"Oblique" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... master, marching (a little chilled perhaps) with firm step and head erect. But on these enchanted grounds there is no medium between a wretched clearness of insight that reduces every curve to a number of straight lines, all clouds to precipitated vapor, all rainbows to an oblique coincidence between a sunbeam and a drop of water, and a total surrender of self to the influences ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... be deceived," said Albert; "the age has many such as this fellow, whose views of the spiritual and temporal world are so different, that they resemble the eyes of a squinting man; one of which, oblique and distorted, sees nothing but the end of his nose, while the other, instead of partaking the same defect, views strongly, sharply, and acutely, whatever is subjected ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... and boldlie, as in thies wordes, Multis sibi quisque imperium petentibus. I beleue, the best Grammarien in England can scarse giue a good reule, why quisque the nominatiue case, without any verbe, is so thrust vp amongest so many oblique cases. Some man perchance will smile, and laugh to scorne this my writyng, and call it idle curiositie, thus to busie my selfe in pickling about these small pointes of Grammer, not fitte for my age, place and calling, ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... dictated "by the royal concern for the honor and dignity of the crown," as implying a doctrine that an alliance of a subject with a branch of the royal family is dishonorable to the crown—a doctrine which he denounced as "an oblique insult" to the whole people, and which, as such, "the representatives of the people were bound to oppose." And he also objected to the "vindicatory part," as he termed the clause which declared those who might assist, or even be present, at a ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... record (a Suliot, belonging to the king of Naples), measured four feet at the shoulders; the least would probably give a height of as many inches. All the untamed species are lank and gaunt, their muzzles are long and slender, their eyes oblique, and their strength and tenacity ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... Flag description: five oblique bands of blue (hoist side), yellow, red, white, and green (bottom) radiating from the bottom of ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... veins, upon beholding this smiling land of groves and verdure stretched out before me. A few glooming vapours, I can hardly call them clouds, rested upon the extremities of the landscape; and, through their medium, the sun cast an oblique and dewy ray. Peasants were returning homeward from the cultivated hillocks and corn-fields, singing as they went, and calling to each other over the hills; whilst the women were milking goats before the wickets of the cottages, and ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... Claude with interest. He saw a young man standing bareheaded on the long flight of steps, his fists clenched in an attitude of arrested action,—his sandy hair, his tanned face, his tense figure copper-coloured in the oblique rays. Claude would have been astonished if he could have known how he ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... hole. Yet was not the feat a perfect one. For, in passing through the aperture, the weapon not having been driven with quite sufficient force, did not preserve its level, so that the end grazed the shield, and the lance then consequently taking an oblique direction, plunged downward and buried ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... Blas, he would have avoided the multiplication of circumstances, names, and dates; or if he had thought it necessary to intersperse his composition with them, he would have contented himself with such as were most general and notorious; the minute, circuitous, and oblique allusions, which it required patient examination to detect, and vast local knowledge to appreciate, could not have fallen within ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... Newcastle shop, was fitted with a tubular boiler six feet long and three feet four inches in diameter. The fire-box was two feet wide and three feet high. On each side of the boiler at its rear end was an oblique cylinder, the piston-rods being connected with the outside of the two driving wheels, which were in front. The two rear wheels were about one-half the diameter of the drivers. The tender, also fourwheeled, was ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... far behind, and had to wait till it overtook us. Meanwhile I looked downhill into the valley below: it was a veritable sea of slush. The teams that followed ours sank into it, and seemed not to be moving at all. The oblique rays of the setting sun, reflected and radiating in every direction, lent a peculiar glitter to the slushy wagons and the broken sheet of mire, as if pointing out their beauty to the darkening sky. So much light wasted, I thought. But ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... examining the eye by looking straight into it through the pupil, the anterior wall of the capsule appeared opaque in its whole extent, and of a color and luster like mother-of-pearl. On looking from the temporal side in an oblique direction into the pupil, there was visible in the anterior wall of the capsule a very small perpendicular cleft of about one line ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... a path oblique to the room and paced to and fro, struggling with intolerable vast impressions. The things he had derived from the cylinders and the things he had seen, conflicted, confused him. It seemed to him the most amazing thing of all that in his thirty years of life he had never tried ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... day, fretted past endurance by the situation, Judith permitted herself some oblique hints and suggestions, on the heels of which she left to prepare his breakfast. Returning to the sick-room with the bowl of broth, she met the strange, unexpected, unsolicited reply to all these withheld demands. Creed greeted her ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... was anything in the old adage that "music hath charms," he told himself grimly that now was the time to put it to the test. He took up a hymn book and selected a hymn Janet could play. The leader of the Methodist Choir condescended to flop down noisily from his oblique position and join him. Janet's sweet, timid voice made a pleasant third and the trio rendered some gospel hymns ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... would have been observable in her. Miss Upton waxed indignant as she went on to picture the probable scenes which had frightened and disgusted the child into such an abnormal frame of mind. The memory of Rufus Carder's gaze, as his oblique eye had feasted upon his guest, brought the blood ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... the men were groaning all around me. He was as hard to please as the captain; once, looking back along the line as we marched company front, he said, "The ancestors of this bunch certainly must have been a lot of snakes!" But I'll venture to say that none of us, after this, will forget how to oblique in making ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... the rock. At 8, when off a rocky point on which are two eminences of white stone in the form of oblique cones inclining inwards, we stood to the southward, and off and on during the night, keeping the peak and high land of Cape Barren in sight, the wind, from the westward. SUNDAY 11 At the following noon, the observed latitude was 40 degrees 41 1/2, Cape Barren bearing north-by-west. The wind ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... understood, I would observe that a perpendicular line starting from that part in the heavens which is our zenith strikes those obliquely who are fifty degrees beyond the equinoctial line: whence it appears that we are in the direct line, and they, in comparison with us, are in the oblique one, and this situation forms the figure of a right-angled triangle, of which we have the direct lines, as ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... England, I started in the beginning of June, 1852, on my last journey from Cape Town. This journey extended from the southern extremity of the continent to St. Paul de Loando, the capital of Angola, on the west coast, and thence across South Central Africa in an oblique direction to Kilimane (Quilimane) in Eastern Africa. I proceeded in the usual conveyance of the country, the heavy, lumbering Cape wagon drawn by ten oxen, and was accompanied by two Christian Bechuanas from Kuruman—than whom I never saw better servants any where—by two Bakwain men, and two ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... example of an oblique echo, not heard by the person who emits the sound, is described in the "Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences" as existing at Genefay, near Rouen. A person singing hears only his own direct voice, while those who listen hear only the echo, which sometimes seems to approach, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... a host of problems which have puzzled classical scholars within recent years. The form of the double axe on the Mycenaean ring[206] and the painted sarcophagus from Hagia Triada in Crete (and especially the oblique markings upon the axe) is probably a suggestion of the double series of feathers and the outlines of the individual feathers respectively on the wings. The position of the axe upon a symbolic tree is not intended, as Blinkenberg claims (op. cit., p. 21), as "a ritual representation ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the Indian would not, so we stared like basilisks. It was not an heroic position, and having a white man's love for open action, I had to argue with myself to keep from letting my sword whistle. But fighting with savages is not open nor heroic. It is tedious, oblique, often uninteresting, and frequently fatal. I was unwilling to lose my head just then. So I lay still. If this were the Huron, he was probably merely reconnoitring, as I had reason to believe he had done several times before. His game interested me, for he seemed to work unnecessarily ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... sufficient to maintain a provost and prebend. The ruins of the chapel, dedicated to Saint Mary, mentioned as early as 1342, are still to be seen. The chapel has one feature not observed in any ecclesiastical edifice—what is termed "a squint"—an oblique opening in the wall to allow those who were late in attendance to hear mass without attracting the attention of the officiating priest. Few traces of ornament are to be seen on the building, but at the eastern gable there is a niche in which a half ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... all things shall revert To that primaeval chaos, stars on stars Shall crash; and fiery meteors from the sky Plunge in the ocean. Earth shall then no more Front with her bulwark the encroaching sea: The moon, indignant at her path oblique, Shall drive her chariot 'gainst her brother Sun And claim the day for hers; and discord huge Shall rend the spheres asunder. On themselves Great powers are dashed: such bounds the gods have placed Upon the prosperous; nor doth Fortune lend To any nations, so that ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... 64. A thrust joint or tie joint or toe joint, Fig. 268, is one in which two beams meet at an oblique angle, one receiving the thrust of the other. The toe may be either square as in 63, or oblique as in 64. The pieces are bolted or strapped together with iron. It is used for ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... and he wondered how and where. There was a row of lilac shrubs against the iron palings just inside and between the palings and the path, but two of the shrubs were dead and leafless, and each time the man passed this spot he came into plain view; each time, also, he directed an oblique glance toward the house opposite. Presently he turned aside and sat down upon one of the public benches, where he was almost, but not quite, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... were ancestors of my father. My mother heard him say it; and he said those skeletons were two million years old, which astonished her and made her Kentucky pretensions look small and pretty antiphonal, not to say oblique. Let me see. . . . I used to know the meaning of those words, but . . . well, it was years ago, and 'tisn't as vivid now as it was when they were fresh. That sort of words doesn't keep, in the kind of climate ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... whole, or concerning the relation of the particular parts to each other. I grant that we may observe in many flowers something of a regular figure, and of a methodical disposition of the leaves. The rose has such a figure and such a disposition of its petals; but in an oblique view, when this figure is in a good measure lost, and the order of the leaves confounded, it yet retains its beauty; the rose is even more beautiful before it is full blown; in the bud; before this exact figure is formed; and this is not the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... rescuing of bodies some method might yet be discovered to revive the souls. And there were the children! Hodder might have been likened to an explorer, seeking a direct path when there was none—a royal road. And if this were oblique it offered, at least, a definite outlet for ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... chief of the establishment and made a light; a strip of birch bark was used, and it took a good deal of blowing on the fire coals before a flame was produced. When we entered we found the proprietor standing in a short garment and rubbing his oblique eyes to ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... mid-December day, clear and cold; and the hesitant high-noon sun, having laboriously dragged its pale orb up from behind the southern land-rim, balked at the great climb to the zenith, and began its shamefaced slide back beneath the earth. Its oblique rays refracted from the floating frost particles till the air was filled with glittering jewel-dust—resplendent, blazing, flashing light and fire, but ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... what he wanted to convey to the two girls was: "Ho, ho, my pretty misses, I'm on bowing terms with you, and yet when I might go up and speak to ye, I prefer to go off and drink with a sweep, d'ye see? That shows what I think o' ye!" All that summer John took an oblique revenge on those who had disconsidered the Gourlays, but would have liked to make up to him now when they thought he was going to do well—he took a paltry revenge by patently rejecting their advances and consorting instead, and in their presence, with the lowest ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... inclined to doubt whether this honor had been obtained for him altogether by friendly aid, though it did happen to have much in it that might suit his half-formed purpose of remaining long abroad; but with an eye already rendered somewhat oblique by political practice, he suspected that a political rival—a rival, though of his own party—had been exerting himself to provide an inducement for Redclyffe to leave the local field to him; while he ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... difficult staccato, Emerson is not free from secondary faults. He uses words that are not only odd, but vicious in construction; he is not always grammatically correct; he is sometimes oblique, and he is often clumsy; and there is a visible feeling after epigrams that do not always come. When people say that Emerson's style must be good and admirable because it fits his thought, they forget that though it is well that ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... which might be advancing to his aid and embarrass his retreat should he be finally overpowered. This was about 10. While both armies were preparing for action General Scott (as stated by General Lee) mistook an oblique march of an American column for a retreat, and in the apprehension of being abandoned left his position and repassed the ravine ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... himself; 'a barque from the neighboring island, or some point of the continent!' And looking again through his copper tube, he clearly distinguishes three masts well rigged, decorated with white sails, which are swelling in the east wind, and gilded by the oblique rays of the ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... had passed the ponds and had traversed in an oblique direction the large clearing which lies on the right of the Avenue de Bellevue, and reached that turf alley which nearly makes the circuit of the hill, and covers the arch of the ancient aqueduct of the Abbey of Chelles, he caught sight, over the top of the brushwood, of the hat ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... how shall I describe to you a view, such as the ancients supposed Jupiter to have of the earth, and to copy which there are no terms in any language. The gradual diminution of objects, and the masses of light and shade are intelligible in oblique and common prospects. But here every thing wore a new appearance, and had a new effect. The face of the country had a mild and permanent verdure, to which Italy is a stranger. The variety of cultivation, and the accuracy with which property is divided, give the idea ever present ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... opposite, a hideous sorcerer was hiding in the bushes. He was as bristly as a wild boar, with wide mouth and small oblique eyes.[60] He was well skilled in all magic; he could make the wind blow from any quarter, could remove ill from one man to cast it on another, and could cause quarrels between the best friends. He had evil demons at his beck and call; but ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... idea that he would turn up at a fashionable resort greatly affected by Washingtonians and only a comparatively short distance from the capital. He was at a great disadvantage in not knowing Armitage's plans and strategy; his own mind was curiously cunning, and his reasoning powers traversed oblique lines. He was thus prone to impute similar mental processes to other people; simplicity and directness he did not understand at all. He had underrated Armitage's courage and daring; he wished to make no further mistakes, and he walked ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... apt to imagine. For example, does it not require some pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle,(which is yet none of the more abstract, comprehensive, and difficult,) for it must be neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalinon; but all and none of these at once. In effect, it is something imperfect, that cannot exist; an idea wherein some part of several different and inconsistant ideas are put together. ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... feel and to understand are certain motions in the sense that motion is said to be the act of a perfect thing.[298] It is in this sense, too, that Denis[299] assigns three movements to the soul in contemplation: the direct, the circular, and the oblique.[300] ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... itself. That maniere d'etre, entierement composee de nuances, was not more, as the writer seems to have supposed, than attributory to Mr. Brummell's art. Nor is it even peculiar to dandies. All delicate spirits, to whatever art they turn, even if they turn to no art, assume an oblique attitude towards life. Of all dandies, Mr. Brummell did most steadfastly maintain this attitude. Like the single-minded artist that he was, he turned full and square towards his art and looked life straight in the face out of ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... carina and passing down the left bronchus, the relatively great distance from the carina to the upper-lobe bronchus is noted. The spur dividing the orifices of the left upper- and lower-lobe bronchi is oblique in direction, and it is possible to see more of the lumen of the left upper-lobe bronchus than of its homologue on the right. Below this are seen the lower-lobe bronchus and ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... silk puffing of her black hat, and the speaking power of her eyes at the moment of danger. The breadth of that clear-complexioned forehead—almost concealed by the masses of brown hair bundled up around it—signified that if her disposition were oblique and insincere enough for trifling, coquetting, or in any way making a fool of him, she had the intellect to ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... when I was directed by McCook to form line of battle and place my artillery in position so that I could act in concert with Davis's division, which he wished to post on my right in the general line he desired to take up. In obedience to these directions I deployed on the right of, and oblique to the Wilkinson pike, with a front of four regiments, a second line of four regiments within short supporting distance, and a reserve of one brigade in column of regiments to the rear of my centre. All this time the enemy kept up a heavy artillery and musketry fire ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... it is sometimes very prudent to be deaf and dumb in society, so is it extremely convenient upon occasions to be blind. The cuts, direct and oblique—the looks at, and the looks over—the distant, formal bow, and the adroit turn upon the heel (should you perceive the party, intended to be cut for the time being at least, advancing with dire intent of obliging a recognition), may be, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... like kind is that of oblique and covert reflections; when a man doth not directly or expressly charge his neighbour with faults, but yet so speaketh that he is understood, or reasonably presumed to do it. This is a very cunning and very mischievous way of slandering; for therein the skulking ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... type. It shows the way the domestic wind blows. Fancy having to be always resisting such a wind. What an oblique, shorn-looking object one would ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... movements of a kind, in so far as movement is defined "the act of a perfect thing." In this way Dionysius (Div. Nom. iv) ascribes three movements to the soul in contemplation, namely, "straight," "circular," and "oblique" [*Cf. Q. 180, A. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... inquiry. Of stylospores which deserve mention on account of their singularity of form, we may note those of Dilophospora graminis, which are straight, and have two or three hair-like appendages at each extremity. In Discosia there is a single oblique bristle at each end, or at the side of the septate spores, whilst in Neottiospora a tuft of delicate hairs is found at one extremity only. The appendages in Dinemasporium are similar to those of Discosia. ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... of spiral on a very long axis, may be made effective for improving even the swivel windmill itself, so as to adapt it for electric generation and conservation of power through the medium of the storage battery. Supposing that a number of small oblique sails be set upon an axis lying in the direction of the wind, the popular conception of the result of such an arrangement is that the foremost sails would render those behind it almost, if not ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... eighth being lost. From Apollonius's prefaces we can judge of the relation of his work to Euclid's Conics, the content of which answered to the first three Books of Apollonius. Although Euclid knew that an ellipse could be otherwise produced, e. g. as an oblique section of a right cylinder, there is no doubt that he produced all three conics from right cones like his predecessors. Apollonius, however, obtains them in the most general way by cutting any oblique cone, and his original axes of reference, a diameter and the tangent ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... cross veins, one or more in number, extending between M1 2 and the bridge (in de Selys between principal and subnodal sectors) proximal to the oblique vein. ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... beard. He had an eye-glass screwed into his right eye, and that whole side of his face was distorted by the contraction of the muscles and drawn upward toward the eye. He did not look at her directly, but with an oblique and furtive glance he expressed his sense of the honor which the introduction conferred on him. However, Sylvia was determined not to be disappointed. She turned to the ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... murmured, and hurried through the stone portal, aware of the gaze of those dark, slightly oblique eyes which had ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... beginning of a small spouting house, to be connected with the main elevator by a belt gallery above the C. & S. C. tracks. A hundred yards to the westward, up the river, the Belt Line tracks crossed the river and the C. & S. C. right of way at an oblique angle, and sent two side tracks lengthwise through the middle of the elevator and a third along the south side, that is, the ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... fingers through her silken hair. Her body was round in the barrel and perfectly symmetrical. She was wide in the haunches, without projection of the hipbones, upon which the shorter ribs seemed to lap. High in the withers as she was, the line of her back and neck perfectly curved, while her deep, oblique shoulders and long, thick forearm, ridgy with swelling sinews, suggested the perfection of stride and power. Her knees across the pan were wide, the cannon-bone below them short and thin; the pasterns long and sloping; her ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray
... mistake. He beckoned to Big Bob Jeffries to try for goal. It was an oblique slant, and only a clever kicker could succeed, with that baffling wind against him. Big Bob looked once in the direction of the grandstand as if to draw inspiration. Most people believed he must know some girl, whose encouragement ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... the "Forhoejning" is still used. This is a raised platform close to the window, on which the lady of the house sits to do her embroidery. While she is here she can follow all that goes on in the street below by an ingenious arrangement of oblique convex mirrors fixed to the outside of the window, and reflecting the life in the streets ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... "you take no more exercise than I do, and probably you eat no less." (Like all excessively obese people he fancied he ate nothing.) "Yet"—and he smiled an oblique smile—"we differ." ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... but it was a sign of his independence. He had long since given up plug and fine-cut and taken to fat Havanas, which he smoked audibly, in plethoric wheezes. Good living had left his body stout and his breathing slightly asthmatic. He sat looking down at his massive knees; his oblique study of Copeland, apparently, had yielded him scant satisfaction. Copeland, in fact, was making paper fans out of the official note-paper in ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... arranging a second system of spirals identical with the first, but placed in a plane at right angles therewith, or, more simply still, by having a single system of spirals comprising the coil of the electro-magnet, but distributed in a plane that is oblique with respect to the needle's position of rest. It then becomes possible, by properly modifying such angle of inclination, to obtain a total directing action that shall continue to increase with the intensity, and which, graphically represented, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... have sketched move away from its station, I feel that it is something not only emblematic and interpretative, but monumental; and I know that when art becomes truly national, the overloaded horse-car will be celebrated in painting and sculpture. And in after ages, when the oblique-eyed, swarthy American of that time, pausing before some commemorative bronze or historical picture of our epoch, contemplates this stupendous spectacle of human endurance, I hope he will be able to philosophize more satisfactorily than we can now, concerning ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... says he is vain constitutionally, and thanks God that he is. I don't think he has enough vanity to make a fool of himself with it, but the simple truth is he cannot help knowing that he has a wide and lively intelligence, and it pleases him to know it, and to be reminded of it, especially in an oblique and tangential sort of way, so as not to look ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... suddenly, diving over the crest, half-demented with anxiety to cover her eggs from that stony stare of the sea-rover; and Cob, seeing where she had come from, surrendered himself to the gale, hurtled down-wind, veered, tacked, circled, rocking, and came down in a series of his oblique plunges—smack-bang into the middle of a gory dinner-party, consisting of the male raven, five gray or hooded crows, and one silver herring-gull, feasting upon the carcass of a ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... without being able to make any adequate return against the concealed foes, General Graham determined to turn it by working round its flank. Accordingly, after a halt, the column continued its march in an oblique direction across the face ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... keen eye; "we are no bigots, and there are moments when we drink Champagne, nor is Burgundy forgotten, nor the soft Bourdeaux, nor the glowing grape of the sunny Rhone!" His Highness held the bottle at an oblique angle with the chandelier. The wire is loosened, whirr! The exploded cork whizzed through the air, extinguished one of the burners of the chandelier, and brought the cut drop which was suspended under it rattling down among the glasses on the table. The President poured the foaming fluid ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... With that oblique persuasion, Anita took up the jacket, and her quick fingers made the needles fly. Her glance was keen, and although apparently concentrated on her work, she saw the strange mixture of plainness and luxury ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... OBLIQUE ASCENSION. An arc between the first point of Aries and that point of the equator which comes to the horizon with a star, or other heavenly body, reckoned according to the order of signs. It is the sum or difference of the right ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... one might have supposed to be riveted to the flagstones, appeared to possess neither movement, nor thought, nor breath. Lying, in January, in that thin, linen sack, lying on a granite floor, without fire, in the gloom of a cell whose oblique air-hole allowed only the cold breeze, but never the sun, to enter from without, she did not appear to suffer or even to think. One would have said that she had turned to stone with the cell, ice with the season. Her hands were clasped, her eyes fixed. At first sight one took her for a spectre; ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... said the king, without changing countenance, and casting an oblique look at D'Artagnan. "And your own ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... precincts in which Fielding was later to labour so assiduously as a student, and as a member of the Middle Temple; but where, as the young Templar of the play observes, "dress and the ladies" might also very pleasantly employ a man's time. But except for an oblique hit at duelling, a custom which Fielding was later to attack with curious warmth, this second play seems to yield few passages of biographical interest. Of very different value for our purpose is the third play, which within ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... oblique line down the hillside, and descended, some two or three hundred yards below the ferry, upon a foreshore firm for the most part and strewn with flat stones, but melting into mud by the water's edge. A small trading ketch lay there, ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to the other extremity of the mine, and reached a sort of hall or amphitheatre much higher than the passages. This was a centre with diverging passages on one side, but closed on the other. Two of these passages led by oblique routes to those old works, the shoring of ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... M. Hutchinson, of the British Army, already described in this book as an instructor who made a powerful impression on the American Army in World War I because of his droll wit, was a master hand at taking the oblique approach to teach a lesson. Old officers still remember the manner and the moral of ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... often tastefully ornamented with patterns of incised or excavated lines which are arranged in groups, in vertical or oblique positions, or encircle the vessel parallel with the border. One specimen has a row of stamped circles, made by a reed ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... Creator. Have not thousands, even of those that are called Christians, taken the liberty to call His mercy, if not His justice also, into question, on this very account? Some indeed have done this a little more modestly, in an oblique and indirect manner: but others have thrown aside the mask, and asked, "Did not God foresee that Adam would abuse his liberty? And did He not know the baneful consequences which this must naturally have on all his posterity? And why then did He permit ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... meantime the projectile visibly drew nearer the moon. It was, therefore, submitted in some proportion to its influence; but its own velocity also inclined it in an oblique line. Perhaps the result of these two influences would be a line that would become a tangent. But it was certain that the projectile was not falling normally upon the surface of the moon, for its base, by reason of its weight, ought to have been ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... perceptible laws binding them in consideration one to another; whenever they offend sound reason, fair justice; are false in humility or moved with conceit, individually or in the bulk—the Spirit overhead will look humorously malign and cast an oblique light on them, followed by volleys of silvery laughter. That is the Comic Spirit." The Comic Spirit is the just common sense, the subconscious wisdom of the ages. There IS a golden mean, the Comic Spirit shows ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... marbling or grain upon the stone of our old buildings, such as the Town-Hall, which I believe was obtained from quarries occupying the site of the St. James's Cemetery. This is due to what is called current bedding; that is to say, the grains have been arranged along oblique lines and curves instead of in parallel laminae. This stone, which is geologically equivalent to the Storeton Stone, and of the same nature, has stood very well. Some of the Storeton Stone, if free from clay galls, although very soft when quarried, becomes hardened by exposure, ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... screaming and exploding shells could be seen. When the head of the Michigan column came into their line of vision, the confederate cannoneers trained one of their guns on the road and the shells began to explode in our faces. A right oblique movement took ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... bird, with breast of red, How prone's my heart to favour thee! Thy look oblique, thy ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... intelligent young Italian woman with strong and somewhat perverted sexual impulses is described as of attractive appearance, with olive complexion, small black almond-shaped eyes, dilated pupils, oblique thin eyebrows, very thick black hair, rather prominent cheek-bones, largely developed jaw, and with abundant down on lower part of cheeks and on upper lip. (Archivio ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... here is the simplest that can be made. It is suggested that until the child becomes accustomed to working with the knife, all designs for grooving had better be confined to straight lines. Combine in a design a vertical, a horizontal, and an oblique line, and some beautiful patterns ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... In an oblique fashion, it was a heat-pump. One control turned it on and intensified or diminished its effect. The other controlled the area it worked on. In any material but iron, it made heat flow together toward the center of its projected field. Pointed at a metal bar, the heat from ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... not equalled in antiquity, quantity, or authenticity in any other Celtic source. In English they are commonly called Brehon Laws, from the genitive case singular of Brethem "judge", genitive Brethemain (pronounced brehun), as Erin is an oblique case of Eire, and as Latin words are sometimes adopted in the genitive in modern languages which themselves have no case distinctions. It is not to be inferred from this name that the laws are judge-made. They are rather case law, in parts possibly enacted by some of the various ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... to promise that the inhabitants should escape with their lives. This was the upshot of the conference. You informed the conferees that you were two months in soliciting these powers. We ask, what powers? for as commissioner you have none. If you mean the power of pardoning, it is an oblique proof that your master was determined to sacrifice all before him; and that you were two months in dissuading him from his purpose. Another evidence of his savage obstinacy! From your own account of the matter we may justly draw these ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... for the outer air to the heated chamber within, while a certain quantity of light would be admitted at the same time. The danger arising from the rains could be avoided to a great extent by giving them a slightly oblique direction. To this very day the Turkish bath-houses over the whole of the Levant from Belgrade to Teheran, are almost universally lighted by these small circular openings, which are pierced in great numbers through the low domes, and closed with immovable glasses. Besides ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... blanket covering, and who had been lingering in the extreme rear of the party, came rapidly up to the spot where the well-affected struggle was maintained. At his approach the hurdles of the other players were withdrawn, when, at a single blow from his powerful arm, the ball was seen flying in an oblique direction and was for a moment lost altogether to the view. When it again met the eye, it was descending into the very centre ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... hand in the armlet of his waistcoat; he brandishes in the other a thickish bit of smooth cherry-wood, sometimes dressing his hair withal; and again giving his head a slight scratch behind the ear, while he takes occasion at the same time for an oblique glance at a fat boy in the corner, who is reaching down from his seat after a little paper pellet that has just been discharged at him from some unknown quarter. The master steals very cautiously and quickly to the rear of the stooping boy, dreadfully exposed by his unfortunate position, ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... you," said he, "that Clairfait would turn out well. I see that he has been taught in our school. Observe that manoeuvre;" he continued his comment with increasing force of gesture—"That was the Great Frederic's favourite, the oblique formation. The finest invention in tactics, with that he gained Rosbach, and beat the French and Austrians; with that he gained the battle of Breslau; and with that he gained the grand fight of Torgau, and finished the war. Yet the king always said that he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... him an oblique, upward glance, and had a pleasant sense of power in seeing his face relax and smile. She had a dance for that evening; but she thrust it aside without regret. For suppose Harry should have something to tell her about the Chatworth ring? ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... in hand, the boy dashed off down the mountain side, leaping lightly from rock to rock, his red neck-handkerchief streaming in the breeze behind him, as he followed an oblique course ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... finished one stitch, carry the needle under one thread, in an oblique line, to the next stitch, see fig. 273. The whole pattern is worked ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... Southern Cross, as it is called, consisting of four stars, three of the first magnitude and the fourth somewhat smaller, arranged in the form of an oblique crucifix, pointing across the firmament "athwartship-like," as the skipper explained one night-watch when the brothers were looking out together. Only once in the year, Captain Brown said, is this cross perfectly perpendicular ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... have been a most dangerous citizen: for his ambition was so resolute, and his sight to its ends was so clear. But there is something in public life in England which compels the really ambitious man to honour, unless his eyes are jaundiced and oblique, like Randal Leslie's. It is so necessary in England to be a gentleman. And thus Egerton was emphatically considered a gentleman. Without the least pride in other matters, with little apparent sensitiveness, touch him on the point of gentleman, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... slanting sunlight poured from clefts in the impendent hills. Inshore the substance of the ice sparkled here and there with iridescence like the plumelets of a butterfly's wing under the microscope, wherever light happened to catch the jagged or oblique flaws that ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... than with What Knows. It is all very fine to assure us that testing our knowledge about Literature and around Literature, and on this side or that side of Literature, is healthy for us in some oblique way: but can you examiners examine, or can you not, on Literature in what you call its own and proper ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... array of miscellaneous objects was shrouded in the same grey covering. Then I perceived, standing strange and gaunt in the centre of the hall, what was clearly the lower part of a huge skeleton. I recognized by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after the fashion of the Megatherium. The skull and the upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and in one place, where rain-water had dropped through a leak in the roof, the thing itself ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... tropical shrubs and trees, and the lower wings are also produced into a short narrow tail. Between these two points runs a dark curved line exactly representing the midrib of a leaf, and from this radiate on each side a few oblique lines, which serve to indicate the lateral veins of a leaf. These marks are more clearly seen on the outer portion of the base of the wings, and on the inner side towards the middle and apex, and it is very curious to observe how ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... seated themselves on a carpet of sheep-sorrel, looking out across the imperturbable expanse of the Weald, and the broad pastures of Sussex. A solemn blue haze brooded soft over the land. The sun was sinking low; oblique afternoon lights flooded the distant South Downs. Their combes came out aslant in saucer-shaped shadows. Alan turned and gazed at Herminia; she was hot with climbing, and her calm face was flushed. A town-bred girl would have looked red and blowsy; but the ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... Jim her next search was for Mrs. Peach, and, by dint of some oblique glancing Margery indignantly discovered the widow in the most forward place of all, her head and bright face conspicuously advanced; and, what was more shocking, she had abandoned her mourning for a violet drawn-bonnet ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... never quite reconciles himself to them. The Frenchmen, who expected to find there the climate of their native land, and ripen her wines in as kindly a sun, have perpetuated the image of home in so many things, that it goes to the heart with a painful emotion to find the sad, oblique light of the North upon them. As you ponder some characteristic aspect of Quebec,—a bit of street with heavy stone houses opening upon a stretch of the city wall, with a Lombardy poplar rising slim against it,—you say, to your satisfied soul, "Yes, it is the real ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Mosaic cosmogony, has assumed that our Hebrew verb bara has the full signification of ex nihilo creavit. Our own Castell, a profound and self-denying scholar has entertained the same groundless notion. And even our illustrious Bryan Walton was not inaccessible to this oblique ray ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... little time or space to give remorse an inning. The Cherokees, checked but for the moment, were storming hotly at our heels. And as we ran I heard the shouted command of Falconnet to his mounted men: "A rescue! Right oblique, and head them in the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... from my theme; I go out of my way; but 'tis rather by licence than oversight; my fancies follow one another, but sometimes at a great distance, and look towards one another, but 'tis with an oblique glance. I have read a dialogue of Plato,—[The Phaedrus.]—of the like motley and fantastic composition, the beginning about love, and all the rest to the end about rhetoric; they fear not these variations, and have ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... natura ut, quo maior vis aquae se incitavisset, hoc artius illigata tenerentur. Haec derecta materia iniecta contexebantur ac longuriis cratibusque consternebantur; ac nihilo setius sublicae et ad inferiorem partem fluminis oblique agebantur, quae {20} pro ariete subiectae et cum omni opere coniunctae vim fluminis exciperent; et aliae item supra pontem mediocri spatio, ut, si arborum trunci sive naves deiciendi operis essent a barbaris immissae, his defensoribus earum ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... with a lazy competence, Brice moved forward and gave him a light push, sidewise, on the shoulder. There was science and a rare knowledge of leverage in the mild gesture. When a man is kicking, he is on only one foot. And, the right sort of oblique push will not only throw him off his balance, but in such a direction that his second foot cannot come to earth in position to help him restore ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... give new form and colour to what we are already possessed of, by superadding refinement and ornament, which too often tend to disguise the real state of the facts; a fault not to be atoned for by the pomp of style, or even the fine eloquence of the historian." This was an oblique stroke aimed at Robertson, to whom Birch had generously opened the stores of history, for the Scotch historian had needed all his charity; but Robertson's attractive inventions and highly-finished composition seduce the public taste; and we may forgive the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... in A, Figure 14, is shown according to the conventions of oblique, or two-point perspective; it can equally be represented in a manner correspondent to parallel perspective. The parallel perspective of a cube appears as a square inside another square, with lines connecting the four vertices of the one with those of the other. ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... He bid His angels turn askance The poles of Earth some ten degrees or more From the sun's axle; they with labour pushed Oblique the centric globe,... ...to bring in change Of seasons to each clime; else had the spring Perpetual smiled on Earth with verdant flowers, Equal ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... that it seemed to jump out of the green tracery about it, my eyes lit upon a black face watching me. I saw that it was the simian creature who had met the launch upon the beach. He was clinging to the oblique stem of a palm-tree. I gripped my stick, and stood up facing him. He began chattering. "You, you, you," was all I could distinguish at first. Suddenly he dropped from the tree, and in another moment was holding the fronds apart and ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... lanes through their solid ranks, but they closed up to 'guide centre' as if upon dress-parade; when half way over Pickett halted his division amidst a terrible fire of shot and shell, and changed his direction by an oblique movement coolly and beautifully made. But here occurred the greatest mistake of all. Wilcox paid no attention to this change of movement, but kept straight on to the front, thus opening a tremendous gap between the two columns and exposing ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... position within three miles of Murfreesboro. Walker reached Stewartsboro from the Nolinsville pike about dark. Early in the morning, Crittenden's command moved into line of battle on the left, under a brisk fire, while Negley's division, by an oblique movement to the right, took position on the right of Palmer's division, and was then advanced through a dense cedar thicket several hundred yards in width to the Wilkinson cross roads, driving the enemy's skirmishers steadily, and with considerable loss. Rousseau's division, with the exception ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... with me this sunbeam, as o'er the moss bank green It glides, and enters swiftly the foliage dark between; Resting its golden lever, of mystic length and line, Upon the dewy herbage, in an oblique decline: Toward its moving column the stamen of the flowers Whirl, as by strong attraction; and through the daylight hours Gay insects, azure atoms, with every-colored wing, Swim 'mid the light, still lending fresh ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... earth being in greater proximity to the sun than the other earths, since heat does not arise from nearness to the sun, but from the height and density of the aerial atmosphere, as is evident from the cold on high mountains even in hot climates; also, that heat is varied according to the direct or oblique incidence of the sun's rays, as is evident from the seasons of winter and summer in every region. These are the particulars which it has been given me to know respecting the spirits and inhabitants of ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg |
