"Geometrical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sole expedient is material force, and as material force diminishes in the same degree as the spread of pauperism and the insight of the proletariat increase, English perplexity necessarily grows in geometrical proportion. ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... her mind to the path which she had traced out for her, for the most decided feature in the character of Anne of Austria was an invincible obstinacy in her calculations, to which she would fain have subjected all events and all passions with a geometrical exactitude. There is no doubt that to this positive and immovable mind we must attribute all the misfortunes of her regency. The sombre reply of Cinq-Mars; his arrest; his trial—all had been concealed from the Princesse Marie, whose first fault, it is true, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the first thing to be decided upon is some main idea, the detail that is to carry it out must then be considered. This latter may be of various types, such as flowers, foliage, figures, animals, geometrical forms, interlacing strapwork, quatrefoils, &c., &c.; perhaps several of these motifs may be combined together in the ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... serviceable. He passed the examination with great distinction, and in the course of it, to the surprise of the examiners, showed that he could repeat Euclid verbatim,—not by the exercise of the memory, which in Ericsson is not remarkably retentive, but from his perfect mastery of geometrical science. There is no doubt that it is this thorough knowledge of geometry to which he is indebted for his clear conceptions on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... me to write algebra and geometry in class and solve problems in physics, and this I could not do until we bought a braille writer, by means of which I could put down the steps and processes of my work. I could not follow with my eyes the geometrical figures drawn on the blackboard, and my only means of getting a clear idea of them was to make them on a cushion with straight and curved wires, which had bent and pointed ends. I had to carry in my mind, as Mr. Keith says in his report, the lettering of the figures, ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... our ships to be sent to London, one Mr Robert Adams, a man of excellent skill, took the exact bigness, height, length, breadth, and other dimensions of this huge vessel, that these might be preserved according to the exact rules of geometrical proportions, both for present knowledge and transmission to posterity, omitting nothing which either his art could demonstrate, or any mans judgment think worthy of being known. After an exact ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... food was then fitter for the prolongation of life, might well live so great a number of years: and besides, God afforded them a longer time of life on account of their virtue, and the good use they made of it in astronomical and geometrical discoveries, which would not have afforded the time of foretelling [the periods of the stars] unless they had lived six hundred years; for the great year is completed in that interval. Now I have for witnesses to what I have said, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... better than by Napier's Bones, &c.] The famous Lord Napier, of Scotland, the first inventor of logarithms, contrived also a set of square pieces, with numbers on them, made generally of ivory, (which perform arithmetical and geometrical calculations,) and are commonly called ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... protoplasm. But just as the inorganic substance, according to well-defined laws, elaborates its structure into a crystal of great beauty, so does the protoplasm elaborate itself into the most beautiful of all structures—the cell unit. Just as gold and copper crystallizes in a geometrical form, a cube—bismuth and antimony in a hexagonal, iodine and sulphur in a rhombic form—so we find among radiolaria, and among other protista and lower forms, that they "may be traced to a mathematical, ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... Plague-stricken (person) pestulo. Plain malbela. Plain senornama. Plainly simple, klare. Plainness simpleco. Plaint plendo. Plaintive plenda. Plait (with straw) pajloplekti. Plait plekti. Plait plektajxo. Plait (hair) harligo. Plan plano. Plan (geometrical) plato. Plane raboti. Plane (tool) rabotilo. Planet planedo. Plank tabulo. Plant planti. Plant kreskajxo. Plantation plantejo. Plaster plastro, gipso. Plastron brustosxirmilo. Plate stanumi. Plate ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... mathematical proportions, such as we employ in chemistry and natural philosophy, such as the Pythagoreans and even Aristotle make use of in Ethics and Politics, e.g. his distinction between arithmetical and geometrical proportion in the Ethics (Book V), or between numerical and proportional ...
— The Republic • Plato
... MR. WILKINSON has traced with singular acumen the manner in which the spirit of geometrical research was diffused amongst the operative classes, and the class immediately above them—the exciseman and the country schoolmaster. Still it is not to be inferred, that even these classes did not contain a considerable number of able geometers anterior to the period embraced ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... thought are the least exhausting to the thinker. How many students, like Chief-Justice Parsons, have been accustomed, when fatigued with the labor of deep research, or exhausted by continued train of thought upon one subject, to relax the mind with arithmetical or geometrical problems. Isaac Newton could, month after month, spend in the profoundest problems of pure mathematics twice as many hours in the day as Walter Scott could give to the composition of what we call light reading; and it will be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... less likely is he to acquire an ability which can be used for anything except the mere noting of verbal visual forms. He may not even be increasing his ability to make accurate distinctions among geometrical forms, to say nothing of ability to observe in general. He is merely selecting the stimuli supplied by the forms of the letters and the motor reactions of oral or written reproduction. The scope of coordination (to use our prior ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... B!" But Joyce, who was a born tease, could no more resist the temptation of baiting Cynthia, than she could have refused a chocolate ice-cream soda, so she continued to make foolish and irrelevant comments on every geometrical statement, until, in sheer exasperation, Cynthia threw the ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... even artificial things and violations of Nature to Nature by a deeper insight — disposes very easily of the most disagreeable facts''; so that he looks upon "the factory village and the railway'' and "sees them fall within the great Order not less than the bee-hive or the spider's geometrical web.'' The poet, however, seems hard to convince hereof. Emerson will have it that "Nature loves the gliding train of cars''; "instead of which'' the poet still goes about the country singing purling brooks. Painters have been more flexible and liberal. Turner saw and did his best to seize ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... go, mother," proceeded the son, when breakfast was finished—"he won't stand it. Ah, if both my parents were of the same geometrical proportion, there would be little difficulty in this business; but upon my honor and reputation, my dear mother, I think between you and me that my father's a gross abstraction—a most substantial ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... in at my house, in which thou hast oftentimes discoursed with me of the knowledge of divine and human things? Had I this attire or countenance when I searched the secrets of nature with thee, when thou describedst unto me the course of the stars with thy geometrical rod, when thou didst frame my conversation and the manner of my whole life according to the pattern of the celestial order? Are these the rewards which thy obedient servants have? But thou didst decree that sentence by the mouth of Plato: ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... from the mast-head; but this is the greatest distance which it is visible even from that height, and under the most favourable circumstances. The elevation of the pic has been determined by several observations. Borda's calculation, which is founded on a geometrical admeasurement, and is conceived to be the most correct, makes it 1905 toises, or 11,430 feet." The relations which some authors have given of the height of this famous pic or peak, are extravagant beyond all ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... description is known, such as that in plate LXXI, is similar in design and method of execution to that shown in the other plates. There is one point, however, in which the Roman work is quite different. In Sicily and southern Italy the bands and borders of geometrical patterns are largely made up of glass or composition, while the Cosmati confined themselves to the use of colored marbles. In the south, and particularly in Sicily, gold is freely used, but this is lacking in the work of the Cosmati. As a result of this difference in ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration - Vol 1, No. 9 1895 • Various
... This is only the D of the alphabet of power. And glancing up to the other suns, one hundred, five hundred, twelve hundred times as large, double, triple, septuple, multiple suns, we shall find power enough to go through the whole alphabet in geometrical ratio; and then in the clustered suns, galaxies, and nebulae, power enough still unrepresented by single letters to require all combinations of the alphabet of power. What is the significance of this single element of power? The answer of science to-day is "correlation," the constant ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... one that has been running uphill. With the paler hawkweeds, whose edges are so delicately trimmed and cut and balanced, almost as if made by cleft human fingers to human design, whose globes of down are like geometrical circles built up of facets, instead of by one revolution of the compasses. With foxglove, and dragon-fly, and yellowing wheat; with green cones of fir, and boom of distant thunder, and all things that say, 'It is summer.' ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Then he successively examined some rare productions of the presses of Wynkyn de Worde, Pynson, and so forth. The clergyman's purchases soon began to assume considerable proportions. Archimedes was not more fully absorbed in his geometrical problems when the Roman soldier killed him, than the East End clergyman in his careful collations. He was aroused, however, from his reveries by the Jewess calling out: 'Mike, dinner is ready.' 'Dinner!' exclaimed the parson. 'At what time do you dine?' 'At one o'clock,' she replied. He looked ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... found either in regular and geometrical forms when they are called cristals, or in more or ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... and no store at all upon rhyme. I am tempted to-day to go farther, and to maintain that, the larger, the sublimer, your subject is, the more impertinent rhyme becomes to it: and that this impertinence increases in a sort of geometrical progression as you advance from monosyllabic to dissyllabic and on to trisyllabic rhyme. Let me put this by a series ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... proportions that strongly resembled those of the animals which children cut out of cardboard. They were like the geometrical definition of a superfice—all length and breadth, and no thickness. A ham from them would look ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... loneliness that sharpens into resentment. I am widowed by the loss of the higher half of your entity. Can you not see, Philip, it is not your views I combat, your theory about humanitarianism and all that? They are but the geometrical figures of thought in your mind; and I have no wish to disturb your "philosophic proposition." The point is, I love that in you more than I love the lover. And the passion with which you cling to it as something ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... own mind. To him x is a known quantity all along. In any picture that he paints, he understands the chemical properties of all his colors. However vague some of his figures may seem, however formless the shadows, to him the outline is as clear and distinct as that of a geometrical diagram. For this reason Mr. Poe has no sympathy with Mysticism. The Mystic dwells in the mystery, is enveloped with it; it colors all his thoughts; it affects his optic nerve especially, and the commonest things get a rainbow edging from it. Mr. Poe, on the other hand, is a spectator ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... mountain barometers were broken at an early stage of the expedition; the height however of some principal points had been previously obtained, and is marked on the chart; these in two instances were verified by geometrical measurement, and the difference was found to be too trilling to be noticed. The conveyance of such delicate instruments is always attended with great risk, and in our case peculiarly so, our means being only those of horseback. I am afraid that a method of constructing ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... summed up in a paper addressed to the Archaeological Association in September 1845, by Mr C. Winston. Two circles of Early Decorated glass are to be seen in the west window, but they are merely composed of coloured pieces arranged in geometrical patterns. The general arrangement of the great window is, as has been already said, kaleidoscopic, the fragments which compose it being too scattered to admit of being put together again in their original ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... mind, then, so unstable," said he, "that a mere figure, an animated geometrical arrangement can shake it ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... two considerable works, "Principes de la Guerre" and "De la Conduite de La Guerre," which give a high idea of their author's character and talent. There is nothing in them that ought to scare away the average reader. Their style has the geometrical lucidity which is the polytechnician's birthright, but in spite of the deliberate impersonality generally attached to that style of writing, there emanates from it a curious quality which gradually shows us the author ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the day into twenty-four parts; and Joseph Scaliger has attempted to derive the names of the days from those of the planets, without reference to this method of division. His explanation, however, which is altogether geometrical, inasmuch as it depends on the properties of the heptagon, seems quite unsatisfactory, though Selden appears to have been inclined to adopt it. At any rate, the account of the matter given by Dio Cassius has generally ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... I assume that hotel as a peculiarly American point of departure, and also because it is the hub of Washington,—the centre of an eccentric, having the White House at the end of its shorter, and the Capitol at the end of its longer radius,—moral, so they say, as well as geometrical. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... in our picture are geometrical figures, nevertheless geometry can obviously say nothing at all about their actual form and position. The network, however, is purely geometrical; all its properties can be given a priori. Laws like the principle of sufficient reason, etc. are about ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... and Geometrical Proportion.—Definite proportion of elements (Chemistry), symmetrical arrangement of parts (Crystallography), numerical and geometrical relation of the forms and movements of the heavenly bodies (Spherical Astronomy), all of which are capable ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... place, by geometrical calculations, and then, by the aid of a barometer, when an ascent has been made. The column of mercury in the instrument falls in proportion as the barometer is carried up the mountain, because the air which presses upon the mercury ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... taught at home, was very different from other boys. When only six or seven years old, he would lie for hours on the hearth, in the little cottage at Greenock, near Glasgow, where he was born in 1736, drawing geometrical figures with pieces of colored chalk. He loved, too, to gaze at the stars, and longed to solve their mysteries. But his favorite pastime was to burrow among the ropes and sails and tackles in his father's store, trying to find out how they were made and what purposes ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... spiritual lustre. Nothing is more interesting than the way in which the two qualities of his mind alternate, and indeed play into each other, tingeing his matter-of-fact sometimes with unexpected glows of fancy, sometimes giving an almost geometrical precision to his most mystical visions. In his letter to Can Grande he says: "It behooves not those to whom it is given to know what is best in us to follow the footprints of the herd; much rather are they bound to oppose its wanderings. For the vigorous ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... about a mile up the hill I had now to climb, but without venturing very near. At length I thought I had had enough of his company, so at the next bend in the road I came to a stand beside a heap of stones that a cantonnier had neatly piled up in geometrical pattern. There I waited, and the animal came on gaily, little expecting to find himself suddenly at close quarters with me. Just as he turned the corner he raised a howl that said he was both surprised and shocked. Skipping with great agility, he avoided the next stone, and the expression ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... &c.; Digby Wyatt's Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century (of both of which the lithographic stones will be destroyed during the progress of the sale); Digby Wyatt's Metal Work, and its Artistic Design; Kirby Wyatt's Geometrical Mosaics of the Middle Ages; Darrell's China, India, and the Cape, coloured and mounted; Nash's Mansions of England in the Olden Time; Gruner's Specimens of Ornamental Art; Muse Royal (picked proofs before ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... of every species are determined, not by the procreative power of its members, which always greatly exceeds the capacity of the earth to support a progeny increasing in geometrical progression, but by two factors, the activity of its enemies and the available supply of food. Those species which survive owe their success in the struggle for existence mainly to one of two qualities, enormous fertility or parental care. The female cod spawns ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... of the Oriental Mediterranean made Salonica bristle with cupolas and towers. The Greek temple threw into prominence the gilded bulbs of its roof; the Catholic church made the cross glisten from the peak of its bell-tower; the synagogue of geometrical forms overflowed in a succession of terraces; the Mohammedan minaret formed a colonnade, white, sharp and slender. Modern life had added factory chimneys and the arms of steam-cranes which gave an anachronistic effect to this decoration of an Oriental harbor. Around the city and its acropolis was ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... probable by the existence of a specifically Islamic concentration on the astrolabe, and on its planetary companion instrument, the equatorium, as devices for mechanizing computation by use of geometrical analogues. The ordinary planispheric astrolabe, of course, was known in Islam from its first days until almost the present time. From the time of al-Biruni (ca. 1000)—significantly, perhaps, he is well known for his travel account of India—there ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... straws of coincidence, where all is geometrical, seems the necessity of certain natures. It, is true, that, in every good work, the particulars are right, and, that every spot of light on the ground, under the trees, is a perfect image of the sun. Yet, for astronomical purposes, an observatory is better than an orchard; and in a universe ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... adapted to the sublime speculations of philosophy, the most useful in advancing all the operations of the arts, and the most rational for scientific amusement. Exact in its process, sure in its results, varied in its operations, without limits in its applications and its views, severe and geometrical in its reasoning, there is scarcely any human occupation which it does not enlighten, and upon the perfection of which it may not have great influence. It bestows great enjoyment to every class of individuals: and who would not be ambitious of becoming ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... advice of making figures in great white roads upon some of Earth's vast plains, but dismissed the idea as too costly and not the best. "We have a new agent now," he said. "There is electricity. We must use that. And the figures must, of course, be geometrical. Geometry is the same throughout all the worlds that are or have been or ever ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... dimensions. For example, it is known that Thompson discovered his familiar "optical circle illusion'' (six circles arranged in a circle, another in the middle. Each possesses bent radii which turn individually if the whole drawing is itself turned in a circle) by the accident of having seen the geometrical ornament drawn by a pupil. Whoever deals with such optical illusions may see very remarkable ones in almost every sample of ladies' clothes, particularly percale, and also in types of carpets and furniture. And these are too complicated ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... forms, and even to-day we are scarcely more than heads out of the vast subtle muddle of thinking about spheres and ideally perfect forms and so on, that was the price of this little necessary step to clear thinking. You know better than I do how large a part numerical and geometrical magic, numerical and geometrical philosophy has played in the history of the mind. And the whole apparatus of language and mental communication is beset with like dangers. The language of the savage ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... to prove to men that the springs of their improvement are to be found in their very organization, in the interest of their passions, and in all that composes their existence. It is time to demonstrate that morality is a physical and geometrical science, subject to the rules and calculations of the other mathematical sciences: and such is the advantage of the system expounded in this book, that the basis of morality being laid in it on the very nature of things, it is both constant ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... those which arise through a community of interests, are all dispersed, and the broadest, most express, and most positive interdictions are promulgated against their revival under any pretext whatever.[2250] France is cut up into geometrical sections like a chess-board, and, within these improvised limits, which are destined for a long time to remain artificial, nothing is allowed to subsist but isolated individuals in juxtaposition. There is no desire to spare organized bodies where the cohesion is great, and least of all that ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... The number of eggs laid varies with the size of the animal. The law of production may be arithmetically expressed as follows: The number of eggs produced at each reproductive period varies in a geometrical series, while the length of lobsters producing these eggs varies in an arithmetical series. According to this law an 8-inch lobster produces 5,000 eggs, a lobster 10 inches long 10,000, a 12-inch lobster ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... than water? It was the prima materia, the [Greek: archae], the beginning of all things—the origin of the world. [Footnote: Aristotle, Metaph., 1. c. 3; Diog. Laertius, Thales.] I do not here speak of his astronomical and geometrical labors—as the first to have divided the year into three hundred and sixty-five days. He is celebrated also for practical wisdom. "Know thyself," is one of his remarkable sayings. But the foundation principle of his philosophy was that water ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... office were picked up some pieces of ivory covered with geometrical designs, engraved with some sharp implement, stilettos, bone needles, knives, flint scrapers, and, stranger still, the remains of the cave-lion, the cave-hyena, and the RHINOCEROS TICHORHINUS, all contemporaries of the most ancient ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... pieces of laminated sandstone (plate xvi.) similar to some of the stones of which the fort of Dunbuie was built, {132} having one of their surfaces decorated with small cup-marks, sometimes symmetrically arranged so far as to indicate parts of geometrical figures, and at other times variously combined with lines and circles. Two fragments of bones, also from Dunbuie, are similarly adorned (plate xvi. nos. 13, 14). Eleven of the twelve sandstone fragments which make up the group were fractured in such a manner as to suggest that the line ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... humour. Bedard was an excellent mathematician, and was in the habit of whiling away the hours of his imprisonment by solving mathematical problems. When the guard came to turn him out, he was in the midst of a geometrical problem. 'At least,' he begged, 'let me finish my problem.' The request was granted; an hour later the problem was solved, and Bedard was thrust ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... are the geometrical operations which typify the work of knowledge in such a case; or else we must fall back on metaphors from some mental chemistry, such ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... longer a gloomy power, struggling with Saracens and barbarism, but dominant, triumphant, issues forth from darksome crypts and soars upward,—elevates her vaulted roofs. "The Oriental ogive appears.... The architects heap arcade on arcade, ogive on ogive, pyramid on pyramid, and give to all geometrical symmetry and artistic grace.... The Greek column is there, but dilated to colossal proportions, and exfoliated in a variegated capital." The old Roman arch disappears, and the pointed arch is substituted,—graceful and elevated. The old Egyptian obelisk appears ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... worth of property was condemned to make way for this splendid street. It cuts across a peninsula through the heart of the city from shore to shore, and is magnificent, indeed, with its sidewalks wrought in beautiful geometrical designs, with its ornate street lamps, with its generous width appearing broader by contrast with other narrow streets, with its ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... hidden for ages under the rough bark of the patient forest-trees, are brought to light; the rings of lovely shadow which the creature went on making in the dark, as the oyster its opaline laminations, and its tree-pearls of beautiful knots, where a beneficent disease has broken the geometrical perfection of its structure, gloom ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... to the maker of the argument he is ready to begin to build his proof. In actual speech-making few arguments can be made as convincing as a geometrical demonstration but a speaker can try to make his reasoning so sound, his development so cogent, his delivery so convincing, that at the end of his speech, he can exclaim triumphantly, ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... from far-off Mediterranean antecedents and more directly connected with the La-Tene culture of the continental Celts. Its characteristics were a flamboyant and fantastic treatment of plant and animal (though not of human) forms, a free use of the geometrical device called the "returning spiral," and much skill in enamelling. Its finest products were in bronze, but the artistic impulse spread to humbler work in wood and pottery. The late Celtic age was one which genuinely delighted ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... on the other side. He had begun by painting a formalised nature; then, little by little, he had risen from nature into the world of pure form, till in the end he was painting nothing but his own thoughts, externalised in the abstract geometrical forms of the mind's devising. He found the process arduous and exhilarating. And then, quite suddenly, he grew dissatisfied; he felt himself cramped and confined within intolerably narrow limitations. He was humiliated to find how few and crude and uninteresting were the forms he could invent; ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... black every day, but being unwell for two days he had to hire a substitute, and paid him a third of the wages per shoe which he himself received. Had A been ill two days longer there would have been the devil to pay; as it was he actually paid the sum of the geometrical series found by taking the first n letters of the substitute's name. How much did A pay the ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... word "archetype" at page 50: "All that I mean is the conception of a form embodying the most general propositions that can be affirmed respecting the Cephalous Mollusca, standing in the same relation to them as the diagram to a geometrical theorem, and like it, at once, imaginary and true.") (in your sense, for I detest the word as used by Owen, Agassiz & Co.) of each great class, I cannot doubt, is one of the very highest ends of Natural History; and certainly most interesting to the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... blast, to be a whirlwind; and the beautiful hues of the iris, bright with hope and promise, play upon the melting clouds in the segment of a circle. The eagle soars toward the heavens in curves, as though measuring the angles of distant objects by geometrical figures; and the drunkard, when unable longer to control his movements, describes a curvilinear path as he reels homeward from his revels, and waits at his bed-side to catch hold of a post as it "comes round again." Those ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... very thing our officers had warned us against,—the least sign of hesitation or uncertainty,—the very danger every European with knowledge of the situation had dinned in our ears. Everybody declared that difficulties were sure to grow on our hands in geometrical proportion to our delays; and it was perfectly known to the respective branches of our Government primarily concerned that while the delay went on it was in neglect of a ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... recollections which can usefully combine with it; all else remains in shadow." But we have no more right to say that the past effaces itself as soon as perceived than to suppose that material objects cease to exist when we cease to perceive them. Memory, to use a geometrical illustration which Bergson himself employs, comes into action like the point of a cone pressing against a plane. The plane denotes the present need, particularly in relation to bodily action, while the cone stands for all our total past. Much ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... that the Essay on "Population" had not confuted them. Professor Wallace, Derham, and a number of German statistic and physico-theological writers had taken the same ground, namely, that population increases in a geometrical, but the accessional nutriment only in arithmetical ratio—and that vice and misery, the natural consequences of this order of things, were intended by providence as the counterpoise. I have here no means of procuring so obscure a book, as Rudgard's; ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... is shown a geometrical diagram which consists of two equally sized circles superimposed so that they each intersect the other's centre which points are marked A and B. The outermost points on the two circles in line with AB are marked D and E. The upper point where the ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... diagramma], from [Greek: diagraphein], to mark out by lines), a figure drawn in such a manner that the geometrical relations between the parts of the figure illustrate relations between other objects. They may be classed according to the manner in which they are intended to be used, and also according to the kind of analogy which we recognize between the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... bamboo show some realistic motives, such as the fish, birds, and flowers in Fig. 23, No. 1; the snake and lizard in No. 2; the man in No. 5; but the strictly geometrical is dominant in nearly every case. Probably the most typical of this class of work is shown in Nos. 3 and 4 and Fig. 22, Nos. 1, 2, and 3. It should be noted, however, that, where one decorated object is seen, many more entirely ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... strange, irregular, romantic, full of feeling, highly imaginative, or improbable to the intellect, was unpopular. Even in Gulliver's Travels, Swift endeavored to be as realistic as if he were demonstrating a geometrical proposition. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... why tarriest thou? Come in from the gate and ease this poor man of his burden.' So the cateress entered, followed by the portress and the porter, and went on before them to a spacious saloon, elegantly built and handsomely decorated with all manner of colours and carvings and geometrical figures, with balconies and galleries and cupboards and benches and closets with curtains drawn before them. In the midst was a great basin of water, from which rose a fountain, and at the upper end stood a couch of juniper wood, inlaid with ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... vegetables for which they found a market on the continent and in England; and the numerous cultivated patches along the mountain sides presented a very pretty appearance from the anchorage—laid out as they were with seemingly geometrical precision. The hardy little horses could be hired very cheaply, and the justly extolled natural beauties of the island in the vicinity of Funchal were fully explored. The greater portion of it is quite inaccessible except on foot, ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... Pointed arches. Pillars with detached shafts. Moulded or carved capitals. Narrow and high pointed windows. Later period—Geometrical trefoil and circular ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... Moreover, he could be in two or more places at once, and cause two bodies to occupy the same space—which to us is inconceivable. Stranger still, he might be both alive and dead at the same time—since Past, Present, and Future would be all one to him; the world without beginning or end ...—From the "Geometrical Possibilities," of Abd'el Kasir, of Cordoba, circa. ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... in Astrology and in Philosophy since those movements were seen, there are nine moveable Heavens; the site of which is evident and determined, according to an Art which is termed Perspective, Arithmetical and Geometrical, by which and by other sensible experiences it is visibly and reasonably seen, as in the eclipses of the Sun it appears sensibly, that the Moon is below the Sun; and as by the testimony of Aristotle, who saw ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... and other exercises of the young maidens naked, in sight of the young men, were, moreover, incentives to marriage: and, to use Plato's expression, drew them almost as necessarily by the attractions of love, as a geometrical conclusion follows from the premises. To encourage it still more, some marks of infamy were set upon those that continued bachelors. For they were not permitted to see these exercises of the naked virgins; and the magistrates ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... few men in England," says the Athenaeum, "were better versed in the methods of the old geometers, or possessed a more critical appreciation of their relative merits." His death is a great loss to geometrical science, as well as to a large ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... it there is no more attractive spot in a park than a lily pool. The old idea of laying out parks according to some geometrical pattern is giving way to the development of walk lines of practical use, recognizing both traffic requirements and the desirability of location for numerous park benches. What will lend more charm to a park ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... doublings, by a knock from behind a hedge, which sometimes sent him to that world which is emphatically the world of spirits. For this, it some happened that the shebeen man was hanged; but as his death only multiplied that of the excisemen in a geometrical ratio, the sharp-scented fraternity resolved, if possible, not to risk their lives, either by exposing themselves to the necessity of travelling by night, or prosecuting by day. In this they acted wisely and prudently: fewer of ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... part of the subject. Of Truth and its three classes, matter of fact, experimental or scientifical truth (contra-distinguished from opinion), and universal truth; which last is either metaphysical or geometrical, either purely intellectual or perfectly abstracted. On the power of discerning truth depends that of acting with the view of an end; a circumstance essential to virtue. Of Virtue, considered in the divine mind as a perpetual and universal beneficence. ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... of significance is to be found in our knowledge of the geometrical character of events inside an opaque material object. For example we know that an opaque sphere has a centre. This knowledge has nothing to do with the material; the sphere may be a solid uniform billiard ball or a ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... some, the direct opposites of those of its components; watery particles, for example, at any temperature not higher than 32 deg. Fahrenheit, tending not to rush asunder, but to cohere into definite geometrical shapes or to build up frosty imitations of vegetable foliage. And let the water be brought into conjunction with ammonia and carbonic acid, and the three will, under certain conditions, give rise to protoplasm, which again, if subjected ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... devoid of paint or varnish, but carved in most elaborate and capricious openwork, the whiteness of the pinewood being preserved by constant scrubbing with soap and water. The posts and beams of the framework are varied by the most fanciful taste: some are cut in precise geometrical forms; others are artificially twisted, imitating trunks of old trees covered with tropical creepers. Everywhere are little hiding-places, little nooks, little closets concealed in the most ingenious and unexpected ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... linen was practised from the earliest times. Threads were drawn and fashioned with the needle, or the ends of the cloth unravelled and plaited into geometrical patterns. St. Cuthbert's curious grave-clothes, as described by an eyewitness to his disinterment in the twelfth century, were ornamented with cut-work, which was used principally for ecclesiastical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... would bring him a solution of the problem,—for the advertisement was one of those challenges which the mathematicians of the age were accustomed to throw down to all comers, daring them to discover a geometrical mystery known as they fancied to themselves alone. Descartes promised and fulfilled; and a friendship grew up between him and Beeckman—broken only by the dishonesty of the latter, who in later years took credit for the novelty contained ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... their work well with my companion, and that he was steadily regaining his normal health. So I felt more and more at liberty to devote myself to Miss Kemball—in such moments as she would permit me—and I found her fascination increasing in a ratio quite geometrical. Martigny was still abed, and, so the ship's doctor told me, was ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... Here when I stay with you from time to time, my life gains a kind of reality and that's what I like most of all. You see, like you, I suffer from the fantastic and so I love the realism of earth. Here, with you, everything is circumscribed, here all is formulated and geometrical, while we have nothing but indeterminate equations! I wander about here dreaming. I like dreaming. Besides, on earth I become superstitious. Please don't laugh, that's just what I like, to become superstitious. I adopt all your ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... This dome we understand to be the complement or completing part of a correspondent dome on the other side of the world. It follows that we are in the heart of a hollow sphere of loveliest blue, spangled with light. Now the sphere is the one perfect geometrical form. Over and round us then we have the one perfect shape. I do not say it is put there for the purpose of representing God; I say it is there of necessity, because of its nature, and its nature is its relation to God. It is of God's thinking; and that half-sphere ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... rarely fill so large a space in the Forms as the lower ones, and the diminution of space occupied by them is so increasingly rapid that I thought it not impossible they might diminish according to some geometrical law, such as that which governs sensitivity. I took many careful measurements and averaged them, but the result did not justify ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... prepared to climb into the narrow bedstead, which he shared with his brother Laurens. He was now in a tranquil frame of mind. He didn't even have any desire to romp with Laurens, who, without laying claim to geometrical knowledge, usually managed to find ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... are beautiful enough in themselves. But an added attraction in these orchids is their form—the curvature of their sepals and petals, and the wonderful little pitchers and cups and lips and tongues which an orchid exhibits. And the form is no mere geometrical pattern of lines and curves. It is obviously an ingenious contrivance devised for some special purpose. That purpose we now know to be the attraction of insects, who in sucking the orchid's honey will unconsciously carry on their wings or backs the flower's pollen to fertilise another ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... Martius was king of Rome, and Josiah reigned at Jerusalem. He has left no writings behind him, but was numbered as one of the seven wise men of Greece on account of his political sagacity and wisdom in public affairs. I do not here speak of his astronomical and geometrical labors, which were great, and which have left their mark even upon our own daily life,—as, for instance, in the fact that he was the first to have divided the year into three hundred and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... had gone to get cool in the gardens, but a few couples had begun to whirl, the women borne along by force, the men poising their legs into curious geometrical positions. ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... Observing a strict geometrical law, They cut out his panties with a circular saw; Which gave such a stress to his oval stride That the people he met invariably cried: "What a cute little boy! What a funny little boy! What ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... at proportions we must reduce the circular table to a geometrical table. We must straighten out the lines so that the exact proportions are apparent. We need not confuse the reader by mathematics, but to establish our theory we produce the Diagram IA, and it will be here seen that the relative proportions existing ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... of an asymmetric atom (optical isomerism); or (2) both chemical and physical properties may be different when the configuration is determined by the disposition of the atoms or groups attached to a pair of doubly-linked atoms, or to two members of a ring system (geometrical isomerism or allo-isomerism). Three sets of physical properties may therefore be looked for: (1) depending on composition, (2) depending on constitution, and (3) depending on configuration. The first set provides evidence as to the molecular weight of a substance: these are termed "colligative ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... the stars and sun to be earthly, and the moon of the same nature as the sun, but illumined by it. Somewhat more valuable would appear to have been his geometrical science, could we with accuracy attribute to Thales many problems claimed also, and more probably, by Pythagoras and later reasoners. He is asserted to have measured the pyramids by their shadows. He cultivated ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the shore, we sat looking through its triangular door in the twilight at our lonely mast on the shore, just seen above the alders, and hardly yet come to a stand-still from the swaying of the stream; the first encroachment of commerce on this land. There was our port, our Ostia. That straight geometrical line against the water and the sky stood for the last refinements of civilized life, and what of sublimity there is ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... bread for angels. Ecstatic reason, passion justifying its intoxication by revealing the mysteries that it has come thus to apprehend, speak in the quintessence of Donne's verse with an exalted simplicity which seems to make a new language for love. It is the simplicity of a perfectly abstract geometrical problem, solved by one to whom the rapture of solution is the blossoming of pure reason. Read the poem called The Ecstasy, which seems to anticipate a metaphysical Blake; it is all close reasoning, step by step, and yet is what its title ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... array. A huge bearskin lay on the floor among strange, beautifully colored rugs, which reminded her of her mother's India shawl. Rugs where queer stiff little men and animals that looked as if a child had drawn them, wandered about among curlicues and odd geometrical patterns. A tiger-skin, head and dangling claws distressingly lifelike, hung in the middle of one wall. She was spell-bound for a few minutes with the strangeness ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... have no sooner arrived at some notion of the difference between Cubism and Futurism than you find your Cubist doing things that are both Cubist and Futurist, or neither Cubist nor Futurist, according as you look at them. You find things made up of geometrical figures to give volume, yet with all the parts many times repeated to give motion. You find things that have neither bulk nor motion but look like nothing so much as a box of Chinese tangrams scattered on a table. Finally, you have assemblages of lines that do not draw anything, even cubes or ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... cigarette, lighted it and flipped the match into the campfire. He smoked it down to the last inch, staring into the fire and saying nothing the while. When the cigarette stub followed the match, he leaned back upon one elbow and began tracing a geometrical figure in ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... that in place of the hard atom, there is merely a geometrical point which can exert attractive or repulsive forces to, or from, the central point. So far as external particles are concerned, they would behave just the same as a hard atom would do. This conception was largely entertained in recent times by Faraday. It is more a mathematical explanation ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... common salt crystallize in the form of cubes, and saltpetre in the shape of six-sided prisms? We see no reason why it should not have been just the other way, salt in prisms and saltpetre in cubes, or why either should take an exact geometrical outline, any more ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... each corner a pole had been erected, and wires crossed the roof diagonally, hung with red and amber bulbs. Around the chimneys had been massed evergreen trees in tubs, hiding their brick-and-mortar ugliness, and among the trees tiny lights were strung. Along the parapet were rows of geometrical boxwood plants in bright red crocks, and the flaps of a crimson and white tent had been thrown open, showing lights within, and ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the former lovely. Thirdly, with regard to the union of the eye with the neighboring parts, it is to hold the same rule that is given of other beautiful ones; it is not to make a strong deviation from the line of the neighboring parts; nor to verge into any exact geometrical figure. Besides all this, the eye affects, as it is expressive of some qualities of the mind, and its principal power generally arises from this; so that what we have just said of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... you'll soon be better. You're getting a little better every hour." And she finished arranging the bed, which was presently in a state of smooth geometrical correctness. He could find no fault with her efficiency, nor with her careful handling of his sensitive body. But the hard, the marmoreal cruelty of his wife's spirit exquisitely wounded his soul, which, after all, was at least as ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... arrived, Quarrier also started to take his leave; but Sylvia, seated at a card-table, idly arranging the cards in geometrical designs and fanciful arabesques, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... discordant forces of passion no longer disturbed the calm and orderly processes of his mind, and he told himself that he saw clearly, because he saw stark images of facts, stripped not only of the glamour of light and shade, but even of the body of flesh and blood. Life spread before him like a geometrical figure, constructed of perfect circles and absolutely conformable to the rules and the principles of mathematics. That these perfect circles should ever run wild and become a square was clearly unthinkable. Because his nature was not quiescent it was impossible for him ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... the cutting of it. Society was working not for the small pleasures of to-day but for the future security and improvement of the race,—in fact for "progress." If only the cake were not cut but was allowed to grow in the geometrical proportion predicted by Malthus of population, but not less true of compound interest, perhaps a day might come when there would at last be enough to go round, and when posterity could enter into the enjoyment of ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... H. Woodyer, Esq., in the Geometrical style of Decorated architecture, and comprises a nave and aisles 60 feet long and 50 feet in width, a handsome chancel, a south porch, and tower 80 feet high. It is built in the ornamented parts and internally of Bath stone, ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... attention to the fit and proportions of the netting. I find the gas, which was before cloudy and opaque, is now clear and transparent, so that I can look right up the balloon and see the meshes of the net-work showing through it, the upper valve with its springs and line reaching to the car, and the geometrical form of the balloon itself. Nor is this an idle examination. I have already said that, in passing through the cloud, the netting would gather moisture, augmenting the weight of the balloon. If this should not all have ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to rush away from one another with great force. Water, at the same temperature, is a strong though brittle solid, whose particles tend to cohere into definite geometrical shapes, and sometimes build up frosty imitations of the most complex ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... through a banker? Console yourself with the example of our nobility. Whether known to the bridegroom or not, I can assure you that, amongst us of rank, scarcely a marriage takes place but what at least half a dozen of the guests—or the footmen—can state the geometrical ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the west, the pavement between the stalls is of tesselated Roman mosaic, in an effective geometrical pattern of squares, and oblongs of red, green and white marbles. The first bay of the chancel is also in Roman mosaic, but of more elaborate design, the central portion being a framework of interlacing cream bands, forming diamond shaped panels alternating ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... and flower designs is generally modern. The old-time patterns are for the most part simple geometrical figures, which are decorative and emblematic rather than imitative. Shafts of light and shadow alternating or dovetailed represent life, its joys and sorrows. The world is conceived of as rectangular and flat, and is represented by a square. The sky ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... and to my office a little, and then abroad to many several places about business, among others to the geometrical instrument makers, and through Bedlam (calling by the way at an old bookseller's and there fell into looking over Spanish books and pitched upon some, till I thought of my oathe when I was going to agree for them, and so with much ado got myself out of the shop glad ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the purest executed between the years 1500-1560. By ANDREW N. PRENTICE, A.R.I.B.A. Containing 60 beautiful Plates, reproduced by Photo-lithography and Photo Process from the author's drawings, of Perspective Views and Geometrical Drawings, and details, in Stone, Wood, and Metal. With short descriptive text. Folio, handsomely bound in cloth gilt, price ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... is supposed to have contained a hundred and twenty-five geometrical paces, or six hundred and twenty-five Roman feet, corresponding to our furlong. Eight stadia make a geometrical, or Italian mile; and twenty, according to Dacier, a French league. It is observed, notwithstanding, ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... further: this liberty being only the power of acting, what is this power? It is the effect of the constitution and present state of our organs. Leibnitz wishes to resolve a geometrical problem, he has an apoplectic fit, he certainly has not liberty to resolve his problem. Is a vigorous young man, madly in love, who holds his willing mistress in his arms, free to tame his passion? undoubtedly ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire |
