"Focus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thoughts away from aborigines and heat, and tried to focus his mind elsewhere. He didn't understand psionic processes, he thought; but then, nobody did, really, as far as he knew. But ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... conditions on the Canal Zone. It is hoped that the report which this mission will furnish will point out a way whereby the modicum of assistance which the United States may properly lend the Ecuadorian Government may be made effective in ridding the west coast of South America of a focus of contagion to the future commercial current ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... also, in comparatively modern times, when a reigning monarch did not disdain to pick up a painter's pencil, and a whole city mourned an artist's death, and paid honours to his remains; all the rank, wealth, genius, talent, taste, and intelligence of the people were concentrated in one grand focus. Among the states of ancient Greece and modern Italy, the city was in fact the nation; and at Athens, Rome, Venice, and Florence, was collected all of genius, taste, and talent, the people as a body possessed. The mental qualities were thereby rendered more acute, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... to Myrtle Forge from New York with a mingled sense of pleasure and the feeling that his place was unsupportably empty. The loneliness of which he had been increasingly conscious seemed to have its focus in his house. The following morning he walked restlessly down the short, steep descent to the Forge, lying on its swift water diverted from Canary Creek. Unlike a great many iron families of increasing prosperity, the Pennys had not erected ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the heart to be angry. Once some one remembered me, and brought me out a half a tumblerful of the playful, innocuous American cocktail. I drank it, and lo! veins of living fire ran down my leg; and then a focus of conflagration remained seated in my stomach, not unpleasantly, for a quarter of an hour. I love these sweet, fiery pangs, but I will not court them. The bulk of the time I spent in repeating as much French poetry ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an insuperable barrier around Jerusalem, would become the second cradle of Christianity. Assuredly, Jerusalem must remain forever the capital of the Christian world; nevertheless, the point of departure of the Church of the Gentiles, the primordial focus of Christian missions, was, in truth, Antioch. It was there that for the first time a Christian church was established, freed from the bonds of Judaism; it was there that the great propaganda of the apostolic age was established; it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... us could have kept the direction except by such an obvious and continuous landmark as the sea to our left. It hardly seemed worth while to focus my mind, but I did it occasionally just by way of testing myself. Schwartz still threw away his gold coins, and once, in one of my rare intervals of looking about me, I saw Denton picking them up. This surprised me mildly, but I was too tired to be very ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... from the century-old custom of writing in parallel columns each theorem and its dual. He has not found that it conduces to sharpness of vision to try to focus his eyes on two things at once. Those who prefer the usual method of procedure can, of course, develop the two sets of theorems side by side; the author has not found this the better plan ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman
... follows a man's selection and decision as to whom he will marry. Consent to canvass their mutual adaptations implies consent to marry, if all is found satisfactory; yet a final test and consummation now become necessary, both to bring this whole matter to a focus, and allow both to state, and obviate or waive, those objections which must needs exist on both sides; including any improvements ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... which case he would be compelled to retrace his steps, and that at the imminent hazard of being captured. He carried habitually a small dark lantern, and had thought of so disposing of it in the lower branches of this very elm, as to form a focus of it, but hesitated about doing that which might prove a guide to his enemies as well as to himself. If Margery would take charge of this lantern, he could hope to reap its advantages without incurring the hazard of having a light suspended in the tree for any length of time. ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... tourists, as even the post brought by the diligence ended at Taravao, and letters for farther on were carried afoot by the mutoi, or postman-policeman of the adjoining district, who handed on to his contiguous confrere those for more distant confines. But for centuries Tautira was known as a focus of the wise, of priests, sorcerers, and doctors, and, said the knowing Brault, especially of the dancers, and those who, he explained, under ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... diminutive landscape dimly lighted up, the wonder is whether it is all artificial, or whether one is not oneself the victim of some morbid illusion; and if it is not indeed a real country view seen through a distorted vision out of focus, or through the wrong end ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... was also chromatic aberration. He next spoke of the question of optical center of lenses, and said that that was not, as had been hitherto generally supposed, the true place from which to measure the focus of a lens or combination. This place was a point very near the optical center, and was known as the "Gauss" point, from the name of the eminent German mathematician who had investigated and made known its properties, the knowledge of which was of the greatest importance in the construction ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... his train of thought to focus once more on the submarine problem. But for some reason the business with the microphone and the speaker in the next room kept lingering ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... a certain distance from you, if I'm to see you. Now you're within the focus, and your ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... their authority was eventually superseded, and they were compelled to bow to the storm by retiring from their seats of government. One common spirit pervaded the United Provinces of America, though it was more rampant in some colonies than others. The grand focus of rebellion was still at Massachusets Bay, where, towards the close of the year, in the course of predatory hostility, the town of Falmouth was cannonaded and totally destroyed, in revenge for some offence relative to supplies, and on the refusal of its ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Chitta, or Mind Substance. What Modern Science Says. A Living Dynamic Focus. Dynamic Correlate of Thought. Answer to Skeptical Critics. The World of Vibrations. Unchartered Seas of Vibration. The Human Wireless Telegraph Instrument. A Great Scientist's Theory. Human-Electro-Magnetism. ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... purchased of a peddler, and differing in color from its natural mate, perpetually getting out of focus by turning ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... a magic-lantern (which has a perfect focus), another to the pantomime, a third to a celebrated conjuror, a fourth to a Christmas tree ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... selection of limbs and features, but the ebullition of an heated fancy that burst forth; and the fine senses and enlarged understanding of the artist selected the solid matter, which he drew into this glowing focus. ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... employed by the Persians, and the constant reports and tributes sent from every province to the central court of the king, were well calculated to bring to it, as to a focus, the curious lore of the various nations who came in contact with ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear
... in disgust and swung back to the microscope. Then he gave up as his tired eyes refused to focus. "Why don't you ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... to be organist, and Isabella and the Clark make but a feeble quorum. The children have all nice, neat little clasped pray-books, and I have laid out 7s. 8d. in Watts's Hymns for Christmas presents for them. The eldest girl alone holds out; she has been at Boulogne, skirting upon the vast focus of Atheism, and imported bad principles in patois French. But the strongholds are crumbling. N. appears as yet to have but a confused notion of the Atonement. It makes him giddy, he says, to think much about it. But such ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to the hospital, I tried to focus my mind on Helen's defense, but all the force seemed to have been sapped out of me. I felt weak and ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... father was at the horse-sheds, making ready to go home between services as was his habit, a cold bite being always set out on the kitchen table according to his orders. By means of these clever manoeuvres Patty made herself the focus of attention when the Wilson party came out on the steps, and vouchsafed Mark only a nonchalant nod, airily flinging a little greeting with the nod,—just a "How d'ye do, Mark? Did you have a good ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... right so far, that it is possible by just a touch to convert the noblest sentiment into commonplace. No more than a touch is necessary. The parabolic mirror will reflect the star to a perfect focus. The elliptical mirror, varying from the parabola by less than the breadth of a hair, throws an image which is useless. But Mr. Cardew was far more wrong than he was right. He did not take into account that what his wife said and what she felt might ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... peasant, in its intensive concentration and limitation to a few perfectly simple relations of life has infinite worth—the same worth as the religion and morality of extensive knowledge and of an existence rich in the compass of its relations and actions. This inner focus, this simple region of the claims of subjective freedom, the home of volition, resolution, and action, the abstract sphere of conscience—that which comprises the responsibility and moral value of the individual—remains untouched and is quite shut out from the noisy din of the world's history—including ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the business of life is transacted. Manhattan Island has something over 2,500,000 inhabitants, and is surrounded by a belt of population, several miles wide, of 12,000,000 more, of which it is the focus, so that the entire city contains more than 14,500,000 souls. The several hundred square miles of land and water forming greater New York are perfectly united by numerous bridges, tunnels, and electric ferries, while the city's great natural advantages have been enhanced and beautified by every ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... ever attain to understand and find his proper place in this Universe, this great sweeping harmonious circle of which nevertheless he feels himself to be the diminutive focus? His senses are absurdly imperfect. His ear cannot catch any music the spheres make; and moreover there are probably neither spheres nor music. His eye is so dull an instrument that (as Blanco White's famous sonnet ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... dinners for two which took place in the private room above the Cafe Dame every Wednesday—and sometimes on Friday. Around the figure of the methodical major—with his conspicuous white hat as a sort of focus—was built up one of the most ingenious schemes of murder with which I have ever come in contact. The ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... title and function, no colors could paint to the imagination anything more venerable. In that light, the mind of an inquirer, subdued by such an awful image as that of the virtue and wisdom of a whole people collected into one focus, would pause and hesitate in condemning things even of the very worst aspect. Instead of blamable, they would appear only mysterious. But no name, no power, no function, no artificial institution whatsoever, can make the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... cautiously up or down, until my attention was arrested by a circular rift or opening in the foliage of a large tree that over-topped its fellows in the distance. In the centre of this rift I perceived a white spot, but could not, at first, distinguish what it was. Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I again looked, and now made it out ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the least, for there is usually a runt, stayed near the mother and climbed on her back or pulled at her tail. They made a lovely picture as they played, and the wrestling group in the middle seemed the focus of it all at first; but a keener, later look would have rested on the mother, quiet, watchful, not without anxiety, but, above all, with a face full of motherly tenderness. Oh, she was so proud and happy, and she would sit there ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... lonely woman is not life made endurable, even pleasant, by the possession and the love of a devoted dog! The man who would focus the burning glass of science upon the animal, may well mock at such a mission, and speak words contemptuous of the yellow old maid with her yellow ribbons and her yellow dog. Nor would it change his countenance or ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... small apartment previously bespoken. He is in the next street to his own and at his journey's end. He can scarcely trust his good-fortune in having got thither unperceived, recollecting that at one time he was delayed by the throng in the very focus of a lighted lantern, and again there were footsteps that seemed to tread behind his own, distinct from the multitudinous tramp around him, and anon he heard a voice shouting afar and fancied that it called his name. Doubtless ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... brown girl and the little brown horse blurred and faded. He tried to look, but could not see. He brought his eyes to nearer vision to fix their focus for another look, and straight before him whirled a shackly old saloon, rough and tumble, its character apparent from the men who were grouped about its doorway and from the barrels and kegs in profusion outside. From the doorway issued four men, wiping their mouths and shouting hilariously. Four ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... reflecting infinite credit upon himself. After a few other remarks the ladies and gentlemen were invited to inspect the library, which for the rest of the evening was the centre of attraction. The coup d'oeil, when once one had fairly entered into this beautifully designed, permanent focus of intellectual wealth, around whose walls were ranged the imperishable memorials of nearly all of man's genius that has been thought worthy of preservation, was striking and memorable. As in the lecture room, those emblems, which are our symbolical as well as actual rallying points in all ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... won't spoil it by coming in now!" called Paul, who was keeping out of the focus of the camera by crouching down behind some bushes. He had heard what Russ said, and had given up his plan of rushing to rescue Ruth. Evidently there ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... influence of trifles upon the greater events of life is a constant theme of speculation among the pragmatics; no petty detail is overlooked in the possibility of its portentous consequences. Walter Shandy's hyperbolic philosophy turned about such a focus, the exaltation of insignificant trifles into mainsprings of action. ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... the end of the last century, formed a set of independent principalities, which varied in taste, in belief, and in literary tone, that we fail to realise the individuality of the scenes of literary activity. At the end of the last century there was one spot which became the very focus of intellectual life. The court of Karl August at Weimar, insignificant in political importance, was great in the history of the human mind.(706) There were gathered there most of the mighty spirits of the golden ago of ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... up, turned and twisted his lithe body into such a grotesque distortion that he was quite awful to look upon, and left no doubt in the girl's mind as to whom he referred. He brought the Far Hill people into focus, ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... could focus his sight upon them, these "shadows," without any light to cast them, moved in distorted guise there on the deck with a motion that was somehow rhythmical—a great movement as of dance ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... for instance—no great distance back—on the great high-priest of our national school of logic and metaphysics,—he who gathered up its divers rays, and, helping them with light from all other sources of human knowledge, concentrated the whole into one powerful focus. No one could look at the massive brow, the large, full, lustrous eyes, the firm compressed lip, without seeing that the demon of energy was powerful within him, and had it not found work in the conquest of all human learning, must ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... northern prairie and the gaunt school-teacher surrounded by his pupils in the thinning afternoon sunlight became memorable to me. It photographed itself on my mind, not sharply, but softened with a fringing prism of feeling, like a picture taken with what camera-men call a "soft-focus." It touched my heart, in some way, and threatened to bring a choke up ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... Norway was not able to avoid occupation by Germany in World War II. In 1949, neutrality was abandoned and Norway became a member of NATO. Discovery of oil and gas in adjacent waters in the late 1960s boosted Norway's economic fortunes. The current focus is on containing spending on the extensive welfare system and planning for the time when petroleum reserves are depleted. In referenda held in 1972 and 1994, Norway rejected joining ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... engrossed was he with his employment that he did not see me until I was within a few paces of him. When he looked up at me it was as though his eyes returned from some far journey. I felt at first out of focus, unplaced, and only gradually coming into view. In his hand he held a lump of earth containing a thrifty young plant of the purple cone-flower, having several blossoms. He worked at the lump deftly, delicately, so that the earth, pinched, powdered ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... Byfield, and brought it to focus upon one of these peepshow rifts: and lo! at the foot of the shaft, imaged, as it were, far down in a luminous well, a green hillside and three figures standing. A white speck fluttered; and fluttered until the rift closed again. Flora's handkerchief! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... persons made every effort to be briefed and informed on as many aspects of the provisions of the proposed Code as possible. As stated later by Dr. S. L. Emsweller (a member of the committee, representing U. S. D. A. and the American Society for Horticultural Science), this situation brought into sharp focus the need in this country for a single horticultural organization of organizations that could serve as authorized in matters at the international level. The American Horticultural Council, to which the Northern Nut Growers Association belongs may ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... small pieces. Usually the prices paid for the nuts are not determined, actually, until the crop starts to move. Everybody has an idea what the market price will be for the nuts, but nothing is crystallized or brought to a focus until the first nuts are actually on the market. Then the nuts sold are examined as to quality, giving some idea of the future quality of deliveries that might be made in that section, and then prices can be established. As I say, it's a nutty ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... most logical of thinking beings has a subconscious as well as a conscious mind, and one of the ways of dealing with an insoluble problem is to make the problem disappear. There were only two ways of doing that, and killing the problem's main focus was a little more complicated. That couldn't be done by the subconscious mind; the conscious had to intervene ...
— Lost in Translation • Larry M. Harris
... as dean of the corps, stood in array to receive the august Emperor. From the spectacular standpoint Dresden is the climax of the Napoleonic drama. Surrounded by men who at least bore the style of sovereigns, the Corsican victor stood alone in the focus of monarchical splendor. At his side, and resplendent, not in her own but in his glory, was the daughter of the Caesars, the child of a royal house second to none in antiquity or majesty, his wife, his consort, his defiance to a passing system. Maria Louisa was as haughty as the Western ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... altogether they pointed to no end, they converged on nothing. She was, it grew more and more apparent, a miscellany bound in a body. She was an animated discursiveness. That passion to get all things together into one aristocratic aim, that restraint of purpose, that imperative to focus, which was the structural essential of Benham's spirit, was altogether foreign to ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... Polly tried to focus everything she knew of him, all her fleeting impressions, in one picture—and failed. He had made himself very agreeable, the single time she had met him; but.... There was Richard's opinion of him: Richard did not like him or trust him; he thought him unscrupulous in ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... intelligent. One's own time had not been exempt. Even since 1870 friends by scores had fallen victims to it. Within five-and-twenty years, a new library had grown out of it. Harvard College was a focus of the study; France supported hospitals for it; England published magazines of it. Nothing was easier than to take one's mind in one's hand, and ask one's psychological friends what they made of it, and the more because it mattered so little to either party, since ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the fashion of young woman who goes to compose the background of life. She raised to the light of the window a face of creamy pallor, with large serious grey eyes, and lips of a gentle and serene composure; but it was not these that redeemed her from being merely negligible and made her the focus of the two men's eyes. It was rather a quality implicit in the whole of her as she sat, feminine and fragile by contrast with even the meager masculinity of Selby, with a suggestion about her, an emanation, of steadfastness and courage as piteous and endearing as the bravery of a lost child. ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... attention, fix my thought on what I am reading, and easily take in its meaning. The act of will, the effort of attention, the intending of the mind on each word and line of the page, just as the eyes are focussed on each word and line, is the power here contemplated. It is the power to focus the consciousness on a given spot, and hold it there Attention is the first and indispensable step in all knowledge. Atten. tion to spiritual things is the first ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... her among the people going back to the village. Once she whirled with an inimitable movement, flinging her fingers toward Skag, in a gesture that seemed to focus the eyes of the whole world upon him. (And in that instant, the American men could not have spoken a word—for the richness ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... as wide as the lagoon: so that I was irresistibly reminded of what I had read of nebular convulsions. A thin cloud overspread the area of the reef and the adjacent sea—the dust, as I could not but fancy, of earlier explosions. And a little apart, there was yet another focus of centrifugal and centripetal flight, where, hard by the deafening line of breakers, her sails (all but the tattered topsail) snugly furled down, and the red rag that marks Old England on the seas beating, union down, at the main—the Flying ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... kill me—I did not know, but I had a dim vision of my sorrowing relatives developing the plate to see how it happened, for I pressed the button at the right time. The picture, such as it is, I give as Plate XL, c. I was so calm and cool and collected that I quite forgot to focus the camera. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... both banks of the St. Lawrence, but chiefly on the northern shore, with the houses grouped into cotes or little villages which almost touched elbows along the banks of the stream. In each of these hamlets the manor-house or home of the seigneur, although not a mansion by any means, was the focus of social life. Sometimes built of timber but more often of stone, with dimensions rarely exceeding twenty feet by forty, it was not much more pretentious than the homes of the more prosperous and thrifty among the seigneur's dependents. Its three or four spacious rooms were, ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... wildly about. Her eyes fell on Caroline and this seemed to bring her into some sort of focus again; the color came back to ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... professional and family selves may be different; they do not always collide. But the various characters that we are in various situations not infrequently do clash. The self whose keynote is ambition or learning may conflict with the self whose focus is love. ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... curio-shops. Jiggle-joggle, jiggle-joggle...! For each pause she was grateful. Whenever Ah Cum (whose normal stride was sufficient to keep him at the side of her chair) pointed out something of interest, she had to strain the cords in her neck to focus her glance upon the object. Supposing the wire should break and her head tumble off her shoulders into the street? The whimsey caused another smile to ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... his assistant a torch in the hand. When I visited the Filipino priest, I was received in a friendly manner by a young girl who, when I offered my hand, thanked me with a bow, saying, "Tengo las sarnas" ("I have the itch"). The malady, which is very common in the Philippines, appears to have its focus in this locality. ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... proportion just mentioned of pupils of this type, the care which should be exercised by the school authorities in the matter of favourable conditions of light, avoidance of visual fatigue, proper distance-adjustments in all visual application as regards focus, symmetry, size of objects, copies, prints, etc., becomes at once sufficiently evident to the thoughtful teacher, as it should be still earlier to the parent. There should be a medical examination, by a competent oculist, ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... where the circumstances of the moment make the epoch such as to focus the life of the ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... said, unconscious that he spoke. At the same instant the stunned eyes found their focus—and found her beside his stirrup, leaning wide from her seat in sweet concern, one gloved hand resting on the pommel of ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... this machine, so as to liberate the force within the compass, say, of this room; but the problem has baffled me. The invisible rays which this machine sends out, and which will penetrate stone, iron, wood, or any other substance, must unite at a focus, and I have not been able to bring that focus nearer me than something over half a mile. Last summer I went to an uninhabited part of Switzerland and there continued my experiments. I blew up at will rocks and boulders on the mountain sides, the distances varying ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... imperative, flighty, irascible and rather foolish little Father, in an ever-increasing degree. "Very coldly received at Court," it is said: ill seen by Walpole and the Powers; being too likely to become a focus of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... as yet much popular interest in the phenomena. Without Mercia's nullifier, the stars were not visible to ordinary eyes, since the light-rays would take years to reach the Earth. But every astronomer who had access to Mercia's nullifier hastened to focus his telescope on the region where extraordinary events were taking place out in the unfathomable gulf of night. Some terrific force was at work, creating worlds and disturbing the positions of stars within a radius already known to extend billions and trillions of miles from ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... my wardrobe, now allow me to show off the rest of my fortune and stock in trade. Father, you shall have the first peep. Let me put my box on the table, and the light—so. Now, stoop, so—look through that glass, so—and—have you got the right focus? Yes!—To the right, you beholds the gallant 'ero, Lord Nelson, him as lost his harm, a just fallin' in the harms of Capen 'Ardy and Victory.—To the left—but first his lordship is a singin' "England expects every man to do his dooty." ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... her hands freely upon the men, as so many "brutes"; it is a crowd annular, compact, and mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its eyes and its heads all bent downwards and inwards, to one common focus. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... man. The 'View' itself has been in a later edition eclipsed by the later 'History of the English Criminal Law.' In point of style it is perhaps better than its successor, because more concentrated to a single focus. Although I do not profess to be a competent critic of the law, a few words will explain the sense in which I take it to be ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus." EMERSON. ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... once said of man: "Stands he not thereby in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities?" One day I saw the American army standing "in the centre of immensities, in the conflux of eternities," at the focus of histories. One day I saw the American army in France march in answer to General Pershing's offer to the Allies at the beginning of the big drive, march to its place in history beside its Allies, the English and ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... so as to be such diverse organs of locomotion as the stilt-like leg of a horse, the flipper of a seal, the whale's paddle, and the bat's wing, while among the birds the wing may change into a flipper like that of the penguin, or become reduced to a vestige as in Apteryx. We may focus our attention upon the material likenesses and differences in such a series of locomotory organs, but an inevitable accompaniment of their physical changes in the transformation of species has ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... instance, contains a poem that reads like a parody of Belinda awaking in the first canto of Pope's Rape of the Lock. The author, identified as W. Overb - - ry, presents a realistic morning scene without either the charms and beauties that surround Pope's Belinda or the viciousness and focus of Swift's similar pictures (see pt. 3, ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... overhead, as if the answer might be etched there in the metal. "Since it is built in as an intrinsic part of the ship, I don't know if it can be counted as cargo or not." He brought his gaze down to focus on Mike. "What do you ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... sympathy; they pose as martyrs—refusing food at table, and eating sweets in their room, or stealing down to the larder at night—to the same end. If mild measures fail, then self-mutilation, half-hearted attempts at suicide, and baseless accusations against others are brought into play to focus ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... designation which, besides attributing to our tragedian his conceded general eminence in character and genius, serves also to distinguish him by merit from his younger brother, who wrote very good tragedy—was an illustrious figure at the Hotel de Rambouillet, that focus of the best literary criticism in France. Corneille reading a play of his to the coterie of wits assembled there under the presidency of ladies whose eyes, as in a kind of tournament of letters, rained influence on authors, and ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... terminated in a huge broken rock, with its nearby soda hill. No such ridge appeared, and no high, round hill. Suddenly his gaze became rivetted upon the southern horizon. What was that stretching away, long, and dark, and winding? Surely—surely it was—trees! Again and again he tried to focus his gaze upon that long dark line, but always his lids drew over his stinging eyeballs, and with a half-sobbed curse, he dashed the water from his eyes. At last he saw it—the green of distant timber. "The Missouri—five miles—maybe more. Oh God, if the horses hold out!" Running, ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... in business, Cyrus H. McCormick might be named. The inventor of the reaper and builder of the first American business which covered the world was not a man of extraordinary intellect, wit, or judgment. He had, however, the will and power to focus his attention on a single question until the answer was evolved. Again and again, his biographers tell us, he pursued problems which eluded him far into the night and he was frequently found asleep at his desk the morning following. ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... swung away from the yellow sun and swept its orbits. The dots that were planets came into focus and out again. Hugh McCann didn't even need to count them, nor to calculate their distance from the sun. He knew the system too well to have ...
— An Empty Bottle • Mari Wolf
... magic. That is because those arts can accomplish their function in the choice and development of some special situation, which lifts or glorifies a character, in itself not poetical. To realise this situation, to define in a chill and empty atmosphere, the focus where rays, in themselves pale and impotent, unite and begin to burn, the artist has to employ the most cunning detail, to complicate and refine upon thought and passion a thousand-fold. The poems of ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... any reason there is immobility of labor, there is always lowering of the wage rate. The trades and general industries for which women are suited are highly localized. They focus in the cities and large towns, and women must seek them there. Great manufactories drain the surrounding country; yet even with these opportunities an analysis of the industrial statistics of the United States by General Walker showed that the women workers of the country made up but seven per ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... magnetic, electric conductor for the magician's will. It directs the flow of his thought and concentrates it upon a given point in space or an object. It is, magically, what the sights of a rifle are to a sportsman. It enables him to focus his powers with exact precision upon the mark against which, or upon which, his will is directed. Apart from this there is no power, per se, in the Wand itself, any more than there is in a lightning conductor ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... (similarly sterile) by its pragmatic treatment of the problem of knowledge. As the views of knowledge, reality and truth imputed to humanism have been those so far most fiercely attacked, it is in regard to these ideas that a sharpening of focus seems most urgently required. I proceed therefore to bring the views which I impute to humanism in these respects into focus ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... Valencia. Farther up is seen the bridge of boats which traverses the water. The principal object of this prospect, however, is the Golden Tower, where the beams of the setting sun seem to be concentrated as in the focus, so that it appears built of pure gold, and probably from that circumstance received the name which it now bears. Cold, cold must the heart be which can remain insensible to the beauties of this magic scene, to ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... confirmed by Christian, Jewish, and heathen writers, that the Temple of Jerusalem was never built again, for as the foundation was about to be laid, fire broke out of the ground accompanied by an earthquake. The same earthquake also destroyed Delphi, "the centre of the earth," and the focus of the religious ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... unclouded splendour and happiness for the woman in whom pity for her lover was soon replaced by a passion as ardent as his own. Fetes and banquets and balls succeeded each other in swift sequence, at all of which Aurora was Queen, the focus of all eyes, and receiving universal homage, won no more by her beauty and her position as the Elector's favourite than by her sweetness and graciousness to the humblest. No mistress of a King was ever more beloved than this daughter ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... 'meaning,' and finally by a deliberate effort of recollection and thought. Tennyson, partly because he was a born poet and partly perhaps because his excessive use of tobacco put his brain occasionally a little out of focus, was extraordinarily accurate in his account of those separate mental states which for most men are merged into one by memory. A song, for instance, in the 'Princess,' describes the succession which I ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... in a disconnected sort of way," he said, evidently trying to focus his thoughts on a problem set by the gods, and which, in consequence, was incapable of logical solution by a mere mortal. "It was a fine night. I felt restless. The four walls of a room were prison-like. I strolled out. I was thinking of you. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... an absolute God, is the God of the human heart. The writer would suggest that the great outline of the theological struggles of that phase of civilisation and world unity which produced Christianity, was a persistent but unsuccessful attempt to get these two different ideas of God into one focus. It was an attempt to make the God of Nature accessible and the God of the Heart invincible, to bring the former into a conception of love and to vest the latter with the beauty of stars and flowers ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... diaphragm at b, which will serve as a support for an eye-piece micrometer. This last, B, is a scale engraved on glass, and may be purchased of any optical instrument maker, though it may be necessary to send the eye-piece to have it properly fitted. When resting on the diaphragm it is in focus for the upper lens, so that on looking through the microscope, the scale is clearly seen in whatever position the instrument may be as regards the object being looked at. Suppose this to be a small button of gold on a shallow, flat watch-glass, on the stage of the microscope. ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... our legs. The day was full of an intense nervous strain, an entire absorption in the precise present. We promptly forgot a difficulty as soon as we were by it: we had not time to think of those still ahead. All outside the insistence of the moment was blurred and unimportant, like a specialized focus, so I cannot tell you much about the scenery. The only outside impression we received was that the canon floor was slowly rising to ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... reawoke slumbering science with a trumpet-call which frightened the Inquisition out of its senses; Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, Da Vinci, Del Sarto created models of art for all succeeding time. Never was there in any region of the world such a focus of illuminating fire. Never will there live a race that does not own its debt to the great seers and creators ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... again, Mrs. Byrd? I'd like to ask you a few questions," interposed Farraday, who had been turning the pages of Mary's manuscript. "Mac, you be off. I can't focus my mind in the ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... carried into houses which gave then a full view. Mivart's, the retreat of princes, had the bustle of a Bond Street hotel. Ashburnham House was in a state of siege. And Buckingham palace, with its guards, cavalcades, musterings of the multitude, and thundering of brass bands, seemed to be the focus of a national revolution. But it was within the palace that the grand display existed. The gilt candelabra, the gold plate, the maids of honour, all fresh as tares in June; and the ladies in waiting, all Junos and Minervas, all jewelled, and none ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... afternoons in the botany laboratory. There were few students. How she loved to sit on her high stool before the bench, with her pith and her razor and her material, carefully mounting her slides, carefully bringing her microscope into focus, then turning with joy to record her observation, drawing joyfully in her book, if the ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... ancient (Mochura), which Ptolemy places in north lat. 24 30', applied to the whole district in South Midian, and then came to denote the chief place and centre of work. To judge by the extent of the ruins, and the signs of labour, this focus was at Umm el-Karyt (the "Mother of the Villages"), which, as has been shown, is surrounded by a multitude of miner-towns and ateliers. And the produce of the "diggings" would naturally gravitate to El-Bad, the great commercial station upon ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... then proposed that he (the mesmeriser) should place his hand over the card; in short, that the card should be blinded and not the eye. Our reason will be obvious. According to the known laws of vision, viz. the convergence of all the rays of light to a focus in the eye, were the least part of this exposed, vision, though imperfect, of every object within the visual angle, would follow; but, were the object covered, a partial opening would assist vision but little, and only quoad the part exposed. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... his eyes. Stella's keener vision made out a black, indistinct figure moving against the yellow background of a far away sand-ridge, and she stood up, clinging to Moore's seat, to gain a better view. Sikes got the object in focus. ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... was mainly due to her that Holland House became the focus of all that was brilliant in Europe. In the memoirs of her father - Sydney Smith - Mrs. Austin writes: 'The world has rarely seen, and will rarely, if ever, see again all that was to be found within the walls of Holland House. Genius and merit, in whatever ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... eyes went out over the hills to where Monticello brooded over great memories, "he was not a boob. He was so big that little people like us can't focus ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... leadership had been the same. J. G. Holland estimated that not more than one in five of the people in Washington in the winter of 1860-61 were glad to have Lincoln come. He was not far from right. Lamon called the city "a focus ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... emergence of minor constants, the inexorable trend toward Price Factor and then verification, verification, to each his own, with all the subtle and shaded values of the Augment Index brought finally to focus on ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... never fully carried out. They were only intended to make an impression on the outer world and to appease the continually growing body of supporters of the reform party, especially numerous in South China. The south remained, nevertheless, a focus of hostility to the Manchus. After his failure in 1898, K'ang Yo-wei went to Europe, and no longer played any important political part. His place was soon taken by a young Chinese physician who had been living abroad, Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), who ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... of the shocks lasted two seconds; the other, from ten to twelve seconds, accompanied by a rumbling noise. The line of disturbance was from north to south, striking the Mendips, and traversing parts of the shires of Somerset and Gloucester. 'The chief focus of oscillation was at Cheddar, where the hill is said to have waved to and fro during several seconds; and in the alluvial flat or marsh below Cheddar, some houses had the plaster of the ceilings cracked; while in others, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... my glasses and turned them on the store. The door was open, and so was the window. In the gloom of the interior I made out Henriques' legs. He was standing by the counter, and apparently talking to Japp. He moved to shut the door, and came back inside my focus opposite the window. There he stayed for maybe ten minutes, while I hugged my impatience. I would have given a hundred pounds to be snug in my old room with japp thinking ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... questions and receive answers from the figures he saw in the mirror. It was often necessary that the stone should be turned one way and another in different positions, before the person who consulted it gained the right focus; and then the objects to be observed would sometimes shew themselves on the surface of the stone, and sometime in different parts of the room by virtue of the action of the stone. It had also this peculiarity, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... "About that business—" he began desperately; but the poet's soft, heavy hand hovered in mid-air, and Wayne sat down so suddenly that when his eyes recovered their focus the poet ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... must have been like Ellen; her hair was the ashes of such a fire as burned over Ellen's brows, and she had Ellen's short upper lip, though of course she had never been fierce nor a swift runner, and no present eye could guess if she had ever been a focus of romantic love. The aged are terrible—mere heaps of cinders on the grass from which none can tell how tall the flames once were or what ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... of Engelberg lies high, and is little more than a cleft in the huge mass of mountains; a narrow gap where storms gather, and bring themselves into a focus. In the summer thunder-clouds draw together, and fill up the whole valley, while rain falls in torrents, and the streams war and rage along their stony channels. But when Jean Merle returned to it in March, after four months' absence, the valley was covered with snow stretching up to the summits ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton |
