"Fluctuate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wild unvitiated taste; you discover them in the swelling sounds that wrap us in imaginary grandeur; in those plaintive notes that make us in love with woe; in the tones that utter the lover's sighs, and fluctuate the breast with gentle pain; in the noble strokes that coil up the courage and fury of the soul, or that lull it in confused visions of joy; in short, in those affecting strains that find their way to the inmost recesses of ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... Their specific gravities fluctuate between .91 and .93. When heated, fats assume a dark color, and boil between 482 deg. and 572 deg. Fahr., but the boiling-point continuously rises, while an uninterrupted decomposition proceeds. From oxide of glycyl ensues acroline; oleic acid affords a fatty ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... eve, my feelings have greatly changed in intensity, and I fluctuate beneath an emotion of oblivious delight. Alas! we young, weak women, try in vain to obstruct the gurgling of the bosom; for I perceive that even I am not proof against the arrows of the god Diana. My heart has thrilled, my dearest friend, ever since you departed, yester eve, with a devious and ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... payment of specie was refused by the banks and the community tacitly agreed to dispense with its employment. Their place was supplied by a currency exclusively of paper, and in many cases of the worst description. Already are the bank notes now in circulation greatly depreciated, and they fluctuate in value between one place and another, thus diminishing and making uncertain the worth of property and the price of labor, and failing to subserve, except at a heavy loss, the purposes of business. With each succeeding day ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... similar obstacles, they face the same enemies, they are affected by the same dangers, and the history of the last thirty years shows quite clearly that their power of influencing public affairs and of commanding national attention fluctuate together. Together they are elevated, together they are depressed, and any Tory reaction which swept the Liberal Party out of power would assuredly work at least proportionate havoc in the ranks of Labour. That may not be a very palatable truth, ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... twenty-eight silver drachmae of Attic money B.C. 335, in the time of Demosthenes; but, like the daric, this gold coin would fluctuate in value relatively to silver. It contained more grains of gold than ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... they have been willing to disturb the harmony of mankind—whenever they have been desirous to render him unsociable, they have cried out that their gods ordained that he should be so. Thus they render mortals uncertain, make the ethical system fluctuate by founding it upon changeable, capricious idols, whom they represent much more frequently cruel and unjust, than filled ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... of gold fluctuate and grow vague before the small interests of everyday living. Casey hadn't the money just then to quit his job of stage driving and go Indian stalking. It would take money,—a few hundred at least. Casey at that time lacked the price of a ticket to Round ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... certainty was better than doubt. The love of truth and the consciousness of that certainty would raise me above hatred and slander. I should then have some kind of principle by which to regulate my conduct; I should then know on what foundation to build. To fluctuate, to waver, to postpone inquiry, was more criminal than any kind of opinion candidly investigated and firmly adopted, and would more effectually debar me from happiness. At my age, with my talents and inducements, it was sordid, it was ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... which originally pulled the trigger may have been a series of pictures in the mind aroused by printed or spoken words. These pictures fade and are hard to keep steady; their contours and their pulse fluctuate. Gradually the process sets in of knowing what you feel without being entirely certain why you feel it. The fading pictures are displaced by other pictures, and then by names or symbols. But the emotion goes on, capable now of ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... a deep eddy whirls slowly round and round; they stand apart from the shore, for the eddy has cleared away the earth around them. Now, walking behind the waves that roll away from you, dark shadowy spots fluctuate to and fro in the trough of the water. Before a glance can define its shape the shadow elongates itself from a spot to an oval, the oval melts into another oval, and reappears afar off. When, too, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... follow the making of silver the exclusive basis of all commercial transactions; the disturbance of our commercial relations with other countries, and the establishment of a standard of value which would fluctuate and shrink as the value of silver fluctuated and shrunk. So that no man who contracted a debt on time could tell what would be the value of the coin he would be compelled to pay when his debt became due, and all business on earth would become gambling. They, therefore, demanded ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... they WERE pearls thus ineffectually thrown; and always doubt the judiciousness of strewing pearls before swine. The prosperity of a book lies in the minds of readers. Public knowledge and public taste fluctuate; and there come times when works which were once capable of instructing and delighting thousands lose their power, and works, before neglected, emerge into renown. A small minority to whom these works appealed ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... dial from its setting, watched a slender thread of light within a transparent sphere above it fluctuate in breadth as the dial twisted. And when it was at its widest, she gambled that it indicated the broadest transmitting beam of which ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... resolve themselves into wages and interest, and the conception of such a static state is therefore not complete unless we know how wages and interest themselves are determined. What we have already said implies that they fluctuate about certain standards, just as do the prices of goods, and that they would remain at these standards if society were reduced to a ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... caravan will of course fluctuate throughout the whole line of route; but I may as well mention the most important personages who were to start with me from Tripoli. Setting aside my colleagues, Barth and Overweg, there was, in the first place, the interpreter, Yusuf Moknee, a man ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... the pain is less and the swelling is reduced or until there is evidence of pus formation, which may be ascertained by examining the surface of the gland with the fingers; and when, on pressing any part of the surface, it is found to fluctuate or "give," then we may conclude that there is a collection of pus at that place. It is well not to open the abscess until the fluctuation is well marked, as at this stage the pus or matter is near the surface and there is less trouble in healing the wound ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... have found it possible to suspect the truth; but, as long as the impression made by his tones, gestures, and looks, remained in my memory, this suspicion was impossible. Wickedness may sometimes be ambiguous, its mask may puzzle the observer; our judgment may be made to falter and fluctuate, but the face of Mervyn is the index of an honest mind. Calm or vehement, doubting or confident, it is full of benevolence and candour. He that listens to his words may question their truth, but he that looks ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... evening at one time Simeon and at another James, but not both together. For he is supposed to have seen one and then the other in the evening, but not both together. His imagination will therefore fluctuate, and he will connect with a future evening first one and then the other; that is to say, he will consider neither as certain, but both as a contingency ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... the doubts, the misgivings which fluctuate in, and irritate the minds of a very large proportion of the Americans; and such is the decided conviction of a portion who retire into obscurity and are silent; and every year adds to the number of both these parties. They remind one of a husband who, having married for love, and supposed ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... soul, transform'd into the brute, glides off, Hissing along the vale, and after him The other talking sputters; but soon turn'd His new-grown shoulders on him, and in few Thus to another spake: "Along this path Crawling, as I have done, speed Buoso now!" So saw I fluctuate in successive change Th' unsteady ballast of the seventh hold: And here if aught my tongue have swerv'd, events So strange may be its warrant. O'er mine eyes Confusion hung, and on my thoughts amaze. Yet 'scap'd they not ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... are various and manifold because he quickly loses the scent of happiness in every way he falls into and therefore must turn to another. And thus men are never at any solid setting about this great business, never resolute wherein this happiness consists, nor peremptory to follow it, but they fluctuate upon uncertain apprehensions, and diverse affections, until the time and date of salvation expire, and then they must know certainly and surely the inevitable danger and irrecoverable loss they have ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Spence's days were organized like a railway time-table, and a delay of an hour implied a casualty as far-reaching as the breaking down of an express. Of the cause of the present derangement Hugh Millner was ignorant; and the experience of the last months allowed him to fluctuate between conflicting conjectures. All were based on the indisputable fact that Mr. Spence was "bothered"—had for some time past been "bothered." And it was one of Millner's discoveries that an extremely parsimonious use of the emotions underlay Mr. Spence's ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... when an intelligent girl is said to fluctuate between childhood and womanhood. Let me add that these seeming fluctuations depend much on the company she is in: the budding virgin is princess of chameleons; and, to confine ourselves to her two most piquant contrasts, by her mother's ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... it to be he, to separate him from his dress; and tried to call him, I remember, PILOT. After another interval of total unconsciousness, I found he had gone, and recognised another figure in its place. It seemed to wave and fluctuate before me as though I saw it reflected in an unsteady looking-glass; but I knew it for the captain; and such was the cheerful influence of his face, that I tried to smile: yes, even then I tried to smile. I saw by his gestures that he addressed ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... naturally one supposes to be more inexpensive in the country which creates them, but to our distress we discovered Avenue de l'Opera prices on everything we wished. Each time that we went back the price was different. The market seemed to fluctuate. One blue enamelled belt, upon which I had set my heart, varied in price from one to three dollars each time I looked at it. Finally, one day I hit upon a plan. I asked my friend, Mile, de Falk, to follow me into this shop and not speak to me, but to notice ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... the world without, Firm to their mark, not spent on other things; Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt, Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings. O Life unlike to ours! Who fluctuate idly without term or scope, Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives, And each half lives a hundred different lives; Who wait like thee, but ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... playful children just let loose from school; The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering wind, And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind; These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, And filled each pause the nightingale had made. But now the sounds of population fail, No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale, No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread, For all the blooming flush of life is fled. All but yon widowed, solitary thing, That feebly bends beside the plashy spring; She, wretched matron—forced in age, for bread, To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread, To pick her ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... senstations. On the very contrary, Mrs. Morgan and her sister will bear witness so far as to say that the longer I abstained the higher my spirits were, the keener my enjoyments, till the moment, the direful moment arrived when my pulse began to fluctuate, my heart to palpitate, and such falling abroad as it were of my whole frame, such intolerable restlessness and incipient bewilderment, that in the last of my several attempts to abandon the dire poison I exclaimed in agony, which I now repeat in seriousness and solemnity, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... and fell constantly; but still a fall disturbed us little, because a thousand dollars a foot was our figure, and so we were content to let it fluctuate as much as it pleased till it reached it. My pile of stock was not all given to me by people who wished their claims "noticed." At least half of it was given me by persons who had no thought of such a thing, and looked for nothing more than a simple verbal "thank you;" and you were not even ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the question of changes in the appearance of bright stars. It seems pretty certain that more than one per cent of these bodies fluctuate to a greater or less extent in their light. Observations of these fluctuations, in the case of at least the brighter stars, may be carried on without any instrument more expensive than a good opera-glass—in ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... public opinion and of the influence of high reputation, on the 13th of June (1780) appointed General Gates to command it. He had acquired a splendid name by his triumphs over Burgoyne, and the populace, whose opinions are formed by appearances and fluctuate with the rumors of the day, anticipated a success ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... estate of the Church with the mass of private property, of which the state is not the proprietor, either for use or dominion, but the guardian only and the regulator. They have ordained that the provision of this establishment might be as stable as the earth on which it stands, and should not fluctuate with the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... whiteness,—and asleep again! but now It was a woman, robed, and with a face Lovely and dim. And Gladys while she gazed Murmured, "O terrible! I am afraid To breathe among these intermittent lives, That fluctuate in mystic solitude, And change and fade. Lo! where the goddess sits Dreaming on her dim throne; a crescent moon She wears upon her forehead. Ah! her frown Is mournful, and her slumber is not sweet. What dost thou hold, Isis, to thy cold breast? A baby god with finger on his lips, Asleep, and ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... metamorphosis into the clerical form. Rather a paradoxical specimen, if you observe him narrowly: a sort of cross between a sycophant and a psalmist, a poet whose imagination is alternately fired by the "Last Day" and by a creation of peers, who fluctuate between rhapsodic applause of King George and rhapsodic applause of Jehovah. After spending "a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets," after being a hanger-on of the profligate Duke of Wharton, after aiming ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... we shall rust in shade, or shine in strife, And fluctuate 'twixt blind hopes and blind despairs, And fancy that we put forth all our life, And never know how with the soul ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... to protect the prosperity of the prince and people. From these vague and indefinite expressions of piety, three suppositions may be deduced, of a different, but not of an incompatible nature. The mind of Constantine might fluctuate between the Pagan and the Christian religions. According to the loose and complying notions of Polytheism, he might acknowledge the God of the Christians as one of the many deities who compose the hierarchy of heaven. Or perhaps he might embrace the philosophic ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... third' as the proportion of reserve to liability at which the Bank should aim; but he does not say whether he regards a third as the minimum below which the reserve in the Banking Department should never be, or as a fair average, about which the reserve may fluctuate, sometimes being ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... inquietude; unrest; agitation &c. 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers[obs3]; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c. 111[obs3]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, shake, totter, tremble, vacillate, wamble[obs3], turn and turn about, ring the changes; sway to and fro, shift to and fro; change and change about; waffle, blow with the wind ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... explained physiologically as a brain-state of readiness for motor discharge; in the case of a visual stimulus, for instance, a state of readiness to carry out movements of adjustment to the object; in short, the motor path is open. Now attention, or vividness, is found to fluctuate periodically, so that in a series of objectively equal stimuli, certain ones, regularly recurring, would be more vividly sensed. This is exemplified in the well-known facts of the fluctuation of the threshold of sensation, ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... what to say to you about the subject which now interests me the most keenly of anything in this world, for, in truth, I hardly know what to think myself. Hope and fear fluctuate daily. The pain in her side and chest is better; the cough, the shortness of breath, the extreme emaciation continue. I have endured, however, such tortures of uncertainty on this subject that, at length, I could endure it no longer; and as her repugnance to seeing a medical man continues immutable,—as ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... surmounted, when the commander in chief had resolved on forcing the passage of the Sound, represented the enterprise as more practicable, and less hazardous, by the circuitous passage of the Great Belt. Though Lord Nelson's mind could not be thus induced to fluctuate, and was decidedly for the immediate passage of the Sound, when the Great Belt appeared to be preferred—"Let us, then, go by the Great Belt!" said the hero. Impatient for action, he was desirous of proceeding by any way which might soonest ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... will cause the engine speed to fluctuate through more or less regular periods from high to low speeds; the engine will seem to be mis-firing and there will be noticeable a strong odor, as well as, usually, a heavy black smoke ...
— Marvel Carbureter and Heat Control - As Used on Series 691 Nash Sixes Booklet S • Anonymous
... and unstable minds of men! How quickly our intentions fluctuate! All thoughts we lightly change, but mostly when These from some lover's quarrel take their date. But now, so wroth I saw that Saracen With woman, so outrageous in his hate, I weened not only he would ill assuage, But never more ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... the commencement of the season to fish for a stated price, or they might allow it to fluctuate from week to week?-They might do either; or they might agree to be settled with at the end of their six weeks' fishing, in a similar manner to what they do at the herring fishing, when they settle with the men immediately upon the ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... 'Thus I fluctuate between the peril of sensuous pleasure and the proof of wholesomeness, and am more inclined (though I would not offer an irrevocable judgement) to approve of the use of singing in the Church, that, by the pleasure of the ear, weaker ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... able, active, and zealous partisan of those changes with which the country was at present threatened. The principles of the noble earl were principles by which any man might safely abide; the principles of Mr. Canning fluctuate daily, and depend upon transitory reasons of temporary expediency. These are the conscientious reasons of my resignation." As for the absurd calumny, that he had threatened the king with his resignation unless he was made prime minister, the duke said it hardly deserved an answer. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... has an open economy with one of the world's highest incomes per capita outside the OECD nations. This wealth is based on oil and gas, and the fortunes of the economy fluctuate with the prices of those commodities. Since 1973, when petroleum prices shot up, the UAE has undergone a profound transformation from an impoverished region of small desert principalities to a modern state with a high standard of living. At present levels ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... complaints tried by me, last year, ending December, was one thousand nine hundred and thirty-two. The average number of apprentices in the district during that time was twelve thousand seven hundred. Offences, generally speaking, are not of any magnitude. They do not increase, but fluctuate according to the season of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... especially of Lettuce, and more refrigerating Herbs. Nor without Cause: For drinking liberally they were found to expell, and allay the Fumes and Vapors of the genial Compotation, the spirituous Liquor gently conciliating Sleep: Besides, that being of a crude nature, more dispos'd, and apt to fluctuate, corrupt, and disturb a surcharg'd Stomach; they thought convenient to begin with Sallets, and innovate the ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... equipped, as though two thousand million new consumers had been discovered in the moon. All at once the shaky speculators abroad, who must have money, begin to sell, below market price, of course, for their need is urgent; one sale is followed by others, prices fluctuate, speculators throw their goods upon the market in terror, the market is disordered, credit shaken, one house after another stops payments, bankruptcy follows bankruptcy, and the discovery is made that three times more goods are on hand or under way ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... standard products of evolutionary processes. These stars usually rise to maximum brilliancy in a few days: some of the most noted ones increased in brightness ten-thousand-fold in two or three days. All of them fluctuate in brightness irregularly, and usually in short periods of time. Several novae have become invisible to the naked eye at the end of a few weeks. With two or three exceptions, all have become invisible in moderate-sized telescopes, or have become very ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... praised, others have called this idea nonsense; although, if we are permitted to speak of the harmony of the tones of a cloud, why not of the harmony produced by the consenting lines of a countenance, where every grace melts into another, and the various features and expressions fluctuate into a fine whole? Whatever, whether it be the beauty of the human face, or the quiet lustre of statuary, or the mild glory of moonlight, gives the effects of music, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... years of age, complained of great tension and pain across the abdomen, and of loss of appetite; his urine, he thought, was less than usual, but the difference was so trifling he could speak with no certainty: his belly seemed to fluctuate. Among other things he tried the Foxglove leaves dried, twice a day; and, although it appeared to afford him relief, yet the effect was ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... to be kept within a certain limit. They are not to fluctuate, as they do in these books of yours. You must get rid of two or three women-servants. There are at least three too many. I am always seeing strange faces about upstairs. One might as well live in a ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... never could approve. All through the organic laws of the Nation and the States there are to be found restraints on numbers, as if the leading idea of the Constitution-makers of America were aversion to mere majorities, things that fluctuate from year to year,—almost from day to day,—and therefore are not to be trusted. We are stating the fact, and it does not concern our purpose to discuss the wisdom of what has here been done. How happened it, then, that our polity was so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various |
