"Focussed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... far diff'rent. I've often thanked th' Lord that I didn't continyoo in pollytics whin I was cap'n iv me precinct, f'r with th' eyes iv all th' wurruld focussed, as Hogan says, on me, I cud niver injye th' pleasure iv a moment's sickness without people in far-off Boolgahrya knowin' whether me liver was on sthraight. Sickness is wan iv th' privileges iv th' poor man that he shares with no wan. Whin it comes kindly to him, th' four walls iv ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... proper position to permit the plate to take in what we wish. Usually it will be necessary to shift our position several times until we find the proper position. The tripod should be firmly set on the ground and the camera made as level as possible. The camera should then be focussed with the stop or diaphragm wide open. The fact that the image is inverted as it appears on the ground glass will at first be confusing to a beginner, but we soon become accustomed to it and never give it a thought. Our focussing cloth should be tightly drawn about the head ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... the case of a mother with child. Is the child under those circumstances really an unjust aggressor? Let us study that important case with the closest attention. Let all the rays of light we have gathered so far be focussed on this particular point. Can a physician ever be justified in destroying the life of a child, before or during its birth, by craniotomy or in any other manner, in order to save its mother's life, on the plea that the child is ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... apparently commonplace acts be investigated they will be found to have a long and complex history. None of these things that seem so obvious to us was attempted until a multitude of diverse circumstances became focussed in some particular community, and constrained some individual to make the discovery. Nor did the quality of obviousness become apparent even when the enlightened discoverer had gathered up the threads of his predecessor's ideas and woven them into the fabric of a new invention. For he had then ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... fundamental than that. All the dress had accomplished was to set an acute accent over a development which, though already at its penultimate stage, had so far escaped the notice of Cleopatra and her mother. The picture had been present the day before, but it had not been quite perfectly focussed. The new frock ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... faith that risks everything. It requires "mighty endurance," "hard labour," "stoutness of spirit," and "a great storm, assault, and onset" to open the Gate. In a word, the key to any important spiritual experience is intention, inward pre-perception, that holds the mind intently focussed in expectation, without which the "flash" of spiritual vision ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... long faces were two square holes, from the edges of which the inside walls focussed back on two smaller, circular diaphragms. That made the two openings act somewhat like megaphone horns to still further magnify the sound which was emitted directly from this receiver without using any earpieces, and could be listened to anywhere in the room, if we chose. This was attached to the ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... definite assurance of Blazing Star being entered, every man in Fort Ryan focussed his thoughts on how he might best turn the race to account, wipe out the damage of the last defeat, and recoup his loss with a double profit. They were very sorry for themselves, most of these losers; especially sorry that ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... provide yourself with a flashlight set back in a metal tube so that the rays of the light are not diffused but can be focussed only on one spot ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... where you live, Amarilly?" she asked, her eyes sparkling as she focussed them on the family. "You needn't come for the washing the first time. I will bring it myself so I can see all your little brothers. Be sure to come to the Guild next Saturday, and then I'll have the rug for you to ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... and inauspicious loam). She will love well," I said, "The flowers of the dead; Where dark Persephone the winter round, Uncomforted for home, uncomforted, Lacking a sunny southern slope in northern Sicily, With sullen pupils focussed on a dream, Stares on the stagnant stream That moats the unequivocable battlements of Hell, There, there will she be found, She that is Beauty veiled from men and Music in ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... cigarette, tossed the match out the open top of the window, then paused in his tracks with the cigarette two inches from his mouth—which fell faintly ajar. His eyes were focussed upon a spot of brilliant color on the roof of a house farther ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the sanctity of the Bear or the Bull or the Tree; the Bear for a hunting people; the Bull for nomads, later for agriculturists; the Tree for a forest folk. On the Bear and the Bull and the Tree are focussed the desire of the whole people. Bear and Bull and Tree are sacred, that is, set apart, because full of a special life and strength intensely desired. They are led and carried about from house to house that their sanctity may ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... hand; his gaze fell dreamily upon the table-top. Before his mind's eye there had unrolled a favorite vision—a white meadow of faces focussed breathlessly upon a great orator. He recalled himself with a start, a ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... and down the street, seeking to escape, instinctively and gropingly, from the awful shambles. And thereafter I lived nightmare. My memory of what happened in the succeeding hours is the memory one would have of nightmare. Many events are focussed sharply on my brain, but between these indelible pictures I retain are intervals of unconsciousness. What occurred in those intervals I know not, and ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... a wonderful spectacle. Half a dozen searchlights were playing, and shells were continually bursting in mid-air with a dull roar. On our way back from the cave where we had again deposited the patients, the searchlights suddenly focussed all three Zeppelins. There they were like huge silver cigars gleaming against the stars. They looked so splendid I couldn't help wishing I was up in one. It seemed impossible to connect death-dealing bombs with those floating silver shapes. Shrapnel burst all round them, and then the Zepps. ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... chatting merrily when suddenly a black figure rose from the water almost at their feet so suddenly that Mrs. Evans screamed. The black figure was the Monkey, who had quietly slipped into the water behind a large rock while all attention was focussed on the girls, and swimming under water came up in front of them. The new arrival on the scene turned out to be the waiter who announced that tea was ready. "We will be down immediately, Thomas," said Sahwah in her best society manner and promptly dove off the rock, the others following suit. ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... Mr. Burns in 1914 from the Office of the Local Government Board, over which he then presided, 'that few, if any, conferences held in London in recent years have done more good for the cause of social progress than the Industrial Remuneration Conference of 1885. The Conference focussed public opinion and sympathy upon a large number of important questions, which have since made greater headway than they would have done if the Conference had not taken place. I have the highest opinion of the value of its work, and of the good influence it exercised in stimulating ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... sat there in the study-room, her frowning eyes focussed on a spot straight ahead of her, her spirit slowly rose to meet the challenge of the debate. These others had all had to live through their "first," ease had come to them only with practice, she ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... not stay to watch them. Her attention was focussed upon the scene that was being enacted ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... my extremity the half-thought, I remember, floated, like a mist, through my fading consciousness, that now perhaps—now—there was silence around me; that now, could my palsied lips find dialect, I should be heard, and understood. My whole soul rose focussed to the effort—my body jerked itself upwards. At that moment I knew my spirit truly great, genuinely sublime. For I did utter something—my dead and shuddering tongue did babble forth some coherency. Then I fell back, and all was once more the ancient Dark. On the ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... town's just pride in this reputation. He said that this reputation was a treasure of priceless value; that under Providence its value had now become inestimably enhanced, for the recent episode had spread this fame far and wide, and thus had focussed the eyes of the American world upon this village, and made its name for all time, as he hoped and believed, a synonym for commercial incorruptibility. [Applause.] "And who is to be the guardian of this ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... London—the London of the 'sixties—noisy with hoofs and iron-bound wheels upon its cobbles and macadam, dark with slums that encroached upon its gayest ways, glittering with night-houses and pleasure gardens that focussed light till dawn, brightened as with clustered bubbles by the swelling skirts of ladies of the whole world and the half, was, though smaller, ignorant of electric light, and without half the broad spaces and great buildings ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... age of science, the attention and interest of the universe have been largely focussed on the marvellous achievements of the human intellect. Discoveries, inventions, advanced methods and great strides of progress in countless directions are the boast and pride of modern times. There is no disputing ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... that have followed, and is completed while the Peace Conference is still in session, holding in the balance, as many believe, the fate of many hopes, and perhaps the whole future of the world. We see focussed there in Paris all the motives that have ever entered into human history and all the ideals that have influenced human affairs. The question must have arisen in all minds in, some form as to what the place of these motives and ideals and dramatic moments is in the progress of the world. Is the ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... consented to aid his purpose. The reason, plainly enough, was that by use of this stern gangway the landing party would be enabled to attain the bank without the necessity of pushing their way through the crowd of idle loungers forward. And the passage had just been accomplished, for, as my eyes focussed the scene, they recognized the spare figure of the deputy disappearing over the crest—a vague glimpse, but sufficient. At the same instant hands above began to ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... dates back to 1650, and is attributed to Professor Kircher, a German philosopher of rare talents and extensive reputation. The instrument is simple and familiar. It is a form of the microscope. The shadows cast by the object are, by means of lenses, focussed upon something capable of reflection, such as a wall or screen. No essential changes in the principles of construction have been made since the time of Kircher; but the modern improvements in lenses, lights, and pictures, have ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... table, flushed with wine and the exertion of hilarity. Twenty eyes were focussed on the queer, insignificant little man in the doorway. If they had not been capable of focussing them on anything a moment before, they acquired the power to do ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... life to collect and arrange a vast encyclopaedia of facts, all finally focussed with supreme skill upon the great principle he so clearly perceived and so lucidly expounded. He brought to bear upon the question an amount of personal observation, of minute experiment, of world-wide ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... a corner with their back to it; and Jack, after trying in vain to get it over his right shoulder or his left, bent down and focussed it between his legs. This must have connected the current; for Simms turned right round and marched up to ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... forgot all around me. With my fancies focussed on my lover, I leaned back in my armchair, gazing at the rising moon. My word, at that moment I was ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... cry was on Jimmie Dale's lips. The bed was moved out now, and he was stooping over a man whose head was gruesomely battered above the right temple and back across the skull. The flashlight wavered in his hand, as he held it focussed on the other's ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... effect of this was astonishing. A tableau ensued, in which the mouths of all the performers were seen to be wide open for at least half a minute, while spoons full of pudding, or fruit, were lifted towards them, and the round eyes above them were focussed with a concentration of complete surprise and agitation upon the intermittent clergyman, who had sat down again, and was speaking to Mrs. Windsor about chasubles. Then, as at a signal, all the spoons, still full, were ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... circumstances that cut these men off more completely from the rest of mankind, whose ideal of conduct had never undergone the trial of a fiendish and appalling joke. They were exasperated with him for being a half-hearted shirker: he focussed on them his hatred of the whole thing; he would have liked to take a signal revenge for the abhorrent opportunity they had put in his way. Trust a boat on the high seas to bring out the Irrational that lurks at the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... focussed vaguely upon the portrait. Clear, honest gray eyes ... lines of character and of humor ... sweetly curved lips, ready to smile or ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... bridges, and pensions to Rajahs whose former sources of revenue have been interfered with or abolished. The sources of revenue are to some extent remarkable, and it is possible that some of them might be altogether abolished if public attention became focussed upon them. Export duties are levied only on tin, the great product of Sungei Ujong, and gutta-percha. The chief import duty is on opium, and in 1879 this produced 4,182 pounds, or about one-fourth of the whole revenue. Besides this fruitful and growing source of income, 3,074 ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... disinterested, sordid or noble; desires, aspirations, hopes, perplexities,—whatever a glance, a word, an attitude, a silence, suggested to her, fixed her attention, excited her intelligence to curiosity, and focussed her ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... ball as if about to throw it, a gigantic human figure a good forty feet high. The figure glittered in the sunlight, clad in a suit of woven white metal and belted with a broad belt of steel. For a moment it focussed all attention, and then the eye was wrested to another more distant Giant who stood prepared to catch, and it became apparent that the whole area of that great bay in the hills just north of Sevenoaks had been ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... mebby it has a trick mule to ride—I'll never forget that one up in Kansas City," he grinned. But almost instantly a doubt arose and tempered the grin. "Huh! Mebby it's the branding chute of some gospel sharp." As he drew near he focussed his eyes on the canvas and found ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... is still and peaceful, and the fact that in the very nature of things one cannot rush through this pervading beauty of the earth, but has to plod onwards step by step along a toilsome roadway, enables the scenery to be so impressed upon one's mind as to be focussed for life in one's memory. One is held spellbound; these are the pictures never forgotten. Here I sit in a corner of the earth as old as the world itself. These mountains are as they were in the great beginning, when the Creator and Sustainer of all things pure and beautiful looked upon ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... of mental gruel, easy to assimilate and none too stimulating; but all the innate barbarism of humanity, all of her nervous force responded to the clashing rhythm of the Slavonic Dance, and the swift color came into her face and focussed itself in a tiny circle in either cheek, as she listened. For the moment, she was as fiercely defiant of fate as a Valkyrie flying forth ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... was the outstanding personality among them all. There was a distinguished French general to bow, courtly, over Yvonne's hand, and a Labour Member to quote Cicero. But it was to Paul that the reporters sought to penetrate and upon Paul that the cameras were focussed. Bassett, who did not believe in thwarting the demands of popularity, induced him ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... beside him, shivering in her wet clothes, she found herself wondering what magnetic quality there could be about a man that focussed a woman's attention upon him whether she willed it or no. Why should she feel an oddly-disturbing thrill at the mere physical nearness of this fair-haired stranger? She did. There was no debating that. And she wondered—wondered if a ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... focussed his glasses upon the beckoner. Seen through their powerful lenses, he seemed to leap to within a few feet —so near that Lord James could see the heaving of his broad chest under the tattered flannel shirt as he flung his arms about his head and bellowed down at the ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... he began his sermon, had that dash of rich colour drawn his reluctant attention. He recoiled from, oddly dreaded it—now more than ever, since to him it rather mercilessly focussed the subject and impending climax of his ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... bull's-eye from the bottom. To-morrow it will surely shine through my suspect, and if the latter be a true lens it will concentrate, for several minutes, a high degree of heat at the particular spot upon which its rays are focussed. That spot I have found, by experiment, to be one of a series of small bosses set in the pivot-base of the big chair. I applied the flame of a match and immediately the metal boss began to soften. I understand now. The boss is made of a fusible alloy that melts at a certain prearranged temperature; ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... was the invisible lamp, Kenny wondered with his blood singing, that filled the world with golden dusk? It lay reflected in the water and in the dim and yellowed forest paths behind him. And there behind the gables of the farm, an autumn sunset focussed its softness into a brilliant ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... speculative difficulties in plenty, but the great fact remains that in Revelation steady light is focussed on the moral qualities of the divine Nature and especially on ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... eyes of the three musicians who were "hairdressers in the daytime" focussed passionately upon Miss Van Tuyn, distracted her attention. She felt masculinity intent upon her ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... to remain potent for good is in the domain of history. He was not altogether an initiator here, having learnt from Walter Scott in the one as in the other capacity; but he developed and focussed what he had received; he added to it, and made it a factor in the historical science. After him historians began to assign a more important place in their narrations and chronicles to the manners and interests of the people, patiently seeking to assemble and situate everything that could ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... the major stalked from the room, followed by the Irishman's adoring eyes. A moment later he stood by the tall white staff at the edge of the northward bluff, at whose feet the river swept by in musical murmurings. There he quickly focussed his glass, and gazed away westward up the Platte to where but the evening before a score of Indian lodges dotted the other bank, perhaps two miles away. The September moon was at its full and, in that rare, cloudless atmosphere, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... corresponding portion of the sleeper's body to recoil. By pricking a certain part of the Shadow Self with a pin, the cheek of the patient could be made to bleed. It was at that spot that the camera was focussed for fifteen minutes! ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... that all phases of the process— the relation of pupil and teacher, school and home, the government and discipline, the lessons taught in every subject, the environment, the proportioning of the curriculum, of physical, emotional and intellectual culture—all shall be focussed and organized upon the one ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... a more detailed description of the New York exchange market is given, but in passing, it is well to note how the whole country's supply of commercial exchange, with certain exceptions, is focussed on New York. Chicago, Philadelphia, and one or two other large cities carry on a pretty large business in exchange, independent of New York, but by far the greater part of the commercial exchange originating throughout the country finds its way to the metropolis. For in New ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher
... as everywhere, it is upon the margin that our attention should be focussed, because it is round about the margin (wherever it is found) that the changes are taking place which really matter for society. When Mr. Mallaby-Deeley buys an estate in Covent Garden from the Duke of Bedford, the transaction hardly deserves the degree of public interest it excites. ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... summoned him to the carpet in the cashier's office it seemed as though the eye of everyone of his associates was raised from the work that had employed their attention and was focussed upon him. ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... of the lagoon inside the reef, and a scrutiny of a few seconds was sufficient to satisfy me that it was a canoe. Seating myself upon the cross-trees, that I might more conveniently use the glass which I had taken aloft with me, I quickly focussed the instrument and brought it to bear. With its assistance, I was now enabled to discern that the canoe was a craft of about the same size as the one which we had towing astern, and it held three persons. The two who wielded the paddles were ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... them, save, perhaps, the driver, kept their eyes focussed on the spot mentioned by Julius until the first clump of trees shut out their view of the old stone quarry and its ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... babyhood something drove him to do the unwelcome and the unexpected. Now he gave her a long account of the day-school that he sometimes patronized. The account was interesting, and she had often pressed him for it before, but she could not attend now, for her mind was focussed on the invisible. She discerned that Mrs. Wilcox, though a loving wife and mother, had only one passion in life—her house—and that the moment was solemn when she invited a friend to share this passion with her. To answer "another day" was to answer as a fool. "Another day" will do for brick ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... course the extent or shallowness of Paracelsus' claim is a matter of quite secondary interest. We are concerned with the poet's presentment of the man—of that strange soul whom he conceived of as having anticipated so far, and as having focussed all the vagrant speculations of the day into one startling beam of light, now lambently pure, now lurid with ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... had not been focussed on the occupant of Stateroom A he would have wondered a good deal as to what had taken Justin O'Reilly on a "flying trip" west. This was O'Reilly's first year in Congress, and he'd manoeuvred to make himself a conspicuous ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... her much, not more than will keep her out of the poor-house." Bergstein's voice had grown as soft as an Oriental's. "I buried him at my own expense. It's hard on her—she's got a little girl who was always ailin'—sickly from the first." He fumbled at his scrubby black beard, his rat-like eyes focussed ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... Rothenstein brightly focussed him. 'Yes, I do,' he replied after a moment, with pride rather than effusion—pride in a retentive ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... even a fern-owl beats by, passing close to the eaves whence the moths issue. On the narrow waggon-track which descends along a coombe and is worn in chalk, the heat pours down by day as if an invisible lens in the atmosphere focussed the sun's rays. Strong woody knapweed endures it, so does toadflax and pale blue scabious, and wild mignonette. The very sun of Spain burns and burns and ripens the wheat on the edge of the coombe, and will only let the spring ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... thoughts of self. It is free of these impediments if he shall have been waiting alone in the room. To be come in to is a thing that needs no art and induces no embarrassment. One's whole attention is focussed on the comer-in. One is the mere spectator, the passive and receptive receiver. And even supposing that the young man could come in under his hero's gaze without a thought of self, his first vision would yet lack the right intensity. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Lefever's flash-light focussed on a United States license hanging back of the bar. "Is that a mere frame-up, Philippi?" he demanded, walking significantly toward the ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... doesn't find much more college-endowing to do. We made only one or two gifts. But we are trying to get the country school task rightly focussed. We haven't done it yet; but we will. Buttrick and Rose will work it out. I wish to God I could throw down my practical job and go at it with 'em. Darned if I couldn't get it going! though I say it, as shouldn't. And we are going pretty soon to begin with the medical colleges; ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... little apparent bearing on the concerns of his office; he was standing at the window of his private room, which was on the first floor of the mill, with a large field-glass at his eyes. The glass was focussed upon the Cartwrights' garden, in which sat Jessie with Emily Hood. They were but a short distance away, and Dagworthy could observe them closely; he had done so, intermittently, for almost an hour, ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... my fancy focussed on the past so mortul plane I kin even smell the locus'-blossoms bloomin' in the lane; And I hear the cow-bells clinkin' sweeter tunes 'n "Money-musk"' Fer the lightnin' bugs a-blinkin' ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... brief and inadequate as it is, of a history of furniture from the earliest time of which we have any record, until from the extraordinary growth of the vast Roman Empire, the arts and manufactures of every country became as it were centralised and focussed in the palaces of the wealthy Romans, brings us down to the commencement of what has been deservedly called "the greatest event in history"—the decline and fall of this enormous empire. For fifteen generations, for some five hundred years, did this decay, this vast revolution, proceed ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... action certainly; it has elements that would ordinarily be called melodramatic—events which are focussed down into realities against the tremendous background of an incredible war. The exotic settings are Egypt and Palestine. It must not be thought that the story is bizarre; the scenes in England, the English slang of John Hazel, as well as the typical ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... curses, though my reason told me that everything of the kind was sheer nonsense. I could not sleep for thinking about it, and in the night I rose from my bed, and, opening the window, held up the cross in the moonlight. The facets caught the silvery rays and focussed them. The amulet seemed to shudder with some prophecy of woe. It was now that, for the first time, I began to feel the signs of that great struggle between reason and the inherited instinct of superstition which afterwards played so important a part in my life. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... misgivings were not new made it the more difficult to understand why they had focussed themselves to-night into this great fear. There had been nothing unusual about the day, except that she had seen little of Diane, while George had remained shut up in his room, writing letters and arranging or destroying papers. There had been nothing out of the common in either of them—not ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... terrifying impression of an unseen and yet real presence did not endure; and, as she focussed her eyes on the open book she held in her hand, it became fainter and fainter, while she realised, with a keen sense of relief, what it was that had brought the presence of her absent friend so very near ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... wandering gaze focussed itself; a silly laugh welled up in his throat. "It would be no strange wonder if I did not," he chuckled. "Odin has changed you greatly; your face was never so beautiful. But this once you cannot trick me, ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... in their pretty light dresses, were standing by the wood fire. On the sofa, to their left, with the light from one of the lamps focussed full on her, sat Mrs. Crofton, her bare left arm hanging over the side of the low couch. Jack, perched on the arm of a big chair, was looking at her, all his soul in his eyes. Mr. Tosswill sat some way off under a shaded reading lamp; his wife, knitting, not far from ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... specific types. The only reason why we notice individual differences in the case of the human type more than we do in the case of any other types, is because our attention is here more incessantly focussed upon these differences. We are compelled to notice them in the case of our own species, however small they may appear to a naturalist, because, unless we do so, we should not recognise the members of our own family, or be able to distinguish between ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... Goethe focussed all the rays of feeling for Nature which had found lyrical expression before him, and purged taste, beginning with his own, of its unnatural and sickly elements. So he became the liberating genius of modern culture. Not only did German lyric poetry reach its climax in him; but he was the ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... felt a sudden thrill of alarm pass over him, even before he had focussed the glasses upon Jimmy's so-called "cloud." He suspected what it might prove to be, and the very thought of being caught out on the ocean by a fog gave ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... gallery of treaty-makers Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson focussed the "fierce light" that beat about the proceedings. But it was Smuts, in the shadow, who contributed largely to the mental power-plant that drove the work. Lloyd George had to consider the chapter he wrote in the great instrument as something ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... he shrugged pleased denial of claim to such courage, then his roving gaze focussed upon a distant object and the confident expression altered swiftly to uneasiness, awe, superstitious terror. Terry, startled at the transformation, followed the direction of his dread stare and saw that his eyes were fixed upon ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... the present century Persia was for a short time the pivot of the Oriental interest of English and Indian statesmen. But little known and scarcely visited during the preceding century, it suddenly and simultaneously focussed the ambitions of Russia, the apprehensions of Great Britain, the Asiatic schemes of France. The envoys of great Powers flocked to its court, and vied with each other in the magnificence of the display and the prodigality of the gifts with which they sought to attract the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... Catia stood there, waiting until, by very force of motionless persistence, she had focussed every eye upon her person. Then, according to the mandates of the Ladies' Galaxy, she hurled her bridal bouquet down across the banister, not upon the waiting Eva Saint Clair Andrews who hankered for it lustily, but straight against the manly ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... solid for a longer dream. Thoughtless, over-confident as her fantasy had been, she had the sense which a child has when a running man comes threateningly near—of a great shape, of unexpected size and dangerousness, looming out of the focussed picture, and setting all previous conceptions at nought. Here was this giant house, and Madam lying dead in it, and servants who would resent her appearance, and Gaga; and Sally was such a little girl in the face of a definite ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... nearly all his novels—those sheets covered with a network of writing, which were the despair of the printers. The collection is most remarkable, even when we remember the large sums of money, and the patience and ability, which have for many years been focussed on its formation. It will one day be deposited in the museum at Chantilly, near Paris, where it will be at the disposal of those who wish to ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... which had been roaming over the prospect of lake and forest, focussed on Smith's ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... And there, in the glare, they saw a youth speeding along on a motor-cycle. In an instant Tom grabbed up the binoculars and focussed ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... his companions emerged from their paralysis. The beams of five heatguns focussed on Old Beard, and he died in a burst of flame that flared from wall to wall ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... for her work she is too eager to serve, and everything tempts her to deceive. Furthermore, it has been proved that the psychic is in the very nature of the case extremely liable to suggestion, and the combined wills of the sitters focussed on one desired phenomena becomes an almost irresistible force to certain psychics. On the other hand, the best observers say that the most striking proofs of spiritualism lies in the fact that the most amazing phenomena come in opposition to the will of both the psychic and the sitters. We may ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... Brinnaria directed the energies of those organizations of the ancient world which were analogous to our modern private detective bureaus, and upon Spain she focussed the energies of the managers of ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... forget the agony of that first meal in the great dining room. She could have dined alone in her room; but courage had demanded that she face the ordeal and have done with it. Every eye seemed focussed upon her; and yet she had known the sensation to be the conceit ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... squealing sound from the communicator on which all the extra recording devices were focussed. Betsy's screen lighted up. Peculiarly curved patterns appeared on it. They shifted and changed. Noises came from her speaker. They were completely unearthly. Now they were shrill past belief, and then they were chopped into very small bits of ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... perpetual prostration. The Brittany coast was a long, flat, green band; the rocks of Cancale were brown, but scarcely higher in point of elevation than the sand-hills; the Normandy forests and orchards were rippling lines that focussed into the spiral of the Avranches cathedral spires: floating between the two blues, hung the aerial shapes of the Chaunsey and the Channel Islands; and nearer, along the coast-line, were the fringing edges ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... reputation which still followed him. The public would have found it hard to believe that at last Alan Massey was leading the most temperate and arduous of lives and devoting himself exclusively to one woman whom he treated as reverently as if she were a goddess. The gazes focussed upon Alan now inevitably included the girl with him, as lovely and young as ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... up the spy-glass again, and after considerable difficulty, and some mutterings, focussed it so as to suit her sight. She was absolutely silent, as she gazed her fill at the unconscious ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... to which their senses focussed these and other very ordinary things, their plight was responsible. It has been said that the faculty of observation is never so pronounced as when the observer is face to face with Death. Anthony and the lady were looking him in the eyes. The pair of them was, in fact, hanging ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... aforehand by putting his ear to the ground. Only by the simplest rules of psychology can he edit rightly so that he may lead, and to the average editor of to-day, it is to be feared, psychology is a closed book. His mind is all too often focussed on the circulation and advertising, and all too little on the intangibles that will bring to his periodical the results essential ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... God. We are in high contemplation when the heart, mind, and soul, having dropped consciousness of all earthly matters, have been brought to a full concentration upon God—God totally invisible, totally unimaged, and yet focussed to a centre-point by the great power of love. The soul, whilst she is able to maintain this most difficult height of contemplation, may be visited by an intensely vivid perception, inward vision, and knowledge of God's attributes or perfections, ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... test-tube held before the beam, emitted a musical tone. With a thin disc of vulcanite as receiver, the dark heat rays which pass through an opaque screen were found to yield a note. Even the outer ear is itself a receiver, for when the intermittent beam is focussed in the cavity a faint musical ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... people, but Mahommerah may have a special interest to us, and also to Russia. It is rather curious to note that it has never struck the British politician nor the newspaper writer that Russia's aims, based usually on sound and practical knowledge, might be focussed on this port, which occupies the most favourable position in the Persian Gulf for Russia's purposes. Even strategically it is certainly as good as Bandar Abbas, while commercially its advantages over the latter port are ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of a movement in every cot. Eyes were all front, gazing in the direction of a golden-haired beauty, who blushed a deep pink when she realised how many pairs of eyes from the train were focussed on her. Soon horny hands were being kissed in her direction. Shyly, she sent a kiss or two back, and then retired ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... Kidder proposed in a buggy. Afraid as I was of a collision, I was enjoying myself very much, when suddenly a horrid thing happened. A great white light pounced upon us like a hawk on a chicken, and focussed on us as if we were a tableau. It was so bright, shining all over us and into our eyes, that it made everything else except just the Prince and me, and our boat, look black, as if it were raining ink. And we were so taken aback with surprise, ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson |
