"Ellipse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an impossibly long ellipse now, surrounded by a vast array of smaller bodies, fragments and contents of the ship. Now the stricken globe moved completely free of its companion. It rotated, presenting a crescent toward us, then wheeled farther as it receded from its twin, showing its ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... is subject to terrific hurricanes and cyclones, as well as explosions, casting up jets to the height of 200,000 miles. In the early days of spectroscopy these protuberances could only be seen at a time of a total solar ellipse, and astronomers made long journeys to distant parts of the earth to be in line of totality. Now all is changed. Images of the sun are thrown into the observatory by an ingenious instrument run by clockwork, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... nearly circular walled-plain, 111 miles in diameter, situated close to the N.W. limb, and consequently always foreshortened into a more or less elongated ellipse. But for this it would be one of the grandest objects in the first quadrant. Under the designation of "Mercurius Falsus" it received great attention from Schroter, who gives several representations of it in his Selenotopographische Fragmente, ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... that port. Crab-like, she crawled obliquely to within a few hundred feet of the low-lying town, then the screw churned up a furious wake as the anxious Tagalog on the bridge swung her back into the Straits to circle in a new attempt. Carried by the tidal rush the old tub circled in a great ellipse. ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... crotalus jaw at the mouth of the mask over the head of each figure. This is again found on the body of the snake in Plate LX, and in other places. Other important questions can be settled by comparison of the two plates. For example, at Palenque we often find a sign composed of a half ellipse, inside of which bars are drawn. I shall elsewhere show that there is reason to believe the ellipse is to represent the concave of the sky, its diameter to be the level earth, and in some cases at least the bars to be the descending and fertilizing rain. The ...
— Studies in Central American Picture-Writing • Edward S. Holden
... third couple clasp hands, arch arms, and let the whole countermarching train sweep through; and a beautiful arch they make, for they are the aforesaid captain and Charlotte Oliver. "Hands round!"—hurrah for the whirling ellipse; and now it's "right and left" and two ellipses glide opposite ways, "to quile dat golden chain." In the midst of the whirl, when every hand is in some other and men and girls are tossing their heads to get their locks out of their eyes, at the windows come unnoticed changes and ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... gravitative phenomena, the difficulty is enormously increased. The orbit of a planet is never an exact ellipse, on account of the perturbations produced by the planetary attractions—perturbations which depend upon the direction and distance of the attracting bodies. These, however, are so well known that slight deviations are easily noticed. If gravitative attraction took any such appreciable ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... happened to catch sight of a cloud of paroquets that swept in a screaming ellipse for a better branch to nest in and added the one touch of gorgeous color needed to make the whole scene utterly unearthly and unlike anything he had ever dreamed of, or had seen in pictures, or had had described to him. He stood at gaze—forgetful of the stone ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... be said to have accentuated the phase of accurate measurement in investigation. They specialized in chemistry and astronomy, all measurements being applied to the heavenly bodies. Their main service was found in accurate records of data. Kepler maintained "that every planet moved in an ellipse of which the sun occupied one focus." He also held "that the square of the periodic time of any planet is proportional to the cube of its mean distance from the sun," and "that the area swept by the radius vector from the planet ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... parallel to the Spanish line, and pouring in its fire as it went from a distance of forty-five hundred yards, the American squadron swept round in a long ellipse and sailed back, now bringing its starboard batteries into play. Six times it passed over this course, the last two at the distance of two thousand yards. From the great cannon, and from the batteries of smaller ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... "the simplest diagram I can suggest," Mr. Venn says, "is one like this (the small ellipse in the centre is to be regarded as a portion of the outside of c; i.e. its four component portions are inside b and d but are no part of c). It must be admitted that such a diagram is not quite so simple to draw as one might ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... around the sun in an orbit called an ellipse. This is not a fixed form, but slowly varies from year to year. It is now gradually becoming circular. It will, however, not become an exact circle. Astronomers assure us that, after a long lapse of time, it ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... before. By dint of many such experiences, we see a book cover or a door as a rectangle, no matter at what angle we may view it, and we know a circle for a circle even though at most angles it is really an ellipse in the field of view. A large share of practised perceptions belong under the head of "response by analogy",[Footnote: See p. 406.] since they consist in making the same response to the present stimulus that has previously ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... method of transportation between the residential and business portions, and in addition to form a communicating link between the terminals of the roads referred to. These terminal stations are arranged in the form of an irregular ellipse and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... origin of human events is so little susceptible of that kind of evidence which can compel our belief; so many are the disturbing forces which, in every cycle or ellipse of changes, modify the motion given by the first projection; and every age has, or imagines it has, its own circumstances, which render past experience no longer applicable to the present case; that there will never be wanting answers, and explanations, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... the planets next to it. If these bodies did not attract one another at all, but only moved under the influence of the sun, they would move in orbits having the form of ellipses. They are found to move very nearly in such orbits, only the actual path deviates from an ellipse, now in one direction and then in another, and it slowly changes its position from year to year. These deviations are due to the pull of the other planets, and by measuring the deviations we can determine the amount ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... has been variously called, was the creation of the Middle Ages, and arose nearly simultaneously in Europe after the first Crusade, so that it would seem to be of Eastern origin. But it was a graft on the old Roman arch,—in the shape of an ellipse rather than a circle. Aside from this invention, to which we are indebted for the most beautiful ecclesiastical structures ever erected, we owe every thing in architecture to the Greeks and Romans. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... and are forced to accompany the fleet, but not all are impressed. If a strange comet undertakes to run across Jupiter's bows the latter brings it to, and makes prize of it by throwing it into a relatively small ellipse with the sun for its focus. Thenceforth, unless, as happened to the unhappy comet of Lexell, it encounters Jupiter again in such a way as to be diverted by him into a more distant orbit, it can never get away. About thirty comets are ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... Pointed, or Christian architecture, as it has been variously called, was the creation of the Middle Ages, and arose almost simultaneously in Europe after the first Crusade, so that it would seem to be of Eastern origin. But it was a graft on the old Roman arch, in the curve of the ellipse rather than ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... altigi. Elevation (height) altajxo. Elf koboldo, feino. Elicit eltiri. Elide elizii. Eligible elektebla. Eligibility elektebleco. Eliminate elmeti. Elision elizio. Elite eminentularo. Ell ulno. Ellipse elipso. Elm ulmo. Elocution parolscienco. Eloquence elokventeco. Eloquent elokventa. Elope forkuri. Else alie. Elsewhere aliloke. Elude lerte eviti. Emaciated malgrasega. Emanate deveni. Emancipate liberigi. Embalm balzamumi. Embankment surbordo bordmarsxejo. Embark ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Induction properly so called, that the propositions they lead to are really general propositions. For example, when we have proved with respect to the circle, that a straight line can not meet it in more than two points, and when the same thing has been successively proved of the ellipse, the parabola, and the hyperbola, it may be laid down as a universal property of the sections of the cone. The distinction drawn in the two previous examples can have no place here, there being no difference between all known sections of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... shore of a great sea. But it was the structure rising up from that shore that drew a sharp exclamation from me. Shaped in a rough ellipse, yet mounted high toward a common point, was a large building of multiple hues and colors. The upper portion was eroded to crumbling ruins, the lower part studded with many bas-reliefs ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi
... the Gr. [Greek: dia], through, [Greek: metron], measure), in geometry, a line passing through the centre of a circle or conic section and terminated by the curve; the "principal diameters" of the ellipse and hyperbola coincide with the "axes" and are at ... (continued in volume 8, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... interesting to note that the circus is perhaps the only form of ancient entertainment which has retained something of its pristine simplicity. To-day, as in the old Roman circuses, tiers of seats run round the course, which in the larger circuses is still in the form of an ellipse, with its vertical axis, where the horses and performers enter, cut away. But the modern world has nothing in this connection to compare with the Circus Maximus of Rome, which, according to Pliny, held a quarter of a million spectators. ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... the engineer, laughing, "whether just or not, we must submit to it, and here lies the reason for this peculiarity. The earth does not describe a circle round the sun, but an ellipse, as it must by the laws of rational mechanics. Now, the earth occupies one of the centres of the ellipse, and consequently, at the time of its transfer, it is further from the sun, that is to say, at its apogee, and at another time nearer, that is to say, at its perigee. ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... observation and study, Kepler arrived at the conclusion that the form of the planet's orbit is an ellipse, and that the Sun occupies one of the foci. He afterwards determined that the orbits of all the planets are ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... the lips would seem to have much to do with their position in singing. Some singers advocate a lip formation that gives an opening like an O; others lay the O on its side like an ellipse. The former represents the lip position of Nordica, the latter of Sembrich—so that, as I have said, it is largely a matter to be determined by the individual. But the singer who uses the elliptical position ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... case. (12) They are often formed against our will. VII. (108:13) The mind can determine in many ways the ideas of things, which the understanding forms from other ideas: thus, for instance, in order to define the plane of an ellipse, it supposes a point adhering to a cord to be moved around two centers, or, again, it conceives an infinity of points, always in the same fixed relation to a given straight line, angle of the vertex of the cone, or in an infinity of other ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... which it will be seen is set off the centre line of the mill and tower, exceeds that found desirable—and this can be regulated by means of a spring on the fantail—the windmill automatically turns on the turn-table and presents an ellipse to the wind instead of a circular face, thus decreasing the area exposed to the wind gradually until the wheel reaches its final position, or is hauled out of gear, when the edges only are opposed to the full force of the wind. The whole weight of the mill is taken upon ...
— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams
... stones often surrounding dolmens or tumuli. Sometimes they form single circles, and at others two, three, or even seven separate enclosures. They are common in Algeria, Sweden, and Denmark, and in the last-named country two kinds are distinguished: the LANGDYSSERS, which form an ellipse, and the RUNDYSSERS which form a perfect circle. In other countries cromlechs are slot so numerous; there are but few in France, of which we may name those of Kergoman (Morbihan), Lestridion in Plomeur, and Landaondec in Crozon (Finistere). The last-named, ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... in part only, for by the time that the word to recommence the bombardment had been flashed round the circuit of the entrenchments, more than half the batteries had been put out of action. The twelve air-ships stationed at equal intervals round the vast ellipse, and discharging their No. 3 shell from their four guns ahead and astern, from an elevation of four thousand feet, had simultaneously wrecked half the batteries of the besiegers before their occupants had any clear idea of what ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... planning of new houses and gardens? He had everything quite settled except the land grant from the Doge when they started back; while the sun, with the swift passage of time in such fascinating diversion, had swung low in its ellipse. When they reached the main street the Doge was on the porch passing his opinion on the Eternal Painter's ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... mind's eye hung masses of glossy black hair, waving along the brows and falling over the shoulders in curling clusters. Within this ebon framework were features to mock the sculptor's chisel. The mouth, with its delicate rose-coloured ellipse; the nose, with smooth straight outline, and small recurvant nostril; the arching brows of jet; the long fringes upon the eyelids; all were vividly before me, and all unlike the features of Eugenie Besancon. The colour of the skin, too—even that was different. It was not ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... territorial flag is dark blue with a narrow red border on all four sides; centered is a red-bordered, pointed, vertical ellipse containing a beach scene, outrigger canoe with sail, and a palm tree with the word GUAM superimposed in bold red letters; US flag is the ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... other sense is conceivable that does not destroy the doctrine which it professes to interpret—that does not convert it into its own negative? As if a geometrician should name a sugar- loaf an ellipse, adding—"By which term I here mean a cone;"—and then justify the misnomer on the pretext that the ellipse is among the conic sections! And yet—notwithstanding the repugnancy of the doctrine, in its unqualified sense, ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... previous letters he mentions a name. If he knew a little of journalism he would be aware that editors are a peculiar race, obtained by natural selection. They are never seen, even by their officials; only heard down a pipe. Secondly, "an ellipse or oval" is composed of four arcs of circles. Mr. Smith has got hold of the construction I was taught, when a boy, for a pretty four-arc oval. But my teachers knew better than to call it an ellipse: Mr. Smith does not; but he produces from it such confirmation of 3-1/8 as would convince ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... to the enlightened eye with the charm of a French subject, and impressionism could be fully justified of its follower in Pymantoning as well as in Paris. That golden dust along the track; the level tops of the buggies drawn up within its ellipse, and the groups scattered about in gypsy gayety on the grass there; the dark blur of men behind the barrier; the women, with their bright hats and parasols, massed flower-like,—all made him long to express them ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... proclaim her whereabouts to those who still remember her. It is good to pause awhile and etheralize oneself in the neighbourhood of her dust. She lived a quiet life in an old brown house, since rebuilt, that overlooks the Coliseum, on whose comely ellipse and blood-stained history she loved to pasture eyes and imagination. Often I walked thence with her, in those sparkling mornings, up the Palatine hill, to stroll about the ilexes and roses in view of the Forum, to listen to the blackbirds, or the siskins in that pine tree. She ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... formulas. From the point of view of the impression they make on our eye these geometrical figures may assume very varied shapes. By perspective the cube may be transformed into a pyramid or a square, the circle into an ellipse or a straight line. Moreover, the consideration of these fictitious shapes is far more important than that of the real shapes, for it is they and they alone that we see and that can be reproduced by photography or in pictures. In certain cases there is more truth in the unreal ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... blow comes in with greater severity on account of the curvature at either end of the major axis of the ellipse being sharper than it is at the end of any diameter of the circle, the sectional areas, of course, being ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... But the shadow of the troubles in his household interfered with his comfort here also; he could not, as formerly, settle down into his favourite chair with the evening paper, reposeful in the celibate's sense that where he was his world's centre had its fixture. His world was now an ellipse, with a dual centrality, of which his ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... procession at the corner of New York Avenue and Seventeenth Street. To the right gleamed the lights of the cavalry corral on the ellipse back of the White House, and on the left were the buildings of the quartermaster general's depot. Lloyd drew Baker to one ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... From the upper end of the lever, E, the motion is carried direct to the valve by the rod, G. It will be evident thus that by one revolution of the crank the lower end of the lever, E, will have imparted to it two different movements, one along the longer axis of the ellipse, traveled by the point, A, and one through its minor axis up and down, these movements differing as to time, and corresponding with the part of the movement of the valve required for lap and lead, and that part constituting the port opening ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... heavy-lined ellipse represents the formal diction of Cicero, the dotted line ellipse his conversational vocabulary. They overlap each other through a great part of their extent, but there are certain literary locutions which ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... the mean or average interval between the centres of the two planets is 59.9643 of the earth's equatorial radii, or only about 237,000 miles. I say the mean or average interval. But it must be borne in mind that the form of the moon's orbit being an ellipse of eccentricity amounting to no less than 0.05484 of the major semi-axis of the ellipse itself, and the earth's centre being situated in its focus, if I could, in any manner, contrive to meet the moon, as it were, in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... expressed in one; not a precise and exact line, like a formula of mathematics, to which the neophyte can refer for deductions of Grace to suit any premises or conditions. This, of course, is contrary to the spirit of beautiful design; and the ingenious Hay,—who maintains that his "composite ellipse" is capable of universal application in the arts of ornamental composition, and that by its use any desirable lines in mouldings or vases can be mechanically produced, especially Greek lines, falls ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... the demand for a special training. This divergence, however, is limited in its sweep and its duration. The difference exists for a definite purpose, and goes only to a definite extent. The curves of separation swell out as childhood recedes, like an ellipse, and, as old age draws on, approach, till they unite like an ellipse again. In old age, the second childhood, the difference of sex becomes of as little note as it was during the first. At that ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... each of which by the necessity of the case is more or less a definite and detachable unit, the periods flow into one another. Like the orbit of a planet, the movement of the verse never closes its ellipse and begins again. Each of the twelve books is a single organic rhythmical structure. But one cannot very ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... most remarkable drawing in the cave (Number 3) was an ellipse, three feet in length and one foot ten inches in breadth: the outside line of this painting was of a deep blue colour, the body of the ellipse being of a bright yellow dotted over with red lines and spots, whilst across it ran two transverse lines of blue. The portion ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... different from each. Since the beings and events form a single uninterrupted series, there are no distinctions of kind in the world, but only distinctions in degree. Rest and motion are not opposites, for rest may be considered as infinitely minute motion; the ellipse and the parabola are not qualitatively different, for the laws which hold for the one may be applied to the other. Likeness is vanishing unlikeness, passivity arrested activity, evil a lesser good, confused ideas simply less distinct ones, animals men with infinitely little ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... evidently referring to Maclaurin's), Integrals, Conic Sections, Kepler's Problem, Analytical Geometry, D'Alembert's Theorem, Spherical Aberration, Rotations round three axes (apparently I had been reading Euler), Floating bodies, Evolute of Ellipse, Newton's treatment of the Moon's Variation. I attempted to extract something from Vince's Astronomy on the physical explanation of Precession: but in despair of understanding it, and having made out an explanation for myself by the motion round three ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... illustrate all that is implied by stability, and we must consider cases of stable and of unstable motion. Imagine a satellite and its planet, and consider each of them to be of indefinitely small size, in fact particles; then the satellite revolves round its planet in an ellipse. A small disturbance imparted to the satellite will only change the ellipse to a small amount, and so the motion is said to be stable. If, on the other hand, the disturbance were to make the satellite depart ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... not describe a circle round the earth, but an ellipse, of which our earth occupies one of the foci; the consequence is, therefore, that at certain times it approaches nearer to, and at others recedes farther from, the earth, or, in astronomical language, ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... of his daughters has her own children who, while obeying the paternal influence of the fiery orb, are also obedient to the world that governs them. These secondary asters, or satellites, follow the planets in their course, and revolve round them in an ellipse, just as the others rotate round the Sun. Every one knows the satellite of the Earth, the Moon. All the other planets of our system have their own moons, some being even more favored than ourselves in this respect, and having several. Mars has two; Jupiter, five; Saturn, eight; Uranus, ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... neck, chest, abdomen and pelvis. The second division takes in head, neck, lower and upper arm and hand. The third division takes in foot, leg, thigh, pelvis and lumbar vertebra. I make this division for the purpose of holding the explorer to the limits of all supplies. In the ellipse of the chest is found all vital supplies; then from that center of life we have two branches only, one of the arm, and one of the lower limb. In each division we have five ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... ('nihil simile est idem'), so here the simile fails, for there is nothing in our loves that corresponds to the cold north, or the declining west, which in two hemispheres must necessarily be supposed. But an ellipse of such length will scarcely rescue the line from the charge of nonsense ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... is made of 5/16 or 3/8 inch wood, cut to an oval or elliptical shape. To mark out an ellipse about 8 inches long and 5-1/2 inches wide—this will be a. convenient size—stick two pins into the board 5-1/8 inches apart, pass a loop of thread 14 inches in circumference round these, and run the point of a pencil round ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... combined in this manner. The movements are rectilinear, but two rectilinear vibrations of equal amplitude acting at right angles to each other generate a circle if they alternate precisely, an ellipse if the alternations are less regular or the amplitudes unequal. A cyclic vibration may also be obtained from a pendulum free to swing in a rotary path. In these ways a most wonderful series of drawings have been obtained, and the ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... alternate curves and graceful sallies, they pursue and circumvent each other. First one hops a few feet, then the other, each one standing erect in true military style while his fellow passes him and describes the segment of an ellipse about him, both uttering the while a fine complacent warble in a high but suppressed key. Are they lovers or enemies? the beholder wonders, until they make a spring and are beak to beak in the twinkling of an eye, and perhaps mount a few feet into ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... redeeming feature in the structure is the cupola; and that is the one thing which Michelangelo bequeathed to the intelligence of his successors. The curve which it describes finds no phrase of language to express its grace. It is neither ellipse nor parabola nor section of the circle, but an inspiration of creative fancy. It outsoars in vital force, in elegance of form, the dome of the Pantheon and the dome of Brunelleschi, upon which it was actually modelled. As a French architect, adverse to Michelangelo, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... yard their height is diminished by the thickness of a brick, and finally they disappear about the middle of the total length. At the point shown in our Fig. 94 the arch has lost its supports and rests directly upon the pavement of the channel. Its ellipse is composed of eight voussoirs, four on each side, and a key with a small wedge-shaped stone voussoir on each side of it. Between the two points shown in our Figs. 93 and 94 the upper and lower sewers have become one, the vaulted roof of the first and the paved floor ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... and the hyperbolic curve, that never returns into itself at all, but has, on the other hand, a course which sets outwards each way for ever. The parabolic curve, as it is called, is a line partaking of the closeness of the ellipse on the one hand, and the openness of the hyperbola on the other. A parabola is an ellipse passing into a hyperbola; or, in other words, it is a part of an ellipse whose length, compared with its breadth, is too great to be estimated, and is consequently deemed to be endless ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various |
