Citations:æquipoise

Nouns: archaic form of equipoise; archaic form of equipoises.

 * 1806, Edward Wortley Montagu, Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republicks, C. P. Wayne; Chapter IX., page #311:
 * He adds too, that to perpetuate the duration of his government,† he united the peculiar excellencies of all the best governments in one form, that neither of the three parts, by swelling beyond its just bounds, might ever be able to deviate into its original inborn defects : but that whilst each power was mutually drawn back by the opposite attraction of the other two, neither power might ever preponderate, but the balance of government continue suspended in its true æquipoise.
 * 1877, Philip James Bailey, Festus, Longmans, Green, and Co.; tenth edition, page #630:
 * As when some ocean‐flood to circumvent
 * An island obstacles, its strifeful tides,
 * Though to collide at last doomed, first, divides,
 * This polewards, linewards that, while each intent
 * On its own course, half with its rival’s blent,
 * Conscious not yet of check, nor rise nor fall
 * Brooks, till at last, one turbulent level all
 * In vast libration hold ; —so we this war
 * And strenuous æquipoise of discontent
 * Wage, doubt‐crowned, nor, who victors know thus far.
 * 1879, The Roman Breviary, William Blackwood and Sons; page #906:
 * As one maiden had brought the sentence of death upon all mankind, so the other maiden took it away— a maiden in each scale of the balance restored the æquipoise.
 * 1885, The Dæmon of Darwin, Estes and Lauriat; pages 30–31:
 * The one is within : it is the life‐principle, the vital energy, the vis viva, the effcient cause, which would drive the atoms apart, dissolve every organism, destroy a world, were not such radiant energy counteracted and held in quivering æquipoises by that which is without, — exterior physical and chemical resistances, which press the particles into closer union, and, like the balance wheel of a mechanism, slow the vibration of the atoms to a rate compatible with vital processes.