"Statical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... adopted for guerilla, it is difficult to account for their success if the tests by which the efficiency of a European army is measured are applied to them. It may be that war has hitherto been regarded too exclusively as a statical and dynamical problem and that the moral element has been overlooked. It certainly was overlooked in South Africa; for the war which Lord Roberts in October, 1900, believed was practically at an end had in fact then run little more than one-third ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... the manner in which every change in any one part, operates immediately, or very speedily, upon all the rest. But this indication may be preceded, or at all events followed, by a confirmation of a purely statical kind; for, in politics as in mechanics, the communication of motion from one object to another proves a connection between them. Without descending to the minute interdependence of the different branches of any one science or art, is it not evident that among the different sciences, as well as ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... received in contemplation" (Dom John Chapman). The revelation sought for was not so much a dogmatic revelation as a revelation of the processes of "transmutation" of Rebirth, of Apotheosis or "Deification." Its aim was dynamic rather than static. But while the followers of the Gnosis, both Christian and Hellenistic, would have agreed that the direct knowledge of God is incommunicable to others, they undoubtedly seem to have held that there ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh
... that were an arm, a dial, and a lens fixed in such a way as to read the dial. I could not see what else the rather complicated little apparatus consisted of, but inside, when Kennedy brought near it the pole of a static electric machine two delicate thin leaves of gold seemed to fly wide apart when ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... disadvantages of creating the periscope wake which I have mentioned, it is reported that the Germans have developed special means to allow the U-boats, when raiding, to submerge to a fixed depth without moving. To maintain any body in a fluid medium in a static position is a difficult matter, as is shown in the instability of aircraft. One of the great problems of the submersible has been to master the difficulties of its control while maintaining a desired depth. The modern submersible usually forces itself ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... the problem of the Empusa; it sets up another one, no less difficult. It shows us how deficient we are in insight, when it comes to differentiating between fatigue and rest in the cogs of the animal machine. The Ammophila, with the static paradox afforded by her mandibles; the Empusa, with her claws unwearied by ten months' hanging, leave the physiologist perplexed and make him wonder what really constitutes rest. In absolute fact, there is no rest, apart from that which puts ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... Ever since the days when he had first met her mother he had been coming more and more to feel for the young girl a soul-stirring passion—and that without a single look exchanged or a single word spoken. There is a static something which is beauty, and this may be clothed in the habiliments of a ragged philosopher or in the silks and satins of pampered coquetry. It was a suggestion of this beauty which is above sex and above age and above wealth ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... with change," she said. "And with evolution. Look at this scarred mountain-side, how confused and senseless the upheavals seem which have given it its grandeur! Nor is it static yet. It is continually wearing down. Erosion is diminishing it, that river is denuding it. Eternal change is the ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... let them know. He was just snapping the speaker switch when he heard a growl of static in his earphones, and then Greg's voice, high-pitched and excited. "Over here! I ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... mystics—amongst whom St. Augustine, Ruysbroeck, and the Sf poet Jallu'ddn Rm are perhaps the chief—who have achieved that which we might call the synthetic vision of God. These have resolved the perpetual opposition between the personal and impersonal, the transcendent and immanent, static and dynamic aspects of the Divine Nature; between the Absolute of philosophy and the "sure true Friend" of devotional religion. They have done this, not by taking these apparently incompatible concepts ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... a certain eminent preacher that his logic was on fire. It might be said of Booker Washington that his statistics were on fire. He marshalled them in such a way that they were dynamic and stirring instead of static and paralyzing, as we all know them to our sorrow. It so happened that Mr. Washington had never before been in southwestern Georgia. After his speech one old farmer was heard to say as he shook his head: "I don't understan' it! Booker T. Washington ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... test of his own free conscience, you are empowering him to criticise everything you teach—even that very liberty of opinion, a belief in which you have been so anxious to create. But with reactionary propaganda it is quite otherwise. By it a static habit of mind is produced—a habit of mind which, except by way of a mercifully not uncommon revolt, is a pawn in the hands of its present teacher, and that public opinion which in time to come will take ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... of what the old world called the solemnity of revels—when they spoke of 'solemnizing' a mere masquerade or wedding banquet. Nevertheless he was not a mere pagan any more than he was a mere practical joker. His eccentricities sprang from a static fact of faith, in itself mystical, and ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... breathless with excitement. "Our reception is improving, sir. European short waves are coming in strong. The static is terrific, but we're getting every station on the continent, and most ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... First, the institutions should be examined as so many wheels in a social machine that is taken as if it were standing still. You simply note the characteristic make of each, and how it is placed in relation to the rest. Regarded in this static way, the institutions appear as "forms of social organization." Afterwards, the machine is supposed to be set going, and you contemplate the parts in movement. Regarded thus dynamically, ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... about in these days you become conscious, among the people you meet, of a certain bewilderment. A static world and a static order are dissolving; and in England that order was so static as to make the present spectacle the more surprising. Signs of the disintegration of the old social strata were not lacking, indeed, in the earlier years of the twentieth century, when labour members ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... published for the discriminating, the bourgeois creeps in and often is dominant. The bourgeois in American literature is a special variety that must not be too quickly identified with the literary product that bears the same name in more static civilizations. It is nearly always clever. Witness our short stories, which even when calculated not to puzzle the least intelligence nor to transcend the most modest limitations of taste, must be carefully constructed and told with facility or ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... were settled down and Mrs. Northover happy and content once more, Mr. Legg cast her into much doubt and uncertainty. Indeed his attitude so unexpected, awoke a measure of dismay. Life, that Nelly hoped was becoming static and comfortable again, suddenly grew highly dynamic. Changes stared her in the face and that was done which ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... and fro across the room as he spoke, his skin-shod feet tapping muffled upon the bare floor, like the pads of an animal. The fur of his leggings, rubbing together as he walked, generated static sparks which snapped audibly. He halted presently by the fireplace, and looked down at ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... was impelled by burning convictions to express freely his pronounced views, he was considered radical, and was misunderstood and disliked by many churchmen. The diocese of those earlier years was conservative and static, and politics then played a more weighty part than now. A clerical friend in speaking of Mr. Nelson candidly stated, "I had to grow into friendship with him. In those early days I had a sort of prejudice against him as ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... was unmoving, static. There was none of the faint breeze of moving air. Something had gone wrong ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... worked every night from 8 P.M. until 1 A.M., calling at short intervals and listening attentively at the receiver. In fact, notes were kept of the intensity of the signals, the presence of local atmospheric electrical discharges—"static"—or intermittent sounds due to discharges from snow particles—St. Elmo's fire—and, lastly, of interference in the signals transmitted. The latter phenomenon should lead to interesting deductions, for we had frequent evidence to show that the wireless waves were greatly impeded ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Nemo replied, "static objects mustn't be confused with dynamic ones, or we'll be open to serious error. Comparatively little effort is spent in reaching the ocean's lower regions, because all objects have a tendency to become 'sinkers.' Follow my ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... that for those who desired a static condition of the affections, Paris was at once the first and last place in which to be friendly with a pretty woman. Revelation was alighting like a bird in his heart, singing: 'Elle est ton reve! Elle est ton reve! Sometimes this seemed natural, sometimes ludicrous—a bad case of elderly rapture. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... still have a chance of retrieving the position by timely retreat. Once a pawn has moved it cannot turn back, and only after the greatest deliberation should we embark on changes in our pawn formation in order not to disturb the balance of this "static element" of the game. But we shall see that the pawn skeleton which was formed in the opening often weathers the storm and stress of the middle game, and frequently preserves its character right up to the end-game. I will therefore make pawn formation my starting-point ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... a metallic brush or comb; daily massage, with the object of loosening the skin and giving more freedom to cutaneous and subcutaneous circulation; and the application, two or three times weekly, of static electricity by means ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... wilfulness and the more static obstinacy of these former, there is an instinctive bond; whereas the tolerant and colourless cleverness of the latter ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... the consequent functional depression and the morphologic alterations seen in the brain-cells may be due to the low blood-pressure which follows excessive trauma is shown by the following experiments: The circulation of animals was first rendered STATIC by over-transfusion, and was controlled by a continuous blood-pressure record on a drum, the factor of anemia being thereby wholly excluded during the application of the trauma and during the removal of a specimen of brain tissue for histologic study. In each instance, morphologic ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... see by way of a glimpse—and even then I put forward my suspicions with extreme reserve—all that I am permitted to surmise is reduced to this: the substance of the sleeping larva as yet has no very definite static existence; it is like the raw materials collected for a building; it is waiting for the elaboration that is to make a bee of it. To mould those shapeless lumps of the future insect, the air, that prime ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... on movement became necessary, full development not being possible to any static organism. To meet this need muscles were evolved, and organic ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... amperage of approximately zero, but a voltage of two billion. Properly amplified by the use of inductostatic batteries (a development of the principle underlying the earth induction compass applied to the control of static) this current energized the "A" ionomagnetic coils on the airships, large and sturdy affairs, which operated the Attractoreflex Receivers, which in turn "pulled in" the second broadcast power known as the "pullee," absorbing it from every direction, ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... an hour later, the pipal was surrounded by thousands of Mahratta sepoys, for word had gone forth,—the mysterious rumour of India that is like a weird static whispering to the four corners of the land a message,—had flashed through the tented city that the men from Karowlee were to take the oath of ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... Decomposition in his hands. If his discovery of Magneto-electricity may be ranked with that of the pile by Volta, this new discovery, may almost stand beside that of Definite Combining Proportions in Chemistry. He passed on to Static Electricity—its Conduction, Induction, and Mode of Propagation. He discovered and illustrated the principle of Inductive Capacity; and, turning to theory, he asked himself how electrical attractions and repulsions are transmitted. Are they, like gravity, actions at a distance, or do they require ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... difference between such words as we have just been considering and words denoting qualities, such as "white" or "round." The chief difference is that words of this latter sort do not denote processes, however brief, but static features of the world. Snow falls, and is white; the falling is a process, the whiteness is not. Whether there is a universal, called "whiteness," or whether white things are to be defined as those having a certain kind of similarity ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... Mbonga were keyed to the highest pitch of hysterical excitement. They needed little to release the accumulated pressure of static nerve force which the terrorizing mummery of the ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... is the opposition between the Greek and Gothic dynasties, in their passionate or vital nature; in the animal and inbred part of them;—Classic and romantic, Static and exstatic. But now, what opposition is there between their divine natures? Between Theseus and Edward III., as warriors, we now know the difference; but between Theseus and Edward III, as theologians; ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... provided the lady, portrayed in 'a state of nature,' with a silver robe—because, say the gossips, the statue was indecent. Not at all: it was to prevent recurrence of an incident in which the sculptured Julia took a static part with a German student ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... range such states beside each other on the ego supposed to sustain them: never can these solids strung upon a solid make up that duration which flows. What we actually obtain in this way is an artificial imitation of the internal life, a static equivalent which will lend itself better to the requirements of logic and language, just because we have eliminated from it the element of real time. But, as regards the psychical life unfolding beneath the symbols which conceal it, we readily perceive that time ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... can think of is the electrostatic condenser, and you could say that it converts static electricity into a current flow if you wanted to stretch a point. On the other hand, a condenser isn't usually considered as a ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... OF THE PAST. Education is the process by which society undertakes the transmission of its social heritage. Indeed the main function of education in static societies is the initiation of the young into already established customs and traditions. It is the method used to hand down those social habits which the influential and articulate classes in a society ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... of the natural sciences, we accepted life as static. If, being born in China, we grew up with foot-bound women, we assumed that women were such, and must so remain. Born in India, we accepted the child-wife, the pitiful child-widow, the ecstatic suttee, as natural ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... miles above, the masses of nitrogen and oxygen and argon were too cold to change their rate of vibration. Fifty miles below the surface of the earth all things were too hot for changes in vibration. In this kinetic belt, between two static masses our bodies had been made, and also, in all probability, all combinations of the elementary substances. It was four thousand miles to the centre of the static prakritic mass beneath us; twenty-one thousand miles ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... seem, then, to wipe out also any knowledge of absolute values. Christian theism has interpreted God largely in static, final terms. The craving for the absolute in the human mind, as witnessed by the long course of the history of thought, as pathetically witnessed to in the mixture of chicanery, fanaticism and insight of the modern mystical and occult healing sects, is ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... become completely static. Unless some new way of killing developed, even the English public did not care to read about its own army. When my English comrades saw that a petty scandal received more space in the London papers than their accounts of a gallant air raid, they ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... is loved by poets, for poetry's sake, marks it off once for all from the photographic or 'plain' realism of Crabbe. But it is also clearly distinct from the no less poetic realism of Wordsworth. Wordsworth's mind is conservative and traditional; his inspiration is static; he glorifies the primrose on the river brink by seeing its transience in the light of something far more deeply interfused which does not change nor pass away. Romance, in a high sense, lies about his greatest poetry. But it is a romance rooted in memory, not in ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... the Earth on its course toward the Moon. Sarka now gave instructions to Klaser and to Cleric to return the speed of the Beryls to that which they had attained at the moment the journey of the Earth had begun—thus bringing them once more into harmony with the Master Beryl, and rendering the Ovidum static. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... warmed and Rick called the airport, then held the phones to his ears to hear the reply through heavy static. When the airport answered he asked for a weather report for the area between St. Thomas and Clipper Cay. He got it, and climbed out, his ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Wimshurst.—A London Royal Institution lecture, of great value as giving a full account of the recent forms of generators of static electricity.—14 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... cannot be managed without the help, the pretty constant help, of armed men; and the movement of troops in London from one point to another is one of the evidences of state which is so little static, so largely dynamic. It is a pretty sight, and makes one wish one were a child that one might fully enjoy it, whether it is the movement of a great mass of blood-red backs of men, or here and there a flaming squad, or a single vidette spurring on some swift errand, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... arrival of the three Miss Scarlets hot from school and society in England, I may manage to slide in the information. The problem is exactly a Balzac one, and I wish I had his fist - for I have already a better method - the kinetic, whereas he continually allowed himself to be led into the static. But then he had the fist, and the most I can hope is to get out of it with a modicum of grace and energy, but for sure without the strong impression, the full, dark brush. Three people have had it, the real creator's brush: Scott, see much of THE ANTIQUARY and THE ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shown that there is a definite state of equilibrium between the constituents of the solution; that is, there is a definite relation between the undissociated acetic acid and its ions, which is characteristic for the prevailing conditions. It is not, however, assumed that this is a condition of static equilibrium, but rather that there is continual dissociation and association, as represented by the opposing reactions, the apparent condition of rest resulting from the fact that the amount of change in one direction ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... the beginning of the young man's longer speech, had sunk almost immediately into his passive calm—the calm of great elemental bodies, the calm of a force so vast as to rest motionless by the very static power of its mass. When he spoke again, it was in the tentative manner of his earlier interrogatory, committing himself not at all, seeking to ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... could not quite understand the full meaning of the brutal judgment, it brought him disquiet and discontent. For one thing, like the high-road, his profession led nowhither. The thrill of adventure had gone from it. It was static, and Paul's temperament was dynamic. He had also lost his boyish sense of importance, of being the central figure in the little stage. Disillusion began to creep over him. Would he do nothing else but this all his life? Old Erricone, the patriarchal, white-bearded Italian, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Smithsonian. All such tables as originally calculated are based upon the hypothesis of a temperature and humidity which decrease regularly with the altitude, and this is not always the case; nor is the "static equilibrium of the atmosphere" which Laplace assumed always maintained; that is to say an equal difference of pressure does not always correspond to an equal difference of altitude. There is, in ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... actively; force causing to draw closer.] Attraction. — N. attraction, attractiveness; attractivity[obs3]; drawing to, pulling towards, adduction[obs3]. electrical attraction, electricity, static electricity, static, static cling; magnetism, magnetic attraction; gravity, attraction of gravitation. [objects which attract by physical force] lodestone, loadstone, lodestar, loadstar[obs3]; magnet, permanent magnet, siderite, magnetite; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... have to admit," he conceded, "But let me remind you that it is a static characteristic of humanity to confuse the ends with the means. When an intense effort is applied, the melodramatic tendency is to honor that effort, despite its uselessness, instead of honoring the product of the effort ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... up, static filled the cabin. Bill depressed the transmitting button. "This is the Yacht Seven Seas calling the Nassau Marine operator," he called into the phone. ...
— The Day of the Dog • Anderson Horne
... listened he picked up a message from shore. The center of the storm, which was fast approaching, was to the east, off shore. Messages coming from the storm's direction would be greatly disturbed by static. But to the west the ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... the robot reacted. It seemed familiar somehow. Then he remembered the robot on the river bank, jiggling and swaying for seconds after each shot. "Of course!" He cursed himself for missing the obvious. "The blaster static blanks out radio transmission from the computer for a few seconds. They ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik
... very painful to the normal skin will in some instances relieve the feeling of pressure and dull discomfort about the rectum and perineum, and it has been successful when galvanism did no good. In patients within reach of a static machine, this form may be used for the numbness if the others ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... The idea flows through the rhythm, permeates the words and throbs in their rise and fall. On the other hand, the mere idea of the above-quoted poem, stated in unrhythmic prose, would represent only a fact, inertly static, which would not bear repetition. But the emotional idea, incarnated in a rhythmic form, acquires the dynamic quality needed for those things which take part in ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... all these various individuals we at the same time provide for the division of labour that we need; nor can we in any other fashion provide so well. Thus we shall attain a society which, if less certainly stable than that of the bees, is what that is not—progressive, and not merely static; and a society which is worth while, justified by the lives and minds of ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... in shadow photography made thus far in America are those of Dr. William J. Morton of New York, who was the first in this country to use the disruptive discharges of static electricity in connection with the Roentgen discovery, and to demonstrate that shadow pictures may be successfully taken without the use of Crookes tubes. It was the well-known photographic properties of ordinary lightning that made Dr. Morton suspect that cathode rays are produced freely ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... man is dynamic, not static; not a condition but a movement. "Not enjoyment and not sorrow" is its end or justification. It is a rush of forces, an evolution towards greater activities and higher adjustment, the growth of a stability which shall be ever more unstable. ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... was led to study this subject in looking to see what had become of my first permanent investment, a small venture, made about thirty-five years ago, in the "Sawyer and Gwynne static pressure engine." This was the high-sounding name of the Keely motor of that day, an imposition made possible by the confused ideas prevalent on this ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... Hence the importance of discussions of scientific method such as those who have so largely occupied our first volume. Yet, I submit, here lies the means of escaping from these too abstract (and consequently too static) presentments of the general methodology of social science into which sociologists are constantly falling; and to which must be largely ascribed the prevalent distaste for sociology so general in this would-be ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... level. The present status of everything that we observe to-day is purely temporary: we are looking at one picture of a cosmic cinema film that stretches on to infinity. Just because we see only one static picture of a process which truly never stops moving, so we get a view of life that contains much of delusion. We have heard a Doctor of Music state in public his opinion that the age of the composition of musical ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... use for lighting gas-jets and mantles and in isolated instances they have served as light-sources. Doubtless, every one is familiar with the parlor stunt of igniting a gas-jet from the discharge from the finger-tips of static electricity accumulated by shuffling the ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... with the present face to face, it is on shipboard. Whether salt water and sea air act as a narcotic on memories of the past and dreams of the future has never been proved, but it is undeniably true that at sea time becomes a static thing and concerns itself solely with the affairs ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... never reasoned this out before, but as I did right there and then, I decided that Society cannot draw lines nor assume a static pose. Society must move constantly, either in one direction or the other. And while I object to paying taxes to support some rattlehead for the rest of his natural life, I'd rather have it that way than to have someone start a trend of bopping off everybody who has not the ability to absorb the ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... other hand, the static character of village life leaves the boy with little inspiration in his primary interests of play and his serious ideals of the noblest manhood. Idle hours work demoralization and the ever-present example of the village loafer ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... suit would be regarded with favour by another woman—an accomplished, clever, experienced woman,—she was very much more eager to monopolize it to herself. And in fairness she admitted that things could not continue as they were. The menace of Bert Morrison was static, so to speak. With fine self-abnegation Bert was standing aside. But how long would she continue to stand aside? Irene was old enough to know that the ramparts of friendship are a poor defence when the artillery ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... Once, when supposedly blasting through space at three-quarters space speed, he received a warning from the radar bridge of an approaching asteroid. He asked for a course change, but in reply received only static. Believing the recording to have broken down, he turned inquiringly to Captain Strong, but received only a blank stare in return. Tom hesitated for a split second, then turned back to the controls. He quickly ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... static electricity sometimes works wonders in the hands of a specialist, but the electric batteries, medical coils, finger-rings and body-belts so ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... mental tone and spirit of the times"; and though it might very well reflect the life, it must not reflect "the common thought of the day" upon pain of vulgarizing and annulling itself. Poetry was static in its nature, and its business was the interpretation of enduring beauty and eternal veracity. If it stooped in submission to any such expectation as that expressed, and dedicated itself to the crude vaticination of the transitory emotions and opinions, it had ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... method of controlling and changing the rate of rotation of the wheel, the rivers of water had already proven themselves; and as a method of static balancing to compensate for off-center weights, masses of it could be stopped and held in counterbalance tanks around the rim, thus assuring that the observatory, in its stationary position on the hub, would not suddenly take up an oscillatory pattern ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... Franklin's discovery, made with the aid of a kite, that lightning is an electrical phenomenon, was the greatest advance in electrical science up to that time. "Electrical machines," such as that shown, were, designed to produce frictional or "static" electricity, of which the quantity is usually small, and is therefore now produced chiefly for laboratory experiments. When the wheel at the left was turned sufficient electricity was generated to cause a spark to jump between ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... destined to inherit the land, but whose descendants were preserved to see it delivered to the alien. The God of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards had been tried in the balance and found wanting. Edward could never understand this; or why the Universe, so long static and immutable, had suddenly begun to move. He had always been prudent, but in spite of youthful "advantages," of an education, so called, from a sectarian college on a hill, he had never been taught that, while prudence may ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... past generation," says Dr. Worcester in his Preface, "men have been groping for a theology which should approach the old mysteries, God, evil, the soul and immortality from the point of view of modern scientific and philosophic thought. The old static aspect of the universe has been supplemented by the dynamic. The old transcendent conception of God has yielded to the immanent. The thought of God as mere ruler and judge is no longer sufficient for men's religious needs. Science has discovered ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... writers—the way they have of absorbing language, of attracting it into the peculiar spirit they are of, with a subtlety which makes the actual result seem like some inexplicable inspiration. By mind, the literary artist reaches us, through static and objective indications of design in his work, legible to all. By soul, he reaches us, somewhat capriciously perhaps, one and not another, through vagrant sympathy and a kind of immediate contact. Mind we cannot choose but approve where we recognise it; soul may ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... parsed. He can take pains to see that his whole thought is expressed, instead of leaving vacancies which must be filled by the puzzled and groping reader. His own views and his quotations from the views of others about the static and dynamic theories of distribution are examples of an important principle so imperfectly expressed as to make us doubtful whether it is perfectly apprehended by the writer. He can avoid the use of those pedantic terms which are really nothing ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... rhythm of every sentence, he changes his cadence with every mood, or for the convenience of every fact; ... he has no fixed prose tune." Nor, by the same token, has Conrad. He seldom indulges, as does Theophile Gautier, in the static paragraph. He is ever in modulation. There is ebb and flow in his sentences. A typical paragraph of his shows what might be called the sonata form: an allegro, andante, and presto. For example, the opening pages of ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... that his body did not offer a static target. He concentrated his attention on Dave, throwing shot after shot at him. That he would kill his enemy Clanton never had a doubt. It was firmly fixed in his mind that he had been sent as the ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... of modern science that the whole world is seen to be more vital than before. Everywhere there has been a passage from the static to the dynamic. Thus the new revelations of the constitution of matter, which we owe to the discoveries of men like Professor Sir J. J. Thomson, Professor Sir Ernest Rutherford, and Professor Frederick Soddy, have shown the very dust to have a complexity and an activity ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... unmoving, static in everything. Jim took him by the arm affectionately. The stranger looked at the flickering tree, with ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... in different directions, as for example in a ball-room or conversazione—must be of a nature to task the angularity of the most intellectual, and amply justify the rich endowments of the Learned Professors of Geometry, both Static and Kinetic, in the illustrious University of Wentbridge, where the Science and Art of Sight Recognition are regularly taught to large classes of the ELITE of ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... the universal modern conviction that the present mode of knowledge, with whose help so much insight into the natural world has been won, is the only one possible, given once for all to man in a form never to be changed. But is there any need, I asked myself, to cling to this purely static notion of man's capacity for gaining knowledge? Among the greatest achievements of modern science, does not the conception of evolution take a foremost place? And does not this teach us that the condition of a living organism at any time is the result of the ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... she assured him gravely. "It will have to work out somehow. Dick says all things work out. All is change. What is static is dead, and we're not dead, any of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... be stated at once. Firstly, the industrial situation is rarely so balanced, no matter what the price situation, that a measure of wage increase may not be possible without an equivalent increase in prices. The distributive situation is never one of static equilibrium. The gain of one group or agent of production may simply be another's loss. Each group or agent strives for a large return. If wages go up, profits may go down, or new methods of production ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... plays in assuring a liveable environment at the earth's surface, the total quantity of ozone in the atmosphere is quite small, only about 3 parts per million. Furthermore, ozone is not a durable or static constituent of the atmosphere. It is constantly created, destroyed, and recreated by natural processes, so that the amount of ozone present at any given time is a function of the equilibrium reached between the creative and destructive ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
... ideals which preeminently sway our tonal architects, emerges this reticent, half-lit, delicately structured, subtly accented music; which is incorrigibly unrhetorical; which never declaims or insists: an art alembicated, static, severely restrained—for even when it is most harmonically untrammeled, most rhythmically fantastic, one is aware of a quietly inexorable logic, an uncompromising ideal of form, underlying its seemingly unregulated processes. It is the ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... like the one we had been waiting for. There were no witnesses to the tragedy, but a number of monitor stations had picked up the discharge static of a large energy weapon being fired. Triangulation had lead investigators to the spot where they found a freighter, Ogget's Dream, with a hole punched through it as big as a railroad tunnel. The freighter's cargo of ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... gas-burner from which she had removed the globe. Mr. Chamberlain, with his nervous temperament, produced a spark an inch long out of himself, and of course the gas flared up immediately. I do not think that I had ever seen any one more surprised. This power of generating static electricity from their own bodies was naturally a source of immense delight to the Lansdowne children. They loved, after shuffling their feet on the carpet, to creep up to any adult relation and touch them lightly on the ear, a most sensitive spot. There would be a little spark, a little ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... L, which applies the spark to the gas jet. The generator consists of a small "influence" machine, which is started by pressing the thumb- key C on the side of the box. The rotation of a disc inside the box produces a supply of static electricity, which passes in a stream of sparks between two contact-points in the open end of the stem D. The latter is tubular, and contains a wire insulated from the metal of the tube, and forming with ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... stable or stationary, save at the times when volition or intense, active conscious operations are in progress—when, in short, effort is exerted. At such times, it is surely conceivable that what was static becomes dynamic; something is set into motion which in turn brings into activity some more "physical" energy, and so on, until sufficient material momentum has been gained to affect that most unstable and mobile substance, nervous tissue. It is certainly quite conceivable that certain nervous ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... with it," Plekhanov said ponderously. "A society that builds pyramids is a static one. For that matter any society that resorts to make-work projects to busy its citizenry has something ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... recently constructed on the English coast near Brighton. For the longer and much more important service across the Channel submarine rails may be laid down as in the cases mentioned, but in addition it will be necessary to provide for static stability by fixing a flounder-shaped pontoon just below the greatest depth of wave disturbance, and just sufficient in buoyancy to take the great bulk of the weight of the structure off the rails. In this way passengers may be conveyed across straits ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... considering the scrupulous attention I've always paid to my bodily well-being—I reflected on the preposterous obstacles put in the way of flight by a bowelless military system, and adapted myself to the static and dynamic conditions of ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... movement. This perpetuum mobile gives its peculiar colour to Nicolai's reflections. In general, we who are advocates or opponents of the war tend to pass judgment on it almost exclusively in abstracto. We conceive it as static and absolute. It may almost be said that as soon as a thinker concentrates upon a subject in order to study it, his first step is to kill it. To a great biologist all is movement, and movement is the material of his study. The social or moral question that concerns ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... was renowned as a graver, found much to do with the chisel, introducing many a fine after-thought, when the rough-casting of his work was over. He studied human form under such conditions as would bring out its natural features, its static laws, in their entirety, their harmony; and in an academic work, so to speak, no longer to be clearly identified in what may be derivations from it, he claimed to have fixed the canon, the common measure, of perfect man. Yet with Polycleitus certainly the measure ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... times. She informed him that Mr. Power had no sort of legal control over Paula, or direction in her estates; but Somerset could not doubt that a near and only blood relation, even had he possessed but half the static force of character that made itself apparent in Mr. Power, might exercise considerable moral influence over the girl if he chose. And in view of Mr. Power's marked preference for De Stancy, Somerset had many misgivings as to its operating in a ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... from an inner centre outward. As within, so without. As we think we become. Which means simply this: our prevailing thoughts and emotions are never static, but dynamic. Thoughts are forces—like creates like, and like attracts like. It is therefore for us to choose whether we shall be interested primarily in the great spiritual forces and powers of life, or whether we shall be interested solely in the ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... STATIC.—Also called atmospherics, grinders, strays, X's, and, when bad enough, by other names. It is an electrical disturbance in the atmosphere which makes noises in the ...
— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins
... can see, the beginning of the chain in China (as indeed in the West) was the making of simple static models of the celestial sphere. An armillary sphere was used to represent the chief imaginary circles (e.g., equator, ecliptic, meridians, etc.), or a solid celestial globe on which such circles could be drawn, together with the constellations ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... so long as society was comparatively static and fixed, but they were endangered as soon as the human world was conceived of as dynamic and progressive. The development of trade and industry, as has been emphasized, rapidly increased the numbers, wealth, and influence of the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... assimilated Evolution. The insight into the real fluidity of natural species ought long ago to have toned down the artificial rigidity of logical classifications. To know reality man can no longer rest in a 'timeless' contemplation of a static system; he must expand his thoughts so as to cope with a perpetually changing process. Since the world changes, his 'truths' must change to fit it. He is faced with the necessity of a continuous reconstruction of ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... faults, were not likely to improve a full-sized novel. He would too much abound in description; the want of evolution of character—his character is not bad in itself, but it is, to use modern slang, rather static than dynamic—naturally shows itself more; and readers who want an elaborate plot look for it longer and are more angry at not being fed. But for the short, shorter, and shortest kind—the story which may run from ten to a hundred pages with no meticulous limitations on ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... with a sense of red. A flame of fear shot through her, and a first thought of fire, but even before she could rise she saw it was static, this crimson gash across the blackness, and shaped ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... the statesman who is responsible for its fortunes; and the progress of the nation from one to another stage of her development often entails (by altering from one class to another the dominant position of power) the complete reversal of her traditional maxims of government. Human life is not static, but dynamic. Hence the theories weaved round it must themselves be subject to ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... that is, as an experience of the heart. What he dreads in space is that the heart should be possessed by it, and transformed into it. He dreads that the imagination should be fascinated by the homogeneous and static, hypnotised by geometry, and actually lost in Auseinandersein. This would be a real death and petrifaction of consciousness, frozen into contemplation of a monotonous infinite void. What is warm and desirable is rather the sense of variety and ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... the industrial awakening of the South, she (who was but the embodied spirit of her race) stood firmly rooted in all that was static, in all that was obsolete and outgrown in the Virginia of the eighties. Though she felt as yet merely the vague uneasiness with which her mind recoiled from the first stirrings of change, she was beginning ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... art, those of the eighteenth century were works of propaganda, appealing with a practical purpose to the age in which they were written—works whose value does not depend solely upon artistic considerations. The former were static, the latter dynamic. As the century progressed, the tendency deepened; and the literature of the age, taken as a whole, presents a spectacle of thrilling dramatic interest, in which the forces of change, at first insignificant, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... Douglas, his personal counsel. Having risen to greet them, Hal stood leaning against his desk, after they were seated. The lawyer disposed himself on the far edge of his chair, as if fearing that a more comfortable pose might commit him to something. Mr. Pierce sat solid and square, a static force neatly buttoned into a creaseless suit. His face was immobile, but under the heavy lids the eyes smouldered, dully. The tone of his voice was lifelessly level: ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of the social scale to that about which shareholding is most apparent, is a second necessary and quite inevitable consequence of the sudden transition that has occurred from a very nearly static social organization to a violently progressive one. This second consequence of progress is the appearance of a great number of people without either property or any evident function in the social organism. This new ingredient is most apparent in the towns, it is frequently spoken of as ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... urge that Milton and Shelley dropped Job for hero because both felt him to be a merely static figure: and that the one chose Satan, the rebel angel, the other chose Prometheus the rebel Titan, because both are active rebels, and as epic and drama require action, each of these heroes makes the thing move; that Satan and Prometheus ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the beginning, if you are in earnest—not at the middle. Only ignorance measures art in terms of skill, for there are no degrees in art. None has transcended Giotto, because technique and draughtsmanship are accidents of time; they lie outside the soul of the matter. Art is in fact a static thing. It changes as the face of the sea changes, from hour to hour; but it does not progress. There are great and small artists and great and small movements, as there are great and small waves, brisk breezes and terrific tempests; but all are moulded ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... these continue to exert their mutual actions undiminished and the opposing changes now balance, is of fundamental significance in the interpretation of changes of matter in general. This is generally expressed in the form: the equilibrium in this and other analogous cases is not static but dynamic. This conception was a direct result of the kinetic-molecular considerations, and was applied with special success to the development of the kinetic theory of gases. Thus with Clausius, we conceive the equilibrium of water-vapour with water, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... come, first, the thought, the idea, then the effort, next the habit, and finally the modification of cerebral mechanism, in which the effort and the habit become represented in relatively permanent and static form. In fact, the crux of the whole discussion between science and metaphysics turns on, or harks back to the discussion between function and structure; and it is the latter, in the sense in which I mean the word, that has had of late a too ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... previously described a similar condition in an albino cat. If, as has been supposed by some physiologists, the stria vasculosa is really the source of the endolymph, this state of affairs must have a marked influence on the functions of the auditory apparatus and the static apparatus, for pressure differences between the endolymph and the perilymph spaces must be present. And, as Kishi points out, should such pressure differences be proved to exist, the functional disturbance in the organ of hearing which ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... The ideal of life, the highest imperative of conscience. Here the nobility of life, as a whole, the supreme life-purpose, gives meaning and incentive to each and every action. The ideal of life is not, however, something static and completed, given once and for all. It grows with the enlightenment of the individual and the development of humanity. The consciousness of every age comprehends it in certain laws and ends of life. The highest form of the ideal finds its embodiment ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... complete acceptability, but without hope or avowed intention of making it over. If his tolerance be never free from satire, his satire is on the other hand always easily tolerant. One might almost suspect him of viewing life as something static against which all fight would be futile. Even life's worst brutalities are related with an offhandedness of manner that makes you look for the joke that must be at the bottom of them. The word reform would seem to be strangely eliminated from his ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... haven't got my blizzard stuff," Luck stated, harshly because of the effort to speak at all. "All that negative I took to-day is chuck full of 'static.'" ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... machine, but the balance could be made nearly perfect. And the six helicopters, whose cylindrical, turbine-like drums gleamed with metallic glitters—three on each side along the fuselage—could at will produce an absolutely static condition of lift or even make the plane hover and ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... second place, we object to universal foreordination because it leads to Pantheism, a phase of Atheism. Pantheism as Pantheism may be viewed statically or dynamically. The static Pantheist assumes that all properties are properties of one substance. This was the feature of the vedanta system of Hindu philosophy, which holds that nothing exists but Brahma. "He is the clay, we are the forms; the eternal spider which spins from its own bosom the tissue of creation; an ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... be founded upon freedom of form and action, upon flexible bodily movements, the result of vitalized energy instead of muscular effort. There must be no set, rigid, static condition of the muscles. Artistic singing is a form of self-expression; and self-expression, to be natural and beautiful, must be the result ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... historic support to the campaign against terrorism. Our Western Hemispheric neighbors invoked the Rio Treaty and have shown a commitment to combat terrorism through a new Inter-American Convention Against Terrorism adopted in June 2002. But these alliances cannot be taken for granted or remain static. We will strive to help them evolve to meet the demands ...
— National Strategy for Combating Terrorism - February 2003 • United States
... I should foretell the history of this second Han Dynasty in this way: from 35 to 67,—the latter date the point where the old and new cycles intersect,— would be a static time: of consolidation rather than expansion; of the gathering of the wave, not of its outburst into any splendor of foam. Between 67 and 100, or when the two cycles coincide, I should look for great things and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... is an abstract vacuity; in the Greek, a static intellect; in the Christian, a dynamic will. As is the conception of God, so is the conception and character of man. The two are so intimately interdependent that it is useless at this time to discuss which is the cause and which the result. ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... not be asserted that hydrogen and the elements of the air had been completely liquefied. These gases had not yet been seen collected in the static condition at the bottom of a tube and separated from their vapors by the clearly defined concave surface which is called a meniscus. The experiments had, however, proved that liquefaction is possible at a temperature of below -120 deg. C. (-184 deg. Fahr.). ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... that must continually be kept in mind is the boy's good and the boy. A lot of our teachers in the public schools are trying to teach the subject-matter of the book when they ought to be teaching the boy. They employ static methods. You can get up a goal for attainment and the boy will reach the goal. Generally, however, he will go no higher than you point. Your teaching should be dynamic ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... news story attentively. No wild theory of a pop-eyed reporter, hungry for fact, was too absurd to receive his careful attention. But they proved of little assistance. With the spot-light of publicity blazing on the crime, the investigation seemed to have become static. There was no forward movement; nothing save that in the brain of David Carroll salient facts were being seized upon and meticulously catalogued for ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... movement was the result of the rupture of an equilibrium, the liberation of a force which till then was retained in a potential state by some opposing force or obstacle, overcoming which it passes to a new equilibrium and so on Hence alternations of dynamic activity and static repose, of origination of species and types, alternated with periods of stability or fixity. The timepiece does not run down regularly, but "la force procede par saccades; et . . . par pulsations d'autant plus energiques que la nature etait plus ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... emotion, in fact, is a face looking two ways, towards terror and towards pity, both of which are phases of it. You see I use the word ARREST. I mean that the tragic emotion is static. Or rather the dramatic emotion is. The feelings excited by improper art are kinetic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. The arts which excite them, pornographical or didactic, ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... tons on the drivers in a space of 12 feet, the total weight of each engine and tender loaded being 66 tons in a space of 50 feet, and followed by loaded cars weighing 20 tons each in a space of 22 feet. An addition of 25 per cent will be made to the strains produced by the rolling-load considered as static in all parts which are liable to be thrown suddenly under strain by the passage of a rapidly moving load. A similar addition of 50 per cent will be made to the strain on suspension links and riveted connections of stringers with floor-beams, and floor-beams with ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... of restitution. But it shouldn't involve Kardon. Actually the Lani were never in a position to develop that world. They'd probably have remained on Flora indefinitely. The old court records showed no tendency for their culture to expand. They were an inbred group, a static, balanced society in harmony with their environment. In nearly thirty-five hundred years their numbers increased only to a few thousand. Actually there is a good possibility that the race would ultimately have died out if Old Alexander ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... drive snow or dust against bare wires of a long line, create upon or place upon those wires a charge of static electricity which makes its way from the line in such ways as it can. Usually it discharges across arresters and when this discharge takes place, the line is disturbed in its balance and loud noises are heard in ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... which perpetually imposes its own convention, and checks the free representation of life. As a tapestry picture, however various and full of meaning, is ultimately reducible to little squares; so the world of common sense is ultimately reducible to a series of static elements conditioned by the machinery of the brain. Subtle curves, swift movement, delicate gradation, that machinery cannot represent. It leaves them out. From the countless suggestions, the tangle of many-coloured wools which the real world presents to ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... day converts O' sinners and o' lasses! Their hearts o' static, gin night, are gane [before] As saft as ony flesh is. There's some are fou o' love divine, There's some are fou o' brandy; An' mony jobs that day begin, May end in ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... of unalloyed virtues is as inadequate as the woman who is a combination of smooth physical perfections. In the moral world, indeed, the desired Imperfection needs to be dynamic and shifting rather than static and fixed, because virtues are contradictory. Modesty and Courage, for instance, do not sort well together at the same moment. Men have rhapsodied much on the modesty of woman, but a woman who was always modest would be as insipid as a woman who was always courageous ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... been handed down to us do we see him reading; he is always meditating on something he has just read. Occasionally, he is fingering a portfolio of engravings, or leaning aside to examine severely a globe of the world. That is the nearest he ever gets to physical activity. In him we see the static embodiment of perfect wisdom and perfect righteousness. We take him at his own valuation, humbly. Yet we have a queer instinct that there was a time when he did not diffuse all this cold radiance of good example. Something tells us that he has been a sinner in his day—a ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... of Locke can be seen all the same—chiefly in the loyal acceptance of political change, in the refusal to be shocked or alarmed at a "leap in the dark," and by a willingness to adjust the machinery of government to the needs of the time. In England Locke's influence has been less dynamic than static; it has helped us to preserve a moderation in politics; to be content with piecemeal legislation, because to attempt too much might be to alienate the sympathies of the majority; to keep our political eye, so to speak, on the ebb and flow of public opinion—since it is public opinion that ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... aside her watchful inactivity and becoming in defiance of all her principles an "agent provocateuse." If it came to the worst she might be forced to do this, for very little time was left to her. If she remained static she would be powerless. Next day, she reflected, they had planned a ride over the flat top of Bredon Hill. She could not go with them; she could not even watch them; yet who knew what shames might be perpetrated in that secrecy as they rode through the green lanes of the ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young |
