"Variable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is preserved as printed. Variable spelling and inconsistent hyphenation is preserved as printed across different pieces, but has been made consistent within pieces if there was a prevalence of one form. Punctuation and printer errors (e.g. omitted or transposed letters) ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... photographs at the Observatory of Paris (an American who became English by her marriage with the astronomer Roberts, but is not forgotten in France);—Mrs. Fleming, one of the astronomers of the Observatory at Harvard College, U.S.A., to whom we owe the discovery of a great number of variable stars by the examination of photographic records, and by spectral photography;—Lady Huggins, who in England is the learned collaborator of her illustrious husband;—and ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... aristocracy, whose business it was to keep the people down and hold the king in check. His career—now supporting the royalists, now the roundheads, now neither—seems incoherent and unprincipled; but in truth he was one of the least variable men of his time; he held to his course, and king and parliament did the tacking. He was an incorruptible judge, though he took bribes; and an unerring one, though he disregarded forms of law. He was tried ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... have increased. His face was still the same impenetrable face which had so powerfully impressed me when I first saw him, but his manner, hitherto so quiet and self-possessed, had now grown abrupt and variable. Sometimes, when he joined us in the drawing-room at North Villa, he would suddenly stop before we had exchanged more than three or four words, murmur something, in a voice unlike his usual voice, about an attack of spasm and giddiness, and leave ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... land on the 23rd January. It has little elevation, and is scarcely possible to be seen at a greater distance than twelve leagues. The wind then became very variable; and, like Captain Cook, we met with currents, which carried us every day fifteen minutes south of our reckoning; so that we spent the whole of the 24th in plying in sight of Botany Bay, without being able to double Point Solander, which bore from us a league north. The wind ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... a muscle is composed of fas-cic'u-li (bundles of fibres) of variable size. These are enclosed in a cellular membranous investment, or sheath. Every bundle composed of a number of small fibres, and each fibre consists of a number of filaments, each of which is enclosed in a delicate sheath. Toward the extremity of the organ the muscular fibre ceases, and ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... zone ranges from about 2000 feet to between 5000 and 6000 feet above the level of the Mediterranean, the climate corresponding with that of the central districts of France. The temperature is, however, very variable, and its changes are sudden. Frost and snow make their appearance in November, and often last for fifteen or twenty days together. It is remarked, that frost does not injure the olive-trees up to the level of about 3800 feet; and snow even renders ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... this Karroo farmer had no light duty to perform each day. The farm was twenty miles in length, and of variable breadth. There were no crops raised on it, save the fruit of the splendid garden already mentioned, some grapes, and a few mealies. The sources of gain were ostriches and their feathers, Angora goat hair, (mohair), horses, ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... anchor in Cape Cod harbor. The fourth Sunday here. Scarce any of those aboard free from vehement coughs, some very ill. Weather very variable. ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... for the accumulation of several distinct layers of camp refuse; and finally for the depositing of the cave earth over it all. This hypothesis is unreasonable. While the rate of formation of either roof dust or stalagmite is extremely variable, so that it is not safe to predicate a definite antiquity for objects found beneath even a considerable thickness of either, at the same time the small area involved precludes the idea that a number of occupants sufficient to account ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... A good rain last night, and we caught a good deal, though not enough to fill up our tank, pails, &c. Our object is to get out of these doldrums, but it seems as if we cannot do it. To-day we have had it very variable, and hope we are on the northern edge, thought we are not much above 7 degrees. This morning we all thought we had made out a sail; but it was one of those deceiving clouds. Rained a good deal to-day, making all hands wet and uncomfortable; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Exceptionally variable—7.50 to 9.80 inches. Usually about an inch smaller than the robin. Male — Coal-black. Shoulders scarlet, edged with yellow. Female — Feathers finely and inconspicuously speckled with brown, rusty black, whitish, and orange. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... St. Johns and Snowflake Stakes have met with great difficulties, first on account of the nature of the country itself, its variable periods of drought, sometimes long-continued, when the parched earth yields little on the ranges for the stock, and makes the supply of water for irrigation purposes uncertain; then came flood periods, that time and again destroyed reservoir dams ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... one of extraordinary wonder, qualified in a moment or two by humor. Suzanne opened the door of the machine and Julie stepped in. Then the maid followed into the darkness of the interior and closed the door. Truly that variable goddess, Fortune, had chosen to play one of her oddest tricks and for the time, at least, she had chosen him also as her favorite. But with a presence of mind bred in the terrible school of war, he stood ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... are too variable for this purpose, but I found that radite B, one form of my new explosive, can be used for propelling the shells from a gun. The ordinary gun will last only two or three rounds, due to the erosive action of the radite charge on the barrel, and ordinary ordnance ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... "The first and most striking principle of Hughes' microphone is a shaking and variable contact between the two parts constituting the microphone." "The shaking and variable contact is produced by the movable portion being effected by sound." "Under Hughes' system, where gas carbon was used, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... 50' north latitude, at breakfast. Approaching the equator on a long slant. Those of us who have never seen the equator are a good deal excited. I think I would rather see it than any other thing in the world. We entered the "doldrums" last night—variable winds, bursts of rain, intervals of calm, with chopping seas and a wobbly and drunken motion to the ship—a condition of things findable in other regions sometimes, but present in the doldrums always. The globe-girdling belt called the doldrums is 20 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Therefore, the gloom is to be charged to my bad luck. Then, as to the noise, never did I sleep at that enormous Hen and Chickens [2] to which usually my destiny brought me, but I had reason to complain that the discreet hen did not gather her vagrant flock to roost at less variable hours. Till two or three, I was kept waking by those who were retiring; and about three commenced the morning functions of the porter, or of "boots," or of "underboots," who began their rounds for collecting ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... to keep a free hand and deal with each case on its merits as a whole. It should be observed that the fulfilment of a contract may create a relation between the parties which, once established, is governed by fixed rules of law not variable by the preceding agreement. Marriage is the most conspicuous example of this, and perhaps the only complete one ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... says that "Mme. Ronner excels all other cat painters, living or dead. She not only infuses a wonderful degree of life into her little figures, but reproduces the shades of expression, shifting and variable as the sands of the sea, as no other artist of the brush has done. Asleep or awake, her cats look to the" felinarian "like cats with whom he or she is familiar. Curiosity, drowsiness, indifference, alertness, love, hate, anxiety, temper, innocence, cunning, fear, confidence, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... was a slip of metal of variable breadth inserted at the focus of the telescope. By observing at what point this exactly covered an object under examination, and knowing the focal length of the telescope and the width of the metal, he could then ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... colourless, so to speak, in his contemplative moments. His eye then resembled a pane of glass no longer illuminated by the sun. The same was true of his strength, which was purely nervous, and also of his voice. Both were equally mobile and variable. The latter was alternately sweet and harmonious, and then at times painful, incorrect, and rugged. As for his ordinary strength, he was incapable of supporting the fatigue of any games whatever. He seemed ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... a passion so confusd, So strange, outragious, and so variable, As the dogge Iew did vtter in the streets; My daughter, O my ducats, O my daughter, Fled with a Christian, O my Christian ducats! Iustice, the law, my ducats, and my daughter; A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats, Of double ducats, stolne from me by my daughter, And iewels, two stones, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the Nishnebotene River at a tremendous pace. The machine "kicks" against this treatment, however, and, when about half wray down, it strikes a hole and sends me spinning and gyrating through space; and when I finally strike terra firma, it thumps me unmercifully in the ribs ere it lets me up. "Variable" is the word descriptive of the Iowa roads; for seventy-five miles due east of Omaha the prairie rolls like a heavy Atlantic swell, and during a day's journey I pass through a dozen alternate stretches of muddy and dusky road; for like a huge watering-pot do the rain-clouds ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... best to keep, as near as possible, midway between the two extremes, and not to approach either the one or the other, nearer than can be possibly avoided. The currents in the Gulf of Guinea are stated to be very variable, although they are most generally from the westward, obeying the direction of the sea breeze. The harmattan generally produces a very strong westerly current in direct opposition to this, and the want of knowing it, has frequently ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... beating about, changed to West-South-West soon after that anchorage had been gained. The vessels instantly weighed and, by carrying all sail, arrived in Yarmouth Roads at seven P.M.; the pilots were landed and our course was continued through the anchorage. At midnight the wind became light and variable and gradually drew round to the North-West and, as the sky indicated unsettled weather and the wind blew from an unfavourable quarter for ships upon that coast, the commander bore up again for Yarmouth and ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... est. That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion—which some whisper is, in the present case, very much the same thing as publican's opinion—has willed otherwise. The Heads may return to their wonted slumbers—at ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... vain Of idle hopes, which still do fly away, Like empty shadows, did afflict my brain), Walked forth to ease my pain Along the shore of silver streaming Thames; Whose rutty bank, the which his river hems, Was painted all with variable flowers, And all the meads adorned with dainty gems, Fit to deck maidens' bowers, And crown their paramours Against the bridal day, which is not long: Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... by the prerogative may be relaxed or enforced as occasion may require, or regulated according to the necessity arising from particular circumstances; circumstances in themselves variable, and subject to the influence of a thousand accidents, and which, therefore, cannot be always foreseen, or provided against by a law ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... last few days Bruce had been greatly depressed, his temper more variable than ever, and he had managed to collect a quite extraordinary number of entirely new imaginary illnesses. He was very capricious about them and never carried one completely through, but abandoned it almost as soon as ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... contradictions, the city presents the paradox of being the most intensely American and yet the most cosmopolitan community on the continent, with aspects as variable as the medley of alien tongues heard on ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... accidental way, you do not feel warranted in calling it a cause. If heat applied to ice (A) were sometimes followed by a tendency to liquefaction (B) and sometimes not, you would not consider A connected with B as a cause, but only as some variable accompaniment of the true and unknown cause, which might allowably be present or be absent. This, then, is the startling and mysterious phenomenon of the human understanding—that, in a certain notion, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... they are called; but whether they return to life with the fresh flowers, or, whether it be new flowers, new fairies, I cannot tell. They have as many sorts of dispositions as men and women, while their moods are yet more variable; twenty different expressions will cross their little faces in half a minute. I often amuse myself with watching them, but I have never been able to make personal acquaintance with any of them. If I speak to one, he or she looks up ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... real interest to practical people. Now the economist concentrates on the agents of production for the very good reason that it is only with respect to them that any clear and certain laws as to distribution can be laid down. Into the distribution between individuals and classes there enter other and variable factors, governed by no fundamental economic law; and here, the conclusion should at once suggest itself, is the field for action designed to alter the distribution of wealth. What is possible or desirable in this field, it is again not the purpose of this volume to discuss. It is ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... but it is somewhat curious that the most noble cliff in Europe, which this eastern front of the Cervin is, I believe, without dispute, should be to us an example of the utmost possible stability of precipitousness attained with materials of imperfect and variable character; and, what is more, there are very few cliffs which do not display alternations between compact and friable conditions of their material, marked in their contours by bevelled slopes when ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... experiments showed that a moderately simple fact practically makes all these complicated theories unnecessary. No two living things are exactly alike—that is, all living matter is more or less variable. Some variations are more fortunate than others, and these variants are the ones which survive—the ones best adapted to their environment. Given this fact of the constant variation of living matter, natural selection (i.e., ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... words that have a variable accentuation: first, those in which an unaccented weak vowel is followed by an accented strong vowel, e.g. majestu^oso, majestu|oso; second, those in which an accented strong vowel is followed by an unaccented ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... at this stage dry—from which the adult Bruchus has emerged, leaving a large round hole of exit, the magnifying-glass will show a variable number of fine reddish punctuations, perforated in the centre. What are these spots, of which I count five, six, and even more on a single pea? It is impossible to be mistaken: they are the points of entry of as many grubs. Several grubs ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... or indications of indigestion will be present as the appetite is variable, temperature elevated, breathing labored, the animal avoids walking down hill as it causes pain from the stomach and intestines pressing the lungs against the heart. The symptoms, however, are so slight that they may easily escape the notice of a casual observer. The animal ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... discussions between him and me did not chill the friendliness, and even pleasantness, of our personal intercourse afterwards; and I believe few men would have more heartily welcomed Mr. Bidwell's return to Canada than Mr. Justice Hagerman himself. Mr. Hagerman was a man of generous impulses. He was a variable speaker, but at times his every gesture was eloquent, his intonations of voice were truly musical, and almost every sentence ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... the English or Persian walnut, under northern conditions, has been variable and not very satisfactory. With good scions and good stocks and other favorable conditions, we have sometimes gotten over 90 per cent to grow, but the stand is more often much below this and the present season we did not average over 25 per cent. The fact that we get good ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... something he may fashion, and about which he may write verses. He will naturally do this with love and a certain becoming reverence, but with the sovereign right of the creator notwithstanding. And precisely because history is more supple and more variable than a dream to him, he can invest the most individual case with the characteristics of a whole age, and thus attain to a vividness of narrative of which historians are quite incapable. In what work of art, ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... pale brown, or yellowish-ochraceous, of variable size and shape, one to many cm. in diameter, and one to two cm. thick, enclosed by a distinct calcareous crust, which varies in texture, thickness, and color; capillitium well developed but variable in color, form, and extent; spore-mass dull black, sooty; spores ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... the weather wuz so variable that she didn't know whether to take summer clothes or winter ones, and so she dallied along till it got so late that Whitfield didn't dast to take her out at all, she wuz ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... picture of the light and laughter and the faces at this Parisian fete, to compare with the novel faces and picturesque surroundings awaiting him at Naples, where he meant to spend a few days before presenting himself at his post. He seemed to be drawing the comparison now between this France so variable, changing even as you study her, with the manners and aspects of that other land known to him as yet only by contradictory hearsay tales or books of travel, for the most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat poetical cast, albeit hackneyed ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... 750 of figure 6A. The oesophagus, oe, is seen as a small, circular opening between two much larger openings, the lungs, lu. The epithelium of the oesophagus is the same here as in the more anterior regions described above; that of the lung rudiments is very variable in thickness, even in different parts of the same section, being in some places composed of a single layer of cuboidal or even flattened cells, in other places consisting of four or five layers of cells (not well shown in the ...
— Development of the Digestive Canal of the American Alligator • Albert M. Reese
... be obtained in a pure state, analysis affords us an important criterion of its chemical nature, for unlike mixtures, the compositions of which are always variable within wider or narrower limits, chemical compounds present definite and characteristic mass-relations, which find full expression in the atomic theory propounded by Dalton (see ATOM). According to this theory a mixture is the result of the mutual interpenetration of the molecules of substances, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... we have fewer elements to deal with, and may therefore arrive at much more rigorous proportional accuracy in determination of time and place than we can in fixing and predicting the quantities and the epochs of variable natural phenomena on ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... is not easily detected. The yellow color of the wattles and comb is the first symptom; the appetite is variable, the feathers appear rough and dry, the head is retracted, and the bird finally dies owing to the absorption of bile in ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... the services they proved to be, perhaps not so predictably, quite similar in practical consequences. One pressure felt by all the services was the recently acquired knowledge that the nation's military manpower was not only variable but also limited in quantity. Military efficiency demanded, therefore, that the services not only make the most effective use of available manpower, but also improve its quality. Since Negroes, who made up approximately 10 percent of the population, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... have taken great care to make of their God, a formidable, capricious, and fickle tyrant. Such a God was necessary to their variable interests. A God, who should be just and good, without mixture of caprice or perversity; a God, who had constantly the qualities of an honest man, or of a kind sovereign, would by no means suit his ministers. It is useful to priests, that men should tremble before their ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... matter of sex differences is in a state of unsettlement, it seems very certain that males are more active and more variable than females. This superabundant vitality appears in the males of the higher animals in secondary sex characteristics, such as more abundant and unnecessary hair and feathers, tusks, spurs, antlers, wattles, brilliant colors and scent pouches. It also appears in ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... so long as we have to do with landed property only. The towns, on the other hand, throughout the West must from very early times have treated production, which with them depended on industry and commerce, as exceedingly variable; but even in the most flourishing times of the Hanseatic League, they never got beyond a simple commercial balance-sheet. Fleets, armies, political power and influence fall under the debit and credit of a trader's ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... faintly smiling, "with a description of the gloom and discomfort of thine unknown northern mansion; but if thou art willing to bear with its scanty means of accommodation, as well as with thy husband's variable temper, come with him to ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... often found attached to feeding bottles. Take about a foot of this and hold one end firmly. Abstract the air by means of the mouth, and it will be found that immediately the air is taken out the tube collapses. Now if the rubber be variable in thickness, here and there along these lines of least resistance will be found certain twists, and it is the same kind of twists which can be so distinctly seen as the cotton fibre is viewed through the microscope. They are exceedingly irregular ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... build religious edifices of masonry, the structure of which, particularly in the vaulting, is inspired by Byzantine art, they adapted to this structure, together with a sensibly modified Byzantine garb, an ornamentation, derived from Asiatic, Sclavic and Turanian elements in variable, that ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... an inevitable consequence of Kalidasa's subject that his women appeal more strongly to a modern reader than his men. The man is the more variable phenomenon, and though manly virtues are the same in all countries and centuries, the emphasis has been variously laid. But the true woman seems timeless, universal. I know of no poet, unless it be Shakespeare, who has given the world a group of heroines ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... of large will feed as much stock as thirty tons of small.—(Vol. ii., p. 20.) Mr. Stephens points out other fallacies also, to which we cannot advert. One, however, he has passed over, of equal, we believe of greater, consequence than any other—we allude to the variable quantity of water which the turnip grown on different soils in different ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... mathematics were concerned this sounded probable to John Henry, who would have considered the speed of the tail to be a variable function of lamb, depending on the value of mother, plus or ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... the tints of the rainbow—perishable the leaf of the rose—variable the love of woman—uncertain the sunbeam of April; but naught on earth can be fleeting; so perishable, so variable, or so uncertain, as the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... precipitous hill blocked the way, extending a considerable distance along the creek, and leading sheer to the water from a variable height ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... suite of offices, was a dream of gleaming black porcelain and solid gold. Each spout, each faucet, was a gracefully stylized mermaid, the combination stall shower-steam room a marvel of hydraulic comfort and decor with variable lighting plotted to give the user every sort of beneficial ray, from ultraviolet ...
— It's All Yours • Sam Merwin
... and light variable winds baffled the ship. It was the 6th April ere she passed the Macclesfield Bank in latitude 16. And now they sailed for many days out of sight of land; Dodd's chest expanded: his main anxiety at this part of the voyage lay in the state cabin; ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... of this circle had, in the mean time, been disputed with variable success, between Count Tilly and the Swedish General Horn, whom Gustavus had left there with 8,000 men; and the Bishopric of Bamberg, in particular, was at once the prize and the scene of their struggle. Called away to the Rhine by his other projects, the king had left to his general ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... manifestation of zeal to which the old man was a stranger; and had made the good bishop lose the corn-fleet which was starting for Italy from his importunity to learn the Catechism. Baptized he was, confirmed, communicated; but a boy's nature is variable, and by the time Agellius had reached adolescence, the gracious impulses of his childhood had in some measure faded away, though he still retained his faith in its first keenness and vigour. But he had no one to keep him up to his duty; no exhortations, no example, no sympathy. ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... cost and the question of materials cannot be separated. A shed even of the dimensions given consumes a lot of wood, and the last, that it may withstand our variable and treacherous climate for a good number of years, should, as regards those parts directly exposed to the weather, be of good quality. Yellow deal may be selected for the boards; pitch pine is better, but it costs considerably more. For the frames and non-exposed parts generally ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... a wretched small silver coin called Dama, of which the value in exchange is variable; but commonly 136 Damas ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... Kepler's explanation of the Star of Bethlehem. But before he had given this to the world, indeed while he was an infant in his cradle, Tycho Brahe had connected the phenomenon with that of one of the great variable stars of ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... imported into England for many years, before Helvetius, under the patronage of Louis XIV, succeeded in introducing it into practice in France; and, to the Queen of Charles II., we are indebted for the introduction of that popular beverage, tea, into England. Tobacco has suffered as many variable vicissitudes in its fame and character. It has been successively opposed and commended by physicians, condemned and praised by priests and kings, and proscribed and protected by governments, until, at length, this once insignificant production of a little island, has succeeded ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... say that here the movements are co-ordinated like those of a machine; the acts of the animal are adapted to a special end; we find in them the characters of intelligence and will, a knowledge and choice of means, since they are as variable as the cause ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... Variable, and therefore miserable condition of man! this minute I was well, and am ill, this minute. I am surprised with a sudden change, and alteration to worse, and can impute it to no cause, nor call it by any name. We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats, and drink, and air, ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... first place, the reduction of the whole Empire to a quasi-uniformity by the substitution of one mode of governing for several; secondly, the substitution of fixed and definite burthens on the subject in lieu of variable and uncertain calls; and thirdly, the establishment of a variety of checks and counterpoises among the officials to whom it was necessary that the crown should delegate its powers, which tended greatly to the security of the monarch and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... his efforts to reducing them, whilst regulating their collection. His desire was to arrive at the establishment everywhere of real talliages, on landed property, &c., instead of personal talliages, variable imposts, depending upon the supposed means or social position of the inhabitants. He was only very partially successful, without, however, allowing himself to be repelled by the difficulties presented by differences of legislation and customs in the provinces. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... represents always, in variable words, quality, person, mode or time. The radical, on the contrary, ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... and effectually may a well-bred woman promote the most useful and elegant conversation, almost without speaking a word! for the modes of speech are scarcely more variable than the modes of silence. The silence of listless ignorance, and the silence of sparkling intelligence, are perhaps as separately marked, and as distinctly expressed, as the same feelings could have been by the ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... printed. Variable spelling, hyphenation and use of accents has been made consistent where there was a clear prevalence of one form over the other, or with reference to reliable sources; otherwise, these are preserved as printed. Typographic errors, e.g. omitted, superfluous or transposed letters, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... is remarkably well supplied with lighthouses; and, considering the narrowness of the channel in parts, the strong and variable currents, and the innumerable islands and shoals, the supply does no ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... in the sky and the desert glowed like an oven. Hot winds began to blow across it—light, variable winds, rushing now this way and now that. They made little whirlwinds that picked up the sand, carried it some distance, and then dropped it and died away. Wellesly saw one of these sand clouds dancing ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... an abundance of grass, we remained the following day for the benefit of our animals. The valley was probably fifteen miles in length, with a variable width of two or three miles. It was a delightful spot. Wild plants grew in profusion, many-hued flowers studded its surface, and silvery streams, bordered by luxuriant verdure and shrubs, were winding through it. ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... any other commodity which the people could offer their civilized customers; and as the reverence for the great burning orb of the sun, master of all the manifestations of nature, was tenfold as great as the veneration for the smaller, weaker, and variable goddess of the night, so was the demand for the metal sacred to the sun ten times as great as for the metal sacred to the moon. This view is confirmed by the fact that the root of the word by which the Celts, the Greeks, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... remained away for a month. We heard of him, leading a wild life, among a vicious set of men. It was reported that a frantic restlessness possessed him which nobody could understand. He came back as suddenly as he had left us. His variable nature had swung round, in the interval, to the opposite extreme. He was full of repentance for his reckless conduct; he was in a state of depression which defied rousing; he despaired of himself and his future. Sometimes he talked of going back to America; and sometimes he threatened to ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... stay was very variable and unsettled; rain fell on several occasions. The wind was usually from the westward, varying between North-West and South-West, and on one occasion during the night we had a sudden and very violent squall from the westward, which for ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... all antiquity, and of the host of smaller stars which our telescopes disclose? Can it be true that these countless orbs are really majestic suns, sunk to an appalling depth in the abyss of unfathomable space? What have we to tell of the different varieties of stars—of coloured stars, of variable stars, of double stars, of multiple stars, of stars that seem to move, and of stars that seem at rest? What of those glorious objects, the great star clusters? What of the Milky Way? And, lastly, what can we learn of the marvellous nebulae which our telescopes ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... Climate: variable, with mostly westerly winds throughout the year interspersed with periods of calm; nearly all ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... (as I find him in an old translation) "is the variable and fickle nature of woman, by whom all mischief in the world (for the most part) do happen and come, as may appear by Marcus Antonius, and by the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... knows only the desert of the geography naturally conceives it an absolutely forsaken and empty region where nothing but dust-storms are born unattended and die "without benefit of the clergy." But the desert has character and is as variable as ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... do not even know of the existence of this vehicle. We could not get right of way on the rails, so this gravity car was developed in secrecy. It is provided with variable repulsion energies that can be adjusted to keep it at a fixed distance from the inner surface of the copper shell. Thus it misses cross beams and braces. It is drawn forward by similar energies, or more exactly, by the component of a number of attracting forces. We do not display ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... have been so, for oar schooner had not felt the influence of the current which had guided her on leaving the Falklands, for fully four days. And yet, there was nothing surprising in that, for everything is variable in the austral seas. Happily, the fresh breeze from the north-east continued to blow, and the Halbrane made progress toward higher waters, thirteen degrees in advance upon Weddells ship and two degrees upon the fane. As for the land—islands ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... expected that variable weather and storms should characterise the winter-season in these seas. But the storms were of longer continuance and of more frequent succession, than was usually known. And at this period, when the proposed consort of James first, then the king ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... the observation of variable stars in a limited portion of the heavens. That, and 'hunting for comets' is about all the real astronomical work that an amateur can do nowadays in our climate, with a three-inch telescope. I am greatly ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... Roquevaire; they are very large and very sweet. This sort is rarely eaten by any but the most wealthy. The dried Malaga, or Muscatel raisins, which come to this country packed in small boxes, and nicely preserved in bunches, are variable in their quality, but mostly of a rich flavour, when new, juicy, and of ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... ["i" acute] in countenance; whilst we were thus abandoning ourselves to a direct confession of our inferiority to France, and whilst many, very many, were ready to act upon a sense of that inferiority, a few months effected a total change in our variable minds. We emerged from the gulf of that speculative despondency, and were buoyed up to the highest point of practical vigour. Never did the masculine spirit of England display itself with more energy, nor ever did its genius soar with a prouder pre-eminence ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... must be an orderly and rational union; in other words, it must be one in which Mind is master and Pleasure servant; the finite, the regular, the universal must govern the indefinite, variable, particular. Thus in the perfect life there are four elements; in the body, earth, water, air, fire; in the soul, the finite, the indefinite, the union of the {157} two, and the cause of that union. If this be so, he argues, may we not by analogy argue ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... child at this stage can distinctly hear single words, can grasp the purport of them, and divine correctly a whole sentence from the looks and gestures of the speaker, although the child himself makes audible no articulate utterance except his own, for the most part meaningless, variable babble of sounds ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... running smoothly. It was astonishing what a peculiar and uncomfortable state of things was produced by the 'resting and reveling' process. The days kept getting longer and longer, the weather was unusually variable and so were tempers; an unsettled feeling possessed everyone, and Satan found plenty of mischief for the idle hands to do. As the height of luxury, Meg put out some of her sewing, and then found time hang so heavily, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... in chromatin. Their protoplasmic body resembles the stellate cells of osseous tissue (astrocytes), and behaves just like a rhizopod (such as Gromia); it sends out numbers of stellate processes all round, which ramify and stretch into the surrounding food-yelk. These variable and very mobile processes, the pseudopodia of the merocytes, serve both for locomotion and for getting food; as in the real rhizopods, they surround the solid particles of food (granules and plates of yelk), and accumulate round their nucleus the food ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... variable spelling, particularly of place names; this has been repaired where there was a definite prevalence of one form over the other, but is otherwise left ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... light blue, with a brown spot in one, which, though a defect, takes nothing away from her beauty or expression. Her eyebrows and hair, which, by the bye, is never clean, are dark and her complexion coarse. Her expression is strongly marked, variable, and interesting; her movements in common life ungraceful, her voice loud, yet not disagreeable." This female critic seems to have been overburdened with the weight of Emma's defects, mental and physical! Elliot ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... also strangers. Petrarch's famous description of Venetian commerce, as occasioned by the view which he saw from his window in the fourteenth century, has often been quoted: 'See the innumerable vessels which set forth from the Italian shore in the desolate winter, in the most variable and stormy spring, one turning its prow to the east, the other to the west; some carrying our wine to foam in British cups, our fruits to flatter the palates of the Scythians and, still more hard of credence, the wood of our forests to the Egean and the Achaian ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... picture of her as a little school-girl herself: sent fastidiously on her way, with long gloves covering her arms, a white linen mask tied over her face to screen her complexion from tan, a sunbonnet sewed tightly on her head to keep it secure from the capricious winds of heaven and the more variable gusts of her own wilfulness; or on another picture of her—as a lonely little lass—begging to be taken to court, where she could marvel at her father, an awful judge in his wig and his robe of scarlet and black ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... well sifted. Many housekeepers fail in producing good bread, because they guess at the quantity of material to be used, particularly the flour, and with the same quantity of liquid will one time use much more flour that at another, thus making the results exceedingly variable. With this same brand of flour, this same quantity should always be used to produce a given amount of bread. This amount will depend upon the quality of the material used. Good flour will absorb a larger quantity of liquids than that ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... difficult because the Missouri never kept even an approximately constant head of water. In times of drought it became very shallow, and in times of flood it tore its wayward course open in any direction it chose. "Of all variable things in creation," wrote a Western editor, "the most uncertain are the action of a jury, the state of a woman's mind, and the condition of the Missouri River." A further handicap, and one which was unknown on the Ohio and rare on the Mississippi, was ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... acquaintance. There is abundant evidence in his own poems alone that at the time of, and for at least two or three years subsequently to, his marriage Coleridge's feeling towards his wife was one of profound and indeed of ardent attachment. It is of course quite possible that the passion of so variable, impulsive, and irresolute a temperament as his may have had its hot and cold fits, and that during one of the latter phases Southey may have imagined that his friend needed some such remonstrance as that referred to. But this is not nearly enough to support ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... offer variations among themselves, as in those of the genus Hepoona, where the extent of the whiteness on the tail, and the variation in the colour of the body appear to differ in the specimens from the same place, I have regarded them as belonging to the same species, believing it to be a variable species which ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... ground-waters, but for some rocks it extends well below this level. In some regions the ground-water level may be nearly at the surface, and in others, especially where arid, it may be two thousand or more feet down. Disintegrated weathered rocks form a blanket of variable thickness, which is sometimes spoken of as the residual mantle, or ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... But Rosader and Adam, knowing full well the secret ways that led through the vineyards, stole away privily through the province of Bordeaux, and escaped safe to the forest of Arden. Being come thither, they were glad they had so good a harbor: but fortune, who is like the chameleon, variable with every object, and constant in nothing but inconstancy, thought to make them mirrors of her mutability, and therefore still crossed them thus contrarily. Thinking still to pass on by the by-ways to get to Lyons, they chanced on a path that led into the thick of the forest, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... tensile test, were comparatively pure manganese steels, low in silicon, only exceptionally up to 0.2 per cent., but generally below 0.1 per cent., and with less than 0.1 per cent. of phosphorus and sulphur. On the other hand, rails with a tendency to break or split are low in carbon, with variable proportions of manganese, but contain much silicon, 0.3 to 0.9 per cent., and often above 0.1 per cent. of phosphorus. Another series of experiments upon rails for the Finland lines made by the author in 1879-80 shows the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... rebuked him thoroughly for his variable though severe criticisms, and stated, with some emotion, that the Board should be enlightened as to his unfitness, through his captious temper, for the delicate task of nourishing the tender sensibilities ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... intuition against mechanical logic. The advantage lay with MacMaine, for, while the computer could not logically fathom the intuitive processes of its human opponent, MacMaine could and did have an intuitive grasp of the machine's logic. MacMaine didn't need to know every variable in the pattern; he only needed to know the pattern ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... sandy region, although sand-ranges bounded the west in the early part of the route; here and there a little sand, loose and flying about. Our road is a splendid carriage-road. Oh, were there but water! But water is the all and everything in The Desert. Encamped on the limitless plain. How variable is Saharan weather: now, at sunset, a tempest rises, and sweeps the bosom of The Desert with "the besom of destruction!" A high wind continued all night. I fancied myself at sea, but preferred the Ocean Desert, its groaning hurricane, its hideous barrenness, to the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... ski-equipped, fixed-wing aircraft; of these, three are equal to or greater than 3 km in length, one is between 2 km and 3 km in length, nine are between 1 km and 2 km in length, five are less than 1 km in length, and four are of unknown or variable length; snow surface skiways are generally prepared and maintained during specific periods only and during summer; all aircraft landing facilities subject to severe restrictions and limitations resulting from extreme seasonal and geographic conditions; aircraft ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... group which, like the Privy Council, differs from the cabinet while containing it, is the ministry. The ministry comprises a large and variable body of functionaries, some of whom occupy the principal offices of state and divide their efforts between advising the crown, i.e., formulating governmental policy, and administering the affairs of their respective departments, and others of whom, occupying less important ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... when unambiguous ("Symrna"), or when the expected spelling occurs many times in the book. A few variable forms such as "handsom : handsome" ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... variable as the most variable quantities x, y, z. I, a student of Girtham College, blush to own that my thoughts very often fly off ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... upon this occasion, printed at the end of his poems, gives us some notion of his principles as to government.' Indeed we cannot but confess he was a little too inconstant in them, and was not naturally so steady, as he was judicious; which variable temper was the cause of his losing his reputation, in a great measure, with both parties, when the nation became unhappily divided. His love to poetry, and his indolence, laid him open to the insinuations of others, and perhaps prevented ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber |
