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Invariable   Listen
noun
Invariable  n.  (Math.) An invariable quantity; a constant.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Invariable" Quotes from Famous Books



... rapacity never ceased. Rudhart's government was a continuation of that of Armansperg, only with the difference that he leaned on a different foreign power for support. Neither Armansperg nor Rudhart conferred any benefit on Greece. They formed a phalanx or corps of veterans; but as they laid down no invariable rules for admission, but kept the door open as a means of creating a party among the military, this institution has become a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... marks from which the sketch was made were 8 inches apart, and that this spacing was regular and invariable "in every parish." Also other towns besides those named in the Times are mentioned. The writer, who had spent a winter in Canada, and was familiar with tracks in snow, says that he had never seen "a more clearly defined track." Also he brings out the point that was so persistently ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... ([alpha] Ursae Minoris) is used at Harvard as a fundamental star of comparison for the brighter stars, and that, according to the observations at Harvard and those of HERTZSPRUNG (A. N. 4518 [1911]), the light of the Pole-star is very nearly invariable, we may say that the zero-point of the photometric scale is chosen in such a manner that for the Pole-star m 2.12. If the magnitudes are given in another scale than the Harvard-scale (H. S.), it is necessary to apply the zero-point correction. ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier

... warts, which are caused by the action of innumerable small thread-like worms named Heterodera radicicola, range from the size of a pin's head to that of a pea, and when they are present in large numbers the total failure of the Cucumber crop is the invariable result. The eelworms are probably introduced to Cucumber-houses in infected water. Each worm is about one-seventyfifth of an inch in length and is at first coiled up inside a transparent egg. At ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... little to her regarding the men. "They 'tend to business," was his invariable response when she sought to question him. "It's a pretty wild life," he told her when one day about two weeks after her coming she had pressed him; "an' the boys just can't help kickin' over the ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... which appears to have been faithfully carried into effect, concurring with principles proclaimed and cherished by the United States from the first establishment of their independence, suggested the hope that the time had arrived when the proposal for adopting it as a permanent and invariable rule in all future maritime wars might meet the favorable consideration of the great European powers. Instructions have accordingly been given to our ministers with France, Russia, and Great Britain to make those proposals to their respective ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Monroe • James Monroe

... mantels, the chairs, tables, piano, bookcase, or sideboard, all of mahogany, oak, or whatever may be chosen—the floors, too, perhaps, and the picture frames—is strictly orthodox and eminently respectable; but like the invariable use of 'low tones' in decorating walls and ceilings, it betrays a sort of helplessness and lack of courage. Discords in sound, color and form are, indeed, always hateful, and they are sure to be produced when ignorance ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... apparent followers. That touch of revelation relieved my mind a little. I felt convinced the police were watching the Maharajah and myself, as suspicious persons connected with the case; but they had not yet guessed that Harold had disguised himself as one of the two invariable Rajput servants. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... gender of each has been fixed by a procedure whereof the grounds cannot now be fully investigated or ascertained. Neither the natural nor artificial qualities or uses of the things named, nor the form of the names given them, furnish any invariable rule by which the gender of nouns may be known. It ought to be remembered, however, that the Gaelic is far from being singular in this respect. The oldest language with which we are acquainted, as well ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart

... and fishing. Before Christmas they have a thorough turn out and clean up, and then await the usual visit from their missionaries, who wisely speak a word of commendation where it is deserved. Undoubtedly the invariable neatness of the mission-houses, and the special care bestowed upon the churches, have a great influence on the cleanliness ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe

... where she found more than enough to occupy her mind; and Eric often wondered at the admirable system and punctuality she displayed—at the grave composure with which she discharged her daily duties, and the invariable reticence she observed with regard ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... spiritual preceptor, these five, O good Brahmana, are worthy of the highest reverence from a person who seeks prosperity. By serving them properly, one acquires the merit of perpetually keeping up the sacred fire. And it is the eternal and invariable duty of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... runs away laughing with the two swords. Tarokaja, frightened at his blunder, runs off too, his master pursuing him off the stage. A general run off, be it observed, something like the "spill-and-pelt" scene in an English pantomime, is the legitimate and invariable termination ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... usually experienced on such occasions—there was no one upon whom to bestow it. He had the best of wine; kept an excellent table; was himself no niggard host; but his own merits, and those of his cuisine, were forgotten in the invariable pendant to the feast; and the best of wine lost its flavor when the last bottle found its way to the guest's head. Dine alone Sir Piers would not. And as his old friends forsook him, he plunged lower in ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... 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 but the brilliancy is invariable. ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... alarmed," says the Cardinal. "I'll arrange the matter diplomatically." And he sits down, and writes an invariable note, in a diplomatically tortuous style, which ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... necessary to add that the Babylonians were a proud people. Pride is unfortunately the invariable accompaniment of success, in the nation, if not in the individual; and the sudden elevation of Babylon from a subject to a dominant power must have been peculiarly trying, more especially to the Oriental temperament. The spirit which culminated in Nebuchadnezzar, when, walking in the palace ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson

... attributes of Deity, and the incarnation; discussing by the way the general relations of theology to science, man, and his place in Nature; and ending with a discussion of predestination and free-will, and of prayer in relation to invariable law—all in a volume of three hundred and twenty-four duodecimo pages! And yet the author remarks that many important subjects have been omitted because he felt unable to present them in a satisfactory manner from a scientific ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... breathless with so much rushing about, Tim would coolly throw over any engagement that chanced to have been made and carry her off for a day up the river, where a quiet little lunch, in the tranquil shade of overhanging trees, and the cosy, intimate talk that was its invariable concomitant, seemed like an oasis of familiar, homely pleasantness in the midst of the gay turmoil ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... dry-farms. Merrill recommends the seeding of oats at the rate of about three pecks per acre; of barley, about three pecks; of rye, two pecks; of alfalfa, six pounds; of corn, two kernels to the hill, and other crops in the same proportion. No invariable rule can be laid down for perfect germination. A small quantity of seed is usually sufficient; but where germination frequently fails in part, more seed must be used. If the stand is too thick at the beginning ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe

... Tanith is invariable placed before Baal, as though superior to him, and can be no other than the celestial goddess (Dea coelestis), whose temple in the Roman Carthage was so celebrated.[1190] The Greeks regarded her as equivalent to ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... the judgment, and reverse it for the errors committed by the court below; and issue a mandate to the Circuit Court to conform its judgment to the opinion pronounced by this court, by dismissing the case for want of jurisdiction in the Circuit Court. This is the constant and invariable practice of this court, where it reverses a judgment for want of jurisdiction in ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... call a prefix, because we never join it to the verb; yet there are three instances in which it becomes such, before a noun: viz., to-day, to-night, to-morrow. If it is a "particle," so is any other preposition, as well as every small and invariable word. If it is a "little word," the whole bigness of a preposition is unquestionably found in it; and no "word" is so small but that it must belong to some one of the ten classes called parts of speech. If it is a "sign of the infinitive," because it ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... correspondence; and that the Danish Prime Minister, Count von Bernstorff, wrote to him in consequence, by the order of the Prince Royal, a severe reprimand. This act of political justice is, however, denied by him, under pretence that the Cabinet of Copenhagen has laid it down as an invariable rule, never to reprimand, but always to displace those of its agents with whom it has reason to be discontented. Should this be the case, no Sovereign in Europe is better served by his representatives than his Danish Majesty, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... found in his room an Austrian officer, in the full uniform of the Hungarian hussars. He had got a year's leave of absence, and has just succeeded in crossing the Potomac, though not without much trouble and difficulty. When he stated his intention of wearing his uniform, I explained to him the invariable custom of the Confederate soldiers, of never allowing the smallest peculiarity of dress or appearance to pass without a torrent of jokes, which, however good-humoured, ended in becoming ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... had finished buying, the storekeeper perched on the edge of his selling counter and began to pass the time of the day. It began with the usual preliminaries, invariable ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... respectively by Hogg in the Domestic Manners and by Lockhart in his biography, and also those given in the same places of the one-sided quarrel between Scott and Hogg, because the former, according to his almost invariable habit, refused to collaborate in Hogg's Poetic Mirror. In all this we have the man's own testimony about himself. It is not in the least incompatible with his having been, as his panegyrists contend, an affectionate friend, husband, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... Welsh portraits, in fact, is his almost invariable, and almost always unnecessary, exhibition of his own superiority. He is nearly always the big clever gentleman catechizing certain quaint little rustic foreigners. He met one old man with a crabstick who told him his Welsh was almost as bad as his English, and a drover who had the ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... quarto, its deleteriousness. Webster, some sentiments of, commended by Mr. Sawin. Westcott, Mr., his horror. Whig party has a large throat, but query as to swallowing spurs. White-house. Wickliffe, Robert, consequences of his bursting. Wife-trees. Wilbur, Mrs. Dorcas (Pilcox), an invariable rule of, her profile, tribute to. Wilbur, Rev. Homer, A.M., consulted, his instructions to his flock, a proposition of his for Protestant bomb-shells, his elbow nudged, his notions of satire, some opinions of his quoted with apparent approval by Mr. Biglow, geographical ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... Street, Finsbury. Her mind became affected at her brother's disgraceful death, and every day after, at noon, she used to cross the Rotunda to the pay-counter. Her one unvarying question was, "Is my brother, Mr. Frederick, here to-day?" The invariable answer was, "No, miss, not to-day." She seldom remained above five minutes, and her last words always were, "Give my love to him when he returns. I will ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... the continuity of the germ-plasm and the consequent non-heredity of acquired characters, while in perfect harmony with all the well-ascertained facts of heredity and development, adds greatly to the importance of natural selection as the one invariable and ever-present factor in all organic change, and that which can alone have produced the temporary fixity combined with the secular modification of species. While admitting, as Darwin always admitted, the co-operation of the fundamental ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... very readily, to return to Chapu, by contrasting the "Jeanne d'Arc" at the Luxembourg Gallery with such different treatment of the same theme as M. Bastien-Lepage's picture, now in the New York Metropolitan Museum, illustrates. Contrary to his almost invariable practice of neglecting even design in favor of impersonal natural representation, Bastien-Lepage's "Jeanne d'Arc" is the creature of wilful originality, a sort of embodied protest against conventionalism in historical painting; she is the illustration of a theory, she is this ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... metaphysics. Having deduced the Idea of God from man's consciousness of an individual Will perpetually affirming itself, Mr. Green proceeds to evolve the Idea of the Trinity, by (as he considers it) an equally necessary process from two of the invariable accompaniments of the above-mentioned introspective act. "For as in our consciousness," he truly says, "we are under the necessity of distinguishing the relation of 'myself,' now as the subject thinking and now as the object contemplated in the manifold of thought, ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... marry out of their circle. For a long series of years has this custom prevailed, and the consequence is that the families above named are nearly of a common blood; and it needs no physiologist to tell us the invariable effect arising from this transgression of natural laws, on the physical and mental faculties of both sexes. In such a state of society is it strange that the present generation should have grown up with ideas better suited to the castes of India than to those of republican America? ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... is my invariable custom to go straight off and buy Mabel something whenever you have been sympathetic to me. Those new earrings of hers—they are in memory of the first day you called me Jack. Her Paquin gown—the one with the beads—was because you let me ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie

... as he lived and was able to talk, this was Dawson's invariable observation at the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... doctrine which they had enunciated, that the public money should only be applied conformably to law. They were indeed sorry that the standing rules of the Council prevented their House from entertaining even the hope that its invariable disposition to provide for the necessary expenses of the civil government could have its proper and legal effect. But they would grant no supplies whatever. This manoeuvre might have been most successfully practised upon the government of Lower Canada, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... must not pass unnoticed, for it is the part of him that most closely identifies him with his forebears and so throws his more original, independent side into stronger relief. Our author is, not unexpectedly, an invariable moralist; is throughout a stickler for dignity; is sensitive to absurdities, improprieties, and slips in decorum; will have no truck with tragi-comedy in any of its forms. He hates puns and bombast, demands refinement in speech and restraint in manners. He regards Hamlet's ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous

... be the invariable law, of earthly life at least, that humanity can advance only by the road of suffering. It is so with individuals. There is no spiritual growth without pain. Prosperity alone never makes a grand character. Purple and fine linen never clothe the hero. There are powers and gifts in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... politeness to ladies was invariable, bowed, and resuming his coat accompanied her through the 'garden gate. "He kicked my dog," he said; "no ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... this coast, thickly studded with timber of a much finer growth than the stunted productions of Roebuck Bay. Behind the cliffy parts of the coast the land assumed a more fertile appearance; and this seemed an almost invariable law in the natural history ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... the philosophers of the Encyclopaedian school that a doctrine is not necessarily false because an insufficient argument is brought forward to prove it. It does not appear to have occurred to skeptical physicists that there may be laws of Nature regulating ultramundane phenomena, as fixed, as invariable, as those which decide the succession of geological phenomena and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... grounds of this question. First then, by the law or light of nature, I mean that law which was concreate with man; that which is natural to him, being original with, and essential to, himself; consequently, that which is invariable and unalterable, as is that nature. Secondly, I grant that by this law of nature, man understands that there is one eternal God; that this God is to be worshiped according to his own will; consequently, that time must be allowed to do it in: but whether the law or light of nature teacheth, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... happened to the Lady Frances? Is she alive or dead? There is our problem. She is a lady of precise habits, and for four years it has been her invariable custom to write every second week to Miss Dobney, her old governess, who has long retired and lives in Camberwell. It is this Miss Dobney who has consulted me. Nearly five weeks have passed without a word. The last letter was from ...
— The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of the skinned, mutilated, hideous body of the baby who had just grown old enough to recognize him and to crow and laugh when taken in his arms. Such incidents as these were not exceptional; one or more, and often all of them, were the invariable attendants of every one of the countless Indian inroads that took place during the long generations of forest warfare. It was small wonder that men who had thus lost every thing should sometimes be fairly crazed by their wrongs. Again and again ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... towns began to spring up in the old forest region, of which the chief are Midhurst, Petworth, Billinghurst, Horsham, Cuckfield, and East Grinstead. Many of the deserted smelting-places may still be seen, with their invariable accompaniment of a pond or dam. The wood supply began to fail as early as Elizabeth's reign, but iron was still smelted in 1760. From that time onward, the competition of Sheffield and Birmingham—where iron was prepared by the 'new method' with coal—blew out the Sussex ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... course of their heavy work of organizing, raising money, gathering equipment, securing transport, passports, and attending to the other innumerable secretarial affairs connected with so big a task, she showed no weakening pity; the one invariable goad applied was ever, 'it is war-time.' No one must pause, no one must waver; things must simply be done, whether possible or not, and somehow by her inspiration they generally were done. In these days of agonizing stress ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren

... writes:—"On this account an attempt is here made to arrive at an anatomical type, a general picture in which the forms of all animals are contained in potentia, and by means of which we can describe each animal in an invariable order."[74] His aim is to discover a general scheme of the constant in organic parts, a scheme into which all animals will fit equally well, and no animal better than the rest. When we remember that the type to which anatomists ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... was always more interesting than one inside the ropes. A blow ripped open Thomas' shirt. It became a slam-bang affair. Thomas knocked his man down just as a burly policeman arrived. Naturally, he caught hold of Thomas and called for assistance. The wrong man first is the invariable rule ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... we overlook the influence upon Lincoln's style of the parables of Jesus and the fables of AEsop. There are two invariable signs of genius in a boy,—one is the serious note, and the other is the picture-making note. All the great things represent serious thinking. The greatest artist of the last century was the most serious one,—Watt, with his Love ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... Sebastian, and else where, the Spanish Friar contains by far the most happy of Dryden's comic effusions. It has, comparatively speaking, this high claim to commendation, that, although the intrigue is licentious, according to the invariable licence of the age, the language is, in general, free from the extreme and disgusting coarseness, which our author too frequently mistook for wit, or was contented to substitute in its stead. The liveliness and even brilliancy of the dialogue, shows that ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... humiliating business? It was a disgrace to the English name. How could we preach freedom and a higher civilisation to the Egyptians while an Englishman enriched himself and ruled a province by slavery? Dicky's invariable reply was that we couldn't, and that things weren't moving very much towards a higher civilisation in Egypt. But he asked her if she ever heard of a slave running away from Kingsley Bey, or had she ever heard of a case of cruelty on his part? Her reply was that he had given slaves the kourbash, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... had little will or power to consider his affairs; and Isabel, while attending on him, had time to think over her plans. Happily, they had not a debt. Mrs. Frost had so entirely impressed her grandson's mind with her own invariable rule of paying her way, that it had been one of his grounds for pride that he had never ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... increased majority. Through the years that followed, Rupert Meryton, by his pertinacity in asking the Invasion Secretary questions which had been answered by him on the previous day, and by his regard for the dignity of the House, as shown in his invariable comment, "Come, come—not quite the Gentleman," upon any display of bad manners opposite, established a clear right to a post in the subsequent Tariffadical Government. He had now been Under-Secretary for two years, and in this Bill his first real ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne

... and America on the subject of recent solar discoveries, and I have conversed with many hundreds of persons of various capacity and education, from men almost uncultured to men of the highest intellectual power; and my invariable experience has been that solar research derives its chief interest when viewed in relation to the sun's position as the mighty ruler, the steadfast sustainer, the beneficent almoner of the system of worlds to which our earth belongs. It is the same with other astronomical ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... their tears." [231] Of this primitive and picturesque but wanton worship they were reminded frequently both by relic and place name. To Palmer, viewing them in the light of the past, the Cedars of Lebanon were a poem, but to Burton—a curious mixture of the romantic and the prosaic—with his invariable habit of underrating famous objects, they were "a wretched collection of scraggy Christmas trees." "I thought," said Burton, "when I came here that Syria and Palestine would be so worn out that my occupation as an explorer was clean gone." He found, however, that such was not ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... but let the suggestion pass unchallenged. He watched the various people vanish into a room on the right, saw them come out again, heard the invariable "Next please" which heralded the seclusion of a new patient, till everybody had gone and come back and gone forth into the street again save only the bandaged boy ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker

... quarrel ensued between the husband of this woman and another of the French hunters. Their altercation filled her with terror, and she gave way to tears and lamentations, not doubting but that the antagonist, who was the aggressor, intended the death of her husband, as threats among Indians are the invariable preludes to fatal actions. When, at length, they began to struggle with each other, without any more ado she seized a hatchet, and would instantly have dispatched the man who fought with her husband, if she had not been prevented by the bystanders. In another instance ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... and we may doubt whether it would be possible for a stranger to settle, without any rite of adoption, in the midst of a hostile or even of an unknown tribe; but this is clearly a matter of minor importance, if adoption is not, as in North America, an invariable element of the change of tribe. Although membership of a tribe is thus loosely determined, tribesmen feel themselves bound by ties of some kind to their fellow-tribesmen, as we shall see below, but in this they do not differ from the members ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas

... must be their law instead of prescription; the chains of conventionality—as strong among the lowest as among the highest—drop from their limbs, and the man rises up from the ruins of the slave and beggar. This consummation, however, is not the invariable result. Even emigration only increases, although to a large extent, the number of Crusoes; and there is still a portion of the people who drift to and fro as helplessly as sea-weed. But at home, the bulk of the people are in this condition; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various

... perspires at every pore, and then, in a state of excitement rush out, roll in the snow, get up and go on to the next similar place of entertainment. So with the army. With every group or circle of tents travels the invariable tea kettle, suspended from a tripod; and it would be in vain to think of computing how many times each soldier's pannikin is filled upon a halt. It is his first idea. Frequently he carries it cold in a copper case as a solace upon ...
— Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six • Juliet Corson

... was long accustomed to his familiar figure on his invariable morning constitutional, walking with an elastic, springy step and a ruddy freshness in his complexion which almost belied his gray hairs and his well-known age. He passed few blocks without a word to some one, for a simple, kindly interest in those about him was one of his chief characteristics. ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... distant inhabitants, whose kindness demanded my gratitude. Early next morning a red flag with a pendant under it, showing one or more of our ships to be cruising before the port, was hoisted upon the signal hills; this was an unwelcome sight, for it had been an invariable rule to let no cartel or neutral vessel go out, so long as English ships were before the island. I however took leave of the benevolent and respectable family which had afforded me an asylum during ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... narwhale is armed with a sort of ivory sword, or lance, as certain naturalists have expressed it. It's a king-sized tooth as hard as steel. Some of these teeth have been found buried in the bodies of baleen whales, which the narwhale attacks with invariable success. Others have been wrenched, not without difficulty, from the undersides of vessels that narwhales have pierced clean through, as a gimlet pierces a wine barrel. The museum at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... acquaintance with the Lintons since her five- weeks' residence among them; and as she had no temptation to show her rough side in their company, and had the sense to be ashamed of being rude where she experienced such invariable courtesy, she imposed unwittingly on the old lady and gentleman by her ingenious cordiality; gained the admiration of Isabella, and the heart and soul of her brother: acquisitions that flattered her from the first—for she was full of ambition—and led her to adopt a double character ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... intolerance provoking ruin to the thing it would foster. The most admirable precepts are thrown from time to time upon this cauldron of human affairs, and oftentimes they only seem to make it blaze the higher. We find men devoting the best part of their intellects to the invariable annoyance and persecution of their fellows. You might think that the earth brought forth with more abundant fruitfulness in the past than now, seeing that men found so much time for cruelty, but that you read of famines and privations which these latter days cannot equal. The recorded violent ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps

... is the greater or less solidarity between the cause and the effect. In the first, the quantity and quality of the effect vary with the quantity and quality of the cause. In the second, neither quality nor quantity of the effect varies with quality and quantity of the cause: the effect is invariable. In the third, the quantity of the effect depends on the quantity of the cause, but the cause does not influence the quality of the effect: the longer the cylinder turns by the action of the spring, the more of the melody I shall hear, but the nature ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... "It is an invariable fact that dragons are extremely vigilant. They never sleep, and for this reason we often find them employed in guarding treasures. A dragon guarded at Colchis the golden fleece that Jason conquered from him. A dragon ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... Chiwaie's town, which they describe as a very strong place, fortified with a stockade and ditch. Shortly before reaching it, some villagers tried to pick a quarrel with them for carrying flags. It was their invariable custom to make the drummer-boy, Majwara, march at their head, whilst the Union Jack and the red colours of Zanzibar were carried in a foremost place in the line. Fortunately a chief of some importance came up ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... morning, Gellert was sitting at his table, and reading according to his invariable custom, first of all in the Bible. He never left the Bible open—he always shut it with a peaceful, devotional air, after he had read therein: there was something grateful as well as reverential in his manner of closing the volume; the holy ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various

... hour of evening, usually about nine o'clock, is the time for marriage—as it often is for burial—in Japan. In the starlight of a June evening the bride set forth on her journey to her intended husband's home, as is the invariable custom. Her toilet finished, she stepped out of her childhood's home to take her place in the norimono or palanquin which, borne on the shoulders of four men, was to convey her to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... some of the forms which luxury takes in the present century, and these are some of the outcomes of an advanced, and still rapidly advancing, civilization. These, too, seem to be the invariable accompaniments of such an advance. A very similar picture of Rome in the days of Cicero and Caesar is drawn by Mr. Froude in his Caesar. He says: "With such vividness, with such transparent clearness, the age stands before us of Cato ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... points discerned in it. Now I ask which of all these various extensions is that stated, determinate one that is agreed on for a common measure of other magnitudes? No reason can be assigned why we should pitch on one more than another: and except there be some invariable, determinate extension fixed on to be marked to the word inch, it is plain it can be used to little purpose; and to say a thing contains this or that number of inches shall imply no more than that it is extended, without bringing any particular idea of that extension into ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley

... Thousands of half-baked romances ending in Gretna Green marriages are the invariable harvest of this season of Summer silliness; marriages which bring suffering and bitter repentance and a tragic climax in the divorce courts—if they do not ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... went home that night she held a communion with herself. So everybody believed it, did they? And she, in spite of her invariable reticence, was being gossiped about, was she? "I've a good mind never to set foot in the academy again," she said ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... They can make any angle whatever with each other, so that by trial there maybe given the active solenoid the most suitable length. When such angle has been determined, the angle, E C D, is rendered invariable by means of a set screw, and the apparatus is maneuvered by imparting to the double winch, H C I, an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various

... essential element in the highest presentation of human life. Here is not the Unknown. On the contrary, we are in the very heart of science; tragedy to the modern is not [Greek: tuchae], but a thing of cause and effect, invariable antecedent and invariable consequent. It is the presence of this tragic force underlying action that gives to all Hugo's work its lofty quality, its breadth, and generality, and fills both it, and us who read, with pity and ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... am ready to afford, if in my power; but I have a horror—I suppose from the invariable habit of my past life—of introducing either political or religious discussions into the ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... employed by Hughes, the printer of the House of Commons, succeeded to the business and became widely known for his despatch and accuracy in printing Parliamentary papers and debates. He died in 1828, but the business was continued by his family, and to refer to Hansard became the invariable custom when an M.P. was to be condemned out of his own mouth—as Hansard was supposed never to err. Recently Hansard has been carried on by a company, but ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... brisk trade for furs was soon opened; the Dutch traders were scrupulously honest in their dealings and purchased by weight, establishing it as an invariable table of avoirdupois, that the hand of a Dutchman weighed one pound, and his foot two pounds. It is true, the simple Indians were often puzzled by the great disproportion between bulk and weight, for let them place ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... pompous-looking personage, flushed in the face, with a moth-eaten grey beard and shifty grey eyes, clothed in a flannel shirt, tweed knickerbockers, brown stockings, white spats and shoes. Such was the Commissioner's invariable get-up, save that in winter he wore a cap instead of a panama. He was smoking a briar pipe and looking blatantly British, as if he had just spent an unwashed night in a third-class carriage between King's ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... than ever. "I didn't know it, my pet!" he answered; "but I'm not surprised. Big yawns are the invariable result of an 'at home.' Do you ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... its little fling at the new-comer. "The Mistral it appears," said one pitiful punster, "has been incarnated in a poem. We shall soon see whether it is anything else but wind." Such has been the invariable welcome of great men in a ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... lover in the question, the cavalier servente must have been a serious impediment; he was always La plante ... a contrecarrer un pauvre tiers, in the words of the witty President de Brosses, who, though he did not wholly credit the assurances he received as to the invariable innocence of the institution, was yet far from passing on it the sweeping judgment arrived at by most foreigners. There is no doubt that habit and opportunity did, now and then, prove too strong ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... it may appear, instinct is not invariable. In the first place, it presents a racial evolution which of itself alone already demonstrates a certain degree of plasticity from generation to generation. It presents, further, individual variations which are more distinct ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... boor named Cowderoy, was sworn and gave his evidence clearly. Hugh and James knew him well. They had no lawyer to defend them, and when the Crown Prosecutor sat down, there seemed no loophole left for the escape of the accused, and I mentally sentenced them to seven years on the roads, the invariable penalty for ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... except in the innermost corner, where Dowson would sit with that singularly sweet and singularly pathetic smile on his lips (a smile which seemed afraid of its right to be there, as if always dreading a rebuff), playing his invariable after-dinner game of cards. Friends would come in during the hour before closing time; and the girl, her game of cards finished, would quietly disappear, leaving him with hardly more than the desire to kill another night as swiftly ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al

... necessary to regulate the quantity of sugar which enters into the composition. It is not invariable and a matter of course, but varies in proportion to the aroma of the bean ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin

... if I may so call it, of distant parts; Instinct, which is crystallized intelligence,—an absolute law with its invariable planes and angles introduced into the sphere of consciousness, as raphides are inclosed in the living cells of plants; Intellect,—the operation of the thinking principle through material organs, with an appreciable waste of tissue in every act ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... 'In sheep we always consider that if a ewe breeds to a Shrop ram, she is never safe to breed pure Leicesters from, as dun or colored legs are apt to come even when the sire is a pure Leicester. This has been proved in various instances, but is not invariable.'" ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... forgotten. The metropolitan managers of her own generation had found that her success in new parts was very uncertain; that she was more capricious than the most petted favorites of the public; and that her invariable reply to a business proposal was that she detested the stage, and was resolved never to set foot upon it again. So they had managed to do without her for so long that the younger London playgoers knew her by reputation ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... delirium of high spirits, he had burst through the invariable monotony of his articulation. Without the slightest gradation of sound, his voice broke suddenly into a screech, prolonged in its own discord until it became perfectly unendurable to hear. The effect that he had ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins

... man openly carries his belt with its invariable appendages, knife and revolver—often two of the latter. Wild Bill always carried two handsome ivory-handled revolvers of the large size; he was never seen without them.... Yet in all the many affairs of this kind in which Wild Bill has performed a part, and which have come to ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody

... which he had a splendid specimen. On second thought, however, I decided that it would be more modest to allow him any honors he might receive together with the responsibilities attendant upon his position. It is the invariable habit of South Sea Islanders, in the event of trouble, to capture and hold as hostages the chief men of a tribe. Their heads, with or without the original bodies, seem to have ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock

... noted, that the speaker in a scene uses that hand which is next the audience, he ought likewise to poize his body upon the same leg: this is almost an invariable rule in action: the hand should act on that side only on which the body bears. Good actors and speakers may sometimes depart from this rule, but such only will know when ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... These sewing-women must have been deprived of work, or the consumers of clothing must have immediately begun to purchase and wear double or treble as much as they had been accustomed to. I do not doubt that the consumption increased from the mere fact of increased cheapness. I believe it is an invariable law of trade, that consumption increases as price diminishes. If silks were to fall to a shilling a yard, everybody would turn away from cotton shirts. As it was, shirts were made without collars, and the collars were produced ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... light, is an almost invariable accompaniment of supra-consciousness, although there are instances of undoubted cosmic consciousness in which the realization has been a more gradual growth, rather than a sudden influx, in which the phenomenon of light is ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... practice dates from Haydn and has been much expanded by modern composers. Witness the glorious climactic effect in Cesar Franck's Symphony and in Brahms's D major Symphony of the closing themes in the Expositions of the first movements. For many years it was the invariable custom to repeat the Exposition, and in Classic Symphonies we always find a double bar with marks of repeat and two endings. This practice was not an integral part of the form but was adopted so that the hearer, by going over ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... honest woman by her betrayer of auld lang syne, this declaration of his motives might easily have hardened her heart against him. What fatuity of affection could have survived it? Yet his candour was probably his only redeeming feature. He was scarcely an invariable hypocrite; he was merely heartless, sensual, and cruel to the full extent of man's possibilities. Nevertheless, he could and would have lied black white with a purpose. He was, this time, thrown off his guard, as it were, and truthful by accident. Whether the way in which the woman silently ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... first turned pale blue, and then assumed a deep violet tint; but he restrained himself, and said, as was his invariable custom: ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland

... argument implies that an effect produced with trouble by an intelligent agent must, 'a fortiori', be more troublesome, if not impossible, to an unintelligent agent. Even putting aside the question whether Nature, acting as she does according to definite and invariable laws, can be rightly called an unintelligent agent, such a position as this is wholly untenable. Mix salt and sand, and it shall puzzle the wisest of men, with his mere natural appliances, to separate all the grains of ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley

... Larrabee, the society editor, who was the only one of us with whom he ever had any business, would pull the string that unhooked the latch of the gate to her section of the room and say, without looking up: "Come into the garden, Maud." To which he made invariable reply: "Oh, Miss Larrabee, don't be so sarcastic! I have ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... down the stairs. He was impatiently searching for his cloak in the back parlour, when a voice behind said: "Let me assist you, sir—do:" and turning round with petulant quickness, he beheld again Mr. Adolphus Poole. It requires an habitual intercourse with equals to give perfect and invariable control of temper to a man of irritable nerves and frank character; and though, where Daxrell really liked, he had much sweet forbearance, and where he was indifferent much stately courtesy, yet, when he was offended, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the invariable question after each load, as the staff prepared to sit down for a gossip; and "Gadgerrie" had to start every one afresh, after deciding whose turn it was to ride back to the billabong in ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... to Mr. Russell for fearlessly exposing the errors and incompetency of the three officers successively at the head of the English army, in spite of "much obloquy, vituperation, and injustice," and for bearing his invariable and eloquent testimony to the bravery, endurance, and patience ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... career—his literary sterility. That he possessed literary power of the highest order is abundantly proved by the "Journal Intime." Knowledge, insight, eloquence, critical power—all were his. And the impulse to produce, which is the natural, though by no means the invariable, accompaniment of the literary gift, must have been fairly strong in him also. For the "Journal Intime" runs to 17,000 folio pages of MS., and his half dozen volumes of poems, though the actual quantity ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... According to the invariable usage of the fishery, the whale-boat pushes off from the ship, with the headsman or whale-killer as temporary steersman, and the harpooneer or whale-fastener pulling the foremost oar, the one known as the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... matter of all poetry—to wit, the appearances of nature and the thoughts and feelings of men—being unalterable, it follows that the difference between poet and poet will depend upon the manner of each in applying language, metre, rhyme, cadence, and what not, to this invariable material.' What has become here of the substance of Paradise Lost—the story, scenery, characters, sentiments as they are in the poem? They have vanished clean away. Nothing is left but the form on one side, and on the other not even the subject, but a supposed invariable material, ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley

... is not altogether fanciful; for 'spell' itself in the Saxon primarily imports a word; and we know that the runes or Runic letters were long employed in this way. For instance, Mr. Turner thus informs us ('History of the Anglo-Saxons,' vol. i, p. 169): 'It was the invariable policy of the Roman ecclesiastics to discourage the use of the Runic characters, because they were of pagan origin, and had been much connected with idolatrous superstitions.' And if any one be incredulous, let ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... approve of my design to accompany Stephen. The influence of variety and novelty will no doubt be useful. Why should I allow my present feelings, which assure me that I have lost what is indispensable not only to my peace but my life, to supplant the invariable lesson of experience, which teaches that time and absence will dull the edge of every calamity? And have I not found myself peculiarly susceptible of this ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... Bok's invariable answer was that he gave his readers the very best of the class of reading that he believed would interest them, and that he spared neither effort nor expense to obtain it for them. When Mr. Howells once asked him how he classified his audience, Bok replied: ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... thievery: the very insistence upon the same motive suggests the fairytale, and, as in the legends of every country, there is an identical element which the anthropologists call 'human'; so in the annals of adventure there is a set of invariable incidents, which are the essence of thievery. The industrious hacks, to whom we owe the entertainment of the chap-books, being seedy parsons or lawyers' clerks, were conscious of their literary deficiencies: they preferred ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... Germans probably knew France better than the French themselves and skilfully adapted their attacks to the lacks and negligences which the swarming spies laid bare. The group, of whose scrutiny we had become aware, was made up of ouvriers and ouvrieres, the men in the invariable blouse, with dark matted hair and black eyes, sometimes with a ratlike keenness of glance as they surveyed us. The women were roughly dressed, sometimes in sabots, with heads bare or surmounted by conical ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer



Words linked to "Invariable" :   constant, strict, parameter, invariant, constant quantity, quantity, invariability, invariableness, changeless, unvarying



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