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Disproportion   Listen
noun
Disproportion  n.  
1.
Want of proportion in form or quantity; lack of symmetry; as, the arm may be in disproportion to the body; the disproportion of the length of a building to its height.
2.
Want of suitableness, adequacy, or due proportion to an end or use; unsuitableness; disparity; as, the disproportion of strength or means to an object.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Disproportion" Quotes from Famous Books



... preachers, or by a few enthusiastic scholars, at once devoted to and in terror of the civil government; intensely national; in all the roots and traditions of its civilization, Roman; impatient of the disproportion of society, and in particular of economic disproportion in the religious aspect of society, because the religious function, by the very definition of Catholicism, by its very Creed, should be the first to redress tyrannies. Upon that Englishman ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc

... in several cases, and on the whole I think South Carolina is the place for you. They're more liberal there, perhaps because they have many more blacks than whites, and would like to lessen the disproportion." ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... states and individuals should seek to attain harmony, which, as the wise tell us, is the bond of heaven and earth, of gods and men. Callicles has never discovered the power of geometrical proportion in both worlds; he would have men aim at disproportion and excess. But if he be wrong in this, and if self-control is the true secret of happiness, then the paradox is true that the only use of rhetoric is in self-accusation, and Polus was right in saying that to do wrong is ...
— Gorgias • Plato

... and but two hundred pages of lyrical production, more than half of which was written in about a dozen years! The seeming disproportion is explained by the lines just quoted from the poem Good Cheer, with which Bjrnson concluded the first edition of his Poems and Songs. Alongside of these stanzas, in which the cause of his popularity and powerful influence is also unconsciously revealed, ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... Numerous are the instances of men who would never have been heard of as thinkers or as reflective poets, if they had had sufficient muscular ballast to pull against their teeming brains. The consequence of the disproportion has been that the superfluous brain has exhaled, as a mere necessity.[A] If Tacitus had fared in any sort like his brother,—if there had been anything like an equitable division between them of muscle and brain, it is more than probable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... scarcely commenced investigations into cosmical influences. Pestilence and epidemy consist not in alterations of the four primary qualities, but in a corruption of the air, powerful, though quite immaterial, and not cognoscible by the senses—(corruptio aeris non substantialis, sed qualitativa) in a disproportion of the imponderables in the atmosphere, as it would be expressed by the moderns. The causes of the pestilence and epidemy are, first of all, astral influences, especially on occasions of planetary ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... this will not awaken in common natures religious trust. Under such protracted suffering, the animal outgrows the spiritual in frightful disproportion. Yet the mother's sublime faith, which had brought her thus far through her agonies, with a heart still warm toward those who shared them, did not fail her now. She spoke gently to one and another; asked ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan

... the clicking, while the sleet fell faster and the evening began to close in. What messages were they, I wondered, that were passing across the mountains? I connected them, idly enough, with the corner in wheat a famous speculator was endeavouring to establish in Chicago; and reflected upon the disproportion between the achievements of Man and the use he puts them to. He invents wireless telegraphy, and the ships call to one another day and night, to tell the name of the latest winner. He is inventing the flying-machine, ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... the Atom he mention'd, but was determin'd, if possible, to become the Diamond. At my first setting out, I stole two Horses; then I got into a Gang; where we play'd at small Game, and stopp'd the small Caravans; thus I gradually lessen'd the wide Disproportion, which there was at first between me and the rest of Mankind: I enjoy'd not only my full Share of the good Things of this Life, but enjoy'd them with Usury. I was look'd upon as a Man of Consequence, and I procur'd this Castle ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... which I have here rendred Starlight, is Zohal in Arabick which signifies Saturn. 'Tis a common way with the Arabian Authors, when they intend to shew a vast disproportion between things, to compare the greater to the Sun and the lesser to Saturn. The meaning of this Distich, is that there is as much difference between what a Man knows by hearsay, or what notions he imbibes in his Education, and what he knows when he comes to examin things to the ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail

... his opponents: "N'etes-vous donc pas ridicules, mes Peres? Qu'on satisfait au precepte d'ouir la messe en entendant quatre quarts de messe a la fois de differents pretres!" When [68] you have the like of that it is impossible not to laugh, parce que rien n'y porte davantage qu'une disproportion surprenante entre ce qu'on ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... readers. The weight of the humming-bird is one drachm, that of the condor not less than four stone. Now, if we reduce four stone into drachms we shall find the condor is 14,336 times as heavy as the humming-bird. What an amazing disproportion of weight! Yet by the same mechanical use of its wings the condor can overcome the specific gravity of its body with as much ease as the little humming-bird. But this is not all. We are informed ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... he muttered to himself. 'Have I ever been sane? Probably not. The disproportion between my motives and other men's is too great to be normal. Well, at least I am sane enough to shut myself up. Long after that beautiful child has forgotten she ever saw me I shall still be doing ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... visionary idea of establishing a pure democratical republic in so extensive a country as Britain. This was a rash theory, where there is such an infinite difference betwixt ranks, habits, education, and morals—where there is such an immense disproportion betwixt the wealth of individuals—and where a large portion of the inhabitants consist of the inferior classes of the large towns and manufacturing districts—men unfitted to bear that share in the direction of a state, which must be exercised by the members of a republic ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... out too much; the general effect is almost pyramidal. Again, take this one," and he indicated a gentleman coming down the steps, "you could thread his legs and body through a needle's eye, but his head would defy you. Mark his boiled eyes, his flashing spectacles, and the absence of all hair. Disproportion, ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... us out of our equanimity. Consonant chords represent stability, satisfaction and, when over-used, inertia. The genius of the composer is shown in establishing just the right proportion between these two elements; but if there is to be any disproportion let us have too much rather than too little dissonance, for then, at any rate, the music is alive. Since Beethoven the whole development of music as a human language shows the preponderating stress laid on dissonance; to this fact a knowledge ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... repentances? At the first temptation I forgot my remorse and good resolutions. I am weak and mean-spirited, and you are not firm enough to govern my vacillating nature. While my intentions are good, my actions are villainous. The disproportion between my extravagant desires, and the means of gratifying them, is too great for me to endure any longer. Who knows to what fearful lengths my unfortunate disposition may lead me? However, I will take my fate in my own hands!" he finally ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... head was crowned with a laurel wreath; his mantle, falling from one shoulder, left his breast bare and covered the lower part of his person with its ample folds of pure gold enamelled with flowers. The whole height of the statue with the pedestal was about fifty feet; by its very disproportion to the size of the temple it was made to appear still larger than it really was. This statue was reckoned one of the wonders of the world. In it the Greeks seemed to behold Zeus face to face. To see it was a cure for all earthly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... sister planets to be? For that determination as to a point in their constitution, will do something to illustrate our own. We are as good as they, I hope, any day: perhaps in a growl, one might modestly insinuate—better. It's not at all likely that there can be any great disproportion of age amongst children of the same household: and therefore, since Kant always countenanced the idea that Jupiter had not quite finished the upholstery of his extensive premises, as a comfortable residence for a man, Jupiter having, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... mind he sought feverishly for the "note" he had to utter, yet found it not, for he was too horribly confused. Fiddles, sand-patterns, colored robes, gongs, giant tuning-forks, wax-sheeted walls, aged-faces-turned-young and caverns-by-the-sea jostled one another in his memory with a jumble of disproportion ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood

... leader, it was only an unlucky accident that restrained Jackson from a resolute endeavour to at least postpone the capture of the town. He had failed to induce the enemy's advanced guard to attack him in position. To attack himself, in broad daylight, with such vast disproportion of numbers, was out of the question. His resources, however, were not exhausted. After dark on the 12th, when his troops had left the town, he called a council, consisting of General Garnett and the regimental commanders of the Stonewall Brigade, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... Man's disproportion.—[This is where our innate knowledge leads us. If it be not true, there is no truth in man; and if it be true, he finds therein great cause for humiliation, being compelled to abase himself in one way or another. And since he cannot exist without ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... enumerate the services, which he has performed to mankind and society. What praise, even of an inanimate form, if the regularity and elegance of its parts destroy not its fitness for any useful purpose! And how satisfactory an apology for any disproportion or seeming deformity, if we can show the necessity of that particular construction for the use intended! A ship appears more beautiful to an artist, or one moderately skilled in navigation, where its prow is wide and swelling beyond its poop, than if it were framed with a precise geometrical regularity, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... glittering falseness, the brow its sinister contraction; you would have pronounced the face not only beautiful, but sweet and womanly. Take that bandage suddenly away and the change would have startled you, and startled you the more because you could detect no sufficient defect or disproportion in the lower part of the countenance to explain it. It was as if the mouth was the key to the whole: the key nothing without the text, the text uncomprehended ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... source of loss to those who adopt it; and may we not speak, and yet with truth, as unfavourably of some of the other striking parts in the same system? What shall we say, first, to that injurious disproportion of the articles of croppage with the wants of the estates, which makes little or no provision of food for the labourers (the very first to be cared for), but leaves these to be fed by articles to be bought three ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson

... fortune of Hannibal was then consolidated; more than 60,000 Boians, Insubrians, and Ligures flocked in a few days to his standards, and raised his forces to 100,000 men. With such a disproportion between the nucleus of the Carthaginian army and its auxiliaries, Hannibal was in reality but a Gaulish chief; and if, in the moments of danger, he had no cause to repent his new situation, more than once, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... Undoubtedly, the relative disproportion would be very much greater if the number of deaths of those who go from other States, after it is too late for them to receive any benefit, could be eliminated from the actual number that die from among the inhabitants themselves. The question may arise right here ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill

... Montesquieu without doubt borrowed his general idea from Aristotle, who remarks not without humour, "Those, who think that they have discovered the basis of good government, are apt to push the consequences of their new found principle too far. They do not remember that disproportion in such matters is fatal. They forget that a nose which varies slightly from the ideal line of beauty appropriate for noses, tending slightly towards becoming a hook or a snub, may still be of fair ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... portions of two or more states. Since 1871 there has been no redistricting of the Empire, and the populations comprising the various constituencies have become grossly unequal. Berlin, with more than two million people, is still entitled to but six seats; and the disproportion in other great cities and densely inhabited regions is almost as flagrant.[328] There has long been demand for a redistribution of seats; but, by reason of the proneness of urban constituencies to return to the Reichstag socialists ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... own interests in being both indefinite and incoherent. In consequence of the daily vicissitudes of his fortune, he is well aware that he is affected for better or for worse by agencies which fall outside the more familiar routine operations of society and nature. So great is the disproportion between the calculable and the incalculable elements of his life that he is like a man crouching in the dark, expecting a blow from any quarter. The agencies whose working can be discounted in advance form his secular world; but this world is narrow and meagre, and is overshadowed ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... serve our immediate purpose to say with Samuel Johnson that humour is "grotesque imagery"; and "grotesque" is "distorted of figure; unnatural." That is to say, humour is an effort of the imagination presenting human nature with some element of distortion or disproportion which instantly kindles mirth. It must be imaginative; it must touch the bed-rock of human nature; it must arouse merriment and not anger or scorn. In this fine and most rare gift Charles Dickens abounded ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... chivalrous and moved affection. I have spoken with one who remembered her, and who had been the intimate and equal of her sons, and I found this witness had been struck, as I had been, with a sense of disproportion between the warmth of the adoration felt and the nature of the woman, whether as described or observed. She diligently read and marked her Bible; she was a tender nurse; she had a sense of humour under strong control; she talked and found some amusement at her (or rather at ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... themselves, from the commanders to the gunners and the unnamed heroes in the boiler rooms, each and all contributing toward the achievement of this astounding victory, for which neither ancient nor modern history affords a parallel in the completeness of the event and the marvelous disproportion of casualties, it would be invidious to single out any for especial honor. Deserved promotion has rewarded the more conspicuous actors. The nation's profoundest gratitude is due to all of these brave men who by their skill and devotion in a few ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... se, this diminishes the chances of a departure from the common type. Thus comparison between whites and blacks, between primitive and civilized peoples, shows that, for equal populations, there is an enormous disproportion as to ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... the stairs leading to the story above a heavy broad cart-wheel, and as it bounded clattering towards the floor below, the assailants fled out of doors in a panic, and taking advantage of their disorder, the Lowes, disregarding the vast disproportion of numbers, rushed upon them, and a regular melee began. It is thought, that the smaller party would have been victorious, but for an ugly blow on the head of the youngest brother, which felled and disabled him; whereupon his associates escaped unmolested and he was taken helpless into the ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous

... average number of young produced is four or five times that of the parents, we ought to have at least five times as many birds in the country at the end of summer as at the beginning, and there is certainly no such enormous disproportion as this. The fact is, that the destruction commences, and is probably most severe, with nestling birds, which are often killed by heavy rains or blown away by severe storms, or left to die of hunger if either ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... dayspring of thy fancies, with hope, like a fiery column before thee, the dark pillar not yet turned ... How have I seen the casual passer through the cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration, (while he weighed the disproportion between the 'speech' and the 'garb' of the mirandula,) to hear thee unfold, in deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Iamblichus [14] or Plotinus, (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts); or reciting Homer ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... trivial offence, committed by a brave well-behaved soldier (as by common consent his boy had been pronounced), who had been driven into it moreover by the "mismanagement" of his superior; and on the other side was this heavy punishment of five months' imprisonment! The disproportion between crime and sentence was incomprehensible ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... whose institutions were naturally antagonistic to the slave idea. This being the case, she must be alarmed at seeing that population steadily outstripping her own in numbers and wealth.[61] Since she could not possibly even hold this disproportion stationary, her best resource seemed to be to endeavor to keep it practically harmless by maintaining a balance of power in the government. Thus it became unwritten law that slave States and free States must be equal in number, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... foaming waterfalls are like streams from penny squirts. Everyone knows the avalanches on the Jungfrau, and the curiously disproportionate appearance of the little puffs of white smoke, which are said to be the cause of the thunder; but the disproportion ceases to an eye that has learnt really to measure distance, and to know that these smoke-puffs, represent a cataract of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... teach, aye, and to inspire others, rather than him whose chief concern it is to see that no one but himself enjoys these opportunities. The means, moreover, that each combatant will bring to the conflict are, in the end, on the side of Germany. Much the same disproportion of resources exists as ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... harps of golden wires, With those just Spirits that wear victorious palms Hymns devout and holy psalms Singing everlastingly: That we on earth, with undiscording voice May rightly answer that melodious noise; As once we did, till disproportion'd sin Jarr'd against nature's chime, and with harsh din Broke the fair music that all creatures made To their great Lord, whose love their motion sway'd In perfect diapason, whilst they stood In first obedience, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... annihilated! Now, upon comparing this simple narration of things and facts with the false and absurd accounts which have rather insulted and imposed upon us than informed us, who but must see the enormous disproportion?... Exaggeration and the absurdities ever faithfully attached to it are inseparable attitudes of the ignorant, the empty, and the affected. Hence those eloquent tropes so familiar in every conversation, monstrously pretty, vastly little; ... hence ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... received into my consciousness the moments of the human comedy which have been an increasing burden to it. Within a block of the river I met a child so small that at first I almost refused to take any account of her, until she appealed to my sense of humor by her amusing disproportion to the pail which she was lugging in front of her with both of her little mittened hands. I am scrupulous about mittens, though I was tempted to write of her little naked hands, red with the pitiless cold. This would have been more effective, but it would not have been true, and the truth ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... were then distracting and corrupting the soul of England. Well, the 154th Error, Heresy, and Blasphemy in this catalogue is this:— "That 'tis lawful for a man to put away his wife upon indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable; and for disproportion and deadness of spirit, or something distasteful and averse in the immutable bent of nature; and man, in regard of the freedom and eminency of his creation, is a law to himself in this matter, being ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... accessions made the collection the finest academic library in England, not excepting the excellent library of 380 volumes then at Peterhouse. It had a character of its own. The usual overwhelming mass of Bibles, of church books, of the Fathers and the Schoolmen does not depress us with its disproportion. The collection was strong in astronomy and medicine: Ptolemy, Albumazar, Rhazes, Serapion, Avicenna, Haly Abenragel, Zaael, and others were all represented. Besides these, there was a fine selection of the classics—Plato, Aristotle, including the Politica ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... aware that all minds are more or less consciously impressed with the broad difficulty that, after all attempts to trace the origin of Christianity to agencies and influences of well-understood human character, the disproportion between causes and effects still continues to appear excessive. The great Christian tradition with its definite beliefs about the conditions of man's existence, which has shaped the fortunes and determined the future of mankind on earth, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... that the conclusion follows from the premises, our sole warrant for that judgment being that we can not conceive it not to follow. Consequently if the postulate is fallible, the conclusions of reasoning are more vitiated by that uncertainty than direct intuitions; and the disproportion is greater, the more numerous the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... intelligence towards explanations, that sets us perpetually seeking laws, seeking statements that will fit into infinite, incessantly interweaving complexities, and be true of them all! There is I perceive a valiant and magnificent stupidity about the human mind, a disregard of disproportion and insufficiency—like the ferret which will turn from the leveret it has seized to attack even man if he should interfere. By these desperate feats of thinking it is that our species has achieved its victories. By them it survives. By them it must stand the test of ultimate survival. Some ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... Cairo professed to be amazed at the ludicrous disproportion between their numerical forces and mine. They could not understand, and they wanted to know, by what strange privilege it is that an Englishman with a brace of pistols and a couple of servants rides safely across the Desert, whilst ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... must it be to compare the son of Sophronicus to the son of Mary! What an infinite disproportion there is between them! Socrates dying without pain or ignominy, easily supported his character to the last; and if his death, however easy, had not crowned his life, it might have been doubted whether Socrates, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... observation concerning that envy, which arises from a superiority in others, that it is not the great disproportion betwixt ourself and another, which produces it; but on the contrary, our proximity. A common soldier bears no such envy to his general as to his sergeant or corporal; nor does an eminent writer meet with so great jealousy in common hackney ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... plays of Shakspeare with greatly more ability and acuteness than himself had brought to the task. His dislike had no better foundation. Neither the works, the character, nor the associations of the man authorized his elevation to the throne of dulness. The disproportion between the subject and the satire instantly impresses the reader. After the first explosion of his malice, it impressed Pope; and anxious to redeem his error, he sought diligently for some plan of dethroning Tibbald, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... his pointing finer and read two descriptions of the filigree ball. The disproportion in the rewards offered was apparent. That promised by Uncle David was calculated to rouse any man's cupidity and should have resulted in ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... fullest consent of the Superior he started off on his expedition, and in his heart he nourished good hopes of success. He knew that Ottilie was not ill-disposed toward him; and although it was true there was some disproportion of rank between them, yet distinctions of this kind were fast disappearing in the temper of the time. Moreover, the Baroness had made him perceive clearly that Ottilie must always remain a poor, portionless maiden. To be related to a wealthy family, it ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... this distance of time, upon the curious struggle which took place in the Cabinet on this question, we cannot fail to be struck by the immense disproportion between cause and effect exhibited in this strange episode in the history of the Shelburne Administration. The full recognition of the rights of Ireland had received the concurrent sanction of the Legislatures of both kingdoms only ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... though in them it is vastly more difficult to ascertain what may be called the normal dimensions or proportions. Nevertheless observation and experience soon show what may be termed the average size of each plant, and any disproportion between the several organs is ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... And this disproportion between induction and conclusion becomes still more glaring, when it is observed that he expects his formula for all history to carry an inference much larger than itself. Dr. Draper is devoted to a materialistic philosophy, and his moving purpose is to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... like as thou wert in the day-spring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before thee—the dark pillar not yet turned—Samuel Taylor Coleridge—Logician, Metaphysician, Bard! How have I seen the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration (while he weighed the disproportion between the speech and the garb of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus or Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold

... become a fault when wanted for the table. The very rapidity with which they increase in size is thought by some to prevent their meat from ripening up sufficiently before being hurried off to the butcher. The disproportion of the fatty to the muscular flesh, found in this to a greater extent than in races coming more slowly to maturity, makes the meat of the thorough-bred short horn, in the estimation of some, less agreeable to the taste, and less profitable ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... uncommonly serviceable, for, at the same time that it totally prevents putrefaction, it renders the skin moist and flexible for many days. While the bird is drying, take it out and replace it in its position once every day. Then, if you see that any part begins to shrink into disproportion, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... this way: He appeared to be just of that age which we should think least advantageous to him; too young to enforce approbation by robust manly exertion of talents; too far advanced to win over the judgment by tenderness; or by a manifest disproportion between his age and his efforts, to excite that astonishment which, however shortlived, is, while it lasts, despotic over the understanding. Labouring, therefore, under most of the disadvantages without any of the advantages of puerility, candor and common sense pronounced at once that much less ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... callous accomplice in the fate of the poor man. In a week to a fortnight unemployment would take all comfort from a home that represented the scraping and saving of many years—so crying was the disproportion. Here was enough to stamp a lasting comprehension upon the minds of all, and enough to challenge agitation. All but persons of feeble mind could see now what ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... to salute the priest. He was feeble and small of stature, but the thing about him that struck you at first sight was the disproportion between his shrunken body and his immense head. The forehead, round and prominent, seemed to crush with its weight the dark and irregular features, much pitted by smallpox. He was very ugly, but still the expression ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... volumes filled by the verse cover a producing period of some eighteen years first and last, while the seventeen or more volumes of novels represent correspondingly about four-and-twenty years. One is reminded by this disproportion in time and result how much more concise and quintessential expression becomes when given in rhythmic form than when shaped ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... who manned them were not content to remain idle, and, though without orders to engage, the Cygnet soon crept in close enough to use her guns. The Condor steamed away to the west, and engaged alone and unsupported the Marabout Fort. The admiral, seeing the disproportion of force between the Egyptian fort and the little gunboat, signalled the Bittern and Beacon to join her. The Decoy went of her own accord, and the other gunboats and the Cygnet also moved off to aid in ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... once establish that those bye-laws which afford protection to the well-governing of the merchant service in general, are not sufficient to maintain the necessary discipline on board of the East India ships. The greater the disproportion between the unit who commands and the numbers who obey, the greater the chance of mutiny. Sedition is the progeny of assembly. Even where grievances may be real, if there is no contact and no discussion, there will be no insubordination; but ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... Effingham slipped out of the bay and hung with the wind upon their rear. In numbers the two forces were strangely unequal, for the English fleet counted only eighty vessels against the hundred and forty-nine which composed the Armada. In size of ships the disproportion was even greater. Fifty of the English vessels, including the squadron of the Lord Admiral and the craft of the volunteers, were little bigger than yachts of the present day. Even of the thirty Queen's ships which formed its main body, there were but four which equalled in tonnage ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... remarkable effect of such extensive wastes, that they impose an idea of solitude even upon those who travel through them in considerable numbers; so much is the imagination affected by the disproportion between the desert around and the party who are traversing it. Thus the members of a caravan of a thousand souls may feel, in the deserts of Africa or Arabia, a sense of loneliness unknown to the individual traveller, whose solitary course is through a thriving ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... aware that Mabel, planted, blond and brimming, too near the edge of the box, was somehow out of scale and out of drawing; and the freedom of her demonstrations increased the effect of disproportion. No one else was wagging and waving in that way: a gestureless mute telegraphy seemed to pass between the other boxes. Still, Undine could not help following Mrs. Lipscomb's glance, and there in fact was Claud Popple, taller and more ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... not be mended, or, at least, it could not be mended much, without upsetting the capitalist balance, or, rather, disproportion in society; for a man with a roof is a man with a house, and to that extent his house is his castle. The cradle could not be made to rock easier, or, at least, not much easier, without strengthening the hands of the poor household, for the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world—to ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton

... than monsters: humanity makes us refrain from expressing disgust at the awkward shame of the one, whilst the intemperate vanity of the other justly provokes ridicule and indignation. I have always observed in the understandings of women who have been too much cultivated, some disproportion between the different faculties of their minds. One power of the mind undoubtedly may be cultivated at the expense of the rest; as we see that one muscle or limb may acquire excessive strength, and an unnatural size, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... this strange disproportion in your years, And, let me add, disparity of tempers, Might make the world doubt whether such an union Could make ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... of France of six millions of livres, to be drawn for by General Washington at distant periods, and an offer to provide clothing and other supplies for the army, the expense to be deducted from the donation above mentioned. The disproportion between this and the necessities of the United States upon which their demand was founded, as well as the exceptionable manner of touching the money, determined me without delay to renew the negotiation, in which I had the concurrence of our Minister Plenipotentiary, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... man gives voluntarily to another that which he does not owe him, he causes neither injustice nor inequality. For a man's ownership depends on his will, so there is no disproportion if he forfeit something of his own free-will, either by his own or ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... like a pennon in the distance. We were now left alone in our glory, and felt assured of what we had more than suspected before, namely, that we had got into the wrong boat. We then, though rather too late, inquired the cause of the extraordinary disproportion of the passengers, and were told that the Etoile was the favourite boat going down the river, while the Dorade had ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... fuer Geburtshuelfe, 1889, Bk. ix, pp. 221 et seq.) has collected over one hundred and fifty cases of injury to women in coitus inflicted by the penis. The causes were brutality, drunkenness of one or both parties, unusual position in coitus, disproportion of the organs, pathological conditions of the woman's organs (Cf. R.W. Taylor, Practical Treatise on Sexual Disorders, Ch. XXXV). Blumreich also discusses the injuries produced by violent coitus (Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... one. What the over-balance will be after the war, one can only guess. When women who want to marry are not married, or married to types different from themselves—which must happen when the sexes are in disproportion—unhappiness must result. Woman is at war, she knows not with what. When women who are full of energy and ability have nothing to do, there is bound to be unhappiness. In Canada a woman has perfect freedom to ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... enterprises and vainglorious pursuits of a monarchy are not a proper standard by which to judge of those which might be necessary in a republic, it ought, on the other hand, to be remarked that there should be as great a disproportion between the profusion and extravagance of a wealthy kingdom in its domestic administration, and the frugality and economy which in that particular become the modest simplicity of republican government. If we balance a proper deduction from one side against ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... battle. But for me, my forebears were savages two hundred years ago. My people learn to know civilization by the lowest and most degrading contact with it, and thus equipped or unequipped I tempt, an abnormal contest. Can't you see the disproportion?" ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... attached; and thus, also, the choir and transepts, taken collectively, form nearly a square, except that, to the end of the middle compartment, is attached a circular apsis, of an unusually small size; and, seen from the inside of the church, this disproportion becomes even more conspicuous: the great thickness of the wall necessarily subtracting much from the space. It even strikes the eye as being less than it really is, from being subdivided into a number of small arches; ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... wise one. I have been informed what is really in the cases. Were I going by myself with a sergeant and twelve men, I should say that to put the money in ammunition-cases was not only absolutely useless but dangerous, the disproportion between the force and the value of the ammunition would be so great that it would attract attention at once, but as you are with us it is more likely to pass without observation. You are an officer on the staff of ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty

... not to say ordinary, disproportion between moral worth and worldly prosperity has at all times led the observant and reflecting few to a nicer consideration of the current belief, whether instinctive or traditional. By forcing the soul in upon herself, this enigma of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... the husbands of young women aged twenty and under average a little above twenty-five years, and the inequality of age diminishes thenceforward, till for women who have reached thirty the respective ages are equal: after thirty-five years, women, like men, marry those younger than themselves, the disproportion increasing with age, till at fifty-five it averages ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... pounds, there are in Ireland 75,000 agricultural proletarians more than in the neighbouring island. {272a} How great the competition for land in Ireland must be is evident from this extraordinary disproportion, especially when one reflects that the labourers in Great Britain are living in the utmost distress. The consequence of this competition is that it is impossible for the tenants to live much better than the labourers, by reason of the high rents paid. The Irish people ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... a hundred and forty fold. The quantity sown by a family is usually from five to ten bamboo measures or gallons. These returns are very extraordinary compared with those of our wheat-fields in Europe, which I believe seldom exceed fifteen, and are often under ten. To what is this disproportion owing? to the difference of grain, as rice may be in its nature extremely prolific? to the more genial influence of a warmer climate? or to the earth's losing by degrees her fecundity from an excessive cultivation? Rather than to any of these causes I am inclined to attribute it to ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... frightfully scourged six times a day for that entire period, there would be just proportion nay, an inexpressibly merciful proportion between the offence and the punishment, in comparison with that which, being an absolutely infinite disproportion, does not really admit of any comparison, the sentence to an eternal abode in hell as a penalty for the worst kind and the greatest amount of crime a man could possibly crowd into a life of a thousand years. Think, then, of passing ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... who are interested in good government and a well-ordered and law-abiding community ... for which this community ought to be profoundly grateful." And this man is also "ebon black." And here we would correct the impression that a large disproportion of the negroes are receiving "a higher education." The idea is given out that a great mistake has been made by the societies and philanthropists that are seeking the elevation of the freedmen. It would relieve the quite unnecessary alarm of objectors if they would consult the United States census ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 08, August, 1885 • Various

... adaptability, it may be that sometimes he will not find work. Such a disproportion between the work to be done and the people to do it may arise as to present a surplus of labour everywhere. This disproportion may be due to two causes: to an increase of population without a corresponding increase of enterprises, or to a diminution of employment throughout the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... observable in such a case. In the moment of real action, the notions of the actual strength of the enemy are generally so uncertain, the estimate of our own commonly so incorrect, that the party superior in numbers either does not admit the disproportion, or is very far from admitting the full truth, owing to which, he evades almost entirely the moral disadvantages which would spring from it. It is only hereafter in history that the truth, long suppressed through ignorance, vanity, or a wise discretion, makes its appearance, and then it certainly ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... ermine once laid aside for the day, he was as jolly and mirthful as any of his frontier companions. Judge Bradford was no advocate, but by the action of a phenomenal memory his large head was stored so full of law as to emphasize, to those who knew him, the curious disproportion between its size and that of his legs and feet. These latter were of such peculiarly modest dimensions as to call to mind Goldsmith's well-known lines, though in this case we must, of necessity, picture admiring ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... size beyond what we are accustomed to expect, or the usual size of things of the same class, produces by contrast a greater feeling of magnitude and ponderous strength than another object of ten times the same dimensions. The intensity of the feeling makes up for the disproportion of the objects. Things are equal to the imagination, which have the power of affecting the mind with an equal degree of terror, admiration, delight, or love. When Lear calls upon the heavens to avenge ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... important, as it gets rid of the difficulty which I myself have felt and expressed, that it was very improbable that she was sold all standing in sea-going trim, as I imagined Turner intended us to believe she was sold, and answers also the criticism just mentioned as to the disproportion between the weight of the masts and yards and the size of the hull." Part of the Temeraire, Mr. White tells me, is still in existence. Messrs. Castle, the shipbuilders of Millbank, have the two figures of Atlas which ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... great heiress, but was ruined by the prodigality of her father and the villainy of a horrid man in whom he confided. And one of the handsomest young gentlemen in the country is attached to her; but, as he is heir to a great estate, she discourages his addresses on account of the disproportion of ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... have their women at hand, and during a journey many of them take two or three female slaves. How is this superabundant supply of the softer sex kept up? If I am noticing a mere temporary phenomenon, the destruction of men in the razzias may account for the disproportion. Besides, the Kailouees are always imparting fresh ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... across killed by artillery, they figured up about three hundred —a ridiculously small number; in fact, not much more than one dead man for each Krupp gun on that part of the line. Although the number of dead was in utter disproportion to the terrific six-hour cannonade, yet small as it was the torn and mangled bodies made such a horrible sight that we turned back toward Bazeilles without having gone further ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... extent of boggy land; this is also the case in the next bay to the westward, Anderson Bay, which receives the waters of the Forestier River.** The only good soil seen was on the large Piper River, so that the disproportion of land fit for cultivation on this part of the northern shore of Tasmania, with that which is not, is very great. Behind the coast the eye wanders over interminable woody ranges of various heights, thrown together in irregular groups, called by the colonists Tiers. They ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... theological argument is based (1) on the disproportion between nature and grace and (2) on the absolute necessity of grace for the performance ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... the decline of life, and who showed me marks of great esteem and affection; but although the heart of the uncle was set upon this marriage, which was much wished for by the nephew also, and I was greatly desirous to promote the satisfaction of both, the great disproportion of age, and the extreme repugnancy of the young lady, made me join with the mother in postponing the ceremony, and the affair was at length broken off. The colonel has since married Mademoiselle Dillan, his relation, beautiful, and amiable as my heart could wish, and ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... poor sorry man, poor dust and ashes, that he should crowd it up, and go jostlingly into the presence of the great God—especially since it is apparent the disproportion that is betwixt God and him? Esther, when she went to supplicate the king her husband for her people, made use neither of her beauty nor relation, nor the privileges of which she might have had temptation to make use of, especially ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan

... in Africa and India prevailed in Ceylon, that is, had the elephants there been provided with tusks, they would long since have been annihilated for the sake of their ivory.[1] But it is a curious fact that, whilst in Africa and India both sexes have tusks[2], with some slight disproportion in the size of those of the females: not one elephant in a hundred is found with tusks in Ceylon, and the few that possess them are exclusively males. Nearly all, however, have those stunted processes called tushes, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... a thunder-clap on Joan and her husband. The Hungarian army consisted of 10,000 horse and more than 7000 infantry, and Aversa had only 500 soldiers under Giacomo Pignatelli. In spite of the immense disproportion of the numbers, the Neapolitan general vigorously repelled the attack; and the King of Hungary, fighting in the front, was wounded in his foot by an arrow. Then Louis, seeing that it would be difficult to take the place by storm, determined to starve them ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... the brain has a double motion of its own, with every beat of the pulse and every breath we draw. When people can get no exercise at all, as is the case with the countless numbers who are condemned to a sedentary life, there is a glaring and fatal disproportion between outward inactivity and inner tumult. For this ceaseless internal motion requires some external counterpart, and the want of it produces effects like those of emotion which we are obliged to suppress. ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer

... cold and poor to second the Heat and Abundance of his Imagination: and therefore was forc'd to dress it up in the Robes, he saw provided for it: rich in themselves, but ill-shaped; cut out to an air of Magnificence, but disproportion'd and cumbersome. To the Costliness of Ornament, he added all the Graces and Decorum of it. It may be said, this did not require, or discover a Knowledge of the Latin. To the first, I think, it did not; to the second, it is so far from discovering ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald

... of God to the goodness of God they tread upon much less firm earth. How can one see any proof of that goodness in the senseless and intolerable sufferings of man—his helplessness, the brief and troubled span of his life, the inexplicable disproportion between his deserts and his rewards, the tragedy of his soaring aspiration, the worse tragedy of his dumb questioning? Granting the existence of God, a house dedicated to Him naturally follows. He is all-important; it is fit that man should take some notice ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken

... discordance; dissonance, dissidence, discrepancy; unconformity &c 83; incongruity, incongruence^; discongruity^, mesalliance; jarring &c v.; dissension &c 713; conflict &c (opposition) 708; bickering, clashing, misunderstanding, wrangle. disparity, mismatch, disproportion; dissimilitude, inequality; disproportionateness &c adj.^; variance, divergence, repugnance. unfitness &c adj.; inaptitude, impropriety; inapplicability &c adj.; inconsistency, inconcinnity^; irrelevancy &c (irrelation) 10. misjoining^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... alleviate the position of the man who thinks that God directed human events to this awful consummation. If an earthly ruler employed such agencies to educate his subjects, with such an extraordinary disproportion between the suffering inflicted and the results attained, what should we think ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe

... Flat-foot.—This, by far the most common and important variety (Fig. 152), generally develops between the ages of fourteen and twenty. It is called static because the essential factor in its production is a disproportion between the weight of the body and the supporting power of ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... creek and crept over the garden bank across the lawn. Already the prison doors were shut in that hot country at the junction of the Niles. "He is to pay for his fault ten times over, then," she cried, in revolt against the disproportion. "And the fault was his father's and mine too more than his own. For neither ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... difficult to understand the modern reader's consuming desire to get it over, and if it be not a pleasure, it is difficult to understand his desire to have it at all. Mere size, it seems to me, cannot be a fault. The fault must lie in some disproportion. If some of Scott's stories are dull and dilatory, it is not because they are giants but because they are hunchbacks or cripples. Scott was very far indeed from being a perfect writer, but I do not think that it can ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton

... called the battle of Hobkirk's Hill, reflected much honor on Lord Rawdon considering the disproportion of force which was, in fact, greater than at Guilford, yet it did not change materially the relative situation of the armies. Greene could still maintain his position and support the detachments operating in the ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... being well, I have had maladies in much greater horror than when really afflicted with them. The vigour wherein I now am, the cheerfulness and delight wherein I now live, make the contrary estate appear in so great a disproportion to my present condition, that, by imagination, I magnify those inconveniences by one-half, and apprehend them to be much more troublesome, than I find them really to be, when they lie the most heavy upon me; I hope to find death ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... dishonourable disproportion at once supplies the one with the means of corrupting, and throws the other into the predicament of being corrupted. In America there is but little difference, with regard to this point, between the legislative and the executive part of ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... poor sorry man! poor dust and ashes, that he should crowd it up, and go jostlingly in the presence of the great God? especially since it is apparent, that besides the disproportion that is betwixt God and him, he is a filthy, leprous, polluted, nasty, stinking, sinful bit of carrion.39 Esther, when she went to supplicate the king her husband for her people, made neither use of her beauty, nor relation, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... anchoring the main chains was adopted on the Caernarvonshire side. A thick bank of earth had there to be cut through, and a solid mass of masonry built in its place, the rock being situated at a greater distance from the main pier; involving a greater length of suspending chain, and a disproportion in the catenary or chord line on that side of the bridge. The excavation and masonry thereby rendered necessary proved a work of vast labour, and its execution occupied a considerable time; but by the beginning of the year 1825 the suspension pyramids, the ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... from 80 to 90 lbs.; while there oxen of the same age, do not average more than 500 lbs. and wethers not more than 40 lbs. At Port Dalrymple it is no uncommon occurrence for yearly lambs to weigh from 100 to 120 lbs. and for three year old wethers to weigh 150 lbs. and upwards; but this great disproportion of weight arises in some measure from the greater part of the sheep at this settlement, having become, from constant crossing, nearly of the pure Teeswater breed. Still the superior richness of the natural pastures in these southern settlements, is without doubt the main cause of the increased ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... young one to her capacious bosom while making tracks from her enemies; nor is she much "on the fight," not being so liberally furnished with jaw as the fierce and much larger bull—for this is the only species of whale in which there exists a great disproportion between the sexes in point of size. Such difference as may obtain between the MYSTICETA is slightly in favour of the female. I never heard of a cow-cachalot yielding more than fifty barrels of oil; but I have both heard ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... other, so as not to admit of being moved. If the beak of a retort is to be luted to the neck of a recipient, they ought to fit pretty accurately; otherwise we must fix them, by introducing short pieces of soft wood or of cork. If the disproportion between the two be very considerable, we must employ a cork which fits the neck of the recipient, having a circular hole of proper dimensions to admit the beak of the retort. The same precaution is necessary in ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier

... idea, with which I was impressed, on walking through the booths and galleries, on this occasion, was the great disproportion between the objects purely of taste and luxury, and the objects of use. The former abounded, were very generally elegant and well-imagined, while the latter betrayed the condition of a nation whose civilization has commenced with ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Shine volunteered for this duty. Ephraim was a tall gaunt man, with hollow cheeks, a leathery complexion, and large feet. He walked or sat with his eyes continually fixed upon these feet—reproachfully, it seemed—as if their disproportion were a source of perennial woe; he carried his arms looped behind him, and had acquired a peculiar stoop—to facilitate his vigilant guardianship of his feet, apparently. Mr. Shine, as superintendent of the Waddy Wesleyan Chapel, ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... Distortion and feebleness are not beauty. A proper proportion should exist between the size of the waist and the breadth of the shoulders and hips, and if the waist is diminished below this proportion, it suggests disproportion and invalidism rather ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... piece of hay was thrown into vibration, and tracings were obtained upon a plane surface of smoked glass passed rapidly underneath. While engaged in these experiments I was struck with the remarkable disproportion in weight between the membrane and the bones that were vibrated by it. It occurred to me that if a membrane as thin as tissue paper could control the vibration of bones that were, compared to it, of immense ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... climate and of their stay near the swamps now became fatally manifest. In the Quorra, fourteen men died, and three in the Alburkah. The disproportion of mortality in the two vessels, at this period, is ascribed to the superior coolness of the Alburkah, which was rendered more healthy in consequence of her iron hull diffusing through her interior the coolness ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... Afterwards the needs of the farm can be attended to, and a farm, like an arch, is never at rest. A little later will come maple-sugar time, when the stately maples are tapped as the sap begins to stir, and be-ringed with absurd little buckets (a cow being milked into a thimble gives some idea of the disproportion), which are emptied into cauldrons. Afterwards (this is the time of the 'sugaring-off parties') you pour the boiled syrup into tins full of fresh snow, where it hardens, and you pretend to help and become very sticky and make ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... thought that "the great number of negroes which of late have been imported into this Collony may endanger the safety thereof." The immigration of white servants was therefore encouraged by a special law.[10] Increase of immigration reduced this disproportion, but Negroes continued to be imported in such numbers as to afford considerable revenue from a moderate duty on them. About the time when the Assiento was signed, the slave-trade so increased that, scarcely a year after the consummation of ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... prevalence of jokers, moreover, spoils the game of humour; the sputter and sparkle of their made jokes interferes with that luminous contemplation of the incongruities of life and the universe which is humour's essence. All that is ludicrous depends on some disproportion: Comedy judges the actual world by contrasting it with an ideal of sound sense, Humour reveals it in its true dimensions by turning on it the light of imagination and poetry. The perception of these incongruities, which are eternal, demands some expense of intellect; a cheaper amusement may ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... large increase of pleasure and comfort, and probably a very considerable addition to real happiness. In the case of rich men this is not the case, and of colossal fortunes only a very small fraction can be truly said to minister to the personal enjoyment of the owner. The disproportion in the world between pleasure and cost is indeed almost ludicrous. The two or three shillings that gave us our first Shakespeare would go but a small way towards providing one of the perhaps untasted dishes on the dessert table. The choicest masterpieces ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... were disgraced; but as the image of a king in his seal ill-represented is not so much a blemish to the wax, or the signet that sealed it, as to the prince it representeth, so disordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. Neither can his mind be thought to be in tune, whose words do jar; nor his reason in frame, whose sentence is preposterous; nor his elocution clear and perfect, whose utterance breaks itself into fragments ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... effected by a higher development of the faculties. There is never an approach to equilibrium between the artist and his public. As it advances in knowledge of his art, he maintains the want of balance, the disproportion that always exists between the genius and the ordinary man, by ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... occupied one whole side of the immense oblong. This market-place haunted for ever the memory of those who had seen it, were it but once, while waiting to change trains; it was so unexpected, so magical, so dream-like almost, in its disproportion to the rest of the town. While the ancient city, whose life had withdrawn itself from century to century, was gradually shrinking all around it, the Grand'Place itself remained an immovable, gigantic, magnificent witness ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck

... names now recognizable in England is out of all proportion to the immense number which must have been introduced at various periods of our history. Even the expert, who is often able to detect the foreign name in its apparently English garb, cannot rectify this disproportion for us. The number of names of which the present form can be traced back to a foreign origin is inconsiderable when compared with the much larger number assimilated ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... allowed to run wild in the woods, without any owner thinking it worth while to claim them. It must be a long time after the first establishment of such colonies, before it can become profitable to feed cattle upon the produce of cultivated land. The same causes, therefore, the want of manure, and the disproportion between the stock employed in cultivation and the land which it is destined to cultivate, are likely to introduce there a system of husbandry, not unlike that which still continues to take place in so many parts of Scotland. Mr Kalm, the Swedish ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... his fate to meet: But fear prevails, and bids him trust his feet. So fast he flies, that his reviewing eye Has lost the chasers, and his ear the cry; Exulting, till he finds their nobler sense Their disproportion'd speed doth recompense; Then curses his conspiring feet, whose scent Betrays that safety which their swiftness lent; Then tries his friends; among the baser herd, Where he so lately was obey'd ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... unsuccessful in the deeds it has witnessed on the high seas, as it has been remarkable for the reverse on land. The French have not been wanting in excellent sailors—gallant seamen, too; but the results of their exploits afloat have ever borne a singular disproportion to the means employed—a few occasional exceptions just going to prove that the causes have been of a character as peculiar, as these results have, in nearly all ages, been uniform. I have heard the want of success in maritime exploits, among the French, attributed to a want of sympathy, in the ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... the danger of "disproportion" was found. For the complex vision with the whole weight of all its aspects behind it receives the colour and the form of only one of them. We can see the result of this from the tenacity—implying the presence of emotion and will—with which some philosopher of pure reason ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... broad and intelligent, her beautiful smiling lips of the colour of the berries of the mountain ash, her teeth a shower of lustrous pearls. Her face and form, her limbs, hands and feet, were such that no defect, blemish or disproportion could be observed, though one might watch and observe long, seeking to discover them. In that daughter of the High Poet and Historian of the Hound-race of the North, [Footnote: The hound was the type of valour. Though Cuculain ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady

... of more sumptuous edifices than any city in the British islands, London itself not excepted, can now boast. It was the same all over the East, and in all the southern provinces of the Roman empire. Whence has arisen this astonishing disproportion between the great things done by the citizens in ancient and in modern times, when in the latter the means of enlarged cultivation have been so immeasurably extended? It is in vain to say, it is because we have more social and domestic happiness, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... This idea, this effort, distinguishes these two men. The Greeks—predecessors, contemporaries, successors of Aristotle—were speculators, full of clever and ingenious guesses, in which the amount of clear and certain fact was in lamentable disproportion to the schemes blown up from it; or they devoted themselves more profitably to some one or two subjects of inquiry, moral or purely intellectual, with absolute indifference to what might be asked, or what might be known, of the real conditions ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... the truth to the detriment of the obnoxious population recalls a passage wherein the suggestion of what is not the truth has been resorted to for the same purpose. At page 123 we read: "The disproportion of the two races—always dangerously large—has increased with ever-gathering velocity since the emancipation. It is now beyond control on the old lines." The use of the expletive "dangerously," as suggestive of the truculence of the people to whom it refers, is critically allowable ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... The apparent disproportion between the losses of the two armies is not surprising when we remember the armor of the Greek spearmen, and the impossibility of heavy slaughter being inflicted by sword or lance on troops so armed, as long as they kept firm in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... the placid dandies about the door of the caffe; to the tide of passers from the Merceria; the smooth-shaven Venetians of other days, and the bearded Venetians of these; the dark-eyed, white-faced Venetian girls, hooped in cruel disproportion to the narrow streets, but richly clad, and moving with southern grace; the files of heavily burdened soldiers; the little policemen loitering lazily about with their swords at their sides, and in their spotless ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... shadows lengthen, and th' oppressive day With all its toil fast wearing to an end. The sun, far in the west, with side-long beam Plays on the yellow head of the round hay-cock, And fields are checker'd with fantastic shapes Or tree, or shrub, or gate, or rugged stone, All lengthen'd out, in antic disproportion, Upon the darken'd grass.—— They finish out their long and toilsome talk. Then, gathering up their rakes and scatter'd coats, With the less cumb'rous fragments of their feast, Return right gladly ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie

... history of that race is finer than the way in which the so called "contemptible little British Army," as the Kaiser somewhat prematurely called it—outnumbered four to one, and with an even greater disproportion in artillery—withstood the powerful legions of Von Kluck at Mons. Enveloped on both flanks they stood as a stone wall for three days against an assault of one of the mightiest armies in recorded history, and only retreated when ordered to do so by the high command of the Allied forces in order ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... most reliable sources the enemy at this period numbered 40,000 men, all trained soldiers of the former regular army, besides undisciplined armed hordes of fanatics and rabble of the city and surrounding country—a formidable disproportion to our scanty force when it is recollected that they were protected by strong fortifications mounting upwards of fifty guns, with an unlimited supply of artillery and munitions of war, and that with their vast numbers they ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... [72] The disproportion between the two sexes is explained by the general custom, which does not allow the Parsi servants to bring their wives to the cities ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant

... her justice, that her massive we features could not be portrayed. "The mere shape of the head," says Kegan Paul, "would be the despair of any painter. It was so grand and massive that it would scarcely be possible to represent it without giving the idea of disproportion to the frame, of which no one ever thought for a moment when they saw her, although it was a surprise, when she stood up, to see that, after all, she was but a little fragile woman who bore this weight of brow ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... the month of June, that the school-room door opened a foot and a half wider than usual, and a huge, colossal figure stalked in, with a kind of bashful laugh upon his countenance, as if conscious of the disproportion betwixt his immense size and that of the other schoolboys. His figure, without a syllable of exaggeration, was precisely such as I am about to describe. His height six feet, his shoulders of an enormous breadth, his head red as fire; ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... the pressure any longer, Constable Anne de Montmorency led out his army to give battle to the Huguenots on the tenth of November, 1567. Rarely has such an engagement been willingly entered into, where the disproportion between the contending parties was so considerable. The constable's army consisted of sixteen thousand foot soldiers (of whom six thousand were Swiss, and the remainder in part troops levied in the city of Paris) and three thousand horse, and was provided ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... and the debt which a fellow-servant owed to him, there is no assignable proportion: so vast is the difference that we cannot form a definite conception of the relation. This is precisely what we should expect in order to show the disproportion, or want of all proportion, between sins against God and sins against a neighbour. In this parable, on the other hand, the debt in both cases is due to the master, and not in either due by one servant to another. We accordingly do not expect, and do not find a disproportion so vast; ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... said that ten Whigs, members of former Cabinets, are omitted in this, while only two Peelites are omitted, and one entirely new is admitted—Argyll. Let me propose further that the minor posts be recast with less disproportion. Cardwell ought not to have office while Labouchere, Vernon Smith, ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... that the fortune of war is sometimes more impartial than the disproportion of numbers might lead one to suppose; to submit is to give ourselves over to despair, while action still preserves for us a hope that we ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... driving on the dangerous reef, was just as much as the oarsmen could accomplish. Weakened as they were, by long suffering and starvation, they had a tough struggle to hold the pinnace as it were in statu quo—all the tougher from the disproportion between such a heavy craft and the light oar-stroke of which her reduced and ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... my bankrupt's schedule. The disproportion between my powers and my desires, my want of balance, in short, will bring all my efforts to nothing. There are many such characters among men of letters, many men whose intellectual powers and character are always at variance, who will ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac

... break the heart, because, by the sight the soul then has of His perfections, it sees its own infinite and unspeakable disproportion." ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... attacks of one sort or another—too often successful—had been made upon the lives of persons who had incurred the hostility of powerful labour organizations. This is a terrible time in which we live, my dear boy. There is none recorded in history, I think, in which the disproportion between the material and the moral constituents of society has been so great or so menacing to the permanence of the fabric. But nowhere, in my judgement, is the prospect so dark as it ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... greed and iniquity; and though there be some dreamers in our midst to-day who look for wonderful transformations of society to follow on possible reforms, there is not even in these dreamy schemes the same amazing disproportion of means to be employed and end to be attained as characterised ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling



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