"Optics" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contains list and prices of Spectacles, Eye Glasses, Lenses, Spy Glasses, Telescopes, Opera and Field Glasses, Graphoscopes, Stereoscopes, Camera Obscuras, Camera Lucidas, Microscopes, Microscopic Preparations, and Books on Optics and Microscopy. ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... frisky in its motions as the nervous monsieur who commanded it. At a little distance, the square-shouldered Antwerper, sitting on the elevated poop of his galliot, was enjoying, with his crew, a glorious smoke. You could almost see them (and that, too, without very keen optics) put care into their tobacco-pipes, anxiety curled in fume over their heads. A not unfrequent sight was the star-spangled banner floating in beauty over the bosom of the wave. The serenity of the atmosphere, the ever-changing ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... form of queries, have been ascertained to be predictions, and among others that of the inflammability of the diamond; and many have been eagerly seized upon as indisputable axioms. A hint at the close of his Optics, that "If natural philosophy should be continued to be improved in its various branches, the bounds of moral philosophy would be enlarged also," is perhaps among the most important of human discoveries—it gave rise to Hartley's Physiological ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... which is controlled by the ciliary muscle (c.m.). In front of the lens is the aqueous humour (a.h.). The description of the action of this apparatus involves the explanation of several of the elementary principles of optics, and will be found by the student in any text-book of that subject. Here it would have no very instructive bearing, either on general physiological considerations ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... refined drawing, the hand goes beyond the eye, and one has to depend upon the feel; and when one has once learned what a delicate affair touch is, one gets a horror of all coarse work, and is ready to forgive any amount of feebleness, sooner than that boldness which is akin to impudence. In optics the distinction is easily seen when the work is put to trial; but here too, as in drawing, it requires an educated eye to tell the difference when the work is only moderately bad; but with "bold" work, nothing can be seen but distortion and fog: and I heartily wish the same result ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... by the writers on optics, that the eye at all times sees an equal number of physical points, and that a man on the top of a mountain has no larger an image presented to his senses, than when he is cooped up in the narrowest court or chamber. It is ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... left long to ascertain in what direction to expect a recontre, for a fresh eructation of the metrical whine gave them sufficient notice. The black boy soon descried the disturbers of their peace by the glitter of a host of canine optics, and directed his masters and their friend where to fire. This they did; and the effect of their shots was instantly apparent, from the excessive yelping that greeted their ears, and satisfied them that ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... queer steeds in a curious way. When I wanted my turtle to turn to the left, I simply thrust my foot into his right eye, and vice versa for the contrary direction. My two big toes placed simultaneously over both his optics caused a halt so abrupt as almost to unseat me. Sometimes I would go fully a mile out to sea on one of these strange steeds. It always frightened them to have me astride, and in their terror they swam at a tremendous pace until compelled ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... course of time, I took up astronomy, I determined to accept nothing on faith, but to see with my own eyes everything which others had seen before me. Having already some knowledge of the science of optics, I resolved to manufacture my own telescopes, and after many continuous, determined trials, I finally succeeded in completing a so-called Newtonian instrument, seven feet in length. From this I advanced to one of ten feet, and ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... behind the moon To make a dreadful night at noon. He at fit periods walks through Aries, Howe'er our earthly motion varies; And twice a year he'll cut the equator, As if there had been no such matter. Some wits have wonder'd what analogy There is 'twixt cobbling and astrology; How Partridge made his optics rise From a shoe-sole to reach the skies. A list the cobbler's temples ties, To keep the hair out of his eyes; From whence 'tis plain, the diadem That princes wear derives from them: And therefore crowns are nowadays Adorn'd with golden stars and rays: Which plainly ...
— English Satires • Various
... the lady (privileged as a sweetheart she called him Stag, though everybody else was obliged to call him Stagyrite), 'how will they know it's meant for me, Stag?' Upon which I am sorry to say the philosopher fell to cursing and swearing, bestowing blessings on his own optics and on posterity's, meaning yours and mine, saying: 'Let them find it out.' Well, now, you see I have found it out. But that is more than I hope for my crypto-criminals, and therefore I take this my ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... from or away, errare, to wander), a deviation or wandering, especially used in the figurative sense: as in ethics, a deviation from the truth; in pathology, a mental derangement; in zoology and botany, abnormal development or structure. In optics, the word has two special applications: (1) Aberration of Light, and (2) Aberration in Optical Systems. These ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... with a camera obscura, whose effect surprises the spectators the more, as the objects represented within it have the motion which they do not find in common optics. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... takes a wide survey of the field of error, embracing in its view not only the illusions of sense dealt with in treatises on physiological optics, etc., but also other errors familiarly known as illusions, and resembling the former in their structure and mode of origin. I have throughout endeavoured to keep to a strictly scientific treatment, that is to say, the description and classification of acknowledged errors, and the explanation ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... Smith, in gaudy putties girt, With sand-blight in his optics, and much leaner than he started, Round the 'Oly Land cavorting in three- quarters of a shirt, And imposin' on the natives ez one Dick ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... this least and lowliest living thing. But if we could even measure these, as a mental necessity, we are urged indefinitely on to a minuteness without conceivable limit, in effect, a minuteness that is beyond all finite measure or conception. So that, as modern physics and optics have enabled us not to conceive merely, but to actually realize, the vastness of spatial extension, side by side with subtile tenuity and extreme divisibility of matter, so the labor, enthusiasm, and perseverance of thirty years, stimulated by the insight of a rare and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... blessing find) Is not to act or think beyond mankind; No powers of body or of soul to share, But what his nature and his state can bear. Why has not man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, man is not a fly. Say what the use, were finer optics given, To inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven? Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, To smart and agonize at every pore? Or quick effluvia darting through the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic pain? If Nature ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... modern authors, has shown that the inference is a very strong presumption. Again, it is easy to over-value such complex instruments as we possess. The possessor of an up-to-date camera, well instructed in the function and manipulation of every part, but ignorant of all optics save a hand-to-mouth knowledge of the properties of his own lens, might say that a priori no picture could be taken with a cigar-box perforated by a pin-hole; and our ignorance of the mechanism of the Psychology of any organism is greater by many times than ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... abstained rigorously, at times, from all but purely vegetable food, and from all drinks but water; and it is also stated that some of his important labors were performed at these seasons of strict temperance. While writing his treatise on Optics, it is said he confined himself entirely to bread, with a little sack and water; and I have no doubt that his remarkable equanimity of temper, and that government of his animal appetites, throughout, for which he was so distinguished to the last hour of his life, were ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... which become themselves radial centers; these generate still others, and so on endlessly. This principle, like every other, patiently publishes itself to us, unheeding, everywhere in nature, and in all great art as well; it is a law of optics, for example, that all straight lines having a common direction if sufficiently prolonged appear to meet in a point, i.e., radiate from it (Illustration 31). Leonardo da Vinci employed this principle of perspective in his Last Supper to draw the spectator's eye to the picture's central figure, the ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Newton's Optics, Book I. part 2. prop. 3 and 6. Dr. Smith, in his Harmonics, has an explanatory note upon this happy discovery, as he terms it, of Newton. Sect. 4. Art. 7. From this curious coincidence, it has been proposed to produce ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... had to be abandoned as too expensive, and he proceeded to study optics. He gave a very accurate explanation of the action of the human eye, and made many hypotheses, some of them shrewd and close to the mark, concerning the law of refraction of light in dense media: but though several minor points of interest turned up, nothing of the first magnitude came ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... Hamlet, "either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." At every change of the mind's colored optics the scene before it changes also. I have sometimes contemplated the vast metropolis of England—or rather of the world—multitudinous and mighty LONDON—with the pride and hope and exultation, not of a patriot only, but of a cosmopolite—a man. Its grand national structures that seem built ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... soon leads to a study of optics in one direction, to aesthetics in another, and to mathematical proportions in a third, and any attempt at an easy solution of its problems is not likely to succeed. It is a very complicated question, whose closest counterpart is to be sought ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... he walked north to the branch library to turn in his book on which a six-cent fine impended. With the yellow card in his hand, he went over to the fiction section of the open shelves. No more Hentys, no more Optics. He was in love, and love stories he ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... to law, on this causal connection taking place according to simple necessities, he could not select, make, and use, with certainty, any tool, from the club with which he defends himself against his enemies or cracks the shells of fruit, up to the finest instruments of optics and chemistry, and even to the telegraph and steam engine. The conformity to law, with which the forces of nature act, far from being an impediment to his appointing and reaching his ends is much more the indispensable means by which he is enabled in general to reach them. Now, if we thus ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... laws of optics and ingenuities of composition which may palliate this effect, but the fact remains that the floor should be covered in a way which will leave the mind tranquil and the eye satisfied, and this is hard to accomplish with what is commonly known as ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... a perfect knowledge of optics and be a skilful stone-cutter. The numerous planes or faces which he cuts on the surface of the diamond are called facets. In the treatment three distinct processes are utilized—cleaving, cutting, and polishing. ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... introduction to a paper on "The Dynamical Theory of the Electro-magnet Field," writes on the matter thus: "It appears therefore that certain phenomena in electricity and magnetism lead to the same conclusion as those of optics, namely, that there is an aetherial medium pervading all bodies and modified only in degree by their presence; that the parts of this medium are capable of being set in motion by electric currents and magnets; that this motion is communicated from one part of the medium to another ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... fighting! And he did. From the tap of the gong he rushed his opponent about the ring at will. He hit him when and where he pleased. The man was absolutely helpless before him. With left and right hooks Billy rocked the "coming champion's" head from side to side. He landed upon the swelling optics of his ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... these must be included not only the horoscopes or nativities, which owing to his reputation were always in demand, but also other writings which probably did not pay so well. In 1604 he published "A Supplement to Vitellion," containing the earliest known reasonable theory of optics, and especially of dioptrics or vision through lenses. He compared the mechanism of the eye with that of Porta's "Camera Obscura," but made no attempt to explain how the image formed on the retina is understood by the brain. He went carefully ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... To him the world is indebted for the binomial theorem, discovered at the age of twenty-two; for the invention of fluxions; for the demonstration of the law of gravitation; and for the discovery of the different refrangibility of rays of light. His treatise on Optics and his Principia, in which he brought to light the new theory of the universe, place him at the head of modern philosophers—on a high vantage ground, to which none have been elevated, of his ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... luminousness &c. adj.; luminosity; lucidity; renitency|, nitency[obs3]; radiance,, radiation; irradiation, illumination. actinic rays, actinism; Roentgen-ray, Xray; photography, heliography; photometer &c. 445. [Science of light] optics; photology[obs3], photometry; dioptrics[obs3], catoptrics[obs3]. [Distribution of light] chiaroscuro, clairobscur[obs3], clear obscure, breadth, light and shade, black and white, tonality. reflection, refraction, dispersion; refractivity. V. shine, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... returned. I determined to go home and place myself in the same position—as regards the mirror—and if the same effect was produced, I would make up my mind that it was the natural result of some principle of refraction or optics, which I did not understand, and dismiss it. I tried the experiment with the same result; and as I had said to myself, accounted for it on some principle unknown to me, and it then ceased to trouble me. But the God who works through the laws of nature, might surely ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... she observed, lightly scornful. "What occult meaning has a sun-dial for the spooney? I'm sure I don't want to read riddles in a strange gentleman's optics." ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... The idea of creating light not only involves the Divine Conception of the thing, and the marvellous method of its production,[1] but doubtless, also, all those wonderful laws of reflection, refraction, polarization, and a thousand others, which the science of Physical Optics investigates. ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... well exercised a gesture; so alone in fashion, able to render the face of any statesman living; and to speak the mere extraction of language, one that hath now made the sixth return upon venture; and was your first that ever enrich'd his country with the true laws of the duello; whose optics have drunk the spirit of beauty in some eight score and eighteen prince's courts, where I have resided, and been there fortunate in the amours of three hundred and forty and five ladies, all nobly, if not princely descended; whose ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... too, for she opened the door personally to Lucian, who was quite amazed when he beheld her monstrous bulk blocking up the doorway. Her face was white and round like a pale moon; she had staring eyes of a china blue, resembling the vacant optics of a wax doll; and, on the whole, appeared to be a timid, lymphatic woman, likely to answer any questions put to her in a sufficiently peremptory tone. Lucian foresaw that he was not likely to have much trouble with ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... the doughty commodore permitted his two unmatched optics to rest mournfully upon his shipmates. For nearly a minute he gazed at them, the while he struggled to stifle the awful fear within him. In the Gibney veins there flowed not a drop of craven blood, but the hideous ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... strange indeed. Strange among all mankind; doubly and trebly strange among the unfortunate species called Kings in our time. To whom,—for sad reasons that could be given,—"wind and blue vapor (BLAUER DUNST)," artistically managed by the rules of Acoustics and Optics, seem to be ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... Anima. The anatomy of the eye is next described; this is done well and evidently at first hand, though the functions of the parts are not given with complete accuracy. Many other points of physiological optics are touched on, in general erroneously. Bacon then discusses vision in a right line, the laws of reflection and refraction, and the construction of mirrors and lenses. In this part of the work, as in the preceding, his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... should suffice for evidence: And whoso desires to penetrate Deeper, must dive by the spirit-sense— No optics like yours, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... mathematics at Cambridge was Nicholas Saunderson, who had lost his sight before he was twelve months old. He was a man of striking mental vigour, an original and efficient teacher, and the author of a book upon algebra which was considered meritorious in its day. His knowledge of optics was highly remarkable. He had distinct ideas of perspective, of the projections of the sphere, and of the forms assumed by plane or solid figures in certain positions. For performing computations ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... like Him if we live near Him, and the end for which the Master became like unto us in His incarnation and passion was that we might become like to Him by the reception of His very own life unto our souls. Light makes many a surface on which it falls flash, but in the optics of earth it is the rays which are not absorbed that are reflected; but in this loftier region the illumination is not superficial but inward, and it is the light which is swallowed up within us that then comes forth from us. Christ will dwell in our hearts, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... selenographic maps have been drawn with a perfection that equals, if it does not surpass, those of terrestrial maps; photography has given to our satellite proofs of incomparable beauty—in a word, all that the sciences of mathematics, astronomy, geology, and optics can teach is known about the moon; but until now no direct communication with it has ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... arrived at a cage containing an automatic Devil revealing the future for a penny in the slit, and Miss JESSIMINA worked the oracle with a coin advanced by myself, and the demon, after flashing his optics and consulting sundry playing-cards, did presently produce a small paper ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... that optics teach, unfold Thy form to please me so, As when I dreamt of gems and gold ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... no other man ever looked into and afterward forgot. His sunburnt, sallow, haggard, ghastly face, stained early and for life with the corpse-like coloring of malarious fevers, was a fit setting for such optics. Although it was nearly oval in contour, and although the features were or had been fairly regular, yet it was so marked by hard, and one might almost say fleshless muscles, and so brutalized by long indulgence in savage passions, that it ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... Is not to act or think beyond mankind; 190 No powers of body or of soul to share, But what his nature and his state can bear. Why has not Man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, Man is not a fly. Say, what the use, were finer optics given, T'inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven? Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, To smart and agonise at every pore? Or, quick effluvia darting through the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic pain? 200 If nature ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... reflections inferior in beauty and suggestion. Instead of motionless repetition of given detail, there are flickering, sinuous, mazy windings and twistings of colour, light, and shadow—a capricious hurrying from surface to surface. Knowledge of optics cannot rob them of their marvel and their glamour. And if such be their effect on the modern mind, what must it have been on that of primitive man! No laws of reflection came within his ken. He looked down on the still surface of tarn, or pool, or fountain, and saw, ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... upon that theory of three primary elements in the sensation of colour, which treats the investigation of the laws of visible colour as a branch of human physiology, incapable of being deduced from the laws of light itself, as set forth in physical optics. It takes advantage of the methods of optics to study vision itself; and its appeal is not to physical principles, but to our ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... nothing as yet, but had been walking backwards and forwards, with his head down, and his hands in his pockets, turned suddenly round to Mary, and said, "I have been thinking we can soon know if your knife is in the nest. We only want a polemoscope for that. Hurrah! long live optics!" ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... seems to be in causal connection, will, I suppose, have to be allowed to exercise their ingenuity in any way to satisfy their minds, even though they may have to revise their theory with every fresh discovery in optics ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... valleys, though they were upon the rocks, they would run away as in a terrible fright; but if they were feeding in the valleys, and I was upon the rocks, they took no notice of me, from whence I concluded that, by the position of their optics, their sight was so directed downward that they did not readily see objects that were above them. So afterward I took this method: I always climbed the rocks first to get above them, and then had frequently a fair mark. The first ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... microscope, but they will consider the nature of the magnifying glass. They should not be rebuffed with the answer, "Oh, it's only a common magnifying glass," but they should be encouraged in their laudable curiosity; they may easily be led to try slight experiments in optics, which will, at least, give the habits of observation and attention. In Dr. Priestley's History of Vision, many experiments may be found, which are not above the comprehension of children of ten or eleven ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... pause of ten minutes, during which I, by this time in perfect possession of my wits, observed all the female Brocklehursts produce their pocket-handkerchiefs and apply them to their optics, while the elderly lady swayed herself to and fro, and the two younger ones whispered, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... to make you acquainted with certain elementary phenomena; then to point out to you how the theoretical principles by which phenomena are explained take root in the human mind, and finally to apply these principles to the whole body of knowledge covered by the lectures. The science of optics lends itself particularly well to this mode of treatment, and on it, therefore, I propose to draw for the materials of the present course. It will be best to begin with the few simple facts regarding light which ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... of Nantes. He was graduated from Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1710, succeeding Keill as lecturer in Experimental Philosophy. He was especially learned in natural philosophy, mathematics, geometry, and optics, having lectured before the King on various occasions. He was very popular in the Grand Lodge, and his power as an orator made his manner of conferring a degree impressive—which may explain his having been accused of inventing ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... harmonies in optics is the same as in acoustics, the same as in everything—it is based on simplicity. Those colors, like those notes, the number of whose vibrations or waves in the same time bear some simple ratio to each other, ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... for the old woman's sequestered life, Amarilly was wont to relate to her all the current events, and it was through the child's keen, young optics that Mrs. Hudgers saw life. An eloquent and vivid description of St. Mark's service was ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... ABERRATION (in Optics).—In the refraction of light by a convex lens the rays passing through different parts of the lens are brought to a focus at slightly different distances—this is called SPHERICAL ABERRATION; at the same time the coloured rays are separated by ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... telescope has no finder, it will be easy for the student to construct one for himself, and will be a useful exercise in optics. Two convex lenses not very different in size from those shown in fig. 1, and placed as there shown—the distance between them being the sum of the focal lengths of the two glasses—in a small tube of card, wood, or tin, will serve the purpose of a finder ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... it acts directly to increase or decrease magnetic force, is not yet proved; and the interesting experiments made by Dr. Draper, in Virginia, go to show that it is without magnetic influence. The discussion of this subject forms, the branch of optics, touching physical science on the one side, the most refined, and the highest range of mathematics on the other. Rittenhouse first suggested the true explanation of the experiment, of the apparent conversion of a cameo ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... two hostile camps, led him to the study of branches of knowledge that were held in little repute. He recognized the place of mathematics as the basis of exact science, and proceeded to the investigation of the facts and laws of optics, mechanics, chemistry, and astronomy. But he did not limit himself to positive science; he was at the same time a student of languages and of language, of grammar and of music. He was versed not less in the arts of the Trivium than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... soil. M. Anagnostakis, one of the most eminent professors of our Faculty of Medicine, has recently published two pamphlets full of interest relating to the archaeology of that science—[Greek: Melitai peri ten optiken ton archaion] (Studies on the Optics of the Ancients); and another small work in French, "Encore deux mots sur l'extraction de la Catarracte chez ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... great advantage to him when the problem is to construct an etymology by following the gossamer clews that lead from sensual images to the metaphorical and tropical adaptations of them to the demands of fancy and thought. The nice optics that see what is not to be seen have passed into a sarcastic proverb; yet those are precisely the eyes that are in the heads and brains of all who accomplish much, whether in science, poetry, or philosophy. With the kind of etymologies we ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... he could be aware that he was standing at the foot of one leg of the glowing arch is to me a mystery. When I see a rainbow, it is always immediately in front of me. I am standing exactly between the highest point of the arch and the sun, and the laws of optics ordain that it can be seen in no other way. You can never see a rainbow at an angle. It always faces you squarely. Hence no two persons see exactly the same bow, because no two persons can occupy exactly the same ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... addressed more to the feelings and passions than to the reason and judgment of the army. The author of the piece is entitled to much credit for the goodness of his pen, and I could wish he had as much credit for the rectitude of his heart; for, as men see through different optics, and are induced by the reflecting faculties of the mind to use different means to attain the same end, the author of the address should have had more charity than to mark for suspicion the man who should recommend moderation ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Just published, 1712, by Dr. Samuel Clarke, then 37 years old. He had been for 12 years chaplain to the Bishop of Norwich, and Boyle Lecturer in 1704-5, when he took for his subject the Being and Attributes of God and the Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion. He had also translated Newton's Optics, and was become chaplain to the Queen, Rector of St. Jamess, Westminster, and D. D. of Cambridge. The accusations of heterodoxy that followed him through his after life date from this year, 1712, in which, besides the edition of ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... was a couple of textbooks on lens-grinding and telescope-design, and a book on optics. You see, when we made that deal with them, they realized that we weren't any better fighters than they were; we just had better weapons. To have the same kind of weapons, they'd have to learn to make them, and once they began studying technology, they found that they had to study science. ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... began to study the laws of optics and lenses. In 1913 I went abroad, and with one of the most famous lens-makers of Europe I produced a lens of an entirely different quality, a lens that I hoped would give me what I wanted. So I returned here and fitted up my microscope that ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... great influence which this Treatise has exercised in the development of the Science of Optics, it seems strange that two centuries should have passed before an English edition of the work appeared. Perhaps the circumstance is due to the mistaken zeal with which formerly everything that conflicted with the cherished ideas of Newton ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... about two miles above Salamanca, the enemy having passed it higher up. Before reaching our ground, we experienced one of the most tremendous thunderstorms that I ever witnessed. A sheet of lightning struck the head of our column, where I happened to be riding, and deprived me of the use of my optics for at least ten minutes. A great many of our dragoon horses broke from their piqueting during the storm, and galloped past us into the French lines. We lay by our arms on the banks of the river, and it continued to rain in torrents the ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... in a pismire, I not grope; Deny it,—and an ant, with on my back A firmament, the skiey vault will crack. Our minds make their own Termini, nor call The issuing circumscriptions great or small; So high constructing Nature lessons to us all: Who optics gives accommodate to see Your countenance large as looks the sun to be, And distant greatness less than ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... makes light of optics, and sees through dioptrics, He's a dab at projectiles—ne'er misses his man; He's complete in attraction, and quick at reaction, By the doctrine of chances he squares every plan; In hydraulics so frisky, the whole Bay of Biscay, If it flowed ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... stimuli depends primarily on the organization of our senses. This is the fundamental law of perception, of modern psychology, variously expressed, but axiomatic in all physiological psychology.''[1] In this direction Helmholtz[2] has done pioneer work. He treats particularly the problem of optics, and physiological optics is the study of perception by means of the sense of sight. We see things in the external world through the medium of light which they direct upon our eyes. The light strikes the retina, and causes a sensation. The sensation brought to the brain by means of ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... Hunter. "Well, that don't go a minute! Here!" says he, "glue your optics to that." He chucked out a specimen peppered with yaller. "That's my mine. I'm just thinkin' of taking a half interest in the mint. You can pick her to go twenty thousand to the ton—help yourselves, gents." He began sortin' rock. "Oh, here!" ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... with one hand, and holding in the other a tumbler of porter. I looked at the glass of sherry, and gave the biscuit a more vigorous bite—alas! it had none of the flavour of the veal and porter; so I discovered that the law of optics was unchanged, and that I had escaped the infliction ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... pair of optics, love, you've never, never seen— One my mother blacked last night, the other it ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... fact, as ornamental as a modern grass lawn; and the same expense incurred to make the ground a laboratory of sweets, might suffice to render it agreeable to the palate as well as to the olfactory nerves, and that even without offending the most delicate optics. It is only in accordance with our plan to give the hint and to put before the reader such novel points as may facilitate the proposed arrangement. It is one objection to the formation of a kitchen garden in front of the dwelling, or in sight of the drawing-room and parlour, that ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... ordinary principles of optics on the part of the reader is assumed, for there are plenty of books on the theory of lenses, and, in any case, it is my intention to treat of the art rather than of the science of the subject. By far the best short statement of the principles involved which I have seen is Lord ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... and gave me such a look of sorrowful tenderness as might have melted my heart, but within those eyes there lurked a something that I did not like; and I wondered how I ever could have admired them—her sister's honest face and small grey optics appeared far more agreeable. But I was out of temper with Eliza at that moment for her insinuations against Mrs. Graham, which were false, I was certain, whether she knew it ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... where his grandfather and father were engaged in business as wine merchants. But Joseph Jackson Lister, who married in 1818, and became in 1827 the father of the famous surgeon, was much more than a merchant. He had taught himself the science of optics, had made improvements in the microscope, and had won his way within the sacred portals of the Royal Society. Letters have been preserved which show us how keen his interest in science always remained, and with what full appreciation he entered into the researches which his ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... the slack end, for I could not well get lower, I sat still, scratching my caput in the midst of a gay company of morning visitors, enjoying the gratifying consciousness that I was distinctly visible to them, although my dazzled optics could as yet distinguish nothing. To add to my pleasurable sensations, I now perceived, from the coldness of the floor, that in MY downfall the catastrophe of my unmentionables had been grievously rent, but I had nothing ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... seen a white, black, red, and yellow fog," and went off into a disquisition about optics, mediums, reflections, refractions, and all sorts of ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... of the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it. There she beheld another countenance, of a man well stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the lamp-light that had served them to pore over many ponderous books. Yet those same bleared optics had a strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner's purpose to read the human soul. This figure of the study and the cloister, as Hester Prynne's womanly fancy failed not to recall, was slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a trifle higher than the right. Next rose before her in memory's ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... different times. We know too little of the laws which determine their appearances to be warranted in finding contradiction or difficulty here. The power of seeing may depend on the condition of the beholder. It may depend, not as with gross material bodies, on optics, but on the volition of the radiant beings seen. They may pass from visibility to its opposite, lightly and repeatedly, flickering into and out of sight, as the Pleiades seem to do. Where there is such store of possibilities, he is rash who ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... physician and physicist, sometimes called the founder of physiological optics. He seems to have initiated the theory of color blindness that was later developed by Helmholtz. The attack referred to was because of his connection with the Board of Longitude, he having been made (1818) superintendent of the Nautical Almanac and secretary of the Board. He opposed ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... is their marriage-temple, and bids her forbear to kill it lest she thereby commit murder, suicide, and sacrilege all in one. Donne's figures are scholastic and smell of the lamp. He ransacked cosmography, astrology, alchemy, optics, the canon law, and the divinity of the schoolmen for ink-horn terms and similes. He was in verse what Browne was in prose. He loved to play with distinctions, hyperboles, paradoxes, the very casuistry and dialectics of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... which are thus more distinct when seen in succession are called opposite colours by Sir Isaac Newton in his optics, Book I. Part 2, and may be easily discovered by any one, by the method above described; that is by laying a coloured circle of paper or silk on a sheet of white paper, and inspecting it some time with steady eyes, and then either gently closing them, or removing them on another part of the white ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... cuneiform letters, their records, and, running this over plastic clay formed into blocks, produced ineffaceable proofs. From their tile-libraries we are still to reap a literary and historical harvest. They were not without some knowledge of optics. The convex lens found at Nimroud shows that they were not unacquainted with magnifying instruments. In arithmetic they had detected the value of position in the digits, though they missed the grand ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift, gives a still more remarkable example yet of such confusion. The word polarization, borrowed from optics, where it has an unequivocal sense, serves likewise to designate the development of the counter electro-motive force of galvanic elements, and also that essentially different condition of badly conducting substances ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... thought that our careful efforts at concealment had been so easily seen through, with never a word to show us that they saw. They had followed up words of ours on the science of optics, asked innocent questions about glasses and the like, and were aware of the defective ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... money hath arithmetic enough: he is a true geometrician, can measure out a good fortune to himself; a perfect astrologer, that can cast the rise and fall of others, and mark their errant motions to his own use. The best optics are, to reflect the beams of some great man's favour and grace to shine upon him. He is a good engineer that alone can make an instrument to get preferment. This was the common tenet and practice of Poland, as Cromerus observed not long since, in the first book of his history; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... cases of much greater practical importance than in others. While a painter may be the better for knowing the laws of light, there can be no question that he may do very good work without any knowledge whatever of the science of optics. He is at least in no danger of injuring any part of ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... be pert. To come back to what I was originally saying—I repeat, sir, I am at twelve paces from my object, six from the mirror, which, doubled by reflection, makes twelve; such is the law of optics. I suppose ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... light blue eyes and coarse, bloated features. He was abrupt in his language, had an exalted opinion of his merits and capacity, was always the hero of his own story; and, although he subsequently proved to be a man of generous feelings, to my unpractised optics he looked more like a bully than ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... (b. in Dublin 1800, d. 1881), F.R.S. His father was Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, a position subsequently occupied also by the son. Lloyd's work was chiefly concerned with optics and magnetism, and it was in connection with the former that he carried out what was probably the most important single piece of work of his life, namely, the experimental proof of the phenomenon of conical refraction which had ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... precisely that which you have laid down? And will you cast off a friend for no unworthiness, but merely because he stands upon his right as an individual being, and looks at matters through his own optics, instead of yours?" ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... itself is a hypothesis. Then, as to the other branches of physics—electricity and magnetism. The whole scheme of these important sciences rests on the hypothesis of "electric fluidity," or of imponderable matter of which the existence is nothing less than proved. Or optics? Optics certainly appertain to the most important and completest branch of physics, and yet the undulatory theory of light, which we accept now as the indispensable basis of optics, rests on an unproved hypothesis, on the subjective assumption of an ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... she said she had often thought what a beautiful world this would be, when we should see every thing right side up. Now, we see every thing topsy-turvy, and all is confusion.' For a person who knows nothing of this fact in the science of optics, this seemed quite ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... made good to him in some way. So, "by way of getting even," he made violent love to all the pretty eyes he met in his commercial travels—"to have something to think about after he should have found favor in the strabismic optics of Miss Mercer," he ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... reflect into water too near the bottom of the picture, a painter's license may move it higher in its vertical line; but if the same cloud is made to reflect at an angle several degrees to right or left, the artist breaks the simplest law of optics. The painter's art at best is one of deception. In the first case the lie was plausible. In the second case any schoolboy could ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... on each side of him a double had taken its place, imitating faithfully his movements and gestures. I do not remember ever before to have seen such a phenomenon, and I leave it to those who are more learned than I am to decide what law of optics disclosed it to our ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... spiritual eye whose mysterious telescope reason forms, or: reason is a necessary appendage of mental optics, or again: reason is the glass used by the ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... spirits who were from that earth concerning various things on our Earth, especially concerning the fact that sciences are cultivated here, which are not cultivated elsewhere, such as astronomy, geometry, mechanics, physics, chemistry, medicine, optics, and natural philosophy; and likewise arts, which are unknown elsewhere, as the arts of ship-building, of smelting metals, of writing on paper, and likewise of publishing by printing, and thus of communicating with ...
— 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
... clearer comprehension, the facts themselves must be investigated by one who, like that accomplished philosopher, is conversant with those branches of physical science to which they are related. They unfortunately lie beyond the range of our own optics, but Mr Scrope's practical improvement of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... The subject of optics still continuing to engross Newton's attention, he followed up his researches into the structure of the sunbeam by many other valuable investigations in connection with light. Every one has noticed the beautiful colours manifested in a soap-bubble. ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... Brewster contends that there are but three primary colors,—red, yellow, and blue. Wollaston finds four,—red, yellowish green, blue, and violet. But this, as well as the consideration of the solar spectrum of Newton, is more the specialty of Optics. The atmospheric relations of color are more apposite to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... us—his collected works, his friendly confidences, his journals, his fragmentary papers, as the interesting series of jottings entitled "Spiritual Optics," and the partial accounts to Emerson and others of the design of the "Exodus from Hounds-ditch"—it remains impossible to formulate Carlyle's Theology. We know that he abandoned the ministry, for which he was destined, because, at an early ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... these days of question and unbelief, is it matter of wonder that, at sight of the harmony of blended and mingling, yet always individual, and never confused colors, and notwithstanding his knowledge of optics, and of how the supreme unity of the light was secerned into its decreed chord, the imaginative faith of the troubled poet should so work in him as to lift his head for a moment above the waters of that other flood that threatened to overwhelm his microcosm, and the bow should ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... the president. "I should not like to state that of itself mere paralysis need incapacitate a professor. Dr. Thrum, our professor of the theory of music, is, as you know, paralysed in his ears, and Mr. Slant, our professor of optics, is paralysed in his right eye. But this is a case of paralysis of the brain. I fear it is incompatible ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... can tell. He did not like the "sulphur and treacle" of "our Scotch connoisseurs;" but what colours has he not added here to his sulphur—colours, too, that we fear for the "idea of truth" cannot coexist! And how, in the name of optics, could it be possible for any painter to take in all this, with the "fathomless intervals," into an angle of vision of forty-five degrees? It is quite superfluous to ask "who is likest this, Turner ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... lecture course in which the theoretical aspects of electromagnetism, the classical theories, and the equations that represent transitory and equilibrium conditions in complex circuits are discussed. In optics, likewise, there is ample material of great importance: physical, geometrical optics, spectroscopy, photography, X-ray crystallography, etc. The advanced student in these fields finds more elasticity and opportunity for cultivating ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... has a digital metropolitan network and a cellular NMT-450 network; waiting lists for telephones are long; local service outside Minsk is neglected and poor; intercity - Belarus has a partly developed fiber-optic backbone system presently serving at least 13 major cities (1998); Belarus's fiber optics form synchronous digital hierarchy rings through other countries' systems; an inadequate analog system remains operational international: Belarus is a member of the Trans-European Line (TEL), Trans-Asia-Europe (TAE) fiber-optic line, and has ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... best preservatives against selfishness and vulgar worldliness. We believe it was Lord Brougham who said, "Blessed is the man that hath a hobby!" and in the abundant versatility of his nature, he himself had many, ranging from literature to optics, from history and biography to social science. Lord Brougham is even said to have written a novel; and the remarkable story of the 'Man in the Bell,' which appeared many years ago in 'Blackwood,' is reputed to have been from his pen. Intellectual hobbies, however, must not ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... besides his hatred of the Church, lay at the bottom of Condorcet's tolerance or more towards Mahometanism. The Arabian superstition was not fatal to knowledge, Arabian activity in algebra, chemistry, optics, and astronomy, atoned in Condorcet's eyes for ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... mixed) the Commissioners (in their Scheme of 1875), include mathematics, properly so called, and those departments of natural philosophy that are mathematically handled—statics, dynamics, and optics. But the next branch, entitled "Natural Science," is what I am chiefly to remark upon. Under it there is a fivefold enumeration: —(1) Chemistry, including Heat; (2) Electricity and Magnetism; (3) Geology and Mineralogy; (4) Zoology; (5) ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... that of meteorology at large. Many who knew him not otherwise, knew—perhaps have in their gardens—his louvre-boarded screen for instruments. But the great achievement of his life was, of course, in optics as applied to lighthouse illumination. Fresnel had done much; Fresnel had settled the fixed light apparatus on a principle that still seems unimprovable; and when Thomas Stevenson stepped in and brought to a comparable perfection the revolving light, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... known books, that in the MS. have been damned, as well as others which seem to be so, since, after their appearance in the world, they have often lain by neglected. Witness the 'Paradise Lost' of the famous Milton, and the Optics of Sir Isaac Newton, which last, 'tis said, had no character or credit here till noticed in France. 'The Historical Connection of the Old and New Testament,' by Shuckford, is also reported to have been seldom inquired after for about a twelvemonth's time; however, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... cause which we have hitherto found to determine Progress holds in these cases also. We might demonstrate in detail how, in Science, an advance of one division presently advances other divisions—how Astronomy has been immensely forwarded by discoveries in Optics, while other optical discoveries have initiated Microscopic Anatomy, and greatly aided the growth of Physiology—how Chemistry has indirectly increased our knowledge of Electricity, Magnetism, Biology, Geology—how Electricity has reacted on Chemistry and Magnetism, developed our views ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... to trace, in a few words, the origin of this admirable society, by whose indefatigable exertions the air-pump has become necessary to the domestic economy of every peasant's cottage; and the Budelight and beer-shops, optics and out-door relief, and Daguerrotypes and dirt, have become subjects with which they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and grasshoppers being the objects of my special investigation. As a school-boy I obtained (despite the frequent closing of my visual organs) considerable Insight into Physical Science in the course of numerous pugilistic encounters. A close Application to Optics at that time enabled me to get ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... no earlier civilization can we trace anything but the faintest germs of this, while in Greek civilization it comes almost at once to flower and fruit. First and foremost we have to think of Mathematics, of Arithmetic and Geometry and Optics and Acoustics and Astronomy, but we must not forget also their later and perhaps not wholly so successful advances in Physics and Chemistry, in Botany and Zoology, in Anatomy and Physiology. Doubtless, especially in the case of the Sciences ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... of a poor widow, which had been styled Brown-eyes by the doctor because of its gorgeous optics, was indeed on the point of taking an involuntary bath as he spoke. Mrs Lynch, seeing the danger, rushed tumultuously to the rescue, leaving the ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mathematics, metaphysics, politics, optics, ethics, pneumatics, hydraulics, &c. are construed either as singular or ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... this field is very wary. He casts his optics around him until he finds the bird for which he thinks he had better go. A vast amount of skill can properly be expended here. If the hunter is young and rich, he can go for almost anything; if he is verging towards gray hair and false teeth, he must not demand too ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... their several bisections—my aspiring half-crown tending gradually towards the fixed stars, so that perhaps it might be right to make the man in the moon trustee for that part of the accumulations which rises above the optics of sublunary bankers; whilst the Ceylon pillar is constantly unweaving its own granite texture, and dwindling earthwards. It is probable that each of the parties will have reached its consummation about the same time. What is to be done with the mustard- ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Doctor Slammer—Doctor Slammer of the 97th rejected! Impossible! It could not be! Yes, it was; there they were. What! introducing his friend! Could he believe his eyes! He looked again, and was under the painful necessity of admitting the veracity of his optics; Mrs. Budger was dancing with Mr. Tracy Tupman; there was no mistaking the fact. There was the widow before him, bouncing bodily here and there, with unwonted vigour; and Mr. Tracy Tupman hopping about, with a face expressive of the most intense solemnity, dancing (as a good many people ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Panton, "only this is not a good time for studying optics. What we want is knowledge that shall bring us to the brig without being shot at ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... a-, privative, chroma, colour), in optics, the property of transmitting white light, without decomposing it into the colours of the spectrum; "achromatic lenses'' are lenses which possess this property. (See ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... seats, what do you find there, I ask? Cards, comedies, music, the opportunity for an agreeable intrigue in the society of your equals? No—but a hostess engaged in suckling and bathing her brats, or in studying chemistry and optics with some dirty school-master, who is given the seat of honour at table and a pavilion in the park to which he may retire when weary of the homage of the great; while as for the host, he is busy discussing education or political ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... How could I tell the difference? "Nay," smiled the nurse, "the child's a boy." And all my soul was soothed to hear That so it was: then startled Joy Mocked Sorrow with a doubtful tear. And I was glad as one who sees For sensual optics things unmeet: As purity makes passion freeze, So faith warns science off her beat. Blessed are they that have not seen, And yet, not seeing, have believed: To walk by faith, as preached the Dean, And not ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... he rummages the bookshelves, is the real test and pleasure. My father's library was a spot of some austerity; the proceedings of learned societies, some Latin divinity, cyclopaedias, physical science, and, above all, optics, held the chief place upon the shelves, and it was only in holes and corners that anything really legible existed as by accident. The Parent's Assistant, Rob Roy, Waverley, and Guy Mannering, the Voyages of Captain Woods ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Burnet the pangs which he had inflicted on another. NEWTON'S favourite work was his "Chronology," which he had written over fifteen times, yet he desisted from its publication during his life-time, from the ill-usage of which he complained. Even the "Optics" of Newton had no character at home till noticed in France. The calm temper of our great philosopher was of so fearful a nature in regard to criticism, that Whiston declares that he would not publish his attack on the "Chronology," lest it ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... have not had the pleasure of casting my optics upon the individual of Nancy Ellen's choice," said Agatha primly, "but Miss Amelia Lang tells me he is a very distinguished person, of quite superior education in a medical way. I shall call him if I ever have the misfortune to fall ill again. I hope ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... bad! too bad entirely!" said Mrs. Crews, who was quite a motherly woman. "I hope your eyes are as well as ever in a day or two." And then she added with a twinkle in her own optics: "I suppose that is what you get for running off with that ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... the business of all the Virtuosi in Christendom, that almost a new Nature has been revealed to us? that more errors of the School have been detected, more useful experiments in Philosophy have been made, more noble secrets in Optics, Medicine, Anatomy, Astronomy, discovered; than, in all those credulous and doting Ages, from ARISTOTLE to us [p. 520]? So true it is, that nothing spreads more fast than Science, when rightly ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... truth in the story that Arago was deceived by the narrative; for in its present form the story, though clever, could not for an instant have deceived any one acquainted with the most elementary laws of optics. The whole story turns on optical rather than on astronomical considerations; but every astronomer of the least skill is acquainted with the principles on which the construction of optical instruments depends. Though the success of the deception ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... than Delia Torre; he invented machinery for water-mills and aqueducts; he devised engines of war, discovered the secret of conical rifle-bullets, adapted paddle-wheels to boats, projected new systems of siege artillery, investigated the principles of optics, designed buildings, made plans for piercing mountains, raising churches, connecting rivers, draining marshes, clearing harbours.[238] There was no branch of study whereby nature through the effort of the inquisitive intellect might be subordinated ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... astronomy, and mathematics, made prodigious progress during this epoch. Several eminent men flourished in the Netherlands. But the glory of others, in countries presenting a wider theatre for their renown, in many instances eclipsed them; and the inventors of new methods and systems in anatomy, optics and music were almost forgotten in the splendid improvements of ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... aviation, communications, computer-aided design and manufactures, medical electronics, fiber optics), wood and paper products, potash and phosphates, food, beverages, and tobacco, caustic soda, cement, construction, metals products, chemical products, plastics, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... from home and hearthstone, from the newly-wedded bride, To be looked at by cold optics on a microscopic slide; We are boiled and stewed together, and they never think it hurts; We're injected into rabbits by those hypodermic squirts: Never safe, although so very insignificant in size, There's no peace for poor Bacillus, so it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... idea of its grandeur which truly belongs to its vastness, and which is always formed from attentively reading or listening to a correct verbal or written description of it. Even the most faithful drawings cannot awaken an adequate conception of the majesty, the greatness of NIAGARA. Now the law of optics will serve to convince us that this must ever be so, since the image formed in the dark chamber of the eye is exceedingly small; and as the Falls are always approached gradually from a distance, the surrounding landscape ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... me, and I'll get six months. He knew where I'd go. I haven't any money," and tears not only filled the wondrous optics of poor Miss Montmorency, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... knowledge, there is often an internal secret despair of finding the truth, which so far paralyzes their efforts as to prevent them from seeking it with that deep earnestness, without which it is seldom found. The history of optics furnishes a most impressive illustration of the justness of this remark. Previous to the time of Newton, no one seemed to entertain a real hope that this branch of knowledge would ever assume the form and ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... treatment of Roger Bacon. Roger Bacon was a Franciscan monk, who not only studied Greek, Hebrew, and Oriental languages, but who devoted himself to natural science, and made many discoveries in astronomy, chemistry, optics, and mathematics. He is said to have discovered gunpowder, and he proposed a reform of the calendar similar to that introduced by Gregory XIII., 300 years later. His reward was to be hooted at as a magician, and to be confined in ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... patience of the Moors themselves, which had held out so marvellously under this system of oppression, began now to be exhausted. Many signs of this might be discerned by much less acute optics than those of the archbishop; but his were blinded by the arrogance of success. At length, in this inflammable state of public feeling, an incident occurred which led ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... starving—that old rascal, perhaps, in his capacity as a magistrate, sentences to jail an unfortunate man whom hunger has driven into the "crime" of stealing a loaf of bread! Bah! ladies and gentlemen, take the beams out of your own eyes before you allude to the motes in the optics of your fellow beings. That's ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... at last Transcendentalism evolve itself (if I construe aright), as the Euthanasia of Metaphysic altogether. May it be sure, may it be speedy! Thou shalt open thy eyes, O Son of Adam; thou shalt look, and not forever jargon about laws of Optics and the making of spectacles! For myself, I rejoice very much that I seem to be flinging aside innumerable sets of spectacles (could I but lay them aside,—with gentleness!) and hope one day actually to see a thing or two. Man lives by Belief (as it was well written ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... moral a life as during my residence in that country, but I gained no credit by it. On the contrary, there is no story so absurd that they did not invent at my cost. I was watched by glasses on the opposite side of the lake, and by glasses, too, that must have had very distorted optics. I was waylaid in my evening drives. I believe they looked upon me as a man-monster." Shortly after his arrival in Switzerland he contracted an intimacy with Miss Clairmont, a daughter of Godwin's second wife, and consequently a connexion by marriage of the Shelleys, with whom she was living, ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... since have completed his preparations; but the rascal came into the world with two left-hands, and as he squints with one eye everything that is straight looks crooked to him, and—according to the law of optics—the oblique looks straight. At any rate, he drove the peg which is to support the new head askew into the neck, and as no historian has recorded that Berenice ever had her neck on one side, like the old color-grinder there, I must see to its being straight ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... His discoveries in optics were in his own time almost equally famous, while in his later life he shared with Leibnitz the honor of inventing the infinitesimal calculus, a method which lies at the root of all the intricate marvels of modern ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... making friendly inquiries concerning the purpose and results of her excursion to Marietta, her large, calm eyes searched his countenance with a look of offended dignity, which caused his tongue to cleave to the roof of his mouth. Speechless for the moment, but not blinded, Plutarch withdrew his optics from the imperious dame, and took an instantaneous brain-picture of her companion, a light-footed, quick-glancing girl about eighteen years of age, whose arrival put little Harman into an ecstasy, and gave manifest delight to the ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... the best that the market could supply, yet he was able, from his knowledge of optics and chemistry, to improve them for his own uses far beyond the ability of the makers. His studio was filled with examples of his work, and his mind was stocked with information and opinions on all subjects ranging from international policies to ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... he then remarked, "which has latterly been hailed as showing that the lines were not lines but a series of dots, was made the other day in France. The observer saw perfectly correctly, but one with knowledge of the optics of a telescope should have known that the effect observed was the inevitable result of using an aperture which the seeing did not warrant; as he could easily have assured himself by looking at the shattered rings round the synchronous image ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... in the dark presses the ball of his eye, by applying his finger to the external corner of it, a luminous appearance is observed; and by a smart stroke on the eye great slashes of fire are perceived. (Newton's Optics.) So that when the arteries, that are near the auditory nerve, make stronger pulsations than usual, as in some fevers, an undulating sound is excited in the ears. Hence it is not the presence of the light and sound, but ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... was the family Missal) Was ornamented in a sort of way Which ancient mass-books often are, and this all Kinds of grotesques illumined; and how they, Who saw those figures on the margin kiss all, Could turn their optics to the text and pray, Is more than I know—But Don Juan's mother Kept this herself, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Isaac Newton at the end of the last edition of his Optics supposes that a very subtile and elastic fluid, which he calls aether, is diffused thro' the pores of gross bodies, as well as thro' the open spaces that are void of gross matter: he supposes it to pierce all bodies, and to touch their least particles, acting on them with a force proportional ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... soil. All that night he sat up and pondered. He knew about lenses and magnifying-glasses. He had read Kepler's theory of the eye, and had himself lectured on optics. Could he not hit on the device and make an instrument capable of bringing the heavenly bodies nearer? Who knew what marvels he might not so perceive! By morning he had some schemes ready to try, and one of them was successful. Singularly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... of all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified. At the time I will confess that I thought chiefly of the Philosophical Transactions and my own seventeen papers upon physical optics. ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... These impressions are all strong and sensible. They admit not of ambiguity. They are not only placed in a full light themselves, but may throw light on their correspondent ideas, which lie in obscurity. And by this means, we may, perhaps, attain a new microscope or species of optics, by which, in the moral sciences, the most minute, and most simple ideas may be so enlarged as to fall readily under our apprehension, and be equally known with the grossest and most sensible ideas, that can be the object of ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... Acoustics and Optics are defied by the sounds which you hear within yourselves in sleep, and by the light of an electric sun whose rays often overcome you. You know no more how light makes itself seen within you, than you know the simple and ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... on musical instruments. But this is surely to show a complete misunderstanding of the question. It is like saying that the best preparation for a painter to know the colours reflected on water by a cloudy or sunny sky would be a course of optics. Music is at once the most imaginative and the most severely abstract of the arts, and the absence of women from music must be referred to deeper causes, which yet, it seems to me, are not ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... the case of two men travelling the same way, starting together, but advancing at different rates; one, we say, falls behind the other. In this manner of expression, we follow exactly the principles on which we started, and suit our language to our ideas and habits of thinking. By the law of optics things are reflected upon the retina of the eye inversely, that is, upside down; but they are always seen in a proper relation to each other, and if there is any thing wrong in the case, it is overcome by early habit; and ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... inversion, and then totally disappeared; leaving behind it a clear open area of ice of the same dimensions. We now perceived that this bed of ice, which was thinly suffused with water, had produced the illusion, by reflecting and refracting (as persons skilled in optics would no doubt easily explain) a rocky and woody section of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... might not eventually command as general a public adhesion as is commanded by a physical science. Even the personally non-religious might accept its conclusions on trust, much as blind persons now accept the facts of optics—it might appear as foolish to refuse them. Yet as the science of optics has to be fed in the first instance, and continually verified later, by facts experienced by seeing persons; so the science of religions would depend for ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James |
