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Lever   /lˈɛvər/  /lˈivər/   Listen
Lever

noun
1.
A rigid bar pivoted about a fulcrum.
2.
A simple machine that gives a mechanical advantage when given a fulcrum.
3.
A flat metal tumbler in a lever lock.  Synonym: lever tumbler.



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"Lever" Quotes from Famous Books



... often proves a cipher; though, to himself, his thoughts form an Infinite Series, indefinite, from its vastness; and incommunicable;—not for lack of power, but for lack of an omnipotent volition, to move his strength. His own world is full before him; the fulcrum set; but lever there is none. To such a man, the giving of any boor's resoluteness, with tendons braided, would be as hanging a claymore to Valor's side, before unarmed. Our minds are cunning, compound mechanisms; and one spring, or wheel, or axle wanting, the movement lags, or halts. Cerebrum must not ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... was melted, but too hot to handle; I put it on one side, satisfied that I and I only had saved Miriam from injury and three brothers from bloodshed, by using his insane love as a lever. It does not look as hard here as it was in reality; but it was of the hardest struggles I ever had—indeed, it was desperate. I had touched the right key, and satisfied of success, turned the subject to let him believe he was following his own suggestions. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... happiness after our work has been in operation; we must elude their caprices and their systems at will, for the people as legislators are very dangerous, they only establish laws which coincide with their passions, their want of knowledge would besides only give birth to abuses. But as the people are a lever which legislators can move at their will, we must necessarily use them as a support, and render hateful to them everything we wish to destroy and sow illusions in their path; we must also buy all the mercenary ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... Le Cheval pour apprendre a y monter, et tenir le corps dans un etat naturel. Le Jube pour redresser la tete et donner des graces; les Plombs pour apprendre a marcher avec grace. Le Fauteuil pour lever un cote de la poitrine qui seroit plus bas que l'autre; le soufflet pour donner un exercise regulier a toutes les ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard

... weeks, and had solved it only by dismissing it. He had assured himself that with his only daughter no man as generous as Carter could be really harsh, and had always held his knowledge of Harriet comfortably in the back of his mind, as an irresistible lever. Now both these considerations were losing their force, and the empty satisfaction of defying Richard seemed to ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... great waggon of coal which had stuck fast in the snow half way up the hill on which the house stood. Harold, a much more comfortable figure in his natural costume than he had been when made up by Eustace, was truly putting his shoulder to the wheel, with a great lever, so that every effort aided the struggling horses, and brought the whole nearer ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... should be arraigned as the declaration of ultra and dangerous opinions? If these warnings were received in the spirit in which they are given, it would augur better for the country. It would give hopes which are now denied us, if the press of the country, that great lever of public opinion, would enforce these warnings, and bear them to every cottage, instead of heaping abuse upon those whose love of ease would prompt them to silence—whose speech, therefore, is evidence of sincerity. Lightly and loosely, representatives of Southern people have been denounced ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... of England's greatness,[25] and sums up his admiration in words which recognize the respective shares of natural advantages and sagacious supervision in the grand outcome. "Called to commerce by her situation, it became the spirit of her government and the lever of her ambition. In other monarchies, it is private individuals who carry on commerce; but in that happy constitution it is the state, or ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... most strenuous opposition to them, is the right and often the duty of every conscientious man. This right, exercised by the press, is one of the most effectual checks against abuses, and the most powerful lever to work reform and changes. But in a great crisis, to set one's self against a measure on which the fate of the nation hangs, is a flagrant abuse of that right; for the effort, if successful, will not work change ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... nothing need be said. About this, within careful limits, much; and that, with, as she believed, happiest result. She had succeeded in bringing father and son together in the first instance. Now, with this pathetic story as lever, might she not hope to bring them into closer, more permanent union? Why should not Faircloth, in future, come and go, if not as an acknowledged son, yet as acknowledged and welcome friend, of the house? A consummation this, to her, delightful ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... running while I broke up some big lumps of coal, and while busy in the tank I felt the air go on full and the reverse lever come back, while the wheels ground sand. I stepped quickly toward the cab to see what was the matter, when the Kid sprang into ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... the way to his sports hovercar and as soon as the two were settled into the bucket seats, hit the lift lever with the butt of his left hand. Aircushion-borne, he trod down on ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... development of more and more scientific engineering and of really adaptable operatives will render possible agricultural contrivances that are now only dreams, and the diffusion of this new class over the country side—assuming the reasoning in my second chapter to be sound—will bring the lever of the improved schools under the agriculturist. The practically autonomous farm of the old epoch will probably be replaced by a great variety of types of cultivation, each with its labour-saving ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... into the end Bertie had been watching, and all three threw their weight on the lever. Slowly the stone yielded to the pressure, and moved farther and farther out. It was pushed open until the crowbar could act no longer as a lever, but they could now get a hold of the inside edge. It was only very slowly and with repeated efforts that they could turn the stone round, and at last ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... opened. The gunners take their positions. The driver opens the throttle a little and tickles the carburetor, and the engine is started up. The driver races the engine a moment, to warm her up. The officer reaches out a hand and signals for first speed on each gear; the driver throws his lever into first; he opens the throttle: the ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh

... shouted Mr. Edison, "you may set the whole thing wrong. Don't touch anything until we have found the right lever." ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... court wyll love and favour have A fole must hym fayne, if he were none afore, And be as felow to every boy and knave, And to please his lorde he must styll laboure sore. His many folde charge maketh hym coveyt more That he had lever[12] serve a man in myserye Than serve his maker ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... each mill twenty feet, to guard still further against the effects of an explosion. Behind these the powder-makers stood, for safety, while starting or stopping the motion of the ponderous rollers. This was done by means of a long lever, which threw in or out of gear the friction arrangement, which worked each set beneath the floor, in the thick archway which extended from end to end beneath the mills. It has already been stated that this archway contained the great iron shaft ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains

... "double x," enough to drown a whale. There Euclid, 'mid a troop of "Riders" passes, Riding a Rhomboid o'er the Bridge of Asses; And shouts to Newton, who seems rather deaf, I've crossed the Bridge in safety Q.E.F. There black Mechanics, innocent of soap, Lift the long lever, pull the pulley's rope, Coil the coy cylinder, explain the fear Which makes the nurse lean slightly to her rear; Else, equilibrium lost, to earth she'll fall, Down will come child, nurse, crinoline and all! ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling

... like ours at Pleasant Hill? Here, if there can be sufficient room and ample teaching force, they will be taught and trained in a practical knowledge of all the duties of life, especially in those of the household. If we educate and save the girls we are using the very lever needed to lift these hopeless and neglected thousands living at our very doors, out of their degraded life and bring them into the light of the 19th century, and qualify them to take positions among the best women of ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 2, February, 1889 • Various

... to and its release from the cylinder is effected by a four-way cock provided with a lever, which is actuated by a tappet rod attached to the crosshead, as seen on the back view of the engine. To the crosshead is also coupled a lever having its fulcrum on a bracket attached to the boiler; this lever ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... shouting [Greek text: eureeka]—all these are schoolboys' tales. To the thoughtful person it is the method of the man which constitutes his real greatness, that power of insight by which he solved the two great problems of the nature of the lever and of hydrostatic pressure, which form the basis of all static and hydrostatic science to this day. And yet on that very question of the lever the great mind of Aristotle babbles—neither sees the thing itself, nor the way towards seeing it. But since Archimedes ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley

... the editors and professors and ordered them to throw all the responsibility on Britain, and the hate was switched from one to the other with the speed and ease of a stage electrician throwing the lever from ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... questioned, accused the mathematician of having been the aggressor, in likening his head to a light cabbage; and here the altercation being renewed, the engineer proceeded to the illustration of his mechanics, tilting up his hand like a balance, thrusting it forward by way of lever, embracing the naturalist's nose like a wedge betwixt two of his fingers, and turning it round, with the momentum of a screw or peritrochium. Had they been obliged to decide the dispute with equal arms, the assailant would have had great advantage ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... she, "and you haven't depressed your figure lever once. You must have it all wrong. It'll just be simple ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh

... I am not a common spear-man. (Lapse into English.) Yeh, dam goo' shot! (pumps lever of imaginary Martini). ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... Germain. I did enough to make the opposition dissatisfied, and not enough to win it to my side. I ought to have secured the migrs when they returned. The aristocracy would have soon adored me; and I needed it; it is the true, the only support of a monarchy, its moderator, its lever, its resisting point; without it, the state is like a ship without a rudder, a balloon in mid-air. Now, the strength, the charm of the aristocracy lies in its antiquity, the only thing I could not create." It must be confessed that from an old Republican general, for the man who had sent Augereau ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... and the fleeing man staggered drunkenly but sped on, while the convict working the lever of his Winchester with remorseless cruelty, emptied its contents after ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... picture of the legislature of this time can be made. There were no reporters nor any publication of debates. Newspapers were in their infancy. Radicalism had not got hold of its fulcrum, and the lever of public opinion was, consequently useless. Nay, in anticipation, as it were, of the unruliness that afterwards exhibited itself, the Governor, now Sir Robert Milnes, recommended the culture of hemp in the province, and the ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... him, does not engender in him a superstitious terror as the thunder does in the peasant, but leaves him unmoved, for he knows that the limbs of the mechanical monster were fashioned and mounted by his comrades, and that he has but to push a lever to set it in motion or stop it. The machine, in spite of its miraculous power and productiveness, has no mystery for him. The labourer in the electrical works, who has but to turn a crank on a dial to ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... here is apprenticeship, and the issues of to-day are recorded in eternity. We are like men perched up in a signal-box by the side of the line; we pull over a lever here, and it lifts an arm half a mile off. The smallest wheel upon one end of a shaft may cause another ten times its diameter to revolve, at the other end of the shaft through the wall there. Here ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... to see that if the sea floors tend to sink downward, while the continental lands uprise, the movements which take place may be compared with those which occur in a lever about a fulcrum point. In this case the sea end of the bar is descending and the land end ascending. Now, it is evident that the fulcrum point may fall to the seaward or to the landward of the shore; only by chance and here and there would it lie exactly at the coast ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... to carry the rude vehicle to the switches at the foot of the slope after it was once set in motion, and, using a crowbar as a lever, this was soon accomplished. ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis

... her in wonderment as she bent to throw the lever into first speed. She roughed it in her impatience, and the growl of the gear drowned the sound of another man's voice calling her name. This man ran toward her, but she did not notice him and got away ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... that lay the danger which occupied the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. To consolidate the throne, and raise it above the storms which threatened it, not this or that electoral law, but the electoral power itself, should, if possible, be abolished. For in whatever hands this formidable lever was placed, it was impossible that royalty could long resist its action. To shift the elective power was only to give the monarchy other enemies, not to save it. * * * The aim of the new ministry was to preserve the electoral law; which amounted to this—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... loose end of bark in his bill, tugging and fluttering, using his tail as a lever with the tree as a fulcrum, and objurgating in unseemly tones, as the bark resists his efforts, the drongo assists the Moreton Bay ash in discarding worn-out epidermis, and the tree reciprocates by offering safe nesting-place ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... compelled, with the socialists, to search for it in those artificial means, in those arrangements which require a fundamental change in the physical and moral constitution of man, or rather we should consider that search idle and vain, for the reason that we could not comprehend the action of a lever ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... pushed the lever, and set the electric starter in motion, but when the gasoline and spark levers were set at the proper places, the motor did not respond, the fly wheel merely revolving under the impulse of ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope

... indeed. I went to church in a perfect fever. I didn't know what to do. Well, as I listened to Mr. Pilcher everything became quite clear to me. I resolved I would accept Captain Wentworth's pure unselfish devotion and make it a lever to raise ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones

... hangers, etc. The more I thought, the more I was determined to put the ship into as good a posture of defence as might be, since I judged it likely the Spaniards might pay us a visit soon or late, or mayhap some chance band of hostile Indians. To this end and with great exertion, by means of lever and tackle, I hauled inboard her four great stern-chase guns, at the which labour my lady chancing to find me, falls to ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... helpers, assisted by Dr. Spencer; but the work of composition seemed to make the ground give way under their feet, and a few adroit remarks from Dr. Spencer finally showed him and Ethel that they had not yet attained the prop for the lever that was to move the world. He gave it up, but still he did not quite forgive Tom for having been so easily convinced, and ready to be dismissed to his ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... ton to a given height represents an expenditure of an equal amount of force, whether the labor is performed by flea, man, or horse. Time supplies lack of strength. We can move as much as a horse by taking more time, and can choose two methods—either to divide the load or use a lever or a pulley. If a horse moves half its own weight three feet in a second, while a June-beetle needs a hundred seconds to convey fifty times its weight an equal distance, the two animals perform equal work proportioned to their ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various

... this, Flint detached a couple of bricks from the party-wall, which were used as a fulcrum for the lever, made of the joist. The building was not inhabited, and there was little to be feared at that height above the street from any noise they might make. Flint sat down on the end of the lever, and the scuttle flew up at once, the staple drawn out ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... that wheeze. The quick touch. Soft mark. I'd like my job. Valise I have a particular fancy for. Leather. Capped corners, rivetted edges, double action lever lock. Bob Cowley lent him his for the Wicklow regatta concert last year and never heard tidings of it from that good day ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... evaporated by the heat, the piston is drawn up, and air entering mixes with the inflammable vapor. A light is applied at a touch hole, and the explosion drives up the piston, which, working on a lever, forces down the piston of a pump for pumping water. Robt. Street adds to his description a note: "The quantity of spirits of tar or turpentine to be made use of is always proportional to the confined space, in general about 10 drops ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various

... soft sugar, and sugar-candy; but a large proportion of the cane is eaten without preparation. It is planted about the 1st of April, and is cut, from the middle of November to the middle of May. The juice is generally expressed by a lever. ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... Marcus, President of Neiman-Marcus Co., in Dallas; and the late Dr. Beardsley Ruml, widely known New Deal socialist "economist." Mr. Jervis J. Babb, Chairman of the CED's Area Development Committee (President of Lever ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot

... printing office to the mechanical department. A later writer recalls often seeing Col. Prentiss in the press-room, with coat off, sleeves rolled up, either inking the type with two large soft balls, or pulling at the lever of the old Ramage press. He describes him as "an industrious, energetic man, a little inclined to aristocratic bearing, but open, frank ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... cases well above the water line. Communication between the engine rooms and boiler rooms was through watertight doors, which could all be closed instantly from the captain's bridge: a single switch, controlling powerful electro-magnets, operated them. They could also be closed by hand with a lever, and in case the floor below them was flooded by accident, a float underneath the flooring shut them automatically. These compartments were so designed that if the two largest were flooded with water—a most unlikely contingency in the ordinary way—the ship ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley

... Arcot pushed the control lever all the way to full power. The ship filled with the strain of flowing energy, and sparks snapped in the air of the control room as they raced at an inconceivable speed through the darkness ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... jerk, and in the middle of the road, so that the on-coming driver would have to exercise caution in passing. The panting engine became silent. Persis alighted. She made several tours of inspection of her property, her face expressive of gravest concern. Occasionally she touched a screw or lever tentatively and then shook her head. Finally dropping on her knees in the dust, she thrust her head between the wheels and gazed inquiringly at the bottom of the car. Thus occupied she was too engrossed to notice that the thud of horse's ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... a lever about a wheelbarrow?' said his father. 'O yes, sir,' said JAMES. 'The axle; and the wheel is the prop, the load is the weight, and ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various

... hand, he has used a bit of looking-glass to dart a ray of reflected sunlight across a wide street or a large room. On the same plan, the extremely minute motion of a galvanometer, as it receives the successive pulsations of a message, is magnified by a weightless lever of light so that the words are easily read by an operator (Fig. 61). This beautiful invention comes from the hands of Sir William Thomson [now Lord Kelvin], who, more than any other electrician, has made ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... a break to check the forward march of sin, and at the same time a sort of lever to uplift souls and help them to overleap the stages of ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... where the shine is; The athletic American matron speaking in public to crowds of listeners, Males, females, immigrants, combinations, the copiousness, the individuality of the States, each for itself—the moneymakers, Factories, machinery, the mechanical forces, the windlass, lever, pulley, all certainties, The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity, In space the sporades, the scatter'd islands, the stars—on the firm earth, the lands, my lands, O lands! all so dear to me—what you are, (whatever it is,) I putting it ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... branch of a tree turn aside an avalanche. The carronade stumbled. The gunner, taking advantage of this critical opportunity, plunged his iron bar between the spokes of one of the hind wheels. The cannon stopped. It leaned forward. The man, using the bar as a lever, held it in equilibrium. The heavy mass was overthrown, with the crash of a falling bell, and the man, rushing with all his might, dripping with perspiration, passed the slipnoose around the bronze neck of ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... yielded projectile type handguns for ten men, with ammunition, and standard Planeteer space knives. The space knives had hidden blades which were driven forth violently when the operator pushed a thumb lever, releasing the gas in a cartridge contained in the handle. The blades snapped forth with enough force to break a bubble, or to cut through a space suit. They were designed for the sole purpose of space ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage

... to smoulder under his lids again, and he returned himself to servitude. But he grew cunning. There was no need for him to wander through his mind. He had been a fool. He pulled a lever and made his mind revolve about him, a monstrous wheel of fortune, a merry-go-round of memory, a revolving sphere of wisdom. Faster and faster it revolved, until its vortex sucked him in and he was ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... patriotism had been a mighty power in the world; and Napoleon, ever on the watch for the weak places of his foes, saw how effective a lever it might be. This had been his constant practice: he had pitted Italians against Austrians, Copts against Mamelukes, Druses against Turks, Irish against English, South Germans against the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns, and for the most part with success. But, except in the case ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... flown with the Khatkan pilot, anticipating each change or adjustment of the controls. Now he felt that sluggish response to the other's lift signal, and instinctively his own hand went out to adjust a power feed lever. ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North

... the creek the grass was five to nine feet high, and greatly impeded our horses. The day was cool and cloudy with some light showers at night. The aneroid barometer was completely put out of adjustment by the principal lever having been moved from its position by a violent shake in crossing one of the ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... balls will not be carried down by the grain, they will float on top, and can be skimmed off and destroyed. The details of pickling vary on different farms, but a common method is to place the wheat about 2 bushels at a time in loosely-tied butts or bags, and then by means of a lever it is lowered into the solution for two or three minutes, when it is raised on to a sloping trough, where the superfluous solution can drain back into the cask. Another method is to place the seed wheat, either loose or ...
— Wheat Growing in Australia • Australia Department of External Affairs

... in the virator, but it was uncomfortable to remain inside, as the air was oppressively warm. Moreover, dictated my brain, I must prepare the virator for my return within five hours, and my hand instinctively grasped a lever in the wall of the apparatus. A door opened and I stepped out, carefully closing it behind me. Again I was astonished at my wonderful familiarity with everything. If I had lived on Mars all my life, ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood

... it. It was precisely what most men who could swim would have done, but Nasmyth stayed, and Mattawa stayed with him. Nasmyth did not think very clearly, but he remembered subconsciously what the construction of that derrick had cost him. There was a lever which would release the load and let it run. He had his hand on it when ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... lever that brought the searchlight into focus on Shopton, which lay below them. Then, turning on the current, a powerful beam of light gleamed ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton

... express was just on the point of starting. The engine-driver, with his hand on the lever, whiled away the moments, like the watchman in The Agamemnon, by whistling. The guard endeavoured to talk to three people at once. Porters flitted to and fro, cleaving a path for themselves with trucks of luggage. The Usual Old Lady was asking if she was right ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... of what appeared to be a strange black metal was set on end and flanked on each side by two smaller ones. On the top of the large block was set a half-globe of a strange substance, somewhat, Henry thought, like frosted glass. On one side of the large cube was set a lever, a long glass panel, two vertical tubes and three clock-face indicators. The control board, it appeared, was ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak

... their revolution was accomplished, stood in even a more precarious position than most successful assailants of the prerogative of whatever is to continue in being. They had carried a political end by means of a religious revival. The fulcrum on which they rested their lever to overturn the existing order of things (as history always placidly calls the particular forms of disorder for the time being) was in the soul of man. They could not renew the fiery gush of enthusiasm, when once the molten metal had begun to stiffen in the mould of policy ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... door to this house was never broken by a professional cracksman. It's the work of a bungling amateur. A professional never undertakes to break a door at the lock. Naturally that's the firmest place about a door. The implement he intends to use as a lever on the door he puts in at the top or bottom. By that means he has half of the door as a lever against the resistance of the lock. Besides, a professional of any criminal group is a skilled workman. He doesn't waste effort. He doesn't fracture a door ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... highest and noblest of all callings; no one could sift wrong from right as he, and punish the wrong. In that I was right. I have not changed my opinion on that point one whit, and I am sure I never shall. The power of fact is the mightiest lever of this or of any day. The reporter has his hand upon it, and it is his grievous fault if he does not use it well. I thought I would make a good reporter. My father had edited our local newspaper, and such little help as I had been of to him had ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... this big tree that sends a limb out right over your head, don't you see, Steve?" Max told him, reassuringly. "Once I get above you and we'll make good use of this rope of mine. The limb will act as a lever, and when the boys get to pulling at the other end of the rope you've just got to come out, that's all ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie

... poles of the tent she ran one end of it under the cot; then bracing her shoulder against it, used it as a lever in the endeavor to pry the weight off her friend. The pole broke ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge

... outside, out in the hills, a raging, murderous monster. For a moment, in the grisly shambles of the little cave Lee stood transfixed. Then his hand was fumbling at his belt. He shoved the small switch-lever. ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings

... dressed for legerdemain, and if you pause to think you will note a strange wizardry at work there. You linger before a little printing-press, and as if magical clouds rose and shut out the work-day world, the skies of Greece are overhead and the Ancient searching for his lever with which to move the world passes down the room and lingers with you; for surely he has found the lever, and surely the world has been moved with it, the boundaries of empires broken up, kings discrowned, republics ruined. Go farther: a case of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... enough to the ear, how false were his words! Zell was giving the best love of which her heart was capable in view of her defective education and character. In a sincere and deep affection there are great possibilities of good. Her passion, so frank and strong, in the hands of a true man, was a lever that might have lifted her to the noblest life. Van Dam sought to use it only to force her down. He purposed to cause one of God's ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... Curtis—mind you, before that I'd been treatin' him as an ordinary dude in evenin' dress—acted like an injarubber man filled with chain lightning. He shoved 'Valtaw' back into the auto, grabs the brake an' gear lever, an' puts 'em both out of action, sweeps the two ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... wells for a weight behind the hinges on either side. Copper wire running on minute pulleys let into grooves suspended these weights and connected them with the flaps, and powerful door-springs supplemented the more elaborate contrivance. The lever controlling the whole was concealed under the counter, and reached by thrusting a foot through a panel, which also opened inward on ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... A side view of ditto 17. War-club of heavy wood, rounded and tapering. 18. Port Lincoln Wirris, or stick used for throwing at game, 2 feet. 19. Murray River Bwirri, or ditto ditto 20. War club, with a heavy knob, and pointed. 21. Port Lincoln Midla, or lever, with quartz knife attached to the end. 22. Murray river ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... picturesque mass of confusion, apparently an outcrop of the limestone, not uncommon in that region. But the lawyer probed the ground all about it. It was light dry soil, with no trace of a rocky bottom. Without a lever, their work was hard, but they succeeded in throwing off the large flat protecting slab, and in scattering its rocky supports. "Man, Coristine, I believe you're richt." ejaculated the perspiring Carruthers. Then he took the pick and loosened the ground, while the lawyer removed the earth with his ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... public by the same means, which have recently served also for the original exhibition of the most elaborate and brilliant Fictions, so that we are now receiving through them by almost every ship from Europe installments of works by Dickens, Bulwer, James, Croly, Lever, Reynolds, Mrs. Marsh, Mrs. Ellis, and indeed nearly all the most eminent contemporary novelists. So complete is the change, that all mind, except the heaviest and least popular, is likely to flow hereafter through the Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Quarterly Miscellanies, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... the other side, so that it could not be picked; while the nails that fastened it to the door were probably riveted through a plate. But there was the socket into which the bolt shot! that was merely an iron staple! he might either force it out with a lever, or file it through! Having removed the roughest of the rust with which it was caked, and so reduced its thickness considerably, he set himself to the task of filing it through, first at the top then at the bottom. It was a slow but ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... surviving to be sung each year when "the nougat bells" (as they call the Christmas chimes in Avignon) are ringing in his native town. And, on the other hand, as though to strike a balance between fame and forgottenness, there are some widely popular noels—as "C'est le bon lever"—of which the authorship absolutely is unknown; while there are still others—as the charming "Wild Nightingale"—which belong to no one author, but have been built up by unknown farm-house poets who have added fresh verses and so have ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... admit that in most cases a reinforcement coming up on the flank or rear of the enemy will be more efficacious, will be like the same weight at the end of a longer lever, and therefore that under these circumstances, we may undertake to restore the battle with the same force which employed in a direct attack would be quite insufficient. Here results almost defy calculation, because the moral forces gain completely the ascendency. This is therefore the ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... MacKenzie, and I told him I was Scotch myself, and he said it 'was a greet pleesure' to find a gentleman so well acquainted with the movements of machinery. He thought I was one of King's friends, I guess, so I didn't tell him I pulled a lever for a living myself. I gave him a cigar though, and he said, 'Thankee, sir,' and touched his ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... cable, which was nothing more than a traveling rope of wire running over guttered wheels in a conduit, and driven by immense engines, conveniently located in adjacent stations or "power-houses." The cars carried a readily manipulated "grip-lever," or steel hand, which reached down through a slot into a conduit and "gripped" the moving cable. This invention solved the problem of hauling heavily laden street-cars up and down steep grades. About the same time he also heard, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... on the lever laid, His oil-can soothed the worrying cranks, His whistle waked the snow-bound grade, His fog-horn cut the reeking Banks; In dock and deep and mine and mill The ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling

... the machine gun through all its five noses as the subaltern drew the lever home. The empty cartridges clashed on the floor and the smoke blew back through the truck. There was indiscriminate firing at the rear of the train, and return fire from the darkness without and unlimited howling. Dick stretched himself on the floor, wild ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... those sails, all that weight! Boxes heaped one on the top of the other—cubes to catch the air—a man sitting inert in a basket, with his hand on a lever and a crank: it's as though one tried to make a stuffed bird fly! And what becomes of the man in all that: the back push, the daring stroke? The man has got to be the backbone of the machine, with his quick balancings, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... Seward pressed for the treaty and instructed Dayton not to raise the question with France. He still had in mind this main object. "If Seward," says Bancroft, "had not intended to use the adherence of the United States to the declaration as a lever to force the other Powers to treat the Confederates as pirates, or at least to cease regarding them as belligerents, he might easily and unofficially have removed all such suspicions[261]." In an interview with Lyons on July 6 Seward ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... madam," I exclaimed, switching the heat-lever to "Froid." "So was I, but being merely an Upper Berth, with no rights, I was suffering in silence. I watched you turn the heat full on, and shut the window tight. I saw you go to bed in all your clothes, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... was indicated by try cocks. The safety valve was controlled by a counterbalanced lever. A jet of salt water was injected into the exhaust trunk to form a vacuum by condensation. An air pump transferred condensate and sea water into a tank from which it passed overboard. Only about a tenth of this water was returned ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle

... said Barnabas, making a respectful acknowledgment to the Doctor's dignified address. "It was but this morning she was safe as Mancastle is in the dirt, hard by Mr Lever's house yonder, in the fields. 'Tis a grievous loss, Master Dee, seeing that I was offered a score of pounds ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... means of a 'dug-out' canoe used as a lever is commonly practised in many parts of the country. The author gives a rough sketch, not worth reproduction. The Persian wheel is suitable for use in wide-mouthed wells. It may be described as a mill-wheel with buckets on the circumference, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... but let his lever forward with a sudden jerk. The wheels ground and scraped and the train trembled and stood still with the rear coach only a few feet in ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... lever is used to lift a log, one end is placed under the log, a block called a fulcrum is placed under the lever as close as possible to the log, and then the workman pulls down on the outer end of the lever. For example, if the fulcrum is one foot from the log and ten feet from the man, the latter can raise ten pounds with a pull of one pound, but he has ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education

... entered it on taking leave of Alfieri, was crowded, as usual at that hour, with the hangers-on of the noble lady's lever: the abatino in lace ruffles, handing about his latest rhymed acrostic, the jeweller displaying a set of enamelled buckles newly imported from Paris, and the black-breeched doctor with white bands who concocted remedies for the Countess's vapours and megrims. These personages, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... pass began once more to press hopelessly forward. They had scaling-ladders certainly, but they had no chance of getting these planted. They could do naught but fill the narrow way with their bodies, and to that end they had been sent, and to that end they humbly died. Our Priests with crow and lever wrenched from their lodging-places the great rocks which had been made ready, and sent them crashing down, so that once more screams filled the pass, and the ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... is better than breakfast. It was the one thing—this unknown enemy of yours—wanting to lever the dull mass of your too peacefulness. What is he like? How strong? How stands the quarrel between you? I was a soldier myself before the sea allured me, and love horse and sword ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... tree, bring you such magnificent, permanent heat, that your heart and your tea-kettle will sing together for joy over it. In making a fire, depend upon it, there is something more than luck,—there is always talent in it. We once saw Charles Lever (Harry Lorrequer's father) build up a towering blaze in a woody nook out of just nothing but what he scraped up from the ground, and his rare ability. You remember Mr. Opie the painter's answer to a student who asked him what he mixed his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... almost seemed to be alive, smiling at him with its wicked round mouth. He picked it up, and it bolstered his courage, his hope and his energy enormously. At once he leaped to the closed entrance-door and felt for the lever that opened it. But there he paused ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... head, oil cans and deck in a clean condition, boiler full of water, enough fire and steam, so that the hostler will not be required to put in fuel while the engine is in his charge; should know that throttle valve is securely closed, reverse lever in center of quadrant, cylinder cocks open, and if equipped with independent brake, it to be applied; in fact, it is an excellent opportunity for a mechanical officer to judge the ability of ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous

... Already had he discovered that nobody could control the complicated machinery of the native tabu any more than any one statesman could manage always any vast political machine; indeed he, as many others, might more than conceivably be ground up by the gargantuan engine with whose starting lever he had played. All he could do had been done; nothing remained but to adopt Marufa's ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... in the doorway. Mr. Roumann grasped a lever. He threw it over. There was a spark as ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood

... couldn't at one time, that's true. But now we've got the machines. The machines drove the women from their homes. Up to lately one had to have a man's strength for the work; now, by just pulling a lever, a woman can do as much and more than the strongest ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux

... the height of the outer parapet. The bishop opened the door with another key and threw the windows wide, disclosing a canvas-hooded telescope in the centre, chairs and tables bearing astronomical instruments, and sidereal maps upon the walls. Then, as he pressed a lever, the roof was cleft asunder till the ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... most individual in the point of view of Ibsen in his dramas is his sense of the vast importance trifles, of the natural human tendency to invent or magnify misunderstandings. A misunderstanding is his main lever of the tragic mischief; and he has studied and diagnosed this unconscious agent of destiny more minutely and persistently than any other dramatist. He found it in himself. We see just this brooding over trifles, this sensitiveness to wrongs, imaginary ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... with a lever, fitted into a slot at the top, which extends half way around the circumference and is held in place at the bottom by a fixing pin. In this pin there is a small metal ring, for the purpose of extracting the pin when ready ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey

... ancestors had murdered a supreme being. Let us teach, not the doctrines of the past, but the discoveries of the present; not the five points of Calvinism, but geology and geography. Education is the lever to raise mankind, and superstition is the enemy ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... of ability may have been engaged upon it, the press of the South—up to the events just preceding the war—had scarcely been that great lever which it had elsewhere become. It was rather a local machine than a great engine for shaping ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... the barns and out into a large, enclosed lot, where were a series of tracks and loops. A half-dozen cars were there, manned by instructors, each with a pupil at the lever. More pupils were waiting at one of the rear doors ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... Gaston de Paris did what no owner ought ever to do: seeing Destruction and judging that by a bold stroke it might be out-leaped, he sprang to the engine room telegraph and flung the lever to ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole



Words linked to "Lever" :   control stick, pinch bar, cant dog, gun trigger, machine, foot lever, fulcrum, wrecking bar, stick, key, tiller, tumbler, ripping bar, tire tool, valve rocker, dog hook, treadle, joystick, open, simple machine, jimmy, bar, trigger, hand throttle, tappet, open up, pry bar, tire iron, pedal, loose, loosen, peavey, peavy, rocker arm, foot pedal, crowbar



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