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noun
Attraction  n.  
1.
(Physics) An invisible power in a body by which it draws anything to itself; the power in nature acting mutually between bodies or ultimate particles, tending to draw them together, or to produce their cohesion or combination, and conversely resisting separation. Note: Attraction is exerted at both sensible and insensible distances, and is variously denominated according to its qualities or phenomena. Under attraction at sensible distances, there are, (1.) Attraction of gravitation, which acts at all distances throughout the universe, with a force proportional directly to the product of the masses of the bodies and inversely to the square of their distances apart. (2.) Magnetic attraction, diamagnetic attraction, and electrical attraction, each of which is limited in its sensible range and is polar in its action, a property dependent on the quality or condition of matter, and not on its quantity. Under attraction at insensible distances, there are, (1.) Adhesive attraction, attraction between surfaces of sensible extent, or by the medium of an intervening substance. (2.) Cohesive attraction, attraction between ultimate particles, whether like or unlike, and causing simply an aggregation or a union of those particles, as in the absorption of gases by charcoal, or of oxygen by spongy platinum, or the process of solidification or crystallization. The power in adhesive attraction is strictly the same as that of cohesion. (3.) Capillary attraction, attraction causing a liquid to rise, in capillary tubes or interstices, above its level outside, as in very small glass tubes, or a sponge, or any porous substance, when one end is inserted in the liquid. It is a special case of cohesive attraction. (4.) Chemical attraction, or Chemical affinity, that peculiar force which causes elementary atoms, or groups of atoms, to unite to form molecules.
2.
The act or property of attracting; the effect of the power or operation of attraction.
3.
The power or act of alluring, drawing to, inviting, or engaging; an attractive quality; as, the attraction of beauty or eloquence.
4.
That which attracts; an attractive object or feature.
Synonyms: Allurement; enticement; charm.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Attraction" Quotes from Famous Books



... however, will require development for another reason. In the case of the plant just referred to, there is a principle of growth or vitality at work superseding the attraction of gravity. Why is there no trace of that Law in the Inorganic world? Is not this another instance of the discontinuousness of Law? If the Law of vitality has so little connection with the Inorganic kingdom—less even than gravitation with the Spiritual, what ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... an orphan girl who in infancy is left by her father to the care of an elderly aunt residing near Paris. The accounts of the various persons who have an after influence on the story are singularly vivid. There is a subtle attraction about the book which will make it a great favorite with thoughtful ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... seaboard; few had yet crossed even the ridge of the Alleghanies. In the Eastern States they found occupation enough, and the steady growth of the country required their willing aid. From that time the North formed their chief point of attraction, and the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, were their great resorts. Even New England was no longer forbidden ground to them, and they began to spread themselves over its rocky and unpromising surface, to effect there a greater moral change than probably ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... smile. I didn't know how it was, but I could see I possessed some mysterious attraction for the Ashurst family. I was fatal to Ashursts. Lady Georgina, Harold Tillington, the Honourable Marmaduke, Lord Southminster—different types as they were, all succumbed without one ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... forest belles was one who went by the expressive name of Bright Lightning; so called, no doubt, from being the favorite daughter of White Thunder. It being noised abroad that she was a savage princess of the very first blood, she, of course, at once became the centre of fashionable attraction, and the leading toast of all the young blades in camp. No sooner, however, did the warriors get wind of these gallantries, than they were quite beside themselves with rage and jealousy, and straightway put an end to them; making the erring fair ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... point in the Highlands of the Hudson, his destination. Making a better dinner than he had enjoyed for a long time, and feeling stronger than for weeks before, he started for the place that now, of all the world, had for him the greatest attraction. ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... Two pair of waves travel round the earth every day, the greater pair obedient to the moon, which, because she is so much nearer to us, has a greater power of drawing the water to herself than the sun has; the lesser pair obedient, in like manner, to the attraction of the sun. This is all that I can tell you now about a very difficult subject, and it is more than I told Chrissie or Ernest when we were talking about the sea; but then you know we had not much time for matters hard to be explained. One thing which I think we did talk about was the depth of ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... good-nature, Savka despised women. He behaved carelessly, condescendingly with them, and even stooped to scornful laughter of their feelings for himself. God knows, perhaps this careless, contemptuous manner was one of the causes of his irresistible attraction for the village Dulcineas. He was handsome and well-built; in his eyes there was always a soft friendliness, even when he was looking at the women he so despised, but the fascination was not to be explained by merely external qualities. Apart from his happy ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... everything else about her. Her singing voice was so curiously unlike her speaking voice that it might have belonged to another person. It had tremendous possibilities and a large range, but it was hoarse and harsh, and yet full of an uncanny attraction. In such a voice a sorceress of old might have crooned her incantations. Where did this girl get her soul, her passion, he wondered; she who was only ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... seen men—quiet, reputable, well-shaved men— reading that pamphlet of mine in the rotundas of hotels, with their eyes blazing with excitement. I think it is the jaguar attraction that hits them the hardest, because I notice them rub themselves sympathetically with ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... Terre's, in the rue Neuve des Petits Champs, which Thackeray described in The Ballad of Bouillabaisse; Maire's, in the boulevard St.-Denis, which dates back beyond 1850; the Cafe Madrid, in the boulevard Montmartre, of which Carjat, the Spanish lyric poet, was an attraction; the Cafe de la Paix, in the boulevard des Capucines, the resort of Second Empire Imperialists and their spies; the Cafe Durand, in the place de la Madeleine, which started on a plane with the high-priced ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... Gladstone in his diary, "the temples are certainly the great charm and attraction of Sicily. I do not know whether there is any one among them which, taken alone, exceeds in beauty that of Neptune, at Paestum; but they have the advantage of number and variety, as well as of highly interesting positions. At Segesta the temple is enthroned in a perfect mountain ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... indifference and apathy at first, and then with murmurs. The movement had no attraction: it had many causes of offence. In England the political movement became a patriotic, an intellectual, and a religious movement; and it succeeded. In Ireland, also, it was political, but it could not ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards

... entire conception is simply made up of this, and has not the faintest existence without it. It is useless to give it notice to quit, and pretend that it is gone when you have only put a new name upon the door. We must not call it 'attraction,' lest there should seem to be a power within; we are to speak of it only as 'gravitation,' because that is only 'weight,' which is nothing but a 'fact,' as if it were not a fact that holds a power, a true ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... on the spot a commentary on the 108th Sura of the Ḳur'an. [Footnote: Nicolas, p. 233.] In this commentary what was the Sayyid's surprise to find an explanation which he had supposed to be his own original property! He now submitted entirely to the power of attraction and influence [Footnote: NH, p. 115.] exercised so constantly, when He willed, by the Master. He took the Bāb for his glorious model, and obtained the martyr's crown in the ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne

... was not proof against this attraction. He ceased trying to pull away from Janet and let her lead him back to the alligator's tank. There Janet took up the scaly, long-tailed creature, which was idly crawling around, and put him on top of the slanting board, as Teddy ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis

... had. Perhaps it began with Warren's desire to rouse jealousy in Marjorie; perhaps it was the familiar though unrecognized strain of Marjorie in Bernice's conversation; perhaps it was both of these and something of sincere attraction besides. But somehow the collective mind of the younger set knew within a week that Marjorie's most reliable beau had made an amazing face-about and was giving an indisputable rush to Marjorie's guest. The question of the moment was how Marjorie would take it. Warren called ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... Parliament had risen. Everybody was out of town, and I yearned for the glades of the New Forest or the shingle of Southsea. A depleted bank account had caused me to postpone my holiday, and as to my companion, neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest attraction to him. He loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumor or suspicion of unsolved crime. Appreciation of Nature found no place among his many gifts, and his only ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... the field of his fathers, the hearth and the clock of his home, even the bed on which he was born, and on which he hopes to close his eyes. The conscript and sailor are often known to die of grief when away from their native land. Brittany possesses for its children an inconceivable attraction, and there is no country in the world where man is more attached to ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... Mr. Samuel Johnson, is in great health and spirits; and, I do think, has a serious resolution to visit Scotland this year. The more attraction, however, the better; and therefore, though I know he will be happy to meet you there, it will forward the scheme, if, in your answer to this, you express yourself concerning it with that power of which you are so happily possessed, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... must not founder for lack of a guide. True, there is a chart, and precepts for the right way are clear, but my craving is for a living Spirit within which shall point me to the peaceful shore by an attraction powerful and unerring, though unseen, and, like that ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... only in size, but the difference in size involves also many other differences, notably the fact that the larger body can attract and hold to itself an atmosphere—a circumstance of the utmost importance to the existence of life on its surface. In order, however, that a planet may by gravitative attraction control the roving atoms of gas, and confine their excursions to within a certain range of itself, it must have a very ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge

... Owing to the attraction of the heat by the black color, asphaltum would increase the injury by absorption of more heat. Some white coating is altogether best for sunburn injuries, because it will reflect and not absorb heat, and a durable whitewash applied as may be needed to keep the ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... experiment of placing the loadstone on a float in water, and observed that the poles always revolved until they pointed north and south, which he explained as due to the earth's magnetic attraction. In this same connection he noticed that a piece of wrought iron mounted on a cork float was attracted by other metals to a slight degree, and he observed also that an ordinary iron bar, if suspended horizontally by ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... Thames, of the Seine, of the Rhine, of the Nile, of the Tigris. After they had enriched themselves with the spoils of the ancient monarchies they returned to their estates in Italy, or to their palaces on the Aventine, for the earth had but one capital—one great centre of attraction. To an Egyptian even, Alexandria was only provincial. He must travel to the banks of the Tiber to see something greater than his own capital. It was the seat of government for one hundred and twenty millions of people. It was the arbiter of taste and fashion. It was the home of generals ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... have been John Lamb's, or possibly his father's; and Lamb's own first impressions of church, probably acquired at the Temple (which he mentions here by comparison), were, it is easy to believe, identical with the imaginary narrator's. Church bells seem always to have had an attraction for him: he has a pretty reference to them in John Woodvil, and a little poem in Blank Verse, 1798, entitled "The ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... our general Mother, and with eyes Of Conjugal attraction unreproved, And meek surrender, half embracing lean'd On our first father; half her swelling breast Naked met his under the flowing Gold Of her loose tresses hid: he in delight Both of her beauty and submissive charms Smil'd ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... love a woman, with the love which has nothing to do with the arranged marriage of his early youth, or his attraction to some beautiful face which causes him to take the possessor thereof to wife, of which Allah in his bounty allows him four, or his desire for some one of his concubines, to the number of which there is no limit; ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... generosity, and his consideration for the poor, for servants, and animals, there are many instances recorded. For divergent types of womanhood, whether passionate, witty, or intellectual, he possessed the attraction of sympathetic intimacy. A woman of peculiar charm and noble character was his livelong friend from girlhood, risking reputation, marriage, position, and all that many women most value, just for that friendship and nothing more. Another woman loved him with more tragic destiny. To Stella, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... are found, or may be manufactured near at hand. The philosophy of deep plowing and thorough pulverization is obvious. A fine soil will retain and appropriate moisture in an eminent degree, on the principle of capillary attraction, or as a sponge or a piece of loaf sugar will take up water. There is also room for excess of water to sink away from the surface, and return again when needed. It also affords room for the roots of plants. Such a soil ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... responsibility than he had expected. Several times when she believed that he had spent part of a morning or afternoon in his room, he was more silent than usual and looked puzzled and thoughtful. She observed, as Mr. Palford had, that the picture-gallery, with its portraits of his ancestors, had an attraction. A certain rainy day he asked her to go with him and look them over. It was inevitable that she should soon wander to the portrait of Miles Hugo and remain standing before it. Tembarom followed, and stood by her ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... writing has the liveliness of springtime; it stirs with an unsuppressible gayety, and it has the attraction which companionship with him had: there is never enough. He could be sharp; he could write angrily and witheringly; but even when he was fiercest he was buoyant, and when his words were hot they were not scalding but rather of a dry, clean indignation with things ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various

... they appeared as if, like bright planets, they could almost cast a shadow; and dimples, before concealed, would show themselves when indulged in her silvery laugh. Although her form was commanding, still she was very feminine: there was great attraction in her face, even when in repose—she was ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... a woman as he had thought her. Something had roiled the blood in her delicate veins until it had muddied the clear freshness of her smooth satiny skin. There was discontent in her eyes, which were her most convincing attraction. They were big eyes, wide open and candid. She had so trained them through a lifetime of practice that she could meet other eyes directly while manipulating her most dextrous evasion. Whenever Eileen was most deceptively subtle, she was looking straight at her ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... be too minute. Whether these diurnal trifles were properly exposed to eyes which had never received any pleasure from the presence of the dean, may be reasonably doubted: they have, however, some odd attraction: the reader, finding frequent mention of names which he has been used to consider as important, goes on in hope of information; and, as there is nothing to fatigue attention, if he is disappointed, he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... to the martial prowess of the "grande nation," of course nearly brought down the house, but it did not carry the audience over the water, at least for some time. At last a new and successful play proved a magnet of irresistible attraction, and produced a receipt of twelve thousand pounds ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... smiling at the thought of it; "and she says she is a woman of great penetration, and never will listen to anything. But it only shows what I have always said, that our family has a peculiar power, a sort of attraction, a superior gift of knowledge of their own minds, which makes them—But there, you are laughing at ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... prepared from autobiographical notes by a Mr. Egerton Wilks, and contained one or two stories told so badly, and so well worth better telling, that the hope of enlivening their dullness at the cost of very little labor constituted a sort of attraction for him. Except the preface, he did not write a line of this biography, such modifications or additions as he made having been dictated by him to his father; whom I found often in the supreme enjoyment of the office ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... philosopher, whom she reads with a critical appreciation of his shortcomings. On the sofa near her lounges MRS. O'CONNELL; a charming woman, if by charming you understand a woman who converts every quality she possesses into a means of attraction, and has no use for any others. On the sofa opposite sits MISS TREBELL. In a few years, when her hair is quite grey, she will assume as by right the dignity of an old maid. Between these two in a low armchair is LADY DAVENPORT. She ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker

... stove in the office, the Snow family was the attraction in the Hinds House, for the entertainment they frequently furnished was as free as the wood that the habitues fed so liberally ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... for the purpose of ingratiating himself with the spectators, a result which, we may be sure, he finds little difficulty in achieving. Among the other plays, the Poenulus possesses for the philologist this special attraction, that it contains a Phoenician passage, which, though rather carelessly transliterated, is the longest fragment we possess of that important Semitic language. [16] All the Plautine plays belong to the Palliatae, i.e. those of which the entire surroundings are Greek, the name being ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... left a restricted communion, deep and delightful; the affectionate and affecting attraction in the charm of a language—there is hardly more in the universe besides its languages which are foreigners—there is left a personal and delicate preference for certain forms of landscape, of monuments, of talent. And even this radiance has its limits. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... sweetness, why men died for it, and delicate women who loved them cheered them on? Once also in later years a beautiful woman cried to me, with white arms outstretched, that to be free was life, was all in all, the heart's one satisfaction. Her I pressed, seeking to know wherein lay the attraction and allurement that fired her to such extravagance. And I told her what the Prince had said to me half-way through his ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... village and come to live at Roscarna. He himself, he said, needed no more in his old age than a couple of rooms; his daughter and his son-in-law might take a wing to themselves and do what they liked with it. He had counted a good deal on the attraction to Considine of the Roscarna library. His offer was refused. Considine already had his plans cut and dried. Quite apart from the fact that his parochial duties tied him to Clonderriff, he had decided that it would be better for Gabrielle to be separated ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young

... reduce that misfortune to a great extent. You loved the position—that worldly estimation, that fortune, all those circumstances which, with perfect moral right, you had hitherto enjoyed. They presented little attraction to me. Moreover, there were many reasons, which I am quite aware you know, that made this very house of mine a dismal dwelling for me. You see I have no wish to give too generous a colour to my motives, too self-denying a character to the benefits I conferred upon you. But, as far as you ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... murmured against him; and, far from fearing scandal, he loved it. He chose his friends partly for their charm, and partly for their bad reputations; and the white flower of a blameless life was much too inartistic to have any attraction for him. He believed that Art showed the way to Nature, and worshipped the abnormal with all the passion of his ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... a couple of sergeants marched a squad of twelve or fourteen shabby-looking young fellows into the barrack yard, the whole party wearing the ribbons of the recruit, and toward this group, as it they were an attraction, the fat drill-sergeant and some half-dozen more from different parts of the yard ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... If every orbit in the Belt were perfectly circular, the analogy would be more exact. If they were, then every rock in the Belt would follow every other in almost exactly the way every merry-go-round horse follows every other. (The gravitational attraction between the various bodies in the Belt can be neglected. It is much less, on the average, than the gravitational pull between any two horses on a carousel.) If every orbit of those millions upon millions of pieces of rock and metal were precisely circular, ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... amuse his friends. 'Retaliation', 'The Haunch of Venison', the 'Letter in Prose and Verse to Mrs. Bunbury', all afford noteworthy exemplification of that playful touch and wayward fancy which constitute the chief attraction of this species of poetry. In his imitations of Swift and Prior, and his variations upon French suggestions, his personal note is scarcely so apparent; but the two Elegies and some of the minor pieces retain a deserved reputation. His ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... "Any counter-attraction? There are some things in which sons do not confide in their fathers. You have never heard that Kenelm has ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... in my berth on ship-board, I used to take pleasant afternoon rambles through the town; down St. James-street and up Great George's, stopping at various places of interest and attraction. I began to think I had been born in Liverpool, so familiar seemed all the features of the map. And though some of the streets there depicted were thickly involved, endlessly angular and crooked, like the map of Boston, in Massachusetts, yet, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... than even pantomime and vaudeville were the "games of the circus." At Rome these were held chiefly in the Circus Maximus. Chariot races formed the principal attraction of the circus. There were usually four horses to a chariot, though sometimes the drivers showed their skill by handling as many as six or seven horses. The contestants whirled seven times around the low ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... counties far distant." It is said that, even within the nineteenth century, the crowd that used to assemble here, especially those bringing rickety and crippled children, was so large that the scene resembled a fair. But now it is curiosity that brings the visitor, or the attraction of a lonely, beautiful scene; Cornish mothers seek other remedies for their delicate children; only perhaps a few of the elder folk fondly nurse a memory and a belief in the powers of St. Cubert's Well. Yet the spring flows ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... be asked, was this congregation of natives in one place? What could be the attraction? My love and admiration of John suggested the answer, and I was right: the power of God's word put forth through His faithful servant. The inhabitants of this town had been collected by concern for their soul's welfare, and ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston

... right to be a coquette, you can very well make fun of B——-, to whom your virtue seems to be of little importance. But as you have plenty of lovers in society, I beg you that you will leave me my husband. He is always at your house, and he certainly would not come unless you were the attraction." ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac

... be sung. He shows the goddess coming in her majesty to destroy order and science, and to substitute the kingdom of the Dull upon earth; how she leads captive the Sciences, and silenceth the Muses; and what they be who succeed in their stead. All her children, by a wonderful attraction, are drawn about her; and bear along with them divers others, who promote her empire by connivance, weak resistance, or discouragement of Arts; such as half-wits, tasteless admirers, vain pretenders, the flatterers of Dunces, or the patrons of them. All these crowd round her; one of them offering ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... so much sympathy with her cousin's wrongs, that aunt Sarah had begun to fear that that sympathy might lead to a tenderer feeling, and aunt Sarah was by no means anxious that her niece should fall in love with a gentleman whose chief attraction was the fact that he had been ruined by his own father, even though that gentleman was a Marrable himself. This danger might possibly be lessened if Captain Marrable were made acquainted with the Gilmore affair, and taught to understand ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... scattered than that they can dictate to me that which they are justly entitled to say. Whether supercilious or respectful, they do not say anything that can be heard. Of course, I have only myself to please, and my work is slighted as soon as it has lost its first attraction. It is to be hoped, if one should cross the sea, that the terror of your English culture would scare the most desultory of Yankees into precision and fidelity; and perhaps I am not yet too old to be animated ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... is the Pure Reason that knows itself as the One Self and knows all things in that Self, and on the side of Matter it is Love, drawing the infinite diversity of forms together, and making each form a unit, not a mere heap of particles—the principle of attraction which holds the worlds and all in them in a perfect order and balance. This is the Wisdom which is spoken of as "mightily and sweetly ordering all things,"[272] which sustains and preserves ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... he treats us to a very scientific account of his experiments in this crow's-nest, with a small compass he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the errors resulting from what is called the "local attraction" of all binnacle magnets; an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship's planks, and in the Glacier's case, perhaps, to there having been so many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew; I say, that though the Captain is very discreet and scientific here, yet, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... had promised to preside. The scheme was one in which she had been prominent from the start, appealing as it did to her large and full-blooded nature. Many movements, to which she found it impossible to refuse her name, had in themselves but small attraction; and it was a real comfort to feel something approaching enthusiasm for one branch of her public work. Not that there was any academic consistency about her in the matter, for in private life amongst her friends she was not narrowly dogmatic ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... of the Soudan is that of misery; nor is there a single feature of attraction to recompense a European for the drawbacks of pestilential climate and brutal associations. To a stranger it appears a superlative folly that the Egyptian Government should have retained a possession the occupation of which is wholly unprofitable, the receipts being far below the expenditure ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... drawn in at the roots, it flows out at the top, to which point it rises by capillary attraction and a process called osmosis. Neither of them is a strictly vital process, since both are found in the inorganic world; but they are in the service of what we call a vital principle. Some physicists and ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... depots—and for the matter of that I can imagine nothing more luscious to the anarchist than seven hundred and forty-two cases of powder and fifty cases of melinite all stored in one place. And to prevent the enormous noise, confusion, and waste that would have resulted from the over-attraction of this base of operations to the anarchists, my two friends, one of whom was a duty-doing Burgundian, but the other a loose Parisian man, were on sentry that night. They had strict orders to challenge once and then ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... thrills thousands in daily flights and skiey acrobatics, including crazy dips and loops, startling dashes to the earth and illuminated flights through the night air. (See p. 192.) Smith became in a day an attraction outshining, perhaps, any other single performer ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... brought to the last extremity filled me with aversion and disgust. But the perils of my sailing expeditions had again acquired for me their former attraction, as in the days when I sailed the North Sea with my father. To die the death of Shelley, my greatest-bard, is an honor I had desired from boyhood, and I thought: If after all it must be, then why not now, before I ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... object was the Golden Fleece: what that actually was can only be conjectured;—that no commercial advantages would tempt the people of that age is obvious, when we reflect on their habits and manners;—that the precious metals would be a powerful attraction, and would be regarded as cheaply acquired by the most hazardous enterprizes, is equally obvious. If Sir Walter Raleigh, sound as he was for his era in the science of political economy, was so far ignorant of the real wealth of nations, as to be disappointed ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... the door, listening impatiently to the voices beneath. At sight of Helen, she drew back; but she smiled exultingly when she saw that all the splendour of beauty she had so lately beheld and dreaded was flown. Her unadorned garments gave no particular attraction to the simple lines of her form; the effulgence of her complexion was gone; her cheek was pale, and the tremulous motion of her step deprived her of the elastic grace which was usually the charm of her ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... experience, he was called upon to view the business problems of a magazine from the editor's position. His knowledge of the manufacture of the two magazines in his charge was likewise educative, as was the fascinating study of typography which always had, and has today, a wonderful attraction ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok

... Another attraction was my companion, Mr. d'E. himself—a man stout in person, quiet by disposition, and of few words; a man, too, with a lineage which connected him with many of the oldest pioneer families of French Canada. His ancestor, Jacques Alexis d'Eschambault, originally of St. Jean de Montaign, ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... charming! Dickens was devoted to this square, vine-covered house, where he resided from 1856 to the time of his death, in 1870. The story goes that when he was a small boy the place had a great attraction for him, and that one day his father, wishing to spur him on in a way peculiar to parents, reminded him that if he worked hard and persevered until he was a grown man, he might own that very estate, ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson

... contained in their waters. The well-waters will bring these salts from great depths, and the canal-waters will collect them as they flow along, or percolate through, the earth; and as they rise, by capillary attraction, they will convey them to the surface, where they are required for tillage. The atmosphere, in water, ammonia, and carbonic-acid gas will continue to supply plants with the oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon which they require from ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... a seafaring life that she misinterpreted well-meant politeness—the only respect he knew how to pay her—to mean insidious advances. She was suspicious of him—distrusted him utterly, and openly ridiculed his abortive seamanship. Pretty she was not, but she soon began to have a certain amount of attraction for Wilbur. He liked her splendid ropes of hair, her heavy contralto voice, her fine animal strength of bone and muscle (admittedly greater than his own); he admired her indomitable courage and self-reliance, while her positive genius in the matters ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... than some sixty-five thousand miles from the moon's surface. The Planetara presently would swing upon her direct course for Mars. There was nothing which could cause passenger comment in this close passing of the moon; normally we used the satellite's attraction to give ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... got leave to go to Poperinghe during these rests out of the line, but I never went there myself. There was an attraction there in the 'Fancies,' a fine concert party, many of whose songs I learnt ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley

... had some points of interest. No Swiss ever saw a hill without an intense desire to get to its top. They soon felt the magnetic attraction of the Blue Hills of Milton, and, descrying from their summit the distant mountains north of Worcester, made a pedestrian excursion thither the following day. Mr. Gallatin was wont to relate with glee an incident of this trip, which Mr. John Russell ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... tell Cyrus—your father—that Aunt Elizabeth has been trying to take Mr. Goward's affections away from Peggy. I'm afraid it's just what she has been doing, though it seems incredible that she should have any attraction for a young man. I was glad Elizabeth had gone away overnight, for Maria is in such a state I don't ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... all stiffness and formality disappears for the time, and the visitors are surrounded by the villagers, eager to learn the latest news from Apia, and from the world abroad. The discussion of political matters always has a strong attraction for Samoans, who are anxious to learn the state of affairs in Europe, and their knowledge and shrewdness is surprising. Should there be any white ladies present, the brown ones make much of them. The Samoans are a fine, handsome race, and the faces and figures of many ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke

... painted such scenery for it that even the great Titian was so struck with the vraisemblance of the work that he was not satisfied until he had touched the canvas to be sure of its not being in relief. We may fancy indeed that the scenery was one great attraction of the representation. In spite of spasmodic encouragement by the more liberally minded pontiffs, the general weight of church influence was against the new musical tendency, and the most skilled composers were at first afraid to devote their ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... the power of bringing a vibrating magnetic needle suspended over it rapidly to rest; and that on causing the disk to rotate the magnetic needle rotated along with it. When both were quiescent, there was not the slightest measurable attraction or repulsion exerted between the needle and the disk; still when in motion the disk was competent to drag after it, not only a light needle, but a heavy magnet. The question had been probed and investigated with admirable skill by both Arago and Ampere, and Poisson had published a theoretic memoir ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... piece of paper, cotton, thread, hair, etc., remain in the trap, and a part of the paper, etc., projects into the lumen of the pipe, a part of the water will be withdrawn by capillary attraction from the trap and may unseal it. To guard against unsealing of traps by capillary attraction, traps should be of a uniform diameter, without nooks and corners, and of not too large a size, and should also be well flushed, so that ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various

... put a friend into or to sit in myself without the music of hammers or the odoriferous scent of paint." He easily dropped back into the round of country duties and pleasures, and the care of farms and plantations, which had always had for him so much attraction. "To make and sell a little flour annually," he wrote to Wolcott, "to repair houses going fast to ruin, to build one for the security of my papers of a public nature, will constitute employment for the few years I have to remain on this terrestrial ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... sightseers circulates, enjoying the oratory with a desultory impartiality. The usual silhouettes of gesticulating speakers appear like jerky clockwork figures above the throng. A crowd of Socialists are "remembering Chicago" in a corner. The chief centre of attraction is a drag occupied by a Philanthropic Young-lady Chairwoman, her chaperon, some leading laundresses, one or two male sympathisers, and a couple of reporters. The Chairwoman conducts the proceedings with the greatest possible tact and grace, but is slightly hampered by the levity ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various

... of June, and no longer opposed it. The latter thrust the muzzle of the rifle through the loophole; and, taking care to make noise enough to attract attraction, she pulled the trigger. The piece had no sooner been discharged than Mabel reproached her friend for the very act that was intended to ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... said the Doctor coolly; "but I should. But, as I was going to say, Colonel, it's wonderful what a deal the human skull can bear. Now, for instance, that boy Gedge: a great stone comes down many hundred feet, increasing in velocity with the earth's attraction, strikes him on the head, and down he goes, insensible, with his skull crushed in, you would expect; but no: it is the old story of the strength of the arch and the difficulty in cracking an egg-shell from outside, ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn

... the sound increasing every minute. The braces were now manned, the order to "go about" given, and the helm put down. But the ship had hardly begun to gather headway on the other tack, when she refused to obey her helm. It seemed, indeed, as if she was under the influence of a powerful attraction, drawing ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams

... mind either suggesting that the power, wherever not exerted by an animated creature, may possibly be directly from God. One thing certain is, that inanimate matter cannot possibly possess or exercise any force or power whatever, so that, unless matter, although apparently dead, be really alive, attraction, cohesion, gravitation, and all its other so called forces, being incompatible with dead inertness, must needs be manifestations of some living, and possibly divine, power. Far from there being any difficulty in conceiving Omnipresent Deity to be exhibiting its might in every speck of universal ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... strutted, conscious of the sidelong glances the group was drawing. But it was obvious that Sir Thomas was the major attraction. Even if you could accept the idea of people in strange costumes, the sight of a living, breathing absolute duplicate of King Henry VIII was a little too much to take. It has been reported that two ladies ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett

... girl's attraction for him had increased during the short period he had been absent from her. He had had time to think over his feelings, to find his interest stimulated by the process. Imagination, which does so much for a woman with a man, and for a man with a woman, had begun ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... more valuable as shrubs than as flowering plants, though their large, bright, single flowers are extremely attractive. Their chief attraction is their beautifully crinkled foliage, of a rich green, and their bright crimson fruit which is retained throughout the season. This class gives flowers, at intervals, from ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford

... is technologically backward, with most production of the cottage industry type. Most development projects, such as road construction, rely on Indian migrant labor. Bhutan's hydropower potential and its attraction for tourists are key resources. Model education, social, and environment programs are underway with support from multilateral development organizations. Each economic program takes into account the government's desire to protect the country's environment ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... with its nuances of attraction, its delicately different disadvantages. They are known as the Oil Wharves, the Generating Station, and the Sewage Station. A wise decree from Scotland Yard leaves us uncertain up to the very last moment of each evening as to which will be our allotted beat. A gambling element is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various

... associations the most engaging, and has afforded, and will afford, ever-new delight to successive generations. The Sabine farm was situated in the Valley of Ustica, thirty miles from Rome, and twelve miles from Tivoli. It possessed the attraction, no small one to Horace, of being very secluded—Varia (Vico Varo), the nearest town, being four miles off—yet, at the same time, within an easy distance of Rome. When his spirits wanted the stimulus of society or the bustle of the capital, which they often did, his ambling ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... bread that was baked for native consumption. Then there was some talk of the nightingale. One man suggested that it was a nightingale attached to a music box which the enterprise of a local inn had hired for the summer months, sending a man to wind it up every night for the attraction of visitors. Then it was that Mr. Courtland said he knew a spot where a nightingale had been in the habit of singing long ago, when his explorations of the Thames River had preceded those of the Fly River. He found three persons who expressed their willingness ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore

... A third of the latter city has now been restored to the light of day; but though it has yielded abundance of all the things that illustrate the domestic and public life, and the luxury and depravity of those old times, and has given the once secret rooms of the museum their worst attraction, it still falls far below Herculaneum in the value of its contributions to the treasures of classic art, except only in the variety and beauty of its ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... product. The manufactures of the North and East, therefore, and the grain and provisions of the Western States are likely to find in Texas a demand, increased by whatever augments intercourse between the two countries, and especially by whatever tends to give attraction to the cities of the United States as marts for the sale of her great and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... observed how apt is the person whom I have called the "average reader of culture" to be drawn to the perusal of an author's works by some attractive idiosyncrasy in the author's private life or character. Lamb is a staring instance of this attraction. How we all love Lamb, to be sure! Though he rejected it and called out upon it, "gentle" remains Lamb's constant epithet. And, curiously enough, in the gentleness and dignified melancholy of his life, Daniel stands nearer to Lamb than any other English ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... manhood coincided with that period in German thought and literature which is called the 'Sturm und Drang'—that is the Storm and Stress—period. The subject of Faust, the attraction of which had for so long lain dormant, appealed powerfully to the adherents of this new school, with their gospel of the divine rights of the human heart and of genius, with their wild passionate graspings after omniscience, their Titanic heaven-storming aspirations after ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... desperately in love with her. With a form of exquisite symmetry, with the fairest complexion and lovely features, she suddenly found herself the sister of a monarch, transformed into the principal ornament, almost the central attraction, of the court. She went to England to attend the coronation of her brother. She then returned to Paris. On the 31st of March, 1661, she was married to Philip in the Palais Royal, in the presence of the royal family and the prominent members of ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... as he saw the bridegroom's eyes fastened on the light form of the bride, as the latter went swiftly up the retired wharf where the ship was lying, on her way to Front street, accompanied by her young friend. But, no sooner had Bridget turned a corner, and Bob saw that the attraction was no longer in view, than he thought it becoming to put in ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... and pretty Marie hanging clothes in the yard. He was at once attracted to her, and entered into conversation. He was deeply pleased; so was the girl; and they made an appointment. He soon saw what her character was, and this was to him an added attraction. ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... graceful and rhythmical. He could write his name with his skates, and every letter was perfect and clean cut as if done with a pen. It was not long before all eyes were centered on him, and Inza did not fail to note that he seemed to be the principal attraction ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish

... there has never been any lack of those restless beings whose wandering spirits lead them to the confines of civilisation and beyond. To this type of man the African continent has offered a particular attraction, and we should have fared badly in the East African campaign, if we could not have relied upon the services of many of them. They are for the most part men who have abandoned at an early age the prosaic existence previously mapped out for them, and plunging ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... thoughts, intensely realised, and sometimes expressed with singular vividness and power, possessed great attraction to minds wearied with the religious controversies or spiritual dulness of the time, and which were not repelled by the wilderness of verbiage, the hazy cloudland, in which Behmen's conceptions were ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... One can see it. That saintly mother of his has not half the attraction for him that you have. Why, look you, it is the way of the world, why dispute it? Well, well," her triumphant voice deepening to a weary whisper. "When one thinks of it all, she is not too happy." She draws her hand in a little bewildered ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... other, we should substitute different conditions, the stability of the universe would be jeopardized, and a frightful chaos would pretty certainly result. The discovery of the actual conditions excluded the idea, at least so far as the solar system was concerned, that the Newtonian attraction might be a cause of disorder. But might not other forces, combined with the attraction of gravitation, produce gradually increasing perturbations such as Newton and Euler feared? Known facts seemed to justify the apprehension. A comparison ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... "the state of being in equilibrium." In design this refers to the equilibrium or balance of attraction to the eye between the ...
— Applied Design for Printers - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #43 • Harry Lawrence Gage

... Groombridge, now in the Hunting Dogs of Bootes. It is thought to have a speed of two hundred miles per second—a velocity that all the known matter in the universe could not give to the star by all its combined attraction. Neither could all that attraction stop the motion of the star, or bend it into an orbit. Its motion must be accounted for on some hypothesis other ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren

... child ought to read. The sacred thing is the way the child feels about the books; and unless the new life, like the needle of a magnet trembling there under the whole wide heaven of them all, is allowed to turn and poise itself by laws of attraction and repulsion forever left out of our hands, the magnet is ruined. It is made a dead thing. It makes no difference how many similar books may be placed within range of the dead thing afterward, nor how many good reasons there may be ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... appears struggling with inexpressible weariness; the music gives a hint of something unnatural and evil in the spell of sleep falling leadenly upon her, expressing at the same time an irresistible element in it of attraction. The dark, wild-haired messenger of the Grail, the despised subordinate, suddenly assumes to our sense a much greater importance than up to this moment. Her personality looms large with an unexplained effect of tragedy. "Only rest! Rest for the weary one!" she murmurs yearningly; "sleep! ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... with, we circled our universe to the remotest point opposite where we wanted to leave it. We then turned our attraction powers on part way so that the millions of stars before us drew us ahead, then we gradually stepped up the power to its full strength, thus ever increasing our speed. At the same time, as stars passed to our rear in our flight, we turned ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei

... William the Third revived the hopes of the Jacobite party; and to that centre of attraction the ruined and the restless, the aspiring and the profligate, alike turned their regards. Never was so great a variety of character, and so great a diversity of motives displayed in any cause, as in the various attempts which were made to secure the restoration of the Stuarts. On ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... engrossed than usual in "setting up" a new piece of work, an occasion on which his scissors were in requisition. These scissors, owing to an especial warning of Dolly's, had been kept carefully out of Eppie's reach; but the click of them had had a peculiar attraction for her ear, and watching the results of that click, she had derived the philosophic lesson that the same cause would produce the same effect. Silas had seated himself in his loom, and the noise of weaving had begun; but he had left his scissors on a ledge which Eppie's arm ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... to pray for Priests." One cannot attain the end without adopting the means, and as Our Lord made me understand that it was by the Cross He would give me souls, the more crosses I met with, the stronger grew my attraction to suffering. For five years this way was mine, but I alone knew it; this was precisely the flower I wished to offer to Jesus, a hidden flower which keeps its ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... more happily."[179] Apart from an outburst like this, the central idea remained the same, though it was approached from another side and with different objects. The picture of a state of nature had lost none of its perilous attraction, though it was hung in a slightly changed light. It remained the starting-point of the right and normal constitution of civil society, just as it had been the starting-point of the denunciation of civil society as incapable of right constitution, and as necessarily and for ever abnormal. ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... white T of the familiar airdrome. As they came down, people in the outlying districts rushed madly toward the field, and the streets everywhere were choked with the concourse pouring toward the center of attraction. ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... regard to the modern attraction of ugly subjects (not when the wish to remedy gross evils makes it a duty to study and live among them; but as common talk between young men and young women), I feel very strongly that the contemplation of God, ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... his legs broken by the cars. His occupation was to wrestle with all the trifling fellows, white and black, around the depot, butt them when he could, and be ridden by them when he couldn't. He had long since lost his situation at the sheep fold, having proved rather an attraction to dogs, who are fond of low company, than a protection to sheep. Untidy, thriftless, a loafer, kicked and cuffed about by the public and half starved, he presented a pitiable contrast to his wife, neat little lady, who, after her husband had lost his situation, ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley

... spiritually, and therefore it is to be accounted supernatural, even as two Lovers, their persons are visible, but their Love one to the other is invisible: Humane Bodies are tangible and natural, but Love is invisible, spiritual, intangible and supernatural, comparable to a Magnetick Attraction only; for the invisible Love which is attracted unto it spiritually by the Imagination is, accomplish'd by the desires and fruition. In like manner when the Heaven hath a love to the Earth, and the Earth hath a Love, Inclination, and Affection towards Man, as the great World to the lesser, for ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus

... childhood as with an elder sister, she might even now have begun to be a formidable rival to the sweet memories of Joan's ladyhood. For he saw in her that which is at the root, not only of all virtue, but of all beauty, of all grandeur, of all growth, of all attraction. Every charm—in its essence, in its development, in its embodiment, is a flower of the tree of life, whose root is the truth. I see the smile of the shallow philosopher, thinking of a certain lady to him full of charm, who has no more love for the truth than a mole for the light. But that lady's ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... History as our guide, as much by showing errors to evade as examples to pursue. It is suspicious of illusions in success, and, though there may be hope of ultimate triumph for what is true, if not by its own attraction, by the gradual exhaustion of error, it admits no corresponding promise for what is ethically right. It deems the canonisation of the historic Past more perilous than ignorance or denial, because it would perpetuate ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton

... of Procter and others for defamation, and recovered against them all. After this, we hear no more of him until he experienced religion and was received into the First Church. Whether he and Procter became reconciled again is not known. Probably they did; for they seem to have had points of attraction, and each of them traits of kind-heartedness and generosity, under a rather rough exterior. The manner in which they bore themselves in their last hours is a matter of history, and stamps them both with ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... herself, smiling, between the two men, who stood glaring at each other in silence. She was annoyed at the dance being broken off, but she saw in Stephen's interference the great tribute paid to her own attraction, and therefore forgave him. At the same time she had no wish to have her vanity further gratified by bloodshed. There was a certain hardness but no cruelty in her nature. She turned from the men and strolled very slowly ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross

... Hebrew mind felt no attraction towards the drama. Hebrew poetry attained to neither dramatic nor epic creations, because the all-pervading monotheistic principle of the nation paralyzed the free and easy marshalling of gods and heroes of the Greek drama. Nevertheless, traces of ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... Yorkshire, Great Northern, and Hull & Barnsley railways. It is in the parish of Silkstone, which gives name to important collieries. It is situated on rising ground west of the river Dearne, and, though it loses in attraction owing to its numerous factories, its neighbourhood has considerable natural beauty. Among the principal buildings and institutions are several churches, of which the oldest, the parish church of St Mary, was built in 1821 on an early site; court house, public hall, institute and free library. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... the auxiliars which then stood Upon our side, we [2] who were strong in love! Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!—Oh! times, 5 In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways Of custom, law, and statute, took at once The attraction of a country in romance! When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights, When most intent on making of herself 10 A prime Enchantress [3]—to assist the work, Which then was going forward in her name! Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth, The beauty wore of promise, that which ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... the Negro, and it was, perhaps, the more dangerous because, while the Negro, so far as he had not absorbed European culture, was a mere barbarian, these people had a very old and elaborate civilization of their own, a civilization picturesque and full of attraction when seen afar off, but exhibiting, at nearer view, many characteristics odious to the traditions, instincts and morals of Europe and white America. There was also the economic evil—really, of course, only an aspect ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... this, had a fellowship in his college been attainable, it would not have had much attraction for Milton. A fellowship implied two things, residence in college, with teaching, and orders in the church. With neither of these two conditions was Milton prepared to comply. In 1632, when he proceeded to his M.A. degree, Milton was twenty-four, he had been ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... Madam Dupin's, everybody concluded I was with Grimm at his apartment, the public walk, or theatre. I left off going to the Comedie Italienne, of which I was free, to go with him, and pay, to the Comedie Francoise, of which he was passionately fond. In short, so powerful an attraction connected me with this young man, and I became so inseparable from him, that the poor aunt herself was rather neglected, that is, I saw her less frequently; for in no moment of my life has my ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... honorabu copton! Is somesing rike five hundred times as great as gravitationar attraction, ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett

... and, taking all the young ladies' flattery for genuine sentiment, and being, as we have before had occasion to show, of a very warm and impetuous nature, responded to their affection with quite a tropical ardour. And if the truth may be told, I dare say that she too had some selfish attraction in the Russell Square house; and in a word, thought George Osborne a very nice young man. His whiskers had made an impression upon her, on the very first night she beheld them at the ball at Messrs. Hulkers; and, as we know, she was not the first woman who had been charmed by them. George ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... rain- coats, and spent the time universally in those little economical ingenuities and skilful adaptations which our people (the worse for them) practise perhaps less than any other. There was no assembling at the sake shop. Poor though the homes are, the men enjoy them; the children are an attraction at any rate, and the brawling and disobedience which often turn our working-class homes into bear-gardens are unknown here, where docility and obedience are inculcated from the cradle as a matter of course. The signs of religion become fewer as I travel north, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... arrived at the chair of Jane, who was seated next her aunt. Here he stopped, and glancing his eye round, and saluting with bows and smiles the remainder of the party, he appeared fixed at the centre of all attraction. ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... them that the Indians are not upon the upper plain. It is not likely, after the pains they had taken to smoke them in the cave and afterwards shut them up. Besides, the distribution of the spoils would be an attraction sure to draw them back ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... Olive had painted the motto on a long narrow panel of canvas, and, giving it to Mr. Popham, stood by the fireside while he deftly fitted it into the place prepared for it. The family had feared that he would tell a good story when he found himself the centre of attraction, but he was as dumb as Peter, and for the ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... speeches were delivered were mostly got up on the Free Church side, where there seemed to be more need of missionary work of this kind than on his own, and his appearances on these occasions increased the favour with which he was already regarded in Free Church circles. "The chief attraction of Union for me," an eminent Free Church layman is reported to have said, "is that it will bring me into the same Church ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns

... a new center for the world and set heaven and earth revolving around his cradle. All things began to gravitate towards him as by a new and more powerful attraction. Angels sang, shepherds wondered, a new star glittered upon the blazing curtain of the night, and wise men came from afar to worship him. These wise men were Persian priests, scholars, scientists, astrologers, students ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden

... other organs which tends to improve the circulation throughout the entire body. The exercise must insure deep breathing, and if a certain amount of perspiration is induced it will be advantageous. First of all get out-of-doors; find some exercise that appeals, some alluring attraction which will take you away from the confinement of your home. Live as much as you can in the open. If possible, try sleeping out-of-doors. Men and women of today may be aptly compared to sensitive plants. We are the devitalized product of the universal custom ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden

... search of the picturesque, or with much eye for it, are rare travellers along this route. The people responsible for the descriptions you complain of are thrifty business-men, with no idea that there can be any possible attraction in a country where crops can't be raised, timber cut or ore dug up. For my part, I thank the Lord for the beautiful barrenness that has consecrated this great region to loneliness. Here there will always be a chance to get out of sight ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... about; the two wounded men became the center of attraction and related for the hundredth time their sensations when the juramentado had struck them down. They were not seriously wounded, but the cruel cuts were displayed, and they did not prove an antidote to ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... prepared to return home; for although the camp beside the spring was scarcely one day old, the fact that it was likely to become the future residence of the little party had already invested it with a species of homelike attraction. Man is a strange animal, and whatever untravelled philosophers may say to the contrary, he speedily makes ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... in compliment to Mr. Poinsett. These interesting women for many years were in the habit of leaving what they called their "Carolina" home for a summer sojourn at Newport, where their house was one of the social centers of attraction. With their graceful bearing, gentle voices and cordial manners they were characteristic types of the Southern grandes dames now so seldom seen. A short distance from my hosts' cottage lived the daughter of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... sounds that are heard in the bush in great perfection. They are about the size of a barn-door fowl, and are not remarkable for any beauty either in the shape or colour, being of a dirty brown, approaching to black in some parts; their greatest attraction consists in the graceful tail of the cock bird, which assumes something the appearance of a lyre, for which reason some naturalists have called ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... of great recommendation in the correspondence amongst men; 'tis the first means of acquiring the favour and good liking of one another, and no man is so barbarous and morose as not to perceive himself in some sort struck with its attraction. The body has a great share in our being, has an eminent place there, and therefore its structure and composition are of very just consideration. They who go about to disunite and separate our two principal parts from one another are to blame; we must, on the contrary, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... powerful activity from a distance, unless through the medium of something present on the spot. Through the same Natural Prejudice which made Newton unable to conceive the possibility of his own law of gravitation without a subtle ether filling up the intervening space, and through which the attraction could be communicated—from this same natural infirmity of the human mind, it seemed indispensable that the god, at a distance from the object, must act through something residing in it, which was the immediate ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... had just time to whisper, before she found herself shaking hands with a tall, red-haired, hatless girl in a white dress. Theo Dene never wore a hat unless it were absolutely necessary, for her hair was her great attraction. It was splendid in the sun, as she came out of the shade to stand in the blaze of light, shaking Angela's hand and sending a long-lashed glance to Nick. She never looked at a woman if there were a man worth looking at within eye-shot. But she had no hypocrisy about this. She did not pretend ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... present, however, the new state was unconscious of its latent importance, The new-risen republic remained for a season nebulous, and ready to unsphere itself so soon as the relative attraction of other great powers should determine its absorption. By the death of Anjou and of Orange the United Netherlands had became a sovereign state, an independent republic; but they stood with that sovereignty in their hands, offering it alternately, not to the highest bidder, but to the power that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... be the centre of attraction at friendly little gatherings like this, and had little inclination to sit and listen to people praising those who recently had been nothing but his satellites. So he lit ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... football, and sports of various kinds used to draw vast throngs to "the Palace," and the firework displays at night were, and are to-day, justly celebrated. In short, this "Cockney Arcadia," if rather a tawdry attraction, has had the benefit of much honest admiration of the Londoner, who perforce could not get farther afield for his holiday, and its like can hardly be said to exist elsewhere in Europe or America. Hence it must perforce rank in a way as something unique in present-day ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... overthrown, and yet more have disappeared altogether. Probably, besides the alignments or stone avenues, there are not more than twenty still standing.[148] One thing is certain, the monolithic form of monument has always had a great attraction for the human race, and we meet with it in Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and Mexico, as well as in England and Brittany. The historian speaks of such monuments in the earliest of existing records; Homer refers to them in the Iliad,[149] and in the ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... is explained by things equally inscrutable, as the rising of sap in plants is explained by the attraction of a sponge for water, a ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick



Words linked to "Attraction" :   attractive feature, travelogue, gravitational attraction, physical attraction, temptingness, show, counterattraction, entertainer, allure, lure, repulsion, van der Waal's forces, attracter, show-stopper, magnetism, fascination, enticement, attractive force, allurement, come-on, coming attraction, gravitation, bond, chemical bond, gravity, force, chemical attraction, draw, quality, attention, sexual attraction



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