"Curve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chug-chugging launches in the harbor, and the white-winged yachts and great ocean steamers in the lower bay. He looked back from the Narrows upon the receding city, to the east upon Coney Island with its pleasure palaces, and to the southwest upon the great curve of Sandy Hook. Every step upon the deck near him brought his heart into his mouth in dread of what he knew he had to face. When the steamer was opposite Long Branch and there was small chance that he could be sent back, he inquired for the ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... in a wide curve, the girl shot away like a weasel, almost straight ahead, her red bodice like a streak of flame and her ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... a square black tilt which nodded with the motion of the wheels, and at a point in it over the driver's head was a hook to which the reins were hitched at times, when they formed a catenary curve from the horse's shoulders. Somewhere about the axles was a loose chain, whose only known purpose was to clink as it went. Mrs. Dollery, having to hop up and down many times in the service of her passengers, wore, especially in windy weather, short leggings under her gown for modesty's ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... travelling, it is being found that on some parts of the roads the convexity of the surface is too great, and especially at curves, where fast motors frequently skid on the rounded surface. To obviate this a piece of road near the Croix d'Augas in the Orleannais has had the outer side of the curve raised eight centimetres above the centre of the road, in somewhat the same manner as on the curve of a railway. Since this innovation has proved highly successful and pleasing to the devotees of the new form of travel, it is likely to be ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... now by the sunny window, idly intent on her vision, without warning the face of Shiela Cardross glimmered through the dream, growing clearer, distinct in every curve and tint of its exquisite perfection; and she stared at the mental vision, evoking it with all the imagination of her inner consciousness, unquiet yet curious, striving to look into the phantom's eyes—clear, direct eyes which ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... like a spot of snow upon the sky; but it, too, was making downward, in the track of the former, and appeared to be of the same species. This soon became evident; for the one last seen, descending more vertically, soon overtook the other; and both together continued to sail downward upon a spiral curve. ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... in with a triumphant air, and Angela. Angela was in Phyllis' arms, and adorably asleep, with her goldy-brown lashes on her pink cheeks and a look of angelhood in every round, relaxed curve. ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... Point Ipizarala, southways Nyonye, both looking like tree-clumps rising from the waves. I could not sufficiently admire, and I shall never forget the exquisite loveliness of land and sea; the graceful curve of the beach, a hundred feet broad, fining imperceptibly away till lost in the convexity of waters. The morning sun, half way to the zenith, burned bright in a cloudless sky, whilst in the east and west distant banks of purple mist coloured the liquid plain with a cool ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the dark line in the bed of the creek now broke into a huddle of flying forms. Three fell, but the rest ran, splashing through the sand and water, until they turned the curve and were protected from the deadly bullets. Then the Panther, calling to the others, rushed to the other side of the grove, where a second attack, led by Urrea in person, had been begun. Here men on horseback charged ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... all had happened. Just how, no one knew. An agonized scream from the little maid, Anita, who was walking behind them, a momentary sight of the tiny, brown-faced Italian boy, her brother, right in the pathway of the swinging car as it rounded the curve—Malcom's spring—and then the boy and himself lying out on the roadside against ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... grotesque qualities of the day's work. To take an extreme case, it would, as Jane Harrison observes, be a monstrosity, when our friend was drowning, to note with lingering appreciation the fluent white curve of his arm in the glimmering waters of the late afternoon. The man to whom every event is flooded with imaginative possibilities and emotional suggestions is a useless or a dangerous character in situations where it is essential to discriminate the ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... monastery. The beautiful Romanesque tower of the church stands on top of a rock that is honeycombed with their cells. The church, consisting of nave only, is of marvellous beauty, early pointed, and built on a curve, as there was but little space to spare between the river and the cliffs. Unhappily church and cloister were delivered over to be "restored" by that arch-wrecker, Abbadie, who has done such incalculable mischief ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... keeps at a height that marks its greatest attainment in this earliest form. The dotted line RX represents the rational development that begins later, advances much more slowly, but progressively, and reaches at X the level of the imaginative curve. The two intellectual forms are present like two rivals. The position MX on the ordinate marks the beginning ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... not meant for wars; See, how they curve away Before the bay, Bidding the voyager pause. Warm with the hoarded suns of centuries, Young with the garnered youth of many Springs, They laugh like happy bathers, while the seas Break in their open arms, And the slow-moving breeze Draws languid fingers down their placid brows. Even the ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... got themselves thankfully out, and drove away as fast as the fat pony could go. As they rounded the curve below the beech wood a plump figure came speeding over Mr. Andrews' pasture, waving to them excitedly. It was Catherine Andrews and she was so out of breath that she could hardly speak, but she thrust a couple of quarters into ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Pilot is carefully buckling his belt and making himself perfectly easy and comfortable, as all good pilots do. As he straightens himself up from a careful inspection of the Deviation Curve[10] of the Compass and takes command of the Controls, the Throttle and the Ignition, the voices grow fainter and fainter until there is nothing but a trembling of the Lift and Drift wires to indicate to his understanding eye their state of tension in ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... "and I observed the track turn to the north-ward. He is for Edinburgh, I will warrant you—so soon as daylight comes I will be on the road again. It is a kenspeckle hoof-mark, for the shoe was made by old Eckie of Cannobie—I would swear to the curve of the caulker." ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... circle that has a radius of 4 in. Place the screws 1, 2, etc., along this arc, and about 5/8 in. apart, center to center; that is, the screws are all 4 in. from F, and are, therefore, in the form of a curve. ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John
... and his mates were making off across country the disaster occurred. At a curve in the track the Simplon Express coming at full speed charged the cars and crushed them, then, lifted by the shock, the engine reared backwards on its wheels and fell heavily, dragging down in its fall a baggage car and the first two carriages coupled behind it. ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... displayed a still whiter appearance, as if painted, and his eyes as if they were set off with carnation. As he rolled his eyes, they brimmed with love. When he gave utterance to speech, he seemed to smile. But the chief natural pleasing feature was mainly centred in the curve of his eyebrows. The ten thousand and one fond sentiments, fostered by him during the whole of his existence, were all amassed in the corner ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the canal against a German advance; and by the 29th the Canadians, who had saved the situation but had suffered heavily in the effort, were replaced by British troops. There was still desperate fighting to do for many days, and the curve of the Ypres salient had been reduced to a narrow oblong stretching from Ypres to Grafenstafel and the Polygon Wood, and little more than half in breadth what it was in length. A shortening of the line was inevitable, and it was effected with great skill ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... language as old as the Egyptian, and which represents the Cushite branch of the Atlantean stock, the sign for n (na) is ; in archaic Phoenician it comes still closer to the S shape, thus, , or in this form, ; we have but to curve these angles to approximate it very closely to the Maya n; in Troy this form was found, . The Samaritan makes it ; the old Hebrew ; the Moab stone inscription gives it ; the later Phoenicians ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... an instant, described an arc of more than forty-five degrees, bringing up with a sudden jerk, which made it necessary to hold on with both hands, and then sweeping off in another long, irregular curve. I was not positively sick, and came down with a look of indifference, yet was not unwilling to get upon the comparative terra firma of the deck. A few hours more carried us through, and when we saw the sun go down, upon ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... a burner until it was red hot. Then carefully he drew out one end of the tube until it was hair fine. Again he heated the other end, but this time he let the end alone, except that he allowed it to bend by gravity, then cool. It now had a siphon curve. Another tube he treated in the ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... sixteen to twenty-two feet in length, with an upward curve towards each end. Laths were introduced from stem to stern instead of planks—they were provided with a gunwhale or edging which, though slight, added strength to the fabric—the whole was covered on the outside with deer skins sewed together ...
— Lecture On The Aborigines Of Newfoundland • Joseph Noad
... same alacrity will be shown to commemorate one who was for many years, and by such judges as Scott, Hazlitt, and Charles Dickens, considered Fielding's complement and absolute co-equal (to say the least) in literary achievement. Smollett's fame, indeed, seems to have fallen upon an unprosperous curve. The coarseness of his fortunate rival is condoned, while his is condemned without appeal. Smollett's value is assessed without discrimination at that of his least worthy productions, and the historical value of his work as a prime modeller ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... poplars, in the midst of the darker, heavier foliage, seemed golden with the early sunlight. Everywhere the bushes sparkled with the rain of the night before. They took a path that ran almost in a curve around one entire side of the mountain. Ben Gile kept a sharp lookout, for the partridge, he knew, would be upon the ground or up in the trees. He pointed to several places where partridge had been scratching. The woods were full of them, and every minute he expected to hear the whir of their ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... homogeneousness about all these vegetable forms, in their colour, in their fruit and flowers, that proclaims them of one family. They are cacti. It is a forest of the Mexican nopal. Another singular plant is here. It throws out long, thorny leaves that curve downward. It is the agave, the far-famed mezcal-plant of Mexico. Here and there, mingling with the cacti, are trees of acacia and mezquite, the denizens of the desert-land. No bright object relieves the eye; no bird pours its melody ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... side of the quay, separated from the quiet water by the broad white road, stand the villas, the embassies, the houses, large and small, a varying front, following the curve of the Bosphorus for half a mile between the Turkish towns of Buyukdere and Mesar Burnu. Behind the villas rise the gardens, terraces upon terraces of roses, laurels, lemons, Japanese medlars, and ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... ropes from the box-bush to the step. I had been sitting there for three hours, and only one creaking farm-wagon had passed, and two dirty brown-legged children. The air was breathless and spicy, and in the rough clearing opposite, the leaves seemed to curve visibly in the intense heat. Did anything ever happen here? It seemed to me as much out of the range of possible happenings ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... acted. But if gravity acts it will have fallen 16 feet by the time it would have got to A, and so will find itself at P. In two seconds it will be at Q, having fallen a vertical height of 64 feet; in three seconds it will be at R, 144 feet below C; and so on. Its actual path will be a curve, which in this case is a ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... with a slight debility and loss of appetite, but if a temperature record is kept the fever will be found to rise from one-half to a degree higher each day. A steady climb in the temperature curve is noted until the end of the first week, when it remains for a week, possibly 103 or 104 F. After one week it begins slowly to decrease and, if all goes well, the early part of the fourth week usually finds the temperature about normal. It is exceedingly important that the child be kept ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... and when I saw her set her foot in her brother's hand and spring across the empty space from the stair to the shelf, it seemed no less than if a wind had blown her. Soon we were all three crouching or kneeling on the stone, with our elbows in the curve of the great window, looking out on the prospect. A fair one it was, of fields and vineyards, with streams winding about, but very small. They spoke of rivers, but I saw none. It was the same with the hills, ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... vanished and peace seemed to have won back the world. But as we stood there a red flash started out of the mist far off to the northwest; then another and another flickered up at different points of the long curve. "Luminous bombs thrown up along the lines," our guide explained; and just then, at still another point a white light opened like a tropical flower, spread to full bloom and drew itself back into the night. "A flare," we were told; and ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... hook is put in at the mouth of the minnow, and the point brought out at a little above the tail—thus giving the minnow the proper curve for spinning. One of the smaller hooks is put through both lips of the lure, to close the mouth and to keep the bait in proper position, while the other is left to spin. Some advocate the use of par-tail as a spinning bait; but as it is not right to kill par at all, we omit any ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... were in spite of itself, the contemptuous curve became a very small smile. The girl's dark eyes dwelt for several seconds upon that portion of her suitor's countenance that was visible under the linen hat. There was a wonderful serenity about the mouth and chin she ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... I sit, Over the river, watching it. A shadowed face peers up at me; And another tree in the chasm I see, Clinging above the abyss it spans; The broad boughs curve their spreading fans, From side to side, in the nether air; And phantom birds in the phantom branches Mimic the birds above; and there, Oh I far below, solemn and slow, The white clouds roll the crumbling snow Of ever-pendulous avalanches, Till the brain grows giddy, gazing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... quivering stars leapt into view on the left-hand side of the Basilica, and then followed the monumental, gradient way, whose curve is gradually described. At that distance you were still unable to see the pilgrims themselves, and you beheld simply those well-disciplined travelling lights tracing geometrical lines amidst the darkness. Under the deep blue heavens, even the buildings ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... leading very quietly, as Mr. Upton had said. It was a buckskin, fat and hearty from long resting. Nothing could be more docile than the pensive lower lip, and the meek curve of the neck; nothing could be more contradictory than the light of its eye; a brooding, baleful fire, quietly ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... sad portrait of a gentleman, undoubtedly the late lamented Norton. His uninteresting nose appeared to turn up at the constant odor of cookery in which it dwelt; his hair was plastered down over his forehead in a gorgeous abandoned curve such as some of the least sophisticated of Mr. John T. ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... occasionally showed its bare pale outline through a veil of cloud. The road in front of Christina was so dim that Mr. Russell could people it for himself with imaginations. Now a knight in armour stood at the next corner, now a phantom sea gleamed over the curve of the road, now he saw great slim ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... from his belt and hurled it at the birds, which had swerved from their course and were now flying swiftly away. It was a mighty cast, even for the strong arm of the mightiest warrior of Eri; and the javelin, glittering in the sun, was well on the downward curve of its long flight, its force spent, when its point touched the wing of the nearest bird. A sphere of golden flame seemed to glitter about them as they turned downward and disappeared beneath the deep waters ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... when, by the automatic inking, the mark was made, there was never an imperfect sign, but every character was truly formed. The ink used, claimed to be absolutely indelible, and those who had tried it, more than two years before, had found no break in any single line or curve if either ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... think, is just what Garay will do. It is likely, too, that he will curve about the town. If he went upon a hard street we would lose him, since he would leave no trail there, but he will keep away because he does not wish to be seen. Ah, he now turns from the houses and into the fields! We shall be able to ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... for speech, and it is difficult to say which means more properly. It means both at once: why? Because really they cannot be divided.... When we can separate light and illumination, life and motion, the convex and the concave of a curve, then will it be possible for thought to tread speech under foot and to hope to do without it—then will it be conceivable that the vigorous and fertile intellect should renounce its own double, its instrument of ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... are inside the orchard, standing in a very secluded spot, with only some green apples and an ivied wall to see them. Her eyes are downcast, and her slender fingers are playing nervously with a ribbon on her gown. Her lips have taken a remorseful curve. Now, as though unable to restrain the impulse, she raises her eyes to his for a brief second, but, brief as it is, he can see that ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... thermometer. Suddenly everything appeared unsteady. The bricks on the floor were dancing up and down. Then the white blossoms, the green leaves behind them, the whole greenhouse, seemed to sweep sideways, and then in a curve upward. ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... thought. No, Ernest, no. We cannot go back to the saint. There is far more to be learned from the sinner. We cannot go back to the philosopher, and the mystic leads us astray. Who, as Mr. Pater suggests somewhere, would exchange the curve of a single rose-leaf for that formless intangible Being which Plato rates so high? What to us is the Illumination of Philo, the Abyss of Eckhart, the Vision of Bohme, the monstrous Heaven itself that was ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... we had descended. Both led in the direction of our route, and the pond we had just left was ascertained to be the only one in the little channel. I sought a good position for a depot camp on the newly-discovered river, and found one extremely favourable, on a curve concave to the N. W., overlooking, from a high bank, a dry ford, on a smooth rocky bed; and having also access to a reach of water, where the bottom was hard and firm. We approached this position with our carts, in the midst of smoke and flame; ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... commission offered by the War Office. A line of Tennyson reminiscent of the days when Bakkus had guided his reading came into his head. Something about a man's own angry pride being cap and bells for a fool. He tried to find repose against the edge of the sharp double curve that divided the carriage side into two portions. The trivial discomfort irritated him. The German compartment might be a symbol of victory, but it was also a symbol of the end of the war, the end of the only intense life full of meaning which he ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... the upright portions of trees curve somewhat turning the convexity towards the South; and their branches are longer and thicker and more abundant towards the South than towards the North. And this occurs because the sun draws the sap towards that surface of the tree which is nearest ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... traveler lingered there a little! Humanity called him, for one thing, to drive often with humanely disposed young ladies round the beautiful shore curve to visit the schools for various colors at Hampton. Then there was the evening promenading on the broad verandas and out upon the miniature pier, or at sunset by the water-batteries of the old fort —such ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... covered on its northern side by an ancient and decaying plantation of beeches, whose upper verge formed a line over the crest, fringing its arched curve against the sky, like a mane. To-night these trees sheltered the southern slope from the keenest blasts, which smote the wood and floundered through it with a sound as of grumbling, or gushed over its crowning boughs in a weakened ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... away, promising to return the following afternoon. Itzig proceeded to brush his silk hat with enviable dexterity; he then put on his best coat, gave his hair its most graceful curve, and went to the house of his antagonist Ehrenthal. As he entered the hall he cast a shy glance at the office door, and hurried on to the staircase. But he stopped on the lowest step. "There he is, sitting again in the office," said he, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... of interest is to determine where the dew-point curve and dry-bulb curve will cut. If they cut above the surface, mist will result; if they cut at the surface, dew will be formed. Below the surface, it may be assumed that the air is saturated with moisture and any difference in temperature of the dew-point is accompanied by distillation. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... metal— Cut in your naked contentment there shows On the curve of your breast one carven petal From ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... girls so fair but now, A mournful sight all bent and bowed— And grieving, thus he cried aloud:— "What fate is this, and what the cause? What wretch has scorned all heavenly laws? Who thus your forms could curve and break? You struggle, but no answer make." They heard the speech of that wise king Of their misfortune questioning. Again the hundred maidens sighed, Touched with their heads his feet, and cried:— "The God of Wind, pervading space, Would bring on us a foul disgrace, And choosing folly's evil ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... ignorant of the significance and grace of manifest intention, which rules a living line from its beginning, even though the intention be towards a point while the first spring of the line is towards an opening curve. But man does not care for intention; he mows it. Nor does he care for attitude; he rolls it. In a word, he proves to the grass, as plainly as deeds can do so, that it is not to his mind. The rolling, especially, seems ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... faultless, secret-chambered shell, Whose sound is an epitome Of all the utterance of the sea; Great, basking, twinkling wastes of brine; Far clouds of gulls that wheel and swerve In unanimity divine, With undulation serpentine, And wondrous, consentaneous curve, Flashing in sudden silver sheen, Then melting on the sky-line keen; The world-forgotten coves that seem Lapt in some magic old sea-dream, Where, shivering off the milk-white foam, Lost airs wander, seeking home, And into clefts and caverns peep, Fissures paven ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... place were not to be overlooked, and he was not long in making up his mind that here should be the future capital of Upper Canada. A peninsula of land extended out into Lake Ontario, and then came round in a gradual curve, as though for the express purpose of protecting the basin within from the force of the waves. Here, then, was an excellent natural harbour, closed in on all sides but one. An expanse of more than ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... early Irish copper work is seen at its best in the numerous copper halberd blades found in Ireland. These blades, varying from nine to sixteen inches in length, were fastened at right angles by rivets into wooden shafts. The blades show a slight sickle-like curve and are of the highest workmanship. Halberds somewhat similar in type have been found in Spain, North ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... everybody's vain. Women are terribly vain. So are men—more so, if possible. So are children, particularly children. One of them at this very moment is hammering upon my legs. She wants to know what I think of her new shoes. Candidly I don't think much of them. They lack symmetry and curve and possess an indescribable appearance of lumpiness (I believe, too, they've put them on the wrong feet). But I don't say this. It is not criticism, but flattery that she wants; and I gush over them with what I feel to ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... employ, as it were, the intuition of the brain, and by using it do not waver and vacillate by too much reasoning over the question or endeavouring to see both sides of it at once. When the sloping Line of Head has a gentle curve downwards towards the Mount of the Moon (1-1, Plate II.), distinct control over the imagination is indicated. The student will then know that the subject simply uses his imagination when he wishes to do so instead of being controlled by it. But the contrary ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... privative is an independent thought, that a thought and its limitation are two thoughts; whereas they are but the two aspects of the one thought, like two sides to the one disc, and the absurdity of speaking of them as separate thoughts is as great as to speak of a curve seen from its concavity as a different thing from the same curve regarded from its convexity. The privative can help us nowhere and to nothing; the positive only can ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... the curve at Kidd's Treasure, and Mr. Barrett looked backward to catch one last glimpse of the sea. As he did so, he forgot Hope, and went back to the memory of his last hour on the beach. Strolling along the sand, ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... speak of the angular position of the piers. What is the amount of the angle? The course of the river is a curve and the pier is straight. If a line is produced from the upper end of the long pier straight with the pier to a distance of 350 feet, and a line is drawn from a point in the channel opposite this point to the head of the pier, Colonel Nason says they will form an angle of twenty degrees. But the ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... coarse-grained and greasy, with heavy, double-chin, and two sullen, menacing gray eyes which glared at me from under tufted and sandy brows. A high bald head had a small velvet smoking-cap poised coquettishly upon one side of its pink curve. The skull was of enormous capacity, and yet as I looked down I saw to my amazement that the figure of the man was small and frail, twisted in the shoulders and back like one who has suffered from rickets ...
— The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hurried to the nearest slidewalk, a moving belt of plastic that glided silently across the ground toward Space Academy. It whisked them quickly past the few buildings nestled around the monorail station and rounded a curve. The three cadets looked up together at the gleaming Tower of Galileo. Made of pure Titan crystal, it soared above the cluster of buildings that surrounded the grassy quadrangle and dominated Space ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... time to canvass the situation. As far as the curve of the river behind the shack were too few trees to cover serious attack from that direction. Probably the survey for the grade had chosen this line of contact between prairie and forest because of the small expense of clearing the right ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... glowed on until the clock in St. Anne's down the street struck one with a querulous fashionable beauty. The elevated, half a quiet block away, sounded a rumble of drums—and should he lean from his window he would see the train, like an angry eagle, breasting the dark curve at the corner. He was reminded of a fantastic romance he had lately read in which cities had been bombed from aerial trains, and for a moment he fancied that Washington Square had declared war on Central Park and that this was a north-bound menace loaded with battle and sudden death. But as ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... example, in the skeleton in the foreground, the pelvis has scarcely the shape, and none of the variety of line, of the bone itself, but is merely a coarsely-drawn girdle. Compared to the extreme delicacy with which he models flesh, and his minute appreciation of every gradation of curve in the muscles, this carelessness in the treatment of the skeleton ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... cluttered streets nested in the valley. When he reaches his journey's end he will be just as wise and just as ignorant as we who now travel by rail in magic, seven-league fashion. For here I am set down, and all save the last half-mile of my path is lost in the curve of the mountains. From my window I see the green-covered mountains, so different from city streets with their ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... centre, at a considerable elevation from the ground. One of these forms is that of a vase: the base being represented by the roots of the tree that project above the soil and join the trunk,—the middle by the lower part of the principal branches, as they swell out with a graceful curve, then gradually diverge, until they bend downward and form the lip of the vase, by their circle of terminal branches. Another of its forms is that of a vast dome, as represented by those trees that send up a single shaft to the height ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... call, 'La-la-la!' And an answer came from the watch-tower hidden round the curve of the hill, 'What is it, ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... they appear to myself to bear, but merely on their actual and demonstrable agreeableness, so that, in the present case, while I assert positively, and have no fear of being able to prove, that a curve of any kind is more beautiful than a right line, I leave it to the reader to accept or not, as he pleases, that reason of its agreeableness, which is the only one that I can at all trace, namely, that every curve divides itself infinitely ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... had examined it closely, a pair of bright, beady eyes, and a dark little thread of a backbone that was always curled up like a horseshoe because there wasn't room for it to lie straight. But along the outside of the curve of each spinal column a set of the tiniest and daintiest muscles was getting ready for a long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull all together. And one day, late in the winter, when the woods were just beginning to think about spring, the muscles in one particular egg tugged with ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... jumped. The head was lying a little clear of the water-jar, under the curve of it; and, as his teeth met, Rikki braced his back against the bulge of the red earthen-rare to hold down the head. This gave him just one second's purchase, and he made the most of it. Then he was battered to ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... article,' says he. 'It's a duplicate of mine, every line and curve of it. Tell you what I'll do,' he says. 'I won't sell, but I'll buy. Give ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... to watch for the house," said the silent Esther, as Carter swung the car around another curve in the beautiful road. "I don't see why I ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... strength of the Brooklyn Suspension Bridge, betake himself to the other end of the island and enjoy the more solid, but in their way no less imposing, proportions of the Washington Bridge over the Harlem, and let him choose his route by the Ninth-avenue Elevated Railroad with its dizzy curve at 110th street. And, finally, let not the lover of the picturesque fail to enjoy the views from the already named Riverside Drive, the cleverly created beauties of Central Park, and the district ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... red mouth, Love me! Love me! Girl of the red mouth, Love me! 'Tis by its curve, I know, Love fashioneth his bow, And bends it—ah, even so! Oh, girl of the red mouth, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... an affectation of reserve). Exactly, I was forgetting. (To himself.) It's really rather humorous. (He laughs again.) Ha, we're beginning to go down now. Hey for Italy—la bella Italia! (The diligence takes the first curve.) Good Heavens, what a turn! We're going at rather a sharp pace for downhill, eh? I suppose these Swiss drivers know what they're ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... be now heated up to 539 deg. Fahr. 1,000 deg. absolute, and at the same time the piston is not allowed to move, the pressure is doubled; and when the piston is released, it would rise 121/2 feet, provided that the temperature remained constant, and the indicator would describe a hyperbolic curve (called an "isothermal") because the temperature would have remained equal throughout. But, in fact, the temperature is lowered, because expansion has taken place, and the indicator curve which would then be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... off across the Place at a run. Omnibuses from Batignolles and Menilmontant got in his way, fiacres tried to run him down, and a motor-car in a hurry pulled up just in time to save his life, but Ste. Marie ran on and caught the tram before it had completed the negotiation of the long curve and gathered speed for its dash down the boulevard. He sprang upon the step, and the conductor reluctantly unfastened the chain to admit him. So he climbed up to the top and seated himself, panting. The dial high on the facade ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... sorrowful face, with bags hung under his eyes, drooping eyelids, no beard, no brows, and no chin; for in the place of the two latter, there was a slight frown where the brows ought to have been, and a curve in the place of the chin, merely perceptible from the bottom of his underlip to his throat. He wore his own hair, which was a light bay, so that you could scarcely distinguish it from a wig. I was given to understand that he was a religious tailor ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... get lost in," said Tom Rover. "Got streets that curve in all directions. But let us go on. Where ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... her nod, he brought forth the ray director, pressed it with his fingers, directing its muzzle toward the curve of the globe, swinging it around in a circle, cutting out the bottom of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... session and to exact from them expression of opinion as to the central point of it, the popular, most comfortable and convenient camping-place, there can be no question that the voice of the majority would favour the curve of the bay rendered conspicuous by a bin-gum or coral tree. Within a few yards of permanent fresh water, on sand blackened by the mould of centuries of vegetation, close to an almost inextricable forest merging into jungle, whence a great portion of the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Colonel Feraud's head, coarse and crinkly like a cap of horsehair, showed many silver threads about the temples. A detestable warfare of ambushes and inglorious surprises had not improved his temper. The beak-like curve of his nose was unpleasantly set off by a deep fold on each side of his mouth. The round orbits of his eyes radiated wrinkles. More than ever he recalled an irritable and staring bird—something like a cross between a parrot and an owl. He was still ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... short of the Van Arsdale cabin the trail took a sharp turn amidst the brush. Halfway on the curve Io caught at ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... tree to be seen. From a root, which, in old trees, spreads much above the surface of the ground, the trunk rises to a considerable height in a single stem. Here it usually divides into two or three principal branches, which go off by a gradual and easy curve. Theses stretch upwards and outwards with an airy sweep, become horizontal, the extreme half of the limb, pendent, forming a light and regular arch. This graceful curvature, and absence of all ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... to catch his words, "I find that the curves of Miss La Neige, Mrs. Parker, and Mr. Downey are only so far from normal as would be natural. All of them were witnessing a thing for the first time with only curiosity and no fear. The curve made by Mr. Bruce ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... the red-tiled white adobe houses studded a little city which was a series of corners radiating from a central irregular street. A few mansions were on the hillside to the right, brush-crowded sand banks on the left; the perfect curve of hills, thick with pine woods and dense green undergrowth, rose high above and around all, ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... outlined, the Transcaspian Railway was remarkably favored by nature. For nearly the whole distance the country is as flat as a billiard-table, and the road so straight that at times it runs for twenty or thirty miles without the shadow of a curve. In the entire distance there is not a tunnel, and only some small cuttings have been made through hills of sand. Of bridges, other than mere culverts, there are but three in the whole length of the road, the only large one being that ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... middle of the house, and around them swept the great curve of boxes at which Undine had so often looked up in the remote Stentorian days. Then all had been one indistinguishable glitter, now the scene was full of familiar details: the house was thronged with people ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the working of the helm, the prow of our air-boat was turned in the direction we desired. The oars, working only on one side, supported the helm, and altogether we got on as we wished. We described a curve, crossing the road from Dijon to Langres. The mercury had descended to 24 inches 8 lines, which announced that we were gradually rising. We attempted for some time to follow the route to I Langres, but the wind drove us off our course in spite of all our efforts. At nine o'clock our ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... kiss, as though they were forcing their lips into one body of living flame. A kiss in which his eyes were blind to the enchantment of the jade light about them, his ears deaf to brook and rustling forest. All his senses were concentrated on the close warmth of her misty lips, the curve of her young shoulder, her woman sweetness and longing. Then his senses forgot even her lips, and floated off into a blurred trance of bodiless happiness—the kiss of Nirvana. No foreign thought of trains or people or the future ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... marry the princess," cried he, "because you have broken the enchantment in which I held her; but I will be revenged on you. You shall have a son with a nose as long as—that;" he made in the air a curve of half a foot; "yet he shall believe it is just like all other noses, and shall be always unfortunate till he has found out it is not. And if you ever tell anybody of this threat of mine, you shall die on the spot." So saying the ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... clothes and stood before Trirodov with uplifted arms. She was sinuously slender, like a white serpent. Crossing the fingers of her upraised hands, she bent her whole body forward, so that she appeared more sinuously slender than ever, and the curve of her body almost resembled a white ring. Then she relaxed her arms, stood up erect, all tranquil and self-possessed, ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... keen eyes had lightened suddenly. The whole face had darkened and narrowed, and the clipped brown moustache lost its smiling curve, and straightened ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Eichorn waved their arms and smiled. The Cabbage Patch, with its crowd of friendly faces, became a blur to the girl on the platform. Suddenly a figure on a telegraph pole attracted her attention; it wore a red necktie and it was throwing kisses. Lovey Mary waved until the train rounded a curve, then she gave ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... an American hospital, had kept his machine gun going after the chief gunners had been killed two feet away and he himself had been wounded, thus protecting a turn in the road known as Dead Man's curve, over which some of the American couriers passed in the face of a concentrated ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... species of antelope, called leche or lechwi. It is a beautiful water-antelope of a light brownish-yellow color. Its horns—exactly like those of the 'Aigoceros ellipsiprimnus', the waterbuck, or tumogo, of the Bechuanas—rise from the head with a slight bend backward, then curve forward at the points. The chest, belly, and orbits are nearly white, the front of the legs and ankles deep brown. From the horns, along the nape to the withers, the male has a small mane of the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Mr. Baynes, upon your attention to detail in your examination of it. A few trifling points might perhaps be added. The oval seal is undoubtedly a plain sleeve-link—what else is of such a shape? The scissors were bent nail scissors. Short as the two snips are, you can distinctly see the same slight curve in each." ...
— The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge • Arthur Conan Doyle
... under the shadow of the bank, and no sound was heard but the regular thugging and splashing of the oars and the voices of insects on the shore. They approached a curve in the river where the bank was thickly wooded, and dense shrubbery projected over ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... into the garden where the flowers ought to have been forget-me-nots, but were as usual mostly marigolds and zinnias. They crowded round tile-edged pools, and other flowers bloomed in pots on the coping of the garden-seats built up of thin tiles carved on their edges to an inward curve. It is strongly believed that there are several stories under the house, and the Marquis is going some day to dig them up or out to the last one where the original Jewish owner of the house is supposed to have hid his treasure. In the ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... Major lay back in his chair, to all appearance stupefied, confounded. Then he too rose, his lips working, his hand shaking for one instant only as with his pipe-stem he traced a magnificent curve ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... under one of the great oaks whose lower limbs had been trimmed so evenly some seven feet above the ground that they made a compact symmetrical roof above the dark head of the girl, who, being alone, had abandoned the limp curve of fashion and was standing very erect, drawn up to her full five feet seven. Alexina had no intention of being afflicted with rounded shoulders when ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... the original ground of their apparent disorder, the enormous system of their reactions, the almost infinite intricacy of their movements. In these very anomalies lies the principle of their order. A curve is long in showing its elements of fluxion; we must watch long in order to compute them; we must wait in order to know the law of their relations and the music of the deep mathematical principles which they obey. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... who gave sign That God willed Beauty, when He drew the line That shaped each float and fold of Beauty's tent; But the soul, drawing up in little space, Thus left the form all staring, self-dismayed, A vacant sign of what might be the grace If mind swelled up, and filled the plan displayed: Each curve and shade of thy pure form were Thine, Thy very hair replete ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... it and realized it was dawn already. We were bowling along at a fine pace past green trees and undulating veld, and I wondered why the engine should keep on screaming like a thing demented. I knelt on Fred's berth to lean from the window and look ahead. We were going round a slight curve and I could see the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... He regained the curve of the drive without meeting any opposition. There, slipping the pistol into his pocket, he climbed rapidly up the tree from which he had watched the arrival of the three cars, climbed over the wall, and dropped into the weed jungle beyond. He crept ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... seen him before. He could not forget the reserve and shyness natural to him, and he felt a sense of hostility. He glanced at her, and saw a cheek ruddier than the cheeks of American women usually are, and a chin with an unusually firm curve. Her hair was dark brown, and when the electric light flashed upon her it seemed to be streaked with dull gold. But the chin held him with an odd sort of fascination, and he strove to read her character in it. "Bold and resolute," he decided, "but too Western, ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... sport at large. Just in the dubious point, where with the pool Is mix'd the trembling stream, or where it boils Around the stone, or from the hollow'd bank Reverted plays in undulating flow, There throw, nice-judging, the delusive fly; And as you lead it round in artful curve, With eye attentive mark the springing games Straight as above the surface of the flood They wanton rise, or urged by hunger leap, Then fix, with gentle twitch, the barbed hook: Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank, And to the shelving shore slow-dragging some, With various hand proportion'd ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... architectural relief. Athwart these ran inscriptions horizontally and obliquely in an unfamiliar lettering. Here and there close to the roof cables of a peculiar stoutness were fastened, and drooped in a steep curve to circular openings on the opposite side of the space, and even as Graham noted these a remote and tiny figure of a man clad in pale blue arrested his attention. This little figure was far overhead across the space beside the ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... doubts of her innocence which he continually told himself no sane man could help entertaining, he found himself strangely nervous. He felt as if he were waiting outside an operating room. He thought of her as he had seen her asleep, of the curve of her eye-lashes on her cheek, of her raising those lashes, awaking to be met with McVay's revelations. Even if she were guilty, Geoffrey found it in his heart to pity her waking to learn that her brother was a prisoner. How unfortunate, too, would ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... increasing moon-light. But she found no prints; after all, as she remembered, she was hardly likely to; the wind and blowing sand would have obliterated them. Over the first level of sand she went to the nearest rise without seeing anything; up to that and down the following hollow, looking in every curve and indentation, still without seeing anything. Then she began to climb the next rise. The moon was struggling through a long cloud, one moment eclipsed, the next shining with a half radiance which made the landscape unevenly ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... Boy in Breeches?" he shouted, as he stamped out under the porte cochre just as a ranch limousine swung around the curve among ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the chick again. "The bother is to keep it up," he said. "They won't trust me in the nursery alone, because I tried to get a growth curve out of Georgina Phyllis—you know—and how I'm to ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... very simple," explained Metcalf, showing a rough diagram he had sketched. "You see he has used my system of reflectors about as I designed it. The focus of one curve coincides with the focus of the next, and the result is a thin beam containing nearly all the radiations ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... and vexatious—but remember, she is intelligent; what she says is clearly expressed, and often picturesquely. I observe the fine sheen of her hair, the pretty cut of her frock, the glint of her white teeth, the arch of her eye-brow, the graceful curve of her arm. I listen to the exquisite murmur of her voice. Gradually I fall asleep—but only for an instant. At once, observing it, she raises her voice ever so little, and I am awake. Then to sleep again—slowly and charmingly down that slippery hill of dreams. And then awake again, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... rushes. If the hazoor will be patient for a little moment ..." The native dropped down from the bund and disappeared into the reedy tangle of the lake shore. A minute or so later Amber saw the boat shoot out from the shore and swing in a long, graceful curve to ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... its qualities of lightness and elasticity. As it floats on water, it ought to be of great value on ships, whilst of late years its employment in the manufacture of light ocean telegraph cables has been seriously considered, showing, as it does, an advantage over other materials by taking a convex curve to the water surface—an important condition in cable-laying. [145] The Spaniards call this product Banote. In this Colony it often serves for cleaning floors and ships' decks, when the nut is cut into two equal parts across ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... handling the frogs, and measuring with his eye the proportion of the parts; he passed his hand up and down the legs, spanning the bones of the lower joint; he peered into his eyes, took into consideration the width of his chest, the dip of his back, the form of his ribs, the curve of his haunches, and his capabilities for breathing when pressed by work. And then he stood away a little, eyeing him from the side, and taking in a general idea of the form and make of the whole. "He seems to stand over a little, I ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... curve for the first year, and from one year to fourteen years are given at the end ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... lying down, its nose on its paw, sleeping, or walking through the paths of its native jungle with soft cat-like tread, it appears formed of muscle and sinew, without a bone in its body, so gracefully does it curve and twist itself as ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... entire ribs, and part of a third, one thigh bone, two bones of the leg, &c. The cranial bone was upwards of twenty feet in its greatest length, about four in extreme width, and it weighed 1,200 lbs. The ribs measured nine feet along the curve, and about three inches in thickness. It had been conjectured that the animal to which these bones belonged was amphibious, and perhaps of the crocodile family. It was also supposed that the animal when alive, must have measured ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... sheltered a different colony. Here, the Bembeces (A species of Digger-wasps.—Translator's Note.) were sweeping the threshold of their burrows, flinging a curve of dust behind them; the Languedocian Sphex was dragging her Ephippigera (A species of Green Grasshopper—Translator's Note.) by the antennae; a Stizus (A species of Hunting-wasp.—Translator's Note.) was storing her preserves of Cicadellae. (Froghoppers—Translator's Note.) ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... so many parrots, instead of using the key he gave you to unlock the mysteries of the universe. A corollary of his law is that the planets move in their orbits because they are impelled thereto between the two forces, and move in a mean curve between them; but it was not until 1896 that you discovered that the mean between two forces is always a curve and never a straight line. You have not a text book in a school today that does not repeat this fundamental and absurd error—which ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... burden of the bulk by masculine labor are conquered, and a long row of powerful pinnaces displayed, as a mounted battery, against the fishful sea. With a view to this clambering ruggedness of life, all of these boats receive from their cradle a certain limber rake and accommodating curve, instead of a straight pertinacity of keel, so that they may ride over all the scandals of this arduous world. And happen what may to them, when they are at home, and gallantly balanced on the brow line of the steep, they make a bright ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... came around a curve just ahead of us, and truly it was a splendid sight. The lower part of the boat was all lighted up, and the fire was blazing away grandly in its iron box, high up ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton |
