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Variable   /vˈɛriəbəl/   Listen
Variable

noun
1.
Something that is likely to vary; something that is subject to variation.
2.
A quantity that can assume any of a set of values.  Synonym: variable quantity.
3.
A star that varies noticeably in brightness.  Synonym: variable star.
4.
A symbol (like x or y) that is used in mathematical or logical expressions to represent a variable quantity.



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"Variable" Quotes from Famous Books



... annular raceway. Its detachment from the axis forms a striking exception to the general construction of interlocking apparatus in this company's machines. Under the beak of this curious device is found an oblong recess, into which fits loosely a carrier or driver, rotating with a differential or variable motion. The space between the carrier and the sides of the recess is sufficient to permit the free passage of the thread in encircling the shuttle, and the differential movement ingeniously releases the contact between the hook and carrier. The skeleton ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various

... discretion of another, and the transferable character of the authority and claim of service of the master.[263] The manner in which men are brought into this condition; its continuance, and the means adopted for securing the authority and claim of masters, are all incidental and variable. They may be reasonable or unreasonable, just or unjust, at different times and places. The question, therefore, which the abolitionists have undertaken to decide, is not whether the laws enacted ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... of "Mr." and "Mr"; use of variable numbers of asterisks as ellipses; irregular and archaic spelling other than noted below; inconsistent capitalization (especially Christian vs. christian) and hyphenation, are as per ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... his exit from public life should be made in company with the latest lady on whom he had bestowed his variable affections; and remembering this proviso, the Baroness, without exactly encouraging or disencouraging his scheme, was at least not prone to insist on ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... 6 in. high by less than 2 in. in diameter, cylindrical in shape, bright green, simple when young, tufted in old specimens. Ribs shallow, broad, irregular on the top, with spine-cushions on the projecting parts; spines straight, yellowish-white, semi-transparent, variable in length, longest about 1 in. There are frequently as many as twelve spines in a tuft, although the specific name implies eight spines only. Flowers on the ridges near the top of the stem, with spiny tubes, spreading petals of a deep purple colour, and yellow stamens and pistil. ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson

... height may be calculated with an average error from these bones, yet the probable error is greater when the calculation is made from the arms than when it is made from the legs. In fact, the length of arm as compared to the length of leg and to whole height is a more variable feature in man than the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... Now the economist concentrates on the agents of production for the very good reason that it is only with respect to them that any clear and certain laws as to distribution can be laid down. Into the distribution between individuals and classes there enter other and variable factors, governed by no fundamental economic law; and here, the conclusion should at once suggest itself, is the field for action designed to alter the distribution of wealth. What is possible or desirable in this field, it is again not the purpose of this volume to discuss. It is an obvious, ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... she was active in sketching her landscapes and market-carts and portraits of friends, in practising her music, and in being from morning till night her own standard of a perfect lady, having always an audience in her own consciousness, with sometimes the not unwelcome addition of a more variable external audience in the numerous visitors of the house. She found time also to read the best novels, and even the second best, and she knew much poetry by heart. Her favorite ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... account of the invaders in Northern France is given by Gabriele and Margerita Yerta, "Six Women and the Invasion." Their experiences were variable. "It is clear," writes a reviewer in the Nation, "that Herr Major, and 'Barlu,' and 'Crafleux' and the two 'model Prussians,' who replenished the house with coal and provisions, and offered the ladies game they had shot, only sinned by their ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... Archaic and variable spelling and capitalisation has been preserved in the quoted material as printed. Asterisks are used instead of periods in ellipses. Minor punctuation errors have been repaired. Where the letter l (representing pounds) is ...
— Captain Richard Ingle - The Maryland • Edward Ingle

... period of life when one has not yet separated the fact of this sensual pleasure from the various women in whose company one has tasted it, when one has not reduced it to a general idea which makes one regard them thenceforward as the variable instruments of a pleasure that is always the same. Indeed, that pleasure does not exist, isolated and formulated in the consciousness, as the ultimate object with which one seeks a woman's company, or as the cause of the uneasiness which, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... unfortunately we were still without a thermometer and could not ascertain the degrees of temperature. The coruscations of the Aurora Borealis were very brilliant almost every evening of the first week and were generally of the most variable kind. On the 3rd they were particularly changeable. The first appearance exhibited three illuminated beams issuing from the horizon in the north, east, and west points, and directed towards the zenith; in a few seconds ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... than him who brings back a photograph of the uncovered countenance, with its one unvarying granite story for all. There is one glory of the Gazetteer with his fixed facts, and another of the Poet with his variable quantities of fancy. The fixed fact may be unfixed next year, like an almanac, but the hasty sketch of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... useless short syllables in our language going to waste, that the fellows who got up the terms for radio work couldn't have used words like 'grid,' for instance. They could have called a variocoupler a 'gol,' a potentiometer a 'dit,' an induction coil a 'lim,' (l-i-m) and a variable condenser would look just as pretty if it were written out as a 'sos'—but no! They forgot the good example set by the grid, the volt and the ohm and they went and ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple

... they do not live by cultivating the land," returned the Professor. "The seasons are too variable, and the changes of temperature are far too sudden to permit raising of crops of ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... end, experience must be its own test), serves also, only made more precise, as the real type of scientific induction. As preliminary to the employment of this test, nature must be surveyed, that we may discover which are respectively the invariable and the variable inductions at which man has already arrived unscientifically. Then, by connecting these different ascertained inductions with one another through ratiocination, they become mutually confirmative, the strongest being made still stronger when bound up with the weaker, ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing

... common subject—the nature of man; that the writer accepts himself as the example of humanity most open to his observation; and that the same tranquil, yet insatiable curiosity is everywhere present. Man, as conceived by Montaigne, is of all creatures the most variable, unstable, inconstant. The species includes the saint and the brute, the hero and the craven, while between the extremes lies the average man, who may be anything that nature, custom, or circumstances make him. And as the species ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... have heard it mentioned as an article of belief among sextons that a hundred years is the fair measure of a head-stone's "life" above ground, but this reckoning is much too short for the evidences, and makes no allowance for variable circumstances. In some places, Keston for instance, the church is founded upon a bed of chalk, and out of the chalk the graves are laboriously hewn. It is obvious therefore that the nature of the soil, as it ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent

... called it, which should change all immovable ecclesiastical properties that were not already confiscated into national rent. Such national rent, as is well known, had only an ephemeral value. It was, at best, variable; and Italy, which was partially bankrupt when it reduced the interest due to its creditors, will, sooner or later, according to the opinion of the ablest writers, land in complete bankruptcy. The rents substituted by force, instead of real property, will then ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... arrears of talliages, and devoted all his efforts to reducing them, whilst regulating their collection. His desire was to arrive at the establishment everywhere of real talliages, on landed property, &c., instead of personal talliages, variable imposts, depending upon the supposed means or social position of the inhabitants. He was only very partially successful, without, however, allowing himself to be repelled by the difficulties presented ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Further, the inquiry of demonstrative science does not go on indefinitely, because one can come to principles that are self-evident, which are absolutely certain. But such like certainty is not to be had in contingent singulars, which are variable and uncertain. Therefore the inquiry of counsel ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... found by the roadsides. According to Britton and Brown's "Illustrated Flora" it is glabrous or pubescent, with several or many stems, ascending or nearly erect; with green or red leaves, which are wonderfully variable in outline, from linear to orbicular, mostly opposite, the upper sometimes whorled, the lower often alternate. The glands of the involucres are elliptic or oblong, and even the ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... were found in variable forms in the original text and both versions have been retained: armchair/arm-chair; byword/by-word; hearthrug/hearth-rug; housekeeping/house-keeping; sky ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... no ascent or descent or terminating wall in space, but equal motion illimitably in all directions; and no absolute standard of duration, only a relative and variable one from the insect of an hour, to man, to an archangel, to that incomprehensible Being whose shortest moments are too vast to be noted by the awful nebula of the Hour Glass, although its rushing sands are systems of worlds. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... He was a great rider, so there was about him some of a horseman's sureness and habitual definiteness of decision, also some of the horseman's animal darkness. Yet his soul was only the more wavering, vague. He seemed made up of a set of habitual actions and decisions. The vulnerable, variable quick of the man was inaccessible. She knew nothing of it. She could only feel the dark, heavy fixity of his ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... persons that they be transported to a more hospitable region would, if carried out, cause their extermination in two or three generations. Our variable climate they could not endure, as they are keenly susceptible to pulmonary and bronchial affections. Our civilization, too, would only soften and corrupt them, as their racial inheritance is one of physical hardship; while to our complex environment ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... the conjunction of the moon alone, or some unfortunate aspects, at such and such set hours and times, like the sea-tides, to some women when they be with child, as [2603]Plater notes, never otherwise: to others 'tis settled and fixed; to one led about and variable still by that ignis fatuus of phantasy, like an arthritis or running gout, 'tis here and there, and in every joint, always molesting some part or other; or if the body be free, in a myriad of forms exercising the mind. A second once peradventure in his life hath a most grievous fit, once in ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... of every sort. The individual is, as a determinate finite thing, burdened with negation and limitation, for every determination includes a negation; that which is truly real in the individual is God. Finite things are modi of the infinite substance, mere states, variable states, of God. By themselves they are nothing, since out of God nothing exists. They possess existence only in so far as they are conceived in their connection with the infinite, that is, as transitory forms of ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... the supple assiduity of which those who possess no valuable art or useful talent are commonly complete masters. Possessing large funds, acquired by his apprenticeship and novitiate in the lowest frauds, he was enabled to lend to this then powerful man, in the several emergencies of his variable fortune, very large sums of money. This great man had been brought down by Mr. Hastings, under the orders of the Court of Directors, upon a cruel charge, to Calcutta. He was accused of many crimes, and acquitted, 220,000l. in debt: that is to say, as soon as he was a great ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... partner, in case of recovery, still remaining valid. That would be a form of polygamy, but Hinton was careful to point out that by "polygamy" he meant "less a particular marriage-order than such an order as best serves good, and which therefore must be essentially variable. Monogamy may be good, even the only good order, if of free choice; but a law for it is another thing. The sexual relationship must be a natural thing. The true social life will not be any ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... is a new field of labor, perhaps a short account of it will not be uninteresting. It is situated on the eastern shore of the Bay of Bengal, and extends from 15 deg. 54' to 20 deg. 51' north latitude. Its width is very variable. At the northern part of the province it is about ninety miles wide, while the width at the extreme southern point is but two or three miles. Probably the average width is something less than fifty miles. It is bounded on the north by the Province of Chittagong, on the east ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy

... viewing the sublime realities of religion only as fantastic dreams; seeing nothing but the gloom of the grave beyond the fleeting shadows of the present life; granting reality to nothing but that which is essentially variable, phenomenal, and contingent; forever revelling in the luxuriousness of mere sensation—they understand only that which can be seen and handled. But the devotion to the True in art is a disinterested worship—a worship requiring the most heroic ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... to the everyday affairs of life. Consider the theories of Darwin, for instance. What are they but an elaborate application of the higher calculus? He differentiates men into protoplasms, and integrates protoplasms into monkeys, and shows the caudal appendage to be the independent variable, a small factor in man, a large factor in monkey. And has not the idea of successive development supplanted the early conception of spontaneous perfection? Take an illustration from India—the new system of competition, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... alternately from both monsoons, the high Sumatran mountains protecting its west side from the south-west winds. The east side is exposed for six months to a modified north-east monsoon. Everywhere else throughout the almost changeless year, steadily alternating land and sea breezes with gentle variable winds and calms prevail, interrupted occasionally on the west coast during the "summer" by squalls from the south-west, which last for one or two hours, and are known as "Sumatrans." Hurricanes and earthquakes are unknown. Drenching dews fall on clear nights. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... evasion-plan, yet never abandons it; living in variable hope; undecisive, till fortune shall decide. In utmost secresy, a brisk Correspondence goes on with Bouille; there is also a plot, which emerges more than once, for carrying the King to Rouen: (See Hist. Parl. vii. 316; Bertrand-Moleville, &c.) plot after plot, emerging ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... time in the southern hemisphere, the weather was very variable; now, when the wind came from the antarctic pole, bitterly cold; or drawing round and blowing from the north, after it had passed over the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, it was ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston

... a fright, kept as much as possible out of sight. Towards her, Mr. Stillinghast's manner was inconsistent, and variable in the extreme. At one time almost kind, at another, captious and surly. Sometimes he called on her for every thing, and perhaps the next moment threatened to throw whatever he had ordered, at her head. Once he told ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... to which that name has been applied. Finally, a Prairie differs from a savanna only in being under a zone where the seasons are not marked as wet and dry, but where the herbage corresponds to a variable moisture.] ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... does not, however, explain why the offspring should suffer from the same disease as that which was artificially induced in the parents. But this does not appear to have been by any means invariably the case. Brown- Sequard himself says: 'The changes in the eye of the offspring were of a very variable nature, and were only occasionally exactly similar to ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... are eighteen notes, termed in Greek [Greek: phthongoi], of which eight in all the three classes are constant and fixed, while the other ten, not being tuned to the same pitch, are variable. The fixed notes are those which, being placed between the moveable, make up the unity of the tetrachord, and remain unaltered in their boundaries according to the different classes. Their names are ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... measuring it with the greatest care, provided a tool of wonderful efficiency. The motion, which sometimes amounts to several hundreds of miles a second could thus be measured to within a fraction of a mile. The discovery that the motion was variable, owing to the star's revolving around a great dark planet sometimes larger than the star, added greatly not only to the interest of these researches, but also to the labor involved. Instead of a single measure for each star, in the case of the so-called ...
— The Future of Astronomy • Edward C. Pickering

... fermentation all grass seeds have been killed. Do not cover so heavily as to smother the plants, nor so lightly that the wind and rains will dissipate the mulch. Your aim is not to keep the plants from freezing, but from freezing and thawing with every alternation of our variable winters and springs. On ordinarily dry land two or three inches of light material is sufficient. Moreover, the thawing out of the fruit beds or crown, under the direct rays of the sun, injures them, I think. Most of the damage is done in February and ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... pretty well. He did not dislike the children, and Kitty liked anything that needed to be waited on. He took Clara's services as a right, but was a little afraid of 'Mrs. Dynevor,' and highly flattered by any attention from her; and with James his moods were exceedingly variable, and often very trying, but, in general, very ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... cases where a long screw must be rotated with a traversing nut or other threaded piece traveling on its thread a limited and variable distance. At one time the threaded nut or piece may be required to go almost the entire length of the screw, and at another time a much shorter traverse would be required. In many instances the use of side check nuts ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... became very intense, the thermometer registering 30 degrees F. below zero. The mercury, however, never exhibited any of those fluctuations that are ever and again to be observed in variable climates, but continued slowly and steadily to fall, and in all probability would continue to do so until it reached the normal temperature of the regions of ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... Oh! swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon That monthly changes in her circled orb; Lest that thy love prove likewise variable. ROMEO. What ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... themselves and use force, then they are rarely endangered. Hence it is that all armed prophets have conquered, and the unarmed ones have been destroyed. Besides the reasons mentioned, the nature of the people is variable, and whilst it is easy to persuade them, it is difficult to fix them in that persuasion. And thus it is necessary to take such measures that, when they believe no longer, it may be possible to ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... gifts, and all kind of princelie largesse. He set verie manie prisoners at libertie, and did many other things to benefit the people, wherein the diligence and good aduice of Lanfranke did not a little preuaile. For he perceiued that there was in the king a variable mind, an vnstable nature, and a disposition to lightnesse and follie. Wherefore hee tooke oftentimes the more paines in persuading him not onelie to liberalitie (which is none of the least vertues in a ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed

... shop-window to look at the same prints. If the swiftest thinking has about the pace of a greyhound, the slowest must be supposed to move, like the limpet, by an apparent sticking, which after a good while is discerned to be a slight progression. Such differences are manifest in the variable intensity which we call human experience, from the revolutionary rush of change which makes a new inner and outer life, to that quiet recurrence of the familiar, which has no other epochs than those of hunger ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... very slowly or indications of indigestion will be present as the appetite is variable, temperature elevated, breathing labored, the animal avoids walking down hill as it causes pain from the stomach and intestines pressing the lungs against the heart. The symptoms, however, are so slight that they may easily escape the notice of a casual observer. The animal eventually becomes ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... Garland and Montgomery Counties, rock crystals are found lining cavities of variable size, and in one instance thirty tons of crystals were found in a single cavity. These crystals are mined by the farmers in their spare time and sold in the streets of Hot Springs, their value amounting to some $10,000 annually. Several ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... brilliant. His voice was pleasant, his manners affable. In stature he was short; in movement, quick and nervous. But in the make-up of the man one essential of true greatness—fixedness of purpose—had been omitted. He lacked the staying qualities. He was "variable and fond of change." "His full nature, like that river of which Alexander broke the strength, spent itself in channels which led to no great name on earth." By a single exploit, at the age of thirty, he carved his name at high-water mark among the elect in surgery. ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell

... chieftains were seen at different parts of the camp, closely conversing in groups; and when any of Wallace's officers approached, they separated, or withdrew to a greater distance. This strange conduct Wallace attributed to its right source, and thought of Bruce with a sigh, when he contemplated the variable substance of these men's minds. However, he was so convinced that nothing but the proclamation of Bruce, and that prince's personal exertions, could preserve his country from falling again into the snare from which ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... at breakfast. Approaching the equator on a long slant. Those of us who have never seen the equator are a good deal excited. I think I would rather see it than any other thing in the world. We entered the "doldrums" last night—variable winds, bursts of rain, intervals of calm, with chopping seas and a wobbly and drunken motion to the ship—a condition of things findable in other regions sometimes, but present in the doldrums always. The globe-girdling belt called the doldrums is 20 degrees wide, and the thread called ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Then shall Hypocrisy be utterly disdained, Whose wretched exile, though greatly complained, And wept for of many, shall be without hope, That in such pomp shall ever be Pope. By Venus the riotous, by Luna the variable, Betwixt whom and Mercury no variance can fall, For they, which in words be most unstable, Would be thought faithful, and the riotous liberal: So that Hypocrisy their doings cloak shall. But whist! not a word, for yonder come some: While I know ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... town to a distance of three to five miles, farmers generally make two loads of a cord each, a day's work. From the barn-yard, a very variable number, per day. In my own case, two men with three horses have been hauling six and seven loads of sixty bushels, fine compost, a distance of from one-half to three-fourths of a mile, up a long and rather steep hill, and spreading from ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris

... slim of all their individual labours. Shap'less they seem'd, but endless shape assumed; Elongated like worms, they writhed and shrunk Their tortuous bodies to grotesque dimensions; Compress'd like wedges, radiated like stars, Branching like sea-weed, whirl'd in dazzling rings; Subtle and variable as flickering flames, Sight could not trace their evanescent changes, Nor comprehend their motions, till minute And curious observation caught the clew To this live labyrinth,—where every one, By instinct taught, perform'd its little task; —To build its dwelling and its sepulchre, From its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various

... republisher. I shall re-issue VIRG. PUER. as Vol. I. of ESSAYS, and the new vol. as Vol. II. of ditto; to be sold, however, separately. This is but a dry maundering; however, I am quite unfit - 'I am for action quite unfit Either of exercise or wit.' My father is in a variable state; many sorrows and perplexities environ the house of Stevenson; my mother shoots north at this hour on business of a distinctly rancid character; my father (under my wife's tutorage) proceeds to-morrow to Salisbury; I remain ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... that is why I am here. No matter: I count the world well lost for her. She had, I pledge you my word, the most magnificent head of hair I ever saw. She had humor; she had intellect; she could cook to perfection; and her highly strung temperament made her uncertain, incalculable, variable, capricious, cruel, ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... cloth as large as a sheet draped loosely (and quite incompletely) around the head and upper part of the body, and a breast-cloth or possibly a waist of brilliant yellow. This combination of hues, of course, is only a specimen. The actual colors are variable ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... "They are variable, then? That is distinctly curious, because—but do I understand that the type of the delusion varies? For example, Mr. Sargent believes that he can buy ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... barn was burning close beside the two detectives, rendering it easy for any one within to have shot them dead. This observed, the light was cautiously removed, and everybody took care to keep out of its reflection. By this time the crisis of the position was at hand, the cavalry exhibited very variable inclinations, some to run away, others to shoot Booth without a summons, but all excited and fitfully silent. At the house near by the female folks were seen collected in the doorway, and the necessities of the case provoked prompt conclusions. The boy was placed at a remote ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... a climate as variable, though not so humid, as that of any English town. A night of high wind followed upon that soft sunset, and all the next day was one of dry storm—dark, beclouded, yet rainless,—the streets were dim with sand and dust, whirled from the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... Only an alert commander can invariably determine whether the situation is unfolding along the lines desired by him, as promulgated in the directives of the third step. In effect, the commander, after action is begun, considers the changing situation as a variable in the problem presented for his solution by the original (basic) situation. With the march of events, he is, therefore, constantly critical to detect whether variations from the original situation are in accordance with his ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College

... their meaning or content is not fixed, and specially if they are undergoing a constant change, in the way of growth, with the progress of reason and society, how can we employ them as a test of morality, which is itself also a variable conception? Surely this is to make one indefinite idea the gauge of another indefinite idea. The answer to this question will, I trust, bring out clearly the nature of a moral test, as well as the ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler

... the msungu there was a pet monkey. It had been captured down on the Tana River months before and at first was wild and vicious. As time went by it lost much of its wildness and to those it liked was affectionate and friendly. To all others it presented variable moods, sometimes friendly and sometimes unexpectedly and unreasonably hostile. We feared that Little Wanderobo Dog would have some bad moments with the little Tana River monkey, and their first meeting was awaited with keen interest. We thought the monkey would scratch all ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... is a bird smaller than the linnet; its plumage is a violet-coloured blue, and its wings, which serve it for a cope, are entirely violet-colour. Its notes are so sweet, so variable, and tender, that those who have once heard it, are apt to abate in their praises of the nightingale. I had such great pleasure in hearing this charming bird, that I left an oak standing very near ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... pugnax, Linnaeus. French, "Combatant," "Combatant variable."—The Ruff is an occasional but not very common autumn and winter visitant; it occurs, probably, more frequently in the autumn than the winter. Mr. MacCulloch writes me, "I have a note of a Ruff shot in October, 1871." This probably was, ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith

... family who cannot compete in companionship with the highly cultured young unmarried lady, with the leisure to post herself up in the last interesting book or the newest political movement. It is the man who is the more variable in his affections than the woman; more constant as she is by nature, as well as firmly anchored down by the strength of her maternal love. It is therefore on the woman that any loosening of the permanence of the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... speed of 1,000, it should certainly not vary over a greater range than from 970 to 980 to 1,020 to 1,030. In many cases there may be shafting from which the necessary power can be taken, and of which the speed is variable only within these limits. There are several devices by which it has been found possible to enable a dynamo to maintain a constant electromotive force, even if the speed of rotation varies over considerable limits. One of these ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... whether they return to life with the fresh flowers, or, whether it be new flowers, new fairies, I cannot tell. They have as many sorts of dispositions as men and women, while their moods are yet more variable; twenty different expressions will cross their little faces in half a minute. I often amuse myself with watching them, but I have never been able to make personal acquaintance with any of them. If I speak to one, he or she looks ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... all his Ishmaelitish tactics there were thoughts of a reconstruction. He may have been right or wrong in his courses. At any rate, it is necessary in a sketch of his career to set out the connecting links in years of activity which to a casual observer may seem disjointed, variable, and erratic. ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot

... that I am accused of rating my books at too high a price, at a price which no other person would demand. To answer this accusation, it is necessary to inquire what those who urge it, mean by a high price. The price of things, valuable for their rarity, is entirely arbitrary, and depends upon the variable taste of mankind, and the casual fluctuation of the fashion, and can never be ascertained, like that of things only estimable according ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... carrying the southerly breeze with us all through the night, and then falling in with a regular twister from the eastward that carried us right across the Line to about latitude 0 degrees 47 minutes North. From thence we had light and variable breezes to Sierra Leone, despite which we made an excellent passage, arriving in the anchorage in just three days short of a month from the date of our leaving it upon our rescuing expedition; and I am happy ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... easy to recognize the radical contradiction this attempt involves, which establishes reason herself as supreme judge of this very submission, the extent and the permanence of which is to depend upon her variable and not very rigid decisions. The most eminent thinker of the present catholic school, the illustrious De Maistre, himself affords a proof, as convincing as involuntary, of this inevitable contradiction in his philosophy, when, renouncing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... premises when he writes: "God, as Laplace has said, is an hypothesis of which exact science has no need; he is, according to Herzen, at the most an X, which represents not the unknowable—as Spencer and Dubois Raymond contend—but all that which humanity does not yet know. Therefore, it is a variable X which decreases in direct ratio to the progress of the ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... of a cracker, the falling of a book, a sudden touch, or even speaking to him unexpectedly, will cause him to start. Cowardice is a sure consequence of Self-Abuse and involuntary emissions. The appetite is irregular, often poor, sometimes voracious; the bowels are also variable in their action. The prostatic portion of the urethra is frequently irritable and sometimes is very much inflamed; oftentimes there is a thickening, a sponginess or puffiness of the parts immediately involving the ejaculatory ducts. ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown

... instrument used with special precautions, the writer, as will be shown hereafter, has been able to prove that the temperature of the air, as traversed in the wayward course of a balloon, is probably far more variable and complex than has been recorded ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... his ministers tried to grapple with the altered circumstances, and strove to substitute and equitable Crown rent or money payment for the existing and variable claims which were collected by the Court of Ward and Livery. The knight's fee then consisted of twelve plough-lands, a more modern name for "a hide of land." The class burdened with knight's service, or ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher

... was formed in Sheffield, and in the years immediately following in Glasgow, London, Bristol, and other cities. They have since come into existence in most of the larger industrial towns, 120 local trades councils existing in 1892. Their influence has been variable ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... Madame Ronner excels all other cat painters, living or dead. She not only infuses a wonderful degree of life into her little figures, but reproduces the shades of expression, shifting and variable as the sands of the sea, as no other artist of the brush has done. Asleep or awake, her cats look exactly to the "felinarian" like cats with whom he or she is familiar. Curiosity, drowsiness, indifference, alertness, love, hate, anxiety, temper, innocence, cunning, fear, ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... steamship,—it has destroyed the sailor. The age of discovery is closing with this century. Up to the limits of the ice-fields, every shore is mapped out, every shoal sounded. Not only does Science give the fixed, but she is even transferring to her charts the variable features of the deep,—the sliding current, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... variable quantity. In the crowded centers his distinguishing marks are short hair and cunning; upon the frontier, sentiment and the six-shooter! In New York he becomes a boss; in Kentucky and Texas, a fighter and an orator. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... working under a variable load require water governors (like impulse wheels) although where the supply of water is large, and the proportion of power between water wheel and dynamo is liberal—say two to one, or more—this necessity is greatly reduced. Reaction wheels as a rule govern themselves ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson

... best to drive Sandy's son to perdition through a downward course of 'loafing,' God had sent Mr. Dyson to put Davy back on the right road. But he was ill at ease; he watched the excitement, which all the lad's prickly reticence could not hide from those about him, with strange and variable feelings. As a Christian, he should have rejoiced; instead, the uncle and nephew shunned each other more than ever, and shunned especially all talk of the revival. Perhaps the whole situation—the influence of the new man, of the local talk, of the quickened spiritual life around ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... which all subsequent discoveries must be made to fit in by force. It is not to be supposed that all prehistoric pottery developed its series of types in an absolutely orderly manner without deviations or throws-back. The work of man's hands is variable and eccentric, and does not develop or evolve in an undeviating course as the work of nature does. It is a mistake, very often made by anthropologists and archaeologists, who forget this elementary fact, to assume "curves ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... sent by the Committee of Safety to Genoa, with instructions; his young wife and her sister Desiree accompanied him. Perhaps the new, variable impressions of the journey, perhaps her separation from Bonaparte, and her association with other officers less gloomy than the saturnine Napoleon, all this seemed to cool the love of Desiree Clary; she no more answered Napoleon's letters, and, in writing to his brother ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... mechanical logic. The advantage lay with MacMaine, for, while the computer could not logically fathom the intuitive processes of its human opponent, MacMaine could and did have an intuitive grasp of the machine's logic. MacMaine didn't need to know every variable in the pattern; he only needed to know the ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett

... represented in the derivative one by a diagonal of greater value than either original line of living movement,—that sometimes there is a loss of vitality hardly to be accounted for, and again a forward impulse of variable intensity in some new and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... no previous existence. You deny it?—let us not argue the matter. Convinced myself, I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of aerial forms—of spiritual and meaning eyes—of sounds, musical yet sad—a remembrance which will not be excluded; a memory like a shadow—vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady; and like a shadow, too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while the sunlight of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... drinking; in Thessaly, ever on horseback; and when he lived with Tissaphernes, the Persian satrap, he exceeded the Persians, themselves in magnificence and pomp. Not that his natural disposition changed so easily, nor that his real character was so very variable, but whenever he was sensible that by pursuing his own inclinations he might give offence to those with whom he had occasion to converse, he transformed himself into any shape and adopted any fashion, that he observed to be most agreeable to them. So that to have seen him at Lacedaemon, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... differ from you with regard to the utility of vows? I am sensible that it would be very dangerous to make vows rashly, and without a due consideration. But I cannot help thinking that they may often be of great advantage to one of a variable judgement and irregular inclinations. I always remember a passage in one of your letters to our Italian friend Baretti; where talking of the monastick life, you say you do not wonder that serious men should put themselves under ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours of incipient madness, which, from time to time, cloud reason, without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety to exhibit, that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... on Mrs. Giles. She is a respectable person who lets her house in lodgings. Twenty-five years ago she had a house in Westminster, and let the drawing-room floor to a gentleman of the name of Gilmore. He was rather tall and dark, and very variable in his temper. He had his wife with him, and two months afterwards a child was born. It was christened at St. Matthew's. I was its god-mother, as they seemed to have very few friends in the town. Mr. Gilmore was out a good deal looking for employment. He used to ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... protoplasmic body resembles the stellate cells of osseous tissue (astrocytes), and behaves just like a rhizopod (such as Gromia); it sends out numbers of stellate processes all round, which ramify and stretch into the surrounding food-yelk. These variable and very mobile processes, the pseudopodia of the merocytes, serve both for locomotion and for getting food; as in the real rhizopods, they surround the solid particles of food (granules and plates of yelk), and ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel

... moon, the inconstant moon, lest that thy love prove likewise variable,'" quotes she archly; "and yet," with a sudden change of mood, and a certain sweet gravity, "I do ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... are governed by the influences of the sun, even as tides obey the commands of their mistress the moon, and stars perform their round of service in the sky, at the command of the Master of all. Our disposition—the disposition of our race—is as variable as that of the winds upon which our great father acts. Ye behold him fiery at times—even so are we—a change comes over him, his beams grow mild and soft, dispensing genial warmth and gladness; ours, like his, also soften, and, though they cannot possess his power, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... At anchor in Cape Cod harbor. The fourth Sunday here. Scarce any of those aboard free from vehement coughs, some very ill. Weather very variable. ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... his autobiography, writes, "I will not dwell upon the moment." From Leghorn he drove with the Hunts to Pisa, and established them in the ground-floor of Byron's Palazzo Lanfranchi, as comfortably as was consistent with his lordship's variable moods. The negotiations which had preceded Hunt's visit to Italy, raised forebodings in Shelley's mind as to the reception he would meet from Byron; nor were these destined to be unfulfilled. Trelawny tells us how irksome the poet found it to have "a man with a sick wife, and seven disorderly ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... time, his mind will be less fatigued, and his understanding more improved, than if he had exerted but half the energy twice as long: the degree of pain which he may have felt will be amply and properly compensated by his success; this will not be an arbitrary, variable reward, but one within his own power, and that can be ascertained by his own feelings. Here is no deceit practised, no illusion; the same course of conduct may be regularly pursued through the whole of his education, and his confidence in his tutor will progressively ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... habitation, being devoyd of all civill inhabitants, wher ther are only salvage & brutish men, which range up and downe, litle otherwise then y^e wild beasts of the same. This proposition being made publike and coming to y^e scaning of all, it raised many variable opinions amongst men, and caused many fears & doubts amongst them selves. Some, from their reasons & hops conceived, laboured to stirr up & incourage the rest to undertake & prosecute y^e same; others, againe, ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford

... The morning again cloudy, and the ice running thicker than yesterday, the wind variable. The man came back with information that our hunters were about thirty miles below, and we immediately sent an order to them to make their way through the floating ice, to assist them in which we sent some tin for the bow of the periogue and a towrope. The ceremony of yesterday ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... in moving ourselves slowly through the water, providentially the sea was comparatively smooth, or our overloaded boats would have swamped, and we should only have escaped the flames to have perished in the deep. The wind was light, but variable, and, acting on the sails, which, being drenched with the rain, did not soon take fire, drove the burning mass, in terrific grandeur, over the surface of the ocean, the darkness of which was only illuminated by the quick ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous

... on which the map is made is variable. In some portions of the prairie region, and in the region of the great plains, the topography and the geology alike are simple, and maps on a comparatively small scale are sufficient for practical purposes. For these districts it is proposed to construct the sheets ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various

... Variable weather and cloudy, wind north-easterly, and calms. I continued my course to the N W, between the islands, which, by the evening, appeared of considerable extent, woody and mountainous. At sun-set the southernmost bore from S to ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh

... weight, coin, or sum of money among the ancients, of variable value among different nations and at different periods; the Attic weight being equal to about 57 lbs. troy, and the money to L243, 15s.; among the Romans the great talent was worth L99, and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... rain fell, which lasted for an hour and a half. When the rain ceased, the day continued cloudy with variable wind. The body of the hippopotamus was discovered at daybreak floating near us, therefore all hands turned out to cut him up, delighted at the idea of fresh meat. There was about an acre of high and dry ground that bordered the marsh in one ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... grotesque style of colouring, but a larger corolla and increased height of the whole plant were thus fixed; whereas with most plants which have been long cultivated for the flower-garden, no character is more variable than that of colour, excepting perhaps that of height. From the consideration of these cases we may infer that the variability of cultivated plants in the above respects is due, firstly, to their being subjected to somewhat diversified conditions, ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin

... which we may learn from a diligent observation. All effects follow not with like certainty from their supposed causes. Some events are found, in all countries and all ages, to have been constantly conjoined together: Others are found to have been more variable, and sometimes to disappoint our expectations; so that, in our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al

... HF.—A solution in water may be purchased in gutta-percha or lead bottles. It is of variable strength and doubtful purity. It must always be examined quantitatively for the residue left on evaporation. It is used occasionally for the examination of silicates. It attacks silica, forming fluoride of silicon, which is a gas. When ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... was well up in the sky and the desert glowed like an oven. Hot winds began to blow across it—light, variable winds, rushing now this way and now that. They made little whirlwinds that picked up the sand, carried it some distance, and then dropped it and died away. Wellesly saw one of these sand clouds dancing across the plain not far away, and instantly the hopeful thought flashed upon him that ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... Epiphany is continued in the Sundays following, the number of which is variable being dependent on the time Easter is kept. There may be one "Sunday after Epiphany" or there may be six. The Scriptural teachings of these Sundays are all illustrative of the fact that the Eternal Word ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller

... where the body is. King Now sonne Hamlet, where is this dead body? Ham. At supper, not where he is eating, but Where he is eaten, a certaine company of politicke wormes [G4] are euen now at him. Father, your fatte King, and your leane Beggar Are but variable seruices, two dishes to one messe: Looke you, a man may fish with that worme That hath eaten of a King, And a Beggar eate that fish, Which that worme hath caught. King What of this? Ham. Nothing father, but to tell you, how a King May go a progresse through the guttes of a Beggar. ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare

... of one of this family, I have promised to ride on Friday, wind and weather permitting; at present both are more variable than I can describe, the extreme changes of the temperature, and the suddenness of these, utterly surpassing all my experience. One day I have a large fire, and the next, windows and doors open in search of cool air: in the course of the afternoon ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... Mercury the supply of solar heat is itself variable to an enormous extent. In six weeks, as we have seen, Mercury diminishes its distance from the sun about one third, which is proportionally ten times as great a change of distance as the earth experiences in six months. The inhabitants of Mercury in those six pregnant weeks see the sun ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... raindrops, which streamed down in parallel lines, except when sudden blasts of wind swept them into a confused mass, the sunlight was able to penetrate through the interstices, aided by the transparency of the water, and so a slight but variable illumination was produced. ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... to the 16th, we met nothing remarkable, and our course was west southerly; the winds variable from north round by the east to S.W., attended with cloudy, rainy, unsettled weather, and a southerly swell. We generally brought-to, or stood upon a wind during night; and in the day made all the sail we could. About half an hour after sun-rise this morning, land was seen from the ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook

... souls in Israel at a late era of the national life. And if they show us their high-water mark, we need not suppose that similar souls outside the Old Testament circle had solid certainty where these had but a variable hope. We know how large a development the doctrine of a future life had in Assyria and in Egypt, and I suppose we are entitled to say that men have always had the idea of a future. They have always had the thought, sometimes as a fear, sometimes ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... love, was a little too ridiculous. I could only sit down before my fire, biting the key of my carpet-bag, and think of the captivating, girlish, bright-eyed lovely Dora. What a form she had, what a face she had, what a graceful, variable, enchanting manner! ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... the man turned, and strolled slowly past us, with that ineffable insolence which is the other side of the flunkey's insufferable self-abasement. He cast a glance at us as he went by, a withering glance of brazen effrontery. We knew him now, of course: it was that variable star, our old ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... rifle-shooting. The sights and the object aimed at cannot be in focus together, and a great deal depends on the form of sight. Tycho Brahe invented, and applied to the pointers of his instruments, an aperture-sight of variable area, like the iris diaphragm used now in photography. This enabled him to get the best result with stars of different brightness. The telescope not having been invented, he could not use a telescopic-sight as we now do in gunnery. This not only removes the difficulty of focussing, but makes ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... Experiments have been made to obtain absolute | | measurements of syllabic quantity, and elaborate rules | | formulated for determining longs and shorts. Thus far, | | however, the results have been very variable and | | unsatisfactory, and should be accepted ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... the sea, in front the anchorage. The sea breeze, as though it had the sooner blown itself out by its unusual violence, was already at an end; it had been succeeded by light, variable airs from the south and south-east, carrying great banks of fog; and the anchorage, under lee of Skeleton Island, lay still and leaden as when first we entered it. The HISPANIOLA, in that unbroken mirror, was exactly portrayed from ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... under my governement, a field hath been wonne so honourably, I suppose that it is good, that I tempt not fortune any more, knowyng how variable, and unstable she is: and therefore, I desire to give up my governement, and that Zanobi do execute now this office of demaundyng, mindyng to followe the order, whiche concerneth the youngeste: and I knowe he will not refuse ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... promising. This nut can be recommended for planting for its own sake as the tree is hardy, a rapid grower, comes into bearing early and bears a fairly good nut. There are no grafted trees, however, so the variable seedlings will ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... signs are constant and universal, their connexion with tangible ideas has been learnt at our first entrance into the world; and ever since, almost every moment of our lives, it has been occurring to our thoughts, and fastening and striking deeper on our minds. When we observe that signs are variable, and of human institution; when we remember there was a time they were not connected in our minds with those things they now so readily suggest; but that their signification was learned by the slow steps of experience: this preserves us from confounding them. But when we find the same signs ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley

... and delimited on the west by more or less compact ice, has been named the D'Urville Sea. We found subsequently that its freedom from obstruction by ice is due to the persistent gales which set off the land in that locality. To the north, pack-ice in variable amount is encountered before reaching the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... occasions to have contained five, twelve, twenty, and forty pennies. Among the ancient Saxons, a shilling appears at one time to have contained only five pennies, and it is not improbable that it may have been as variable among them as among their neighbours, the ancient Franks. From the time of Charlemagne among the French, and from that of William the Conqueror among the English, the proportion between the pound, the shilling, and the penny, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... had delivered his call for help. "You see, I talk into this transmitter. The simplest transmitter for this purpose is a plane mirror of flexible material, silvered mica or microscope glass. Against the back of this mirror my voice is directed. In the carbon transmitter of the telephone a variable electrical resistance is produced by the pressure on the diaphragm, based on the fact that carbon is not as good a conductor of electricity under pressure as when not. Here, the mouthpiece is just a shell supporting a thin metal diaphragm to ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... Method exhibits Concomitant Variations to the eye, and is extensively used in physical and statistical inquiries. Along a horizontal line (the abscissa) is measured one of the conditions (or agents) with which the inquiry is concerned, called the Variable; and along perpendiculars (ordinates) is measured some phenomenon to be compared ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... a wet-weather racket with you when you go to tournaments; it is, like a pair of steel-pointed shoes, a necessary item in your tennis bag. In England, with such variable weather, it is necessary to play in the rain, or at any rate on a wet ground, and with sodden balls; and the very best gut in the world cannot stand rough usage. It is a good plan, too, to take to tournaments at least two rackets ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers

... materials: approximately one hundred and sixty million dollars a year of cotton; seventy-five million dollars of copper; fifteen millions of wheat; twenty millions of animal fats; ten millions of mineral oil and a large amount of vegetable oil. Of course, the amount of wheat is especially variable. Some manufactured goods from America also find their way to Germany to the extent of perhaps seventy millions a year, comprising machinery such as typewriters and a miscellaneous line of machinery and manufactures. ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... the Norman Conqu'ror reign'd With intermix'd and variable fate, When England to her greatest height attain'd Of power, dominion, glory, wealth, and state; After it had with much ado sustain'd The violence of princes, with debate For titles and the often mutinies Of nobles for ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... through a ribbon give variable shades and the typist in filling in must watch carefully to see that her typewriter ribbons match the impressions made in the body of the letter, especially where the form letters are printed several months in advance ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... or Italy; the most esteemed of all are those of Roquevaire; they are very large and very sweet. This sort is rarely eaten by any but the most wealthy. The dried Malaga, or Muscatel raisins, which come to this country packed in small boxes, and nicely preserved in bunches, are variable in their quality, but mostly of a rich flavour, when new, juicy, and of ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... his plain-spoken companion, well content. Strahan's promise to return all the courtesy he received left a variable standard in Merwyn's hands that he could employ according to circumstances or inclination. He was satisfied that his neighbor, in accordance with a trait very common to young men, cherished for Miss Vosburgh a chivalric and sentimental regard at ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... through the body by which they are expressed. The body itself is a mere aggregation of physical atoms, as a planet is, so organized that they constitute an instrument for a purpose. The mass of matter constituting the body is a variable mass. It may increase or diminish greatly, but the man remains unchanged. There is no permanent relationship between the man and the physical matter which he uses for his vehicle of consciousness. According to the physiologists every atom of the body changes within a period of a few years. The cells ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers

... little realized how slowly, how painfully, we approach the expression of truth. We are so variable, so anxious to be polite, and alternately swayed by caution or anger. Our mind oscillates like a pendulum: it takes some time for it to come to rest. And then, the proper allowance and correction has to be made ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... of motion is, that a ball once projected will fly on to all eternity with undiminished velocity, unless something checks. The fact is, that a ball stops in a few seconds after proceeding a few yards with very variable motion. Every man would wring his child's neck and pick his friend's pocket if nothing checked him. In fact, the principle thus stated means only that governments will oppress unless they abstain from oppressing. This ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... your mind and intellect, to which I look up with reverence under a consciousness of immense inferiority, are much under the dominion, whether it be known or not known to yourself, of an agency lower than their own, more blind, more variable, more difficult to call inwardly to account and make to answer for itself—the agency, I mean, of painful and disheartening impressions—impressions which have an unhappy and powerful tendency to realise the very worst of what ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby

... on variable stars, indeed, were in the same line as those of PIGOTT; FLAUGERGUES and DARQUIER, in France, had perhaps preceded him in minute scrutiny of the sun's surface, etc.; but, even in that department of observation, he at once put an immense distance between himself and others ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden

... found the rich dowry of Jacqueline wrenched from his grasp, and, from so much opposition, placed beyond his attaining, and he had become satiated with her person. One of her attendants, Eleanor Cobham, had affected his variable fancy; and tho' her character had not been spotless before, and she had surrendered her honour to his own importunities, yet he suddenly married her, exciting again the wonder of the world by his conduct, as in that proud day every ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... Further, everything which is mutable is variable. But forms are invariable; for it is said (Sex Princip. i) that "form is essence consisting of the simple and invariable." Therefore it does not belong to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... would have been to boast of himself as loving the Master more than the other disciples did,—but as the disciple whom Jesus loved. In this distinction lies one of the subtlest secrets of Christian peace. Our hope does not rest in our love for Jesus, but in his love for us. Our love at the best is variable in its moods. To-day it glows with warmth and joy, and we say we could die for Christ; to-morrow, in some depression, we question whether we really love him at all, our feeling responds so feebly to his name. A peace that depends on our loving ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... was a slip of metal of variable breadth inserted at the focus of the telescope. By observing at what point this exactly covered an object under examination, and knowing the focal length of the telescope and the width of the metal, he could then deduce the apparent angular breadth of the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... on an annual vote, was obviously uncertain; and it became necessary to declare the terms on which it was enjoyed. The minister of the day notified to the officers of the Anglican and Scotch churches that incomes dependent on variable resources and mutable opinions were liable to casualties. He therefore warned them that, beyond the fair influence of the crown and the equitable claims of existing incumbents, no guarantee could be given.[223] During a financial crisis these views were reiterated by ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... is there needs a revised ideal of life. Look back through the past, or look abroad through the present, and we find that the ideal of life is variable and depends on social conditions. Everyone knows that to be a successful warrior was the highest aim among all ancient peoples of note, as it is still among many barbarous peoples. When we remember that in the Norseman's heaven, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... shoulders. "Ah, I don't call that weather. I like a variable barometer. I cannot stand monotony." As he spoke he looked at his daughter. In a less perfect gentleman there would have been significance in the look. As it was, ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... and the cold-blooded and less heterogeneous fish is quicker in its movements than the warm-blooded and more heterogeneous sloth. But the admission that the several aspects under which this increasing contrast shows itself bear variable ratios to one another, does not negative the general truth enunciated. Looking at the facts in the mass, it cannot be denied that the successively higher groups of organisms are severally characterized, not only by greater differentiation ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... No! her variable humor had changed once more. She looked about her with a flaunting, feverish gayety; she scoffed at the bare idea of any serious difficulty with Mrs. Lecount; she mimicked Noel Vanstone's high-pitched voice, and repeated Noel Vanstone's ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... In the body text, variable spellings such as "villany" : "villainy" and "intire" : "entire" are unchanged. Unless otherwise noted, all spelling, punctuation ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous

... experiments showed that a moderately simple fact practically makes all these complicated theories unnecessary. No two living things are exactly alike—that is, all living matter is more or less variable. Some variations are more fortunate than others, and these variants are the ones which survive—the ones best adapted to their environment. Given this fact of the constant variation of living matter, natural selection (i.e., ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... to explain him briefly, was a professional relative. He was the greatest son-cousin-nephew in the United States, and always he was the son, cousin, or nephew of one of the great, of one of the great mentioned in "Who's Who." He was as variable as a chameleon. Sometimes he was a son, cousin, or nephew of some one beginning with A, and sometimes of some one beginning with Z, but usually of some one with about twelve to fourteen lines in ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... about 6. in the afternoone, the wind came to the West northwest for the space of one houre, and presently to the East againe, and so was variable all the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt

... as a King," she whispered, and drew from her bosom the opal, as lovely and as variable as the human spirit. "With the other three stones you may, if you will, buy back your father's kingdom. But this, which contains all qualities in one, let us keep for ever, for our children and theirs, that they may know ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... solidity and dry nature. The fourth, of iron, was that of Mercury, expressing his indefatigable activity and sagacity. The fifth, of copper, was that of Mars, expressive of his inequalities and variable nature. The sixth, of silver, was that of the Moon: and the seventh, of gold, that of the Sun. This order is not the real order of these Planets; but a mysterious one, like that of the days of the Week consecrated to them, commencing with Saturday, and retrograding ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... book is to stimulate thought and to encourage the average young officer to seek truth for, and in, himself. It is never a good idea to attempt a precise formula about matters which are by nature indefinite and subject to all number of variable factors. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense



Words linked to "Variable" :   vector, argument, polestar, pole star, symbol, thing, placeholder, versatile, variability, inconsistent, uncertain, scalar, unknown quantity, variant, unknown, tensor, correlate, correlative, covariant, independent variable, quantity, vary, varied, degree of freedom, polar star, variate, predictor variable, changeable, unsettled, multivariate, shifting, adaptable, protean, star, infinitesimal, inconstant, invariable, Polaris, North Star



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