"Inverse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well understood that the second Volksraad is simply a show institution, devised in 1890. The various schemes for redistribution lead one to the conclusion that the number of members in the First Volksraad were to be in inverse ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... checking your speed in advance. You must, of course, be careful to avoid collisions with meteors and asteroids but if you do, they will be of use to you, for by attracting or repelling them you can change your course to suit yourself, and also theirs in inverse ratio to their masses. Jupiter's moons will be like head and stern lines in enabling you to choose the part of the surface on which you wish to land. With apergy it is as essential to have some heavy body on which ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... I find, is in an inverse proportion to the attraction of the Newtonian philosophy. In the system of Sir Isaac, the nearer objects are to one another, the stronger is the attractive force; in my system, every mile-stone that marked my progress from Clarinda, awakened a keener pang of attachment to her. How ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... of serviles, and chattels, is somewhat over-artificial; at any rate, now it is not generally recognized. Like the high-caste Hindu, the nobler race will marry women of lower classes; for instance, King Njogoni's mother was a Benga; but the inverse proceeding is a disgrace to the woman, apparently an instinctive feeling on the part of the reproducer, still lingering in the most advanced societies. Old travellers record a belief that, unlike all other Guinea races, the Mpongwe marries his mother, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the inverse of his master's. To Thorpe it had suddenly become a very little thing in contrast to the great, sweet elemental truth that the dream girl had enunciated. To Collins the affair was miles vaster than the widest scope ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... of Wight, towards the Needles passage. Numberless yachts skimmed by them; those fairy-like fabrics which Englishmen alone know how thoroughly to enjoy, varying in size from Lord Yarborough's superb Falcon, to the tiny craft whose owner is probably proud of her in inverse ratio to her tonnage. All is not gold that glitters, and the fair admirers of the graceful frigate and corvette would have been somewhat horrified, could they have witnessed the various scenes taking place within the dark recesses of the ships, and had they heard the language, neither ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... clearer air. At length it seemed to me as if the flood were beginning to subside. The old landmarks, by whose disappearance I had measured its advance, here a crag, there a brave pine-tree, now began, in the inverse order, to make their reappearance into daylight. I judged all danger of the fog was over. This was not Noah's flood; it was but a morning spring, and would now drift out seaward whence it came. So, mightily relieved, and a good deal exhilarated by the sight, I went into the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the number of vibrations is independent of the width, proportional to the thickness, and very nearly inverse ratio of the square of the length, provided the latter exceeds ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... just made public, leave no doubt of the accuracy of M. Duter's view, that the glass of the jar really expands. According to the theory of elasticity, the effect of an internal pressure in a hollow sphere is in the inverse ratio of its thickness. M. Duter, therefore, had three flasks made of the same volume, but of thicknesses of 4 mm., 0.8 mm., and 0.5 mm. respectively. They were filled with water and enveloped by tin foil. ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... own or others' personalities the advantages of it would be too dearly bought. This is, in part, a matter of wholesome instinct, in part of wise training. We now know that the absence of clothes has little relation with the absence of modesty, such relation as there is being of the inverse order, for the savage races which go naked are usually more modest than those which wear clothes. The saying quoted by Herodotus in the early Greek world that "A woman takes off her modesty with her shift" was a favorite text of the Christian Fathers. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... body knows who has been there, or who has talked with any observing habitue of the place, contains a great many queer, spurious people, smuggled in somehow by indirect influence, when royal command is not the least effectual: a surprizing number of seedy, poverty-stricken young men, and, in an inverse ratio, women who have any thing more than the clothes they wear: yet, by mere dint of difficulty, by the simple circumstance of making admission to this assembly a matter of closeting, canvassing, balloting, black-balling, and so forth, people ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... unsanguineous animal." Equally efficacious might be the modern definition of the same creature as a "terrestrial, air-breathing, gastropodous mollusk." The degree of efficiency of such prescriptions is naturally in inverse proportion to the patient's mental culture. An average Southern negro, for example, affected with indigestion, might derive some therapeutic advantage from snail diet, but would be more likely to be benefited by the mental stimulus ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... at the stripling, and thought to bribe him with a fete in his honor and a promise, and in the meantime a clerkship where there was no work to speak of and pay in inverse ratio. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... possess an initial velocity of 1,200 yards per second; calculations prove that to be sufficient. In proportion as we recede from the earth the action of gravitation diminishes in the inverse ratio of the square of the distance; that is to say, at three times a given distance the action is nine times less. Consequently, the weight of a shot will decrease, and will become reduced to zero at the instant that the attraction of the ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... the impulse radius, or in other words, the closer the ruby pin is to the balance staff and the longer the fork, the easier will the unlocking of the pallets be performed, but this entails a great impulse angle, for the law applicable to the case is, that the angles are in the inverse ratio to the radii. In other words, the shorter the radius, the greater is the angle, and the smaller the angle the greater is the radius. We know, though, that we must have as small an impulse angle as possible in order that the balance should be highly detached. ...
— An Analysis of the Lever Escapement • H. R. Playtner
... educated men of the present day have by no means universally outgrown. Save for some such old associations as these, why should it be supposed that matter becomes "spriritualized" as it diminishes in apparent substantiality? Why should matter be pronounced respectable in the inverse ratio of its density or ponderability? Why is a diamond any more chargeable with "grossness" than a cubic centimetre of hydrogen? Obviously such fancies are purely of mythologic parentage. Now the luminiferous ether, upon which our authors make such extensive demands, may be physically ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... himself. What may be the exact amount of the guilt which he thus appropriates is a very dark question to his own judgment, and not much illuminated by any of the masters in casuistry whom he has consulted on the occasion. On the one hand it seems generally agreed that a promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made; for which reason it is that we see many persons break promises without scruple that are made to a whole nation, who keep their faith religiously in all private engagements, breaches of promise towards the stronger party being committed ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... instances the species which grow in hot springs have been reserved in order to make their comparison more easy. I shall begin in an inverse order, with those of the springs of Pugha in Tibet, which attain a temperature of 174 degrees. Two Confervae only occur in the specimens which have been preserved, viz., an Oscillatoria allied to that which I have called O. interrupta, and a true Conferva ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... rise until it soon became apparent to me, who brought up the rear, that they were gaining rapidly upon us. I could understand the reason for this, as with the narrowing expanse of Omean as the waters rose toward the apex of its dome, the rapidity of its rise would increase in inverse ratio to the ever-lessening space to ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... question, there it stood, nearly ready. Just behind the great hissing locomotive, with its parabolic headlight and its coal-laden tender, came the baggage, mail, and express cars; then the passenger coaches, in which the social condition of the occupants seemed to be in inverse ratio to their distance from the engine. First came emigrants, "honest miners," "cow-boys," and laborers; Irishmen, Germans, Welshmen, Mennonites from Russia, quaint of garb and speech, and Chinamen. Then came long cars full of people of better station, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... books is a new candidate for public favor; the others are revised and improved editions of books which have already been favorably received. We have sometimes thought that the popularity of a school-book is in inverse proportion to its merits, and are glad to learn that five editions of Dr. Gray's "Structural and Systematic Botany" are witnesses against the truth of this assumption. No man can deny that Dr. Gray's books ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... unsuccessful. Napoleon soon discovered, what his successor is also likely to learn, that the real evil of the Papal Government consisted not in its territorial extent, but in the admixture of temporal and spiritual authority; that, in fact, its power of working mischief was, if anything, in inverse proportion to its size. With that rapidity of resolution which formed half his power, he resolved at once to suppress the temporal power of the Popes, and gave instructions to Count Aldini to draw up the necessary decrees. The Emperor was then on the eve of departure for the ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... circle is a narrow one. Whereas, in aristocratic classes, having more leisure and wealth, the intercourse is inconceivably more rapid; so that the publication of any book which interests them is secured at once; and this publishing influence passes downwards; but rare, indeed, is the inverse process of publication ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... we have seen that it is now an incontrovertible fact that, in considering the animal scale in a sense the inverse of that of nature, we find that there exists in the groups composing this scale a continuous but irregular modification (degradation) in the organization of animals which they comprise, an increasing simplification in the organization of these organisms; finally, a proportionate ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... fermentation there is a portion of the sweet matter which remains undecomposed and in its original state. Lavoisier found that it was 4.940; that is, nearly 5 parts in 100. It may possibly be the same in a weaker liquor; which would increase the loss, in the inverse ratio of the density of the liquor. Such are the causes to which I attribute the great superiority of Lavoisier's products; and from those observations I thought I could establish the fabrication of whiskey upon ...
— The Art of Making Whiskey • Anthony Boucherie
... friend of his family who dared to give him advice or warning, for there was none to whose advice or warning he would have listened. Once when Ashburner was conversing with Benson on some subject which brought on a reference to this inverse order of things, the latter gave his explanation of it, which was ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... it is a mere chance whether or not organs which are of importance to organisms are likewise of importance as guides to classification; and, in point of fact, that the general tendency in this matter is towards an inverse instead of a direct proportion. More often than not, the greater the value of a structure for the purpose of indicating natural affinities, the less is its value to the ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... 358. The inverse process, the reduction of divine beings to simple human proportions, has gone on in early cults and in early attempts at historical construction to a not inconsiderable degree. Thus, to take a relatively late example, ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... by the basket mould used before the invention of the potter's wheel, and in the willow pattern on old china, and the basket capitals or mouldings of Byzantine architecture, the influence of the basketmaker's art is clearly traceable. Essentially a primitive craft, its relative importance is in inverse ratio to the industrial development ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... as being a work of art, must fail to teach the lesson of life in its completeness: as an inferior work of art, it has peculiar weaknesses of its own. However extensive the influence of the literature of fiction may have been, its intensity has been in inverse proportion. A great poem, once made our own, abides with us ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... we might step With goodly strides ahead; or forearms joined Unto the sturdy uppers, or serving hands On either side were given, that we might do Life's own demands. All such interpretation Is aft-for-fore with inverse reasoning, Since naught is born in body so that we May use the same, but birth engenders use: No seeing ere the lights of eyes were born, No speaking ere the tongue created was; But origin of tongue came long before Discourse of words, and ears created ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... under responsibility to one of the greatest controlling powers on earth, the sense of fame and estimation. The share of infamy, that is likely to fall to the lot of each individual in public acts, is small indeed; the operation of opinion being in the inverse ratio to the number of those who abuse power. Their own approbation of their own acts has to them the appearance of a public judgment in their favour. A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world. As it is the most shameless, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... remedies, with new-school remedies, or she can let him die without remedies because she doesn't believe in the reality of disease. She is quite willing to legislate for his stomach, his mind, his soul, her teachableness, it goes without saying, being generally in inverse proportion to her knowledge; for the arrogance of science is humility compared with the ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... in that which does not rest on sufficient evidence, I cannot believe that the great mysteries of existence will be laid open to me on other terms. It is no use to talk to me of analogies and probabilities. I know what I mean when I say I believe in the law of the inverse squares, and I will not rest my life and my hopes upon weaker convictions. I ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... that science and religion are in inverse ratio to each other; the one diminishes and grows weaker in the same proportion that the other increases and grows stronger in its ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... us to talk of essential human needs, of attaining security, if we run the risk of another World War in ten or twenty or fifty years. That is just plain common sense. Wars grow in size, in death and destruction, and in the inevitability of engulfing all Nations, in inverse ratio to the shrinking size of the world as a result of the conquest of the air. I shudder to think of what will happen to humanity, including ourselves, if this war ends in an inconclusive peace, and another war breaks out when the babies of today ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... least unsuccessful parts of the play are also by far the most unimportant. The capacity of the author seems to shrink and swell alternately, to erect its plumes and deject them, to contract and to dilate the range and orbit of its flight in a steadily inverse degree to the proportionate interest of the subject or worth of the topic in hand. There could be no surer proof that it is neither the early nor the hasty work of a great or even a remarkable poet. It is the best that could be done at any time by a conscientious and studious workman of technically ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... hungerings to see self reflected in another convinced. In such efforts lie dangers as vulgar as the minds that make them, and love the excitement of them. But genuine love is far beyond such grovelling delights; and the peril of such a relation is in inverse proportion to ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... very graceful. All these four will gladly come to a window in winter for a little fat hung to a string, and will put themselves into wonderful inverse positions. ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... for it must be remembered that the poor cock who undergoes all this plucking and mangling is a living bird! It is doubtful whether a thought of the cruelty ever entered the mind of a New Mexican. If so, it must have been a New Mexican woman; for the humanity of these is in an inverse ratio to that of their lords. For the women it may be urged that the sport is a custom of the country; and what country is without its cruel sports? Is it rational or consistent to weep over the sufferings of Chanticleer, while ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... fascination to the experience. There is a certain degree and tone of light which tends to disturb the equilibrium of the senses, and to promote dangerously the tenderer moods; added to movement, it drives the emotions to rankness, the reason becoming sleepy and unperceiving in inverse proportion; and this light fell now upon these two from the disc of the moon. All the dancing girls felt the symptoms, but Eustacia most of all. The grass under their feet became trodden away, and the hard beaten surface of the sod, when viewed aslant ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... atomic theory of matter leads us into a non-material world, or a world the inverse of the solid, three-dimensioned world that our senses reveal to us, or to matter in a fourth estate. We know solids and fluids and gases; but emanations which are neither we know only as we know spirits and ghosts—by dreams or hearsay. Yet this fourth or ethereal estate of matter seems ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... as elsewhere, the spice of conversation is apt to be in inverse ratio to family tree and income-tax, and one can hear better repartees among the boat-builders' shops on Long Wharf than among those who have made the grand tour. All the world over, one is occasionally reminded ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this phantastic standing apart from the contest, these phantastic attacks on it lose all practical value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... of the rings after the 9,999th move has been made, and the reader will find that the method shown will solve any similar question, no matter how many rings are on the tiring-irons. But in working the inverse process, where you are required to ascertain the number of moves necessary in order to reach a given position of the rings, the rule will require a little modification, because it does not necessarily follow that the position is one that is actually ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... of their big shells," said the Captain, "you can hear nothing until it is too late, for the reason that the shell travels more quickly than the sound of it. The sounds reach your ears in inverse order—if ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... was young "the morning stars sang together for joy," and the planets were guided in their courses by celestial hands. Now, the harmony of the stars has resolved itself into gravitation according to the inverse squares of the distances, and the orbits of the planets are deducible from the laws of the forces which allow a schoolboy's stone to break a window. The lightning was the angel of the Lord; but it has ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... women have skill in domestic matters; and domestic service is needed everywhere, no matter how many unemployed walk the streets. Needed most in the poorest home, the help of the grandmother is often appreciated in inverse ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... p. 258).] It is rather super-Consciousness than a consciousness like ours. Matter is a flux rather than a thing, but its flow is in the opposite direction to that of Spirit. The flow of Spirit shows itself in the creativeness of the evolutionary process; Matter is the inverse movement towards stability. Bergson adheres to the view of Spirit as fundamental, while Matter, he says, is due to a lessening of the tension of the spiritual force which is the initial elan. Now, of course, Matter ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... street, or in this part of the town for that matter. Yet with all this crowding and renting of rooms Mrs. Phillips did not grow rich. She was always getting into debt or getting out of it, this depending in inverse ratio upon Joe ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... intelligence only. Here the Empyrean, or highest Heaven, comes into view; at first as a point of intense brilliancy round which nine circles are revolving. These represent the Angelic hierarchies, and their places with regard to the central point are in inverse order to that of the spheres which they move. Beatrice takes occasion from them to instruct Dante upon some points relating to the creation and functions of the angels, and incidentally, upon the creation of form and matter, and their combination ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... same of magnetism. Second, gravitation is attractive; so is magnetism. Third, gravitation is proportionate to the mass; the force of magnets also depends upon the mass. Fourth, gravitation acts in an inverse ratio to the square of the distance; so does magnetism. Fifth, gravitation does not manifest polarity; magnetism is known not to do so. Sixth, gravitation acts independently of bodies affording a resistance to light ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... exposure. Up to the time of the explanation of the puzzle on board the departing vessel (on the road to Windsor, at the Premier's reception, in the cell of the Police, in the presence of the Magistrate-whose crack of a totally inverse decision upon their case, when he becomes acquainted with the titles and station of these imputedly peccant, refreshes them), they hold debates over the mysterious contrarieties of a people professing in one street what they confound in the next, and practising by day a demureness ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... worthy of remark that in India the spirit of combination is always in the inverse ratio to the rank of the class; weakest in the highest, and strongest in the lowest class. All infringements upon the rules of the class are punished by fines. Every fine furnishes a feast at which every member sits and enjoys himself. Payment is enforced by excommunication—no ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... and their satellites attracted each other with a force varying according to the inverse ratio of the squares of their distances, but rejected the mutual attraction of the molecules of matter, believing that they possessed gravity towards a central point only, to which they were attracted. This supposition was at variance with the Newtonian theory, which, however, ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... that she contributes little or nothing to the common income in no way embarrasses an American wife; her pretensions are usually in an inverse proportion to her personal means. A man I knew some years ago deliberately chose his bride from an impecunious family (in the hope that her simple surroundings had inculcated homely taste), and announced to an incredulous circle of friends, at his last bachelor ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... on the failure of the Mackenzies of Allangrange, he or his representative will become Chief of the Mackenzies. Failing Thomas, or his male heirs, that honour would fall to the heirs male, if any, of each of the eight others mentioned, in the inverse order in which their ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... "developmental energy" of the eggs is in an inverse ratio to their size. The last and largest eggs of the season develop least and produce most females. The second egg of a clutch is larger than the first, but develops less and the bird produced is shorter-lived. Overworking and other conditions tending to produce large eggs and females also ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... desert. What a church teaches is true or not true, without reference to her independent right of teaching; and eventually, when the irritations of earthly feuds and political schisms shall be soothed by time, the philosophy of this whole question will take an inverse order. The credentials of a church will not be put in first, and the quality of her doctrine discussed as a secondary question. On the contrary, her credentials will be sought in her doctrine. The Protesting Church will say, I have the right to ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... fact, there is quite an imposing array of titled dignitaries who as true republicans have risen by their own merits. As yet the "leprosy of decorations," as Dr. Seton Watson describes the outbreak of coloured ribbons on manly chests, its spread in inverse ratio to danger incurred, has not assumed undue proportions—but who knows? I must, however, get back to the 6th of July and tell you how the memory of John Hus ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... Conductors. The conductivity of a wire depends upon its material, its cross-section, its length, and its temperature. Conductivity of a copper wire, for example, increases in direct ratio to its weight, in inverse ratio to its length, and its conductivity falls as the temperature rises. Resistance is the reciprocal of conductivity and the properties, conductivity and resistance, are more often expressed in terms of resistance. The ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... rule, all parts of the musket are assembled in the inverse order in which they are dismounted. Before replacing screws, oil them slightly with good sperm oil, as inferior oil is converted into a gum, which clogs the operation of the parts. Screws should not be turned in so hard as to make the parts bind. When a lock has, ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... of the Loire carries barks almost as far as Croisic. If they want to lie by a little, or to refresh the crew, they come to Pirial along the coast; from Pirial they find another inverse current, which carries them to the Isle-Dumal, two leagues ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... influence upon the fertility of marriages. In southern regions more children are born, fewer in northern. The number of children is in inverse proportion to the amount of food in a country and in a season. In Belgium, the higher the price of bread the greater the number of children, and the greater the ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... of another is to weaken it. Timidity, apprehension, fear, are in inverse ratio to confidence, ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... human happiness, on the largest scale, depends"—an abstract proposition which cannot be too carefully studied in connection with the present state of public morality in China, and the general welfare of the people. Dr Legge, however, whose logical are apparently in an inverse ratio to his linguistic powers, rushes wildly into the concrete, and declares that every falsehood told in China may be traced to the example of Confucius himself. He acknowledges that "many sayings might ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... was but a stroller's barn, as this old Globe of ours had never or hardly ever beheld. Which method also we reckon natural, then and there. Nor perhaps was the respective keeping of these two Oaths far out of due proportion to such respective display in taking them: inverse proportion, namely. For the theatricality of a People goes in a compound-ratio: ratio indeed of their trustfulness, sociability, fervency; but then also of their excitability, of their porosity, not continent; or say, of their explosiveness, hot-flashing, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... instrument employed on most of the longer cables is the siphon recorder of Lord Kelvin, shown in figure 54, which marks or writes the message on a slip of travelling paper. Essentially it is the inverse of the mirror instrument, and consists of a light coil of wire S suspended in the field between the poles of a strong magnet M. The coil is attached to a fine siphon (T5) filled with ink, and sometimes kept in vibration by an induction coil so as to shake the ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... with the current the rivermen caught and arranged to the best possible advantage about the improvised piers. A good riverman understands the correlation of forces represented by saw-logs and water-pressure. He knows how to look for the key-log in breaking jams; and by the inverse reasoning, when need arises he can form a jam as expertly as Koosy-oonek himself—that bad little god who brings about the disagreeable and undesired—"who hides our pipes, steals our last match, and brings rain on the just when they want to ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... is projected from a grain of corn, a portion of the farina, or starch, is changed into sugar, which may be called the blood of the plant, and from it is drawn the nourishment necessary to its expansion and appearance above the surface of the earth. In the latter growth of many plants an inverse process is carried on, as in the Indian corn, which I have just spoken of. In this instance, as also numberless others, sugar is formed in large quantities in the body of the plant, and elaborated into ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... went about, there were raps at doors, and nobody was ever any the wiser as to the cause. Here it may be observed that a ghost's power of making a noise, and exerting what seems to be great physical energy, is often in inverse ratio to his power of making himself generally visible, or, at all events, to his inclination so to do. Thus there is a long record of a haunted house, by the chief observer, Miss Morton, in P. S. P. R., pt. ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... for his social wit and professional wisdom, who prescribed "a rush of blood to the boots" to all professional patients and head-workers—men who, happening to possess brains, are prone to forget that they have bodies. In no way can this inverse apoplexy be more healthfully or pleasantly induced than by a jolly game of cricket. That the sport is adapted to American tastes and needs we are convinced, and that it may find a habitat throughout the length and breadth of our land is an end toward which we launch this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... contrariety, contrast, foil, antithesis, oppositeness; contradiction; antagonism &c (opposition) 708; clashing, repugnance. inversion &c 218; the opposite, the reverse, the inverse, the converse, the antipodes, the antithesis, the other extreme. V. be contrary &c adj.; contrast with, oppose; diller toto coelo [Lat.]. invert, reverse, turn the tables; turn topsy-turvy, turn end for end, turn upside down, turn inside out. contradict, contravene; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... formations is vast indeed when measured by any human standard, and, as all action implies time, so are we compelled to regard these mineral masses as a measure of the time which has elapsed during their accumulation. The amount of the time which they represent is, of course, in the inverse proportion of the intensity of the forces which have been in operation. If, in the ancient world, mud and sand accumulated on sea-bottoms at tenfold their present rate, it is clear that a bed of mud or sand ten feet thick would have been formed then in the same time as a stratum ...
— Time and Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... must be Rats like us, Who let the cat out of the bag. Yet still these Tyros in the cause Deserve, I own, no small applause; And they're by us received and treated With all due honors—only seated In the inverse scale of their reward, The merely promised next my Lord; Small pensions then, and so on, down, Rat after rat, they graduate Thro' job, red ribbon and silk gown, To Chancellorship and Marquisate. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... following conclusions: (1) The temple was restored after the departure of the Persians; (2) it was injured by fire B.C. 406; (3) it was repaired and continued in use; (4) it was seen and described by Pausanias I. 24.3 in a lost passage. Let us take up these points in inverse order. The passage of Pausanias reads in our texts:—[Greek: Lelectai de moi kai proteron (17.1), s Athenaiois perissoteron ti e tois allois es ta theia esti spoudes, prtoi men gar Athenan eponomasan Erganen prtoi d'aclous Ermas... omou de ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... siphon recorder is exactly the inverse of the mirror galvanometer. In the latter we have a small magnet suspended in the centre of a large coil of wire—the wire enclosing the magnet, which is free to rotate round its own axis. In the former we have a small coil suspended between the poles ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... human race with brutes, which prevails here," L'Isle remarked, "certainly, promotes neither comfort nor cleanliness. Indeed, it is curious, that as you go from north to south, cleanliness should decline in the inverse ratio with the need of it. Compared with ourselves, the French are not a cleanly people, but become so when contrasted with their neighbors, the Spaniards, who are, in turn, less filthy than the Portuguese, whose climate renders cleanliness still ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... whom the University of Cambridge accorded the honour of an honorary degree in 1893, has written but one opera, 'Mefistofele,' but his influence upon modern Italian music must be measured in inverse ratio to his productive power. When 'Mefistofele' was originally produced in 1868, Verdi's genius was still in the chrysalis stage, and the novelty and force of Boito's music made 'Mefistofele,' even in its fall—for the first performance ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... the 'New Way to Pay Old Debts' showed, in consequence, more vitality than any of his other plays. Much praise has been given, and not more than enough, to the originality and force of the conception. The conventional miser is elevated into a great man by a kind of inverse heroism, and made terrible instead of contemptible. But it is equally plain that here, too, Massinger fails to project himself fairly into his villain. His rants are singularly forcible, but they are clearly what other people would think about him, not what he would really think, still less ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... best have been found in an association with the very worst.' Whenever the Tories have deviated from their tenets, they have enlarged their views and exceeded their promises. The Whigs have always taken an inverse course. Whenever they have come into power, they have previously been obliged to slight those matters, and to temporise with those duties, which they had not the courage either to follow ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the conditions of culture in the various regions of the earth, to enable us to follow out this ingenious view in all its details. His theory is, that the time required by a plant to arrive at maturity is as the inverse ratio of the temperature; therefore, knowing the mean temperature of any place, and the number of days which a plant takes to ripen, the time required at any other point more or less elevated, can easily be ascertained. Peter Purry, a native of Switzerland, who settled ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... woman she is cordial. But if she does not like her she is very, very cordial. A woman's aversion for another woman moving in the same social stratum in which she herself moves may readily be appraised. Invariably it is in inverse ratio to the apparent affection she displays upon encountering the object of her disfavor. Why should this be? I cannot answer. It is not given for ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... of tracing analogies of origin and descent between the Chinese and Polynesian Nations, are quite vain. The Chinese Nations are evidently Asiatic and primitive akin to the Tartars and Turks (the modern Turans,) their language have the same inverse position, and monosylabic[TN-22] structure. The idea of Harcourt to deem the Chinese the real Semetic stock of Languages, is worthy of enquiry. He has proved that the Obri (Hebrew) was in reality a Hamite language, the posterity of Abraham having adopted a dialect of the Acuri (Assyrian) ...
— The Ancient Monuments of North and South America, 2nd ed. • C. S. Rafinesque
... that I had found an inverse relation between the double etiquette which dogs obey; and that those who were most addicted to the showy street life among other dogs were less careful in the practice of home virtues for the tyrant man. But the female dog, that mass of carneying[24] affectations, shines equally ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... actions of ourselves, but feelings of energy which are taken as energies of the visual forms and lines." So the idea belonging to the object, and the psychophysical effect of the object are only obverse and inverse of the same phenomenon. And our pleasure in the form of the column is rather our appreciation of energy than our feeling of favorable stimulation. Admitting this reasoning, the meaning of a picture ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... indistinctly into something like the words, "my eye, and Betty Martin," did issue from the neckcloth of Sir Bingo, but they were not much attended to; for it had not escaped the observation of the quicksighted gentry at the Well, that the Baronet's feelings towards the noble Earl were in the inverse ratio of those displayed by Lady Binks, and that, though ashamed to testify, or perhaps incapable of feeling, any anxious degree of jealousy, his temper had been for some time considerably upon the fret; a circumstance ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... to explain to themselves the working of mental superiority, by exaggerating the power of memory. Milton's own writings remain a sufficient evidence that his was not a verbal memory. And, psychologically, the power of imagination and the power of verbal memory, are almost always found in inverse proportion. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... the electro-sensibility appears in the majority of cases to be in inverse proportion to the severity of the disease and the intensity of the ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... names in speaking of the greater subjects, and the fitness which qualifies a man to use them, commonly exist in inverse proportions. If we reflect on the conditions out of which ordinary opinion is generated, we may well be startled at the profuse liberality with which names of the widest and most complex and variable significance are bestowed on all hands. The majority ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... this is the only one you will find without exception: That in this world the salary or reward is always in the inverse ratio of the duties ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... bar before which the proprietor of slaves is likely to be arraigned, is the bar of public opinion; and the influence which that knowledge will have upon his conduct is exactly in the inverse ratio to its need; for the hardened brute, upon whom its influence is most wanted, is the very person who, if he can escape lynching, is indifferent to public opinion. No Southerner can be affronted, if I say that he is not more Christian, kind-hearted, and mild-tempered than ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... there is indeed freedom of speech, but not of clamor; or like that in an orderly senate, in which men who deserve to be heard, are heard in due time, and under determined restrictions. The degree of liberty you can rightly grant to a number of men is in the inverse ratio of their desire for it; and a general hush, or call to order, would be often very desirable in this England of ours. For the rest, of any good or evil extent, it is impossible to say what measure is owing to restraint, and what to license where the right is balanced between them. I was ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... market than Barny O'Reirdon's; his opinion on certain points in the craft was considered law, and in short, in his own little community, Barny was what is commonly called a leading man. Now your leading man is always jealous in an inverse ratio to the sphere of his influence, and the leader of a nation is less incensed at a rival's triumph than the great man of a village. If we pursue this descending scale, what a desperately jealous person ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... curious fact, that the half of the numbers which compose this progression represents, in inverse order, the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... of life in the inverse order of nature—that is to say, from man downwards—we certainly perceive a sustained but irregular degradation of organism, with an increasing simplicity both ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... limestones of Cumanacoa at Cuchivano and between Guanaguana and Caripe. The exceptions to this general law are extremely rare in the gneiss-granite of the littoral Cordillera; it may even be affirmed that the inverse direction (from south-east to north-west) often bears with it the inclination ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... propitiate a divinity is generally in inverse ratio to its responsiveness, and the sense of discouragement produced by Osric Dane's entrance visibly increased the Lunch Club's eagerness to please her. Any lingering idea that she might consider herself under an obligation to her ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... testing its general accuracy by experiments; it is reserved for his successors to note the divergence between his broad and sweeping generalization and particular instances which do not quite accord with it. So it was with Boyle's law that the volume of a gas varies in inverse ratio to the pressure to which it is exposed; so it is with the Darwinian theory, inasmuch as deterioration and degeneration play a part which was, perhaps, at first overlooked; and similar instances may be found in almost all ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... my mercantile enterprise in a forward state of readiness for a start over the plains. My caravan will not be a large one, about six or seven waggons with less than a score of men; but the goods I take are valuable in an inverse ratio to their bulk— designed for the 'ricos' of your country. I intend taking departure from the frontier town of Van Buren, in the State of Arkansas, and shall go by a new route lately discovered by one of our prairie traders, ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... Louis XIV of France, the majority of the then extraordinarily numerous princely courts of Germany displayed great lavishness in all manner of show and tinsel. This was especially the case in the matter of the keeping of mistresses, which stood in inverse ratio to the size and capabilities of the realms and realmlets. The history of these courts during the eighteenth century belongs to the ugliest chapters of history. Libraries are filled with the chronicles of the scandals of that era. ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... humanly possible. The element of error is always present. I've checked and re-checked my calculations. I've augmented the vacuum tubes by installing three super-dimensional inverse power tubes." He clasped the girl's arm. "The street is no place to talk. Let's go to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... the institution in question stands so close to the main thoroughfare that the most fastidious may visit it with ease. Here I found some twenty Arabs assembled for evening school. They were of all ages, from seven to fifteen, and their clothing was in an inverse ratio to their dirt—very little of the former, and a great deal of the latter. They moved about with their bare feet in the most feline way, like the veritable Bedouin himself. There they were, however, over greasy slates ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Bond Street masher makes the physiological mistake of undervaluing the innate sense of decency inherent in every woman. Gentle courtesy and manners impress a courtesan by reason of the novelty. The inverse is often useful in dealing with a pampered ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... Carter's were very strict. Not that the moral sentiment of the place was particularly high, but it had been noticed that the amounts of labor and whisky were in inverse proportion. The more whisky, the less labor. It was a pure question of political economy. The foreman had often stated that he would prosecute to the fullest extent of the law the first man caught bringing whisky into camp. The foreman ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... of the Melbury family was of that kind which evinces some shyness in showing strong emotion among each other: a trait frequent in rural households, and one which stands in curiously inverse relation to most of the peculiarities distinguishing villagers from the people of towns. Thus hiding their warmer feelings under commonplace talk all round, Grace's reception produced no extraordinary demonstrations. But that more was felt than was enacted appeared from ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... are free from all danger. As they formed, in some sort, a part of the programme of the day, the fear had seized them that they might be forced to execute it faithfully, and they had fled far from the scene at the instant when the balloon was being filled. Their courage was evidently the inverse ratio of their ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... only one of the means of obtaining laughter. There is a host of others, and the source of laughter must be sought for much further back. Moreover, without going so far, we see that while the transposition from solemn to trivial, from better to worse, is comic, the inverse transposition may ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... In an inverse order, romanticism consists in putting literature into our life, in taking the latest literary fashion for our rule of action. This is not only a proof of want of taste; it is a most dangerous mistake. ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... His conscience stood in inverse relation to the vigor of his body. When he was well, his too darkly stained past life troubled him little; but when he was unmanned by weakness, he was incapable of fighting the ghastly demon that forced upon his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... said the colored man solemnly, "dis trip am wuss dan any ob de udders. It suah am. Good land a' massy! T' t'ink ob being projected transmigatorially in de obverse tangent ob de parallelism circumdelegated on de inverse side ob a duodecimo. It's too altogether imparipinated fo' dis chile! I'se afraid dat's what I is! I'se too much afraid t' go," and Washington started to run from the shop, as if he feared that the big ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... than hell upon my father, but can I help it? They don't see either that my game is not the light-hearted scoffer; that I am not (as they call me) a careless infidel. I believe as much as they do, only generally in the inverse ratio: I am, I think, as honest as they can be in what I hold. I have not come hastily to my views. I reserve (as I told them) many points until I acquire fuller information, and do not think I am thus justly to be called ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... apologetic folio which the Bollandists published. In looking through it the reader will specially be struck by this instructive fact, that the bitterness and violence of the controversy were always in the inverse ratio of the importance of the points at issue. This much also must any fair mind allow: the Society of Jesus, since the days of Pascal and the "Provincial Letters," has been regarded as a synonym for dishonesty and ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... the green world round? How came the inspiration for that classic paysage, such as Ingres would have loved, from the sage-brush, and cactus? "Well," she told herself, "Moore wrote 'Lalla Rookh' in a back room in London, among the chimney-pots and soot. Maybe the proportion is inverse. But, Mr. Harold Vickers of Ash Fork, Arizona, your little book is, to say the ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... I said dryly, "that undertakers' assistants are jovial young men. A man's sense of humor seems to be in inverse proportion to ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... clientele, who could pay two hundred and fifty dollars, is a question which I will not answer in the affirmative or negative. I will leave it open. I will merely remark that in the question of abortion in certain specific cases the moral indignation of some physicians is in inverse proportion to the size of the fee expected. A doctor who will become terribly insulted when a poor woman who can only pay ten or fifteen dollars asks to be relieved of the fruit of her womb, will usually discover that the woman who can afford to pay one hundred dollars is badly ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... this faculty, when the visible and outward frame of the man of genius bears witness to its presence? When FIELDING said, "I do not doubt but the most pathetic and affecting scenes have been writ with tears," he probably drew that discovery from an inverse feeling to his own. Fielding would have been gratified to have confirmed the observation by facts which never reached him. Metastasio, in writing the ninth scene of the second act of his Olympiad, found himself suddenly moved—shedding tears. The imagined sorrows ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... to something beyond it, and to change of place and pursuit as the means of improving his fortunes. This at last, as has been seen, led him off to the West in the ardent hope of becoming in time a wealthy farmer. In an inverse ratio to the hopeful elevation of spirits with which Parker set out upon his journey was the sorrowful depression experienced by his wife. But Rachel kept meekly and patiently her feelings to herself. It was her duty, she felt, to go with her husband. She had united her fortunes ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... in the omnipresent Spirit; for him there is no distance inverse to the square. Only one reason, therefore, can motivate Babaji in maintaining his physical form from century to century: the desire to furnish humanity with a concrete example of its own possibilities. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... measure, and not excessive; which three things it was impossible for the Latin Commentary to have; and, therefore, it was impossible for it to be obedient. That to the Latin it would have been impossible, as is said, is evident by such an argument as this: each thing which proceeds by an inverse order is laborious, and consequently is bitter, and not sweet; even as to sleep by day and to wake by night, and to go backwards and not forwards. For the subject to command the sovereign, is to proceed in ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... insects and birds moreover differs in the form of the trajectory in space; in the inclination of the plane in which the wings beat; in the role of each of the two alternating (and in an inverse sense) movements that the wings execute; as also in the facility with which the air is decomposed during these different movements. As the wings of a fly are adorned with a brilliant array of colors, we can follow the trajectory or figure that each wing writes ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... Olympians and could follow the unobstructed paths of inclination in realms controlled only by fancy! Napoleon's greeting was laconic, "Vous etes un homme." This flattered Goethe, who called it the inverse "ecce homo," and felt its allusion to his citizenship, not in Germany, but in the world. The nineteenth-century Caesar then urged the great writer to carry out an already-formed design and compose a drama ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... him to which a preacher might appeal. Thus they became Dogmatists; that is, men who assert a truth so fiercely, as to forget that a truth is meant to be used, and not merely asserted—if, indeed, the fierce assertion of a truth in frail man is not generally a sign of some secret doubt of it, and in inverse proportion to his practical living faith in it: just as he who is always telling you that he is a man, is not the most likely to behave like a man. And why did this befall them? Because they forgot practically ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... of them are, of course, oviparous, and it is quite the rule for them to deposit their eggs by hundreds of thousands, by millions even. Everybody knows, since Darwin taught us, that the average number of offspring of any given species of animal or plant bears an inverse proportion to the liability of that species to juvenile fatalities. When, therefore, we find a fish or a lobster or other pelagic creature depositing innumerable eggs, we may feel perfectly sure that the vast ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... earth the greater is the leverage (if we may use the expression) which is afforded by the protuberance at the equator. The efficiency of a given force will, therefore, on this account alone, increase in the inverse proportion of the distance. The actual intensity of the force itself augments in the inverse square of the distance, and hence the capacity of the attracting body for producing precession will, for a double reason, increase ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... blouses, and full trousers of black velveteen, tucked into tall wrinkled boots, dart about to bakery and dairy shop, preparing for their masters' morning "tea." Venders of newspapers congregate at certain spots, and charge for their wares in inverse ratio to the experience of their customers; for regular subscribers receive their papers through the post-office, and, if we are in such unseemly haste as to care for the news before the ten o'clock delivery—or the eleven o'clock, if the postman has not found it convenient ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood |
