... where it could easily be seen. As he stole quietly down the long hall, in an attempt not to awaken the household, he came suddenly upon Mademoiselle Ivanovitch seated in a chair drawn into a windowed recess. She started as he came upon her, but instantly recovered her calm poise of the ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... furie of the Winde. Sometime, the Flood preuailes; and than the Winde: Now, one the better: then, another best; Both tugging to be Victors, brest to brest: Yet neither Conqueror, nor Conquered. So is the equall poise of this fell Warre. Heere on this Mole-hill will I sit me downe, To whom God will, there be the Victorie: For Margaret my Queene, and Clifford too Haue chid me from the Battell: Swearing both, They prosper best of ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Considering how the heavy burdens which she had borne from childhood had never allowed her time to think for herself at all, but had obliged her always to tread blindly in the beaten paths, I think it greatly to her credit that in her puzzling situation she did not lose her poise entirely. Bred to submission, submit she must; and when she perceived a conflict of authorities, she prepared to accept the new order of things under which her children's future was to be formed; wherein she ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... tore His wife's locks nor his own; but wisely weighing His own offence with her's in equal poise, And woman's weakness 'gainst the strength of man, Came to a calm and witty compromise. He coolly took his gay-faced widow home, Made her his second wife; and still the first Lost few or none of her prerogatives. The servants call'd her mistress ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... made her, as years developed her character and stormy fates thickened around her life, the unflinching comrade of her soldier husband, the passionate adherent of the Church. Through wars, insurrections, revolutions, downfalls, Spanish, Mexican, civil, ecclesiastical, her standpoint, her poise, remained the same. She simply grew more and more proudly, passionately, a Spaniard and a Moreno; more and more stanchly and fierily a Catholic, and a ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... in daily life. The one type does believe in the indignity and the other in the dignity of the detective. It has nothing to do with ethics in the merely external sense. It involves no particular comparison in practical morals and manners. It is something in the whole poise and posture of the self; of the way a man carries himself. For men are not only affected by what they are; but still more, when they are fools, by what they think they are; and when they are wise, by what ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... pressed onward, the adventurer quickly regained his poise. The novelty of the situation thrilled him agreeably. His thoughts were crowded with imaginings of the strange things to come. Ambitious vision of himself successful among the city's throngs made his pulses beat faster. He felt that ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... strange, therefore, to find that the career of the first great Virginian profoundly influenced the second. "One familiar with the life of Lee," says Thomas Nelson Page, "cannot help noting the strong resemblance of his character in its strength, its poise, its rounded completeness, to that of Washington; or fail to mark what influence the life of Washington had on the life of Lee. The stamp appears upon it from his boyhood, and grows more plain ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... real oratory—strong talk, ardent, electric, manly. His eyes flashed, his teeth came together with a snap and he shook both fists under my nose. He has enthusiasm, capacity for righteous wrath, and the spirit of battle. But he doesn't lose poise for a moment. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... was out of the finals now—and Norma went back to the starting place. She had not recovered her poise when the time came for her to race Bobby, and that young person won easily only to ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... seems to have been erased. But there are many passages besides the famous lines descriptive of the grove at Colonus which betray the personality behind the plays; and, studied more closely, the very detachment of the drama from the dramatist is significant of character. In the poise, harmony, and balance of these beautiful creations there is revealed the instinct for proportion, the self-control and the subordination of the parts to the whole which betray a nature committed by its very instincts to a passionate devotion to beauty. In one of the poems of our own ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... as carbon, silicon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen, would rise towards the surface. A crust would form, and portions of it breaking in or bursting out together with eruptions and floods of molten lava, would disturb the poise of the planet, and give rise to inequalities of surface, to continents, and mountains. When the crust was sufficiently stable, sound, and cool, the mists and clouds would condense into rivers, lakes, or seas, and the atmosphere would ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... expression which almost proved that she had never before heard that sound of thunder, or at least had no idea what it could bode. My fixed regard lost not one of her movements, while inch by inch, not breathing, careful as the poise of a balance, I crawled. And suddenly, with a rush, I was out in the open, running ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... is apt to lose her keys when she is in the biggest hurry. She is also apt to lose her temper, and feels worse over this than she does when she loses her keys. She has to argue over prices; to fuss over the quality of charcoal consumed. She has to keep her poise when, after ordering something especially nice for dinner, the cook proudly passes around something quite different and not at all nice. She dare not even visit her own cook-house without coughing and making a noise, for fear that she will ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... House of Marriage; that all-important relation which may make or mar a life, the Balance is so easily disturbed in its equilibrium. To preserve its harmony, equality must reign, blending love and wisdom. It is the perfect poise of body, mind, and soul, achieved by loving obedience to the higher laws of our being and the true union ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... women that I have seen in years, Jewish or Christian, there's not one can compare with Leah Mordecai—such hair and such eyes are seldom given to woman. Helen says that her hair measures four feet in length! What a queenly poise to ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... his first direct appeal to her compassion, and for a moment it nearly unsettled the delicate poise of her sympathies, and sent them trembling in the direction of scorn and irony. Buteven as the impulse rose, it was stayed by another sensation. Once again, as so often in the past, she became aware of a fact ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... twenty-six. With his clear olive skin, straight features and curly dark hair he looked not so much like a breed as a man of one of the darker peoples of the Caucasian race, an Italian or a Greek. There was a falcon-like quality in the poise of his head, in his gaze, but the effect was marred by the consciousness of evil, the irreconcilable look in the ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... but to look into her eyes—But wait. Make no mistake. The Lady Om was no fool. I have said she was of my own age. All of thirty she was, with the poise of her years. She knew what she wanted. She knew what she did not want. It was because of this she had never married, although all pressure that an Asiatic court could put upon a woman had been vainly ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... he was handsome, for a Siamese; of medium stature, compact and symmetrical figure, and rather dark complexion. His conversation and deportment denoted the cultivation, delicacy, and graceful poise of an accomplished gentleman; and he delivered his English with a correctness and fluency very noticeably free from the peculiar spasmodic effort that marked his royal brother's exploits in ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... stare. Cynthia Lennox was one to bear herself with such dignity over all jolts of circumstances that she might almost convince others of her own exemption from them. Her mental bearing disproved the evidence of the senses, and she could have committed a crime with such consummate self-poise and grace as to have held a crowd in abeyance with utter distrust of their own eyes before such unquestioning confidence in the sovereignty of the situation. Cynthia Lennox had always had her own way except ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... do not, brother, Inferr, as if I thought my sisters state Secure without all doubt, or controversie: Yet where an equall poise of hope and fear 410 Does arbitrate th'event, my nature is That I encline to hope, rather then fear, And gladly banish squint suspicion. My sister is not so defenceless left As you imagine, she has a hidden strength Which you ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... said Patty, recovering her poise, both mental and physical. "You are very welcome, Azalea. Will you sit here a few minutes before we go ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... everywhere; it is in the earth's green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky; in the reckless exuberance of spring; in the severe abstinence of grey winter; in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame; in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright; in living; in the exercise of all our powers; in the acquisition of knowledge; in fighting evils; in dying for gains we never can share. Joy is there everywhere; it is superfluous, unnecessary; nay, it very often contradicts ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... lightly on his hip, he might have been the Titan that had forged the boulder at his side, pausing now for breath before another mighty task. Well over six feet tall, still straight as any of the pines before him, his head and broad shoulders in the easy poise of power, there was about him from a little distance no sign of age. His lines were gracefully full, his bearing had still the alertness of youth. One must have come as near as Billy Brue now came to detect the marks of time in his face. Not of age—merely of time; for here was no senility, ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... that upon which those that see the spreading nature of sin, and the leprosy and contagion thereof, should meditate, to wit, The broadness of the grace and mercy of God in Christ. This will poise and stay the soul; this will relieve and support the soul in and under those many misgiving and desponding thoughts unto which we are subject when afflicted with the apprehensions of sin, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and graceful exercise," he said, "and like the use of arms, it greatly improves the carriage and poise of the figure. Queen Elizabeth loves dancing, and none can say that she is not a good Protestant. Every youth should be taught to dance, if only he may know how to walk. I am not one of those who think that, because a man is a good Christian, he should necessarily be awkward and ungainly in speech ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... Storm, and led him around to show his action, the connoisseurs took on a critical attitude, an attitude of judgment, exhibited not less in the poise of the head and the serious face than in the holding of the cane and the planting of legs wide apart. And the attitude had a refined nonchalance which professional horsemen scarcely ever attain. Storm could not have received more critical ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... earlier part of the piece, and indeed indirectly throughout, he has in mind Wordsworth's famous Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, which is to be found in any complete edition of Wordsworth's poems, or in his poise writings, as ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... the light which the soul needs on the nature of man. Wonderfully has Holman Hunt elaborated this truth in his picture "The Light of the World." The ideal humanity never had more beautiful expression than in that great sermon in color. The poise of the figure of Jesus indicates strength and self-control; the thorns on the brow tell their story of sorrow and pain; the hand at the door shows that one man at least is mindful of the welfare of His brother; the radiance on the face and the ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... in the middle of the bay now," she answered, "and almost as far from the nearest land as we are from Bryngelly, besides it is all rocks. No, you must go straight on. You will see the Poise light beyond Coed presently. You know Coed is four miles on the other side of Bryngelly, so when you see it head ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... face the colour of the soil. JINKS—An old soldier, red, lean, wrinkled, with very blue eyes. His face is rough-hewn, almost grotesque like a gargoyle. In his eyes there is a perpetual glint of humour, and in the poise of his head a ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... a gentle, loving, clinging child; her nature, like her voice, belonging to the order of birds,—bright, flitting, merry, confiding. She returned a woman, still loving, still gentle in her manner, but with a new poise in her bearing, a resoluteness, a fire, of which her first girlhood had given no suggestion. It was strange to see how similar yet unlike were the comments made on her in the manse and in the farmhouse by the two couples most interested ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... far as ever from that goal. Why? Peter wondered. Couldn't one be happy in this lovable water-city, which had, after all, green ways of shadow and gloom between the peeling brick walls of ancient houses, and, beyond, the broad spaces of the sea? Couldn't one be happy here even if the babies did poise muddy feet on a table-cloth, not, after all, otherwise clean; and even if the poor boarders wouldn't pay their rent and the rich Jews would buy palaces and plaques? Bother the vice of the age, thought Peter, as he crossed the sun-bathed piazza and suddenly ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... by frost and sun, rickety plank walks, whirling wisps of dust, and groups of men, splendid in their lean, muscular symmetry and picturesque apparel. There was a boldness in their carriage, and a grace that approached the statuesque in every poise. Still, she started when they passed one wooden building where blue-shirted figures with rifles stood motionless in ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... been to some extent appropriated for war purposes, and delicate diplomatic questions are forced upon the neutral nations. Just at this time, when these questions are most acute, the belligerent Governments are least able to deal with them with the calmness and poise which ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... here of the dissipated man of the night before. It was Hillars as I had seen him in the old days. But for his 19th century garb, he might have just stepped down from a frame—a gallant by Fortuny, who loved the awakened animal in man. The poise was careless, but graceful, and the smile was debonair. His eyes were holding Gretchen's. A moment passed; ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... the classical Roman poets; the society of a few friends, men who know the world as well as books, who are loyal to their nation and their church, and whose; conversation is intellectually vigorous but always polite; the occasional companionship of a woman of virtue, wit, and poise of manner; and, above all, the avoidance of public or private contentions. Culture and peace—and the greater of these is peace! The sentiment characterizes the first quarter of the ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... respected him profoundly, and loved him dearly. I have often heard him speak at gatherings of old soldiers and on a variety of occasions; sometimes those of turbulence. I have marveled at his self-poise and reserved power. Never once did I hear him say ill of any man, nor allude to his own sufferings or deeds, nor utter words of bitterness. He took his lot as it came to him, as a man who does the best he can and leaves ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... evening's entertainment, in its outdoor form it may take whole communities and schools into the freedom of the open. It should rouse patriotic ardor, and be of benefit ethically, esthetically, and physically. It should wake in its participants a sense of rhythm, freedom, poise, and plastic grace. It should bear its part in developing clear enunciation and erectness of carriage. To those taking part it should bring the exercise of memory, patience, and inventiveness. It should kindle enthusiasm for the things of America's past. In ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... Jean lifted his gaze again he found her face half averted and a stain of red in the gold tan of her cheek. That touch of embarrassment somehow removed her from this strong, raw, wild woodland setting. It changed her poise. It detracted from the curious, unabashed, almost bold, look that he had encountered in ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... touching sadness to her expressive face. She was dressed in simple black, with exquisite taste, and without an ornament. The thin lace vail which partially covered her face did not so much conceal as heighten her beauty. She would not have entered a drawing room with more self-poise, nor a church with more haughty humility. There was in her manner or face neither shame nor boldness, and when she took her seat in fall view of half the spectators, her eyes were downcast. A murmur of admiration ran through the room. The newspaper reporters made their pencils fly. Mr. Braham ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... her poise of mind and remembered that she had been at the point of writing a letter to her mother (to be mailed by the first vessel bound to a port) ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... converts! They wanted Food and Raiment, so they took Religion for their Seamstress and their Cook. Unmask them well; their Honours and Estate, As well as Conscience, are Sophisticate. Shrive but their Titles, and their Money poise; A Laird and Twenty Pence,[27] pronounc'd with Noise, When constru'd, but for a plain Yeoman go, And a good sober Two-pence, and well so. Hence then,'you Proud Imposters, get you gone, You Picts in Gentry and Devotion, You Scandal ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... braids which bound her head. She surely was fair to look upon, and when Steve had assisted her to mount in the old way,—holding out his hand and she stepping upon it in laughing ease,—she sat her pony with the graceful poise of the true Kentucky girl, making a picture which less partial observers than Steve could not have failed to find full of charm. They cantered ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... been made in the image of God, her poise should be erect and fearless. Nature bestowed the gift of a ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... companions, suddenly grown shy, stood silent for a moment, for the time rather at a loss to carry on the play which had been easier in the open. I heard Jimmy draw a long breath. He was first to remove his hat. But his companion was quicker to regain his poise, although for a moment he forgot his pirate speech. "Gee!" said he. "Ain't ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... speak again. Minna Eddy suddenly joined in her torrent of vituperation with the dress-maker's. She caught up the soft-soap idea with a peal of laughter more sustained than that of Madame Griggs, for she had a better poise of mentality, and her wrath was untempered with the grief and self-pity of a small, helpless woman who was fitted by nature for ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the luminous eyes grew suddenly cold, while her head assumed its usual haughty poise; the brief spell was over, and ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... cry of "The devil is out of Senor Don't Care!" and seeing for the thousandth time Mary's horrified face as he pressed Pedro Nogales against the hedge. Now poise was all on the side of the father, who glanced away from Jack at the glint of the library cases in the semi-darkness in satisfaction. But only a moment did the son's absent mood last. He leaned forward quivering, free from his spell of reflection, and his words came pelting like hail. He ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... removal of a dangerous rival, and he is too good a Christian, to repine at Dutton's success. Even Mrs Jenkins will have reason to congratulate herself upon this event, when she cooly reflects upon the matter; for, howsoever she was forced from her poise for a season, by snares laid for her vanity, Humphry is certainly the north-star to which the needle of her affection would have pointed at the long run. At present, the same vanity is exceedingly mortified, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... much so that she conceded grudgingly the testimony of her senses to the rapidity with which he regained his normal poise and command of resource; for one evidence of which last she noted that he backed up to the centre-table with a casual air, as if needing its support, and with a deft, certain, swift gesture slipped the jewel-case into his coatpocket. And she noted, too, a flash of ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... the earnest wish and purpose of every thoughtful American that this great country of ours, which is, of course, the first in our thoughts and in our hearts, should show herself in this time of peculiar trial a nation fit beyond others to exhibit the fine poise of undisturbed judgment, the dignity of self-control, the efficiency of dispassionate action; a nation that neither sits in judgment upon others, nor is disturbed in her own counsels, and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is honest and disinterested ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... various form; Abysmal depths, and dire profundities; Chasms so deep and awful that the eye Of soaring eagle dare not gaze below, Lest, dizzied, he should lose his aerial poise, And headlong falling, reach ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... He was completely intrigued by her. Her performance in "The Zingara" had led him to expect a girl of much more poise and finish, and yet with all her rawness she was far from naive. His own experience recognized hers; both had lived in the world's squalid byways; he could have talked to her in their language and she would have understood. But she was not of the women of such places, she had ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... course of study, which included, in succession: (1) leaping and jumping, for general bodily and lung development; (2) running contests, for agility and endurance; (3) throwing the discus, [19] for arm exercise; (4) casting the javelin, for bodily poise and cooerdination of movement, as well as for future use in hunting; (5) boxing and wrestling, for quickness, agility, endurance, and the control of the temper and passions. Swimming and dancing were also included for all, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... trees by the Lancaster Gate walk. She had a tall, stately figure of that type immortalised by Du Maurier—indeed, she herself may be recognised in some of his famous society sketches about the year 1870. The clear, decisive features, the tender discerning expression, the poise of the head, were irresistibly attractive to all artists with a strong sense of grace—even artificial grace—as opposed to rude vigour or homeliness. She possessed naturally that almost unreal elegance which many painters—Frederick ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... greeting at me from his poise on his trapeze, and I watched for a few minutes. There was an odd mood about the crowd that day, largely due to a group of loud-mouthed hill-billies from the back country—the sort which is so ignorant as to live in perpetual fear of getting ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... those who work about them. Whether it is the Rembrandt effects produced by the strong light and shade, or whether it is that the necessary use of the long iron instruments, such as all furnace workers employ, compels a certain dignity and grace of poise and action, we know not; but certain it is that the grace is there in a marked degree, and as we watched the men take their long-handled iron tongs and place in or lift out the plates of hot metal, we could not fail to be impressed with the charm of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... him—the development of society into a infinitely various school of discipline and ordered skill. He has been made more human by schooling, by growing more self-possessed—less violent, less tumultuous; holding himself in hand, and moving always with a certain poise of spirit; not forever clapping his hand to the hilt of his sword, but preferring, rather, to play with a subtler skill upon the springs of action. This is our conception of the truly human man: a man in whom there is a just balance of faculties, a catholic sympathy—no ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... heart-throb of exultation. He had deliberately gone about to break down her poise, her only barrier of defense, and it began to look ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... instant, however, she recovered her poise, and crumpling the telegram into a ball she addressed the ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... situation lasted for some minutes. I had no clear vision through my spy-hole, and knew not at the first watching whether the man I saw was asleep or awake. A finer inspection of him, made with a catlike poise as I knelt crouching at the door, showed me that he slept: had fallen to sleep with his fingers amongst the jewels—a great rough dog of a man clutching wealth in his dreaming. And he was, then, one of those connected ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... She was, perhaps, a little troubled by Enoch's calm and persistent declaration of principles. It is not easy for a woman even of Diana's poise and simple sincerity to keep in order a gentleman as distinguished and as courteous and as obviously in ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... with exceeding gentleness, as a skilful physician would deal with a dangerous wound. He was in no haste. A full week passed before he did anything. During those days the sad heart had time to react, to recover something of its self-poise. Thomas still persisted in his refusal to believe, but when a week had gone he found his way with the others to their meeting. Perhaps their belief in the Lord's resurrection made such a change in them, so brightened and transformed them, that Thomas grew less ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... lips. It was like my hostess in a fashion of line and color, and yet enough unlike her so that I knew it must be the daughter. The face was a shade narrower of chin, a bit longer, and in some obscure differing of the features there was an effect of more poise, almost of a maturer dignity, so that while I divined it was the face of her daughter, it would seem to have been better planned for the ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... place of the earlier round-arched abutment. Its supports were provided at the points where the transverse and diagonal arches of the nave vault began to spring away from the vertical plane of the walls. The other series was the immediate counter-poise to any direct thrust exerted by the arching of the vault against the upper section of the same walls. There was, in fact, a large buttress added to support these nave walls at that point from which each set of vault-carrying ribs began to rise. This buttress, though apparently sub-divided, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... how angry the one who is calling becomes, no matter how profane he may be, no matter what he says, she must not answer back, and she must not slam the receiver down while he is talking. Perfect poise, an even temper, patience, and a pleasant voice under control—if she has these, and a vast number of the telephone girls have, she need not worry about the rules of courtesy. They will take care ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... not looking at her face. His eyes were running approvingly over her perfect figure, noting the straightness of the back, the fine poise of the head, the shapeliness ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... a fine figure of a young Englishwoman, brown-haired, grey-eyed, and she stands about five-feet-eight in her shoes. There's an expression of great malice and humour in her physiognomy, and a kind of devil-may-care haughtiness in the poise of her head. She's a bit of a grande dame, into the bargain—something like an Anglo-Italian duchess, for example; she's monstrously rich; and she adds, you'll be surprised to learn, to her other fascinations that of being a widow. Faith, the men ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... her eyes drooped heavily. It was as if, in watching Arlt's overthrow, her old prescience of impending disaster had come back upon her in fourfold measure, heightened by the intensity of her exhilaration of a few moments before. When a quiet woman is stirred from her usual poise, the pendulum of her nerves swings in a long arc. The Dvorak dance had not deepened Sally's color; the Damrosch song had not caused her to draw her white ostrich boa ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... life, my fall under the York coach in August 1654, when the great wheel went over my leg, so as I could feel it passing me without hurting, far less breaking my leg, as if it had been thus carried over in a just poise, to let me see how providence watched over me, &c. 38. The comfort God gave me in my children, and those extraordinary confirmations I got from God upon the death of those sweet children whom God removed from me ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... the moon, and stars, as profane spectra:—a company of the blind, beseeching those they lead to remain blind also. "The heavens and the lights that rule them are untrue; the laws of creation are treacherous; the poles of the earth are out of poise. But we are true. Light is in us only. Shut your eyes close and fast, and we ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... slowly. The swagger of the poise was gone; he stood upright now with a positive effort, as if the realization of his position had ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... braced far back, haunches strained, flank heaving and quivering, the two held steady, staccato grunts and snorts attesting the ferocity of their efforts. Then the hind foot of the younger bull slipped a little. With a convulsive wrench he recovered his footing; and again the struggle hung at poise. But it was only for a few moments. Suddenly, as if he had felt his opportunity approach, the white bull threw all his strength into a mightier thrust. The legs of his adversary seemed to crumple up like paper ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... woman and the paw of a chimpanzee. It is supple and boneless as the hands wrought in pigment by a fashionable portrait painter. The tapering fingers bend backward. Between them burns a scented cigarette. You poise it with infinite daintiness, like a woman under the eyes of her lover. The long line of your curved ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... does not quail, nor her determination falter for an instant, her vivid fancy conjures up one terrible apprehension after another, till gradually, and most naturally in such a mind once thrown off its poise, the horror rises to frenzy—her imagination realizes its own hideous creations, and she sees ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... my nerves. It seemed to be the voice of all the strangers in the town. I looked up at her quickly. She was masked; yet the grey eyes seemed to gleam beyond the velvet, much as that woman's eyes had gleamed. Her mouth; her chin; the general poise of her body, all convinced me. She was the woman who had carried away the book from Longshore Jack. I was quite sure of it. I pretended not to understand her. I dropped my eyes, without stopping; she flicked me lightly with her whip ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... Rex Krane, tall, easy-going old Rex, with his wife beside him. Mat was a fair-faced young matron now, with something Madonna-like in her calm poise and kindly spirit. Two little boys, Esmond, and Rex, Junior, clinging to her gown, smiled a shy welcome ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... from him at daylight, and how he had ever since been haunted by the fear of seeing the assassin again and being claimed by him as an acquaintance. When he had related this, with an emphasis and poise on the word, 'assassin,' peculiarly belonging to his own language, and which did not serve to render it less terrible to Clennam, he suddenly sprang to his feet, pounced upon the bill again, and with a vehemence that would have been absolute madness ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... the other. Agitation makes us catch our breath, and sadness makes us sigh. Conversely, slow, even breathing calms mental agitation. It is not without reason that, in the East, breathing exercises are used as a means of cultivating mental poise and as an aid ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... two big states to leave the matter of Uruguayan politics to his impartial adjustment. At both Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires a roar of laughter went up from the press at this notion of an obscure chieftain of a band of Indians in the tropical backwoods daring to poise the equilibrium of much more than half a continent on his insolent hand. But the merriment soon subsided, as Brazilians and Argentinos came to realize what their peril might be from a huge army of skilled and valiant soldiers, ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... from you; you don't realize how I have longed to meet you—to listen to you, to have you lift the veil that hides your mind from me. Sometimes in a crowd I have fancied I caught a glimpse of you; I can't explain—the poise of the head, a look in the eyes, there was something that hinted it was You. And in a whirlwind of an instant it almost seemed that you would recognize me; but you said no word—you passed, a secret from me still. To yourself where you are sitting ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... then to feel whether the bunch of leaves at their back is in place. They were certainly no beauties, but there was a charm in their light, soft step, in the swaying of their hips, in the dainty poise of their slim ankles and feet, and the softness and harmony of all their movements. And the light playing on their dark, velvety, shining bodies increased this charm, until one almost forgot the many defects, the dirt, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... thrown them off their balance. But of course this was different. He was a little flustered himself—a circumstance that dawned upon him with surprise. When the Gales had been shown to rooms, Mrs. Belding gained the poise momentarily lost; but Nell came rushing back, wilder than a deer, in a state of excitement strange ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... during the past two years the syndicate man had dropped in upon March to air the scheme and to get his impressions of it. This had happened so often that it had come to be a sort of joke between them. But now Fulkerson clearly meant business, and March had a struggle to maintain himself in a firm poise ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... football practice, and call him in. I just didn't happen to go to watch practice to-day, and now"—she smiled at him,—"I'm glad I didn't." There was something intensely pitiful about this lad to her mothering young heart, for all his poise and pride. ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... Cleggett. There was hesitation in the brown old man's feet, there was doubt upon his wrinkled brow, but there was the consciousness of duty in the poise of his shoulders, there ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... set him into a glow. But by the time he had reached home and had stripped off his wet clothes and swathed himself in a rough blanket, his racked nerves reasserted themselves. He craved a drink—a number of drinks—to restore his wonted poise. Lighting the kitchen lamp, he set the whisky bottle on the table and put a thick tumbler alongside it. Chum was lying at his master's feet. In front of Ferris was a pint of good cheer. The lamplight made the ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... Roman nose, his well-shaped head, his clear, bright eye, and his rosy cheeks flushed with excitement, rendered him an attractive figure among the bright faces and well-dressed figures. His superb physical poise lent a grace to all his movements, while he was self-possessed at the ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... stars of the general or undecorated "horizon" blue of the Poilu. The look that I saw in his eyes, the calm, steady, utterly emotionless looking straight forward, I saw everywhere at the front and at the back of the front. It embodied for me an enduring impression of the spirit and the poise of the French soldier of the latest and most terrible of French struggles. And I confess that, more than all I saw and heard at the front and in Paris, the look of this man convinced me that Verdun would not fall, that France herself would ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... shewn good prowess there; None of them falls behind the other pair; Through the great press, pagans they strike again. Come on afoot a thousand Sarrazens, And on horseback some forty thousand men. But well I know, to approach they never dare; Lances and spears they poise to hurl at them, Arrows, barbs, darts and javelins in the air. With the first flight they've slain our Gualtier; Turpin of Reims has all his shield broken, And cracked his helm; he's wounded in the head, From his hauberk ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... air, while he loomed tall and unreal in such an attitude, the broncho hung for a moment in mid-poise, then dropped over sheer—as if ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... of the individual to the whole. This doubt as to a personal future life will unquestionably increase. Let traditional teachers beware how they venture to shift the moral law from its immutable basis in the will of God to a precarious poise on the selfish hope and fear of man. The sole safety, the ultimate desideratum, is perception of law ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... betrayed him a little on the words, but he instantly recovered his poise, and, hand on the knob, faced the other with ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... up at the word, and its butt landed neatly on the fakir's ribs, sending him reeling backward off his balance, but not upsetting him completely. He recovered his poise with quite astonishing activity, and shuffled himself back again to the center of the dais. His eyes blazed with hate and indignation, and his breath came now in sharp gasps that sounded like escaping steam. He needed ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... still in agitation, and whose mind could not yet digest the incidents that occurred, embraced them all by turns; but, like the faithful needle, which, though shaken for an instant from its poise, immediately regains its true direction, and points invariably to the pole, he soon returned to his Monimia; again he held her in his arms, again he drank enchantment from her eyes, and thus poured forth the effusions of his ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... thrilled at his words. There was such command, such fearlessness in them, in his whole poise. She felt, too, that there was trouble looming. There was rebellion in the air. Her excitement rose, and her sympathies were all ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum |
