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Counterpoise   Listen
noun
Counterpoise  n.  
1.
A weight sufficient to balance another, as in the opposite scale of a balance; an equal weight. "Fastening that to our exact balance, we put a metalline counterpoise into the opposite scale."
2.
An equal power or force acting in opposition; a force sufficient to balance another force. "The second nobles are a counterpoise to the higher nobility, that they grow not too potent."
3.
The relation of two weights or forces which balance each other; equilibrium; equiponderance. "The pendulous round eart, with balanced air, In counterpoise."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Counterpoise" Quotes from Famous Books



... Francis II. (1559- 1560), his brother Charles came to the throne as Charles IX. He was only ten years of age, so the queen-mother assumed the government in his name. Pursuing her favorite maxim to rule by setting one party as a counterpoise to the other, she gave the Bourbon princes a place in the government, and also by a royal edict gave the Huguenots a limited toleration, and ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... result of productive power be the length of time that was taken for getting it ready, we can dimly conceive what that joy must be for which seventy years of strife and pain and sorrow are but a momentary preparation; and what must be the weight of that glory which is the counterpoise and consequence to the afflictions of this lower world. The further the pendulum swings on the one side, the further it goes up on the other. The deeper God plunges the comet into the darkness out yonder, the closer does it come to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... conventional standards of right and wrong, is in a condition of constant change, which it should be the business of the wise and good to favor, so long as care is had that the advantage is not bought by a re-action of evil, that shall more than prove its counterpoise. Conrad was one of the lowest class of those fungi that grow out of the decayed parts of the moral, as their more material types prove the rottenness of the vegetable, world; and the probability of the truth of the portraiture ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... fact must be an emotional and instinctive one, not a rational and deliberate one; and this must be our next endeavour, to see in what direction the counterpoise must lie. ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety. The purpose you undertake is dangerous; the friends you have named uncertain; the time itself unsorted; and your whole plot too light for the counterpoise of so great an opposition.— Say you so, say you so? I say unto you again, you are a shallow, cowardly hind, and you lie. What a lack-brain is this! By the Lord, our plot is a good plot as ever was laid; our friends true and constant: a good plot, good ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... torn With violence of this conflict, had not soon The Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray, Hung forth in Heaven his golden scales, yet seen Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign, Wherein all things created first he weighed, The pendulous round earth with balanced air In counterpoise, now ponders all events, Battles and realms: In these he put two weights, The sequel each of parting and of fight: The latter quick up flew, and kicked the beam, Which Gabriel spying, thus bespake the Fiend. Satan, I know thy strength, and thou knowest mine; Neither ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... with a proportion of a certain tax called "direct." The dignity of suffrage is thus lowered; and, in placing it in the scale with an inferior thing, the enthusiasm that right is capable of inspiring is diminished. It is impossible to find any equivalent counterpoise for the right of suffrage, because it is alone worthy to be its own basis, and cannot thrive as a graft, or ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... Germany, according to these writers, wanted to preserve the position of hegemony in Europe she had obtained under Bismarck, and consequently felt annoyed by the Triple Entente, which robbed her of her traditional friend Russia and set up an effective counterpoise to the Triple Alliance of which Germany was the leading Power, and on which she could, or believed she could, rely for support in case of war with France. In going, therefore, to Tangier, at the moment when her defeat by Japan rendered Russia for the time being of little or no account in the considerations ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... whence I cannot but conclude, that our geographers of Europe are in a great error, by supposing nothing but sea between Japan and California; for it was ever my opinion, that there must be a balance of earth to counterpoise the great continent of Tartary; and therefore they ought to correct their maps and charts, by joining this vast tract of land to the northwest parts of America, wherein I shall be ready to ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... attention to strangers—more sensibility to the misfortunes of others, of what ever nation, than here—than I have myself experienced in Mauritius. To the names of the two families whose unremitting kindness formed a great counterpoise to the protracted persecution of their governor, might be added a long list of others whose endeavours were used to soften my captivity; and who sought to alleviate the chagrin which perhaps the strongest minds cannot ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... course in the "People's Banner," headed, "Our Prime Minister's Good Works," in which poor Lord Earlybird was ridiculed in a very unbecoming manner, and in which it was asserted that the thing was done as a counterpoise to the iniquity displayed in "hounding Ferdinand Lopez to his death." Whenever Ferdinand Lopez was mentioned he had always been hounded. And then the article went on to declare that either the Prime Minister had quarrelled with ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... very distinctly, saw nothing clearly, except that, everywhere among his squadron ran yelling men on foot, shooting, lunging with bayonets, striking with clubbed rifles. Twice he felt the shocking impact of his lance point; once he drove the ferruled counterpoise at a man who went down under his horse's feet. One moment there was a perfect whirlwind of scarlet pennons flapping around him, another and he was galloping alone across the grass, lance crossed from right to left, tugging at his bridle. Then he set the ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... think of the situations in Clelia, and what I can do with her," snapped Tracy. "I see a song there that would light up all London. Unfortunately, the sentiment's dead Radical. It wouldn't so much matter if we were certain to do Camillus as well; because one would act as a counterpoise to the other, you know. Well, follow your own fancy. Camillus is strictly classical. I treat opera there as Alfieri conceived tragedy. Clelia is modern style. Cast the die for Camillus, and let's take horse. Only, we lose the love-business—exactly where I show my strength. Clelia in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... opposition to Klopstock and Gleim, was fond of casting off his personal dignity, because he was confident that he could at any moment grasp and take it up again, delighted in a dissipated life in taverns and the world, as he always needed a strong counterpoise to his powerfully laboring interior; and for this reason, also, he had joined the suite of Gen. Tauentzien. One easily discovers how the above- mentioned piece was generated betwixt war and peace, hatred and affection. It was this production which ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... Congress towards Arnold, that "these stern patriots, regarding virtue as essential to true honor, did not consider great examples of valor, resource, and energy even of arousing and sustaining the military ardor of a country as an adequate counterpoise to a dereliction of principle and a compromising integrity." "How far a judicious policy and a pure patriotism were combined on this occasion," writes Sparks, "as to what extent party zeal contributed to warp the judgment, we need not ...
— Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe

... act as a kind of intelligence bureau, watching the continual changes of the labour market here and abroad, and suggesting any measure which may be practicable, such as co-ordination and distribution of Government contracts and municipal work, so as to act as a counterpoise to the movement of the ordinary labour market, and it will also, we trust, be able to conduct examinations of schemes of public utility, so that such schemes can, if decided upon by the Government and the Treasury, be set on ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... and Lehmann houses, despite the political differences between them, were closely related one to the other, and intimately connected, Orla Lehmann had heard these lectures very warmly spoken of. At that time he had just founded a People's Society as a counterpoise to the supremely conservative Society of August, and, looking out for lecturers for it, hit upon the twenty-three-year-old ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... at once revealed the mystery of the trap-door. It formed a ponderous counterpoise attached to the smaller section of the stone slab, and so nearly equalised the weight on the hinge that, as we have seen, Softswan's weak arm was sufficient to ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne

... appeared in it as actors, and the graphic way in which the tragic tale was told. As a rounded whole, in which each part is finely and beautifully polished, in which the two great divisions of the story are kept in perfect balance and counterpoise, in which each person who appears is left free to speak in a way which stamps him with a character of his own, while all unite in working towards a common end, no Saga had such claims on public attention ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... tempest: to furnish ourselves with philosophical and Divine precepts, other men's examples, [3933]Periculum ex aliis facere, sibi quod ex usu siet: To balance our hearts with love, charity, meekness, patience, and counterpoise those irregular motions of envy, livor, spleen, hatred, with their opposite virtues, as we bend a crooked staff another way, to oppose [3934]"sufferance to labour, patience to reproach," bounty to covetousness, fortitude to pusillanimity, meekness to anger, humility to ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... a petard will soon be dropped in your midst from the main peak, and probably a heavy stone or bomb from the opposite end of the long lateen yard, where it serves the double purpose of missile and counterpoise. Now is the time to keep your distance, unless you would have a hole in your ship's bottom. The Corsairs, indeed, are very wily in attack and defence, acquainted with many sorts of projectiles,—even submarine torpedoes, which a diver will attach to the enemy's ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... the tin turns inwards, and to this, one end of the cord m m is attached. This cord passes back from d to a small pulley at the upper part of the board, and at the tower end of it a tassel, loaded so as to be an exact counterpoise to the card, is attached. By raising the tassel, the plate will of course fall over forward till it is stopped by the part b striking the board, when it will be in a horizontal position. On the other hand, by pulling down the tassel, ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... the collapse of French power in the New World, established British rule on our shores, and hastened the birth of the great Commonwealth founded by George Washington, by removing from the British Provinces, south of us, the counterpoise of French dominion. More than once French Canada had threatened the New England Settlements; more than once it had acted like a barrier to the expansion and consolidation of the conquering ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... Irish vote as an anti-British force, then, is undoubtedly overrated in England; but it must be borne in mind that some of the other foreign elements in the population which on many questions may act as a counterpoise to the Irish are not themselves conspicuously friendly to England. If we hear too much of the Irish in America, we hear perhaps too little of some of the other peoples. And the point which I would impress on the English reader is that he cannot expect the American to ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... unpleasant—generally to other people, and kindness patronage. But she was just in money matters, and her son too had every intention of being worthy of his hire, though wherein lay the value of the labour with which he thought to counterpoise that hire, it were ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... longer be done without ruinous disadvantage, then the advantage of the negative must be considered as exhausted, and then comes forward unchanged the effort for the destruction of the enemy's force, which was kept back by a counterpoise, ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... the engines, he placed upon their sterns, raising up their prows by throwing upon them an iron grapple, attached to a strong chain, by means of a tolleno which projected from the wall, and overhung them, having a heavy counterpoise of lead which forced back the lever to the ground; then the grapple being suddenly disengaged, the ship falling as it were from the wall, was, by these means, to the utter consternation of the mariners, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... necessary in an earlier chapter to notice the strange freaks madness will sometimes play. It was then the object to show how strong affections of the mind will recall an erring judgment to its true balance; but, the action of the counterpoise growing weaker by time, the disease returns, and reason again kicks the beam. Such was the old dowager's case: the death of her son recalled her to herself; but a few days produced relapse, and she was as foolish as ever. Nevertheless, as ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... in the obscure tavern he had chosen as a counterpoise to the expense of her lodging: and she explained to him her homelessness. He had been so anxious about her all night, he said. Somehow, now it was morning, the request to leave the lodgings did not ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... there were some disadvantages in counterpoise. After the gay life of Vienna, Eisenstadt must have been dull enough, and there is plenty of evidence to show that the young artist occasionally fell into the dumps. In one letter he complains that he "never can obtain leave, ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... security, and severely punished theft and robbery of every kind, especially of the property of the Church. He bestowed freedom on slaves after six years of service. Some think he instituted trial by jury. Like Theodosius and Charlemagne, he gave peculiar privileges to the clergy as a counterpoise ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... changed, and he began to think why, for what reasons, on what account, Mr Slope should not be dean of Barchester. As far as he himself, the bishop, was concerned, he could well spare the services of his chaplain. The little idea of using Mr Slope as a counterpoise to his wife had well nigh evaporated. He had all but acknowledged the futility of the scheme. If indeed he could have slept in his chaplain's bed-room instead of his wife's there might have been something in it. But—-. And thus as Mr Slope as speaking, the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... a year. A swallow devours about five hundred insects a day, eggs and all. A sparrow's nest in the city of Paris was found to contain seven hundred pairs of the upper wings of cockchafers. It is easy to see what an excess of insect life is produced when a counterpoise like this is withdrawn; and the statistics collected show clearly to what an extent the balance of nature has been disturbed. Thus the value of wheat destroyed in a single season, in one department of the east of France, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... horrid fray Hung forth in Heav'n his golden Scales, yet seen Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion signe, Wherein all things created first he weighd, The pendulous round Earth with ballanc't Aire 1000 In counterpoise, now ponders all events, Battels and Realms: in these he put two weights The sequel each of parting and of fight; The latter quick up flew, and kickt the beam; Which Gabriel spying, thus bespake the Fiend. Satan, I know thy strength, and thou knowst mine, Neither our own but giv'n; what follie ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... moment, the former parties that have stood in counterpoise have fallen to pieces. And we are on the eve, and in the very act, of reconstructing our parties. One movement there is that calls itself American. Oh, that it were or or would be! Never was an opening so auspicious for a true ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... evil and to good, with even hand Drawing straight justice for the lot of each. But had another held the goad as One in whose heart was guile and greediness, He had not kept the people back from strife. For had I granted, now what pleased the one, Then what their foes devised in counterpoise, Of many a man this state had been bereft. Therefore I showed my might on every side, Turning at bay like ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle

... ought not to lay aside their arms until they had secured the independence of their country. With the northern portion of Ireland, this independence meant Republicanism, with the southern, Popery. The heads of the faction then proceeded to hold an assembly in the metropolis, as a rival and counterpoise to the parliament. This was then regarded as a most insolent act; but the world grows accustomed to every thing; and we have seen the transactions of the League in London, and of Conciliation Hall in the Irish capital, regarded as ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... endure its price and its counterpoise. Dante was alone—except in his visionary world, solitary and companionless. The blind Greek had his throng of listeners; the blind Englishman his home and the voices of his daughters; Shakespeare had his free associates of the stage; Goethe, his correspondents, a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... affairs in the Mediterranean depended greatly upon the presence and readiness of the British fleet, and its efficiency therefore could not be risked, to any serious extent, except for the object of destroying the enemy's naval forces, to which it was then the counterpoise. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... many are brought into a common stock, and the associates, obtaining corporate privileges, are enabled to prosecute, under one superintending head, their business to better advantage. Nothing can be more essentially democratic or better devised to counterpoise the influence of individual wealth. In Kentucky, almost every manufactory known to me is in the hands of enterprising and self-made men, who have acquired whatever wealth they possess by patient and diligent labor. Comparisons are odious, and but in defence would not be made by me. But ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... meaning in the answer. The man who has been educated, who not only can read, but has acquired a taste for reading, and for reading of a proper kind, is rarely driven into low and debasing crime. He has resources within himself, which are a counterpoise to the incitements of his animal nature. His awakened intellect and conscience also make him understand more clearly the danger and guilt of a life of crime. Many of the deeds which swell the records of our criminal courts spring from ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... as they have been from the conflicts and complications of European governments, and even by the gravitation of peculiar circumstances and events, has been constituted a separate political factor, a new and vast theater for the development of the human race, which will serve as a counterpoise to the great civilizations of the other hemisphere, and so maintain the equilibrium ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... returned; and though he carefully disguised his vacillation from others, and, perhaps from himself, he had never been able to come to any precise line of decision on the subject. In fact, his natural sense had acted as a counterpoise to his controversial zeal. He was by no means pleased with the quiet and indifferent manner in which King William's government slurred over the errors of the times, when, far from restoring the Presbyterian kirk to its former ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... somewhat less esteem, his friendship was scarcely diminished. In solitude our feelings have unrestricted play; and a man preoccupied like David, with all-absorbing thoughts, will give way to impulses for which ordinary life would have provided a sufficient counterpoise. As he read Lucien's letter to the sound of military music, and heard of this unlooked-for recognition, he was deeply touched by that expression of regret. He had known how it would be. A very slight expression ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... agreeable to every one, they advanced Cimon to the highest employments in the government. The man that contributed most to his promotion was Aristides, who early discerned in his character his natural capacity, and purposely raised him, that he might be a counterpoise to the craft and boldness of Themistocles. After the Medes had been driven out of Greece, Cimon was sent out as admiral, when the Athenians had not yet attained their dominion by sea, but still followed Pausanias and the Lacedaemonians; ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... Burnet has expressed it. Yet Cromwell, in that temper of conservatism, or desire of a settled order in all things, which more and more grew upon him after he had assumed the Protectorate, had undoubtedly the old Episcopalian clergy in view as a body to be conciliated, and employed as a counterpoise to the Anabaptists. He cannot but have been aware, too, of the spontaneous movements in some of the quasi-Presbyterian Associations of the clergy for a reunion as far as possible with the more moderate Episcopalians, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... there were indeed any thing in it that could justly be complained of, our duty might still be to bear with the local evil, as correcting an opposite extreme in some other quarter of the Island;—as a counterpoise of some weight elsewhere pressing injuriously upon the springs of social order. How deplorable would be the ignorance, how pitiful the pride, that could prevent us from submitting to a partial evil for the sake of a general good! In fine, if a comprehensive ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... time it is necessary to encourage trade and industry vigorously and especially speculation, the function of which is to act as a counterpoise to industry.... It is necessary for industry to deplete the land both of laborers and capital, and, through speculation, transfer all the money of the world into our hands, thereby throwing the Gentiles into the ranks of the proletariat. ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein

... beam about ten feet high, with a sufficiently heavyweight at the other end, which balanced him, while he kept time, by the motions of his body and trunk, with the music, as well as the other elephant. The Hindoos, after having fastened on the counterpoise, had drawn the other end of the board down to the ground, and made ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... high dignity of man, thus bringing the dust under his feet into sensible communion with the thoughts and affections of the angels, was supposed to belong to him, not as renewed by a religious system, but by his own natural right. The proclamation of it was a counterpoise to the increasing tendency of medieval religion to depreciate man's nature, to sacrifice this or that element in it, to make it ashamed of itself, to keep the degrading or painful accidents of it always in view. It helped man onward to that reassertion ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... on the other hand, the rationalist movement had always had over against it the great foil and counterpoise of the pietist movement. Rationalism ran a much soberer course than in France. It was never a revolutionary and destructive movement as in France. It was not a dilettante and aristocratic movement as deism had been in England. It was far more creative and constructive than elsewhere. Here ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... Powers, and France, tied as she was to Russia, could not object. But she viewed with great jealousy any increase of Italian power on the Mediterranean, and began therefore to build up Greece as a naval counterpoise. ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith

... where possible to be adopted, in order to solve peaceably difficulties which threaten peace. In short, the consciences of the nations are awake to the wickedness of unnecessary war, and are disposed, as a general rule, to seek first, and where admissible, the counterpoise of an impartial judge, where such can be found, to correct the bias of national self-will; but there is an absolute indisposition, an instinctive revolt, against signing away, beforehand, the national conscience, by a promise that any other ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... some short time since to have an Emigrant's Home as a sort of Model Barrack, erected in one of the New Docks, so as to form a counterpoise to the frauds of emigration lodging-house keepers, but local jealousies defeated a plan which would have been equally advantageous to the ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... rational and moral elements in their nature, which suggest noble pieces of abstinence and self-restraint, thus securing a certain freedom, a certain superiority to the brute pressure of interest and impulse. These rational and moral elements are in variable counterpoise with the ruder desires,—sometimes commanding them with imperial ease, sometimes overcoming them by struggle, sometimes striving with them feebly and vainly, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... said Mr Jenkison, "forms an admirable counterpoise to your example. As far as I am attracted by the one, I am repelled by the other. Thus, the scales of my philosophical balance remain eternally equiponderant, and I see no reason to say of either of them, OICHETAI ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... afraid of their great feudal tenants, the barons and knights through whom the Conquest had been effected. Hence, as English kings, they assiduously maintained and fostered Anglo-Saxon institutions, and particularly the "fyrd," which they used as a counterpoise to the feudal levy. They even called upon it for Continental service and took it across the Channel to defend their French provinces.[9] Thus in 1073 it fought for William I in Maine; in 1094 William II summoned ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw

... assist her, in the growing fear and jealousy of Thebes, thereby showing that the animosities of the Grecian States grew out of political jealousy rather than from revenge or injury. To rescue Sparta was a wise policy, if it were necessary to maintain a counterpoise against the ascendency of Thebes. An army was raised, and Iphicrates was appointed general. He first marched to Corinth, and from thence into Arcadia, but made war with no ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... 6th of November, 1789, in deference to principle and in dread of corruption, the Assembly had declared that none of its members should hold ministerial office. We see it in consequence deprived of all the instruction which comes from direct contact with affairs, surrendered without any counterpoise to the seductions of theory, reduced by its own decision to become a mere academy of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... and had dismissed from his councils both the princes of the blood royal and the Constable de Montmorency. The plot failed miserably and La Renaudie lost his life; it only secured more firmly the authority of the Guises. As a counterpoise to their influence, the Queen-mother now conferred the vacant chancellorship on one of the wisest men France has ever seen, her Lord Bacon, Michel de L'Hopital, a man of the utmost prudence and moderation, who, had the times been better, might have won constitutional liberties for his country, ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre

... about his adventure with the truck, judging the old lady of over eighty quite a fit and qualified person to sympathize with the raptures of sitting on a handle, and being jerked violently into the air by a counterpoise of confederates. And no doubt she was; but not to the extent imputed to her by Dave, of a great sense of privation from inability to go through the experience herself. Nevertheless there was that in his blue eyes, and the disjointed rapidity of his exposition of his own satisfaction, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... Its aerial flights will bear her above the beaten, common-sense, road of duty, and make her the prey of a fatal instability and its attendant mortifications, follies, and sorrows. Her acute feelings, and tender affections need a moral counterpoise. The sudden sickness of the loved will else overwhelm her, and unfit her for the service she owes them. In this world of casualties, if her heart be not braced by the power of good judgment, she will ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... military governors in the citadels, and (c) visitors living at court, but possessed of lands in the provinces. The object is, no doubt, to create a common interest between the nobles and the king which will keep the satrap in counterpoise. ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... journey. Under a pretext that was little remarked, M. de Wardes went forward in advance of the others. He took Manicamp with him, for his equable and dreamy disposition acted as a counterpoise to his own. It is a subject of remark, that quarrelsome and restless characters invariably seek the companionship of gentle, timorous dispositions, as if the former sought, in the contrast, a repose for their own ill-humor, and the latter a protection for their weakness. Buckingham ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... plain fact is that ever since the Herzegovinian embroglio the Ballplatz is little more than a counterpoise to the Wilhelmstrasse." ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... incredibly wistful air, as though it missed the young life that circulated all about it; as though it spread its beauties out to be used and enjoyed, and wondered why none came to claim them. As a counterpoise to this I like to think of all the happiness flowing into hundreds of homes; the father and mother waiting for the sound of the wheels that bring the boy back; the children who have gone down to the lodge to welcome the big brothers ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... his friends in check for a time—if we can put some backbone into the party of freedom—if we can rally and call up the forces we have in the country, the thing will be done. We shall have established the counterpoise—we shall very likely turn the next election, and liberty—or what still remains of it!—will be saved for a generation. But to succeed, the effort, the sacrifice, from each one of us, will have ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... to the Church of Rome, led them to maintain many opinions in regard to biblical questions which were not only erroneous, but altogether unnecessary for the stability of their position. Having renounced the dogma of an infallible church, it was deemed necessary to maintain as a counterpoise, not only that of an infallible Bible, but, as the necessary foundation of this, of a Bible which had been handed down from the earliest ages without the slightest textual alteration. Even the vowel points and accents were held to have been given by divine inspiration. The Massoretic text ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... she said mournfully: 'Now I have done all I could! I felt that the only counterpoise to my cruelty to you in my drawing-room would be to come as a suppliant ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... laid on feeling and sentiment was a needed one, as a counterpoise to the exaggerations of rationalism. Man does live in his feelings more than in his reason. He is a being of sentiment, a creature of impulse, his social life is one of the affections. In all the ranges of his moral, religious ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... is not among the Mafulu, as there is in Mekeo, a large body of powerful professional sorcerers, who are a source of constant terror to the other people of their own villages, and are yet to a certain extent relied upon and desired by those people as a counterpoise to the powers of sorcerers of other villages; and a Mafulu native, unless prevented by a fear of outside hostility in no way connected with the supernatural, will travel alone outside his own community in a way in which fear of the sorcerers would make a Mekeo native unwilling ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... natural strength and beauty:—I would effectually provide, That the meadows and corn fields of my dominions, should laugh and sing;—that good chear and hospitality flourish once more;—and that such weight and influence be put thereby into the hands of the Squirality of my kingdom, as should counterpoise what I perceive my Nobility are now taking ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... unknown condiment named Point, into the meaning of which I have vainly inquired; the victual Potatoes-and-Point not appearing, at least not with specific accuracy of description, in any European Cookery-Book whatever. For drink, they use, with an almost epigrammatic counterpoise of taste, Milk, which is the mildest of liquors, and Potheen, which is the fiercest. This latter I have tasted, as well as the English Blue-Ruin, and the Scotch Whiskey, analogous fluids used by the Sect ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany), there taxable "third estate" of the monarchy (as in France), afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, corner-stone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world's market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx

... from most of the other sphincters of the body, that it is furnished with antagonist muscles, which are the radial fibres of the iris: no sooner does the circular muscle begin to relax, than these fibres, wanting their counterpoise, are forcibly drawn back, and open the pupil to a considerable wideness. But though we were not apprised of this, I believe any one will find, if he opens his eyes and makes an effort to see in a dark place, that a very perceivable pain ensues. And I have heard some ladies ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... (and Cicero appears to have thought so too,) when they reasoned against everything, and laid it down as a system, that against every affirmative position an equal force of negative argument could be brought as a counterpoise: now this view of Socrates is, in my judgment, not only partial, but incorrect. He entertained no such doubts of the powers of the mind to attain certainty. About physics he thought man could know nothing; but respecting the topics which concern man and society, this was the field ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... man magnifying his office; and it was well that my friend the professor should have a slightly exaggerated idea of the bearing of the calculus on the daily routine or occasional emergencies of a ship. What is needed is a counterpoise, to correct undue deflection of the like kind, to which an educational institution from its very character and object is always liable. That the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... should be sorry for any one who regards Corinne as merely a tedious and not at all brief subject for laughter. One solid claim which it possesses has been, and is still for a moment, definitely postponed; but in another point there is, if not exactly a defence, an immense counterpoise to the faults and follies just mentioned. Corinne to far too great an extent, and Oswald to an extent nearly but not quite fatal, are loaded (affubles, to use the word we borrowed formerly) with a mass of corporal ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... the balance between parties: so at least those who knew James understood him. He had no intention of allowing Buckingham's fall, as the enemies of that nobleman wished, but he perhaps thought of finding a counterpoise for him: he did not wish to let him become lord and master of affairs. On the other hand Buckingham, by his connexion with the leading men of the Lower House, had already won an independent position, in which he was no longer at the mercy of the King. He may perhaps be set down ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... volant an attitude, has been admirably overcome by the artist. The sweep of the tail, with the hinder parts of the horse, are interwoven with the curvatures of the expiring snake; and together compose a sufficient counterpoise to the figure and forepart ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various

... force of will whereby Her flexile grace seems sweeter; The sturdy counterpoise which ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... back the enemy, and fight hard on the very edge of Ausonia. As when in the depth of air adverse winds rise in battle with equal spirit and strength; not they, not clouds nor sea, yield one to another; long the battle is doubtful; all stands locked in counterpoise: even thus clash the ranks of Troy and ranks of Latium, foot fast on foot, and man ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... Constitution of 1791 relating to education (p. 501), and to provide an education for the people of France who were now to exercise, through elected representatives, the legislative power for France. Instruction he held to be the necessary counterpoise of liberty, and every citizen was to be taught to know, obey, love, and protect the new constitution. Political, social, and personal morality were to take the place of religion in the cantonal schools, which were ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... paralyze as much as is in their power, by their tendency towards the isolation of nations. By this means they render much more decided the differences existing in the conditions of production; they check the self-levelling power of industry, prevent fusion of interests, neutralize the counterpoise, and fence in each nation within its own ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... It is easy to say that there ought to be no difference between Roman Catholics and Protestants. I wish to God it could be so; but the circumstances of Ireland are such as to render it necessary, that a counterpoise should be given to counteract the influence which the Roman Catholics will acquire by the bill. I wish to carry the principles of 1829 into effect, and that can not be done if both parties are placed upon an equal footing. I think it most unfair to give the ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... relative to an exchange of pictures with Edwin Atherstone,[5] poet and novelist, who collected both Violins and pictures. A difficulty arose in adjusting the balance, when Mr. Atherstone suggested throwing a Fiddle in as a counterpoise. "That would be to no purpose," remarked Mr. Gillott, "for I have neither knowledge of music nor of the Fiddle." "I am aware of that," rejoined his friend; "but Violins are often of extraordinary value as works of art." ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... centre. Into the back of the drum, in the middle, a revolving axis is inserted, and round that axis is wound a flexible bronze chain, at one end of which hangs the "cork" which is raised by the water, and at the other a counterpoise of sand, equal in ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... Black Sea. No fewer than seven different plans were simultaneously or in turn propounded. They were every one of them admitted to be dubious, inefficient, and imperfect. I will spare the reader the mysteries of limitation, of counterpoise, of counterpoise and limitation mixed. Russia preferred counterpoise, the allies were for limitation. Was this preference between two degrees of the imperfect, the deficient, and the ineffective a good ground for prolonging a war that was costing the allies a hundred million ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... at a standstill, and bands of starving people swarmed in the streets, whilst the incursions of the savage Indians daily became more frequent. In fact, Asuncion was but a type of what the world would be under the domination of any of the sects without the counterpoise of any civil power. The Governor, seeing the misery on every side, determined, like an honest man, to pocket up his pride and reconcile himself with Cardenas at any price. So, setting forth with all his ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... was I entrusted more intimately with cabinet secrets, than I discovered the state of factions, and that Bestuchef and Apraxin were even then in Prussian pay; that a counterpoise, by their means, might be formed to the prevalence of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... mangonel, fundis fundibula, that some do also term catapultum, the which worketh by torsion and shall heave you great stones of the bigness of a man fully two hundred yards an it be dry weather; next is the Trebuchet, like to the mangon save that it swingeth by counterpoise; next cometh the Balista or Springald that worketh by tension—a pretty weapon! and shall shoot you dart or javelin so strong as shall transpierce you six lusty fellows at a time, hauberk and shield, like so many fowl upon a spit—very sweet to behold, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... read; while, of those who maintained them, there is no history, except of the annual ravage of their fields by contending cities or nobles;— and, finally, that of the higher body of merchants, whose influence was already beginning to counterpoise the prestige of noblesse in Florence, and who themselves constituted no small portion ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... find, if you consider, that which may make you fear him indeed, but never flee from him,—that which may abase you, but withal embolden you to come to him though trembling. Whatever thought possess thee of thine own misery, of thy own guiltiness, labour to counterpoise that with the thought of his mercy and free promises. Whatever be suggested of his holiness and justice, hear himself speak out his own name, and thou shall hear as much of mercy and grace as may make these not terrible unto thee, though high and honourable. The Lord hath so framed the expression ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... minute details, and carrying the story through a longer range of years, will paint the progress of the Republic in its palmy days, and narrate the establishment of, its external system of dependencies and its interior combinations for self-government and European counterpoise. The lessons of history and the fate of free states can never be sufficiently pondered by those upon whom so large and heavy a responsibility for the maintenance ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... obtained from than corrected by experiments on the human constitution; the pious, self- denying, laborious, and ill-paid missionary; the half-educated, litigious, envious, and disreputable lawyer, with his counterpoise, a brother of the profession, of better origin and of better character; the shiftless, bargaining, discontented seller of his betterments; the plausible carpenter, and most of the others, are more familiar to all who have ever dwelt in a ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... too much upset to answer his own question. Beauty is the greatest of human gifts for power. Every power that has no counterpoise, no autocratic control, leads to abuses and folly. Despotism is the madness of power; in women the despot ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... stirring clothes, from which looked the minute, red, downy, still, round face, with unfixed eyes and working lips,—in that unearthly gravity which has never yet been broken by a smile, and which gives to the earliest moon-year or two of an infant's life the character of a first old age, to counterpoise that second childhood which there is one chance in a dozen it may reach by and by. The boys had remembered the old man and young father at that tender period of his hard, dry life. There came to him a fair, silver goblet, embossed with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... of the blind multitudes against the elect is one of the continuous facts of history, and the triumph of popular sovereignties without counterpoise has already marked the end of more than one civilisation. The elect create, the plebs destroys. As soon as the first lose their hold the ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... it will be understood, is never put in operation except when the water in the boiler becomes too low: and when the water rises, the elevation of the encased float closes the valve and stops the engine. The ball on the end of the lever acts as a counterpoise to the float, (which is of stone) that it may be freely influenced by the rising or falling of the ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various

... given valuable advice; scarce one who did not know off-hand that there was never a seaport in Bohemia,—as if Shakspeare's world were one which Mercator could have projected; scarce one but was satisfied that his ten finger-tips were a sufficient key to those astronomic wonders of poise and counterpoise, of planetary law and cometary seeming-exception, in his metres; scarce one but thought he could gauge like an ale-firkin that intuition whose edging shallows may have been sounded, but whose abysses, stretching down amid the sunless roots of Being and Consciousness, mock the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... provided with projections that slide between circular guides, and carries the strap of a small hydraulic piston, p, that suffices to move the entire affair in a vertical plane, the gun and movable carriage being balanced by a counterpoise, q. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various

... his brothers and sisters invites attention to that home where he reigned supreme. Lady Trevelyan thus describes their life at Clapham: "I think that my father's strictness was a good counterpoise to the perfect worship of your uncle by the rest of the family. To us he was an object of passionate love and devotion. To us he could do no wrong. His unruffled sweetness of temper, his unfailing flow of spirits, his amusing talk, all ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... passion of Titus for a daughter of Tarquin, which constitutes the knot, is not improbable, and in its tone harmonizes with the manners which are depicted. Still less am I disposed to agree with La Harpe, when he says that Tullia, to afford a fitting counterpoise to the republican virtues, ought to utter proud and heroic sentiments, like Emilia in Cinna. By what means can a noble youth be more easily seduced than by female tenderness and modesty? It is not, generally ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... allowed the stress of my poems from beginning to end to bear upon American individuality and assist it—not only because that is a great lesson in Nature, amid all her generalising laws, but as counterpoise to the leveling tendencies of Democracy—and for other reasons. Defiant of ostensible literary and other conventions, I avowedly chant 'the great pride of man in himself,' and permit it to be more or less a motif of nearly all my verse. I think this ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... function. But their intellectualism was checked by the aesthetic and eudaemonistic element, and preserved from the one-sidedness which it manifests in the modern period, because of the lack of an effective counterpoise. However eloquently Bacon commends the advantages to be derived from the conquest of nature, he still understands inquiry for inquiry's sake, and honors it as supreme; even the ethelistic philosophers, Fichte and Schopenhauer, pay ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... with the berth, A, as described of a counterpoise to facilitate the handling of the same ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... By way of counterpoise, there were admirable surprises in man. That cross-play of human tendencies determined from time to time in the forces of unique and irresistible character, "moving all together," pushing the world around it to phenomenal good or evil. For such as "make it their business ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... objection that could weigh against the obvious benefits. Society would then become a social state; and it would no longer be problematical, whether a man in a wilderness, separated from the bad passions of his fellow-men, were not happier than he who is surrounded by them, but who has no counterpoise in their intercourse and affections? May these considerations sink deep into the minds of "Men of Ross," wherever they are to be found; and, if acted upon as they merit, I may perhaps live to form one of many happy groupes of village ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... Henry justice, he spent as freely on others as on himself; he clothed and fed destitute children; and when in his pride, at the goodly height of his five-year-old boy, he caused him and his little sisters to be weighed, the counterpoise was coined silver, which was scattered in largesse ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... equal, counterpoise, counteract, counterbalance, countervail; adjust, equalize, square. Antonyms: unbalance, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... Quality is no more possible, than of some Distempers that descend by Inheritance. However, a great deal may be done by a Course of Beneficence obstinately persisted in; this, if any thing, being a likely way of establishing a moral Habit, which shall be somewhat of a Counterpoise to the Force of Mechanism. Only it must be remembred, that we do not intermit, upon any Pretence whatsoever, the Custom of doing Good, in regard if there be the least Cessation, Nature will watch the Opportunity to return, and in a short time to recover the Ground it was so long in quitting: ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... of thy priests' confuting, Of fate and form and law, Of being and essence and counterpoise, Of poles that drive and draw? Ever some compensation, Some pandering purchase still! But the vehm of achieving ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... whenever the frailties of human nature are put to severest test. I think we possess a better reason than Democritus himself for our Abderian tendency; for laughter with us oftenest veils an effort to regain balance of temper, when disturbed by any untoward circumstance. It is a counterpoise ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... the true counterpoise to passions; then let him not seek to destroy them; but let him endeavour to direct them; let him balance those which are prejudicial, by those which are useful to society. Reason, the fruit of experience, is only ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... who complained that they were sacrificed because they stood in his path and thwarted his plans. Franklin partly shared in their suspicions, and appointed persons to offices who were unconnected with the Arthur party, and as a counterpoise to their influence. The immediate cause of the final rupture was the restoration of a colonial surgeon, dismissed on a charge of culpable negligence. His neighbors, believing the penalty unjust, remonstrated in his favor, and Franklin complied ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... of the heart, which is sufficiently cogent and valid to counterpoise that of the mind; and which gives to "faith," or "hope," a firm foothold in the very face of the opposing "resistless" testimony ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... one arm is added to the weight of the already inclined torso, the other arm must rise to form a counterpoise. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... we will not go into all that again," said Sir Harry, interrupting him. "I explained to you before, sir, that I would have admitted your future rank as a counterpoise to her fortune, if I could have trusted your character. I cannot trust it. I do not know why you should thrust upon me the necessity of saying all this again. As I believe that you are in pecuniary distress, I made you an offer which I thought to ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... by the fact that the conception of the moral law deprives self-love of its influence, and self-conceit of its illusion, it lessens the obstacle to pure practical reason and produces the conception of the superiority of its objective law to the impulses of the sensibility; and thus, by removing the counterpoise, it gives relatively greater weight to the law in the judgement of reason (in the case of a will affected by the aforesaid impulses). Thus the respect for the law is not a motive to morality, but is morality itself subjectively considered as a motive, inasmuch as pure practical ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant

... the view, cynically surmised that Leicester wished to 'bestow handsomely upon another some part of the pains, and perhaps of the envy, to which long indulgent fortune is obnoxious.' By others, whom Scott has partly followed, the Earl of Sussex has been credited with the elevation of Ralegh, as a counterpoise to Leicester. Neither the one noble nor the other, it was supposed, could have patriotically desired to enrol in the public service the most effective of recruits. Amongst all the subtle solutions of the mystery of Ralegh's leap into prominence, Fuller's well-worn ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... also the introduction of Missouri itself into the Union as a Slave State (as a counterpoise to the State of Maine admitted the same year), although almost the entire territory of the State of Missouri was north of the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam

... the boy's crude compositions with some severity was perfectly natural; equally so that the petted and bepraised boy should have felt these criticisms keenly. But the severity of the master was no more than a necessary counterpoise to the injudicious praise of others. That Beethoven, however he may have spoken of Neefe to Wegeler and Schindler, did at times have a due consciousness of his obligations to his old master, is proved by a letter which he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... bids man recognise that he is vile, even abominable, and bids him desire to be like God. Without such a counterpoise, this dignity would make him horribly vain, or this humiliation would ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... minute he was over the ridge, looking down on Mike, who, instead of hauling in the rope as he came up, had let himself glide down like a counterpoise, and as soon as he saw his companion in safety, he drew himself in a crouching position and stared ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... a specimen of the new and pure aristocracy created by the right honorable gentleman,[61] as the support of the crown and Constitution against the old, corrupt, refractory, natural interests of this kingdom; and this is the grand counterpoise against all odious coalitions of these interests. A single Benfield outweighs them all: a criminal, who long since ought to have fattened the region kites with his offal, is by his Majesty's ministers enthroned in the government of a great kingdom, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... him. This auspicious event occurred in the little town of Sos, in Aragon, on the 10th of March, 1452; and, as it was nearly contemporary with the capture of Constantinople, is regarded by Garibay to have been providentially assigned to this period, as affording, in a religious view, an ample counterpoise to the loss of the capital of ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... been destroyed. Against [Greek: ho protos anthropos], St. Paul had set [Greek: ho deuteros anthropos]: against [Greek: ek ges]—[Greek: ex ouranou]: against [Greek: choikos]—[Greek: ho Kyrios]. Remove [Greek: ho Kyrios], and some substitute for it must be invented as a counterpoise to [Greek: choikos]. Taking a hint from what is found in ver. 48, some one (plausibly enough,) suggested [Greek: epouranios]: and this gloss so effectually recommended itself to Western Christendom, that having ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... Leander took in hand Fair Hero's love and favour to obtain, When void of fear securely leaving land, Through Hellespont he swam to Cestos' main, His dangers should not counterpoise my toil, If my dear love would once but pity show, To quench these flames which in my breast do broil, Or dry these springs which from mine eyes do flow. Not only Hellespont but ocean seas, For her ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... with what seemed but wonder—great and absolute wonder. Her eyes lingered upon Buckley's. Let no one ask or presume to tell through what subtle medium the miracle was performed. As by a lightning flash two clouds will accomplish counterpoise and compensation of electric surcharge, so on that eyeglance the man received his complement of manhood, and the maid conceded what enriched her womanly grace ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... London, where he resigned his principality, received back his lands, under a royal patent conveying them to him as "Earl of Thomond, and Baron of Inchiquin." Henry was but too happy to have raised up such a counterpoise to the power of Desmond, at his own door, while O'Brien was equally anxious to secure foreign aid against such intolerable encroachments. The policy worked effectually; it brought the succeeding Earl of Desmond to London, an humble ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... inestimable advantages, which no modern skill can wholly counterpoise, are known and felt by the scholar alone. He has not failed, in the sweet and silent studies of his youth, to drink deep at those sacred fountains of all that is just and ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... roof—paramont—are intended, by pressing on the air above in ascending, and on the air below in descending, to furnish the necessary point of resistance, or fulcrum, from which to steer. The other eight wings, four at each end of the central group, are intended, by being opened or shut, to act as a counterpoise; thus producing a rupture of equilibrium around the central fulcrum, and thereby changing the upward movement of the balloons into an oblique forward movement. In other words, the ship being raised into the air—to the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various

... sparing blood must obtain an ascendancy if the enemy does not do likewise. By so doing he frames a law for the other and thus both strain every nerve without finding any other limitation but their own natural counterpoise." Von Der Goltz, the tutor of the Turks and the author of a German textbook on war, "The Nation in Arms," says, "If from humanitarian principles a nation decided not to resort to extremities, but to employ its strength up to a given point only, it ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... in April of that year he says:—"Since I saw you I have had a treat in the reading way which comes not every day. The Latin Poems of V. Bourne which were quite new to me. What a heart that man had, all laid out upon town and scenes, a proper counterpoise to some people's rural extravaganzas. Why I mention him is that your Power of Music reminded me of his poem of the ballad singer in the Seven Dials. Do you remember his epigram on the old woman who taught Newton ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... scarcely conceivable, that any men of science in the end of the 18th century, should have insisted on mathematical reasons for the supposition of a southern counterpoise; and therefore, as is mentioned by Mr Wales, in his introduction to the account of the astronomical observations made during this voyage, it must be held, that the opinion which induced his majesty to order the voyage, for the purpose of discovering a continent ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... Allosaurus. A study of the mechanism of the Allosaurus skeleton shows us in the first place that the animal is balanced on the hind limbs, the long heavy tail making an adequate counterpoise for the short compact body and head. The hind limbs are nine feet in length when extended, about equal to the length of the body and neck, and the bones are massively proportioned. When the thigh bone is set in its normal position, as indicated by the position of the scars and processes ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew

... had yielded only to Henry's entreaties; he had held his office for two years and a half—and it would have been well for his memory if he had been constant in his refusal—for in his ineffectual struggles against the stream, he had attempted to counterpoise the attack upon the church by destroying the unhappy Protestants. At the close of the session, however, the acts of which we have just described, he felt that he must no longer countenance, by remaining in an office so near to the crown, measures which he so intensely disapproved and deplored; ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... speaking and writing, cannot deal honestly, if ever he silently prefer a suggested improvement, to any established and undisturbed usage of the language; for, in grammar, no individual authority can be a counterpoise to general custom. The best usage can never be that which is little known, nor can it be well ascertained and taught by him who knows little. Inquisitive minds are ever curious to learn the nature, origin, and causes of things; and that instruction is ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... principle among the ancient states of Greece. Even in the Middle Ages, as regards Italy, the popes endeavored to keep up an equilibrium. They supported the Norman kingdom in Southern Italy, or the Lombard leagues in the North, as a counterpoise to the German emperors. In the sixteenth century, there were formed combinations to check the power of Charles V., king of Spain and emperor of Germany, and afterwards to restrain his successor on the Spanish throne, Philip II. In the seventeenth century, there were like ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... steam restores its heat by becoming partially fluid, and until the cylinder has regained the temperature of 100 deg. its elasticity will be found considerably attenuated; thence will ensue slowness of motion, for the counterpoise will not raise the piston until there is sufficient spring contained in the cylinder to counterbalance the action of the atmosphere; thence there will also arise an ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... ardour. Happily for students of history, while Villehardouin presents the views of an aristocrat and a diplomatist, the incidents of the same extraordinary adventure can be seen, as they struck a simple soldier, in the record of Robert de Clari, which may serve as a complement and a counterpoise to the chronicle of his more illustrious contemporary. The unfinished Histoire de l'Empereur Henri, which carries on the narrative of events for some years subsequent to those related by Villehardouin, the work of Henri de Valenciennes, is a prose ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... and she had gone to live in a more convenient quarter. But her loss had been great and her visitation cruel; it never would have occurred to me moreover to suppose she could come to regard the enjoyment of a technical tip, of a piece of literary experience, as a counterpoise to her grief. Strange to say, none the less, I couldn't help fancying after I had seen her a few times that I caught a glimpse of some such oddity. I hasten to add that there had been other things I couldn't help fancying; and as I never felt I was really ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... war the Great Elector had laid the foundations of a strong political power, which, under his successors, gradually grew into an influential force in Germany. The headship of Protestant Germany devolved more and more on this state, and a counterpoise to Catholic Austria grew up. This latter State had developed out of Germany into an independent great Power, resting its supremacy not only on a German population, but also on Hungarians and Slavs. In the Seven Years' War Prussia broke away from Catholic Austria and the ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... gravest authors of antiquity. For although the supreme power cannot properly be said to be divided, yet it may be so placed in three several hands, as each to be a check upon the other; or formed into a balance, which is held by him that has the executive power, with the nobility and people in counterpoise in each scale. Thus the kingdom of Media is represented by Xenophon before the reign of Cyrus; so Polybius tells us, the best government is a mixture of the three forms, regno, optimatium, et populi imperio: the same ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... law but that of love. Our weak and imperfect conception of God as a God with a long beard and a voice of thunder, of a God who promulgates laws and pronounces dooms, of a God who is the Master of a household, a Roman Paterfamilias, required counterpoise and complement, and since fundamentally we are unable to conceive of the personal and living God as exalted above human and even masculine characteristics, and still less as a neutral or hermaphrodite God, we have recourse to providing Him ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... in upon her," it follows that the true interest of the spirit must ever be to treat the body—Well! as a corpse attached thereto, rather than as a living companion—nay, actually to promote its dissolution. In counterpoise to the inhumanity of this, presenting itself to the young reader as nothing less than a sin against nature, the very person of Cornelius was nothing less than a sanction of that reverent delight Marius had always had in the visible body ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater

... of recruiting the regiment must have proved as disgusting to the officers as it was detrimental to the interests of the settlement. If the corps was raised for the purpose of protecting the civil establishment, and of bringing a counterpoise to the vices and crimes which might naturally be expected to exist among the convicts, it ought to have been carefully formed from the best characters; instead of which we now found a mutineer (a wretch ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... remain of the same length through vast periods of time is probably due to this balance between the effects of tidal action and those arising from the loss of heat—in other words, we have here one of those delicate arrangements in the way of counterpoise which serve to maintain the balanced conditions of the earth's surface amid the great conflicts of diverse energies which are at work in and ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... themselves dependant for impunity on the royal clemency. He employed the discretion with which he was entrusted, to avert the miseries of forfeiture; but he could not restore the relations between the bond and the free, which revolt had shaken; or dispense with the counterpoise of ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... man, and find none equal. It is the hydra of calamities, The sev'nfold death; the jealous are the damn'd. Oh, jealousy, each other passion's calm To thee, thou conflagration of the soul! Thou king of torments, thou grand counterpoise For all the ...
— The Revenge - A Tragedy • Edward Young

... slightly tilted up, the influx of the molten alloy advanced in one unbroken tide. As soon as the entire surface of the mould plate was covered by the alloy, its weight overcame that of my up-tilting counterpoise, and allowed the entire apparatus to resume its exact level. The resulting speculum was, by these simple arrangements, absolutely perfect in soundness. It was a perfect casting, in all respects worthy of the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... the monstrous dream of an entente with Germanism. As well might one, to escape the flood, throw oneself into the rising ravening torrent. Before long, Germany will be the ruler of Austria, of Hungary, Turkey and Holland, and we shall have prepared no counterpoise to this encroachment, we, the Allies of the great Russian people, who, even though they may eventually succumb to the fatal attraction of Asia, might first help us to secure our racial psychology and to establish bonds between our Gallo-Latin soul and the soul ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam

... from the brute in that he has the sovereign right to dispose of his person; take away this power of life and death over himself and he becomes the plaything of fate, the slave of other men. Rightly understood, this power of life and death is a sufficient counterpoise for all the ills of life; the same power when conferred upon another, upon his fellow-man, leads to tyranny of every kind. Man has no power whatever unless he has unlimited freedom of action. Suppose that he has been guilty of ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... a counterpoise to the power so lavishly conferred on Leicester, Prince Maurice was, according to the wise advice of Olden Barnevelt, raised to the dignity of stadtholder, captain-general, and admiral of Holland and Zealand. This is the first instance of these states ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... of the body will be carried on normally, but the balance must be a proper one; that is, not only must the entire waste be repaired but the correct proportions of one kind of food and another must be observed. If all the elements needed are not furnished there can be no true counterpoise. ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... still, round face, with unfixed eyes and working lips,—in that unearthly gravity which has never yet been broken by a smile, and which gives to the earliest moon-year or two of an infant's life the character of a first old age, to counterpoise that second childhood which there is one chance in a dozen it may reach by and by. The boys had remembered the old man and young father at that tender period of his hard, dry life. There came to him a fair, silver goblet, embossed with classical figures, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... indemnification; compromise; &c 774 neutralization, nullification; counteraction &c 179; reaction; measure for measure, retaliation, &c 718 equalization; &c 27; robbing Peter to pay Paul. set-off, offset; make-weight, casting-weight; counterpoise, ballast; indemnity, equivalent, quid pro quo; bribe, hush money; amends &c (atonement) 952; counterbalance, counterclaim; cross-debt, cross- demand. V. make compensation; compensate, compense^; indemnify; counteract, countervail, counterpoise; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... which the new regime has disturbed, but it has also disordered sentiments. "Authority is transferred from the Chateau of Versailles and the courtier's antechamber, with no intermediary or counterpoise, to the proletariat and its flatterers."[1114] The whole of the staff of the old government is brusquely set aside, while a general election has brusquely installed another in is place, offices not being given to capacity, seniority, and experience, but to self-sufficiency, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine



Words linked to "Counterpoise" :   equalizer, equaliser, weight, balance, counterweight, tare



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