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Invariable   Listen
noun
Invariable  n.  (Math.) An invariable quantity; a constant.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Invariable" Quotes from Famous Books



... was accustomed to these assaults and met them with weary dignity, at times expostulating: 'It is all very well for you, Aunt Julia, who have Uncle Tom and the girls; I have nobody, and all my friends are married.' But this brought upon her an invariable retort: 'Well, why don't you get married then? Franklin Winslow Kane asks nothing better.' This retort angered Althea, but she was too fond of Franklin Winslow Kane to reply that perhaps she, herself, did ask something better. So that it was as a convenience, and not ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... of which can be foreseen and relied upon, and a universe controlled by a self-determining deity, capable of modifying the action of these same forces. You may have one or the other, but it is sheer lunacy to imagine that you can have both. Either uniformity with invariable causation, or a world in which every scientific calculation must be prefaced with the "D.V." of a prayer meeting. And the Atheist, who accepts the principles of modern science, says, not merely that he is without a belief in god, but that he fails to see any necessity for his existence, ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... weary, His spirit startled by an event which vividly foreshadowed His own approaching violent death, and now this vigorous renewal of His old temptation, again He had recourse to His one unfailing habit of getting off alone to pray. Time alone to pray; more time to pray, was His one invariable offset to all difficulties, all temptations, and all needs. How much more there must have been in prayer as He understood and practiced it than many ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon

... I think, an inestimable privilege to claim the friendship of a man whose life and letters are a perpetual stimulus to action, an invariable provocative of thought. I have just had a letter from my friend, telling me that he is in despair of the stage. His play is a thing of the past, and he vows that he has done ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... unwise, with a view to a peaceful settlement.' Lord Aberdeen believed in the 'moderation' of a despot who took no pains to disguise his sovereign contempt for 'les chiens Turcs.' Lord Palmerston, on the other hand, made no secret of his opinion that it was the invariable policy of Russia to push forward her encroachment 'as fast and as far as the apathy or want of firmness' of other Governments would allow. He held that her plan was to 'stop and retire when she was met with decided resistance,' and then to wait until the next favourable opportunity ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... to have no breakfast at all?" asked Aunt Caroline, from behind the coffee-urn on the morning following the garden-party. It was an invariable custom of hers to pretend that her nephew was fully conversant with his ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... was not in the habit of seeing people here, or—as far as that's concerned—of considering any business matters whatever after he returned home in the evening; this was his invariable ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk

... should spread a little more quickly in one direction than in the other) and I scarcely doubted that there were in this crystal such an arrangement of equal and similar particles, because of its figure and of its angles with their determinate and invariable measure. Touching which particles, and their form and disposition, I shall, at the end of this Treatise, propound my conjectures and ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens

... foreseen, they would already have been there. A new creed, even a new machine, may confound the wisest of speculations. Man is, in relation to the science that would survey society, a creator. In short, that stability in the order of events, that invariable recurrence of the same linked series, on which science depends for its very existence, here, in some measure, fails us. In such degree, therefore, as humanity can be described as progressive, or developing itself, in such degree is it an untractable subject ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... full—that she had changed her mind, and that Mabel might get married as often as she pleased, if she would have cake like that every time,—a liberality of permission which Mabel listened to with her invariable waxen smile. ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge

... faithful servant is remonstrated with for having committed a crime, he not unfrequently accounts for the fact by saying, "Senor, my head was hot." When caught in the act on his first start on highway robbery or murder, his invariable excuse is that he is not a scoundrel himself, but that he was "invited" by a relation or ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... floating with the clouds. While she merely watched them, she thought they kept a level course, but to go with them was like riding on a swollen sea, and as she rose and fell in slow and splendid curves, she discovered differences of colour and quality in a medium which seemed invariable from below. She swooped downwards like a bird on steady wings and saw the moor lifting itself towards her until she anticipated a shock; she was carried upwards through a blue that strained to keep its colour, yet wearied into a pallor ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... continuity of the germ-plasm and the consequent non-heredity of acquired characters, while in perfect harmony with all the well-ascertained facts of heredity and development, adds greatly to the importance of natural selection as the one invariable and ever-present factor in all organic change, and that which can alone have produced the temporary fixity combined with the secular modification of species. While admitting, as Darwin always admitted, the co-operation of the fundamental laws of growth and variation, of correlation ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... he only knew the men by their heads, bald or crowned with locks, as the case might be. His colleagues were gathered together, awaiting him, and chatting in the salon, decorated in white and gold, the invariable salon of official apartments with the inevitable Sevres vases with deep-blue, light-green or buff color grounds, placed upon consoles or pedestals. The portfolios appeared stuffed or empty, limp or bursting with paper bundles, under the arms of their Excellencies. Suddenly a door ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... now it was a burden and a weariness to her. She would have liked to keep quiet and meditate on her happiness, to think of nothing else: and she could devise no other amusements for her guests than the invariable. visit to the fish preserves, to Ronsard's castle, and to the Orphanage. Her own pleasure was complete when her hand touched Paul's, as accident brought them together in the same boat or ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... washed after, as well as before, dinner; an invariable custom throughout the East, as among the Greeks, Romans, Hebrews, and others; and Herodotus speaks of a golden basin, belonging to Amasis, which was used by the King, and "the guests who were in the habit of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... are preserved, of course, with great fidelity throughout; but the admirable way in which each fresh character is conceived, the grotesque appropriateness of Robert's every successive attitude and gesticulation, and the variety of Bertrand's postures of invariable repose, the exquisite fitness of all the other characters, who act their little part and disappear from the scene, cannot be described on paper, or too highly lauded. The figures are very carelessly drawn; ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... letter was a ruse on the part of the "Receiver," and contained not a particle of truth. It was, however, quite enough for Sinan, who immediately called a council of war and imparted this alarming news to its members. The council, after the invariable fashion of such bodies, decided to take the safest and easiest course: the name of the terrible Andrea was one of evil omen to the Ottomans, and, as one man, they voted for prosecuting their voyage to Tripoli before the Genoese seaman should put in ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... which both Hygeia and Venus command? Here, again, invariable rules are not possible. Science rarely lays down laws so inflexible as those of the Medes and Persians. She designates limits. The passage between Scylla and Charybdis is often a wide one. The folly of the ancient statutes which have been referred to, consists mainly ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... theory it cannot; and therefore it is that I make a great distinction between the error of Adam Smith and of other later writers. He, though wrong, was consistent. That the value of labor is invariable, is a principle so utterly untenable, that many times Adam Smith abandoned it himself implicitly, though not explicitly. The demonstration of its variable value indeed follows naturally from the laws which govern wages; and, therefore, I will not here anticipate it. Meantime, having once adopted ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... the west, and the limit between Upper and Lower Mesopotamia on the north, formed the natural bounds, which were never greatly exceeded, and never much infringed upon. These boundaries are for the most part tolerably clear, though the northern only is invariable. Natural causes, hereafter to be mentioned more particularly, are perpetually varying the course of the Tigris, the shore of the Persian Gulf and the line of demarcation between the sands of Arabia and ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... answered, "when you learn the nature of our powers. Hundreds among millions, we are no match for the fighting force of our unbelieving countrymen. Our safety lies in the terror inspired by a tradition, verified by repeated and invariable experience, that no one who injures one of us but has reason to rue it, that no mortal enemy of the Star has ever escaped signal punishment, more terrible for the mystery attending it. Were we known, were our organisation avowed, we might be hunted down ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... driven away from their noxious haunts. Some found a congenial haven in the State prison, a few reformed, and many died in want. The plague being temporarily stayed, and popular indignation a matter of record, New York, as is its invariable custom, permitted its vigilance to go quietly to sleep, with a fair prospect of it being rudely awakened to find history repeating itself. That this awakening cannot safely be much longer deferred, it is partly ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... ft. square, surmounted by a lofty pyramidal roof, and the kitchen court; to the west, the butteries, pantries, &c. The infirmary had a small kitchen of its own. Opposite the refectory door in the cloister are two lavatories, an invariable adjunct to a monastic dining-hall, at which the monks washed before and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of our Wool. Indeed there appears no reason to fear but that the Wool of this Country may by care and judicious Management be placed on an equality with the very best that is grown in Spain. It has been Mr. MacArthur's invariable practice to keep the Spanish Breed apart from all others, and as fast as Spanish Rams have been reared they have been put among the coarse-woolled Ewes. The result of this system has proved extremely satisfactory, his Flocks now consist of more than Five ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... seaside for a week. I have the honor to inform you that from about the fourth to the tenth of March there is always a week of fine weather, which takes everybody by surprise, except me. It does not astonish me, because I observe it is invariable. Now, what would you say if I gave you a week at Herne Bay, to set you ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... models for discourses of like character. Canon Farrar says that there was not one sermon ever preached by Dean Stanley which did not contain at least some one bright, and fresh, and rememberable thing. His metaphors, his anecdotes, the invariable felicity of his diction, his historical, literary and biographical illustrations, his invincible habit of taking men at their best and looking out for the good in everything, the large catholicity which rose above ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... no sympathy, no kindliness. If you are kind to them, they think you are a fool. If you are gentle with them they think you are afraid. And when they think you are afraid, watch out, for they will get you. Just to show you, let me state the one invariable process in a black man's brain when, on his native heath, he encounters a stranger. His first thought is one of fear. Will the stranger kill him? His next thought, seeing that he is not killed, is: Can he ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... incapable of being sensibly magnified, even with the highest powers. True, there was a great variety of apparent brightness in these objects and a singular diversity of configuration, but there was no exception to the invariable feature referred to. The point of light was constant, and no striking exception was anticipated until one night—March 13, 1781—Herschel being intently engaged in the examination of some small stars ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... the order of S. Gregory himself, concluded this part of the service, which came to be known as the Canon, the invariable part of the Mass. In the Roman rite the kiss of peace followed, the faithful kissing each other according to the ancient custom. Then the priest broke the bread, and said the Lord's Prayer alone ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton

... pioneers, and this alone, without his sagacity or his generalship, would have given him control of many tribes. But hatred for his own people, coupled with unerring judgment, a remarkable ability to lead expeditions, and his invariable success, had raised him higher and higher until he stood alone. He was the most powerful man west of the Alleghenies. His fame was such that the British had importuned him to help them, and had actually, in more than one instance, given him ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... In accordance with his invariable good luck,—scarcely has he started this little shack than the bridge upon the highway burns down and the obscure country road becomes a thoroughway for automobiles. Pee-wee reaps a large profit from his business during the balance ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... of Hume and of Comte are the metaphysical theories of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Intuitions were regarded by Mill as the impression produced by a frequent conjunction of like experiences, and thus to be the product of sensation. Causation was resolved into the invariable association of phenomena, by which an expectation is created that seems instinctive. Another writer of the same general tendency, who seeks for the explanation of knowledge in the materials furnished ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... for all who enter it are taught in one way and trained to the same employment. Several non-caste nations have still continued to progress. But all caste nations have stopped early, though some have lasted long. Each colour in the singular composite of these tesselated societies has an indelible and invariable shade. ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... science just as is any recognized physical science—astronomy, chemistry, physiology. The economic "facts we find existing are the results of causes, between which and them the connection is constant and invariable. It is, then, the constant relations exhibited in economic phenomena that we have in view when we speak of the laws of the phenomena of wealth; and in the exposition of these laws consists the science of political economy." It is to be remembered ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... a wonderful voice, used with discretion, with a fine instinct for moderation which would have kept the haunting beauty of its intonations from seeming objectionable or florid to any but American ears. In spite of the invariable good taste with which it was used, American men, accustomed to the toneless speech of the race, and jealously suspicious of anything approaching art in everyday life, distrusted Morrison at the first ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... how, so as to be mildly portable, and then proceeded to steer Modestine through the village. She tried, as was indeed her invariable habit, to enter every house and every courtyard in the whole length, and, encumbered as I was, without a hand to help myself, no words can render an idea of my difficulties. A priest, with six ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... it would be a strange departure from Burchard's invariable rule, which is one of cold, relentless, uncritical chronicling of events, no matter what their nature. Besides, any significance with which that lacuna might be invested is discounted by the fact that such gaps are of fairly common occurrence in the course of Burchard's record. Finally it ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... personage, flushed in the face, with a moth-eaten grey beard and shifty grey eyes, clothed in a flannel shirt, tweed knickerbockers, brown stockings, white spats and shoes. Such was the Commissioner's invariable get-up, save that in winter he wore a cap instead of a panama. He was smoking a briar pipe and looking blatantly British, as if he had just spent an unwashed night in a third-class carriage between King's Cross and Aberdeen. The magistrate, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... seems also advisable to have the artillery not in reserve distributed at equal intervals in batteries along the whole line, since it is important to repel the enemy at all points. This must not, however, be regarded as an invariable rule; for the character of the position and the designs of the enemy may oblige the mass of the artillery to move to a wing ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... face first turned pale blue, and then assumed a deep violet tint; but he restrained himself, and said, as was his invariable custom: ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland

... superior to many brand new ones. The two domestic establishments were a few minutes away from the shops, facing each other diagonally across the square. They were small, three-roomed houses, without basements, the ground floor window in each being filled up with a black gauze blind (an invariable index of gentility) which allowed the occupants to see all that was passing outside, but confronted gazers with their own rejections. Passers-by postured at these mirrors, twisting moustaches perkily, or giving coquettish pats to bonnets, unwitting of the grinning inhabitants. Most of the doors ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... of the house had to stay in their studies and make some pretence of work, he would wander indolently down the passage and pay calls. When he paused outside a study he heard the invariable sound of a novel flying into the waste-paper basket, of a paper being shoved under the table, or a cake being relegated to the ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... tell just as many as you please at mine. You see I have always gone with such a blind rush that I never had time to see the ridiculous, and blessed for me and my work and my happiness that I did not." Another invariable habit was never to notice complaints written to her. She always answered the business points but entirely ignored complainings, charges against other people ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... and down the streets, going into scores of buildings and asking if they wanted "a hand;" but "no" was the invariable reply. His quaint appearance led many to think he was an escaped apprentice. One Sunday at his boarding-place he heard that printers were wanted at "West's Printing-office." He was at the door at five o'clock Monday morning, and asked the foreman for a ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... of life, and on the invariable ultimate triumph of the insignificant and small over the important and vast, illustrated in this instance by the easy substitution in the arbour of slugs for grandfathers, I went slowly round the next bend of ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp

... careless son happened to break a pane of glass? If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact, that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation—"It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... spite of such amazing obstacles, and which is still proceeding in the midst of the ruins it has made. It is not necessary that God himself should speak in order to disclose to us the unquestionable signs of His will; we can discern them in the habitual course of nature, and in the invariable tendency of events: I know, without a special revelation, that the planets move in the orbits traced by the Creator's finger. If the men of our time were led by attentive observation and by sincere reflection to acknowledge ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... they were—only one cloud worth mention in the blue; only one phrase in a minor key. The old familiar figure of "the Major"—intermittent, certainly, but none the less invariable; making the house his own, or letting it appropriate him, hard to say which—was no longer to be seen; but the old sword had been hung in a place of honour near a portrait of Paul Nightingale, Mrs. Fenwick's ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... unprepared for any farming operations, having neither agricultural tools nor seed. Neither if they had them could they wait for the slow advent of the harvest. Famine commenced its reign, and with famine, its invariable attendant, pestilence. In less than six months, of all the glittering hosts, which with music and banners had landed upon the isthmus, expecting soon to return to Europe with their ships freighted with gold, but a few hundred were ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... in which a Roman Catholic clergyman and a Jewish doctor were embroiled. The dramatist is fair, he holds the scales evenly. At the end of the piece both priest and surgeon stand alike in your regard. That the incident hardly suggests dramatic treatment is beside the mark; Schnitzler, with his invariable deftness of touch, has painted a dozen vital portraits; the priest is superb, the character values of exquisite balance. The hero, if hero he be, Professor Bernhardi, is carved out of a single block ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... Such rights are, therefore, certain at some time or other to be disputed, if there is any maintainable ground for contesting them; and for these reasons, when negotiators have intended to grant exclusive grants, it has been their invariable practice to convey such rights in direct, unqualified, and comprehensive terms, so as to prevent the possibility of future dispute or doubt. In the present case, however, such forms of expression are ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... present Catholicism is, comparatively speaking, weak in America, and the objects of that church is, to become strong; they do not, therefore, frighten or alarm their converts by any present show of the invariable results; but are content to bide their time, until they shall find themselves strong enough to exert their power with triumphant success. The Protestant cause in America is weak, from the evil effects of the voluntary system, particularly ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... seeds, the calyx remaining entire. Hence? the induration of the calyx should be the most permanent if it is the cause, but to obviate all doubts, both calyx, fructus induratus, and capsula circumscissa, should enter into the generic character; the unilaterality of capsules, and their invariable tendency to look downwards, or rather the inferior unilaterality, may likewise reasonably be considered connected with the same structure of calyx, as well as the ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... breathless companies, thanked God for a check, and tightened their girths and took courage. The latter would undoubtedly be needed if the run continued; Drumkeen Wood was hung like a cloak upon the side of a steep hill, and was the invariable prelude to the worst going within the bounds of ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... by various institutions and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the sprightliness of infancy to the despondence of decrepitude. He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age and country; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths, which will always be the same. He must, therefore, content himself with the slow progress of his name, contemn the ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson

... a few moments, and then deliberately enter an omnibus bound for the lower part of the city. Such an occurrence created quite a sensation among street-corner gossippers. There must really be some new and pressing emergency, which could produce this departure from the custom and invariable habits of forty years; so said every one who knew the old gentleman. The omnibus stopped at the court-house; the subject of these observations and his blue umbrella emerged from it, and both soon disappeared in the corridor leading to the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... mind or purpose, or even judgment, implying disapproval and abandonment of past opinions and purposes, and the adoption of others which are different." B. H. Carroll, President Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary: "We may therefore give as the one invariable definition of New Testament repentance that it is a change of mind." B. H. Carroll, again, "Repentance is a change of mind toward God concerning a course of sin leading rapidly down to death and eternal ruin." Once more from B. H. Carroll: "If in one moment the soul is contrite enough to turn ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin

... Father Mathias had had several conferences with the Inquisitor. Although in his wrath he had accused Amine, and had procured the necessary witnesses against her, he now felt uneasy and perplexed. His long residence with her—her invariable kindness till the time of his dismissal—his knowledge that she had never embraced the faith—her boldness and courage—nay, her beauty and youth—all worked strongly in her favour. His only object now was to persuade her to confess that she was wrong, induce her to embrace ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... any other family than the Epanchins', nothing particular would have happened. But, thanks to Mrs. Epanchin's invariable fussiness and anxiety, there could not be the slightest hitch in the simplest matters of everyday life, but she immediately foresaw the most dreadful and alarming consequences, and ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... hereditary diseases, it is eminently true that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." As a general and almost invariable rule, animals possessing either defects or a tendency to disease should not be employed for breeding. If, however, for special reasons it seems desirable to breed from one which has some slight defect of symmetry, or a faint tendency ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale

... dairymaid,' I replied, always tossing up my chin at that. My father had concocted the questions and prepared me for the responses, but the effect was striking, both upon his visitors and the landlady's. Gradually my ear grew accustomed to her invariable whisper on these occasions. 'Blood Rile,' she said; and her friends all said 'No!' like the run of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... somewhat grave Harriet Field had first made her appearance in the family. Ward was so much a child in those days that Harriet used to go with him to pick out suits and shirts, and to buy matinee seats for him and his school friends, and they laughed now to remember his favourite and invariable luncheon order of potato salad and French pastries. Nina had had a nurse then, and Harriet practised French with both the boy and girl, but now the nurse was gone, and Ward could buy his own clothes, and Nina ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... professor persisted in inviting him to take dinner, or stay to tea, or sit on the balcony in the evening, or go on a picnic into the woods. Why couldn't the old gentleman divine the cause of his invariable and unhesitating refusals? Leaving other considerations out of the question, would such things be likely to increase his knowledge of theology, or further the lofty schemes of his ambition? He would be glad when that daughter left the house! What was it about her that had so disturbed and beclouded ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... invariable greeting between husband and wife. Tims went up behind her, gripped her elbows to her side, and kissed ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins

... much spice in that bowl; that's an invariable error in your devisers of drink, to suppose that the tipple you start with can please your palate to the last; they forget that as we advance, either in years ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... represented T'swan-chau, the Chinese name of the city of Zayton, or rather of the department attached to it, written by the French Thsiuan-tcheou, but by Medhurst Chwanchew, were it not that Polo's practice of writing the term tcheu or chau by giu is so nearly invariable, and that the soft ch is almost always expressed in the old texts by the Italian ci (though the Venetian does use the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... for this dance of the minuet having become general, is the possibility of dancing it to so many different airs, though the steps are invariable. If one tune does not please a performer, he may call for another; ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... said, the combination was a sight fit to make a horse laugh. It may be that small boys have a lesser sense of humor than horses have, for certainly the boys who were the old man's invariable shadows did not laugh at him, or at his boots either. Between the whiskered senior and his small comrades there existed a freemasonry that made them all sense a thing beyond the ken of most of their elders. Perhaps ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... must be repudiated by every one who possesses an adequate acquaintance with either the facts, or the philosophy, of science, and be relegated to the limbo of pseudo-scientific fallacies. If the human mind has never entertained this notion of "force," nay, if it substituted bare invariable succession for the ordinary notion of causation, the idea of law, as the expression of a constantly-observed order, which generates a corresponding intensity of expectation in our minds, would have exactly the same value, and play its part in real science, ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... very solicitous about the baby, but to hear of nothing else worried him. He was glad when old Lady Randolph, who was an invariable ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... necessary to regulate the quantity of sugar which enters into the composition. It is not invariable and a matter of course, but varies in proportion to the aroma of the bean and ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin

... The invariable result of an attack thus attempted, however vigorously made, was that the van of the assailant got into action first, receiving the brunt of the enemy's fire without proper support. Not infrequently, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... the trousers are generally of white calico, with a slit on the sides from the knee down. A calico shirt is worn. The stockings are of blue wool, without feet. Moccasins, with a sole of thick rawhide and uppers of dressed buckskin, are worn. The invariable silk handkerchief, or red bandana "bands" surrounds the hair, which is cut long, generally long enough ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... hugging a bar, and for not hugging it; for 'pulling down' when not invited, and for not pulling down when not invited; for firing up without orders, and for waiting FOR orders. In a word, it was his invariable rule to find fault with EVERYTHING you did; and another invariable rule of his was to throw all his remarks (to you) into the form of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... that night she held a communion with herself. So everybody believed it, did they? And she, in spite of her invariable reticence, was being gossiped about, was she? "I've a good mind never to set foot in the academy ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... strengthen his physique to endure its brain-burden, I heard with pleasure the account of one who had passed much of his youth beneath his roof, and who, however enthusiastic, was, in the very framing of his nature, strictly truthful with regard to the mutual devotion of the master and slaves, the invariable courtesy and sweetness of his deportment to his own family, his justice and regard for the feelings of his lowest dependant, his simplicity, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... resolution, the production of plants and of living bodies, their generation, growth, and their dissolution, which we call their death, we observe a regular sequence of phenomena, which within the limits of experience present and past, so far as we know the past, is fixed and invariable. But if this is not so, if the order and sequence of phenomena, as known to us, are subject to change in the course of an infinite progression,—and such change is conceivable,—we have not discovered, nor shall we ever discover, the whole of the order and sequence of phenomena, ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

... breathless with so much rushing about, Tim would coolly throw over any engagement that chanced to have been made and carry her off for a day up the river, where a quiet little lunch, in the tranquil shade of overhanging trees, and the cosy, intimate talk that was its invariable concomitant, seemed like an oasis of familiar, homely pleasantness in the midst of the gay turmoil ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... ourselves, with children to keep filled, covered, and taught,—rents high,—beef eighteen to twenty cents per pound,)—after this first squeak of selfishness, followed by a brief movement of curiosity, so invariable in mature females, as to the nature of the complaint which threatens the life of a friend or any person who may happen to be mentioned as ill,—the worthy soul's better feelings struggled up to the surface, and she grieved for the doomed invalid, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... have fixed habits. If you know those habits, you can predict just what they will do at any time. Our particular Scientist is a daytime creature—that is to say, he comes at dawn and goes at dusk. His invariable habit, my boy!" ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd

... ways in which this unhappy result is brought about. In the first place, there is the invariable custom of giving young children toys which, far from stimulating the imagination, only serve to impress upon their minds the commonplace facts of everyday life. It is really, only in a different form, a part of the process by ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... order of importance among the Chinese shopkeepers, come the coffin makers, and they are very important men indeed, in a country where the worship of ancestors is carried to a degree unknown elsewhere in the world. Their coffins are of all sizes and degrees of finish, but of one invariable shape. Some of those seen in Shanghai cost as much as one thousand taels, equal to $1,500 in American gold. They are extremely massive, more like miniature junks than the shape we are accustomed to associate with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... except to the horse that carried him out of fire at Molwitz. That humiliation taught Frederk to remodel and increase his cavalry, and he afterwards owed to it much of his success. Nobody again advised him to ride out of the way of danger. He was soon known to an invariable victor, and Maria Theresa ended the war by surrendering the contested province. Frederic concluded a treaty of alliance with France, which was to last fifteen years, and did last until, in 1756, Kaunitz effected the great change in the attitude of European Powers. On the extinction of the Habsburg ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... the Arabian deserts, as the pleasure of enjoying every morning the sublime spectacle of the break of day and of the rising of the sun, which is always accompanied, even in the hottest season, with a refreshing breeze. It was an invariable custom with me, at setting out early in the morning, to walk on foot for a few hours in advance of the caravan; and as enjoyments are comparative, I believe that I derived from this practice greater pleasure than any which the arts of the most luxurious capitals can afford. At two ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... garrulous man. He was much more given to reflection than to talk, and he was never known to speak boastfully of any of his achievements. It is the invariable testimony of all who knew him, that he was mild, gentle and unassuming, one of Nature's noblemen. While travelling he scarcely ever spoke. Nothing escaped his keen eye. His whole appearance was that of a man deeply ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... have entirely different meanings, representing totally different things or ideas. De is one. In French this word, pronounced der, without dwelling on the last letter, is a preposition generally meaning "of." Before a name, without being incorporated with it, it is an invariable sign of nobility, being even frequently affixed, like the German von, to the family name, on attaining that rank. In Flemish it is an article, and is pronounced precisely as a Dutchman is apt to pronounced the, meaning the same. Thus De Witt, means the White, or White; the Flemings ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... one of the largest telescopes in the world; and even if there are no races going on, the Flemington Racecourse is a 'lion' of the largest dimensions. There are four theatres, only one of which is well-fitted up. The visitor will notice that drinking bars are invariable and very disagreeable accompaniments of every theatre. One bar is generally just opposite the entrance to the dress circle, an arrangement which ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... gastric juices had begun to take effect; the fish, in fact, must have died immediately after swallowing the toad. The country people in South America believe that the milky secretion exuded by the toad possesses wonderful curative properties; it is their invariable specific for shingles—a painful, dangerous malady common amongst them, and to cure it living toads are applied to the inflamed parb. I dare say learned physicians would laugh at this cure, but then, if I mistake not, the learned have ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... elder of these was declared the son and successor of Hadrian, on condition, however, that he himself should immediately adopt the younger. The two Antonines (for it is of them that we are now peaking,) governed the Roman world forty-two years, with the same invariable spirit of wisdom and virtue. Although Pius had two sons, [42] he preferred the welfare of Rome to the interest of his family, gave his daughter Faustina, in marriage to young Marcus, obtained from the senate the tribunitian and proconsular ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... Lyons in the evening of the third day after we left Moulins. We remained there two days, and employed nearly the whole of the time in walks over the city and environs. I adopted this practice as the invariable rule on the whole course of my tour—to have certain points where we might repose, and thence take a view both of the place itself, and a retrospect of what we ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... drills together on the top of one drill, with the tops all one way and the roots another; but it is better that parties should follow the carts and pull the turnips from the drills, and throw them into the carts at once. It is an invariable rule with me that the turnips are filled by hand in wet weather. Advantage should be taken of fine weather to secure a good stock of turnips, and a good manager will always provide for a rainy day. A very considerable proportion of turnips should be stored, to wait the severe winters very ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie

... 2. A constant and invariable example of this general partiality will be found in the different regard which has always been shewn to rashness and cowardice; two vices, of which, though they maybe conceived equally distant from the middle point, where ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... the immensity of the Atlantic, but the other, which passes into the Irish sea, rejoins, and feeds the inhabitants of most of the coasts that border on it. The brigades, as we call them, which are separated from the greater columns, are often capricious in their motions, and do not show an invariable attachment to their haunts." ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley

... other is the greater or less solidarity between the cause and the effect. In the first, the quantity and quality of the effect vary with the quantity and quality of the cause. In the second, neither quality nor quantity of the effect varies with quality and quantity of the cause: the effect is invariable. In the third, the quantity of the effect depends on the quantity of the cause, but the cause does not influence the quality of the effect: the longer the cylinder turns by the action of the spring, the ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... sky-line they pass into a wonderful tone of violet, which grows bluer and bluer until it melts into the pure indigo of the extreme distance. And all this is empty, silent, and dead. It is the splendour of an invariable region, from which is absent the ephemeral beauty of forest, verdure, or herbage; the splendour of eternal matter, affranchised from all the instability of life; the geological splendour of the world before ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... response to his menacing demands. He had always assumed that boys who were well dressed had fruit or candy in their pockets. He had sometimes required them to verify their denials by an exhibition of the interior of these receptacles. His invariable demand had become a habit with him. Therefore the little sugared black brick which now hit him in the eye came as an unprecedented surprise. For a moment he did not know whether to construe it as a propitiatory ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... some. But to Joe's view, essentially European by nature and education, it seemed as though her aunt, like many Bostonians, judged everything— literature, music, art of all kinds, history and the doings of great men— by one invariable standard. Her comments on what she heard and read were uniformly delivered from the same point of view, in the same tone of practical judgment, and with the same assumption of original superiority. ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... well Zem-zem, as generations of people and horses which have drunk of it would testify, if they could come back. And if they could file along this road again, what a procession there would be riding down the valley!—antiquated vehicles, rusty wagons adorned with the invariable buffalo-robe even in the hottest days, lean and long-favored horses, frisky colts, drawing, generation after generation, the sober and pious saints, that passed this way to meeting ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... best he could, to sleep again. John now read for an hour or two; but when he thought his friend had slept long enough, he took up his fiddle, safely kept among the books, and began playing a merry gypsy tune. This had the invariable effect of bringing Mr. Edward Drury, passionately fond of music, down to his books and his friend, and, coffee having been prepared, the long day of talking, reading, and fiddling set in ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... exceptional or idiosyncratic. Again, the two cases that I had witnessed coincided in characteristics; but could this coincidence be accidental? It might still be asked, 'Were the phenomena displayed uncertain, mutable, such as might never occur again; or were they orderly, invariable, the growth of fixed causes, which, being present, implied their presence also?' In fine, was mesmeric sleep-waking not only a state, but entitled to rank as a distinct state, clearly and permanently characterized; and, as such, set apart from all other abnormal conditions of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... were when we explained that we were reformers and not fortune tellers. I have been a great lover of card games all my life; patience in solitude, and cribbage, whist, and bridge have been the almost invariable accompaniments of my evenings spent at home or with my friends. Reading and knitting were often indulged in, but patience was a change and a rest and relief to the mind. I have always had the idea that card games are an excellent incentive to the memory. We had an afternoon meeting ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... Finsbury. Her mind became affected at her brother's disgraceful death, and every day after, at noon, she used to cross the Rotunda to the pay-counter. Her one unvarying question was, "Is my brother, Mr. Frederick, here to-day?" The invariable answer was, "No, miss, not to-day." She seldom remained above five minutes, and her last words always were, "Give my love to him when he returns. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... overlook the influence upon Lincoln's style of the parables of Jesus and the fables of AEsop. There are two invariable signs of genius in a boy,—one is the serious note, and the other is the picture-making note. All the great things represent serious thinking. The greatest artist of the last century was the most serious one,—Watt, with his Love and ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... thoroughbred, hereditary, inherited, immanent; congenital, congenite|; connate, running in the blood; ingenerate[obs3], ingenite|; indigenous; in the grain &c. n.; bred in the bone, instinctive; inward, internal &c. 221; to the manner born; virtual. characteristic &c. (special) 79, (indicative) 550; invariable, incurable, incorrigible, ineradicable, fixed. Adv. intrinsically &c. adj.; at bottom, in the main, in effect, practically, virtually, substantially, au fond; fairly. Phr. " character is higher than intellect " [Emerson]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... fortunately I found a man of whom I inquired if I was in "Carson Flat." "Carson Flat? Well, I should say not! You're 'way off!" "How much?" I asked feebly. "Oh, several miles." This in a tone that implied that though I was in a bad fix, it might possibly be worse. However, with the invariable kindness of these people, he put me on a trail which, winding up to the summit of a ridge, struck down into Carson Flat and joined the main road. And there I registered a vow: "The hard highway for me!" As a consequence of this deviation, I materially lengthened the distance to Angel's. ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley

... she had forgotten them in the pleasure of instructing her poor people. When the destruction of the monastery had reduced the inmates to utter destitution, her parents employed every argument to induce her to return to France. The Mothers at Tours joined in the request, but her invariable answer was, that she would rather share the coarse, scanty fare of the savages to the end of her life, or even die a thousand deaths, if that could be, than prove herself thus unfaithful to her vocation and ungenerous ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... And with this extra susceptibility to pain they have to expose to the risk of wounds and bruises the most sensitive parts of their natures. Suffering is therefore inevitably their lot. It is the invariable attendant of progress however beneficent. Excruciating pain each expects to have to endure—as every expectant mother and every soldier anticipates ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... diffidence and despondency. On a final review of his own generous labours, he is supposed to have questioned the very existence of Virtue, though he had made it the idol of his life; a striking proof, that the temperate and invariable energy of soul, which alone perhaps deserves the name of true Courage, can only proceed from a fuller knowledge and love of GOD; from the animating assurance, that, however we may prosper or fail in the earthly success of our ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley

... consists of food and drink of which the god who is addressed is invited to come and partake, or which are conveyed to the gods seated on their heavenly thrones, by means of fire. Soma, the intoxicating juice of the soma plant, is an invariable feature of the banquets in these hymns; the solid part consists of butter, milk, rice or cakes; but animals were also killed, and the horse-sacrifice was a specially important one. The hymn also is an essential part of the rite; the sacrifice would have no virtue without it. It consists ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... and picturesque but wanton worship they were reminded frequently both by relic and place name. To Palmer, viewing them in the light of the past, the Cedars of Lebanon were a poem, but to Burton—a curious mixture of the romantic and the prosaic—with his invariable habit of underrating famous objects, they were "a wretched collection of scraggy Christmas trees." "I thought," said Burton, "when I came here that Syria and Palestine would be so worn out that my occupation as an explorer was clean gone." He found, however, that ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... begins with sheer eulogy. Eulogy is nice, but one does not learn anything from it. Had dear Charles Reade stopped after writing "womanly grace, subtlety, delicacy, the variety yet invariable truthfulness of the facial expression, compared with which the faces beside yours are wooden, uniform dolls," he would have done nothing to advance me in my art; but this was only the jam in which I ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... a grin worn awry, "can you cook, Eleanor? Can you roast a steak, and saute baked beans, and stew sausages, and fry out a breakfast muffin? Does she look like a cook to you?" he suddenly demanded of the waitress, who was serving him, with an apologetic eye on the menu, the invariable toast-coffee-and-three-minute-egg breakfast that he had eaten every morning since ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... first place its mass, and the other constants which define its properties, are absolutely invariable; the individual molecule can neither grow nor decay, but remains unchanged amid all the changes of the bodies of which ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell

... very different from the smart green and white craft of the "Company," was crookedly painted the name Loseis. Making her fast, the breeds, with furtive stares at Garth, threw themselves on the ground like tired dogs. It was not long, however, before a "stick-kettle," the invariable tom-tom, was produced, the ear-splitting chant raised, and a game of met-o-wan, a sort of Cree equivalent for Billy-Billy-who's-got-the-button, started ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... had undergone so subtle a change when sung at the top of Mr. James Finnegan's voice that while the original warp and woof of those very popular melodies were entirely unrecognizable to any but the persons interested, to them they were as gall and wormwood. This was Cully's invariable way of expressing his opinions on current affairs. He would sit on the front-board of his cart,—the Big Gray stumbling over the stones as he walked, the reins lying loose,—and fill the air with details of events passing in the village, with all the gusto of a variety ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith

... here, a rock just below the brow of the hill there, that tree yonder near the corner of the woods, or the end of that stone wall looking down the side-hill, or commanding a cow-path, or the outlet of a wood-road. A half-wild apple orchard near a cross-road was pointed out as an invariable run-way, where the fox turned toward the mountain again, after having been driven down the ridge. There appeared to be no reason why the foxes should habitually pass any particular point, yet the hunters told me that year after year they took about the same turns, each ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... affairs of the Government are now and have been during the whole period of these wide-spreading difficulties conducted with a strict and invariable regard to this great fundamental principle, and that by the assumption and maintenance of the stand thus taken on the very threshold of the approaching crisis more than by any other cause or causes whatever the community at large has been shielded from the incalculable ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... sooner to impress them with the conviction to which G——, in fact, did finally arrive—the conviction that the letter was not upon the premises. I felt, also, that the whole train of thought, which I was at some pains in detailing to you just now, concerning the invariable principle of political action in searches for articles concealed—I felt that this whole train of thought would necessarily pass through the mind of the Minister. It would imperatively lead him to despise all the ordinary nooks of concealment. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... I venture to think that the latter plan does not always ensure to us a good master. I believe it was by election that we Greeks have given to ourselves a generalissimo, not contented, it is said, to prove the invariable wisdom of that mode of government; wherefore this seems an occasion to revive the good custom of tyranny. And I propose to do so in my person by proclaiming myself Symposiarch and absolute commander in the Commonwealth here assembled. But if ye prefer the chance ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... massive silver plate and inexpensive glass and china. The servants handed round the first hot dish, placed a cold uncut sirloin of beef in front of the Squire and vegetable dishes on the sideboard, and then left the room. After that it was every one help yourself. This was the invariable arrangement of luncheon on Sundays, and allowing for the difference of the seasons the viands were always the same. If anybody staying in the house liked to turn up their noses at such Sunday fare—one hot entree, cold beef, fruit tarts and milk puddings, a ripe cheese and a good bottle ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall



Words linked to "Invariable" :   parameter, strict, quantity, constant quantity, invariableness, parametric quantity, hard-and-fast, invariant, unvarying, consistent



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