"Optic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ceased when the superior Fiend Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, Behind him cast. The broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe. His spear—to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great ammiral, were but a wand— He walked with, to ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... only with the inner eye, but that the calamity which disabled the astronomer would restore inspiration to the poet. How deeply he was impressed appears, not merely from the famous comparison of Satan's shield to the moon enlarged in "the Tuscan artist's optic glass," but by the ventilation in the fourth and eighth books of "Paradise Lost," of the points at ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... up the optic nerve, or nerve of sight, are branches of nerve cells in the eye, and extend into the brain stem. Light striking the eye starts nerve currents, which run along these axons into the brain stem. Similarly, the axons of the nerve of smell are branches ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... ascertained, 1.40 grain euphthalmine inserted, and examination of eye grounds showed no optic atrophy. The right eye ground (retina) was slightly higher in color ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... the newborn states beheld The shock sustain of many a hard-fought field; Swift o'er the main, with high-spread sails, advance Our brave auxiliars from the coast of France. On the tall decks their curious chiefs explore, With optic tube, our camp-encumber'd shore; And, as the lessening wave behind them flies, Wide scenes of conflict open on their eyes. Rochambeau foremost with his gleamy brand Points to each field and singles every band, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... and objects. When an object augments or diminishes to the eye or imagination from a comparison with others, the image and idea of the object are still the same, and are equally extended in the retina, and in the brain or organ of perception. The eyes refract the rays of light, and the optic nerves convey the images to the brain in the very same manner, whether a great or small object has preceded; nor does even the imagination alter the dimensions of its object on account of a comparison with others. The question then is, how from the same impression ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... the hull, two of them provided with hammers to drive in the nails, while the third held the materials. We found that these men could remain at work forty-eight seconds at a time. When they emerged, their eyes were always red and starting; the effect of the violent strain upon the optic nerve which the use of the sight under water produces. We had some skilful divers among our own sailors, who, although they could not have attempted this work, were able to inspect what was done by the Wahuaners, and to report ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... crucified martyrs!" the prostrate man burst forth. "I said a little, Jarvis! You drown my optic nerves in ink and, without a moment's warning, flood them with the glaring brilliancy of the noonday sun!" Jarvis half-drew the curtain. "Ah, that's better. Never more than an inch at a time, Jarvis. How many times have I told you that? Never ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... was easy for him to invent a plausible excuse for this mishap; he had run slap against a door when getting up in the dark. And, of course, nobody believed him, though only a select few understood the true origin of his damaged optic. ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... network capacity; despite major improvements in trunk and urban systems, telecommunication services are still not readily available to the majority of the rural population domestic: microwave radio relay, coaxial cable, fiber-optic cable, cellular, and satellite international: satellite earth stations - 3 Intelsat (1 Atlantic Ocean and 2 Indian Ocean); 3 operational international gateway exchanges (1 at Karachi and 2 at Islamabad); microwave radio relay ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... generally a matter of good luck. So far as submarines are concerned the fact must not be over looked that movements in the sea are carried out under blind conditions: the navigator is unable to see where he is going; the optic faculty is rendered nugatory. Contrast the disability of the submarine with the privileges of its consort in the air. The latter is able to profit from vision. The aerial navigator is able to see every inch of his way, at least during daylight. When ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... perusing, and its reading to anticipation. For the volume is but the first of the Old Glory Series, and the imprint is that of the famed firm of Lee and Shepard, whose name has been for so many years linked with the publications of Oliver Optic. As a matter of fact, the story is right in line with the productions of that gifted and most fascinating of authors, and certainly there is every cause for congratulation that the stirring events of our recent war are not to ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... of the Book of Job came from a strange land and of a strange parentage. 5. The optic nerve passes from the brain to the back of the eyeball, and there spreads out. 6. Between the mind of man and the outer world are interposed the nerves of the human body. 7. All forms of the lever and all the ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... them with something less than pleasure. It was clear that the face did not like being illuminated. It was very bright, much too bright. It seemed to be searing its way through the face's closed eyelids, right past the optic nerves into the brain-pan itself. The face twisted in a sudden spasm, as if its brain were shriveling with heat. Its owner thoughtfully turned over, and the face sought the seclusion and comparative ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... (reported in the Lancet), in a speech at University College, pointed out the close connection of the optic and auditory nerves with ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... a transverse section through the head of an embryo of the approximate age of the one just described; it passes through both forebrain, fb, and hindbrain, hb; through the extreme edge of the optic vesicles, ov, and through the anterior end of the notochord, nt. It is just cephalad to the anterior end of the pharynx and to the hypophysis. The chief purpose in showing this section is to represent the two large ...
— Development of the Digestive Canal of the American Alligator • Albert M. Reese
... defect—Dr. Custer was right about that. The eyes are perfect, beautiful gray eyes, he says, and the optic nerves and auditory nerves are perfectly functional. The defect isn't there. It's deeper. Too ...
— Second Sight • Alan Edward Nourse
... cup-shaped, and it was this bone that afforded protection. It was evident that when the eye was completely turned in the swordfish could not see at all. Probably this was for close battle. The muscles were very heavy and strong, one attached at the rim of the eye and the other farther back. The optic nerve was as large as the median nerve of a man's arm—that is to say, half the size of a lead-pencil. There were three coverings over the fluid that held the pupil. And these were as thick and tough as isinglass. Most remarkable of all ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... Optic lobes: the laterals lobes of the procerebrum in which are centered the nerves supplying the organs ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... her like an entomologist over a favorite beetle. Take her for what she seems, and chuck analysis. She is decorative. She satisfies the optic nerve." ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... organ which can be called an eye consists of an optic nerve, surrounded by pigment-cells and covered by translucent skin, but without any lens or other refractive body. We may, however, according to M. Jourdain, descend even a step lower and find aggregates of pigment-cells, apparently serving as organs of vision, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... Punctual Pride Superb, haughty Plenty Copious Pitch Bituminous Priest Sacerdotal Rival Emulous Root Radical Ring Annular Reason Rational Revenge Vindictive Rule Regular Speech Loquacious, garrulous, eloquent Smell Olfactory Sight Visual, optic, perspicuous, conspicuous Side Lateral, collateral Skin Cutaneous Spittle Salivial Shoulder Humeral Shepherd Pastoral Sea Marine, maritime Share Literal Sun Solar Star Astral, sideral, stellar Sunday Dominical ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... in plenty, but they were of 'such stuff as dreams are made on,' and vanished at a wink, only to appear in other places; and by and by not only islands, but refulgent and revolving lights began to stud the darkness; lighthouses of the mind or of the wearied optic nerve, solemnly shining and winking as we passed. At length the mate himself despaired, scrambled on board again from his unrestful perch, and announced that we had missed our destination. He was the only man of practice in these ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Proser put up his Dukes, and let fly with both of them, one after another, at the Dullard's conk, drawing claret profusely. Nothing daunted, the Dullard watched his opportunity, and delivered a first-class Royal Prince on the Proser's right eye, half closing that optic. The men now closed, but broke away again almost directly. Some smart fibbing, in which neither could claim an advantage, ensued. The round was brought to a close by some rapid exchanges, after which the Proser went down. Betting 6 to 4 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... look intently; strain one's eyes; fix the eyes upon, rivet the eyes upon; stare, gaze; pore over, gloat on; leer, ogle, glare; goggle; cock the eye, squint, gloat, look askance. Adj. seeing &c. v.; visual, ocular; optic, optical; ophthalmic. clear-eyesighted &c. n.; eagle-eyed, hawk-eyed, lynx-eyed, keen-eyed, Argus-eyed. visible &c. 446. Adv. visibly &c. 446; in sight of, with one's eyes open at sight, at first sight, at a glance, at the first blush; prima facie[Lat]. Int. look! &c. (attention) 457. Phr. the scales ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the only one on the river. I had heard so much about it from others, as well as from F., that I really did expect something extra. When I entered this imposing place the shock to my optic nerves was so great that I sank helplessly upon one of the benches, which ran, divan-like, the whole length (ten feet!) of the building, and laughed till I cried. There was, of course, no floor. A rude nondescript, in one ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... warm spot in my heart and a nook on my private shelf for Oliver Optic and Horatio Alger. Though I bar them from my library (I mean my Library with a big L) I have no right to exclude them from my private collection of favorites, for once I loved them. I scarcely know why or how. If there had been in those far-off days ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... continued, and with the nerves which come off from it: of the segments of which it is composed—the olfactory lobes, the cerebral hemisphere, and the succeeding divisions—no one predominates so much over the rest as to obscure or cover them; and the so-called optic lobes are, frequently, the largest masses of all. In Reptiles, the mass of the brain, relatively to the spinal cord, increases and the cerebral hemispheres begin to predominate over the other parts; while in Birds this predominance is still more marked. The brain of ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... author has come before the public during the present generation who has achieved a larger and more deserving popularity among young people than "Oliver Optic." His stories have been very numerous, but they have been uniformly excellent in moral tone and literary quality. As indicated in the general title, it is the author's intention to conduct the readers of this entertaining series "around the world." As a means to this end, the hero of the ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... dangers to be contended with are that the ethmoid cells may be mistaken for the sphenoids; that we may go too low and enter the pons and medulla; that, laterally, we may enter the cavernous sinus, and above, that we may injure the optic nerve. ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... eyes turned slightly to the left and began to get the rest—the great levelled creature upon the darkened floor. Skag kept his imagination down until his optic nerves actually brought him the picture. The long thin sweep was the mother's tail, yet she was not crouched. Skag saw her sprawled paws extended toward him. She lay upon ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... this; for his grace the Duke, whether irresistibly carried on by the full tide of harmony, or whether to impress the strangers with a proper idea of his consequence, chose to sing his ditty to an end before addressing them, though, during the whole time, he closely scrutinized them with his single optic. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the gentleman's eyes. He did so very conscientiously, and it was an interesting experience, for he was kept busy answering Mr. Edison's numerous questions. When the oculist finished, he turned to me and said: 'I have been many years in the business, but have never seen an optic nerve like that of this gentleman. An ordinary optic nerve is about the thickness of a thread, but his is like a cord. He must be a remarkable man in some walk ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... fiber-optic cable - a multichannel communications cable using a thread of optical glass fibers as a transmission medium in which the signal (voice, video, etc.) is in the form of a coded ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... work upon are the heart and the imagination. Get a hold on their affections by encouraging words and manifesting a readiness to help them, and you command their devotion and confidence. Give them interesting books (Optic and Alger, if needs be), and you fix their attention. Above all, let the book be interesting; for the attention is never fixed by, nor does the memory ever retain, what is laborious to read. But, once assured of their devotion, with their confidence secured and their attention ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... editorial on the Big Bluff Extension to the hands of the Honorable Abner Dean, Assemblyman from Angel's. The loss of the Honorable Mr. Dean's right eye in an early pioneer fracas did not prevent him from looking into the dim vista of the future and discovering with that single unaided optic enough to fill three columns of the "Star." "It is not too extravagant to say," he remarked with charming deprecation, "that Indian Spring, through its own perfectly organized system of inland transportation, the confluence of its North Fork with the Sacramento River, and their combined ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... 650,000 telephones; 177 telephones/1,000 persons; progress on installation of fiber optic cable and construction of facilities for mobile cellular phone service remains in the negotiation phase for joint venture agreement local: NA intercity: NA international: international connections to other former republics of the USSR are by landline or microwave and to other countries ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... in causing degeneration of the eyes. He refers to experiments by Uhlenhuth, who transplanted eyes of young Salamanders into different parts of their bodies where they were no longer connected with the optic nerves. These eyes underwent a degeneration which was followed by a complete regeneration. He showed that this regeneration took place in complete darkness, and that the transplanted eyes remained normal when the Salamanders were kept in the dark for fifteen months. Hence the development ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... of sixteen engines, cuddies, ports, spars, levers, hatches, stancheons, floating trunks, bibulous boxes heavy with drink, and the awful, mysterious gloom of the water, which is not night or darkness, but the absence of any ray to touch the sensitive optic nerve. The sense of touch the only reliance, and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... the room, when I saw, or seemed to see, a tall figure reaching up a hand to a bookshelf. The next instant, my vision apparently rectified by the comparative dusk, I saw no one, and concluded that my optic nerves had ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... the under surface of the brain, which rests on the floor of the skull, shows the origin of important nerves, called the cranial nerves, the cerebellum, the structure connecting the optic nerves (optic commissure), the bridge of nervous matter (pons Varolii) connecting the two hemispheres of the cerebellum, and ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... use of the adjective for the noun is probably supposed to be humorous, like "canine" for dog, "optic" for eye, "anatomy" for body, and the like. Happily the offense is not ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... and while waiting for the event (which did not occur in their day, however,) they indulged in all the pastimes modern Rome afforded. They shivered through endless galleries, getting 'cricks' in their necks staring at frescoes, and injuring their optic nerves poring over pictures so old that often nothing was visible but a mahogany-coloured leg, an oily face, or the dim outline of a green saint in a whirlwind ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... his sleep-laden eyes and succeeded in opening one, with which he looked at the intruder, but, on recognizing the Colonel's orderly standing at his side, hastily arose to a sitting posture, and proceeded to rub open the other optic; meanwhile repeating his former question, but this time assuming a manner more in keeping with ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... rather than of the intelligence. It commences at night: the incubator begins by seeing nocturnal visions, often of a photopsic* character, or hearing nocturnal sounds, neither of which have any material existence, being conveyed to his optic or auricular nerves not from without, but from within, by the agency of a disordered brain. These the reason, hitherto unimpaired, combats at first, especially when they are nocturnal only; but being reproduced, and becoming diurnal, the judgment succumbs under the morbid impression ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... wakened on election morning with the damaged optic swollen shut and sadly discolored. Realizing that this unfortunate condition would not win votes, Mr. Hopkins remained at home all day and nagged his long-suffering spouse, whose tongue was ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... gunpowder, capable of being exploded by certain kinds of external excitation; but neither the gunpowder nor the material in the ear develops any energy other than that in it at the outset. In the same way the optic nerve has, at its end, a bit of mechanism readily excited by light vibrations of the ether, and hence the optic nerve will always be excited when ether vibrations chance to have an opportunity of setting the optic machinery in ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... the universal reason, His will as surrendered to the will of God, His human affections as fused in the fire of divine feeling, His body as a phantom. They could not admit that He lived the real life of a real man. They could not see the value of such a life. Neo-Platonism had paralysed their optic nerve. Thinkers such as the Christologians of Alexandria, imbued with the spirit of Neo-Platonism, had no motive for preserving the distinct subsistence of Christ's human nature. It was their boast that their ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... body I seemed to have full power over the muscles of the back, and considerable power over those of the neck, but none over my limbs....I dimly saw Mr. Coxwell in the ring, and endeavoured to speak, but could not do so; when in an instant black darkness came over me, and the optic nerve lost power suddenly. I was still conscious, with as active a brain as whilst writing this. I thought I had been seized with asphyxia, and that I should experience no more, as death would come unless we speedily descended. Other thoughts ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... had been the unusual fruit of the raid—unusual because when the boatswain and others had rushed to recover what they thought was their captain's mangled body, they discovered their leader unmarred by the blast but stone-blind from the shock. An injured optic nerve, the San Francisco specialists ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... measure, maintains the form of the eyeball and protects the more delicate structures within it. Its interior portion, which is covered by the ocular conjunctiva, is commonly known as the "white of the eye." In form it is bell-shaped, and the optic nerve pierces it behind like a handle, the perforation being a little to its inner side. In front, the rim of the bell becomes continuous with the cornea. The outer surface of the membrane receives the insertion of the muscles of the eyeball. The coat is ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... a nervous illness is well illustrated by two cases reported by Thaddeus Hoyt Ames.[39] A young woman, the drudge of the family, suddenly became hysterically blind, that is, she became blind despite the fact that her eyes and optic nerves proved to be unimpaired. She remained blind until it was proved to her that a part of her welcomed the blindness and had really produced it for the purpose of getting away from the monotony of her unappreciated life at home. She naturally resented the charge but finally ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... was, I'd have you know, Something of a boxing pro., So he knew the golden maxim: "He who eyes his man best whacks him." Shorty, when he saw the grim Optic that was turned on him, Thinking Jimmy's fist looked hard Prudently remained on guard. Canny Hun! And who can blame Longshanks if he did the same? But our hero, irritated, Grassed the third man while ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... position: we do not see with our outward eye any more than we do with spectacles. The apparent ocular apparatus is but the passive, unconscious instrument to transmit images thrown through it upon a fine interior fibre, the optic nerve; and even this does not take cognizance of the object, but is only another conductor, carrying the image still farther inward, to the intellectual nerves of the brain; and not until it reaches them ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... sleep by wearying out the optic nerve of the eyes, by making the patient fix them upon a certain spot for a time, generally situated where it is a little wearisome for the eyes to find it. The fatigue thus induced spreads from the ocular muscles to the system, causing ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... There's a place in the brain stem called the isthmus, no cell masses, just bundles of fibers running up and down. Almost all the nerves come off below that point; and the few that don't can be spliced together, except the smell nerves and optic nerve. Ever notice I can't smell, Willie? And they transplanted my eyes with the brain—biggest trick ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... an open page of a textbook, but not studying; not even reading; not even thinking. Nor was he lost in a reverie: his mind's eye was shut, as his physical eye might well have been, for the optic nerve, flaccid with ennui, conveyed nothing whatever of the printed page upon which the orb of vision was partially focused. Penrod was doing something very unusual and rare, something almost never accomplished except by coloured people or by a boy in school on a spring day: he was doing ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... hand first; then she extended her efforts to the servants, with consequences more disastrous to the domestic harmony; and lastly she applied herself to Lethbury. She proved to him by statistics that he smoked too much, and that it was injurious to the optic nerve to read in bed. She took him to task for not going to church more regularly, and pointed out to him the evils of desultory reading. She suggested that a regular course of study encourages mental concentration, ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... dodging about the human ring, was indulged in by Dick, but William foiled each blow, and as the Cambridge man inadvertently rubbed his swollen eye, the Bard landed a stinging blow on the left optic of Milton and sent him into ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... Fiber-optic cable - a multichannel communications cable using a thread of optical glass fibers as a transmission medium in which the signal (voice, video, etc.) is in the form of a ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... pent the whole year through, Man views the world, as through an optic glass, On a chance holiday, and scarcely then, How by ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... hope. Look at the pupils yourself, count; there is not the least susceptibility to the light; there is a paralysis of the optic nerve. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... as ether is physical matter, etheric sight depends upon the sensitiveness of the optic nerve while spiritual sight is acquired by developing latent vibratory powers in two little organs situated in the brain: the Pituitary body and the Pineal gland. Nearsighted people even, may have etheric vision. Though unable to read the print in a book, they may be able to ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... best means of obviating the present danger, while the persons whom he beheld glimmered before him, less like distinct and individual forms, than like the phantoms of a fever, or the phantasmagoria with which a disease of the optic nerves has been known to people a sick man's chamber. At length they assembled in the centre of the apartment where they had first appeared, and seemed to arrange themselves into form and order. A great number of black torches were successively lighted, and the scene became distinctly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... little man laughed heartily at the success of his stratagem, and polished and fondled the great eye until that optic seemed to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... joint venture agreement to install fiber-optic cable and construct facilities for cellular telephone service is in the implementation phase domestic: NA international: international connections to other former Soviet republics are by landline or microwave radio relay and to other countries ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... typical examples. That the variation would be unequal seems almost self-evident from the varying rapidity and extent of the effects of use and disuse on different tissues and on different parts of the general structure. The optic nerve may atrophy in a few months from disuse consequent on the loss of the eye. Some of the bones of the rudimentary hind legs of the whale are still in existence after disuse for an enormous period. Evidently use-inheritance could not equally modify ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... about: I am sure I couldn't otherwise have written so much. With scenes, when I think, what certitude did I want more?—scenes being the root of the matter, especially when they bristled with proper names and noted movements; especially, above all, when they flowered at every pretext into the very optic and perspective of the stage, where the boards diverged correctly, from a central point of vision, even as the lashes from an eyelid, straight down to the footlights. Let this reminiscence remind us of how rarely in those days the real stage was carpeted. The difficulty ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... of childhood typify innocence; the narrowed line of the flirt's optic proves the invasion of art. The horizontal mouth is the mark of determined cunning; who has not read Nature's most spontaneous lyric in lips rounded ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... below, and in direct connection by nervous tracts with both of these. The technical names of the more important of these organs are these: the "corpora striata," or striped bodies, of which there are two, the "optic thalami," also two in number, and the "cerebellum" or little brain, situated behind. These make up what is called the "second level" in the system. They seem to be especially concerned with the life of sensation. When the centres lying above them, the hemispheres, are removed, ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... between the first and second buttons of his coat, and the other raised in that gesture with which the orator stills the sea of discontent, he stepped forward, and turning slowly about, brought his eyes to bear on the contumacious Bolum. He indicated the target. Every optic gun in the room was levelled at it. The upraised hand, the potent silence, the solemn gaze of a hundred eyes was too much for the old man to bear. Slowly he swung back on two legs of his chair, caught the rungs again with the projecting soles, turned his eyes to the ceiling, closed them, and set ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... observed that the size of the occipital lobes is in proportion to the size of the optic tracts, and that the occipital lobes are the centers ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... who have not read some of the writings of this famous author, whose books are scattered broadcast and eagerly sought for. Oliver Optic has the faculty of writing books full of dash and energy, such as ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... without altering its distance. Under normal conditions a change in size is followed by a corresponding change in the distance. It is probable that we have here inadequate convergence and that the optic axes do not intersect at the object but beyond, so that the axes are more or less parallel. Thus the feeling of convergence is less intense than experience teaches is necessary to perceive the object as such a size and at such a distance. If degree of convergence ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... The optic or visual, the palpebral or pupil, and the eyebrow agent. Each of these has its peculiar sense, and we shall show how they ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... to "read the mind's construction in the face." But, then, in every species of reading, so much depends upon the eyes of the reader; if they are blear, or apt to dazzle, or inattentive, or strained with too much attention, the optic power will infallibly bring home false reports of what it reads. How often do we say, upon a cursory glance at a stranger, "What a fine open countenance he has!" who, upon second inspection, proves to have the exact features of a knave? ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... undone or something. Trousers? Suppose I when I was? No. Gently does it. Dislike rough and tumble. Kiss in the dark and never tell. Saw something in me. Wonder what. Sooner have me as I am than some poet chap with bearsgrease plastery hair, lovelock over his dexter optic. To aid gentleman in literary. Ought to attend to my appearance my age. Didn't let her see me in profile. Still, you never know. Pretty girls and ugly men marrying. Beauty and the beast. Besides I can't be so if Molly. Took off her hat to show her hair. Wide brim. Bought to ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... involved in our perception of different smells or different sounds. Dr Brown's doctrine, in which Mr Mill seems to concur, is, that the perception of superficial extension no more results from a certain expanse of the optic nerve being affected by a variety of colours than it results from a certain expanse of the olfactory nerve being affected by a variety of odours.[30] So much for Mr Bailey's assertion, that all philosophers admit the perception of extension in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... smiles in that small heavenly space, Ringed with the tree-trunk's leafy grace, While upward grins his ghastly face As if some wild-wood Satyr, Some gnomish Ptolemy should dare Up that dark optic tube to stare, As all unveiled she floated there, Poor maiden ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... wedding any day, as when one took place it always meant three, though she couldn't "fetch the third couple together, even in her mind's eye," which I have found to be usually a capacious and well filled optic. ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... eyes riveted on that slight figure before him, as though he wished to absorb it through the optic nerves and hold it in his brain forever. He understood the situation perfectly. His brain worked slowly, but he had a keen sense of the values of things. This girl represented an entirely new species of humanity to him, but he ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... eye is not of flesh but one of manufacture. It is placed in sensitive connection with the optic nerve, on which images are thrown by the delicate mechanism of the false eye. The sight thus obtained is almost one-half as distinct as that which is enjoyed ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... a very fine large theatre) one finds that Miss Grace George is to be the next attraction. On the train to Saratoga one rides on the same train with the Million Dollar Doll, and those who have seen her "paper" on the billboards in Newburgh or Poughkeepsie keep an attentive optic open for the lady herself to see how nearly she lives up to her lithographs. And if the passerby should see a lighted window in the hotel glimmering at two in the morning, he will probably aver that there are ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... and are now practically worthless as far as vision is concerned. All moles, however, can tell darkness from light, consequently, are not wholly blind—a certain amount of sight remains. This is due to the fact that, although the optic nerve, on examination, is invariably found to be atrophied or wasted, there yet remain in the shrivelled nerve-cord true nerve-cells; these nerve-cells transmit light impressions ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... and if they grew darker as she grew older, it was only a darker blue. Watho, with the help of Falca, took the greatest possible care of her—in every way consistent with her plans, that is, the main point in which was that she should never see any light but what came from the lamp. Hence her optic nerves, and indeed her whole apparatus for seeing, grew both larger and more sensitive; her eyes, indeed, stopped short only of being too large. She was a sadly dainty little creature. No one in the world except those two was aware of the being of the little bat. ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... probably for the simple reason that more of the poison is thereby absorbed. The condition found in the eye in the early stages is that of extreme congestion only; but this, unless remedied at once, leads to gradually increasing disease of the optic nerve, and then, of course, blindness is absolute and beyond remedy. It is, therefore, evident that, to be of any value, the treatment of disease of the eye due to excessive smoking must be immediate, or it will probably be useless."—Journal ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... faculties and actions of a man, and to impose a perpetual illusion on the senses of his friends and enemies. Articulate sounds vibrated on the ears of the disciples; but the image which was impressed on their optic nerve eluded the more stubborn evidence of the touch; and they enjoyed the spiritual, not the corporeal, presence of the Son of God. The rage of the Jews was idly wasted against an impassive phantom; and the mystic ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... perhaps twelve feet—with a high conical roof. The roof had an inner lining of wood, and through a hole in it—where a panel had been slid back—a large optic-glass, raised on a pivot-stand, thrust its nose out into the night. Close within the door stood an oaken press, and beside it, on a tripod, a brazier filled with charcoal and glowing. A truckle-bed, a chair, and two benches made ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... startling enough, is the fact that the eye is evolved out of a portion of the skin; and that while the crystalline lens and its surroundings thus originate, the "percipient portions of the organs of special sense, especially of optic organs, are often formed from the same part of the primitive epidermis" which forms the central nervous system.[59] Similarly is it with the organs for smelling and hearing. These, too, begin as sacs ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... of Oliver Optic's Library of travel and adventure chronicles the doings of the Young America and her crew in British ports and waters, and is replete with thrilling adventures and descriptions of ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... fate of our still surviving companions. Mr. Roper had received two or three spear wounds in the scalp of his head; one spear had passed through his left arm, another into his cheek below the jugal bone, and penetrated the orbit, and injured the optic nerve, and another in his loins, besides a heavy blow on the shoulder. Mr. Calvert had received several severe blows from a waddi; one on the nose which had crushed the nasal bones; one on the elbow, and ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... (Gutta Serena). It was once thought that this sort of blindness was an incurable extinction of vision by a transparent watery humor distilling on the optic nerve. It caused total blindness, but made no visible change in the eye. It is now known that this sort of blindness arises from obstruction in the capillary nerve-vessels, and in some cases at least is curable. Milton, speaking of his own blindness, expresses a doubt whether it arose from the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... guards, the old storekeeper always carried a well-chosen stock of juvenile fiction in cloth; and those fellows who were fond of spending their spare hours in reading the works of old favorites like Optic and Alger, as well as numerous more recent additions to the ranks of authors, were to be found poring over the contents of numerous book shelves and racks, deciding which volume they would ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... or my legs. As in the case of the arms, so all muscular power was lost in an instant from my back and neck. I dimly saw Mr. Coxwell, and endeavoured to speak, but could not. In an instant intense darkness overcame me, so that the optic nerve lost power suddenly; but I was still conscious, with as active a brain as at the present moment whilst writing this. I thought I had been seized with asphyxia, and believed I should experience nothing more, as death ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... transparent eyeball" is about as near it as he ever came. This was almost too much for some of his admirers and worshippers. One of his most ardent and faithful followers, whose gifts as an artist are well known, mounted the eyeball on legs, and with its cornea in front for a countenance and its optic nerve projecting behind as a queue, the spiritual cyclops was shown ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... of the appearances they presented. They resembled the real cities seen on the coast of Holland, where towers, and battlements, and spires, "bosomed high in tufted trees," rise on the level horizon, and are seen floating on the surface of the sea. Among the optic deceptions noticed by Captain Scoresby, was one of a very singular nature. His ship had been separated by the ice, from that of his father for some time; and he was looking for her every day, with great anxiety. At length, one evening, to his utter ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... opening the telecommunications market to competition and foreign investment with the "Telecommunications Liberalization Plan of 1998", Argentina encouraged the growth of modern telecommunication technology; fiber-optic cable trunk lines are being installed between all major cities; the major networks are entirely digital and the availability of telephone service is being improved; however, telephone density is presently minimal, and making telephone ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... considerable skill as an anatomist, and it is known that, within a few years of his death, having caught a mole in his garden, he dissected it most skilfully, with a view to discover the peculiarities of the eyes and optic nerves of that singular animal. His knowledge of chemical and medical science was, in after life, of great service to him. No doubt it was a considerable factor in the marvellous defence he made of Palmer, the Rugeley poisoner, which, though unsuccessful, was universally considered ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... structure. But when I say that the eye "makes use of" light, I do not merely mean that the eye is capable of seeing; I allude to the very precise relations that exist between this organ and the apparatus of locomotion. The retina of vertebrates is prolonged in an optic nerve, which, again, is continued by cerebral centres connected with motor mechanisms. Our eye makes use of light in that it enables us to utilize, by movements of reaction, the objects that we see to be advantageous, and to avoid those which we see to be injurious. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... eye to dilate, whereas, if the person in question had only thought of the dilatation of the pupil, the mere wish to dilate it would not have brought about the result, inasmuch as the motion of the gland, which serves to impel the animal spirits towards the optic nerve in a way which would dilate or contract the pupil, is not associated in nature with the wish to dilate or contract the pupil, but with the wish to look at remote or very near objects. Lastly, he maintained that, although every motion of the aforesaid ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... arrangements in the animal economy for the production and loss of heat are themselves probably regulated by the central nervous system, there being a thermogenic centre—situated above the spinal cord, and according to some observers in the optic thalamus. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... turned on my watch, for example, the vibrations of light striking its face are reflected on the pupil of my eye. There the little motions, previously existing only in the surrounding ether, are communicated to my optic nerve. This vibrates too, and by its motion excites the matter of my brain, and then—well, I have a sensation of the white face of my watch. But what was contained in that then is precisely what we do not understand. Incoming ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... to—hem! to welcome you as a neighbor—as a neighbor. Arthur Bimby, humbly at your service—Arthur Bimby, once a man of parts though now brought low by abstractions, gentlemen, forces not apparent to the human optic, sirs. Still, in my day, I have been known about town as a downy bird, a smooth file, and a ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... contrast to blue; red and blue form violet or purple, so much admired in contrast with yellow in the pansy; yellow and blue form green, the contrast to red, and the color needed to restore the tone of the optic nerve when strained or fatigued by undue attention to red. This is the most common and admirable contrast in the vegetable kingdom; the brilliant red blossom or fruit, with green leaves, as instance the fiery tulip, the crimson rose, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... American author, better known and loved by boys and girls through his pseudonym "Oliver Optic," was born July 30, 1822, in the town of Medway, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, about twenty-five miles from Boston. For twenty years he was a teacher in the Public Schools of Boston, where he came in close contact with boy life. These ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... by Le Keux, from a design by Martin, which we are at a loss to describe. It requires a microscopic eye to fully appreciate all its beauties—yet the thousands of figures and the architectural background, are so clear and intelligible as to make our optic nerve sympathize with the labour of the artist. The next is a View on the Ganges, by Finden, after Daniell; Constancy, by Portbury, after Stephanoff, in which the female figure is loveliness personified; Eddystone during a Storm; the Proposal, a beautiful family group; the Cottage ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... well he might, that this taste of his quality would be quite sufficient for a little eighteen—gun sloop, close under his lee; but the fight was not to be so easily taken out of Deadeye, although even to his optic it was now high time to ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... mud, spoiled paste, or grain-smut; the Rotifera—a kind of little shell-fish protected by a carapace, provided with a good digestive apparatus, of separate sexes, having a nervous system with a distinct brain, having either one or two eyes, according to the genus, a crystalline lens, and an optic nerve; the Tardigrades—which are little spiders with six or eight legs, separate sexes, regular digestive apparatus, a mouth, two eyes, a very well defined nervous system, and a very well developed muscular ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... the scalpel, a glance with a lens, and their secret is betrayed. The eyes are a mockery. Externally they are organs of vision—the front of the eye is perfect; behind, there is nothing but a mass of ruins. The optic nerve is a shrunken, atrophied and insensate thread. These animals have organs of vision, and yet they have no vision. They have eyes, but they ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... replied the wise doctors, after they had first consulted their books: "it is only the electrifying of the optic nerve." ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... of the chase, his fingers would be plying at their task, like an old lady knitting. Like an experienced old-wife too, his digits had become so expert and conscientious, that his eyes left them alone; deeming optic supervision unnecessary. And on this trip of ours, when not otherwise engaged, he was quite as busy with his fingers as ever: unraveling old Cape Horn hose, for yarn wherewith to darn our woolen frocks; with great patches from the skirts of a condemned reefing jacket, panneling ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... nerve and paralysis of the optic nerve are not necessary to ensure deafness and blind- 194:12 ness; for if mortal mind says, "I am deaf and blind," it will be so without an injured nerve. Every theory op- posed to this fact (as I learned in metaphysics) ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... and autumn will speak to one of decay and death, to another of sleep and rest, after toil, to prepare for a new and brighter awakening. All the glory of dawn and sunset is but etheric waves thrilling the vapory air and impinging on the optic nerve; but behind it all is the magician who sees and knows, who thinks and loves. "It is the mind that makes the body rich." Thoughts take shape and coloring from souls through which they pass; and a free and open mind looks upon the world in the mood in which a fair ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... 'world' Sir William Fraser so pathetically laments. For folly, egotism, vanity, conceit, and stupidity, he had an amazing eye. He could not, owing to his short sight, read men's faces across the floor of the House, but he did not require the aid of any optic nerve to see the petty secrets of their souls. His best sayings have men's weaknesses for their text. Sir William's book gives many ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... happens to the mean-spirited artificer of Roman pearls; or the diamond seeker, seeking through deserts for months; the fine diamond merchant, dying in caravans, of the past; and, finally, the diamond-cutter, grinding that adamant for weeks far, far more indefatigably than to make the optic lenses which reveal hidden planets and galaxies. All that labour, danger, that weary, weary time embodied in a thing so tiny that, like Queen Mab, it can sit on an alderman's forefinger! What could be more deeply satisfactory to ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... a fiber-optic submarine cable link encircling the continent of Africa. Arabsat - Arab Satellite Communications Organization (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia). Autodin - Automatic Digital Network (US Department of Defense). CB - citizen's band mobile radio communications. cellular telephone system - the telephones ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... not wish to be forced under oath to tell what I know—or suspect. However, I am in a position to assure you that Oriental activities on this ranch have absolutely ceased. Mr. Okada has been solemnly assured that, in dealing with certain white men, they will insist upon an eye for an optic and a tusk for a tooth; he knows that if he starts anything further he will go straight to that undiscovered country where the woodbine twineth and the ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... will give you the details. It's decay of the optic nerve—a Russian from St. Petersburg. Both eyes completely blind, the nerves destroyed, and he saw light yesterday for the first time. He'll be down from the Russian hospice about eleven. We expect a cure ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... of the blacks (RHODOMYRTUS MACROCARPA), possesses the flavour of the cherry guava, but has a most evil reputation. Some assert that this fruit is subject to a certain disease (a kind of vegetable smallpox), and that if eaten when so affected is liable to induce paralysis of the optic nerves and cause blindness and even death. Blacks, however, partake of the fruit unrestrictedly and declare it good, on the authority of tradition as well as by present appreciation. They do not pay the slightest respect to the injurious repute current among some white folks. Perhaps some ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... When the optic image of a given object is not projected upon the retina of the visual medium, that object fails to be desired by the chief vital organ of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... remotenesses and 'minutiae' of vegetable terms,—the same entireness of subject. You have quincunxes in heaven above, quincunxes in earth below, and quincunxes in the water beneath the earth; quincunxes in deity, quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in bones, in the optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in petals, in every thing. In short, first turn to the last leaf of this volume, and read out aloud to yourself the last seven paragraphs of Chap. v. beginning with the words ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... glowed in those eyes! I never in my life witnessed such an extraordinary glare. I do not believe that any human being ever lived whose eyes habitually wore that expression: only by a violent effort could the expression be produced, and then for a very short time, without serious injury to the optic nerves. The eyes were made as large as possible; and the thing after which the poor fellow had been struggling was that peculiar look which may be conceived to penetrate through the beholder, and pierce his inmost thoughts. I never beheld the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various |
