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Equable   Listen
adjective
Equable  adj.  
1.
Equal and uniform; continuing the same at different times; said of motion, and the like; uniform in surface; smooth; as, an equable plain or globe.
2.
Uniform in action or intensity; not variable or changing; said of the feelings or temper.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Equable" Quotes from Famous Books



... having taken snuff very solemnly, and looked round him with a calm circumspection, fixing his dull eye upon me, and wagging his head, with an equable motion, slowly up and ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... stature and beauty the Filbertines are far above the average. The men are six feet in height and upwards, and proportionately wide. By a combination of equable climatic and economic conditions this altitude has become standardized and there is little variation from it. A sort of rough control is exercised in this regard. When a young male Filbertine has got his growth ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock

... than cotton culture"—would seem, when the facts of the whole case are known, to be perfectly warranted so far as Brazil is concerned. Certainly, from a climatic point of view, this country is exceptionally well favoured, an equable and suitable temperature together with an adequate supply of earth and air, moisture and rich alluvial soils, a long dry season for picking extending over many weeks—all point to an ideal cotton-growing area. In fact, there ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson

... the pit of panegyric by an enumeration of his qualities, personal and literary. It would not be out of harmony with the temper and characteristics of a mind so equable. He, the equable, whether in condemnation or eulogy. Our loss of such a man is great, for work was in his brain, and the hand was active till close upon the time when his breathing ceased. The loss to his friends can be replaced only by an imagination that conjures him up beside ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... beautiful avenues of the park, and in this respect Hortense had the same taste as her mother. This whimsical fancy astonished Bonaparte, and he was sometimes vexed at it. My intercourse with Josephine was delightful; for I never saw a woman who so constantly entered society with such an equable disposition, or with so much of the spirit of kindness, which is the first principle of amiability. She was so obligingly attentive as to cause a pretty suite of apartments to be prepared at Malmaison ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... deviation forms the school. Taking Gogol as the norm of modern Russian fiction—Leo Wiener's admirable anthology surprises with its specimens of earlier men—we see the novel strained through the rich, mystic imagination of Dostoievsky; viewed through the more equable, artistic, and pessimistic temperament of Turgenieff, until it is seized by Leo Tolstoy and passionately transformed to serve his own didactic purposes. Realism? Yes, such as the world has never before seen, and yet at times as idealistic as Shelley. It is not surprising that Mr. John M. Robertson ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... the summons that may come without warning. For the rest, quit this climate as soon as you can,—it is the climate in which the blood courses too quickly for one who should shun all excitement. Seek the most equable atmosphere, choose the most tranquil pursuits; and Fenwick himself, in his magnificent pride of stature and strength, may be nearer the grave than ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... start of genuine surprise. Haward could punish,—Juba had more than once felt the weight of his master's cane,—but justice had always been meted out with an equable voice and a fine impassivity of countenance. "Don't stand there staring at me!" now ordered the master as irritably as before. "Go stir the fire, draw the curtains, shut out the night! Ha, Angus, is ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... than nothing we admit; but that it is an adequate substitute for play we deny. The defects are both positive and negative. In the first place, these formal, muscular motions, necessarily less varied than those accompanying juvenile sports, do not secure so equable a distribution of action to all parts of the body; whence it results that the exertion, falling on special parts, produces fatigue sooner than it would else have done: to which, in passing, let us add, that, if constantly repeated, this exertion ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... scale of charges being high, however, to all who could afford to pay, and Mrs Pipchin very seldom sweetening the equable acidity of her nature in favour of anybody, she was held to be an old 'lady of remarkable firmness, who was quite scientific in her knowledge of the childish character.' On this reputation, and on the broken heart of Mr Pipchin, she had ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... on an actual specie basis in order to redeem the notes at the places of issue, produces no dangerous redundancy of circulation, affords no temptation to speculation, is attended by no inflation of prices, is equable in its operation, makes the Treasury notes (which it may use along with the certificates of deposit and the notes of specie-paying banks) convertible at the place where collected, receivable in payment of Government dues, and without violating any principle of the Constitution affords ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler

... first time, against some of the keenest brains in the country, failed to see it. His blindness allowed Lady Dunstable to run a somewhat dangerous course, unchecked. She risked alienating a man whom she particularly wished to attract; she excited a passion of antagonism in Doris's generally equable breast, and was quite aware of it. Notwithstanding, she followed her whim; and by the Sunday evening there existed between the great lady and her guest a state of veiled war, in which the strokes were by no means always to ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward

... life in an equable flow of happiness, if thou canst go by the right way, and think and act in the right way. These two things are common both to the soul of God and to the soul of man, and to the soul of every rational being: not to be hindered by another; and to hold good to consist in ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

... with children which is not easy to define. Some people possess it, and some do not; it cannot be learned, it comes by nature. She was bright and firm and equable all at once. She both amused and influenced them. There was something about her which excited the childish imagination, and always they felt her sympathy. Amy was a tractable child, and intelligent beyond her age, but she was never quite so good ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... the most rapidly growing of the Protestant churches of America, the Lutheran, growing now with new increments not only from the German, but also from the Scandinavian nations, is among us in such force to teach us somewhat by its example of the equable, systematic, and methodical ways of a state-church, as well as to learn something from the irregular fervor of that revivalism which its neighbors on every hand have inherited from the Great Awakening. It would be the very extravagance of national self-conceit if the older American ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... some excitement in the bosoms of them all, as they met and shook hands; by far too much to enable either of them to begin his story and tell it in a proper equable style of narrative. Mr. Harding was some minutes quite dumbfounded, and Mr. Arabin could only talk in short, spasmodic sentences about his love and good fortune. He slipped in, as best he could, some sort of congratulation about the deanship, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... had passed into the speech of the inhabitants, and they saluted each other when they met with 'Breezy, breezy,' instead of the customary 'Fine day' of farther south. These continual winds were not like the harvest breeze, that just keeps an equable pressure against your face as you walk, and serves to set all the trees talking over your head, or bring round you the smell of the wet surface of the country after a shower. They were of the bitter, hard, persistent sort, that interferes with sight and respiration, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... very long and slender fingers, conveyed the same impression. Her dress, though dainty, was simple and inconspicuous, and her movements, light, graceful, self-controlled, seemed to show a person of equable temperament, without any strong emotions. In her light cheerfulness, her perpetual interest in the things about her, she might have reminded a spectator of some of the smaller sea-birds that flit endlessly from wave to wave, ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... various orders,—for life and death, the securing of his prisoners, and the washing his charger's shoulder,—were given in the same unmoved and equable voice, of which no accent or tone intimated that the speaker considered one direction as of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... humanity itself. In none of his contemporaries (except perhaps in the sentimentalities of Steele) can one detect the traces of emotion; to read Swift is to be conscious of intense feeling on almost every page. The surface of his style may be smooth and equable but the central fires of passion are never far beneath, and through cracks and fissures come intermittent bursts of flame. Defoe's irony is so measured and studiously commonplace that perhaps those who imprisoned ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... was she too young, though by reason of her quiet country life her twenty-four years did not count more to her in wear and tear of feeling and the doubtful moulding of experience than if she had lived through one London season. She was a girl of acknowledged good sense, calm, equable, holding herself in the strictest leash of ladylike reserve, and governing all her emotions without trouble, patent or unconfessed. Hers was a character which would never floreate into irregular beauties to give her friends anxiety and crowd her life with embarrassing consequences. She despised ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... voices, for every one was anxious to propitiate the forewoman by bestowing upon her the flattery which was essential to keep her in an equable state ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... the human trait of mere seeming. Then the qualities, almost emotional, palpably artistic, heroic, of a tree; so innocent and harmless, yet so savage. It is, yet says nothing. How it rebukes by its tough and equable serenity all weathers, this gusty-temper'd little whiffet, man, that runs indoors at a mite of rain or snow. Science (or rather half-way science) scoffs at reminiscence of dryad and hamadryad, and of trees speaking. But, if they don't, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... amidst the powerful rivalry of the works of man. The effect on my mind was, on the whole, saddening, but not in the least depressing. It was a kind of poetic sadness that had nothing to do with low spirits. I have never been either merry or melancholy, but have kept an equable cheerfulness that maintains itself serenely enough even in solitude and amidst the desolate aspects of stony and barren lands. As life advances, it is wise, however, to seek the more cheering influences of the external ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... children cannot, perhaps, properly be said to be exercised upon animals; they are frequently extremely fond of animals, but they are not always equable in their fondness; they sometimes treat their favourites with that caprice which favourites are doomed to experience; this caprice degenerates into cruelty, if it is resented by the sufferer. We must not depend merely upon the natural ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... rocky parts of the steep mountain side, that they had to be brought down to the flat in rude little sledges, drawn by a bullock, who required to be trained to the work, and to possess so steady and equable a disposition as to be indifferent to the annoyance of great logs of heavy wood dangling and bumping against his heels as the sledge pursued its uneven way down the bed of a mountain torrent, in ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... the future development of the human race, as one of the lines of action in which the advancing enfeeblement of man may express itself: the abandonment of individual strife in commerce may be regarded as a mark of diminishing vitality, which seeks immunity from effort and an equable condition of material comfort, in preference to the risks and excitement of a more eventful and arduous career. Order will be purchased at the price of progress: the abandonment of individual enterprise in industry is part of the decadence of humanity. This is the interpretation ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... meantime he gave me, casually as it were, a complete account of the sugar crop, of the local business houses, of the state of the freight market. All that talk was interspersed with hints as to personalities, amounting to veiled warnings, but his pale, fleshy face remained equable, without a gleam, as if ignorant of his voice. As you may imagine I opened my ears very wide. Every word was precious. My ideas as to the value of business friendship were being favourably modified. He gave ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... portions of the forests on the national domain as essentially contribute to the equable flow of important water courses is ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson

... changed from a pecking, fluttering voice to tragic earnestness. "This was the—the—open cesspit that dared to call us 'stinkers.' And now—and now, it tries to shelter itself behind a dead rat. You annoy me, Rattray. You disgust me! You irritate me unspeakably! Thank Heaven, I am a man of equable temper—" ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... man of equable temper, but this too much for him. Must find object of attack somewhere. Waited till HOWORTH had said adieu to five ladies whom he had been showing round the House. "Look here, HOWORTH," said Mr. ATTORNEY, his amiable visage clouded with unwonted wrath, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various

... in the surrounding strata)—pre-historic men in this sense were 'savages without the fixed habits of savages;' that is, that, like savages, they had strong passions and weak reason; that, like savages, they preferred short spasms of greedy pleasure to mild and equable enjoyment; that, like savages, they could not postpone the present to the future; that, like savages, their ingrained sense of morality was, to say the best of it, rudimentary and defective. But that, unlike present savages, they had not complex customs and singular customs, ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... singular way; that in their splenetic, envious despair, to keep-out the Army at least, these men were hurrying through the House a kind of Reform Bill—Parliament to be chosen by the whole of England; equable electoral division into districts; free suffrage, and the rest of it! A very questionable, or indeed for them an unquestionable, thing. Reform Bill, free suffrage of Englishmen? Why, the Royalists, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... moral basis of sterling qualities is of capital importance. A true, honest, and trustworthy nature, capable of self-sacrifice and self-restraint, should rank in the first line, and after that a kindly, equable, and contented temper, a power of sympathy, a habit of looking at the better and brighter side of men and things. Of intellectual qualities, judgment, tact, and order are perhaps the most valuable. Above almost all things, men should seek in marriage perfect sanity, and dread everything ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... worth and character. It would be impossible to write the history of the early life of this people under the constitution without borrowing material from the papers of Hamilton and of Madison. Equally impossible will it be for the future historian to narrate, in just and equable proportion, the events from 1845 to 1874, without consulting the fifteen volumes which Mr. Sumner has left ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various

... made by the tuned crayons and tested by reference to the color sphere, have so trained the color judgment that children may now be trusted with more flexible material. They have memorized the equable degrees of color on the equator of the sphere, and found how lighter colors may balance darker colors, how small areas of stronger chroma may be balanced by larger masses of weaker chroma, and in general ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell

... honour of the day of the Colonel's arrival at Port Talbot—the 21st of May, 1803. The Colonel was not, in the strict sense of the term, a politician, but he was a member of the Legislative Council, and naturally supported the official party; whereas Rolph, though a man of equable mind, and by no means constitutionally inclined towards Radicalism, had much better opportunities for mixing with the people than had Colonel Talbot, and his keen eye revealed to him many official abuses which did not commend ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... the regular tenor of the man's reflections; but the latter burst forth from time to time with an unruly violence, and then he would forget all consideration, and go up and down his house and garden or walk among the fir-woods like one who is beside himself with remorse. To equable, steady-minded Will this state of matters was intolerable; and he determined, at whatever cost, to bring it to an end. So, one warm summer afternoon he put on his best clothes, took a thorn switch in ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... what has been; and, from what has actually been, we have data for concluding with regard to that which is to happen hereafter. Therefore, upon the supposition that the operations of nature are equable and steady, we find, in natural appearances, means for concluding a certain portion of time to have necessarily elapsed, in the production of those events of ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... restricted to the present-day Colombia and the older Nueva Granada. The capital of the Republic is Santa Fe de Bogota, to-day generally known simply as Bogota. It is at an elevation of 8700 feet above the level of the page 286 sea, and has a cool and equable climate. ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various

... much like that of New York in early autumn. It was of equable temperature. There was no discomfort in walking, no difficulty in breathing. Jeter surmised that at least one of those buildings, perhaps the central one, housed some sort of oxygen renewer. Such a device at this ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks

... if you wish," said Cellini, his usual equable humour and good spirits now quite restored. "You shall know everything; but not to-day. We have too little time. I have not yet commenced your picture. And I forgot—you were thirsty, and I was, as you said, inhospitable. You must permit ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... peculiar and terrible hardship and privation for a gently-nurtured woman, that, conjoined with her exceptional beauty of face and form, exercised a fascination upon me so potent that I frequently found it exceedingly difficult to maintain that equable coolness and strict friendliness of behaviour demanded by the exigencies of our peculiar situation. All of which, however, ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood

... his riches and external honours and show himself in his shirt. Has he a sound body? What mind has he? Is it fair, capable, and unpolluted, and happily equipped in all its parts? Is it a mind to be settled, equable, contented, and courageous in any circumstances? ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... last scene of his life does honor to his memory; and that, in all appearances before his judges, he never forgot his part, either as a prince or as a man. Firm and intrepid, he maintained, in each reply, the utmost perspicuity and justness both of thought and expression; mild and equable, he rose into no passion at that unusual authority which was assumed over him. His soul, without effort or affectation, seemed only to remain in the situation familiar to it, and to look down with contempt on all the efforts of human malice and iniquity. The soldiers, instigated by their superiors, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... intellect, that is, which had expressed itself in poetry. Dryden himself was not always careful to distinguish between what material was fit and what unfit for verse; so that we can now enjoy his masterly prose with more equable pleasure than his verse. But he saw clearly enough the distinction in Donne between intellect and the poetical spirit; that fatal division of two forces, which, had they pulled together instead of apart, might have achieved a result wholly splendid. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... capital plant for rockwork, where it shows itself to much advantage; but specimens are much finer grown in beds or borders, where the moisture and temperature at the roots are likely to be more equable; besides, I find that, owing to its small quantity of roots, all of which are very near the surface, when grown on rockwork they may often be seen bare on inclined surfaces, and the weight of the flowers drags them entirely out of the soil on one side. They may be planted as an edging ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood

... resembling those of the Gauls are met with at every turn, and cattle are very numerous. Gold coins are in use, or iron bars of fixed weight. Hares, fowls, and geese they think it wrong to taste; but they keep them for pastime or amusement. The climate is more equable than in Gaul, the cold being less severe. The island is triangular in shape, one side being opposite Gaul. One corner of this side, by Kent—the landing-place for almost all ships from Gaul—has an easterly, and the lower ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... woman. The natural disposition of that woman may be an amicable one; if it were allowed to express itself naturally it would be kind, gentle, considerate, affectionate. No woman, however, the victim of chronic constipation, can preserve an equable temperament or an amicable disposition. It is impossible—with her nerves being constantly poisoned—that she can hold the symptoms of that condition in abeyance. She must be irritable and nervous and sick of herself and everything and everybody. The home as a direct result suffers; its atmosphere ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... be back. Yet she could not recall that he had ever shown himself at a disadvantage anywhere they had been together. He wore evening clothes when occasion required as unconcernedly as he wore mackinaws and calked boots among his loggers. She had not yet determined whether his equable poise arose from an unequivocal democracy of spirit, or from sheer egotism. At any rate, where she had set out with subtle misgivings, she had to admit that socially, at least, Jack Fyfe could play his hand at any turn of the game. Where or how he came by this faculty, she did not know. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... her, the clear and brilliant eyes and the sweet, proud mouth presided in unbroken calm. These superb tints implied resources only, not a struggle. With this torrent from the tropics in her veins, she was the most equable person I ever saw, and had a supreme and delicate good-sense, which, if not supplying the place of genius, at least comprehended its work. Not intellectually gifted herself, perhaps, she seemed the cause of gifts in others, and furnished the atmosphere in which all showed ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... was incredible. Already, in less than an hour, I had died a thousand deaths. And yet this neighbour, balanced and equable, calm-voiced and almost beneficent despite the harshness of his first remarks, had been in ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... generally prefers the narrative style, which is proper to old age. Hence Homer in his Odyssey may be compared to the setting sun: he is still as great as ever, but he has lost his fervent heat. The strain is now pitched to a lower key than in the "Tale of Troy divine": we begin to miss that high and equable sublimity which never flags or sinks, that continuous current of moving incidents, those rapid transitions, that force of eloquence, that opulence of imagery which is ever true to Nature. Like the sea when it retires upon itself and leaves its ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus

... for me to say it," she admitted, with an accent of reproach in her equable tones; "but there the wrong and the shame are, and I owe it to myself and to ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... already mentioned separation of property and an equable division of the fruits of labor between conjoints as the only just basis in marriage contracts. I repeat here, that true justice can only be established by the recognition of equal legal rights ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... favourite prescription for lung complaints; and it is doubtless an honest one, as the doctor who gives it at the same time parts with his patient and his fees. But the advice is sound; as the long rest of the voyage, the comparatively equable temperature of the sea air, and probably the improved quality of the atmosphere inhaled, are all favourable to the healthy condition of the lungs as well ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles

... that, Jim! Lucy—that's the mother—and I used to visit like this when we were girls. It was done then," his wife replied with an air of equable amusement. ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley

... life had simplified itself. Her days passed in noiseless, equable procession. Many hours had been given back to her empty after Edith's death. She had filled them with interests outside her home, with visiting the poor in the district round All Souls, with evening classes for shop-girls, with "Rescue" work. Not ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair

... in which he vegetated! Shut up in this happy existence, without a care or a cross, he grew weary like a prisoner in his cell. He longed for the unforeseen; his wife irritated him, she was of too equable a temperament. She always met him with the same smile on her lips. And then happiness agreed with her too ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... children. He praises old friends and laments his inability to make new ones. He commends Jane Austen, whose novels he has just finished reading. "Her flights," he remarks, "are not lofty, she does not soar on eagle's wings, but she is pleasing, interesting, equable, and yet amusing." He laments that he "can no longer debate and yet cannot apply his mind to anything else." One recalls Darwin's similar lament that his scientific work had deprived him of ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... spirit; never a nature to which Literature and Society—books and men—yielded a more constant and exhilarating joy. He had unstinted admiration for the performances of others, and was wholly free from jealousy. His temperament indeed was not equable. He had ups and downs, bright moods and dark, seasons of exaltation and seasons of depression. The one succeeded the other with startling rapidity, but the bright moods triumphed, and it was impossible to keep him permanently depressed. His health had always been delicate, but illness neither ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... endless chain, for the mere pleasure of labor. It is true he may be aware of the wholesomeness of such labor as one of the means of cheerfulness; but, if he have no further aim, his being aware of this result makes an equable flow of spirits a positive object. Without hope, uncompelled labor is an impossibility; and hope implies an object. Nor would the veriest idler, who passes a whole day in whittling a stick, if he could be brought to look into ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... bronzed faces, with keen eyes, looking straight forward from between sabres; while beneath the equable but haughty motion of their steeds, almost disciplined as their riders, with long black horse-hair flowing in martial majesty, nod their high Roman casques. The sweet storm of music has been passing by while we were gazing, and is now ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... is able to lead twenty or thirty carts; for the ground being quite plain, they fasten the carts, whether drawn by camels or oxen, behind each other, and the girl sits on the front of the foremost cart of the string, directing the cattle, while all the rest follow with an equable motion. If they come to any difficult passage, the carts are untied from each other, and conducted across singly; and they travel at a very slow pace, only so fast as an ox or a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... make another effort for Mr. Cleveland's acceptance. During this first visit of mine, the Secretary of State and the First Assistant Secretary were both absent, having been almost prostrated by the extreme heat. At a second visit in October, I again saw the President, found him in the same equable frame of mind, not allowing anything to trouble him, quietly discharging his duties in the calm faith that all would turn out well. Dining with Secretary Hay, I mentioned this equanimity of the President, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... unknown to European readers. And the translators of Homer themselves gracefully acknowledge, "We have tried to transfer, not all the truth about the poem, but the historical truth into English. In this process Homer must lose at least half his charm, his bright and equable speed, the musical current of that narrative, which, like the river of Egypt, flows from an undiscoverable source, and mirrors the temples and the palaces of unforgotten gods and kings. Without the music of verse, only a half truth about Homer can ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous

... a half counted as little until the flying automobile gained the Harlem River Speedway. Here the pace improved. There was practically no traffic to interfere with progress now, and Brodie had to maintain an equable rate of forty miles an hour in order to keep within ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... in water. Indeed, obedience was instantaneous. She whirled round as quickly as one could turn one's hand, requiring promptness and presence of mind in the steersman. Thus, like a bird, with smooth and equable motion, she flew with her delighted passengers, in many a zig-zag, down the Severn, until they had gone as far as desired, when round she spun, and before the breeze, houses, and men, and trees, gliding by as in a race, dashed up ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... Fluctuations in production take place of course, but not such as to result in want, to any noticeable extent. There are no extremes of heat and cold, no extremes of drought and flood, no extremes of wealth and poverty. The climate is equable, the progress is uniform, ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple

... two generations of couples fleeing from irking bonds in the societies of England and the continent of Europe. Southern California combined a wild independence with a languor that blunted too sensitive nerves, offered an equable climate with months on end of out of door life, boating, shooting, riding, driving, motoring, romantic excursions, and even sport if a distinguished looking couple played the game well and ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... differing in the degree, of its operation. The proselyte to a pure diet must be warned to expect a temporary diminution of muscular strength. The subtraction of a powerful stimulus will suffice to account for this event. But it is only temporary, and is succeeded by an equable capability for exertion, far surpassing his former various and fluctuating strength. Above all, he will acquire an easiness of breathing, by which such exertion is performed, with a remarkable exemption from that painful and difficult ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... beginning to diverge; and these went on diverging far enough: but in their kindly union, in their perfect trustful familiarity, precious to both parties, there never was the least break, but a steady, equable and duly increasing current to the end. One of Sterling's commonest expeditions, in this time, was a sally to the other side of London Bridge: "Going to Guy's to-day." Maurice, in a year or two, became Sterling's brother-in-law; wedded ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... body. They cannot be regarded as a disease of the skin; but are the result of long continued bad health, anxiety and study, and of general emaciation and old age. Cleanliness, nutritious food, vigorous outdoor exercise, agreeable occupation of the mind, and an equable and happy temper, retard their formation. Whatever tends to promote the general health and to increase the bulk of the body, and particularly the disposition of fat in the cellular tissues, also tends to remove them and to increase the smoothness and beauty ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... was Gertrude's cousin, and he and his wife sometimes came over from Shropshire for a week-end. He sat with Sir Cloud in the smoking-room; a man with greying hair and a youngish, equable face. ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... of Plain Zones.—The submontane zone has the most equable and the pleasantest climate in the plains. It has a rainfall of from 30 to 40 inches, five-sevenths or more of which belongs to the monsoon period (June-September). The north-western area has a longer and colder winter and spring. ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... confronting fortune with his head erect, living quietly in the house where he had been wont to live, haunted by no dismal shadows, subject to no dark hours of remorse, no sudden access of despair, always equable, business-like, and untroubled; and she told herself that such a man could not be guilty of the unutterable horror she ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... characterized the winters in the region of the Great Lakes tended to aggravate my wife's difficulty, and would undoubtedly shorten her life if she remained exposed to them. The doctor's advice was that we seek, not a temporary place of sojourn, but a permanent residence, in a warmer and more equable climate. I was engaged at the time in grape-culture in northern Ohio, and, as I liked the business and had given it much study, I decided to look for some other locality suitable for carrying it on. I thought of sunny France, of sleepy Spain, of Southern California, ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt

... be cheerfully admitted, while he has so many other things that are his own. There may be none of those flashes of lightning in his verse that make day for a moment in this dim cavern of consciousness where we grope; but there is an equable sunshine that touches the landscape of life with a new charm, and lures us out into healthier air. If he fall short of the highest reaches of imagination, he is none the less a master within his own ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... the supreme blossoming of years of prosperity, and brought a finishing touch to the happiness of the home. She was the prettiest of Mathieu's daughters, with dark brown hair, round gilded cheeks, merry eyes, and charming mouth. And she had the most equable of dispositions, her laughter ever rang out so heartily! She seemed indeed to be the very soul, the good fairy, of that farm teeming with busy life. But beneath the invariable good humor which kept her singing from morning ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... any one who is well acquainted with Greek types and with the forms of modern athletes will observe that the Greek physical build is not identical with that of our days. The equable climate and the unstrained life of the young men produced something more rounded and fleshy than we see in the north. Our athletes are less harmoniously built, with more prominent sinews, more harsh and wiry in type. An American trainer who ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... greatest variations in price (see 103), whereas, in the case of the precious metals, the diversity of uses to which they may be turned contributes greatly to render their value, as instruments of exchange, more equable. If the supply of them be small, gold and silver vessels are less in demand; a part of the old ones are melted ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... than was his wont to-day, but he seemed in equable spirits, and made many exclamations of delight. He said suddenly, "Do you know one of the advantages of growing old? It is that if you have an unpleasant thing ahead of you, instead of shadowing the mind, as it does when you are young, it gives a sort of relish to the intervening ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... or ground to thank God. The true prosperity of the nation consisted not so much in the fact that the nation was growing in wealth—though wealth was a necessary attribute of prosperity—but that it was growing in virtue; and that there was a more equable distribution of comfort, contentment, and the things of ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... subject. General literature had no charms for Wilson. He is believed never to have read one of Scott's poems or novels; and the playful mirth that enlivened all Heber's paths was not with him, though he had the equable cheerfulness of a faithful servant doing his Lord's work. His daughter, soon after his arrival, married her cousin, Josiah Bateman, his chaplain (and biographer), and thus continued to be the ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... flowery meads. Their hearts are by chance enkindled, each burns, fire seeks the embrace of fire; they touch, they mingle, they soar together. Wedded love, which neither soars nor leaps like a furnace, but glows steadily with equable and radiant heat—wedded love ensues this passionate commingling. But the pair remain what they were at first, simple, naked, unashamed, unshameful, with all things displayed, even to the very aspirations of the secret soul, in blessed sympathy, in union ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... never shocked; a fund of talk which never wore itself into platitudes, and a willing ear; and an absolute confidence in herself and her destiny. In addition she had great beauty, the high light spirits of her mercurial temperament, a charming and equable manner (when not engaged in judiciously tormenting her slaves), and a shrewd brain. What wonder that her sovereignty was something for the men who worshipped her to remember when they too were old beaux, ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... well again, without having taken either medicines or globules. But have we done nothing? When the heart was striving to restore the balance of the circulation, by adopting the recumbent posture, we gave it less work to do. The equable warmth of bed was soothing to the nervous system, and solicited the afflux of blood to the surface. By abstinence, we avoided ministering to congestion of the viscera, and introducing food which, as it could not be properly digested, would decompose and irritate ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various

... menyecske whose laughter echoes from end to end of the village, whose merry voice rings all the day, and whose pretty bare feet trot briskly up and down from her cottage to the river, or to the church, or to a neighbour's house, but an equable, contented bride, a fitting wife for a person of such high ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... arrived at seventeen and a half grains a day I experienced but little uneasiness, and my digestive organs acquired or regained strength very rapidly. All constipation had vanished. My skin became moist and more healthy, and my spirits instead of being depressed became equable and cheerful. No visions haunted my sleep. I could not sleep, however, more than two or three hours at a time, and from about 3 A.M. until 8—when I took my opium—I was restless and troubled with a gnawing, twitching sensation in the stomach. From seventeen grains downward my torment ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... in work and play. He had conquered the art of bearing care lightly. He seldom allowed public affairs to distract him in moments of leisure. He was able to throw aside the cares of office, and to enter with vivacity and humour into social diversions. His equable temper and placid disposition served him in good stead amid the turmoil ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... is more rapid and easy than in others. In this country, Mr. F. Currey has been the most successful in the cultivation of Sclerotia. The method adopted is to keep them in a moist, somewhat warm, but equable atmosphere, and with patience await the results. The well-known ergot of rye, wheat, and other grasses may be so cultivated, and Mr. Currey has developed the ergot of the common reed by keeping the stem immersed in water. The final conditions are small clavate bodies of the ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... commonly said that there is a great difference between the transpiration and evaporation of water in plants. The former takes place in an atmosphere saturated with moisture, it is influenced by light, by an equable temperature, while evaporation ceases in a saturated atmosphere. M. Leclerc has very carefully examined this question, and he concludes that transpiration is only the simple evaporation of water. If transpiration ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various

... should feel agitated, and Valentine accosted her so seriously as to increase her emotion. She had been able to recover her usually equable spirits after the loss of her child, it was only on particular occasions that she now gave way to tears. She was by no means of their number who love to make a parade of grief; on the contrary, emotion was painful to ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... said I, in an equable tone—"My dear, I may as well warn you I am shockingly given to short and expressive terms, and as we are likely to see a deal of each other for the future, you will have to be lenient with them,—accordingly, I repeat, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... of life, which brings out a calmness of mind and that equable temperament that minor worries can no longer shake, springs the mental leisure which gives time for other and unaccustomed ideas. Men who wittingly, time and again, have faced but escaped death, will inevitably begin to think what death may mean. As the first lessons of obedience teach each man that ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh

... of Ecuador's Andes, there lies that mysterious mountain valley, cut off from the world of men, the Country of the Blind. Long years ago that valley lay so far open to the world that men might come at last through frightful gorges and over an icy pass into its equable meadows; and thither indeed men came, a family or so of Peruvian half-breeds fleeing from the lust and tyranny of an evil Spanish ruler. Then came the stupendous outbreak of Mindobamba, when it was night in Quito for seventeen days, and the water was boiling at Yaguachi and ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... a more logical, reasoning, reasonable being than he believed it possible for a woman to be. Poor papa! All that he really knew of his most interesting daughter was that she was growing up a good child, physically strong and active, morally well educated, with a fortunately equable temper; and that she owed a great deal to him. What, precisely, was never defined. But when the thought of his kindness recurred to him it always suffused him ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... 'I wasn't aware his chirography was so unusually elegant; but his books were magnificent, weren't they? So equable, too, and without that bold speculation that we too often ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... people, too, who were not farmers, the rural multitude, saw in the god of the weather a more important personage than they do now. Indeed, the feeling of the peasantry in this matter was so intense as to be almost unrealizable in these equable days. Their impulse was well-nigh to prostrate themselves in lamentation before untimely rains and tempests, which came as the Alastor of those households whose crime it was ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... was equable, but he shot Hanson a quick glance. "He was our faro dealer for a while, but he's interested in mines now. He's dead sure. Come to think of it, he's a lot of dead things," he mused; "but don't ever confuse him with a dead one." Delight at his own wit expressed itself in mirthful chuckles. "He's ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... theoretic positions, there was that in his very manner of speech, in his rank, unweeded eloquence, which seemed naturally to discourage any effort at selection, any sense of fine difference, of nuances or proportion, in things. The loose sympathies of his genius were allied to nature, nursing, with equable maternity of soul, good, bad, and indifferent, rather than to art, distinguishing, rejecting, refining. Commission and omission; sins of the former surely had the preference. And how would Paolo and Francesca have read the lesson? ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater

... general way sloped down from the high wall to the low wall, an acre broad of thatch. These old thatched houses seemed to be very healthy so long as the old folk lived in them in the old-fashioned way. Thatch is believed to give an equable temperature. The air blew all round them, and it might be said all through them; for the front door was always open three parts of the year, and at the back the dairies were in a continual blow. Upstairs the houses ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... o'clock was heralded by the College bell, and Pauline arose as though this equable deep-throated interruption of the music's levity had been a signal. John Charteris saw her clearly ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... professional studies were distracted by a momentary infatuation for a fair face, a woman had proved fickle when tempted by greater wealth than he possessed. For long he was a confirmed misogynist, to his great and lasting gain as a leader of men. But with more equable judgment came a fixed resolution not to marry unless his prospective bride cared only for him and not for his position. To a Staff Corps officer, even one with a small private income, this was no unattainable ideal. Then he met with his debacle in the shame and agony of the court-martial. Whilst ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... and a court life. Wherever, therefore, they do not paint an ideal kingdom, with the manners of some remote age, they invariably fall into stiffness and formality, which are much more fatal to boldness of character, and to depth of pathos, than the monotonous and equable ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... made it easier for her, for her pride had been a little wounded. If he had held aloof, but shown that, although he had given her her freedom, he hoped she had not accepted it, she would have felt irked, and whatever unformed love she had for Jim would quickly have disappeared. But, as it was, his equable friendship kept alive the affection which she had always felt for him; only it seemed to make the remembrance of their love passages a little absurd. She was not exactly ashamed of what had happened, but she never willingly thought ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... Ruggiero's eye is of a colder blue, is less mobile and of harder expression than Sebastiano's. His firm lips are generally tightly closed, and his square chin is bolder than his brother's. He is stronger, too, though not by very much, and though he is more silent and usually more equable, he has by far the worse temper of the two. At sea there is little to choose between them. Perhaps, on the whole, Sebastiano has always been the favourite amongst his companions, while Ruggiero has been thought the more responsible and possibly the more dangerous in a quarrel. Both, however, have ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... character, the offer was accepted. Surrendering my own steed to the care of a ragged boy, who promised to lead it with equal judgment and zeal, I entered the little car, and, keeping a firm hand and constant eye on the reins, brought the offending quadruped into a very equable ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and Flemings from the north, and Norsemen from the west, all met and mingled with the native Gauls and eventually became Parisians. Environment acted its part, and so did the forces of Nature. The soil of the basin of Paris is fruitful, the climate equable, but neither encourage idlers; both demand a toll of strenuous labour, yet not so trying to man's strength as to leave him exhausted at the end of the day's work; he may recreate himself and bring his mind to bear on the ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... are found to come from the northward; but light winds usually prevail from the southwest during the wet season, and from the opposite quarter, the dry, following closely the order of the monsoons in the China seas. As to the temperature, the climate is very equable, the thermometer seldom rising above 90 deg. or falling below ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... this article, gorging on abalones and mussels, digging clams, and catching record-breaking sea- trout and rock-cod in the intervals in which we are not sailing, motor- boating, and swimming in the most temperately equable ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London

... read to Cousin Hugh, she talked over parish matters, and after relieving her mind with a conversation on the question of how much the march of intellect ought to penetrate into country schools, it was wonderful how much more equable and comfortable she became. The return to the true bent of her nature softened her on every side; and without the least attempt to show off, she was so free from the morose dignity with which she had treated her own family since going abroad, that ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... present he was very well satisfied with the fact of his engagement, believing that he had taken the best possible means for securing his future happiness; an equable, quiet sort of happiness, of course—he was nearly thirty, and had outlived the possibility of anything more than that. It would have bored him to suppose that Geraldine expected more from him than this tranquil kind of ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect had power to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, perhaps stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was when, on the eve of great events, he returned from his travels, in the prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... many respects naturally fitted for those forms of social life in which woman's work may be performed under the most favorable circumstances; a country richly adapted to the various forms of agriculture and to pastoral occupations; a mild and generally equable climate are there well calculated to show the pioneer-housewife ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... and almost certain to be amused, by her; why, such ingredients though not of the fieriest, were perhaps those most likely to keep his feeling for her at a pleasant temperature. She had had a taste of the tropics, and wanted more equable weather; but the idea of having to fan his flame gently for a year was unspeakably depressing to her. Yet all this was precisely what she could not say. The long period of probation, during which, as she knew, she would have to amuse him, to guard him, to hold him, and ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... of the morning seemed to have some effect, even upon his equable temper. His manner was unusually gay; his smile more placid and agreeable than usual; his voice more clear and pleasant. He laid down the newspaper he had been reading; leaned back upon his pillow with the air of one who resigned himself to a train of charming recollections; and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... into prominence, and is now made easy of access by the completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad. The vast inland sea, popularly known as Puget Sound, ramifying in various directions, the wide-spreading and majestic forests, the ranges of snow-capped mountains on either side, the mild and equable climate, and the diversified resources of this favored region, excite the astonishment and admiration of all beholders. To the lovers of the grand and beautiful, unmarred as yet by any human interference, who appreciate the freedom from conventionalities which pertain ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... equable conversation, which Mrs. Hilary thought in bad taste. She talked of England and the family, asked after Grandmama, Neville ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... side will be the belief that you are playing against the Devil for the living soul. It is a great, a joyous belief; but he who can hold it unwavering for four and twenty consecutive hours, must be blessed with an abundantly strong physique and equable nerve. ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... topographical report and maps had been accepted by Congress, and ten thousand copies ordered to be printed and distributed to the people throughout the United States. The commercial world was not slow to appreciate the value of those distant and hitherto unfrequented harbors. Tales of the equable climate and the marvellous fertility of the soil spread rapidly, and it followed that before the close of 1845, pioneers on the western frontier of our ever expanding republic were preparing to open a wagon route ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... the "Autobiography," the self-confession which we find is this: An old-maidish personage, inhabiting boarding-houses, equable and lukewarm in all his tastes and passions, having no desultory curiosity, showing little interest in either books or people. A petty fault-finder and stickler for trifles, devoid in youth of any wide designs on life, fond only of the more mechanical ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... man who has been introduced to us as Lieutenant Chatterton, pursued his way up the main street in no very equable temper. A little, grey-eyed, snub-nosed civilian, to have insulted an officer and a gentleman! the disgrace was past all bearing, especially as it had been inflicted on him in the presence of a lady. Burning with the indignation befitting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... second issue was resolved on. All-devouring war had soon swallowed these also. Three more millions were ordered in November. But the war was to end soon,—by June, '76, at the latest. All their expenditures were calculated upon this supposition; and wealth flowing in under the auspices of a just and equable accommodation with their reconciled mother, these millions which had served them so well in the hour of need would soon be paid by a happy and grateful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... are, however, so uniform that these calamities rarely arise. Egypt rejoices, more than almost any other country, in an equable climate, an equable temperature, and an equable productiveness. The summers, no doubt, are hot, especially in the south, and an occasional sirocco produces intense discomfort while it lasts. But the cool Etesian wind, blowing from the north through nearly all the summer-time, tempers the ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... reputation for courage, he was no favourite even with the cadets. He was hardly in sympathy with them. His temper was always equable. Whatever he may have felt he never betrayed irritation, and in the lecture-room or elsewhere he was kindness itself; but his own life had been filled from boyhood with earnest purpose and high ambition. Hard work was more to his taste than amusement. Time, to his mind, was far too valuable to ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... "and I might have had a good bit of it. It's confounded annoying to think he's gone and couldn't have waited a few days longer." Hope, triumphant or deferred, ambition or disappointment, victory or patient ambush, Morgan bore all alike, with similar equable countenance. Until the proper day came, the major's boots were varnished and his hair was curled, his early cup of tea was brought to his bedside, his oaths, rebukes, and senile satire borne, with silent, obsequious ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... other hand, it is almost inevitable that when rhyme is expected, the lines which it tips should be reduced to an equal or at any rate an equivalent length. Otherwise the expectation of the ear—that the final ring should be led up to by regular and equable rhythm—is baulked. If this is not done, as in what we call doggerel rhyme, an effect of grotesque is universally produced, to the ruin of serious poetic effect. With these desiderata present, though unconsciously present, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... state in the temperate and frigid zones, which renders them less prolific than the tropical regions, as exemplified by the great distance beyond the tropics to which tropical forms penetrate when the climate is equable, and also by the richness in species and forms of tropical mountain regions which principally differ from the temperate zone in the uniformity of their climate. However this may be, it seems a fair assumption that during a period of geological repose the new species which ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... in something, then?" he said in a clear voice, which had been growing feeble of late. "You believe in flesh and blood, perhaps? A full and equable contempt would soon do away with that, too. But since you have not attained to it, I advise you to cultivate that form of contempt which is called pity. It is perhaps the least difficult—always remembering that you, too, if you are anything, are as pitiful as the ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... commenced almost immediately, and for a week I never left his sight. Many a time in the course of that week did I bless the good fortune which had thrown me in contact with Simla's best and kindest doctor. Day by day my spirits grew lighter and more equable. Day by day, too, I became more and more inclined to fall in with Heatherlegh's "spectral illusion" theory, implicating eyes, brain, and stomach. I wrote to Kitty, telling her that a slight sprain caused by a fall from my horse kept me indoors for a few days; and ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... confiding all her joys and sorrows from the time that the child could form any conception of what joy or sorrow meant. But Mrs Tipps did not weep over her sorrows, neither did she become boisterous over her joys. She was an equable, well-balanced woman in everything except the little matter of her nervous system. Netta was a counterpart of her mother. As time went on expenses increased, and living on small means became more difficult, so that Mrs Tipps was compelled to contemplate leaving the villa, poor and small though ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... This promise, offering as it did, a prospect of immediate release from the terrors which were consuming me, had an extraordinary effect upon me. I got up out of my bed saying that I was well now and ready to start on the instant. The doctor, finding my pulse equable, and my whole condition wonderfully improved, and attributing it, as was natural, to my hope of soon joining my mother, advised my whim to be humoured and this hope kept active till travel and intercourse with children should give me strength and prepare me for the bitter truth ultimately ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various

... Hamlet, to the end of Shakespeare's Second Period—the period of Henry V.—is based mainly, we saw, on considerations of form. The general style of the serious parts of the last plays from English history is one of full, noble and comparatively equable eloquence. The 'honey-tongued' sweetness and beauty of Shakespeare's early writing, as seen in Romeo and Juliet or the Midsummer-Night's Dream, remain; the ease and lucidity remain; but there is an accession of force and weight. We find no great change from this style when ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... man's first taste of bitter mental anguish. Hitherto his life had been equable and pleasant; his friends had adored him; the world had flattered him; he had been at peace with his own soul. He had known his failings, but laughed at them cavalierly; he stood on a different platform ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... capable of performing in the fullest degree the highest functions of life. Therefore give the children plenty of plain, wholesome food; their active systems will appropriate it. If they continue serene in temper, equable in disposition, and generally healthy,—if the eyes are bright, the skin clear, the sleep serene,—the diet ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson

... "land animals," but it is only our lungs that are really so. All the rest of the body is still made up of sea creatures. It is little wonder that our lungs should pay the heaviest penalty of our change from the warm and equable sea water to ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... elements which are absent here—and the climate is more temperate. Owing to the fact that the planets are partially shielded from the suns by cloud layers, the temperature—except immediately at the poles and the equators, where it is slightly more extreme—is always equable, resembling that of ...
— The Most Sentimental Man • Evelyn E. Smith

... home, as became such a distinguished composer and artistic plenipotentiary of Balakia's king. Then he was bowed out of the chamber, down the low malachite staircase, into his supper room. It was all very disturbing to a man of Pobloff's equable disposition. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... decorated externally with figures or foliage in terra cotta; but it is the cracking and falling off of this external coating, which occurs more readily in a place subject to great changes of temperature than in more equable temperate climes, that imparts to Bucarest the dilapidated appearance so often referred to by writers. This blemish is, however, likely soon to disappear; for the rise of a wealthy middle and trading class, and the general increase ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... people, to realise that the old arrangement which has given us of the fortunate minority so much leisure, luxury, and abundance, advantages we have as a class put to so vulgar and unprofitable a use, is breaking down, and that we have to discover a new, more equable way of getting the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells



Words linked to "Equable" :   placid, temperate, good-tempered



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