"Gradient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... however, in many respects, was the revelation of the amazingly complete system of drainage with which the palace was provided. The gradient of the hill which underlay the domestic quarter of the building enabled the architect to arrange for a drainage system on a scale of completeness which is not only unparalleled in ancient times, but which it would ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... downhill now, and the giant's weight was telling. On the opposite side of the valley was another pinewood. If he could only reach that, between the good going and the up-gradient Anthony felt that there was a bare chance. The thing behind, however, was ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Osborn did not answer. Redmire bank was an obstacle to horse traffic, and the road surveyor had plans for easing the gradient that would necessitate cutting down a wood where Osborn's pheasants found shelter. He had refused permission, and the matter had been dropped; but, if the farmers insisted, the council might be forced to use their powers. He was obstinate, and did not mean ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... taste danger, sweat, earn rest: learn to discover ungrudgingly that haggard fatigue is the fair vision you have run to earth, and that rest is your uttermost reward. Would you know what it is to hope again, and have all your hopes at hand?—hang upon the crags at a gradient: that makes your next step a debate between the thing you are and the thing you may become. There the merry little hopes grow for the climber like flowers and food, immediate, prompt to prove their uses, sufficient: if just within ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Nos. 31046-31047 are immaculate and white. Miller (1955:167) noted the two specimens collected from the Sierra del Carmen to have narrow dark shaft streaks on the under tail coverts. He (loc. cit.) remarked also that "the marking of the under tail coverts may indicate a beginning of a gradient in increased darkening of these feathers toward S. n. nigricans in ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban
... fellows. A few ponies have swollen legs, but all are feeding well. The wind failed in the morning watch and later a faint breeze came from the eastward; the barometer has been falling, but not on a steep gradient; it is still above normal. This afternoon it is overcast with a Scotch mist. Another day ought to put us beyond ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... there, with a guard of six men on his road to Cape Town. During the night as they drew near De Aar, his guards fell asleep, and our brave Commandant prepared to leave the train. He seized a favourable opportunity when the engine was climbing a steep gradient and jumped off. But the pace was fast enough to throw him to the ground, though fortunately he only sustained slight injury. When daylight came he hid himself. Having made out his bearings he began to make his way back on the following night. He passed a house, but dared not seek admission, for he ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... island two volcanic peaks, Troodes and Olympos, face each other, and rise to a height of nearly 7000 feet, the range of mountains to which they belong—that of Aous—forming the framework of the island. The spurs of this range fall by a gentle gradient towards the south, and spread out either into stony slopes favourable to the culture of the vine, or into great maritime flats fringed with brackish lagoons. The valley which lies on the northern side of this chain runs from sea to sea in an almost unbroken ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Roundheads once stood at push of pike for fifty minutes by "the towne clocke"; through the market-place, where the cheap-jack ceased lying that he might regard us; past the policeman at the Cross (slower at this point); up the steep gradient of the High Street; right through a flock of geese (illustrious bird! who not only warnest great cities of impending ruin, but keepest thyself out of harm's way better than any four-footed beast of the field), we drove our headlong ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... the village of Harley brought the car within sight of a very steep hill, up which the road wound like a silver thread against the black slope. This was Harley Bank, one of the steepest of many stiff Shropshire hills, its gradient averaging one ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... first one is a mile long, and somewhere near the centre has a passage out to the cliffs, so that even if both ends of the tunnel collapsed there would be a way of escape. But this is small comfort when travelling from Kettleness, for the down gradient towards Sandsend is very steep, and in the darkness of the tunnel the train gets up a tremendous speed, bursting into the open just where a precipitous drop into the sea could be most ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... wondered if her early notes had had the genuine ring in them, or whether a poet who could be thrust by realities to a distance beyond recognition as such was a true poet at all. Yet Ethelberta's gradient had been regular: emotional poetry, light verse, romance as an object, romance as a means, thoughts of marriage as an aid to her pursuits, a vow to marry for the good of her family; in other words, from soft and playful Romanticism ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... remarked upon further on), as one of my managers reports that he has observed it under jack while it was not apparent on the coffee under other kinds of shade trees. But on hot westerly and southerly slopes, and especially where the soil is a bad retainer of moisture, and where the gradient is rather steep, jack may be used with advantage, as in such situations the heat is great and the light strong. I am therefore taking steps to remove jack by degrees from all but southerly and westerly exposures. I may add here that I have found that plants ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... follow, Balbi took a grip of Casanova's belt with his right hand, so that, in addition to making his own way, Casanova was compelled to drag the weight of his companion after him, and this up the sharp gradient of a roof rendered slippery ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... control. The right road was from the foot of the pool up a long shelf to a clump of juniper. Then there was an easy chimney; then a piece of good hand-and-foot climbing; and last, another ledge which led by an easy gradient to the top. I figured all this out as I have heard a condemned man will count the windows of the houses on his ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... re-echoed from the heights above, and intensified the electric battery within him. He went down the slopes regardless of gradient at a pace that might have left even Zeppa behind if he had followed; but ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... only have a year's apprenticeship where sympathy holds our hands! If only we could enter the new state by a gradient instead of a plunge! But there is no isle between, no one to lead us gently to the light. . . . And few of us would pause to be led. And so we struggle, and in the struggling hurt ourselves or are hurt. We strike out—and are ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... gravel which the stream regularly deposits in the wet season. Local travel in Sicily, Italy[649] and other Mediterranean countries uses such natural roads extensively. Trade routes across the plateau of Judea and Samaria follow the wadis, because these give the best gradient and the best footing for the ascent.[650] Wadis also determine the line of caravan routes across the highlands of the Sahara. In the desert of Southwest Africa, the Khiuseb Is the first river north of the Orange to reach the Atlantic through the barrier dunes of the coast. Hence it has drawn ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... "trimmed" many times in the days which preceded his actual discipleship. Great crises do not make men, they reveal them. The men have been made in the smaller issues which go before. We march to our crises by a gradient, every step of which is a moral decision. The interior of the tree is secretly eaten away by white ants; the tempest reveals ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... fringe of brush and scrubby timber separated the camp from the actual work. From the water's edge to the donkey engine was barely four hundred yards. From donkey to a ten-foot jump-off on the lake shore in a straight line on a five per cent. gradient ran a curious roadway, made by placing two logs in the hollow scooped by tearing great timbers over the soft earth, and a bigger log on each side. Butt to butt and side to side, the outer sticks ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... on, relieved. Mechanically, my feet worked to and fro on the pedals. It was a gentle down-gradient now towards the town. I had no further need for ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... lies at the foot of the hill, enjoys as fine a prospect as though it stood on the summit; the ascent is so gentle and easy, and the gradient so unnoticeable, that you find yourself at the top without feeling that you are ascending. The Apennines lie behind it, but at a considerable distance, and even on a cloudless and still day it gets a breeze from this range, ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... train in motion. So hilly is the little island that if the engine is approaching the chances are it looks as if it were about to plunge wildly down on its head and turn a somersault into the station, or else it seems to be gradually climbing up a steep gradient after the fashion of a fly on the wall. But everything appears well managed, and the dulness of the daily press is never enlivened by accounts of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... closed behind me as I pressed forward. The passage was narrow and but faintly lighted; it bent to the right with a circular sweep as though it skirted the inner circumference of the building; still curving, it sank by a gentle gradient; and then it rose again and turned almost at right angles. Pushing ahead resolutely, although in not a little doubt as to the meaning of my adventure, I thrust aside a heavy curtain, soft to the hand. Then I found myself just inside a large circular hall. Letting the hangings fall ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... of the road averages twenty-one feet. In difficult places, such as along ravines, or where the road had to be cut into the rock, it is naturally less wide, but nowhere under fourteen feet. The gradient averages 1—20 to 1—24. At a very few points, however, it is as steep as 1 in 15. If the hill portion of the road is excepted, where, being in zig-zag, it has very sharp angles, a light railway could be laid upon it in a surprisingly ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... difficult obstacle than the Sauerbach, the brook which meanders through the open meadows of the Alsatian valley. A deep channel of more than sixty feet in width is overshadowed by forest trees; and the ground on either bank ascends at a sharp gradient to the crests above. Along the ridge to the west, which parts the Antietam from the Potomac, and about a mile distant from the former stream, runs the Hagerstown turnpike, and in front of this road there was a strong ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson |
