"Focal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... two on the front seat were a thousand miles away. Neither we, nor the day, nor the beauty of the drive had power to woo their glances from coming back to the focal point of interest they had found in each other. They were beginning to talk, not about each other but of themselves—the danger-signal of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... "Out of the focal and foremost fire, Out of the hospital walls as dire; Smitten of grape-shot and gangrene, (Eighteenth battle and he sixteen!) Specter! such as you seldom see, Little Giffen ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... long been, and for some decades of years it will continue to be, the necessary chief focal point of our nation. But, in all respects, it is not the true heart. In its composition and dealings, it is almost as much foreign as American. Located on our eastern border, fronting the most commercial and the richest transatlantic nations, and of easy access to ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... many observations on this portion of the heavens, using a Newtonian reflector of twenty feet focal length, and an aperture of eighteen inches. With this powerful telescope he completely resolved the whitish appearance into stars, which the telescopes he had formerly used had not light enough to do. In the most vacant place ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... the troubled waters of family friction and delicate adjustments, this adventurous pair had slid into a haven of peace and mutual understanding. And now behold, fresh portent of trouble arising from the dual strain in Roy—the focal point of their life ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... be such as to permit the attainment of the objective by a single course of action such as "to escort trade in convoys" or "to patrol the trade routes". Both of these courses of action might be necessary, and, in addition, perhaps, the further course "to cover focal ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... follows a band of basket-laden women, he will find that their goal is that focal-point of every old-time city, the market-place. There arrived, he will witness a scene common enough in Europe but hardly to be duplicated anywhere in America. Hundreds of venders of meat, fish, vegetables, cloths, and household utensils have their open-air booths scattered ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... we became more and more convinced of the correctness of Capt. Parker's theory that there had been a big focal center of the battle somewhere still to the east of us, and that the actions along the rest of the line of contact from Paris to Lorraine had occurred ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... many cases of delinquents with more or less marked psychopathic signs in which pathological lying was the focal point. He reports five cases at great length, in all of whom the inclination to fabricate stories, "der Hang zum fabulieren,'' is irresistible and apparently not to be repressed by efforts of the will. Risch's main points, built up from study of his cases, are worthy ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... certain variations of apparent size, and degrees of faintness of color; that our estimate of the object's distance from us is the result partly of a rapid inference from the muscular sensations accompanying the adjustment of the focal distance of the eye to objects unequally remote from us, and partly of a comparison (made with so much rapidity that we are unconscious of making it) between the size and color of the object as they appear at the time, and the size and color ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... by Hansen and Lehmann in their experiments consists of two large concave reflectors. These are placed at a convenient distance, one facing the other, so that two experimenters may be seated, the first having his mouth at the focal point of one reflector, the second with his ear at the focal point of the other. As the first experimenter repeats mentally any words or phrases, these are found to be unconsciously whispered. These sounds of whispering, inaudible under ordinary conditions, ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... o'clock M. Leverrier asked me to go into the observatory, which connects with the dwelling. They are building immense additional rooms, and are having a great telescope, twenty-seven feet in focal ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... FOLDING CAMERA, is superior to every other form of Camera, for the Photographic Tourist, from its capability of Elongation or Contraction to any Focal Adjustment, its Portability, and its adaptation for taking either Views or Portraits.—The ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... sense of evil. You will awake to the perception of God as All-in-all. You will find yourself losing the knowledge and the operation of sin, proportionably as you realize the divine infinitude and believe that He can see nothing outside of His own focal distance. ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... thought, to chemical combustion, but to vital replenishment. No energy is created within the body; it is merely transmitted. The body, in fact, acts as a means of transmission—as a sort of "organic burning glass" which transmits and focuses the sun's rays on one focal point. And just as any crack, or blur, or clouding, or other accident to the burning glass would interfere with its power and capacity from transmitting the rays, so, any accident or disease or pathological state of the organism would interfere with or altogether prevent the passage or ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... its result. Thus the magic of personal influence of all kinds would have radiated from it in omnipresent and colliding circlets forever, as the mighty imponderable agents are believed to radiate from some hidden focal force. He would trace his idea in the massive architecture and groping science of Egypt,—in the elegant forms of worship, thought, institutes, and life among the Greeks,—in the martial and systematizing genius ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... that he was actually a focal point in human history, that the whole future of the human race depended to a tremendous extent on him, was a realization that weighed heavily and, at the same time, ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... all on a level; some are superior, others subordinate. The unity is mediated through one or more accented elements, through which the whole comes to emphatic expression. The attention is not evenly distributed among the parts, but proceeds from certain ones which are focal and commanding to others which are of lesser interest. And the dominant elements are not only superior in significance; they are, in addition, representative of the whole; in them, its value is concentrated; they ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... Western America, or rather the prairie region. But, just at present, what are the greatest commercial towns of the world? All ports to a man. And the day when it will be otherwise, if ever, seems still far distant. Look at the newest countries. What are their great focal points? Every one of them ports. Melbourne and Sydney; Rio, Buenos Ayres, and Valparaiso; Cape Town, San Francisco, Bombay, Calcutta, Yokohama. Chicago itself, the most vital and the quickest grower among modern towns, owes half its importance to the fact that ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... bisected the outer concentric circles like the radii of an orb spider's web. In the center of the web was the smallest circle. Within the circle was the focal point ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... identify the very spot on which the telescope stood which was used in this memorable research. It was erected at the house then occupied by Molyneux, on the western extremity of Kew Green. The focal length was 24 feet 3 inches, and the eye-glass was 3 and a half feet above the ground floor. The instrument was first set up on November 26th, 1725. If there had be any appreciable disturbance in the place of Beta Draconis in consequence of the movement of the earth around ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... actually a giant balloon eight thousand feet in diameter, one-half "silvered" with a greenish reflective surface inside that reflected only that light that could be utilized by the ruby rods at its long focal center; and that absorbed the remainder of the incident solar radiation, dumping it through to its black outside surface, and on into the vastness of space. This half of the big balloon was the spherical collector mirror, facing, through ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... per- [10] fection, and by no means the medium of imperfection. Immortal man is the eternal idea of Truth, that cannot lapse into a mortal belief or error concerning himself and his origin: he cannot get out of the focal distance of infinity. If God is upright and eternal, man as His like- [15] ness is erect in goodness and perpetual in Life, Truth, and Love. If the great cause is perfect, its effect is per- fect also; and cause and effect in Science are immutable and immortal. ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... workers, the Clarks of Cambridge, use a modification of the Rosse method which in their hands is productive of the very highest results. The device is very simple, consisting of a telescope (a, Fig. 1) in which aberrations have been well corrected, so that the focal plane of the objective is as sharp as possible. This telescope is first directed to a distant object, preferably a celestial one, and focused for parallel rays. The surface, b, to be tested is now placed so that the reflected image of the same object, whatever it may be, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... following each other at random down a rushing current, now this one ahead, now that. On the contrary, our thoughts come, one after the other, as they are beckoned or caused. The thought now in the focal point of your consciousness appeared because it sprouted out of the one just preceding it; and the present thought, before it departs, will determine its successor and lead it upon the scene. This is to say that our thought stream ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... a Second-hand Achromatic Portrait Lens by Lerebour, 2-1/4 aperture, 7 inches focal ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... According to most psychologists, the term attention is used to describe the form consciousness takes, to refer to the fact that consciousness is selective. It simply means that consciousness is always focal and marginal—that some ideas, facts, or feelings stand out in greater prominence than do others, and that the presence of this "perspective" in consciousness is a matter of mechanical adjustment. James describes consciousness ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... 11th I gave Mr Peacock a paper on the alteration of the focal length of a telescope as directed with or against the Earth's orbital motion (on the theory of emissions) which was written out for reading to the Cambridge Philosophical Society on Feb. 24th and 25th. [This Society I think was then about a year old.] ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... the window a writing-table, with blotter, pens, and ink, made a focal-point for her gaze. At first a mere detail in her line of vision, it attained by degrees, it seemed, a definite relevancy to her train of thought. She looked in her portmanteau for her desk, and getting out some note-paper, went to the table and ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... Francisco, and in 1869, one hundred years after the first white man looked upon San Francisco Bay, came the railroad, bringing an increasing influx of people from the East. The opening of the markets of China and Japan led to the establishment of a trade that has made San Francisco the focal port ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... stars. Many of the detached masses are too vast to admit of the supposition that they are to be transformed into planets, in our sense of planets, and the distances of the stars which appear to have been originally ejected from the focal masses are too great to allow us to liken the assemblage that they form to a solar system. Then, too, no nodes such as the hypothesis calls for are visible. Moreover, in most of the spiral nebul the appearances ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... without and about us. As a plain statement of fact, there is no such thing. But, I ask again, Is the mind within the brain, waiting for vibrations that will give it information concerning the external world? Or does the mind, from some focal point without the brain, look first at these vibrations, and then translate them into terms of things without? Do these vibrations in some way suggest form and color and substance to the waiting mind? Does the mind first look at vibrating nerve-points, and then form its own ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... of pollen-tubes is not difficult, but in most cases requires some practice with dissecting under a one-tenth of an inch focal distance single lens; and just at first this will seem ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... night. They were alone in the darkness, a universe in themselves. The horse's body filled the upper part of the picture; the legs, the great hoofs, frozen to stillness in the midst of their trampling, limited it on either side. And beneath lay the man, his foreshortened face at the focal point in the centre, his arms outstretched towards the sides of the picture. Under the arch of the horse's belly, between his legs, the eye looked through into an intense darkness; below, the space was closed in by the figure of the prostrate man. A central gulf ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... power of obtaining good and pleasing likenesses appears to me decidedly increased, the facility of subsequent enlargement permitting them to be taken sufficiently small, at a sufficient distance (and therefore with greater rapidity and certainty) {61} to avoid all the focal distortion so much complained of,—while the due enlargement of a portrait taken on glass has the effect, moreover, of depriving it of that hardness of outline so objectionable in a collodion portrait, giving it more artistic ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... of duration was gone. Awareness drifted in formless inattention until a focal point, a mere nucleus of intellect, captured and held it. The nucleus strengthened, became an impression of identity—not his own identity, nor any that he knew, but that of some Other. From this other presence came insistently the warmth and gentleness ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... themselves; rather, they sink into themselves. Before the distortions of a mob orator, with his extravagant promises, the masses become merely a driven crowd eager for gain, not human souls. They are the concave reflector of passions and greeds that rage in the focal point of the speaker's rostrum; they return in concentrated form the rays that dazzle them. He who puts the masses in the judgment-seat, who looks for counsel and decision at their hands, has neither reverence nor love for man. ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... long. The problem then became that of seeing what you were doing, and one of the boys faked up a kind of binocular jeweler's loupe with long focus, so that I could lie back a yard from the screw and focus on it with about ten diameters magnification. The trouble was that the long focal length gave a field of vision about six times the diameter of the screw-head, which meant that every time my heart beat my head moved enough to throw the field of ...
— The Trouble with Telstar • John Berryman
... the plane continued its way westward offshore. Frank again took up the glasses and searched the sky, gradually increasing the focal radius. An exclamation from Frank and a hurried request in the ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... Clairvoyance, we have an instance of the simplest form of astral seeing, without the necessity of the "associated object" of psychometry, or the focal point of ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... will consider it, here is the stem, with its roots and top-root, with its world-wide upas boughs and accursed poison exudations, under which the world lies writhing in atrophy and agony. You touch the focal centre of all our disease, of our frightful nosology of diseases, when you lay your hand on this. There is no religion; there is no God; man has lost his soul, and vainly seeks antiseptic salt. Vainly: in killing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... merely a large collector of moonlight, which was thrown after collection onto a lunium plate. The resultant emanations were turned into a parallel beam by a parabolic reflector and focused, through a rock crystal lens with an extremely long focal length, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... (the distance the eye is from the plane of the picture when you are looking at it), and this is one of the chief causes of the perennial difficulty in painting backgrounds. In nature they are out of focus when one is looking at an object, but in a painting the background is necessarily on the same focal plane as the object. Numerous are the devices resorted to by painters to overcome this difficulty, but they ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... in Cadore had extended like two arms around one of the principal systems of defense. General Dankl hurried reenforcements to the Cadore front to check the thrust up the Cordevole Valley. At the end of this valley was the focal point of the system of railways that carried food and munitions to both the Trentino forces and those in southern Tyrol. If the Italians had succeeded in cutting the railway at this point the enemy would have had great ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... &c.) Nay, which is worst of all, unconscious or semi-conscious thoughts and feelings or natural impulses, rising, like a breath of wind under some motion of nature, and again dying away, because not made the subject of artificial review and interpretation, are now brought powerfully under the focal light of the consciousness: and whatsoever is once made the subject of consciousness, can never again have the privilege of gay, careless thoughtlessness—the privilege by which the mind, like the lamps of a mail-coach, moving rapidly through the midnight woods, illuminate, for one instant, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... made by the direction, and at the expense of the Board of Longitude, for the purpose of exemplifying the principle of repetition when applied to a circle of so small a diameter as six inches, carrying a telescope of seven inches focal length, and one inch aperture; and of practically ascertaining the degree of accuracy which might be retained, whilst the portability of the instrument should be increased, by a reduction in the size to half the amount which had been previously regarded by the most eminent artists as the ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... art should find a place in public buildings where large numbers of persons might find easy access to it. The proximity of the proposed new structure to historic Independence Hall and the adjacent buildings would make it a focal point for visitors from all parts of the country and the world. The opportunity presented itself to put good art, within the comprehension of a large public, into the new building, and Bok asked permission of Mr. Curtis to introduce a strong note ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... activities and relations to self and others. There are in the life records of our patients certain ever-returning tendencies and situations which a psychiatry of exclusive brain speculation, auto-intoxications, focal infections, and internal secretions ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... the amazing spectacle: earth and hell gloating on the gashed form of the Lord of Glory; men and devils glutting their malice in the agony of the Prince of Life; and all the scattered rays of vengeance which would have consumed our guilty race, converging and beating in focal intensity upon Him of whom the Eternal twice exclaimed, in a voice from heaven, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." After this, what are our emotions? Can we ever be cold or faithless? No, my brethren, it is ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... would be "troublesome and require tact, patience, and tolerance" on the part of those in charge. But, he added, "we have so many difficulties to surmount anyhow that one more possibly wouldn't swell the total very much." Foreseeing that segregation would become the focal point of black protest, he argued that the Navy had to begin accepting Negroes somewhere, and it might as well begin with a ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... abbreviate her labors, she will sit with closed doors, and do nothing towards the general exchange of life, because she cannot do as much as Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Parsons. If the idea of meeting together had some other focal point than eating, I think there would be more social feeling. It might be a musical reunion, where the various young people of a circle agreed to furnish each a song or an instrumental performance. ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... we may conclude that if an individual deviates at all from the path which the laws (or, directrix) indicate, if he does not show true respect to the decrees of the focal government, and preserve the true position between them, directly he is found deviating from his course, he is quickly banished to a less enlightened sphere. In an ellipse there is less likelihood of his straying away from the course which the directrix points out, on ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... Donders, has got up a table in which, opposite the amplitudes, the corresponding ages are found. Now, the Javal-Bull optometer permits of a quick determination of the value of the amplitude of accommodation in dioptries. (A dioptrie is the power of a lens whose focal distance is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... A meniscus lens of the diameter of four inches should have a focal length of twenty inches, and will produce perfect landscape pictures fourteen inches square. It is said they will cover fifteen inches; but fourteen they do with great definition. We strongly advise W. L. to purchase a good article. It is a bad economy not to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... were more or less confused by rainbow tints, due to the bending, or refracting, by the object glass of the rays of light. To overcome this obstacle to clear vision, and also to secure magnification, the focal lengths of the instruments were greatly extended. Telescopes 38, 50, 78, 130, 160, 210, 400, and even 600 feet long were constructed. I can, however, find nothing on record indicating that the object glasses of these enormously attenuated instruments ever exceeded ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... 1828, the moon being nearly full, and the evening extremely fine, I was watching the second satellite of Jupiter as it gradually approached to transit the disc of the planet. My instrument was an excellent refractor of 3 3/4 inches aperture, and five feet focal length, with a power of one hundred. The satellite appeared in contact at about half-past ten, and for some minutes remained on the edge of the limb, presenting an appearance not unlike that of the lunar mountains ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... finally by the action of the pump itself. All the measurements were made by a fine cathetometer which was constructed for me by William Grunow; see this Journal, Jan., 1874, p. 23. It was provided with a well-corrected object-glass having a focal length of 200 mm. and as used by me gave a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... Charleston earthquake, which took place on the 31st of August, 1886, are described in great detail by Captain Clarence E. Dutton, of the U.S. Ordnance Corps.[5] The conclusions arrived at are;—that as regards the depth of the focal point, this is estimated at twelve miles, with a probable error of less than two miles; while, as regards the rate of travel of the earthquake-wave, the estimate is (in one case) about 3.236 miles per second; and in another about 3.226 miles ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... areas of loops and whorls are enclosed the focal points which are used to classify them. These points ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... similar objects, or of any that we may wish to see side by side, easy, there should be a stereographic metre or fixed standard of focal length for the camera lens, to furnish by its multiples or fractions, if necessary, the scale of distances, and the standard of power in the stereoscope-lens. In this way the eye can make the most rapid and exact comparisons. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various |
