"Symmetry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the line, every officer at his post. The guns went rattling, bounding by, accurately maintaining their prescribed distances, each accompanied by its caisson, men and horses, beautiful in the perfect symmetry of its arrangement; and in the 5th battery Maurice recognized his cousin Honore. A very smart and soldierly appearance the quartermaster-sergeant presented on horseback in his position on the left hand of the forward driver, a good-looking ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... had been convicted and how many acquitted, how large or how small had been the batch of the guillotine since the previous night. Across the breadth of the gardens, beyond their trees and fountains, stood the Monster itself, with its cruel symmetry, its colour as of the blood of the dead, its unheeding ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... employment for her future. There was something, of course, that might have stopped me: you know, you know what I mean—it looks at me," she veritably moaned, "out of your face! But all I can say is that it didn't; the reason largely being—once I had fallen in love with the beautiful symmetry of my plan—that I seemed to feel sure Maggie would accept Charlotte, whereas I didn't quite make out either what other woman, or what other KIND of woman, one could think of ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... smiles upon the earth,—all this is education of a higher and altogether more real kind than it is possible to receive within the walls of a school; and lacking this, nothing shall have power to develop the faculties of the soul in symmetry and completeness. Hence a philosopher has said there are ten thousand chances to one that genius, talent, and virtue shall issue from a farmhouse rather than from a palace. The daily intercourse with Nature in childhood and youth intertwines with noble and enduring ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... out wildly in his head, his teeth showed like the teeth of a snarling puma and a foamy lather slithered from his mouth down on to his huge, hairy, muscle-heaving chest. He stood over six feet—a man of gigantic proportions, with every inch of him tuned and in perfect symmetry. ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... prepared in exactly the same manner; and the second trestle is a duplicate of the first, with the exception that the directions of the struts are reversed relatively to the C piece, to preserve the symmetry—which, however, is not an ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... on the other side of the room opened and some one entered. At first I did not look round, but hearing the new-comer approaching me I turned, to find myself, to my horrified surprise, face to face with Dr. Nikola. He was dressed entirely in black, his coat was buttoned and displayed all the symmetry of his peculiar figure, while his hair seemed blacker and his complexion even paler than before. He had evidently been prepared for my visit, for he held out his hand and greeted me without a sign of ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... some axis and often with respect to several. They go across from pole to pole, sometimes bent out of their course by the armature core, but still symmetrical. The presence of a mass of iron in the space between the pole pieces concentrates the lines of force, but does not destroy the symmetry of the field. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... JESSIMINA MANKLETOW, and already may have concluded that I was long since up to the hilt in the tender passion. In this deduction, however, they would have manufactured a stentorian cry from an extreme paucity of wool; the actual fact being that, although percipient of the well-proportionate symmetry of her person and the ladylike liveliness of her deportment, I did never regard her except with eyes of strictly platonic ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... brought home to us that we are going down-hill. Lately I sat at dinner opposite an old lady who had the remains of striking beauty. I remember how much she interested me. Her hair was false, her teeth were false, her complexion was shrivelled, her form had lost the round symmetry of earlier years, and was angular and stiff; yet how cheerful and lively she was! She had gone far down-hill physically; but either she did not feel her decadence, or she had grown quite reconciled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... later, coming early one morning into Singapore, from a journey to the southward, I saw the brig lying at anchor in all her usual symmetry and splendour of aspect as though she had been taken out of a glass case and put delicately into ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... a little difficult for an outsider to appreciate the perfect order, perhaps I might say symmetry, of the Civil Service;" and Mr. Perkins spoke with a tone of condescension as to a little child. "The Head goes himself to the one sub-department in the morning and to the other in the afternoon, and he ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... a very fine, cramped hand, and there was ample room at the bottom for his own signature and those of the witnesses, although it must be said that the elegant symmetry of the document was destroyed by the bulging scrawl of the bailiff, whose name was Abraham Kosziemanowski and who had to turn the final two syllables down at a sharp angle in order to get the whole of his ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... appearance that one could easily understand the epithet "romantic" Rosebud had applied to him. He stood at least four inches over six feet, and dwarfed even Nevil's height. But it was in the perfect symmetry of his lithe, sinuous body, and the keen, handsome, high-caste face where his ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... my countrymen and friends and their generous participation in the sorrow occasioned by our irretrievable loss, expressed through their supreme authorities and otherwise, are the only solace of which my heart is susceptible on the departure of him who had never lost sight of that consistency, symmetry, and beauty of character in all its parts which secured to him the love and admiration of his country, and which must ever be the subject of peculiar and tender reverence to one whose happiness was derived from their ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... lumber to make all the pieces shown in the detail drawing and finish to the dimensions shown, being careful to make the corresponding pieces exactly alike in order to preserve the perfect symmetry which is necessary in work of this kind. In boring the holes care must be taken to keep both edges of the holes sharp and clean. The holes should each be bored until the spur shows; the bit should then be withdrawn ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part I • H. H. Windsor
... district had assembled to vindicate his cause. His personal appearance at this early period is thus described by Mr William Laidlaw:—"About nineteen years of age, Hogg was rather above the middle height, of faultless symmetry of form; he was of almost unequalled agility and swiftness. His face was then round and full, and of a ruddy complexion, with bright blue eyes that beamed with gaiety, glee, and good-humour, the effect of the most exuberant animal ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... attains great proportions and beautiful symmetry is yonder giant oak or elm that grows in the open. It needs room to breathe and grow. It grows better if it is segregated from the crowded forest. The giant tree is not the one that grows in ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... with which, drawing nearer and nearer to the intellectual sun, and ridding itself of the rust of human cares, it becomes a gold tried and pure, has the perception of divine and internal harmony, and its thoughts and acts accord with the symmetry of the law, innate in all things. Not, as drunk from the cups of Circe, does he go dashing and stumbling, now in this and then in that ditch, now against this or that rock, or like a shifting Proteus, changing now to this, now to ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... organized a church. Writing of Browne's labors there in 1580 and 1581, Dr. Dexter says: "Here, following the track which he had been long elaborating, he thoroughly discovered and restated the original Congregational way in all its simplicity and symmetry. And here, by his prompting and under his guidance, was formed the first church in modern days of which I have any knowledge, which was intelligently and one might say philosophically Congregational in its platform and processes; he becoming its pastor." [3] Persecution followed Browne ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... the monologue of the actor. Whatever else Phrynichus effected is uncertain. The developed plot—the introduction of regular dialogue through the medium of a second actor —the pomp and circumstance—the symmetry and climax of the drama—do not appear to have appertained to his earlier efforts; and the great artistical improvements which raised the simple incident to an elaborate structure of depicted narrative and awful catastrophe, are ascribed, not to Phrynichus, but Aeschylus. If the later works ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... equality but equal rights, 170 Proportioned like the columns to the temple, Giving and taking strength reciprocal, And making firm the whole with grace and beauty, So that no part could be removed without Infringement of the general symmetry. In operating this great change, I claim To be one of you—if you trust in me; If not, strike home,—my life is compromised, And I would rather fall by freemen's hands Than live another day to act the tyrant 180 As delegate of tyrants: such I am not, And never have been—read ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... pretty, fair girl, with soft dark-brown hair, and soft long dark eyelashes. Her grey eyes, though quiet in their tone, were tender and lustrous. Her face was oval, and the lines of her cheek and chin perfect in their symmetry. She was generally quiet in her demeanour, but when moved she could rouse herself to great energy, and speak with feeling and almost with fire. Her fault was a reverence for martyrdom in general, and a feeling, of which she was ...
— The Mistletoe Bough • Anthony Trollope
... Estaing. It is a little place full of originality, and looks as if it had been built to set forth the dream of some old writer of romance. The late-Gothic church is more quaint and odd than beautiful. The architect sported with the laws of symmetry, and revelled in the fanciful. The nave is much wider at one end than the other. The great sundial over the door, bearing the date 1636, is scarcely less useful now than when it was placed there. The castle is a strange pile, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... mass of rocks thrown together by the hand of nature with wildness and confusion, strike the mind with more grandeur, than if they were adjusted to one another with the accuratest symmetry. ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... not have me vaccinated; the consequence of which has been that my chin is full of little dells, thickly studded with dark and stunted bristles. I have bunions and legs that (as "the right line of beauty's a curve") are the perfection of symmetry. My poor mother used to lament what she, in the plenitude of her ignorance, was pleased to denominate my disadvantages. She knew not the power of genius. To me these—well, I'll call them defects—have been the source of great profit. For years I have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... perceived its fulfilment would be hard, saw the obstacles in his way, and knew it would require both time and caution. That even in the first rush of his wrath he should thus be aware of difficulty, indicates moral symmetry; but the full weight of what lay in his path could appear to him only upon reflection. Partly in the light of passages yet to come, I will imagine the further course of his thoughts, which the closing couplet of the first act shows as having already begun to apale 'the native hue ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... symmetrical system of forms, within which the two outer, dynamically regarded, represent the extreme tendencies of expansion and contraction, whilst in the middle forms these are held more or less in balance. By adding Howard's nimbus formation to this system, we destroy its symmetry. Actually, in the nimbus we have cloud in such a condition that it ceases to be an atmospheric phenomenon in any real sense of the word; for it now breaks up into single drops of water, each of which, ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... floating, as it were, in the pure empyrean, and crowned with a diadem of stars. The Moon, Arcturus, and the Pleiades might well all make obeisance to her, and the Milky Way invite her to extend her flight and plough its snowy fields. I was astonished at her size, the symmetry of her parts, and the harmony of her proportions, as she lay there at a great height, which I was quite unable to estimate, in bold relief against ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... religious artists of the Middle Ages, whose thoughts grew and flowered in prayerful shadows, bursting into thousands of quaint and fanciful blossoms on the pages of missal and breviary. In them the fine life of color, form, and symmetry, which is the gift of the Italian, formed a rich stock on which to graft the true vine of religious faith, and rare ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... who seemed to have a strong objection to being led, and who held back and dragged at his rein in a most provoking manner; and lastly, by the side of a brown hack that I fancied I had seen before, a beautiful black horse, the very impersonation of strength, symmetry, courage, speed, and all that a ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... the incendiary bombing, no saltlick, wandering stream or struggling bush enlivened this prairie. There was not even an odd conformation, a higher clump here or there, a dead patch to relieve the unimaginative symmetry. I have read of men going mad in solitary confinement from looking at the same unchanging walls; well, here was a solitary cell hundreds of miles in area and its power to destroy the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... good (although crude) carving, its old-time sculpturing of dreadful-looking animals at either end, its decorative triumphal arches, its masses of memorial tablets (which I could not read), its seven arches of beautiful simplicity and symmetry and perfect proportion, it would have been a credit to any civilized country in the world. I noticed that, in addition to cementing, the stones and pillars forming the sides of the roadway were also dovetailed. Among the works of public interest with ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... shielded him from some peril, such as might easily beset him within five miles of the Royalist headquarters, she may have won his heart while pleading for her harassed father; he may have fancied hers a mind he could mould to perfect symmetry and deck with every accomplishment, as the Gods fashioned and decorated Pandora. Milton also seems to imply that his, or his bride's, better judgment was partly overcome by "the persuasion of friends, that acquaintance, as it increases, will amend all." It is possible, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... expression of the thought should be permitted, but it is quite desirable to gradually extend the range of the inflections, if one still maintains in the practice that common sense which will leave the expression in perfect symmetry when the extra effort made for inflection shall have been withdrawn. Though it is sometimes desirable to exaggerate one element, even to the sacrifice of others, it is never necessary to introduce false notes, the effect of which may remain as a limitation ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... world of matter and of spirit. Wolff was a disciple of Leibnitz; great as a teacher rather than an inventor, who invested the system of his master slightly modified, with the precision of form which raised it to rivalry with the perfect symmetry of Spinoza's system. Adopting his master's two great canons of truth, the law of contradiction as regulative of thoughts, and the law of the sufficient reason as regulative of things,(664) he attempted in his theoretic philosophy to work out a regular system on each of the great branches ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... of the principles of arrangement, with brief comment on the periods of design which have most influenced printing. Treats of harmony, balance, proportion, and rhythm; motion; symmetry and variety; ornament, esthetic and symbolic. 37 illustrations; 46 review ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... to us and to the Zouaves," smiled Chanrellon, surveying the figure of the one who addressed him, with a keen sense of its symmetry and its sinew. "Still, a good sword brings its welcome. Do you ask ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... in build, with a thin face and a finely shaped head. Her limbs were perfect in symmetry. As a girl, doubtless she had claim to a delicate beauty. She now showed the wear and tear of her mountain experience, coupled with an accumulation of heart-breaking trouble. She gave prodigally of all her gifts. She interpreted life and its arts to all discerning pupils, and by the magic ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... Just so she moved amidst the flying bullets upon the field, bringing succor to the wounded; or through the hospitals amidst the pestilent air of the fever-stricken wards. Self-controlled, she could control others, and order and symmetry sprung up before her as a natural result of the operation of ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... slim. His hands and feet were large and bony, his arms long, his form bowed and lacking in all that we call symmetry. But the long face with its look of abject melancholy, the curved nose, the thin lips and the sharp, protruding chin, made a combination that Fate has never duplicated. You could easily believe that this man knew all the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... He was the discoverer of Marcy, and caused the first trail to be cut to its summit, so that others could enjoy the noble views from its round and rocky top. To him it was, in noble symmetry and beauty, the chief mountain of the globe. To stand on it gave him, as he said, "a feeling of heaven up-h'istedness." He heard with impatience that Mount Washington was a thousand feet higher, and he had a childlike ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Frontal Cave; the clay is of blackish hue mixed with little bits of calcareous spar. M. Ordinaire, Vice-Consul for France at Callao, speaks of the CAYANES or MACAHUAS, which are earthenware basins of great symmetry of form, made by the Combos women, without turning wheels or mills of any kind. Though the elegant shape of the Frontal and other vases at first surprises us, reflection convinces us that men who could cut stones with such rare skill would ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... of Anak, approaching from the corridor? Towering a full head above the throng, a figure of superb strength and perfect symmetry, we give him that hearty admiration which is due to a man who illustrates and embellishes manhood. In this case we can give it freely: for that finely balanced head holds a clear, vigorous brain,—those ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... use. We say that matter is the something felt; but we do not say for the sake of symmetry, that the mind is the something which feels. I have used a more cautious, and, I think, a more just formula, which places the mind in the fact of feeling. Let me repeat again, at the risk of appearing too subtle: ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... palest ivory with rose, was no doll's face, for all its symmetry and a forgotten patch to balance the dimple in her rounded chin; it was even noble in a sense, and, if too chaste for sensuous beauty, yet touched with a strange and pensive sweetness, like 'witched ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... —decorated—adorned. Here sweeps a plantation, in that beautiful regular curve: there winds a gravel walk: here are parts of the old wood, left in these majestic circular clumps, disposed at equal distances with wonderful symmetry: there are some single shrubs scattered in elegant profusion: here a Portugal laurel, there a juniper; here a laurustinus, there a spruce fir; here a larch, there a lilac; here a rhododendron, there an arbutus. The stream, you see, is become a canal: the banks are perfectly ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... lives room to grow to truth, and they will grow to symmetry; give them leave to ripen, and they will ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks
... of knowledge would more than any other illuminate the problem, I think we may give the answer without hesitation. The greatest advance that we can foresee will be made when it is found possible to connect the geometrical phenomena of development with the chemical. The geometrical symmetry of living things is the key to a knowledge of their regularity, and the forces which cause it. In the symmetry of the dividing cell the basis of that resemblance we call Heredity is contained. To imitate the morphological ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... strength, discipline, and courage. 7. This gigantic man, we are told, was eight feet and a half high; he had strength corresponding to his size, being not more remarkable for the magnitude than the symmetry of his person. His wife's bracelet usually served him for a thumb ring, and his strength was so great that he was able to draw a carriage which two oxen could not move. He could strike out the teeth of a horse with a blow of his fist, and break its thigh with a ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... into that of the traditional Irish hospitality. They showed us their great linen mills and other huge manufactories; they showed us the shipyards, in which the frames of monster ships lay cradled in gigantic gantries, works of architecture as wonderful in their vast symmetry as any cathedral, and having the beauty which goes with any perfect design combining lightness and strength. Perhaps the most impressive sight of all was the disbandment of workmen from the yards. Endless lines of empty tramcars drawn up on the quay awaited the turn-out of ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... day and night, Continues in his long, unwearied flight. He's not a song-bird, but he's said to be Famed for his beauty and his Symmetry. He frequents an old abbey or a manse; The ostrich eats him if he gets ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... injured its aftergrowth—the swaddling-clothes of its second childhood. If we have spoken freely—we hope not flippantly—of these feeblenesses, it is because the renown of Cooper is too tenaciously and permanently rooted to be 'radically' affected thereby, however they may diminish the symmetry and dim the verdure of blossom and branch. His magnificent panoramas of prairie solitude, his billowy expanses of the 'many-voiced sea,' his artistically-grouped figures of red-skins and trappers, sealers and squatters, are among the things which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... something, at the ninth hour on the morrow he comes, and fifty women around him, and he quite whole, without stain and without blemish; of equal age (the women), of equal form, of equal beauty, of equal fairness, of equal symmetry, of equal stature, with the dress of women of the fairies about them so that there was no means of knowing of one beyond the other of them. Little but men were suffocated around them. They separate in front of the Liss.[FN31] They give forth their ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... while the sadness of her thoughts, softening gradually, gave tone to the general tenor of her life and united all its parts in an indefinable harmony, expressed by the exquisite neatness, the exact symmetry of her room, the few flowers sent by Savinien, the dainty nothings of a young girl's life, the tranquillity which her quiet habits diffused about her, giving peace and composure to the little home. After breakfast ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... unfortunate wife? I am afraid you find it quite impossible to keep her up at heel, or to mold her personal appearance into harmony with the eternal laws of symmetry and order. Does she attempt to be too familiar with you? I have always been accustomed to check her, in this respect. She has never been permitted to call me anything but Captain; and on the rare occasions since our union, when circumstances ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... the Rhone, the third of the poems in twelve cantos that Mistral has written, appeared in 1897. It completes the symmetry of his life work; the former epics extolled the life of the fields, the mountains, and the sea, the last glorifies the beautiful river that brings life to his native soil. More than either of the other long poems, it is an act of affection for the past, for the Rhone of the poem ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... breadth of the yielding saddle! With what inimitable grace does she whirl these tiny banners around her head, as winningly as a Titania performing the sword exercise! How coyly does she dispose her garments and floating drapery to hide the too-maddening symmetry of her limbs! Gods! She is transformed all at once into an Amazon—the fawn-like timidity of her first demeanour is gone. Bold and beautiful flushes her cheek with animated crimson—her full voluptuous lip is more compressed and firm—the deep passion of the huntress flashing in her lustrous eyes! ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... seen her. The figure I beheld is, and is not, my Charlotte—my thirty years' companion. There is the same symmetry of form, tho those limbs are rigid which were once so gracefully elastic—but that yellow mask, with pinched features, which seem to mock life rather than emulate it, can it be the face that was once ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... The general conception of the point of view, and the skilful distribution of the masses, so as to secure the due preparation, development, and culmination, without wasteful prodigality or confusing want of symmetry, constitute Composition, which is to the structure of a treatise what Style—in the narrower sense—is to the structure of sentences. How far Style is reducible to law will be ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... into the forest. As he was on the point of retracing his steps toward the road, his gaze fell upon a huge moss-covered rock less than a hundred yards away. He stared, and gradually it began to take on angles and planes and recesses of the most astounding symmetry. Under his widening gaze it was transformed into a substantial object of cubes ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... rare, Which is a loving, lasting joy to share Whilst we remain unconscious the time's flight Steals like sweet music on the ear of night; So full of quiet rapture nature seems, We feel suffused in peace as in sweet dreams. Observe how graceful form and symmetry Are blent in trees with kind utility, Showing the Father's scientific care, Is testified to nature every where. The "Taliput" of fair Ceylon supplies The shade required 'neath tropic orient skies; Its leaf, impervious to sun and rain, Affords refreshing shelter ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... the symmetry of the two opening similes, making the eagle the subject of the sentence in the first, the kid in the second, an awkwardness which the Latin is able to avoid by its power of distinguishing cases by inflexion. I trust, however, that it will not ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... depend on themselves, to think quickly and act promptly. Perhaps no emergency will arise in their lives in which the importance of such mental training shall be illustrated; but it is well to be prepared "for any fate," and the discipline which produces this virtue gives strength and symmetry ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... went with a party of English to see the Coliseum, but the moon was as English as the party, and gave a faint and feeble light. Still, with this dim moon it was inconceivably grand. The exquisite symmetry of the building appears better, and its vast dimensions are more developed by night. I long to see it with an Italian sky and full moon; but not with a parcel of chattering girls, who only 'flout ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... exquisitely-formed features of the stranger were those which have been made familiar to us by the masterpieces of antiquity treasured in our museums. Lycidas might well have served as model to Phidias for a statue of Endymion. His form was of faultless proportions, remarkable rather for symmetry and grace than for strength; and his face might have been deemed too feminine in its beauty, but for the stamp of intellect on it. That young brow had already worn the leafy crown in the Olympic contest for poetic honours; Lycidas had read his verses ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... described. In stature he was slightly over the middle height, though the poise of his head, both in youth and age, gave the impression of greater tallness. Till past his thirtieth year he was notably slender in figure, a defect in symmetry being the observable shortness of the legs, and he walked with swift, elastic step. The foot was elegantly shaped, but the hand was that of the descendant of ancestors who had been engaged in manual labour. The head was of oval form, the chin small and feminine, ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... tyger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake
... her a child. He found her a beautiful woman. What transformation is so magical, so charming, as this? To see the uncertain lines of youth rounded into firmness and symmetry, to discover the half-ripe, merry, changing face of the girl matured into perfect loveliness, and looking at you with calm, clear, serious eyes, not forgetting the past, but fully conscious of the changed present—this is to behold a miracle ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... the preservation of a main theme is more necessary the longer the composition; and Bach has an incalculable number of methods of giving his fugues a symmetry of form and balance of climax so subtle and perfect that we are apt to forget that the only technical rules of a fugue are those which refer to its texture. In the Kunst der Fuge Bach has shown with the utmost clearness how in his opinion the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... Gooreedeeana so abruptly. She belonged to the tribe of Cameragal, and rarely came among us. One day, however, she entered my house to complain of hunger. She excelled in beauty all their females I ever saw. Her age about eighteen, the firmness, the symmetry and the luxuriancy of her bosom might have tempted painting to copy its charms. Her mouth was small and her teeth, though exposed to all the destructive purposes to which they apply them, were white, sound and unbroken. ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... far downwards from the middle. But then they had some advantage from the splendid colours, lace, and gay embroidery which masculine attire then exhibited; and, as happens in many similar instances, the finery of the materials made amends for the want of symmetry and grace of form in the garments themselves. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... and racial mistakes. We look forward in our vision of the future to children brought into the world because they are desired, called from the unknown by a fearless and conscious passion, because women and men need children to complete the symmetry of their own development, no less than to perpetuate the race. They shall be called into a world enhanced and made beautiful by the spirit of freedom and romance—into a world wherein the creatures of our new day, unhampered and unbound by ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... to her distant garret. What an opportunity for carrying off the children at the same time! The house was actually on her homeward route. The economy of it tickled her, made her overestimate the chances of capture. As she packed the motley, far-spreading heap into the symmetry of her sack, pressing and squeezing the clothes incredibly tighter and tighter till it seemed a magic sack that could swallow up even the Holloway Clothing Emporium, Natalya's brain revolved feverish fancy-pictures of the ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... the artist; (2) the conception that art consists in "imitation," which they carried to an absurdity, indeed, by arguing that an imitation must be less "valuable" than the thing imitated; (3) the conception that beauty consists in certain formal relations, such as symmetry, harmony of parts—in a word, "unity ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... with a ladle. When the mixture has become hard keep it a few moments more on the fire and then pour it in a plate to make it about half an inch thick and cut it into diamonds when it is cold. Put these diamonds one over the other with symmetry in a baking tin or in a fireproof glass plate, with some little pieces of butter in between and brown them a little in the ...
— The Italian Cook Book - The Art of Eating Well • Maria Gentile
... Defoe is before its time by a hundred years; nothing can be found in the realm of the English prose short-story to approach it in symmetry until the ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... soft and silky without that taint of grease which is so common with silken-headed darlings. His eyes were long, brown in colour, and were made beautiful by the perfect arch of the perfect eyebrow. But perhaps the glory of the face was due more to the finished moulding and fine symmetry of the nose and mouth than to his other features. On his short upper lip he had a moustache as well formed as his eyebrows, but he wore no other beard. The form of his chin too was perfect, but it lacked that sweetness and softness ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Meleager of Gadara—not so very far removed from Jesus in space of time—has a good deal to say about flowers, but not at all in the same sense as Jesus, not with any feeling such as his for the immortal hand and eye that planned their symmetry, and their colours and sweetness. St. Paul is conspicuously a man of the town—"a citizen of no mean city" (Acts 21:39), and he dismisses the animals abruptly (1 Cor. 9:9); he has hardly an allusion to the familiar and homely aspects of Nature, so frequent and ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... wings, shoulder, rump, and thighs, with wonderful exactness, so that in stuffing the bird, if you make an even rotund surface of the skin, where the cavities existed, in lieu of re-forming them, all symmetry, order, and ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... writing. Protagoras investigated the principles of accurate composition; Prodicus busied himself with inquiries into the significance of words; Gorgias, like Voltaire, gloried in a captivating style, and gave symmetry to the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... civilization, the great reservoir of thought and perfected art. The profoundest thoughts of philosophy, the most electrifying words of statesmen and orators; the grand, sublime and patriotic strains of the muses, the illimitable beauty and symmetry of her art have been bequeathed to the world by Athens, "THE EYE OF GREECE." But above and beyond these is the principle of personal liberty and popular government that has come down to us from the Athenian Commonwealth. The aim and purpose of the Athenian Republic in its educational ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... bareheaded, and the fading sunshine lingered lovingly upon the glossy hair and delicate lovely face which had lost naught of the purity that characterized it eighteen months before, while during that time she had grown much taller, and gave promise of attaining unusual height and symmetry. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Benoit, the jolly French-Canadian cook. "Good for my healt. He's tak off my front porsch here." And the cook patted affectionately the little round paunch that marred the symmetry ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... from effused good, by ideas, seeds, reasons, shadows, stirring up our minds, that by this good they may be united and made one." Others will have beauty to be the perfection of the whole composition, [4475]"caused out of the congruous symmetry, measure, order and manner of parts, and that comeliness which proceeds from this beauty is called grace, and from thence all fair things are gracious." For grace and beauty are so wonderfully annexed, [4476]"so sweetly and gently win our souls, and strongly allure, that they confound our judgment ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... contrary, I revere a dancer—the dancer who is a genuine artist." He paused, then went on speaking thoughtfully. "Dancing, to my mind, is one of the most consistent expressions of beauty. It's the sheer symmetry and grace of that body which was made in God's own likeness developed to the utmost limit of human perfection. . . . And the dancer who desecrates the temple of his body is punished proportionately. No art is a harder taskmistress than ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... me say again, seemed indifferent to symmetry, or never thought of it in his piano music. Mendelssohn, possibly influenced by his early severe training with Zelter, accepted symmetry of form as the cornerstone of his musical edifice; although he was one of the first in the realms of avowed programme music, he ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... to come here early some morning and bring with you some full description of the pictures, which tells whom the figures are intended to represent. Study first each painting as a whole; see the fine distribution of masses; the general arrangement; the symmetry of groups which balance each other; the harmony of line and color. Then study individual figures for form, attitude, and expression. I think you will wish to give several ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... however, is the great obstacle which must ever prevent this poetry from becoming popular in the Western world. The great personifications of the Deity have not been softened down, as in the mythology of the Greeks, to the perfection of human symmetry, but are here exhibited in their original gigantic forms. Majesty is often expressed by enormous stature; power, by multitudinous hands; providence, by countless eyes; ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... yellow lace in cross bars, confined her slender waist. Her robe was of carnation-coloured silk, with wide sleeves, and the gold-fringed skirt descended only a little below the knee, like the dress of a modern Swiss peasant, so as to reveal the exquisite symmetry of her limbs. Over all she wore a surcoat of azure silk, lined with white, and edged with gold. In her left hand she held a red pink as an emblem of the season. So enchanting was her appearance altogether, so fresh the character ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... destined to meet with entire failure, however. Sophy turned to the boxes of plug that were stored on the shelves and pretended to busy herself with their order and symmetry. But she ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... "Thou shalt be able to enter." And, saying, So be it, Nala thereupon went to the palace of Damayanti. And having arrived there, he beheld the daughter of the king of Vidarbha surrounded by her hand-maids, blazing in beauty and excelling in symmetry of form, of limbs exceedingly delicate, of slender waist and fair eyes. And she seemed to rebuke the light of the moon by her own splendour. And as he gazed on that lady of sweet smiles. Nala's love increased, but desirous of keeping his truth, ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... others use eccentric and epicyclic ones, with which, however, they do not fully attain the desired end. They could not even discover nor compute the main thing—namely, the form of the universe and the symmetry of its parts. It was with them as if some should, from different places, take hands, feet, head, and other parts of the body, which, although very beautiful, were not drawn in their proper relations, and, without making ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... setipes, anisochir, and Fresnelii), and I can add a fifth (Figure 1), in which the second pair of feet bears upon one side a small hand of the usual structure, and on the other an enormous clasp-forceps. This want of symmetry is something so unusual among the Amphipoda, and the structure of the clasp-forceps differs so much from what is seen elsewhere in this order, and agrees so closely in the five species, that one must unhesitatingly ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... those in his father's house they were preserved with a care due to articles which had been often used with effect in the past. Among them was one which had been out in the campaigns of 1689 (Dundee's), 1715 (Mar's), and in 1745-6. It was of Spanish manufacture, and remarkable for the length and symmetry of its blade, in consequence of which it received the sobriquet of Rangaire Riabhach.[B] In his failure to find the keys of the arms depository, he bethought him to make a confident and enlist the sympathies ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... they are daintily shod in French slippers, the soles of which are scarcely more substantial than brown paper. Their feet are made for ornament and for dancing. Though they possess a roundness of form that leaves nothing to be desired in symmetry of figure, still they are light as a sylph,—so buoyant, clad in muslin and lace, that it would seem as if a breeze might waft them away like a summer cloud. Passionately fond of dancing, they tax the ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... with German problems it is fair to give examples where her methods have been wholly and entirely successful. The man who does not know one tree or shrub from another cannot travel in trains, motor-cars, or afoot without remarking the neatness, symmetry, and the flourishing condition of the forests. In these matters Germany so far surpasses us that we may be said to be merely in a kindergarten stage of development. As early as 1783 a German traveller, Johann David Schoepf, was distressed to see the waste ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... painting is of stuffs—bricks and mortar, the grass of the fields, the shadows of trees, and bridges and rivers, which they call landscapes, and little figures here and there; and all this, although it may appear good to some eyes, is in truth done without reasonableness or art, without symmetry or proportion, without care in selecting or rejecting, and finally, without any substance or verve; and in spite of all this, painting in some other parts is worse than it is in Flanders. Neither do I speak so badly of Flemish painting because it is all bad, but because it tries to ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... reefs studded with innumerable craving mouths: the subsidence of a reef based on a bank of this kind, would give depth to its central expanse or lagoon, steepness to its flanks, and through the free growth of the coral, symmetry to its outline:—I may here repeat that the larger groups of atolls in the Pacific and Indian Oceans cannot be supposed to be founded on banks of ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... of the decorative with the dramatic element in both literature and music is maintained by the example of great masters in both arts. Very touching dramatic expression can be combined with decorative symmetry of versification when the artist happens to possess both the decorative and dramatic gifts, and to have cultivated both hand in hand. Shakespeare and Shelley, for instance, far from being hampered by the conventional obligation to write their dramas in verse, found it much the easiest and cheapest ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... these facts remain quite inexplicable; without indeed we rank as an explanation such loose metaphors as that of De Candolle's{506}, in which the kingdom of nature is compared to a well-covered table, and the abortive organs are considered as put in for the sake of symmetry! ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... dowry towards a rustic establishment for life. Can a more interesting picture be drawn of virtuous exertion? Why have our poets failed to colour and finish it? More virtue never existed in their favourite shepherdesses than in these Welsh and Shropshire girls! For beauty, symmetry, and complexion, they are not inferior to the nymphs of Arcadia, and they far outvie the pallid specimens of Circassia! Their morals too are exemplary; and they often perform this labour to support aged parents, or to keep their own children from the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... the Countess's bedroom. Before a shrine, which was full of old images, a golden lamp was burning. Faded stuffed chairs and divans with soft cushions stood in melancholy symmetry around the room, the walls of which were hung with china silk. On one side of the room hung two portraits painted in Paris by Madame Lebrun. One of these represented a stout, red-faced man of about forty years of age, in a bright green uniform, and with a star upon his breast; the other—a ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... you behold the picture of Julius Caesar, do you see with your eyes any more than some colours and figures, with a certain symmetry and composition of ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... Lane's Notes I have ever spoken highly: they are excellent and marvellously misplaced—non erat his locus. The text of a story-book is too frail to bear so ponderous a burden of classical Arabian lore, and the annotations injure the symmetry of the book as a work of art. They begin with excessive prolixity: in the Introduction these studies fill 27 closely printed pages to 14 of a text broken by cuts and vignettes. In chaps. i. the proportion is pp. 20, notes: 15 text, and in chaps. ii. it ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... irritated, half amused. One could never quite be angry at this fellow nor in tune with him. Leidesdorff, with his cherubic grin, his plump, comfortable body, the close-cropped hair, side whiskers and moustache, framing and embellishing his round face with an ornate symmetry, was like a bearded cupid. Hull handed him the latest dispatch. "Nothing since then, confound it!" ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... foreign affairs as the public interests seem to require. Our Government is now undergoing its most trying ordeal, and my earnest prayer is that the peril may be successfully and finally passed without impairing its original strength and symmetry. The interests of the nation are best to be promoted by the revival of fraternal relations, the complete obliteration of our past differences, and the reinauguration of all the pursuits of peace. Directing our efforts to the early accomplishment ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... equal plainness that these rudimentary or atrophied organs, are imperfect and useless. In works {454} on natural history rudimentary organs are generally said to have been created "for the sake of symmetry," or in order "to complete the scheme of nature;" but this seems to me no explanation, merely a re-statement of the fact. Would it be thought sufficient to say that because planets revolve in elliptic courses ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... apartment he had not seen, and it was not in the least inferior to the others. At his entrance, he admired the infinite number of wax candles perfumed with amber, the multitude of which, instead of being confused, were placed with so just a symmetry, as to form an agreeable and pleasant light. A large beaufet was set out with all sorts of gold plate, so finely wrought, that the workmanship was much more valuable than the weight of the gold. Several bands of beautiful women richly dressed, and whose ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... seems to be that symmetry of phrases (the balancing of large blocks of syllables) is an essential and important part of modern Spanish versification; but that, in musical verse of the ordinary type, there is also a subtle and varied binary movement, while in some recitative verse (notably the ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... logical types. A supreme application of it to definition of man, and the science of human welfare.—The psychology of mathematics and the mathematics of psychology. Both of them in their infancy. Consequent retardation of science. The symmetry of thought. The asymmetry of imagination.—Science and engineering. Science as engineering in preparation. Engineering as science in action. Mathematics the guide of the engineer. Engineering the guide of humanity. ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... second temple was far inferior to that which had flourished from 1639 till the battle of Dunbar, still it was a structure that, wanting the strength and the terrors, retained at least the form and symmetry, of the original model. Then came the insurrection in 1715, and David Deans's horror for the revival of the Popish and prelatical faction reconciled him greatly to the government of King George, although ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... was settled. He who slept beneath Was straightened for the grave, and as the folds Sank to their still proportions, they betrayed The matchless symmetry of Absalom, The mighty Joab stood beside the bier And gazed upon the dark pall steadfastly, As if he feared the slumberer might stir. A slow step startled him. He grasped his blade As if a trumpet rang, but the bent form Of David entered; ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... essentials into an ideal shape; and therefore it implies the absence of all superfluity, incongruousness, bombast, extravagance or purposelessness. The Parthenon and the statue of the grey-eyed goddess standing up in faultless symmetry against the clear blue sky of Attica; Plato's Apology of Socrates breathing serene and lucid thought in language lucid and serene—these are the types of art as understood by the Hellenic spirit. We nowadays prate much of real and ideal. The Greek combined them without prating. ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... crimson; but, when the first flush passed away, her looks gave painful proof of the effect of solitude and sorrow. The rounded beauty of her cheek was gone, her eyes, once dancing with every emotion, were fixed and hollow, and her frame, once remarkable for symmetry, was thin and feeble. But, her heart was buoyant still, and when I talked of past scenes and recollections, her eye sparkled once more. Still, her manner was changed—it was softer and less capricious; her language, even her voice, was subdued; and more than once I saw ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... playing upon it the Marseillaise. The case, the pulpit, and the lovely screen of the sanctuary are of walnut wood from the forest of Ste. Baume. Few parts of any church present such an admirable combination of beauty, elegance, and symmetry as this sanctuary, by a Flemish monk, Frre Louis, in 1692. Round the screen are 20 sculptured panels, each bearing within a wreath a representation in relief of one of the incidents in the life of some celebrated member of the order of St. Dominic. Under them are 92 ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... myself, I love lords, and shun them. I lived with one; the beauty of my recollections suffices me. I remember his country house, like a glory in a cloud. My dreams are all retrospective. Nothing could be more admirable than Marmaduke Lodge in grandeur, beautiful symmetry, rich avenues, and the ornaments and surroundings of the edifice. The houses, country seats, and palaces of the lords present a selection of all that is greatest and most magnificent in this flourishing kingdom. I love our lords. I thank them for being opulent, powerful, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Canaanite massebas), which originally represented the deity, came to be conventional attachments to temples, and then were treated in accordance with architectural principles. They would be placed in pairs, one pillar on each side of the temple door, for the sake of symmetry, and dignity would be sought by giving them a considerable height.[560] They might also be utilized, when they were not too high, as stands for lamps or cressets, but this would be a secondary use. The obelisks ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... structure; but the part in the direction of the city is exceedingly old, irregular, and unsightly. Small windows, agreeing neither in form nor size, neither in a line nor placed at equal distances; gates and doors arranged without symmetry; a ground-floor mostly turned into shops,—it forms a confused outside, which is never observed by any one. Now, here this accidental, irregular, unconnected architecture had been followed; and every window, every door, every opening, was surrounded by lamps,—as indeed can be done with a well-built ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... sexual insurrection" was not merely a grotesque phrase, but a movement of the time which threatened national disaster, and to which, in its most plausible manifestations, the stoutest resistance must be offered. Here again his love of coherence and logical symmetry, his born hatred of an anomaly, his belief in Reason as the true guide of life, made him intolerant of all the palpably insincere attempts to say Thus far and no farther. He knew that all the laws of Affinity must stand or fall together, and that no ground ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... the Incas is characterized, says an eminent traveller, "by simplicity, symmetry, and solidity."31 It may seem unphilosophical to condemn the peculiar fashion of a nation as indicating want of taste, because its standard of taste differs from our own. Yet there is an incongruity in the composition of the Peruvian buildings which argues a very imperfect acquaintance ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... speaks of Symmetry. How perfectly formed is this candle! It is smooth, there are no rough places that stand out like an ugly wart on one's face. Your life should have symmetry. God asks you to give heed to your physical, your mental and your spiritual ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... American town—and there were thousands like it—its architectural squalor, its animal unconsciousness, shocked her after four years in lands where colour, symmetry and good taste are indigenous and beauty ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers |
