"Focused" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... effect upon what follows, justifies mention. For to O'Malley, in some way difficult to explain, Reason and Intellect, as such, had come to be worshipped by men today out of all proportion to their real value. Consciousness, focused too exclusively upon them, had exalted them out of due proportion in the spiritual economy. To make a god of them was to make an empty and inadequate god. Reason should be the guardian of the soul's advance, but not the object. Its function was that of a great sandpaper which should ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... Grace or Covenant of Works is a very old one, and it is not settled yet. It goes forever with a certain type of mind. Our criminal laws punish for the act—magistrates consider the deed. And it is only a few years ago since a judge in America focused the world's attention upon himself by refusing to punish delinquent children brought before him for their deeds. He organized the Juvenile Court, the sole intent of which is not to punish for the act, but to go back of this and find out why this child committed the act, and then ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... unnecessary, but those who have even a little experience will realize with me the extraordinary efficacy of this very simple means. It is really what Coquelin spoke of as a "high light," where the interest is focused, as it ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... stated the motion was not satisfactory to most of the members, who preserved a silence of indecision, with the single exception of Ruth, who uttered an enthusiastic affirmative vote, as a matter of course, only to shrink back perplexedly when she found angry eyes focused on her from every side. But Cicily nonchalantly announced the motion as having been carried, without troubling to call for ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... once saw a man walk past under the light of a street lamp and melt into the shadow of a doorway on the opposite side of the road. He went into his bedroom and brought back a pair of night glasses, and focused ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... was the vision of dear old Hubbard as I so often saw him during our struggle through that rugged northland wilderness, wasted in form and ragged in dress, but always hopeful and eager, his undying spirit and indomitable will focused in his words to me, and I can still see him as he looked when he ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... on the outside telescope, and the image on its screen was more incredible than the voices and the existence of the fleet itself. The scope focused first on a bulging, monster, antiquated freighter of a design that had not been built for a hundred years. The second view was of a passenger liner with the elaborate ornamentation that in past generations was considered suitable for space. There was a bulk-cargo ship, with no emergency ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... crouched almost double, you scurried into the fire area of a mitrailleuse or perhaps a Maxim; the Telly cameras which swung in your direction speedily, avidly, when a blast of fire threw you back and to the ground; the Telly cameras with their zoom lenses which focused full into your face as life leaked away. The Spanish aficionados never had it so good. The close-up expression of the dying matador ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... did not answer him. Her eyes were fixed, unseeing. They focused their gaze upon the fire as he led her to it. She sat down in the chair he placed for her and then very suddenly she began to shiver as ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... touch to it. The spectacle inclined one to laugh, almost making one forget for a moment that here in this spectacle one beheld the misery of war made concrete; that in the lorn state of these poor folks its effects were focused and made vivid; that, while in some way it touched every living creature on the globe, here ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... could be no doubt about it at all, now; the other motorcycle was rapidly making up lost ground. Then while they still raced on, and when the other machine was less than a hundred yards behind, the whole road was paved in light again, as the Boncelles searchlight swung around and down, and was focused full on ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... nodded silently, her attention focused upon Nora, whose singing always delighted her, and Grace, slipping quietly down to the door that led into the hall, made her way toward the back rows of seats just in time to witness Guido Savelli's emotion at first sight ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... the voice in the special service of will-power, or propelling force, it is necessary first to test its freedom. This may be done by taking the humming tone and bringing to bear upon it a strong pressure of energy. If the tone sharpens under the strain it is not perfectly focused. If it remains mellow one may venture upon the next step, which is to practise various vowel sounds and elements of speech with concentrated energy. The sense of bearing on to the voice, or endeavoring to push the tone by any pressure whatever, should be absolutely avoided. Tone support should ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... 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 really nothing at all. He was ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... about searching her out. "There! now! Hold still!" cried Simpkins as they focused ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... looked down at us with aloof disdain, then his eyes focused on the old man. His glance wavered; he threw a startled and fearful look at the cylinders holding up his bathmat. They did not fall. A vast relief overspread his face, and he drew himself erect with more disdain than ever. The old ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... seawards, broke over jagged reefs. The sea looked strangely calm from this height. Irregular blue patches on the horizon to south and east caught the man's first glance. He unslung the binoculars he still carried and focused ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... Costigan flashed on the powerful ultra-beam projector of the speedster and focused the plate upon Bradley's prison; careless now of detection, since the Nevians were already warned. Upon that plate he watched the Nevians carry the helpless body of the captain into a small boat, and continued to watch as they bore it into one of the ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... held to his eyes a pair of night marine glasses. Incessantly this watcher kept his gaze focused on Williamson. ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... see the door slide open to admit the three cadets who entered quietly. His whole attention was focused on the ugly glaring faces of Bill ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... attention was focused on Alma Marston, who stood in the companionway clutching its sides and shrieking out her fears. The lantern showed her to him plainly. Its radiance lighted him also. He called to her several times, angrily ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... talking about?" The young man's wavering attention focused itself on her now with swift completeness. He had hardly heard her, until a few moments before, when her conversation had first drifted to that ever fascinating feminine topic of foreign lords and American heiresses, then narrowed down, much to his inward disapproval, ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... amazing. The thing had happened in such an incredibly brief space of time. One moment, it seemed to George, he was the centre of a nasty row in one of the most public spots in London; the next, the focus had shifted; he had ceased to matter; and the entire attention of the metropolis was focused on his late assailant, as, urged by the arm of the Law, he made that journey to Vine Street Police Station which so many a better ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Jr., handing the mileage-books to the shortstop, focused his intellect on the C. N. & Q. timetable. "Oh, yes—you leave Union Station, Baltimore, at 7:30 A.M., arriving at Eastminster at noon; it is the only train, you can get, to make it in time for the game, so remember the hour—7.30 A.M.! Here, stuff ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... conveyed to the ear through a rubber hearing tube, c. The wire passes through the perforated handle, D, and is exposed only at the extremity. When the point, A, was rested against the center of a diaphragm upon which was focused an intermittent beam of sunlight, a clear musical tone was perceived by applying the ear to the hearing tube, c. The surface of the diaphragm was then explored with the point of the microphone, and sounds were obtained ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... to vote, but he was old enough to fight, and the account he had given of himself, with the inherited rifle smoking, gave augury of fighting effectiveness. So sanguinary had been this fight, and so dangerously had it focused upon the warring clans the attention of the outside world, that after its indecisive termination, they made the compact of the present truce. By its terms, the Hollmans held their civil authority, and the Souths were to be undisturbed dictators beyond Misery. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... and the ridge detail is clear but because of discoloration the ridges are not readily seen in the ground glass as there is lack of contrast between ridges and depressions. Accordingly, the lights, instead of being focused directly on the skin or finger, are placed to the side of the object so that the light is directed across the skin or finger, thus highlighting the ridges and ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... comes in more, I suppose, in those craft," said Sir William musingly. He focused his glasses on a turf cabin ashore. "The Admiral was telling me that a London brain specialist was born in one ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... two undivided faces of the cube, relatively squaring the center, were four borings somewhat smaller in diameter than an ordinary pencil, and extending through; and directly in the center was focused a network of insulated wires which dropped down out of the gloom overhead. In the other two sides of the great cube, just where the dividing lines of the halves came, were the funnel-like mouths of a two-inch boring. This, too, extended ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... particular time, which could rejoice so in the multiplication of doors—the opposite extreme to the modern, the actual almost complete proscription of them; but it had fairly contributed to provoke this obsession of the presence encountered telescopically, as he might say, focused and studied in diminishing perspective and as by ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... few of the points which, when focused together, show how the Germans have degraded warfare—a degradation which affects not only the Allies at present, but the whole future of the world, since if such examples were followed the entire human race would, each in turn, become ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... is energy enough in less than fifty acres of sunshine to run all the machinery in the world, if it could be concentrated. But the sun might blaze out upon the earth forever without setting anything on fire; although these rays focused by a burning-glass would melt solid granite, or even change a diamond into vapor. There are plenty of men who have ability enough; the rays of their faculties, taken separately, are all right, but they are powerless to collect them, to bring them all to bear upon a single spot. Versatile ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... light is properly focused, that is, if the rays are leaving the reflector in parallel lines, but the light does not strike the center of the ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... very act of returning. Here is a tube (Fig. 14) exhausted to a pressure of 0.001 millimeter or 1.3 M. In the middle of the tube is a thin glass diaphragm, C, pierced with two holes, D and E. At one part of the tube a concave pole, A', is focused on the upper hole, D, in the diaphragm. Behind the upper hole and in front of the lower one are movable vanes, F and G, capable of rotation by the slightest current ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... did not stop upon the familiar objects of the foreground. Instead it spanned two continents and an ocean to rest upon the little spot of woodland and rugged mountain and lowland that is Lutha. It was with an effort that the man suddenly focused his attention upon that which lay directly before him. A shadow among ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... worlds," I answered. "And in the eyes of Papa Gage, if they could once be focused upon it, our world ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... we have become crazy over material things. We are looking only at the structure above ground. We are trying to get more smoke from the chimney. We are looking at space instead of service, at profits instead of volume. With our eyes focused on the structure above ground, we have lost sight of those human resources, thrift, imagination, integrity, vision and faith which make the structure possible. I feel that only by the business men can this foundation be ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... slight young girl, with a fetching sun-hat and a basket, was walking pensively along the path on the opposite side of the brook, for the third time. Her passing and repassing before his abstracted and unseeing vision had become slightly monotonous, and for the first time he focused his eyes back from their distant view of pulp marshes and stock certificates and inspected the girl directly. Why, he knew that girl! It was ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... alert attention. His eyes focused on a girl sitting on a back seat. In the pretty, childish face he read a wistful helplessness, a pathetic hint of ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... sight blurred; he experienced a slight giddiness as though the substantial ground were shifting beneath him in masses, slowly, as in a dream. It gave him a curious feeling of instability. By an effort he focused his eyes; but almost immediately he caught himself growing fuzzy-minded again, exactly as though he had been gazing absently for a considerable period at a very bright light. He ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... or plant should be studied as a living, active organism. The attention of the pupils should be focused upon activities; for these appeal to the child nature and afford the best means for securing interest and attention. What does this animal do? How does it do it? How is it fitted for doing this? How does this plant grow? What fits it for growing in this ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... table seemed to feel this, and they forgot their duties as they looked at the beautiful Helene with her radiant face and at the red, broad, and happy though uneasy face of Pierre. It seemed as if the very light of the candles was focused on ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... stairs to the child's bedroom. They made a pretty picture as they stood there, the mother with her plain Mennonite garb, her sweet face encircled by a white cap, and the little red-haired child, eager, active, her dark eyes glimpsing dreams as they focused on the distant castles in Spain which were a part of her legitimate heritage of childhood. The room was like a Nutting picture, with its rag carpet, old-fashioned, low cherry bed, covered with a pink and white calico patchwork quilt, its low cherry bureau, its rush-bottom ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... of optical pyrometer is focused on the body, the temperature of which is to be measured. The rays converge in the telescope on metal cells, heating them, and thereby generating a small electric current, the voltage of which is read an a calibrated voltmeter similar to that ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... demanded, staring blindly—with eyes not yet focused to the change from light to gloom—at the young man, who was sitting with the guide open on his knees, a tightly clenched fist resting on the transom at either ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... At this every one focused their eyes on Mrs. Wayne. Pete felt sorry for his mother, knowing how she hated to make a sudden decision, knowing how she hated to do anything disagreeable to those about her; but he never for an instant doubted what her decision would be. Therefore ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... Bansemer crossed to the window and looked down into the seething street far below. He saw that his hand trembled and he tried to laugh at his weakness. For a long time he stood there, his unseeing eyes focused on the hurrying masses, his ears alert for unusual sounds from ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... the larger ones and began as thorough a cleaning as masseurs or Turkish-bath attendants. The three arrivals were at once hustled away to a distant part of the board and there cleaned from end to end. I found that the focal length of my 8-diameter lens was just out of reach of the ants, so I focused carefully on one of the soldiers and watched the entire process. The small ants scrubbed and scraped him with their jaws, licking him and removing every particle of dirt. One even crawled under him and worked away at his upper leg-joints, for all the world as a mechanic will creep under ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... their expression of strain. They seemed to glare with a hard, unnatural brilliance, as though the man's vision were focused upon some terrible inner presentment. She laid a detaining hand on his sleeve, but he appeared quite unconscious of her touch and she gave his arm ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... that rays of light entering the eye are brought to a focus on, or close to, the retina at the back of the eyeball. Some people, however, are unfortunately born with eyes that are too small and flat, or do not "bulge" enough; and then the rays of light are focused behind the retina instead of upon it, and the image is blurred. This is known as "long sight" (hyperopia), and can be corrected by putting in front of the eyes lenses of glass, called spectacles, which bulge sufficiently to bring the rays to ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... and grew younger with years. He might be known as the man of the second childhood par excellence. To the eye of history the effort of his soul was an effort backwards, because the vision of history is focused only for a perspective of progress. On his after-dinner journey to Diderot at Vincennes, Jean-Jacques saw, with the suddenness of intuition, that that progress, amongst whose convinced and cogent prophets he had lived so long was for him an unsubstantial word. He beheld the soul of man sub specie ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... speck that marked her position on the radar-screen. The same position was marked with a pin-point of light on the vision-screen—some device on the Sky-Spy, synchronized with the detectors, kept it focused there. The Company ships and contragravity vehicles all were carrying topside lights, visible only from above, which flashed alternate red ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... all before it in Galicia. The first great disillusionment of the war was at hand, and its promised beginning in May looked uncommonly like a repetition of the previous August. Popular discontent focused itself on the lack of munitions, and especially of high-explosives, which "The Times" military correspondent declared on 14 May to have been a fatal bar to our success. "Some truth there was, but brewed and dashed with lies," as Dryden remarked of Titus ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... the forehead, pasted there, a gray-colored, diamond shaped paper seal flaunted itself—the device of the Gray Seal. In Jimmie Dale' hand, hidden as he turned his back, the tiny combination of powerful lenses was focused on the seal. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... been less implacable, less intent, he might have noticed many things, the changing conformation of the clouds, the far flight of a gull, the new perfume and texture of the wind that flowed over his hot temples. But as it was, the sea took him by surprise. Coming over a little rise, his eyes focused for another long, dun fold of the plain, it seemed for an instant as if he had lost his balance over a void; for a wink he felt the passing of a strange sickness. He went off a little way to the side of the road and sat down ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... minute," responded the young cattleman. He rode up alongside one of the animals and focused on its rump the gleam from an electric flash light. Bud carried one of these mighty handy pocket articles, which are much more effective than matches for making observations at night. In the bright gleam of the little light the boy ranchers saw, plainly branded in the hide of the animal, ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... she focused her gaze upon the bit of high, green bank on which the sun was now shining again so brilliantly. She remembered how badly she had been treated by Bess ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... his knees, he wormed his way beneath the tree, and through to the opposite side. Finding an aperture commanding the exit of the path, he opened and focused the camera upon it. The next moment the two Italians appeared. For the fraction of a second Jack hesitated, fearing the click of the shutter might betray him. But he took the chance, there was a crisp, low click—and he had them, and they ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... nature of the thirty-five hundred foot laser barrel; the necessity for access to the rods from inside that barrel; and the placement of the control booth at its outside end, the firing could only be forward, straight towards the sun on which the mirror was focused. ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... the following evening he returned to his post, and before he had been there five minutes knew that his presence was noticed. This was encouraging, so he focused his mental powers in an effort to communicate telepathically with the object of his desires. But she seemed unattuned, and coyly refrained from showing her face. He undertook to loiter gracefully, knowing ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... and a flutter of the heart, he knew that it was close beside him in the tent; and, when he turned over for a better hearing, it focused itself unmistakably not two feet away. It was a sound of weeping; Defago upon his bed of branches was sobbing in the darkness as though his heart would break, the blankets evidently stuffed against his mouth ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... of iodine is the unique distinctive fact in its chemistry. Discovered by Baumann in 1895, the presence of the element has focused the intelligence of chemists upon the gland, with the consequent demonstration of arsenic also in it. It was soon manifest that the secretion of the gland was dependent upon the iodine content for its activity. Active extracts of the thyroid like thyreoglobulin and iodothyrin were ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... It was fitting that the representatives of the nation should, at that decisive moment, hear Him declare Himself Messiah. It was not fitting that He should be condemned on any other ground. In that answer, and its reception by the council, the nation's rejection of Jesus is, as it were, focused and compressed. This was the end of centuries of training by miracle, prophet and psalmist—the saddest instance in man's long, sad history of his awful power to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Hooch was dreaming that the moon had blown up when he awakened. The room was dark except for the glowing night-light near the door, and he sat up trying to separate the dream from reality. He focused his eyes on the glow-plate. What had wakened him? Something had, he was sure, but there didn't seem to be anything out of the ...
— The Bramble Bush • Gordon Randall Garrett
... party who made sheep's eyes at his clock every day. He hated him quite impartially, as he hated everybody. Mr. Lukisch had a bad heart in more senses than one, and a grudge against the world which he blamed for the badness of his heart. Also he had definite ideas of reprisal, which were focused by a dispossess notice, and directed particularly upon the person and property of his landlord. The clock he needed as the instrument of his vengeance; therefore he would not have sold it at any price to the sheep-eyed old lunatic ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... there early, and for heaven's sake remind him to call up Conrad Lyte soon 's he came in. To-night he departed with feigned and apologetic liveliness. He was as afraid of his still-faced clerks—of the eyes focused on him, Miss McGoun staring with head lifted from her typing, Miss Bannigan looking over her ledger, Mat Penniman craning around at his desk in the dark alcove, Stanley Graff sullenly expressionless—as a parvenu before the bleak propriety of his butler. He hated to expose his back ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... decks were crowded with passengers. He dropped down some distance, to enable him to see these people more plainly, and while he hovered near he could hear the excited exclamations of the passengers, who focused dozens of marine glasses upon his floating form. This inspection somewhat embarrassed him, and having no mind to be stared at he put on additional speed and soon left the ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... kite-photograph taken on the American continent was one made by Mr. Eddy's camera on May 30, 1895. Although some attempts in this direction had been previously made in Europe, this was the first clearly focused kite-photograph obtained. The previous ones had been blurred, owing to defects in the devices for swinging the camera apparatus from the kite-cord, and for loosening the shutter. Mr. Eddy's apparatus ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... tremendous and rapidly increasing speed, by the shortest course—i. e., a straight line—so that for the present it was not necessary to steer. Until beyond the limits of the atmosphere they kept the greatest apergetic repulsion focused on the upper part of their cylinder, so that its point went first, and they encountered least possible resistance. Looking through the floor windows, therefore, the travellers had a most superb view. The air ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... Just about. I got under the cloth. Focused him all right. Then slipped in my plate. Just going to press the bulb when he charged. Straight for me. No warning. I squeezed the bulb, anyhow; grabbed the camera and ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... only the lonely slope, bare now, it seemed, of all life. But they thought otherwise. Their unspeakably fierce gaze was focused upon what looked like a grained slab, like any other grained slab, if it had not all at once begun to twitch, and so—even then one could only make out the faint outline of a body—turn gradually into a wild ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... had picked her out of the chorus of the preceding Revue and commented so enthusiastically upon her beauty that this season had witnessed her advancement to a speaking part. Through Pope's column attention had been focused upon Bergman's latest acquisition; and once New York had paused to look carefully at this fresh young new-comer, her fame had spread. But he had never met the girl herself, and he wondered idly what effect ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... from the West, on reaching some Eastern land, finds it difficult at first to distinguish between the faces of different individuals, his mind being focused on the likeness pervading them all, so the Occidental student of Oriental thought is impressed with the remarkable similarity that pervades the entire Oriental civilization, modes of thought, and philosophy, finding it difficult to discover ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... lips, couldn't keep his eyes on Dan's eyes, focused on his nose instead,—as if the nose were really the important part of the conversation. "It isn't just me that makes these decisions, Dan. Other people have to be consulted. It's pretty late to catch them now, you know. It might be pretty hard ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... within a few minutes of its scheduled time, and at times even upon the very minute. Will is the sun-glass which so concentrates and so focuses the sun's rays that they quickly burn a hole through the paper that is held before it. The same rays, not thus concentrated, not thus focused, would fall upon the paper for days without any effect whatever. Will is the means for the directing, the concentrating, the focusing, of the thought-forces. Thought under wise direction,—this it is that does the work, that brings ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... the planet Mars, our nearest neighbor but one in the Sun's little family. When no important celestial phenomena in other quarters demanded attention, it was on the ruddy disc of Mars that my telescope was oftenest focused. I was never weary of tracing the outlines of its continents and seas, its capes and islands, its bays and straits, its lakes and mountains. With intense interest I watched from week to week of the Martial winter the advance of the polar ice-cap toward the equator, and ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... hunt began. Tom had plotted a concentric search pattern, focused on the probable position worked out by the task-force computers. After checking his fix on the automatic navigator, Tom switched on the Damonscope and steered the Sea Hound on ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... back O. K., and then the first heliographic message was sent from the ledge to the island. It was a rather mixed-up message, and kept Jim and Reddy wigwagging back and forth very strenuously to straighten matters out. It was my duty to keep the mirror focused. As the sun moved across the sky the shadow spot would move off the disk, and I had to keep shifting the mirror to bring the spot back where it belonged. We used the International Telegraph Code, which we had been studying every evening for a week, but it was many weeks ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... for a full minute before I focused my eyes enough to see, at the bottom, a thousand ...
— The Big Bounce • Walter S. Tevis
... seminarian in Plautus little satisfaction has been vouchsafed. We are often greeted by the enthusiastic comments of German critics, which run riot in elaborate analyses of plot and character and inform us that we are reading Meisterwerke of comic drama.[3] Our perplexity has perhaps become focused upon two leading questions; first: "What manner of drama is this after all? Is it comedy, farce, opera bouffe or mere extravaganza?" Second: "How was it done? What was the technique of acting employed to represent in particular the peculiarly ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... under your crown. Or if it happen that these apartments are noble in decoration and proportions, then this captivating little object will find a suitable place in some spare nook or other, and will rest or entertain eyes too long focused on the severely sublime and beautiful. I need not, however, rely upon abstract argument to support my contention. Many of the best writers of all time have used their skill in the inverted form of story ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... the direction indicated, through the groundcar's transparent dome. It was difficult to get them focused, for the groundcar swayed and jolted, but at last she was able to ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... colonel. "Cream, no sugar. And bring a second cup as soon as I've finished with the first." Only a part of his attention was given to the waiter; the rest was focused on the instructions he was receiving. The instructions kept coming until after the coffee had been ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett
... He would find it directly, and it was invariably the word needed. Most writers employ, now and again, phrases that do not sharply present the idea—that blur the picture like a poor opera-glass. Mark Twain's English always focused exactly. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... since that night when he had been called from his sleep to find Harry Goldenburg dead. Was there some point he had overlooked? He knew how fatal it was in the work of criminal investigation to take anything for granted. Although the main work of the explorer was now focused on Grell, it was not entirely certain that he was the murderer. Indeed, strange as his proceedings had been, there might be some explanation that would account for them. It might be that after Grell was found the whole investigation would have to ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... focused too long on the wrongs of the rural regions to be able to transfer themselves to the sufferings and injustices of the town. He saw the city collectively as the oppressor of the country, and Leverett Whyland, by reason of Clytie's innocent prattle, became the city incarnate ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... She ought to repent, of course, and Church was the right place; yet there was something brazen in her repenting there before their very eyes; she was too palpable a flaw in the crystal of the Church's authority, too visible a rent in the raiment of their priest. Her figure focused all the uneasy amazement and heart searchings of these last weeks. Mothers quivered with the knowledge that their daughters could see her; wives with the idea that their husbands were seeing her. Men experienced sensations varying from condemnation to a sort of covetousness. Young folk wondered, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... for us as we enter into this new international era. The whole power and will and wisdom of our Government and of our people should be focused to contribute to and to influence international action. It is intricate, continuing business. Many concessions ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... this chatter. He must keep in the picture. He merely favoured her with a glance of fatigued indifference. The camera was focused. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... he had seen a parabolic reflector for sound tried, but, unfortunately, the reflector so intensified and focused all the sounds about the vessel and the noise of the sea that the operator could hear nothing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various
... has been focused upon this matter of the supremacy of Christ. Was he human or divine? The arguments of Paul still hold good for a stout belief in the Divine Christ. The writings of the Great Apostle are all characterized by his grasp of fundamental things; they serve their purpose for the ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... eyes rested upon the shaving mirror which still hung upon the tent wall above the table; but his sight was focused far beyond. And then a reflection moved within the polished surface of the tiny glass, the man's eyes shot back out of space to the mirror's face, and in it he saw reflected the grim visage of Achmet Zek, framed in the flaps of the tent doorway ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... similitude, across her mental consciousness stole a reculmination of all the truths she had ever known concerning, or even remotely relating to, the not easily fathomed qualities of paste and ink. So she stood, focused in an intensity of soul-quivers, and I, all unrelenting, waited, though of a dim uncertainty whether, after all, it might not be ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... produced a small camera and focused it on Alan. He pressed a button; a droning sort of hum came from the machine. Alan felt a ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... him quick to scent a story. He was not sure, of course, but the situation appeared to him at least suggestive. With the end of the play he wandered out with the crowd, edging his way close to the man and girl who had focused Gregory's attention, and following them into the street. He saw only a tall man with a certain quiet distinction of bearing, and a young and pretty girl, still flushed and excited, who went up the street a short distance and got into a small and shabby car. Bassett ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... The American gentleman was the Special Correspondent of the "New York Herald." It is tolerably well known that except beneath his searching eye no considerable event can occur—and his whole attention was focused upon that apple-pie! ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... Empire Day may be extended to include most of the subjects on the time-table by providing interesting problems in these subjects which will, at the same time, keep the pupils' attention focused on the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... clearly treating itself to a sensation, and upon Philip were focused the eyes of all. From now he was a marked man. The President, stirred by the wishes of a large part of the people, expressed by them in divers ways, offered him reinstatement in the Army with the rank of Major, and indicated, through the Secretary of War, that he would be assigned ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... normal enough, in spite of the odd smells. He lay on a high bed, surrounded by prim white walls, and there was even a chart of some kind at the bottom of the bedframe. He focused his eyes slowly on what must be the doctors and nurses there, and their faces looked back with the proper professional worry. But the varicolored gowns they wore in place of proper clothing were covered with odd designs, stars, crescents ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... understand, but just to be on deck, looking landward. And then at two o'clock it appeared. Far off in the northeast was a small black dot in the sky. It looked like a seabird; but it grew. In ten minutes the whole deck was excited. Every glass was focused on the growing black spot. And then it loomed up the size of a baseball; it showed colour, a dull yellow in the distance and then it swelled and took form and glowed brighter and came rushing toward us, as large as a moon, as large as a barrel, and then we saw its outlines, and ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... more. He had been pacing the room, and now, while Hayes's perspiring attention was focused imploringly on Wong and McGinnis, ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... resigned my church office, and early one bright, beautiful morning I bade farewell to Redding. Just before the train drew out of the depot, I opened my Bible. My eyes were focused on these words (many friends had gathered to bid me Godspeed): "And let us not be weary in well-doing; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." Gal. 6:9. I stood on the rear platform of the train, holding up the open Bible, and soon Redding ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... raised his eyebrows. "You needn't shout, Mr. Heinz. I'm not the least interested in what you do. My interest is focused completely on a collection of five thousand letters, telegrams, and visiphone calls I've received in the past three days alone. My constituents, Mr. Heinz, are making themselves clear. If the Grdznth ...
— PRoblem • Alan Edward Nourse
... a whole roomful of people—she had never done it in her life. It would be as bad as that nightmare fancy which used to haunt her, of being dragged forward to find the ten thousand eyes of a crowded theater all focused upon her, a sensation almost as horrible ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... not get by bribery we tried to do by stealth and concealed ourselves behind bushes with the camera focused on a certain spot upon the road. The instant a Tibetan discovered it he would run like a frightened deer and in some mysterious way they seemed to have passed the word along that our camp was a spot to be avoided. Sometimes ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... whole, the note of the Chicago trip, all the dazzling lights and reflections of which focused, for Sylvia, upon Aunt Victoria's radiant person. At times, the resultant beam was almost too much for the young eyes; as, for example, on the next day when the two made a momentous shopping expedition to the largest and finest department store in the city. "I've a curiosity ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... was at once compelled to follow her protector's example, and before the ensuing season all her harbors were fortified and closed. In spite of the French occupation, a national reform movement had begun in this land. In Koenigsberg was formed the League of Virtue, which focused the new morality and patriotism of the masses. The pens of Fichte, Schleiermacher, and other great writers continued to build up public spirit. Stein accepted office, stipulating that the privy council should be abolished, and then freed the serfs. Among other important reforms ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... beings. The object of social organization is not to destroy sentiment and pleasure, but on the contrary to allow them to flourish, within the limit of not wronging others. It is right to enjoy what you have clearly earned by your work. That focused wisdom alone bursts among the old order ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... John, "think of the army as a sun, and of every loyal individual soldier, officer and private alike, as a ray of that sun and there is your true equality. Pershing's rank was simply the burning glass that focused our two million individual rays to a point of such equality that they could move as one. And I noticed another thing in that review, too," continued John, earnestly, "even if I was supposed to have my eyes front, I noticed that General ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... was too dazed to resist. Besides, he began to see that all eyes were focused on the black stallion and the man beside him. That man was the huge, cloddish stranger who had advised him to ride without spurs. Then the full meaning came to Dunbar. The rope was no longer around the neck of the stallion. The very bridle had ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... awful. Blunders? why, he never did anything but blunder. But, you see, nobody was in the fellow's secret—everybody had him focused wrong, and necessarily misinterpreted his performance every time—consequently they took his idiotic blunders for inspirations of genius; they did honestly! His mildest blunders were enough to make a man in his right mind cry; and they did make me cry—and rage and rave ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is first focused on the deeper notes. A gradual rise in pitch is noticeable in the lines from instrument to ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... mouth by tasting movements, to an odor by sniffing movements, to a sound by cocking the head and turning the eyes towards the source of sound. The most instructive of this type of attention-reactions are those of the eyes. The eye is focused on the object that arouses attention, the lens being accommodated for its distance by the action of the little ciliary muscle inside the {250} eyeball; the two eyes are converged upon the object, so that the light from it strikes the fovea or ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... her out of the tea room, his gaze focused on the back of her neck, and it was just possible to resist the mad inclination to bend and kiss the smooth, ivory-tinted skin. He was not ready to analyze the impulse for fear he might find how deep down the propellant was. A woman, young in the heart, ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... He focused his glasses. Some one in clerical attire accompanied by the man whom Beale recognized as the guard of the gate, was walking quickly down the drive. There was no time to be lost. But now for the first time doubts assailed him. His great scheme seemed more fantastic and its difficulties more real. ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... will subscribe; and it must be possible to discover some fundamental principles that will constitute a focal point toward which the thinking of all nations can be directed. Once this focal point is determined and the thinking of the world focused upon it, the work of ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... sea- mark given—a certain headland, known indifferently as Cape Adam and Eve, or Cape Jack and Jane, and distinguished by two colossal figures, the gross statuary of nature. These we were to find; for these we craned and stared, focused glasses, and wrangled over charts; and the sun was overhead and the land close ahead before we found them. To a ship approaching, like the Casco, from the north, they proved indeed the least conspicuous features ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... securing it, he thought out the procedure to use at the remote control panels. Turning on the screen above one of them produced a cross-haired image of the bulkhead directly in front of the near torpedo. He tried various manipulations until he had focused the view and caused it to sweep all around the interior of the turret. After idly watching himself and Truesdale appear on the screen, he returned the view to dead ahead, switched it off, and turned to ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe
... of my search I walked across to where I had left my camera focused upon the chancel. From the satchel that I had put beneath the tripod I took out a dark slide and inserted it in the camera, drawing the shutter. After that I uncapped the lens, pulled out my flashlight apparatus, and pressed the trigger. There was an intense, brilliant flash, that made ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... of longer radii. It became the inn for travelers and merchants sailing from Asia and Egypt to Italy and Greece, and hence drew to itself the trade and people of the whole Mediterranean basin.[863] The northwestern Indian Ocean had a similar emporium in the ancient Dioscoridis, (Sokotra) which focused on itself the trade between ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... at the landscape and get it imaged upon his soul before he can produce it upon the canvas. The Bible description of the life of Christ must fill your soul with admiration and with a strong desire to possess it. Your heart must lay hold upon it until that life is focused and printed upon your own soul. It is like the art of photographing. The object must be set before ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr |
