"Filament" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proportions of Egypt would be represented by a green ribbon an inch wide and a yard long, lying upon the ground in a serpentine form; and to complete the model, we might imagine a silver filament passing along the center of the green to denote the Nile. The real valley of verdure, however, is not of uniform breadth, like the ribbon so representing it, but widens as it approaches the sea, as if there had been originally ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... pulpit mentions no name; but he talks of "The hand of God made visible amongst us." He tells us how, when the white stroke fell, quivering and naked, the soul fled, robbed of his earthly filament, and lay at the footstool of God; how over its head has been poured out the wrath of the Mighty One, whose existence it has denied; and, quivering and terrified, it has fled to the ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... full-bodied light of a day that was overcast and advanced past its dawn only by an hour or two. There was no one in the farmyard. Yet it came back to her that she had been called by the sound of men's voices; of Richard's voice, she could be almost sure, for there was a filament of pleasure trailing across her consciousness. There was no reason why he should be out of doors at this hour, before the family had been called to breakfast, unless the search for Marion had been unsuccessful. She jumped ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... rape, and hardly a clover plant escaped this parasitic growth. By carefully removing the earth with a pocket-knife the two could be dug up together. From the roots of the clover a slender filament passes underground to the somewhat bulbous root of the broom rape, so that although they stand apart and appear separate plants, they are connected under the surface. The stalk of the broom rape is clammy to touch, and is an unwholesome greenish yellow, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... Theophrastus, nor Pliny the elder, nor any ancient, could conceive of a fact but dimly guessed until the day of Franklin; that this secret of the silent amber was also that of the thunder-cloud, that the essence that drew to it a floating filament is also that which rends an oak, that had splintered their temples and statues, and had not spared even the image of Jupiter Tonans himself. The spectral lights which hung upon the masts of the ancient galleys of the Mediterranean were named Castor and Pollux, not electricity. Absolutely ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... dawn their counsels wrought with me, And I went forth; alas that I so went Under the great gum-forest canopy, The light on every silken filament Of every flower, a quivering ecstasy Of perfect paleness made it; sunbeams sent Up to the leaves with sword-like flash endued Each turn of that grey ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... my eye was attracted by these words upon a signboard,—CHEAP CASH-STORE. Here was at once the confirmation of my speculations, and the substance of my hopes. Here lingered the fragment of a happier past, or stretched out the first tremulous organic filament of a more fortunate future. Thus glowed the distant Mexico to the eyes of Sawin, as he looked through the dirty pane of the recruiting-office window, or speculated from the summit of that mirage-Pisgah which the imps of the bottle are so cunning ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... but acutely pointed. Lower down the breast these feathers, however, begin to assume more of the ordinary shape; but the shafts still remain very thick and rigid, while each is terminated by a slender, naked filament, hornlike, shining, and somewhat flattened towards the end, where there are a few obsolete radii. The wings in proportion to the size of the bird, are very short; the lesser quills ending in a point. The tail is rather lengthened and considerably ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... surface to sight at is not required. So long as the image formed by the objective is broader than the lamp filament, the temperature can be ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... several canoes in the bay, which had just completed their morning's work in fishing for cod. The fish were taken with a primitive hook and line, apparently in a manner not very different from that of the present day. The line was made of a filament of bark stripped from the trunk of a tree; the book was of wood, having a sharp bone, forming a barb, lashed to it with a cord of a grassy fibre, a kind of wild hemp, growing spontaneously in that region. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... The conduction by the silk is in this case very small; and after the best examination I could give to the effects, the impression on my mind is, that the adhesion of the whole is due to the polarity which each filament acquires, exactly as the particles of iron between the poles of a horse-shoe magnet are held together in one mass by a similar disposition of forces. The particles of silk therefore represent to me the condition of the molecules of the dielectric ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... a surface is brought into contact with the glass having a silky lustre; this is the tongue; it is moved with a short sweep, and then the tubular proboscis infolds its walls again, the tongue disappearing, and every filament of Conferva being carried up into the interior, from the little area which had been swept. The next instant, the foot meanwhile having made a small advance, the proboscis unfolds again, the makes another sweep, and again the whole is withdrawn; and this proceeds with great regularity. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... flowers, and especially of the seaweeds, with which she decorated it, was so exact that she did not require the originals before her vision. They were painted upon her mind's eye, where every filament and every shade seemed to be recorded. These green "growing things" had been the beloved companions of her childhood, as they continued to be of her womanhood, and even to reproduce their forms in painting was a delight to her. The written descriptions of ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... membranous termination of the upper filament overlap the corresponding portions of the two middle stamens? Because this enables the bee to move the pistil and thereby to set free the pollen more easily than would be the case under ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... better case than that given by you—namely, that of the glands of Drosera, which can be touched roughly two or three times and do not transmit any effect, but do so if pressed by a weight of 1/78000 grain ("Insectivorous Plants" 263). On the other hand, the filament of Dionoea may be quietly loaded with a much greater weight, while a touch by a hair causes the lobes to close instantly. This has always seemed to me a marvellous fact. Thirdly, I have been accustomed to ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... cotton cloth in the container. He hurried a little, because the men in the rocket were shaky and might not practice patience. He took a small emergency-lamp from his spare spacesuit. He carefully cracked its bulb, exposing the filament within. He put the lamp on top of the cotton and sprinkled magnesium marking-powder over everything. Then he went to the air-apparatus and took out a flask of the liquid oxygen used to keep his breathing-air in balance. He poured the frigid, ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... other the seer faculty, developed and improved, living the secluded, severe, and simple lives of the anchorite, amid the grand and solemn silence of mountain and desert, were enabled, by wondrous and protracted effort, to wear through the filament—impenetrable as adamant to common men—that screened from them the invisible future, and they ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... of the Deity which can be folded up between the sheets of any human book is to the Deity of the firmament, of the strata, of the hot aortic flood of throbbing human life, of this infinite, instantaneous consciousness in which the soul's being consists,—an incandescent point in the filament connecting the negative pole of a past eternity with the positive pole of an eternity that is to come,—that all of the Deity which any human book can hold is to this larger Deity of the working battery of the universe only as the films in a book of gold-leaf are to the broad seams and curdled ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and stamina,) in weaving, the warp, the thread, any thing made of threads. In botany, that part of a flower, on which the artificial classification is founded, consisting of the filament or stalk, and the anther, which contains the pollen, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... classified under the same terms. The wool fiber is distinguished by its scale-like surface which gives it its felting and spinning properties. Hair as distinguished from wool has little or no scaly structure being in general a smooth filament with no felting properties and spinning only with great difficulty. Fur is the undergrowth found on most fur-bearing animals and has in a modified way the scaly structure and felting properties ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... fish. Mrs. Meredith calls it Tortoise-shell Fish from its colour, when figuring it in 'Tasmanian Friends and Foes' under its former scientific name of Cheironectes Politus. The surface of its skin is hirsute with minute spines, and the lobe at the end of the detached filament of the dorsal fin—called the fintacle—hangs loose. The scientific names of the genus are derived from Grk. brachiown, "the arm," and cheir, "the hand." The armlike pectoral fins are used for holding ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... which grows in most of the provinces of the Philippines. It contains a sort of filament, from which is extracted a soapy foam, which is much used for washing clothes. This foam is also used to precipitate the gold in the sand of rivers. Rizal says the most common use is ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... commissions came back, and his dividends came back, and they were rich and sweet, and worth while. But—he was shocked when he found courage to ask it—if they did not come back, what could he do? He was part of a great web—a little filament in one obscure corner, and he was spinning a fabric whose faintest plan he ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... brain except when I have a headache; consciousness is in my eyes and finger-tips and so on. It is physically true, no doubt, that consciousness in and of my finger-tips is not possible without the functioning of my brain; but that is a poor reason for locating the consciousness in the brain. The filament of the electric bulb will not be incandescent apart from the functioning of the dynamo; but that is a poor reason for saying that the incandescence is ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... instant the Lad dropped the bow upon the strings. Strong and round, mellow and sweet, the note swelled forth. Starting with the least filament of sound, it wove itself into a compact chord of sonorous resonance; filled the great parlors; passed through the doorway into the receptive stillness outside; charged it with throbbings—thus held the air a moment; reigned in it—then, calling its powers back ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... carpeted the ground, not a branch which clothed the trees, was either broken or bent, nor did they extend horizontally; all stretched up to the surface of the ocean. Not a filament, not a ribbon, however thin they might be, but kept as straight as a rod of iron. The fuci and llianas grew in rigid perpendicular lines, due to the density of the element which had produced them. Motionless yet, when ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... and he was the happiest man in the world—at least he thought so, which is just the same thing. He had been successful in business; his wife—the friend and companion of his youth, the brightest filament of the bright vision his fancy had woven—had been won, and the ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... which they are encased. This is especially the case with a darning-needle, which has increased its circumference in places nearly one half, while in other places it is eaten away until only a mere filament of steel remains. The sharp point of a curved sewing-awl has grown with rust until it is larger than the body of the awl. Several fish-hooks have been found, all more or less rust eaten. A brass pistol, single barreled, apparently ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... sapphire, are held so as to reflect at the same time images of an incandescent light into the eye of the observer, such a direct comparison will serve to show that much more light comes to the eye from the diamond surface than from the sapphire surface. The image of the light filament, as seen from the diamond, is much keener than as seen from the sapphire. The same disparity would exist between the diamond and almost any other stone. Zircon comes nearest to having adamantine luster of any of the other gems. The green ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... lacteal streams. The king ascertaining everything, was filled with joy, and addressing that female cannibal disguised as a human being possessing the complexion of gold, asked,—O thou of the complexion of the filament of the lotus, who art thou that givest me this child? O auspicious one, thou seemest to me as a ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... with a well-defined neck or collar borne upon a shoulder-like end of the body. It is hyaline, colorless, and carried upon a stalk equal in length to the cup or shorter than this. The animal does not fill the cup, nor is it attached by a filament to the latter. There is a single flagellum. The nucleus is minute and lateral in position; the contractile vacuole is in the posterior end of the body. Total length of cup and stalk 21 mu; of cup alone 12 mu. This minute form looked so much like a choanoflagellate that I supposed it to be ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... crowd the branches, and the hoya carnosa, the yam, the blue-blossomed Thunbergia, the vanilla (?), and other beautiful creepers, conceal the stems, while nearly every parasitic growth carries another parasite, but one sees here a filament carelessly dangling from a branch sustaining some bright-hued epiphyte of quaint mocking form; then a branch as thick as a clipper's main-mast reaches across the river, supporting a festooned trailer, from whose ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... took out his compass, balanced it in the palm of his sinewy hand and glanced at the needle. As he glanced, this filament of soft iron began to tremble and swing. He stood fascinated. Slowly at first, but gradually with more active and jerky motions, the thing became possessed. It vibrated as though in doubt, then ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... a stem or filament, at the summit of which are placed two little sacks called the anther, which contain a fine, microscopic dust, the pollen, which contains the male reproductive element of the flower. This part of the plant corresponds to the male organ of reproduction in animals. A stamen has been called, ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... The fundamental principle upon which heating by electricity is generally arranged depends upon the fact that a thin wire offers more electrical resistance to the passage of a current than a thick one, and therefore becomes heated. In the case of the incandescent lamp, in which the carbon filament requires to be raised to a white heat and must be free to emit its light without interference from opaque matter, it is necessary to protect the resisting and glowing material by nearly exhausting the air from the hermetically sealed globe or bulb ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... carries a naked sword, that is to say, the sheath of its drill stands out slantwise at the tip of its belly, instead of lying in a hollow groove along the back, as it does with the Leucospis. This scabbard holds the latter half of the inoculating filament, which extends below the animal to the base of the abdomen. In short, its utensil is that of the Leucospis, with this difference, that its lower half sticks ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... periphery of the wheel, whose face is about 12 inches wide. Motion is then communicated, and the crystal thread is drawn from between the gas jets and wrapped upon the wheel at the rate of about 7,500 feet per minute. A higher speed results in a finer filament of glass, and vice versa. During its passage from the flame to the wheel, a distance of five or six feet, the thread has become cooled, and yet its elasticity is preserved to a notable degree. The next step in the process consists in the removal of the layers of threads from ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... "from a single living filament" (p. 230), or, stated in other words, referring to the warm-blooded animals alone, "one is led to conclude that they have alike been produced from a similar living filament" (p. 236); and again he expresses the conjecture that one and the same kind of ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... very far, at least in the way of toleration. Yet it appeared to me quite impossible either that any great number of English Churchmen would ever go so far, or that the persons possessing authority in the Church would fail to protest, not to say more.... As to Ward I did but touch a filament or two in one of his monstrous cobwebs, and off he ran instantly to Newman to complain of my gratuitous impertinence. Many years after I was forcibly reminded of him by a pretty group of a little Cupid flying to his mother to show a wasp-sting he ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... at the back of its base or middle to the top of the filament in the suture separating the two large cells. These anther-cells split along the outer margins, releasing ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... Before their eyes the whole surface of the mountain had changed suddenly to a dazzling burning yellow, which showed up through the jacket of turf as light shows through a human hand. For a moment the intolerable glow continued, and then like an extinguished filament it disappeared, revealing a black waste from which blue smoke arose slowly, carrying off with it what remained of vegetation and of human flesh. Of the aviators there was left neither blood nor bone—they were consumed as completely as the five souls who ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald |
