"Focus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sir," replied the officer, with a chuckle; and he did watch, with close attention and great interest, while Thorndyke laid the glass slips on the microscope stage and proceeded to focus. ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... Harold realized that here was his opportunity: in one stroke, one easy shot, he could turn the day's ignominy into triumph. He could focus Virginia's admiration upon himself. But the impulse had even deeper significances. It was not the way of sportsmen, wandering in file on mountain trails, to clamor for the first shot at game. Whatever is said is usually in solicitation to a companion to shoot; and Virginia felt oddly ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... shop on the corner is the political and social focus of the neighbourhood. I shall never forget the pallid and ghastly countenance of the newsdealer when the rumour first went the rounds that "Hampy" was elected. Every evening a little gathering of local sages meets in the shop; on tilted chairs, in a haze of tobacco, ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... recalled her to the game, and she made an effort to focus her attention on the cards. But it was quite useless. Her play grew wilder and more erratic with each hand that was dealt, until at last a good no-trump call, completely thrown away by her disastrous tactics, brought the rubber ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... of thought or thought of having a thought. He not only puts a microscope to his eyes to know with, but his eyes have ingrown microscopes. The microscope has become a part of his eyes. He cannot see anything without putting it on a slide, and when his microscope will not focus it, and it cannot be reduced and explained, he explains that ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... To offer the help and happiness of club life at a low rate by establishing clubs in many centres throughout the country as the focus of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... grown from a casual, though bloody, event in California labor history into such a focus for discussion and analysis of the State's great migratory labor-problem that the incident can well be said to begin, for the commonwealth, a new ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... and veins with blood in them, and yet the head lost nothing by that. There was then a France, Monsieur. The province had an existence, subordinate doubtless, but real, active, and independent. Each government, each office, each parliamentary centre was a living intellectual focus. The great provincial institutions and local liberties exercised the intellect on all sides, tempered the character, and developed men. And now note well, Durocher! If France had been centralized formerly as to-day, your dear Revolution ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... paid from local funds. None of these can be said to be matters of local, as distinguished from national importance. It would not be a matter personally indifferent to the rest of the country if any part of it became a nest of robbers or a focus of demoralization, owing to the maladministration of its police; or if, through the bad regulations of its jail, the punishment which the courts of justice intended to inflict on the criminals confined therein (who might have come from, or committed their offenses in, any other district) ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... literature is unifying; it joins the candle and the star, and by the magic of an image shows that the beauty of the greater is in the less. And, not content with the disclosure of beauty and the bringing together of all things whatever within its focus, it enforces a moral wisdom by the tracing everywhere of cause and effect. It consoles doubly—by the revelation of unsuspected loveliness, and by the proof that our lot is the common lot. It is the supreme cry of the discoverer, ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... closed. Jim crouched over the unconscious old man. He was in a state of utter perplexity. He could not quite gather what Parrish had been trying to tell him, and it was with difficulty that he could focus his mind upon the situation, so great had been the shock of finding his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... of the new railroad line. "What you are looking at has been called a part of the Great American Desert—the most forbidding part, in the stories of the early explorers. Notwithstanding, there will come a time when you can focus your glass here on this mountain and look out over what the promoters will then be advertising as a 'peopled paradise,' and these 'logs of wood in a row, with two strands of iron to fasten them together' will bring it ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... the person he had seen. Jane suggested dragging the canal, but was silenced by an indignant "sh-sh-sh," accompanied by apprehensive and sympathetic glances at the bereaved parents. She was displaced from the focus of attention by the appearance of the two policemen who had been sent to the chalet. Smilash was between them, apparently a prisoner. At a distance, he seemed to have suffered some frightful injury to his head, but when he was ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... Universe.—Passing through the Tower of Jewels into the great court where themes become universal under the circle of stars above the surrounding colonnade, we come to the Fountains of the Rising and the Setting Sun, by A. A. Weinmann, one at either focus of the elliptical sunken garden. In the East, the Sun, in the strength of the morning, his wings spread for flight, is springing upward from the top of the tall column rising out of the fountain. Walk toward him from the west and you get the effect ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... I'll look.—Thanks. Your eyes require a different focus from mine. Yes. What I expected," said the professor, handing back the glass. "Have another look at your sand heap; it will repay observation; it is one of the milestones of the caravan roads, only ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... glass in focus more scales had fallen from my eyes; and now I knew why I had seen so much of Raffles these last few weeks, and why he had always come between seven and eight o'clock in the evening, and waited at ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... was composed of fresh leaves of the Moreton Bay ash, with the petioles towards the centre, forming a complex green star. No doubt the arrangement of the leaves was accidental, but the white dumpy egg as a pearl-like focus completed a quaint device. Another egg reposed carelessly at the base of a vigorous plant of DENDOBRIUM UNDULATUM, the old-gold plumes of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... tell now," he said, as he raised the objective glass and pointed it at the cloud of dust, while he squinted through the eye-piece. A moment later, after he had made a better adjustment of the focus, he cried: "It's sheep all right! A big ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... who was taken a prisoner there by Big Bear. He brought it with him for one of his brother Indians who was blind in one eye, imagining with untutored wisdom that if it gave light to a white man, it should also to a red, and they worked at it for a time, but they could not get the focus, finally they threw it away, saying it was no good, ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... Bergson the facts which we actually know directly in the ordinary course are discriminated out of a very much wider field which we must also be said in a sense to know directly though most of it lies outside the clear focus of attention. This whole field of virtual knowledge is regarded as standing to the actual facts to which we usually devote our attention, much as, for instance, the whole situation of stumbling upon something in a dark room stood to the single quality of roughness: ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... incubation, to infuse with warmth, to fortify, the nascent germs of spiritual life. In it lives and breaks forth what, in the evolving soul, tends feebly and furtively toward the flowering. In short, the voice, speech, the tongue, condenses in a single focus incalculable quantities ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... I have found it impossible to use up, in what I have written upon places and their genius, these notes about Rome. I cannot focus Rome into any definite perspective, or see it in the colour of one mood. And whatever may have happened there to my small person has left no trace in what I have written. What I meet in Rome is Rome itself. Rome is alive (only ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... holy forgiveness occupy our souls. There let the clash of interests and the war of jealousies be forgotten; and let us endeavor to persuade ourselves that, as all the conflicting pursuits of life must terminate at this point at last, so should our feelings converge to the one focus of amenity and Christian love. And, after all, how many who have considered themselves to be antagonists must, during a moment of solemn reflection, become convinced that, when toiling in the great workshop of the world, they have been engaged, in unconscious fraternity, in building ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... squarely in the eye, I said to him, "Well, why don't you move?" as though we were playing checkers instead of the game of life. He made no reply, but the spell was broken. I believe that both sides had been bluffing. In attempting to use my kodak while continuing the bluff, I brought matters to a focus. "What a picture you fellows will make," I said aloud, as my right hand slowly worked the kodak out of the case which hung under my left arm. Still keeping up a steady fire of looks, I brought the kodak in front of me ready to focus, and then touched ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... however, a horrific blaze, emitted from a huge focus of intolerable light, set the whole heavens aflame. As from a fresh-created baleful sun, blue and livid and golden-colored lightnings were shivered from it on all sides; dull, however, in comparison to the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... with paper of two colours, one black, say, and the other gold. You can work your eye and adjust the focus of vision so that you may see either a black background or a gold one. In the one case the prevailing tone is gloomy, relieved by an occasional touch of brightness; and in the other it is brightness, heightened by a background of darkness. And so you can ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... two squadrons were in little less danger in the opposite direction. Attempting to intercept with dismounted fire parties of the enemy, who were retiring towards Halifax, the little force became the focus of every wandering party of the enemy, not only of those evacuating the positions of Talana and Lennox Hill, but also of many riding in from the Buffalo. For the hills and plain were full of Boers who had taken no part in the battle. But Knox was not to be trapped. Moving ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... right. Is that so surprising? Take a telephone—you can't talk over it unless the connections are right, can you? Take a telescope or a microscope—you can see nothing through them unless the instruments are in focus, can you? Take an automobile—it will not move an inch unless all the parts are properly adjusted, will it? You may have the finest photographic camera in the world, yet you will get no picture unless you expose the sensitive ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... laid out to dry, the thatched cottage of the miller, his fishing-nets, and the tank where the fish are kept,—not to speak of the miller's boy, who was already watching me. No matter where you are in the country, however solitary you may think yourself, you are certain to be the focus of the two eyes of a country bumpkin; a laborer rests on his hoe, a vine-dresser straightens his bent back, a little goat-girl, or shepherdess, or milkmaid climbs a ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... a metropolis even in the modern sense; not merely an emporium of commerce, but a focus where the intellectual and religious treasures of various countries were concentrated and worked up, and transmitted to all the nations that desired them. I have resisted the temptation to lay the scene of my story there, because in Alexandria the Egyptian element was too much overlaid by the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Getting my camera into position, ready to swing in any direction, I waited. With deafening explosions the shells exploded in a small street behind me. The Germans were evidently trying to smash up the old Flemish town hall, which was in the corner of the market-place, so I decided to fix my focus in its direction. But though I waited for over an hour, nothing else happened. The Germans had ceased firing for that morning at least. Not till I had gone to my cafe did I realise the danger I had exposed myself to, but somehow ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... his wildebeeste over in much the same way, and thought it was dead; and as he was very keen on obtaining photographs of game, he took his stand-camera from the Indian who carried it and proceeded to focus it on the animal's head. When he was just about to take the picture, he was thunderstruck to see the wildebeeste jump up and come charging down upon him. He sprang quickly aside, and in an instant up went the camera into the ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... are moving past me, over me, and round and round me their fixed center—for the horizon to bend about, for the sky to arch over, for the highways to start from, for every influence and interest between Hingham and Heaven to focus on. ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... years gardeners and farmers had few fertilizers other than animal manure and compost. These were always considered very valuable substances and a great deal of lore existed about using them. During the early part of this century, our focus changed to using chemicals; organic wastes were often considered nuisances with little value. These days we are rediscovering compost as an agent of soil improvement and also finding out that we must compost organic ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... to be in the foreground of any social event which they may both grace with their presence. The common human interest of the unengaged, and the reminiscent interest of the married, tend to focus all eyes upon them. For this reason they will try and be as little conspicuous ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... and untainted, the ancient, inbred integrity, piety, good-nature, and good-humor of the people of England, from the dreadful pestilence which, beginning in France, threatens to lay waste the whole moral and in a great degree the whole physical world, having done both in the focus of its ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... of telegraph wires, called the Telegraph Bureau, of which James Crowley was superintendent and Eldred Polhamus deputy. There were three operators— Chapin, Duvall, and Lucas. A telegraph station was in each precinct—thus making thirty-two, all coming to a focus at head-quarters. These are also divided into five sections—north, south, east, west, and central. The Commissioners, therefore, sitting in the central office, can send messages almost instantaneously to every precinct of the city, and receive immediate answers. ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... shadows, the gradations of its colouring, and all its carefully subordinated wealth of art, pointed to, were concentrated round, one sacred spot, as a curve, however vast its sweep though space, tends at every moment toward a single focus? And that spot, that focus, was, and is still, in every Romish church, the body of God, present upon the altar in the form of bread? Without Him, what is all your building? Your church is empty: your altar ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... received a check. A blood-stained revolution at Belgrade ousted the pro-Austrian Obrenovitch, and put in its place the rival family of the Karageorgevitch. Under the new dynasty Servia escaped from Austrian tutelage, and became an independent focus of Slav life in close touch with Russia. The change was illustrated in 1908, when Austria took advantage of the revolution in Turkey, led by the Young Turks, to annex formally the occupied territories of Bosnia and the Herzegovina. Servia, which had hoped ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... was the established perception and those its earliest images. The perception remained, deepening, changing only in hue, as a viscid liquid solidifies and darkens in a vessel over the fire. It remained, persisted. Time but steadied the focus as the wise oculist, seeking for his patient the perfect image, drops lenses in the frame through which the vision chart is viewed. In a little the perfect image is found. There was that Rosalie, come to maidenhood, come to ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... shaving." In 1745 barbers and surgeons were separated into distinct corporations by 18 George II. c. 15. The barber's shop was a favourite resort of idle persons; and in addition to its attraction as a focus of news, a lute, viol, or some such musical instrument, was always kept for the entertainment of waiting customers. The barber's sign consisted of a striped pole, from which was suspended a basin, symbols the use of which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... the era had come for the expedition, planned, administered, equipped and carried out with a definite objective. It is characteristic of the race of men that the first design should have centred on the Pole—the top of the earth, the focus of longitude, the magic goal, to reach which no physical sacrifice was too great. The heroism of Parry is a type of that adamant persistence which has made the history of the conquest of the Poles a volume in which disaster and death have played a large part. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... any of 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 ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... passage to a second corridor. There was a chance that he might meet Clementina, but he reached his room without encountering any one. It was a large vaulted apartment with a single window, a deep embrasure in the thick wall that seemed to focus like a telescope some forgotten, sequestered part of the leafy garden. While washing his hands, gazing absently at the green vignette framed by the dark opening, his attention was drawn to a movement of the foliage, stirred apparently by the rapid passage of two half-hidden ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... 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. ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... phenomenon. The first method for this purpose is due to Dr Priestley, who exposes the metal to be calcined in a porcelain cup N, Pl. IV. Fig. 11. placed upon the stand IK, under a jar A, in the bason BCDE, full of water; the water is made to rise up to GH, by sucking out the air with a syphon, and the focus of a burning glass is made to fall upon the metal. In a few minutes the oxydation takes place, a part of the oxygen contained in the air combines with the metal, and a proportional diminution of the volume of air is produced; what ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... creation of a "Gold Room" in Wall Street, where the precious metal could be dealt in; while for dealings in stocks there also existed the "Regular Board," the "Open Board," and the "Long Room." Devoted to one, but the leading object of speculation, the "Gold Room" was the very focus of all the financial and gambling activity of the time, and its quotations governed trade and commerce. At first notations in chalk on a blackboard sufficed, but seeing their inadequacy, Dr. S. S. Laws, vice-president and actual presiding officer of the Gold Exchange, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... that felt communion with a Person which is the clou of the devotional life, we get as it were the link between the extreme apprehensions of transcendence and of immanence, and their expression in the lives of contemplation and of action; and also a focus for that religious-emotion which is the most powerful stimulus to spiritual growth. It is needless to emphasize the splendid use which Christianity has made of this type of experience; nor unfortunately, the exaggerations ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... platform system, however, still remained. In front of the curtain, the stage projected into a wide "apron," as it was called, lined on either side by boxes filled with spectators; and the house was so inadequately lighted that almost all the acting had to be done within the focus of the footlights. After the curtain rose, the actors advanced into this projecting "apron" and performed the main business of the act beyond the ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... speaking very deliberately. He even paused at this point and lighted a cigarette, while we all listened breathlessly. We felt that we had got the thing to a focus at last. ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... diffuse in the strict sense of the term; the omentum often protects the upper abdominal cavity from infection, as was proven in this case at the autopsy. It is possible that this diffuse peritonitis, which did not in the early period of the affection extend beyond the limited local focus, was not due to the intestinal contents and to bacteria, but chiefly to bacterial toxins which arose from the circumscribed original focus. This fact is pointed out by the prompt retrogression of the diffuse peritoneal symptoms ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... can build eternal realities. "Are we to beg and cringe and hang on the outer edge of life,—we who should walk grandly? Is it for man to tremble and quake—man who in his spiritual capacity becomes the interpreter of God's message,—the focus of ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... exist this minute with you, and then you focus your attention on Mart there, the next minute, and he exists, what becomes of me when you turn your head ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... lay the low sand-hills of Cape Cod, over our larboard quarter, and before us, the wide waters of Massachusetts Bay, with here and there a sail gliding over its smooth surface. As we drew in toward the mouth of the harbor, as toward a focus, the vessels began to multiply until the bay seemed actually alive with sails gliding about in every direction; some on the wind, and others before it, as they were bound to or from the emporium of trade and centre of the bay. It was a stirring sight ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... pair of photographs, they are placed at the same distance from the eyes as the length of the focus of the lens used in producing them, then without doubt the distance between the eyes, viz. about two and a quarter {228} inches, is the best difference between the two points of view to produce a perfectly natural result; and if the points of operation be more distant from one another, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... But the focus of the assembly was the little space before Hartrath's painting. It was called "A Study of the Contra Costa Foothills," and was set in a frame of natural redwood, the bark still adhering. It was conspicuously displayed on an easel at the right of the entrance to the main room of ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... tread, through the opalescent light, they appeared like specters flying from hateful shadows. Suddenly, in the air before them, not farther up than a low hill-top flared a lambent flame; as they looked at it, the apparition contracted into a focus of dazzling lustre. Their hearts beat fast; their souls thrilled; and they shouted as with one voice, "The Star! the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... with these religious requirements and on what grounds. If men were deeply concerned about the taboo food that went into their bodies, they would not be concerned about the evil thoughts that arose in their souls. If they were taught to focus on petty duties, such as tithing, the great ethical principles and obligations moved to the outer field of vision and became blurred. The Sabbath, which had originated in merciful purpose toward the poor, had been turned into ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... of sense,—out of focus, distorted. Some of it was opium. Didn't you coax a little of his favorite ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... went on. It was an expensive thing to buy, but an oyster supper would do it and leave something over for the organ. Which brings us to the very core and centre of these activities, their pivot, their focus and, in a human sense, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... astronomy, all measurements being applied to the heavenly bodies. Their main service was found in accurate records of data. Kepler maintained "that every planet moved in an ellipse of which the sun occupied one focus." He also held "that the square of the periodic time of any planet is proportional to the cube of its mean distance from the sun," and "that the area swept by the radius vector from the planet to the sun is proportional to the time."[4] ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... "super" could be expected of Beason. His very blank face recalled her to the absurdity of getting out of focus with one's audience. ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... say what a day might bring forth. The young doctor looked back over the past; he bowed beneath the burden that he felt upon him. However, due credit must be given to his friend Samuel O'Neill for assisting him to bring his sober meditations to a focus. ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... softly. "Dynamite! That will bring things to a focus beautifully, won't it? When they have blown us up, I wonder how they will account to Uncle Sidney for the ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... introduction, while Miss Wild blushed and nodded an embarrassed greeting, then immediately turned her face away from the focus of the professor's observation and made a comical grimace which came very near proving ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... commanding crowded audiences, and that a passage was formed from the house where they lodged into a gallery of this church; and that the pulpit of St. Antholin's seems, for many years, to have been the focus of schism, faction, and sedition, and he may be able to bring forward from these happily preserved registers much ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... capable of the darkest designs; the sudden and evidently concealed appearance of the latter on the day my uncle died; the agitation and paleness of the attorney; the enormous advantages accruing to Gerald, and to no one else, from the terms of the devise: when these were all united into one focus of evidence, they appeared to me to leave no doubt of the forgery of the testament and the crime of Gerald. Nor was there anything in my brother's bearing and manner calculated to abate my suspicions. ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... films, I now stood up. The Caribou dashed away and by a slight limp showed that he was in sanctuary. The 20-yard estimate proved too long; it was only 16 yards, which put my picture a little out of focus. ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... men for the most part considerably his seniors, among whom, in spite of the presence of Whately, High Church principles probably predominated already, and were destined soon to predominate in the most extreme sense, for the college presently became the focus of the Ritualistic and Romanizing movement. Thus, up to twenty-three, Keble's life had been that of a sort of acolyte, and though not ascetic (for his nature appears to have been always genial and mirthful), entirely ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... college Dick Livingstone had found, like other men, that the two paths of ambition and duty were parallel and did not meet. Along one lay his desire to focus all his energy in one direction, to follow disease into the laboratory instead of the sick room, and there to fight its unsung battles. And win. He felt ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... recollected observation. Or again a quality might be propounded, such as generosity or spitefulness, and the boys required to construct an imaginary anecdote of the simplest kind to illustrate it. This would have the effect of training the mind at all events to focus itself, and this is just what drudgery pure and simple will not do. The aim is not to train mere memory or logical accuracy, but to strengthen that great faculty which we loosely call imagination, which is the power of evoking mental images, and of migrating from the present into ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... the sun were rising out of the sea. "Hai-yah!" He yawned. "Another bloomin' day. . . . I was dreaming . . . about . . . blowed if I can remember what I was dreaming about." He adjusted the focus of his glasses and stared out across the North Sea. "I wonder if they're ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... into the noble garden, with its regal trees. Groups were there of well dressed persons. Vance heard himself called by name. He had forgotten the London world,—forgotten, amidst his midsummer ramblings, that the London season was still ablaze; and there, stragglers from the great focus, fine people, with languid tones and artificial jaded smiles, caught him in his wanderer's dress, and walking side by side with the infant wonder of Mr. Rugge's show, exquisitely neat indeed, but still in a coloured print, of a pattern familiar ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him, enveloped in a heartening whirl of new popularity. To the candidate it seemed that his star had changed with stunning swiftness. His advance to the door had been a Roman progress; and when he finally reached the lobby he was still the focus of a coterie of enthusiasts who would not be shaken off. Here a new halt was made: new people surrounded him; more hand-shakings and back-slappings took place; and everything ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... mountain? The atmosphere was deceptive, but surely it was some animal approaching in his direction. He had up till then forgotten his binoculars, but he was now wide awake and, looking first to his rifle, he got out his glasses and twisted them into focus upon the moving object in the distance. A startled exclamation rose to his lips as the field-glasses covered the moving spot; it was a man. Yes running, stumbling, crouching and at times almost crawling the object which he saw was a white man, naked except for a few rags. His desperate haste ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... tendency to give immediate expression to ideas of action. Moreover, the social instincts of the child, his sympathy, etc., give him a special interest in human beings and in their acts. These tendencies, therefore, focus his attention upon human action, and cause his ideas of such acts to become more vivid and interesting. For this reason, observation of human acts is more likely to lead to motor expression. That the social instincts of the child reinforce the tendency to imitate is indicated ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... boasted right of instruction by the constituent body is "mere sound," signifying nothing. Sir, the inhabitants of this district are subject to state legislation and state policy; they cannot complain of this, for their condition is voluntary; and as this city is the focus of power, of influence, and considered also as that of fashion, if not of folly, and as the streams which flow from here irradiate the whole country, it is right, it is proper, that it should be subject to state policy and state power, and not used as a leaven to ferment and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... alumni; androgynus, androgyni; calculus, calculi; dracunculus, dracunculi; echinus, echini; magus, magi. But such as have properly become English words, may form the plural regularly in es; as, chorus, choruses: so, apparatus, bolus, callus, circus, fetus, focus, fucus, fungus, hiatus, ignoramus, impetus, incubus, isthmus, nautilus, nucleus, prospectus, rebus, sinus, surplus. Five of these make the Latin plural like the singular; but the mere English scholar has no occasion to be told which ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the term eccentric retreat he did not understand a retreat made on several diverging roads, but one which, instead of being directed toward the center of the base of operations or the center of the country, should be eccentric to that focus of operations, and along the line of the frontier of ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... Parson Jones who first spoke. "But what do all these figures mean?" And Tom observed how the paper shook and rustled in the tremor of excitement that shook his hand. He raised the paper to the focus of his spectacles and began to read again. "'Mark ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... adopted is still, in a sense, the result of suggestion, but of one particular suggestion which the fancy of the moment determines. Or, to put it another way, the caprice of the moment causes the attention to focus itself in a particular manner, to direct itself specially to certain aspects ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... thermo-electric pyrometers in that a thermo-couple is employed. The heat rays given out by the hot body fall on a concave mirror and are brought to a focus at a point at which is placed the junction of a thermo-couple. The temperature readings are obtained from an indicator similar to that ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... and lay gnawing my bones!—I am not mad, most noble Festus! but in sober sadness I have suffered this day more bodily pain than I had before a conception of. My right cheek has certainly been placed with admirable exactness under the focus of some invisible burning-glass, which concentrated all the rays of a Tartarean sun. My medical attendant decides it to be altogether nervous, and that it originates either in severe ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... dividing-line cut me off from all others: their appointment was to trade, navigate, eat and drink, marry and give in marriage, and the rest; mine was to discover the Source of the Nile. Hither had all the threads of my life been converging for many years; they had now reached their focus, and henceforth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... the focus of the reflector of the lantern, and not more than a hundred feet distant, stood a prodigious black creature, on eight legs, rolling something in its mandibles, which were held close to what seemed to ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... Sainte-Beuve, thinks he can trace a marked rise even in Bossuet's style from the moment he became a courtier of Louis XIV. The King brought men together, placed them in a position where they were induced and urged to bring their talents to a focus. His court was alternately a high-bred gala and a stately university. If we contrast his life with those of his predecessor and successor, with the dreary existence of Louis XIII and the crapulous lifelong debauch of Louis XV, we become sensible that Louis XIV was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... made the motion, as though he desired to take the glass. The savage took the loop from his neck, and handed the instrument to George. The latter put it to his eyes and pointed them to the east, carefully adjusting them to get the proper focus. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... path into the fine cotton-field in the North. You will see that the discoveries of Burton and Speke confirm mine respecting the form of the continent and its fertility. It is an immense field. I crave the honor of establishing a focus of Christianity in it, but should it not be granted, I will submit as most unworthy. I have written Mr. Venn twice, and from yours I see something is contemplated in Cambridge.... If young men come to this country, they must lay their account with doing everything for themselves. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... irresponsible conduct is almost inevitable. But this opens up, of course, a whole series of different questions, which, for the reasons I have just set forth, I do not try to answer, rather purposely neglecting the second illegitimate parent, the father, so as better to focus attention on the evils arising from the existing unprotected relations between ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... whip in; gather; hold a meeting; convene, convoke, convocate[obs3]; rake up, dredge; heap, mass, pile; pack, put up, truss, cram; acervate[obs3]; agglomerate, aggregate; compile; group, aggroup[obs3], concentrate, unite; collect into a focus, bring into a focus; amass, accumulate &c. (store) 636; collect in a dragnet; heap Ossa upon Pelion. Adj. assembled &c. v.; closely packed, dense, serried, crowded to suffocation, teeming, swarming, populous; as thick as hops; all of a heap, fasciculated cumulative. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... money, and the University can depend upon it for handsome subsidies. It may well depend upon it for much more. As the Bank of England—to which in its system of government it may be likened—is the focus of all the other banks, private or joint-stock, in the kingdom, and the treasure-house, not only of the nation's gold, but of its commercial honor, so the Clarendon Press—traditionally careful in its selections and munificent in its rewards—might become the academy or central ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... less in making lint. For me, I was about amongst the wounded half the day, the British, s'entend! The rising in France for the honour of the nation now, and for its safety in independence hereafter, was brilliant and delightful, spreading in some directions from La Manche to La Mditerrane: the focus of loyalty was Bordeaux. The king left Gand the 22nd. All Alost, etc., surrounded followed, or preceded him. The noble Blcher entered France ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... country in the finest world. The streets, all grave and mellow in the sunset, seemed to applaud this after-dinner stroll; the entrance quad of his old college—spaciously majestic, monastically modern, for years the heart of his universe, the focus of what had gone before it in his life, casting the shadow of its grey walls over all that had come after-brought him a sense of rest from conflict, and trust in his own important safety. The garden-gate, whose ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the particular care and attention of the operator is the proper focus. It is not unfrequently the complaint of sitters that their hands are represented as being magnified and greatly out of proportion with the general figure. This is the case also with the nose and eyes, but in a less degree. As this cannot be wholly remedied, it is desirous to come as near as ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... for nocturnal (terrestrial) radiation were made by freely suspending thermometers with naked bulbs, or by laying them on white cotton, wool, or flannel; also by means of a thermometer placed in the focus of a silvered parabolic reflector. I did not find that the reflector possessed any decided advantage over the white cotton: the means of a number of observations taken by each approximated closely, but the difference ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... 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 company gathered ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... processing of such applications from recurring, in accordance with section 204(a) of the Immigration Services and Infrastructure Improvements Act of 2000 (8 U.S.C. 1573(a)). Such initiatives may include measures such as increasing personnel, transferring personnel to focus on areas with the largest potential for backlog, and streamlining paperwork. (b) Transfer of Functions From Commissioner.—In accordance with title XV (relating to transition provisions), there are transferred from the Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization ...
— Homeland Security Act of 2002 - Updated Through October 14, 2008 • Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives
... inexperience at handling such men, and the anomalous character of my position to some extent consoled me. In the filaments brushed across the face of my understanding I could discover none so strong as to support an overt act on my part. I cannot doubt, that had the affair come to a focus, I should have warned the scientists even at the risk of my life. In fact, as I shall have occasion to show you, I did my best. But at the moment, in all policy I could see my way to ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... a glance at his wrist watch as he talked, but in that glance, without pause or fumble of focus, with swift certainty of correlation, he ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... Georgia thus the geographical focus of our Negro population, but in many other respects, both now and yesterday, the Negro problems have seemed to be centered in this State. No other State in the Union can count a million Negroes among its citizens,—a population as large as the slave population of the whole Union ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... gentleman had often met before. Finding that his look was not returned, or indeed observed by the person to whom it was addressed, John gradually concentrated the whole power of his eyes into one focus, and brought it to bear upon the man in the flapped hat, at whom he came to stare in course of time with an intensity so remarkable, that it affected his fireside cronies, who all, as with one accord, took their pipes from their lips, and stared with open ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... he took the glass and began to focus it on a distant object. "Now, own up; you did rub that ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... who has obtained some idea of social progress. We are still childishly pleased when we see the further subdivision of labor going on, because the quantity of the output is increased thereby, and we apparently are unable to take our attention away from the product long enough to really focus it upon the producer. Theoretically, "the division of labor" makes men more interdependent and human by drawing them together into a unity of purpose. "If a number of people decide to build a road, and one digs, and one brings ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... theatre was crowded for my final performance and several Tri-D video cameras stared down at me. Pupils, lights and lenses, all came to a glittering focus on me. I slowly closed my eyes to ...
— Man Made • Albert R. Teichner
... glass lens," Lana said. "When I take the picture a lens forms just long enough to focus the elements of your body into a Mantram fix." She touched my shoulder. "Would you sit down ...
— The Gallery • Roger Phillips Graham
... before the select committee raised by the English House of Commons, that the use of the locomotive-whistle as a fog-signal was first suggested by Mr. A. Gordon, C.E., who proposed to use air or steam for sounding it, and to place it in the focus of a reflector, or a group of reflectors, to concentrate its sounds into a powerful phonic beam. It was his idea that the sharpness or shrillness of the whistle constituted its chief value. And it is conceded that Mr. C.L. Daboll, under the direction of Prof. Henry, and at the instance of the United ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... subject credit for the former, but denies his claim to the latter of these attributes. As if any manifestation of mind were more deserving of that title than the power of intellectual concentration, to which nothing that came within its focus ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... above question is the badge of admission. To be clever is the badge of promotion. I am the center of this intensely interesting circle. I am the focus, the magnet around which they all revolve. The bulk of the social burden rests on me. The minute but highly important details are carefully watched and skillfully righted by the good mother. I am the General Entertainer, but she ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... a large and beautiful town—the capital of the Eastern Province—situated on the slopes of the Zuurberg range, near the head waters of the Kowie River, 1760 feet above the sea, and thirty-six miles distant therefrom. She is also the focus where all the roads from the interior converge to enter the only available ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... hands touched me. Once I felt the clutch as of cold, soft fingers at my throat. I was still equally conscious that if I gave way to fear I should be in bodily peril; and I concentered all my faculties in the single focus of resisting stubborn will. And I turned my sight from the Shadow; above all, from those strange serpent eyes,—eyes that had now become distinctly visible. For there, though in naught else around me, I was aware that ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... know whether they need to certify compliance with CIPA by July 1, 2002, to receive subsidies for the upcoming year, the Court conducted an eight-day trial at which we heard 20 witnesses, and received numerous depositions, stipulations and documents. The principal focus of the trial was on the capacity of currently available filtering software. The plaintiffs adduced substantial evidence not only that filtering programs bar access to a substantial amount of speech on the Internet that is clearly constitutionally ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... dynamic consciousness between mother and child suffers no interruption at birth. It continues almost the same. The child has no conception whatsoever of the mother. It cannot see her, for its eye has no focus. It can hear her, because hearing needs no transmission into concept, but it has no oral notion of sounds. It knows her. But only by a form of vital dynamic correspondence, a sort of magnetic interchange. The idea ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... tradition permeated him with the expectation that such powers would be propitiated by his worship of the images set up in their names. There was therefore no reasoned creed, such as those of the Catholic and Reformed Churches, but only a vague sentiment brought to a focus by the associations of the shrine. From such a view of polytheism it is easy to understand how most, if not all, of the old speculative philosophers could allow the existence of the traditional gods, even while in reasoned contemplation ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... show seven centuries of development, and, moreover, development along the broad and national lines of common or vulgar speech. Euphuism was after all only part of the general tendency of the age to focus everything that was good in politics, religion, and art, on the person and immediate surroundings of the sovereign; and the history of the eighteenth century, which saw the last issue of the series ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... spy, and that he loved to converse with foreigners and conform his behaviour to them. For his personal safety, therefore, it was perhaps unfortunate that a portion of his youth had been passed in a visit to Italy, then the focus of literature and fount of inspiration; but for his surviving fame, and for the progress of English poetry, the circumstance was eminently propitious; since it is from the return of this noble traveller that we are to date not only the introduction into our language of the Petrarchan sonnet, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... when the exercises had been duly gone through, then arose the original and powerful minds, to take full advantage of what had been gained by all the practising, and to concentrate and bring to a focus all the hints and lessons of art which had been gradually accumulating. Then the sustained strength and richness of the Faery Queen became possible; contemporary with it, the grandeur and force of English prose began in Hooker's Ecclesiastical ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... every one of those wildcats would spin up to a tremendous premium before you could turn a handspring—profit on the speculation not a dollar less than forty millions!" [An eloquent pause, while the marvelous vision settled into W.'s focus.] "Where's your hogs now? Why my dear innocent boy, we would just sit down on the front door-steps and peddle banks like ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... single battle, which was to decide its fearful issue. With divided sympathies, Europe looked with anxiety to this scene, where the whole strength of the two contending parties was fearfully drawn, as it were, to a focus. ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... 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
... scale for each of the two lenses that we principally use. For great magnification or reduction a lens of comparatively short focus must be used, but, as a long-focus lens gives a more perfect image, we use one of very long focus—thirty-six inches—for copying the same size or for slight ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... 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 and ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... may therefore be regarded as War concentrated, as the centre of effort of the whole War or campaign. As the sun's rays unite in the focus of the concave mirror in a perfect image, and in the fulness of their heat; to the forces and circumstances of War, unite in a focus in the great battle for ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... artists, though this is partly due to his persistence in knocking at the doors of the Paris salons, and gaining the universal prestige of admission there. There is, unfortunately, no such place to focus the attention of the world on a musician. Yet, through the success of American musical students among their rivals abroad; through the concerts they are giving more and more frequently in foreign countries; ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... ills are principally caused by bad physical habits, so are mental ills and inefficiency chiefly due to various bad mental habits, which are allowed to fasten themselves upon us. These will be briefly discussed so as to focus attention upon them, for the first thing necessary for the correction of a bad habit is to recognize its presence. It is as important to think right as it is to give the body proper care. A good body with a mind working in the wrong direction is of no use. If we allow our minds to be disturbed ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... it," reviewing it at different angles; noting the hour at which it is at its best and happiest, seizing upon its most telling presentment—and all this before he begins even mentally to compose its salient features on the square of his canvas. You can turn, if you choose, your camera skyward and focus the top of a steeple and only that. It is true, but it is uninteresting, or rather unintelligible, until you focus also the church door, and the gathering groups, and the overgrown pathway that winds through the quiet graveyard. So a picture can be true and yet very much like a slip ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... direction in which they were going; but this circumstance favored them, for those who wish to be unobserved, when they cannot be absolutely alone, have only to mix with the crowd. As they were borne towards the focus and centre of the festive doings, they clung closely together, she to him, and he to her, so that they might not be torn apart by any of the rushing and tumultuous processions of excited Thracian women ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hurl them like an avalanche upon the critical point, crowding volley upon volley, charge upon charge, till he made a breach. What a lesson of the power of concentration there is in this man's life! He was able to focus all his faculties upon the smallest detail, as well as upon an empire. But, alas! Napoleon was himself defeated by violation of his own tactics,—the constantly repeated crushing force of heavy ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... the glass from 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! Blessings ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nature that led him astray in his judgment of the individual; it was merely that he was too much occupied with what he counted his work—with his theories first, then his writing of them, then the endless defending of them, to care to see beyond the focus of his short-sighted eyes. Vavasor was a gentlemanly fellow, and that went a long way with him. He did not oppose him, and that went another long way: of all things he could not bear to be opposed in what he so plainly saw to be true, nor could think why every other ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... forget, or even the occasional grossness or harshness of sentiment which contrasts so strongly with the superficial polish. A genuine report of even the best conversation would be intolerably prosy and unimaginative. But imagine the very pith and essence of such talk brought to a focus, concentrated into the smallest possible space with the infinite dexterity of a thoroughly trained hand, and you have the kind of writing in which Pope is unrivalled; polished prose with occasional gleams of genuine poetry—the epistle to Arbuthnot ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... bell began to ring in front of Roger. Without hesitation he adjusted a dial that brought the radar scanner into focus. When the screen remained blank, he made a second adjustment, and then a third and fourth, until the bright white flash of a meteor was seen on the scanner. He quickly grabbed two knobs, one in each hand, and twisted them to move two thin, plotting lines, one horizontal ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... respect to composition, he is likewise liable to censure. At one time he wearies, and at another tantalises the reader, with the prolixity or ambiguity of his preambles. His prelusive sentiments are sometimes far-fetched, and converge not with a natural declination into the focus of epigram. In dispensing praise and censure, he often seems to be governed more by prejudice or policy, than by justice and truth; and he is more constantly attentive to the production of wit, than to the ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... we have often said before, we think that a good lens requires no "actinic" focus to find. In a properly constructed lens the chemical and visual foci are identical; and we would ourselves not be troubled with the use of one in which they differed. Our advertising columns will point out ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various |
