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Reversal   Listen
noun
Reversal  n.  
1.
The act of reversing; the causing to move or face in an opposite direction, or to stand or lie in an inverted position; as, the reversal of a rotating wheel; the reversal of objects by a convex lens.
2.
A change or overthrowing; as, the reversal of a judgment, which amounts to an official declaration that it is false; the reversal of an attainder, or of an outlawry, by which the sentence is rendered void.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Reversal" Quotes from Famous Books



... harshly to Katharine: 'What reversal should give my mother her life again? Wench! Wench!...' Then she ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... space. But we may apply the same method, of estimation by results, to the powers of the moral and spiritual worlds. Judged thus, it was indeed a stupendous power which was exerted by Christ from the Cross. For what result can be more amazing than the reversal, at the last, of the character slowly built up by the habits of a lifetime? It is, of course, useless to speculate on the antecedents of the robber (not "thief") who turned to our Lord with the words, "Jesus, remember me when Thou shalt come into Thy kingdom." We know only what is implied ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz

... interested parties, and duly occupied with industrious and zealous applauders. This occurred at six successive representations. The result was the immediate apparent triumph of Pradon over the humiliated Racine. Boileau in vain bade his friend be of good cheer, and await the assured reversal of the verdict. Racine ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... waters of socialism. For several years after I came to this church, I was in a state of intellectual and emotional upheaval impossible for me to describe. At last came a conviction which was a complete reversal of all my former ideas. I was as a man converted; I was as one who had seen a great light. Henceforth I was a social radical; and religion, pre-eminently not a testimony to theological truth but a crusade for social change. Of course, my interest ...
— A Statement: On the Future of This Church • John Haynes Holmes

... in the least conceited, tell how, through his clear-sighted firmness in refusing to write in the Spencerian manner prescribed in school, he succeeded in bringing the Principal and the whole Board of Education to their senses, resulting in a complete reversal of the public-school policy in the ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley

... cut the throat of Wealth, and then gash itself limb by limb, if Patience, the Angel of the Poor, sat not by its side, pointing with solemn finger to the life to come! And now, as Nicot neared the house of the Dictator, he began to meditate a reversal of his plans of the previous day: not that he faltered in his resolution to denounce Glyndon, and Viola would necessarily share his fate, as a companion and accomplice,—no, THERE he was resolved! for he hated both (to say nothing of his old ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... held with Lord Glenelg in his unwise reversal of the good Sir Benjamin D'Urban's Kafir policy, they must have had the veil removed from their eyes when that nobleman himself confessed his error with a candour that said much for his heart; reversed his own decrees, and fell back upon ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... between him and the door. "No, madman, I will not let you go, to do this great wrong, to kill this innocent young soul, who—God help her—loves you!" North, confounded at this sudden reversal of their position towards each other, crouched bewildered against the wall. "I say you shall not go! You shall not destroy your own soul and hers! You love her! So do I! and my love is mightier than yours, for it shall ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... written thirty years ago for one of the New England States, regrets that, even then, home government had grown lax. He wittily says that Young America is rampant, parental influence couchant; and no reversal of these positions is ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... are, the huge vested interests, the iron network of vast enterprises frightened of losing profit. If we pass this moment, when men of every class and occupation, even those who most thrive on our town-ridden state, are a little frightened; if we let slip this chance for a real reversal—can we hope that anything considerable will be done, with the dice loaded as they are, the scales weighted so hopelessly in favour of the towns? Representatives of seven-ninths will always see that representatives ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... possible for people to follow the employment for which they are by nature best fitted; and secondly, to study much more closely than heretofore, from the point of view of happiness, the conditions under which work is done. The first task involves a very considerable reversal of current educational and social values. It does not simply mean paving the way for the son of an engine-driver to become a doctor or a lawyer or a cavalryman. It means paving the way for the son of a duke to become, without any sense of social failure, an engine-driver or a merchant ...
— Progress and History • Various

... northern and southern types of Mammalia in the same deposits, or in deposits apparently synchronous, and within a single district. Lastly, at the final close of the arctic cold of the Glacial period, and the re-establishment of temperate conditions over the northern hemisphere, a reversal of the original process took place—the northern Mammals retiring within their ancient limits, and the southern forms pressing northwards and reoccupying their ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... equal scorn of labours and of gold. His bounty shall be spread abroad so widely, As not to let the tongues e'en of his foes Be idle in its praise. Look thou to him And his beneficence: for he shall cause Reversal of their lot to many people, Rich men and beggars interchanging fortunes. And thou shalt bear this written in thy soul Of him, but tell it not; "and things he told Incredible to those who witness them; Then added: "So interpret thou, my son, What ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... cannot see that the man who passes from a distinguished University career to a distinguished public life may do more for the poor by his pen, by his power of awakening sympathy, by the opportunity that may be his to obtain the reversal of unjust laws or the establishment of good laws, than he ever could have done by living in a slum as the friend and helper of a small group of needy men and women. Decisive victories are won more often by lateral movements than ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... Carlyle, in the first of his two essays on Richter (1827), expressly distinguishes true humour from irony, which he describes as a faculty of caricature, consisting "chiefly in a certain superficial distortion or reversal of objects"—the method of Swift or Voltaire. That is, Carlyle uses irony in the common English sense; the Socratic irony, the irony of the "Modest Proposal." The earliest attempt that I have encountered to interpret to the English public ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... of tobacco in Maryland and Virginia for one year.[400] At first this appeal was rejected and the colonists were commanded to refrain from presenting similar petitions in the future. Later, however, the Privy Council secured a reversal of this decision and an order was issued authorizing the Assembly to appoint commissioners to confer with the Marylanders upon the best means of lessening the excessive crops.[401] Accordingly a meeting was held at Wiccocomico, May 12, ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... there was a reversal of the usual facts of nature—(I say facts, not laws): the dreams of most people are more or less insane; those of Lady Alice were sound; thus, with her, restoring the balance of sane life. That smile was the sign of the dream-life ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... the road ran into, an obstruction. What it was, or how far ahead, I had almost no conception; but quick as thought—and thought is quick as lightning in such circumstances—I whistled for the brakes, shut off the steam, and waited the collision. I would have reversed the engine, but a fear that a reversal of its action would crowd up the cars on the trestlework and throw them into the gorge below, forbade; nor was there wisdom in jumping off, as the steep embankments on either side would prevent escape from the wreck of the ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson

... lies which by a sort of social suggestion have intimidated women. They have, in appearance at least, accepted the rule of shame imposed on them by men, but only custom inspires the modesty for which they are praised; it is really an outrage to their sex. This reversal of psychological laws has, however, only been accepted by women with a struggle. Primitive woman, proud of her womanhood, for a long time defended her nakedness which ancient art has always represented. And in the actual life of the young girl to-day ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... the agent. "That would be a reversal of the ordinary routine. You old villain!" he added, as Ebenezer Brown ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin

... Legislature was so soon to assemble. There must have been a strong outside pressure, from some quarter, to produce such a change of front. From Wednesday to Friday, some persons of great influence must have been hard at work. The reasons assigned, in the record, for this sudden reversal, by the Council, of its deliberate decision, are the great number of criminals waiting trial, the thronged condition of the jails, and "this hot season of the year," on the twenty-seventh of May! It is further stated, "there being ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... seldom fully restored. I doubt whether the Supreme Court has ever recovered from the shock it then received, and, considered from this point of view, the careless attitude of the American people toward General Grant's administration, when in 1871 it obtained the reversal of Hepburn v. Griswold by appointments to the ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams

... to regulate by law. For modern homes for the most part are not sanitary dwellings in the country, but single floors or parts of floors in huge tenement houses in great cities. It is probable to-day, therefore, that there is a perfect reversal of opinion, and that the social reformer now dreams of a world where no work is permitted in the home, other than ordinary domestic avocations, but all is compelled to be done in factories under the supervision of public authorities—a splendid example of the dangers of hasty legislation; ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... we have met precisely another Gettysburg. The whole community is uneasy as to the silver bill and the illimitable folly of the greenbackers; business men anxiously await the adjournment of Congress, that they may be able to lay their plans with some sense of security against a complete reversal of monetary conditions by some silly legislation; and I do not believe that there is a quiet man in the Republic to whom the whole political caucus at Washington is not ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... describe a pendulumlike movement with respect to the large one. The explanation suggested is that the comparative faintness of the small star causes its light to affect the retina of the eye less quickly than does that of its brighter companion, and, in consequence, the reversal of its apparent motion with the swinging of the telescope is not ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... two gentlemen of the United States having differed in opinion concerning his incompetence in the Court of Chancery—the one of them maintaining that the greater number of his decrees had been reversed, and the other maintaining that so many of his decisions had not endured reversal—the dispute gave rise to a bet of three dozen of port. With comical bad taste one of the parties to the bet—the one who believed that the Chancellor's judgments had been thus frequently upset—wrote to Erskine for information ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... he forbore openly to express the sentiments of his court on this topic. It was after Melvil's departure that Elizabeth, not indeed without reluctance and hesitation, permitted Darnley to accompany the earl his father into Scotland, ostensibly for the purpose of witnessing the reversal of the attainder formerly passed against him, and his solemn restoration in blood; but really, as she must well have known, with the object of pushing his suit with ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... achieved independence from the UK in 1966 and became a republic in 1970. In 1989 Guyana launched an Economic Recovery Program, which marked a dramatic reversal from a state-controlled, socialist economy towards a more open, free market system. Results through the ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... which other Italian troops had shown during the summer and their success on the Bainsizza plateau had not prepared Italy or her Allies for so great a reversal of fortune in the autumn. The attempt after the fall of Gorizia in August 1916 to force a way to Trieste had been checked by the formidable bastion of Mount Hermada, and in May 1917 Cadorna turned to the other ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... matter there was, in fact, an abrupt reversal of policy. The independent countries of North and South America had been invited to participate in a general congress to be held in Washington, November 24, 1881. James Gillespie Blaine, who was then Secretary ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford

... has been brought to a fortunate termination. To congratulate a man who is yet alive and exposed to the caprice of fortune is like proclaiming and crowning as victor one who has not yet run his race, for his good fortune is uncertain and liable to reversal." After speaking thus, Solon took his leave, having enraged Croesus, who could ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... position of their followers was little to be envied. Their leaders had confidently assured them that Darwin had given to the world coveted knowledge never known until he had discovered it. This had been loudly and confidently proclaimed from the housetops of science; and now—strange reversal—those same leaders tell them that their preachments were ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... and their only child, Hetty, with an unreasoning and unreasonable affection which would have been the ruin of her, if she had been any thing else but what she was, "the old Squire over again." As it was, the only effect of this overweening affection, on their part, was to produce a slow reversal of some of the ordinary relations between parents and children. As Hetty grew into womanhood, she grew more and more to have a sense of responsibility for her father's and mother's happiness. She was the most filially docile of creatures, and obeyed like a baby, grown woman as she was. It was strange ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson

... decisively indicated the conclusion at which he had arrived on the main point in the case, we have the best reason for believing that there was not a single person in the House of Lords—with the possible exception of Lords Denman, Cottenham, and Campbell—who expected a reversal of the judgment. So much has the public press been taken by surprise, that, with the exception of a fierce controversy between the Standard, and Morning Herald, and the Morning Chronicle, which was conducted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... there was nothing to hinder the passage of a law increasing the number of Supreme Court justices to any desired extent, and the new appointments would certainly be of such a nature as to make the reversal of the Dred Scott decision an easy matter. The election of 1860 had brought only a Republican President; the majority in both Houses was to be against him until 1863 at least. But the drift in the North and West was too plain to be mistaken, and it was felt ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... compact houses of the French traders; and, not far off, the clustered wigwams of an Ottawa village. [Footnote: There is a rude plan of the establishment in La Hontan, though, in several editions, its value is destroyed by the reversal of the plate.] Here was a centre of the Jesuit missions, and a centre of the Indian trade; and here, under the shadow of the cross, was much sharp practice in the service of Mammon. Keen traders, with or without a license; and lawless coureurs ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... of this reversal of Anglo-American trade balance was a decline in the exchange value of the pound sterling, which was normally worth $4.86-1/2 in American money, to the unprecedented level of $4.50. This decline in sterling was reflected in different degrees in the other European money ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... early in October 1949 when I finished the reversal of our space-exploration plans. I spent the next two days running down a sighting report from a town in Pennsylvania. Like three or four other tips that had seemed important at first, it turned ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... time it is important to remember that such a thing as reversal of the relation between cause and effect is possible, just as the same apparatus may be made to generate mechanical power by the application of electricity, or to generate electricity by the application of mechanical power. And ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... of Faust, which they tell me is very poor, who can have courage to attempt[3] a reversal of the judgment of all criticism against continuations? Let us except Don Quixote, however, although the second part of that transcendant work is not exactly uno ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... is a reversal of our conception of things to see the "gentler sex " engaged in building a house, as is often the case in Hopiland. Yet to the Hopi there is nothing strange in this scene, for the woman, and not the man, is the owner of the house. Hence, the Hopi reasons, why ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... New Jersey, Congress sent that illustrious trio, John Dickinson, John Jay, and George Wythe, to procure a reversal of their determination. They were courteously received on the floor, and urged in their addresses that nothing but unity and bravery in the Colonies would bring Great Britain to terms; that she wanted to procure separate petitions, but that such a course would ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... you first shot, Jim," came the half-mocking voice of De Launay beating, half heard, on Solange's ears, where the astounding reversal of her notions was causing her brain almost to reel. Then she heard the whistling scream of Banker, quite lunatic by now, as he lost all sense of fear ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... reversal or a misdirection of the Cosmic Urge. The will brought to bear in fighting temptation might be a power for good, if used in co-operation with Nature. But Nature to the priestly mind has always been bad. The worldly mind was one that led to ruin. To be good by doing ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... for his own holiday, which he did during the hot days contentedly enough—waited in spacious halls and a vast, dim, bird-haunted garden. The official world and most other worlds withdrew from Paris, and the Place de la Concorde, a larger, whiter desert than ever, became by a reversal of custom explorable with safety. The Champs Elysees were dusty and rural, with little creaking booths and exhibitions that made a noise like grasshoppers; the Arc de Triomphe threw its cool, thick shadow for a mile; the Palais de ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... of the country were at the lowest ebb. But there was to be a speedy reversal of conditions, and the world was to learn how dangerous a man was leading the Continental troops. Washington, to whom a retreat was as hateful as it had been necessary, had long meditated an attack whenever any chance whatever of success might present itself. ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... the Procurator Gratus. The Roman gave it out an attempt to assassinate him. Under that pretext, by leave from Rome, he confiscated to his own use the immense fortune of the widow and children. Nor stopped he there. That there might be no reversal of the judgment, he removed all the parties interested. From that dreadful day to this the family of Hur have been lost. The son, whom I had seen as a child, was sentenced to the galleys. The widow and ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... and deliverance are described in verses 16 and 18. The Revised Version has wisely substituted a simple 'and' for 'nevertheless' at the beginning of verse 16. The latter word implies that the raising up of the judges was a reversal of what had gone before; 'and' implies that it was a continuation. And its use here is not merely an instance of inartificial Hebrew style, but carries the lesson that God's judgment and deliverance come from the same source, and are harmonious parts of one ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Maggione all whose lives or lands were threatened by this new reversal of Caesar's policy. These were Paolo Orsino, Gian Paolo Baglioni, Hermes Bentivoglio, representing his father Gian, Antonio di Venafro, the envoy of Pandolfo Petrucci, Olivertoxo da Fermo, and the Duke of Urbino: ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... contentious month, the matter—with what seemed to everybody an extraordinary and reckless precipitation, the end once reached—was finally arranged. Tom Bingham was to build them a house in the neighborhood favored by Roger, and was to find an architect for them—a reversal of the usual procedure which afflicted Jane with grave doubts. And on the morning of the earliest day of spring, when the piano-organs were trilling through the side streets, and the flower-men were offering hurried shoppers their earliest verbenas and ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... spectacle of her father in the role of a young lover touched her no more acutely than with a mild half-humorous melancholy. She even paid the tribute of a passing smile to the queer reversal of their roles, her own and his. She was more like a mother brooding over the first love-affair of an adolescent son. It was so young of him, younger, she believed, than any act she herself could be capable of, to have come ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... with all your might to win, and then if you fail, not to care, relieves a game of an immense amount of unnecessary nervous strain. A spirit of rivalry has so taken hold of us and become such a large stone in the way, that it takes wellnigh a reversal of all our ideas to realize that this same spirit is quite compatible with a good healthy willingness that the other man should win—if he can. Not from the goody-goody motive of wishing your neighbor to beat,—no neighbor would thank you for playing with ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call

... the white light of his genius. Permeation is described, explained, and defended—the Special Committee had suggested rather than proposed, in scarcely more than a sentence, that the policy be abandoned—and it is announced that as long as the Executive was unchanged there would be no reversal of the political policy of the Society. Finally the Reply asserts that the time had come to attempt the formation of a middle-class Socialist Party. At the end three resolutions were set out, which the Executive submitted to the ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... surface along which the current flows. If, now, we add another quadrant of a circle to the curve, and so turn the stream through two right angles, or 180 deg., as shown by Fig. 4, then such a complete reversal of the original direction represents the carrying of it back again to the highest point; it means the entire destruction of its velocity, and it gives the maximum pressure obtainable from a jet of water impinging upon a surface of any form whatsoever. The reaction noticed in Fig. 3 as acting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various

... appetite. This inexplicable incident, this reversal of my previous experience, seemed, like the Babylonian finger on the wall, to be spelling out the letters of my judgment; and I began to reflect more seriously than ever before on the issues and possibilities of my double existence. That part of me which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... brought no cheery gossip; but bent over her tubs dry-eyed and silent—even the approaching move to a larger house failed to thrill her. There was Tillie, too. But one did not speak of her. She was married now, of course; but the Street did not tolerate such a reversal of the usual processes as Tillie had indulged in. It censured Mrs. McKee severely for having been, so to speak, and accessory after ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the verisimilitude of his fictions and his ironies by careful accuracy in details, which is sometimes arithmetically genuine, sometimes only a hoax. In Lilliput all the dimensions are scientifically computed on a scale one-twelfth as large as that of man; in Brobdingnag, by an exact reversal, everything is twelve times greater than among men. But the long list of technical nautical terms which seem to make a spirited narrative at the beginning of the second of Gulliver's voyages is merely ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... to let the woman have a glimpse of the gift lying there, that that may kindle desire, and hints at some occult depth in His person and nature all undreamed of by her yet, and which would be the occasion of greater wonder, and of a reversal of their parts, if she knew it. Then, in answer to her, half understanding that He meant more than met the ear, and yet opposing the plain physical difficulties that were in the way, in that He had 'nothing to draw with, and the well is deep,' and asking whether He ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... of an assertion, was Chase all over! Three other ministers agreed with him except that they did not equivocate. One evaded. Of all those who had stood with Seward on the sixteenth, only one was still in favor of evacuation. Seward stood fast. This reversal of the Cabinet's position, jumping as it did with Lincoln's desires, encouraged him to prepare for action. But just as he was about to act his diffidence asserted itself. He authorized the preparation of a relief expedition but withheld sailing orders until further notice.(18) Oh, for ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... own method of work was a reversal of the natural alternation of regular periods of activity and repose. He not only, as he told all his correspondents with wearisome iteration, burned the midnight oil, but would keep up these eighteen or twenty hours' daily labour for weeks altogether, until some novel ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... forfeited their goods and chattels to the King, had not they made such submissions as appeased the wrath of Sir Launcelot and Captain Crowe; then they ventured to return, and, by dint of interest, obtained a reversal of the outlawry. But this grace they did not enjoy till long after our adventurer ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... good, old bean," the younger man frowned in thought. "They figure like astronomers, not navigators. They've made no allowances for anything, not even the reversal—and I figure four thousands for that and for minor detours. Then there's check ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... weary times she must have had with his father,—for Mr. Drummond could make himself disagreeable to his wife when things went wrong with him, and the sullen fortitude with which he bore his reversal of fortune gave small opening to her tenderness; the very way in which he shirked all domestic responsibilities, leaving on her shoulders the whole weight of the domestic machinery and all the home-management, had hardened ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... might prevent the reversal of his own unjust condemnation, but Pierre had won renown in the recent campaigns. He was favored with the friendship of many of the noblest personages in France, who would support his suit for the restoration of his ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... With this reversal of the relationship between cause and effect it is not, however, intended to represent the commonly accepted order of things as entirely incorrect. In the realm of life, cause and effect are not so onesidedly fixed as in the realm of ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... reduce the danger of future wars—as long as China herself is impotent to go to war. The agreement might conceivably for a considerable time be of benefit to China herself. But it is clear that for the United States to become a partner in any such arrangement would involve a reversal of our historic policy in the Far East. It might be technically consistent with the open door policy, but it would be a violation of the larger sense in which the American people has understood and praised that ideal. He is blind who does not see that there are forces ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey

... mortified, was not likely to bind, for any length of time, a gallant aristocracy and a susceptible people. Many of the younger portion of the community, pining at the dishonour of their country, and eager for enterprise, were secretly inclined to countenance any stratagem that might induce the reversal of the decree. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... social salvation in its highest, ideal form. But the higher leisure class can exercise this quasi-sacerdotal office only under certain material limitations. The class cannot at discretion effect a sudden revolution or reversal of the popular habits of thought with respect to any of these ceremonial requirements. It takes time for any change to permeate the mass and change the habitual attitude of the people; and especially it takes time to change the habits of those classes that are socially more remote from ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... King—coming forward through the royal portal, and across the raised platform in the rear of the stage—did literally "enter from the palace," and did "descend the palace steps" to the "public place" where Creon and the priests awaited him. It was a direct reversal of the ordinary effect in the ordinary theatre: where the play loses in realism because a current of necessarily recognized, but purposely ignored, antagonistic fact underruns the conventional illusion and compels us to perceive that the palace is but painted canvas, ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... king, even younger than his grandfather Manasseh had been at his accession, and another reversal of the father's religion! These vibrations from idolatry to Jehovah-worship, at the pleasure of the king, sadly tell how little the people cared whom they worshipped, and how purely a matter of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... battle-field resisted as the eddy whirls. Venice kept her brave colours streaming aloft in a mighty grasp despite the storm, but between Venice and Milan there was this unutterable devastation,—so sudden a change, so complete a reversal of the shield, that the Lombards were at first incredulous even in their agony, and set their faces against it as at a monstrous eclipse, as though the heavens were taking false oath of its being night when it was day. From Vicenza and Rivoli, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... upon them whose glory was putting kingship into obscurity. Besides, an Emperor who combined humble origin with democratic genius and ambition created by the Revolution was a challenge to the legitimacy of the Divine Right of Kings and a reversal of the order of ages. George III raged at Pitt for including Fox in his Ministry when he was asked to form a Government. "Does Mr. Pitt," said he, "not know that Mr. Fox was of all persons most offensive ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... clung to the conservative notions of a checked and balanced freedom, inherited from English precedent, were accused of monarchical and aristocratic leanings. On their side they were not slow to accuse their adversaries of French atheism and French Jacobinism. By a singular reversal of the natural order of things, the strength of the Federalist party was in New England, which was socially democratic, while the strength of the Jeffersonians was in the South, whose social structure—owing to the system of slavery—was ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... Business, says the Minister, does not inspire a man to Letter-writing. He is acclimatizing himself to Cervantes, about whom he must write one of his fine, and (as I think) final Essays: I mean such as (in the case of others he has done) ought to leave no room for a reversal of Judgment. Amid the multitude of Essays, Reviews, etc., one still wants that: and I think Lowell does it more than any other Englishman. He says he meets Velasquez at every turn of the street; and Murillo's Santa Anna opens his ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald

... Parliamentary agitation have resulted in an anti-clerical colour which this new movement has acquired, and to this, force is added by the measure of strength which it has gained among a certain number of young Protestants in Belfast, whose fathers must turn in their graves at this reversal of opinion on a question which was to them a chose jugee, a veritable article of faith. The proposals of Sinn Fein include a boycott of all English institutions in Ireland, educational and of other kinds, the abandonment of the attendance of Irish members in ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... follows the finger as it would follow a pistol; this occasions a reversal of the head proportional ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... the answer is very obvious. Viewed as an historical fact, the Church is not of human origin. The Church is a Divine Institution. That a Priest of the Church, charged with a cure of souls, should desire her annihilation,—the reversal of the facts of her past History,—her reconstruction on an unheard-of basis, without even Creeds as terms of communion with her,—and so forth; all this may suggest some very painful doubts as to the objector's honesty in continuing to employ ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... situation, some hypothesis which was glaringly absurd. He then placed it in an abrupt juxtaposition with the normal, instead of working from the normal to the actual, in the usual manner. Just as the reader was beginning to protest against the reversal of his accustomed values, G.K.C. would strip the grotesque of a few inessentials, and, lo! a parable. A few strokes of irony and wit, an epigram or two infallibly placed where it would distract attention from a weak point in the argument, and the thing was complete. By such means ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... Gwendolen; but when Lord Brackenshaw moved aside a little for the prefigured stranger to come forward and she felt herself face to face with the real man, there was a little shock which flushed her cheeks and vexatiously deepened with her consciousness of it. The shock came from the reversal of her expectations: Grandcourt could hardly have been more unlike all her imaginary portraits of him. He was slightly taller than herself, and their eyes seemed to be on a level; there was not the faintest smile on his face as he looked at ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... down, in a heart more sensitive to hurt than was Moses'. Without doubt it was said with reluctance, for Moses' sake. But it was said, plainly, irrevocably, for their sakes. Moses' petition was for a reversal of this decision. Once and again he asked. He wanted to see that wondrous land of God's choosing. He felt the sting too. The edge of the knife of discipline cut keenly, and the blood spurted. But God said:—"Do not speak to Me again of this." The decision ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon

... of energy. By breaking the circuit entirely the motive power ceased, and the vehicle might either be stopped by the brakes or allowed to run forward by gravity, if the road were sufficiently inclined. The reversal of the motor was effected by means of a lever which reversed the position of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various

... punishment, when in fancy they saw before them the woeful victim, with rope round her neck, by the gallows where she was about to hang, their hearts rose in revolt. From all sides went forth the cry, "Never, since the world began, was there seen so villanous a reversal of things; the law of rape administered the wrong way, the girl condemned for having been made a tool, the victim ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... oracle, it seems, had declared that Neptune would not smile, unless two were cribbed together in one pen,—that the arrangement of these pairs should be left with the lot of the bean,—and that as the beans went, so must go the victims. Inexorable Fate would allow no reversal of her decrees. Soon the beans were rattling in the hat of the Pontifex, and, mirabile! pen No. 1 fell to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... and when your bullion was ready you shipped it by express to the mint in San Francisco. In the express office at Ehrenburg I found a record of that shipment. You shipped it under the name 'T. C. Morgan,' a reversal ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... gave by its arms authority in the South to the unscrupulosity of Northern scoundrelism supported by the votes of Negro ignorance. Such a policy naturally produced bitter irritation among the Southern Whites. Its reversal as naturally restored to the Whites at once power and contentment. Whether this reversal was as satisfactory to the Blacks is less clear. In any case it is hard to see how the restoration of the Southern States to their natural place in the Union tells in favour of giving Ireland a position ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey

... their attention to illusions of sight and touch are rather unequally divided in their views as to whether the geometrical optical illusions undergo a reversal in the field of touch, the majority inclining to the belief that they are reversed. And yet there are not wanting warm adherents of the opposite view. A comparison of the two classes of illusions, with this question in view, appears therefore ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... One William Green had commented extensively on David Mushet's early praise of the Bessemer process and on his sudden reversal in favor of Martien soon after Bessemer's British Association address (Mechanics' Magazine, 1856, vol. 65, p. 373 ff.). Green wrote from Caledonian Road, and the proximity to Baxter House, Bessemer's London headquarters, suggests the possibility ...
— The Beginnings of Cheap Steel • Philip W. Bishop

... realized heavily in his investments which caused his friends and his enemies to regard him in a new light; his profit had been quite small, as things go on the Exchange in these days. The mere fact that he had shown such foresight proved sufficient cause for the reversal of opinion. Men looked at him with new interest in their eyes, with fresh confidence. His unfortunate operations in the stock market had restored him to favor in all circles. The man, young or old, who could do what he had ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... made the time tearful with questionings as to the effect on Santa Claus, and how would they get word to him, and would it be Christmas in the City, and why couldn't they move there, and other matters denoting the reversal of this their earth. But Tab slipped out the kitchen door, to the corner of the barn, where the great turkey gobbler who had been named ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale

... of Brasidas the Peloponnesians still continued their efforts to effect a landing, but they were baffled by the obstinate defence of the Athenians, and the rugged and inhospitable coast. It was a strange reversal of affairs which had been brought about by the fortune of war. On one side were the Spartans, trained to military service on land, but now compelled to serve on board a fleet, in order to obtain a footing on their own territory, and on the other side the Athenians, whose natural element was the ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... it must be confessed that Opdyke, albeit healthy-minded and as philosophical as a surgical case can ever be, had felt a good deal of dread of their meeting. In the old days, he had been the strong one and the masterful, Brenton the weak. The present reversal of the situation ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... life would be prolonged for fifteen years is not in the manner of Isaiah, nor indeed of any of the great prophets, whose precise numbers, where they occur, are to be interpreted as round numbers (e.g. seventy years in Jer. xxv. 11, xxix. 10); and the story of the reversal of the shadow on the sun-dial reflects the later conception of the prophet as a miracle-worker (cf. I Kings xiii. 3-6). The section, in its present ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... general condemnation of the burning of the Capitol. Then, on the heels of this intelligence, came rumors that the British invasion of New York had failed and that Prevost's army was in full retreat to Canada. The Americans could hardly grasp the full significance of this British reversal: it was too good to be true. But true it was, and ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... the patience, the calm endurance, the sweet loveliness chiseled out of some rough life by the reversal of fortune ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... leaning forward with his hand shading his eyes, turned about with a startled gesture, throwing his arms aloft, and shouted to the captain that we were close in shore, and heading for it directly; the captain sprang to the indicator, and signalled for the reversal of the engines; but it was too late. With a thud that threw us all forward ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... and dramatic story of the rise of a beggar to be the king's vizier, and of as sudden and entire reversal of fortunes. ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... period that confronts us, with the decreased buying power of our own people, of uncertainty as to the progress of the world's politics, with the Government in control of exports and imports, he would be a foolish man indeed who today started a speculation in food. This is a complete reversal of the commercial atmosphere that existed when war began eighteen months ago, and therefore the major necessity for law in repression of speculative activities is, to my mind, rapidly passing. It is our duty, however, to exert ourselves in every direction so to handle our ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg

... we had it to do over again we should of course build them, but in another way. Therefore I propose another way of providing the means of transportation, which must precede, not tardily follow, the development of our trade with our neighbor states of America. It may seem a reversal of the natural order of things, but it is true, that the routes of trade must be actually opened-by many ships and regular sailings and moderate charges-before streams of merchandise will flow freely and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... afternoon, and such sequestered nooks in the garden as were invisible from the Grange were chosen as resting-places, while Kitty willingly consented to walk an extra half-mile on her way home, so as to avoid going out by the front gate. Such a reversal of the usual comings and goings would, it was hoped, give the final touch to Mr Vanburgh's curiosity, and teach him a wholesome lesson on the folly of shutting himself up and holding no communication with the world. When Agatha suggested that the poor old dear ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... exact reversal of his relationship with Marion. There the huskiness was his, the triumphant smile was Marion's. And the feeling of being adored without stint ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the senate after the fall of Gracchus was not that of a combatant who had emerged secure from the throes of a great crisis. A less experienced victor would have dwelt on the magnitude of the movement and been guilty of an attempt at its sudden reversal. But the government pretended that there had been no revolution, merely an emeute. The wicked authors of the sedition must be punished; but the Gracchan legislation might remain untouched. More than one motive probably contributed to shape this view. ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... and competent testimony offered by the contestors, as to force the conclusion that the trial judge was influenced by bias and prejudice, to the extent at least, charged in the application for a change of venue, and sufficient in itself to justify a reversal of judgment.... ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... humanity in earth's kingdoms shall fall, and the spirit and will of Christ pervade and beautify all the institutions, ecclesiastical and imperial, of the world. Yes, the kingdom "not in hands" shall shatter yet all the usurped rights of the world-powers. There shall be a glorious reversal of the disaster in Eden. That old Adamic principle of a legislative sovereignty in man, which has convulsed the nations for six thousand years, shall be utterly renounced and crucified the world over. Ruin irreparable ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... followers of the late king Tootaha, the lands and possessions which had been withheld from them, ever since his death. Probably, the new sacrifice was the concluding ceremony of what may be called the reversal of attainder. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... was disappointed would be a most inadequate description of his feelings. He was dismayed at first when he realized the total reversal of his expectations, and finally enraged to think that this living image of the man he disliked, and whom his conscience at times would insist he had wronged, would be constantly before him to remind him of things ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke

... Macedon is said to have maintained on the Euphrates a squadron of seven-banked ships. In the following century the Macedonians had ships of sixteen banks of oars, and this was probably the limit for sea-going ships in antiquity. These multiple banked ships must have been most unhandy, for a reversal of policy set in till about the beginning of the Christian era the Romans had gone back to two-banked ships. In medieval times war galleys reverted to a single row of oars on each side, but required four or five men to ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... exposed to death. In such cases, and particularly where deaths are due to accident, the mortality may not only be non-selective, but is sometimes contra-selective, for the strongest and most active men will often be those who expose themselves most to some danger. Such a reversal of the action of natural selection is seen on a large scale in the case of war, where the strongest go to the fray and are killed, while the weaklings stay at home to perpetuate their type of ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... which she now knew to be a vast collection of hives, built by the humans at the command of the bees. At the moment the air was thick with workers, returning with their loads of honey from the fields which the humans had been compelled to cultivate. What a diabolical reversal of the ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... in almost every province of Trajan's empire, was in a splendid but sure decline from the exhaustion of the southern races. Our story then begins naturally with the worst time and climbs up for a thousand years, from the Heathen and Mohammedan conquests of the fifth and seventh centuries, to the reversal of that judgment, of those conquests, in the fifteenth. The expansion of Europe is going on all this time, but at our beginning, in the years before and after Pope Gregory the Great, even the legacy of Greece and Rome, in wide knowledge of the world and practical exploring ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... inevitable under our system of law procedure, this meant that the action of the court was apt to be determined by legal technicalities. It was possible to dismiss a man from the service for quite insufficient reasons, and to provide against the reversal of the sentence, if the technicalities of procedure were observed. But the worst criminals were apt to be adroit men, against whom it was impossible to get legal evidence which a court could properly consider in a criminal ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... not in such a degree as to prevent any iniquitous sentence against a person obnoxious to the ruling party; but sufficient, on the return of his credit, or that of his friends, to serve as a reason or pretence for its reversal. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... unfortunate error to have been made, suppose a reversal of the Court's finding and the year's policy to have become immediately needful, wisdom would indicate an extreme frankness of demeanour. And our two officials preferred a policy of irritating dissimulation. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... have been decided unrighteously shall be re-investigated by the monarch: [in case of reversal of the judgment] the judges and the winning party shall be amerced in double the amount of the fine decreed in ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya

... to ask no additional questions. He did not care to lay grounds for the possible reversal of a judgment in favor of the defendant, by introducing questionable evidence. But he felt that the case, in its present aspect, needed farther investigation, and he moved for a continuance of the cause for two days. He desired, ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... all the possibilities, all the lights and shadows of his genius had been constructed. In the first act he sang a drinking song to a wing accompaniment delightfully, adding much to the tone and color of the situation. The exact reversal of the Lear suggestion in the last act was an inspiration, his own and not Boucicault's. The weird scene in the mountains fell in admirably with a certain weird note in the Jefferson genius, and supplied the needed element ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... Why this reversal of position? First, because, if consciousness be allowed, free-will must be admitted; since the universal consciousness is that of freedom to choose. But there is a larger reason. In accordance with his general notions, personality must ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... the presence of the loyal Imperialist with the baleful eye meant a reversal in his own case too. But the recent and very definite animus of Lopez against him he could in no way fathom. The blackmailer testified again. The prisoner, this Americano, had waylaid him in the wood two days before, and had robbed him of his ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... essential, of course, to provide some comic relief, and we are relying confidently on certain Members to practise the wearing of mobile moustaches and to take lessons in the stagger, the butter slide, the business with the cane and the quick reversal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various

... mounted on a knitting needle and spun in a horizontal plane, the black lines will appear of different colours. A clockwise rotation makes the outermost lines appear a greenish blue, those nearest the centre a dark red, and the intermediate groups yellow and green. A reversal of the motion reverses the order of the colours, the red lines now being farthest from the centre. The experiment is generally most successful by artificial light, which contains a larger proportion of red and yellow rays than does sunlight. The speed ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... marriage the king promoted Guy to the rank of Baron of Penshurst, and about the same time the Count of Montepone, who had been for some months in Italy, finding that his enemies at Mantua were still so strong that he was unable to obtain a reversal of the decree of banishment that had been passed ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty

... by a hair's breadth; only the feet stepped forward, at first deliberately, then faster and faster, until the rolling log threw a blue spray a foot into the air. Then suddenly slap! slap! the heavy caulks stamped a reversal. The log came instantaneously to rest, quivering exactly like some animal that had been spurred through ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... Siphomeris, has exactly the same kind of movement as the other internodes; for a line painted on the convex surface first becomes lateral and then concave; but, owing to the youth of these terminal internodes, the reversal of the hook is a slower process than that of the revolving movement. {10} This strongly marked tendency in the young, terminal and flexible internodes, to bend in a greater degree or more abruptly than the other internodes, is of service to ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin

... completer reversal of the truth than this "hopeless comment," as Professor Brander Matthews has justly called it. The whole effect of the long and highly-elaborated scene depends upon our knowledge that Lady Teazle is behind ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... (broad, circular system of currents) in the southern Indian Ocean; unique reversal of surface currents in the northern Indian Ocean; low atmospheric pressure over southwest Asia from hot, rising, summer air results in the southwest monsoon and southwest-to-northeast winds and currents, while high pressure over northern Asia from cold, falling, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... and notes in the first person are addressed to My dear Mrs. Smith. If Mrs. Smith is a friend or an acquaintance, she is addressed as "Dear Mrs. Smith." This is the American custom, and is an exact reversal of the English. which is, by the way, being more generally adopted in our society. "My dear" certainly seems to the uninitiated, at least, more intimate and familiar than "Dear." A business communication ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... implication unobtrusively; or if obtrusively, then with the greatest gain to sense and vigour. Even the derangement of the phrases from their (so-called) natural order is luminous for the mind; and it is by the means of such designed reversal that the elements of a judgment may be most pertinently marshalled, or the stages of a complicated action most perspicuously ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... dominion between Huascar, to whom was given ancient Peru, and Atahualpa, who took Quito to the north. World-history, of which Huayna could have known nothing, has shown conclusively enough that such a policy has always brought about civil war, and this startling reversal of Peruvian custom by a doting monarch on his deathbed produced ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... thirty years were chiefly spent in efforts—by scientific research, by mechanical experiment, and by persevering argument—to increase the naval power of his country, and in efforts no less zealous to secure for himself that full reversal of the wrongful sentence passed upon him in a former generation, which could only be attained by public restitution of the official rank and national honours of ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... pre-revolutionary days. His embargo upon American commerce and the later variants on that policy, designed to force the belligerents to recognize the American position, actually were more costly to American shippers than were the depredations of the French and the British, so they forced a reversal of American policy. The war against England that followed did not have the support of the shipping interests, whose trade it was supposedly trying to protect. It was more an adventure in American imperialism than it was an attempt to defend neutral rights, so it can hardly ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin

... reluctant, and prudish, the male she courts may prove at first, yet her perseverance, her ardour, her persuasive powers, her command over the mystic agencies of vril, are pretty sure to run down his neck into what we call "the fatal noose." Their argument for the reversal of that relationship of the sexes which the blind tyranny of man has established on the surface of the earth, appears cogent, and is advanced with a frankness which might well be commended to impartial ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... himself that his guest, though armed with the best of credentials, was quite unknown to him otherwise, and that, perhaps, he had acted unwisely in inviting a stranger to his house without making some preliminary inquiry. This reversal of their roles was a conceit so ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... is a delightful effect of irony, indeed, that he should have accomplished his errand after all, in spite of himself; but the point of the book is not there, the ironic climax only serves to bring out the point more sharply. The reversal of his own idea is underlined and enhanced by the reversal of the young man's idea in the opposite sense; but essentially the subject of the book would be unchanged if the story ended differently, if the young man held to his freedom and refused to go home. Strether would ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

... three years, and saw that her chains were kept bright and strong. Never, since Lysander demolished the Long Walls of Athens to the music of the Spartan flute, had the world seen so bitter a spectacle of national humiliation, so absolute a reversal of fortune,—the long-conquering legions perishing by the sword, and him who had headed so many triumphal processions perishing as it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... indestructible, existing in some shape from everlasting to everlasting, it is inconceivable that mind, the lord of matter, should perish utterly—should fade like an echo into the great inane. That were a reversal of the law of the survival of the fittest—casting away a priceless jewel while preserving its tawdry setting. That the lesser should survive the greater; that the case of Anaxarchus should continue and Anaxarchus' proud self become nonexistent, were to leave matter without law and ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... Reversal of the Attainder of William Ryan of Bally Ryan in the County of Tipperary, Esq.; and for restoring him to his Blood, ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... and Canada and form the headwaters of the St. Lawrence River system. They cover an area of 94,000 Sq. M. The Great Lakes date back to Glacial period or before, but it is probable that a "warping" of the earth's crust and a consequent reversal of drainage areas have been among the most potent causes of the formation of these great inland seas. Some of the most salient facts about the Great Lakes are ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous

... him have intimated) any mere personal attachment to Cardinal Wiseman. 'I don't mind,' he said, 'as long as you keep to the political and personal side of the matter, but doctrines you must not attack.' Douglas Jerrold and Thackeray were not likely to appreciate this reversal of the general sentiment, which resents personal attack above all else. 'Look at the Times,' they argued; 'its language has been most violent, but the Catholic writers on its staff do not for that reason resign. They understand, and the world at large understands, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... of the will can keep machinery in its place. He has no faith whatever in automatic governments. While the routineers see machinery and precedents revolving with mankind as puppets, he puts the deliberate, conscious, willing individual at the center of his philosophy. This reversal is pregnant with a new outlook for statecraft. I hope to show that it alone can keep step with life; it alone is humanly relevant; and it alone ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... Education question remains to be found. A Royal Commission was appointed last session in South Australia to consider the bearings of the existing system, and in Victoria there is already a strong political party opposed to it. After such a complete reversal of a policy which was supposed to be so firmly established as Sir John Robertson's land system, no system in Australia can be said to be finally established if there is any considerable number of sufferers by it. Most sensible people—though they are certainly not numerous—admit that ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... carrying trade? Can we doubt that the trade-winds, too, would be mere playthings in the hands of a lunar colonial Government, inspired in every action by the malice of an unfriendly terrestrial Admiralty, and that, in short, by a terrible reversal of the national motto for which we feel so just a reverence, Britannia would cease to rule the waves, while the waves would rule Britannia?' (Loud and prolonged Ministerial cheers, during which another member of the Opposition rose and inquired the precise ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... any day this week and we 'll go over things," he announced cheerfully. "We put one over on his royal joblots that time, anyway. Hates me from the ground up. Worst we can hope for is a conviction and then a Supreme Court reversal. I 'll get him so mad he 'll fill the case with errors. He used to be an instructor down at Boulder, and I stuck the pages of a lecture together on him one day. That's why I asked for an early trial. Knew he 'd give me a late one. That 'll let us have time to stir ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... friendly but unmistakable hint in the concluding words and the young engineer went to bed in a curious reversal of sentiment. Gentleman Geoff had evidently earned his title; and from the tawdry, fevered atmosphere of the Blue Chip his daughter, miraculously enough, seemed to have drawn only strength and a warm-hearted ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... Robert and the two, with Tayoga, saw that the soldiers fought well under cover. The young Philadelphians, in the excitement of battle and of a sudden and triumphant reversal of fortune, were likely to expose themselves rashly, and the advice of the forest veterans was timely. Captain Colden saw that it was taken, although two more of his men were slain as they advanced and several ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... reached in 1906 assuring an early acquisition of all roads by the city. The issue of bonds for municipal railways was, however, declared unconstitutional that year; and at the municipal elections of 1907 there was a complete reversal of policy; a large majority voted this time against municipal ownership in favour of leaving the working of the street railways in private hands, and strengthening the powers of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... had been high-handed and even dictatorial; so that constitutional struggles were not at all infrequent towards the end of the seventeenth and during the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The efforts of Sir Constantine Phipps towards a non-parliamentary government,[3] and the reversal by the English House of Lords of the decision given by the Irish House of Lords in the famous Annesley case, had prepared the Irish people for a revolt against any further attempts to dictate to its properly elected representatives assembled in parliament. Moreover, the wretched ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift

... of Rome; the ruin of the family; the claustration of the daughters; the flight of the widow to Switzerland; her introduction to Voltaire; the excited zeal of that incomparable partisan and the passionate persistence with which, from year to year, he pursued a reversal of judgment till at last he obtained it and devoted the tribunal of Toulouse to execration and the name of the victims to lasting wonder and pity—these things form part of one of the most interesting and touching episodes of the social ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... no mind to incur risks for her; and Clement, though he annulled Cranmer's proceedings, hesitated as yet to take sterner action. Henry, on the other hand, conscious that the die was thrown, moved rapidly forward in the path that Cromwell had opened. The Pope's reversal of the primate's judgment was answered by an appeal to a general council. The decision of the cardinals to whom the case was referred in the spring of 1534, a decision which asserted the lawfulness of Catherine's marriage, was met by the enforcement of the long-suspended statute forbidding ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... die, or he might have proved a serious obstacle to our seizure of these estates, for I remember it being stated at the time, by one of the judges, that had he been living, he might have procured a reversal of the Star-Chamber sentence upon Sir Ferdinando ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... ever, beheld,—an American, pure blood, handling the pick, the shovel, and the wheelbarrow, while an Irishman directed his labors. Upon inspection, it appeared that none of the trees grew with their roots in the air, in recognition of this great reversal of the natural law; all the French-roof houses stood right side up. The phenomenon may become more common in future, unless the American race accomplishes its destiny of dying out before the more populatory foreigner, but as yet it graced the ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells



Words linked to "Reversal" :   judgment, jurisprudence, reconsideration, change by reversal, rethink, change of state, turnabout, second thought, regress, reverse, turn around, change of direction, law, volte-face, whammy, retroversion, decision making, about turn, reversion, natural event, deciding, afterthought, occurrence, transposition, u-turn, policy change, reorientation, turning, turnaround, turn, judicial decision, affirmation, about-face, retrogression, judgement, regression, happening



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