"Vital force" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bird, so vastly superior to the inert atmosphere in which it flies? What subtle power paints the rose, and tunes the merry songster's voice? To explain this mystery, philosophers of olden time supposed the existence of a certain peculiar force which is called life, or vital force, or vitality. This supposition does nothing more than furnish a name for a thing unknown, and the very existence of which may fairly be doubted. In fact, any attempt to find a place for such a force, to understand its origin, ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... there are none but forces at one with these in their blindness and necessity. True, the purposiveness of living processes cannot be denied; but its ground lies, according to this view, not in a vital force which guides and rules the individual life, but in the original creation and collocation of matter according to a rational plan. The purposiveness of life is part of the purposiveness of the universe; just as the stars circle for ever ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... quickly,—"I know them now. They have great absurdities, great vices even, but they have virtues, or, at the least, estimable qualities; in them lies the vital force of our ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... relationship; and just as a pendulum is functional, by reason of the counteraction of two opposing forces,—viz., the force of motion and the force of gravity,—so is a thoracic cavity (considering it as a mechanical apparatus) functional by two opposing forces—the vital force and the surrounding physical force. The inspiration of thoracic space is the expiration ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... thinner and thinner in body and fainter in strength until, one day, as he was slowly walking about and meditating, his vital force suddenly left him and he fell ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
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