"Obtuse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prediction which may come true: 'London may yet be the spiritual capital of the world; while Asia—rich in all that gold can buy and guns can give, lord of lands and bodies, builder of railways and promulgator of police regulations, glorious in all material glories—postures, complacent and obtuse, before a Europe content in the possession of all that matters.' For, as the Greek poet says, 'the soul's wealth is the only real wealth.' The spirit creates values, while the demagogue shrieks to transfer the dead symbols of them. 'All that matters' is ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... Depressed-globose: tubercles cylindrical, obtuse, with some axillary bristles: radial spines very much crowded, exceedingly numerous, radiant, very slender and bristle-like, white; central spines 6 to 10 and even more, erect and more rigid: flowers pale reddish: ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... an external husk, not dissimilar in form and colour to the coat of the common walnut, but of course much larger, and proportionably thicker. The nut itself is about a foot in length; of an elliptic form; at one end obtuse, at the other and narrower end, cleft into two or three, sometimes even four lobes, of a rounded form on their outsides, but flattened on the inner. It is exceedingly difficult to give a popular description when encumbered by ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... always endeavouring to secure posts on our leading newspapers, and complain bitterly that their letters of application are ignored by obtuse editors. To help them in this sad ambition Mr. Punch has composed a series of letters to divers editors which he guarantees will prove ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... So many writers think it unjust—and even obtuse and offensive—if the thing is put on too personal a basis. It's all just an imagined situation, ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... which result from wrong-headed mental elaboration, as distinguished from those which are the result of hasty and imperfect apprehension, the heresies of the clever rather than the heresies of the obtuse. The former are of endless variety and complexity; the latter are in comparison natural, simple confusions. The former are the errors of the study, the latter the superstitions that spring by the wayside, or are brought down to us in our social structure ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... people. Shall we go into the house? I need not say that I am glad you are on our side, and doubtless your husband's scruples"—Lord Grayleigh laid the slightest emphasis on the word, and made it, even to the obtuse ears of his hearer, sound offensive—"even your husband's scruples of conscience may be overcome by judicious management. A wife can do much on occasions of this sort, and also a friend. He and I are more than ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... with the neat little sitting-room which Nettie's presence made dainty and refined in its homeliness, lounging in Nettie's way. He could not bring himself to speak with ordinary patience to Fred; and Fred, obtuse as he was, perceived his brother's disgust and contempt, and resented it sullenly; and betrayed his resentment to the foolish wife, who sulked and said spiteful things to Edward. It was not a pleasant ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... at a little distance, were scattered freely over the grayish hills. These huddling, low-lying plants were among the things which bestowed upon Longnook its pleasing and remarkable mountain-top aspect. The rest of the vegetation was more or less familiar, I believe: the obtuse-leaved milkweed, of which I had never seen so much before; three sorts of goldenrod, including abundance of the fragrant odora; two kinds of yellow gerardia, and, in the lower lands at the western end of the valley, ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... many of whom I know quite intimately, often ask me to their houses, I fancy when I meet their women I can detect a certain scorn of my nationality, a certain undefinable manner toward me, by which I suppose they mean to convey to my obtuse comprehension that I am but a step better than a 'native'—a 'nigger' in fact, to use the term they love so well. So I simply avoid them, as a rule, for my temper is hasty. Of course I understand it well enough; they are brought up or trained by their fathers and husbands to regard the native ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... plausible assertions pass unexamined, but a more philosophical mind will say to itself, when it comes across them, 'You great duffer, aren't you going to ask Why?' Suppose that, by way of experiment, I assume that the fourth angle of my quadrilateral will be acute, or again obtuse, will the body of conclusions I can now deduce from my set of postulates be free from contradictions or not? If I really give my mind to the task, cannot I define a continuous function which is not differentiable? The raising of the first question led in fact to the discovery of what ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... estimation of their relative powers was the same. Emily had a head for logic, and a capability of argument, unusual in a man, and rare indeed in a woman, according to M. Heger. Impairing the force of this gift, was a stubborn tenacity of will, which rendered her obtuse to all reasoning where her own wishes, or her own sense of right, was concerned. "She should have been a man—a great navigator," said M. Heger in speaking of her. "Her powerful reason would have deduced new spheres of discovery from the knowledge ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Hamilton was obtuse, but at length, by fagging very hard with one or two boys in the school-room, and getting one of the ushers, who generally performed a second in all the musical efforts in the school, to make some kind of bass, Louis presented his choir one evening in the playground, and made them sing, to the ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... how she had kissed Dick flashed across her mind, but in an instant it was gone; and bending her head, she laid her lips to her husband's. It in no way disgusted her to do so; she was glad of the occasion, and was only surprised at the dull and obtuse anxiety she experienced. They then spoke of indifferent things, but the flow of conversation was often interrupted by complimentary phrases. While Ralph discoursed on his mother's nonsense in always dragging religion into everything, Kate congratulated him on looking so much better; ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... emblem of wretchedness. He was relieving his uneasiness by giving his back every now and then, a comfortable rub against the wall. A little on one side of this forlorn being, at the head of the table where the landlord sat, was a character that could hardly escape the notice of the most obtuse observer, a stout active young man, in the very perfect costume of a cadger. The upper part of his person was decorated with a piece of a garment that had once been a coat, and of which there yet ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... expression. Thereupon he extended his two wings as far as he dared, leaving between them a considerable interval, so as to overlap his opponent at either extremity; which done, he threw his left forward. His brigade thus formed an obtuse angle, the apex to the rear, the bullets therefore converging and crossing upon the space in front, into which it and the enemy were moving. In the approach both parties halted several times to fire, and Scott says that the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... to feel amiable when passing through these desolating scenes, where nature, originally so beautiful, has been defaced, and the people, instead of deriving pleasure from natural beauties, are obtuse to all the surroundings, which, according to educated taste, would ensure appreciation. I felt inclined to upset the donkeys, capture their proprietors, and . . . I could not have hung them upon the trees that they had defaced, for no bough had been left that would have supported their ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... and a turn round will release it, leaving the stud in position; if on the other hand the point is too prolonged, rough and sharp, the stud will probably be pulled off again. It will thus be perceptible that the best shape will be rather obtuse but very smooth. When the stud is in position and the glue setting or chilling, an additional pressure with a small rod of wood or hard material will drive the glue out from the edges and the work ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... steal A revel in the town, let others seal, Purchase, or cheat, and who can, let them pay, Till those black deeds bring on a darksome day. Innocent spenders we! A better use Shall wear out our short lease, and leave th' obtuse Rout to their husks: they and their bags, at best, Have cares in earnest—we ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... despondent as they left London behind, but the necessity of interfering between a goggle-eyed and obtuse mate and a pallid but no less obstinate cook helped ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... in an erratic half-circle. Another minute of walking would have brought him to the highroad, not far from the Place's gateway. And, as he changed his course, to seek the road, he moved at an obtuse angle to his former line ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... inhabited the woods and the fields, and {followed} Pan, who always dwells in caves of the mountains; but his obtuse understanding[11] still remained, and the impulse of his foolish mind was fated again, as before, to be an injury to its owner. For the lofty Tmolus, looking far and wide over the sea, stands erect, steep with its lofty ascent; and extending in its descent on either side, is bounded on the one ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... of tea, and Sir Chichester, obtuse to the warning glances of his wife, plunged into an account of the events ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... differs from a right angle; neither obtuse nor acute; deviating from a line by any angle except ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... be so—" he hesitated for the right word, not wishing to be unjust,—"so obtuse. Listen to that wind! It's cold here. Think what it must be in ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... of our public actions, and we are far from denying his right to criticise them; but when he speaks of our private lives, before men of his own faith, and without being under the necessity of adducing a single scrap of evidence, it is plain to the most obtuse intelligence that his utterances are ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... with vexation, she also spoke with feeling. Her dark eye swam in tears, and the color of her brown cheek deepened, until her companion saw new reasons to forget his discontent in sympathies, which, however obtuse they might ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... lifeless, deceased, inanimate, defunct, extinct, departed; inert, obtuse, impassive, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... 3-4 high, all its parts covered with hairs, simple and tomentose. Leaves heart-shaped, angular, obtuse, unequally serrate, smooth, soft, the lower surface hoary and bearing 9 well-marked nerves. Petioles longer than the leaves, with 2 stipules at the base. Flowers yellow, axillary, solitary. Peduncles long, with a node near the end. Calyx, 5 sepals, ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... the foundation, made the shaft start sheer from the dirt like a spear of asparagus, and, instead of an acute angle, by which I hoped to show the work was done and lead off the eye, they have made an obtuse one, producing the broken-chimney-like effect which your eye will not fail to condemn in No. II. Then they have enclosed theirs with a light, elegant fence, a la Parigina, as though the austere forms of Egypt were compatible ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... half in length, the lower half somewhat triangular, grooved on the two lowermost sides, and keeled at bottom, the keel running straight to its extremity, the upper half gradually dilating towards the base, runs out into two lobes more or less obtuse, which give it an arrow-shaped form, bifid at the apex, hollow, and containing the antherae, the edges of the duplicature crisped and forming a kind of frill from the top to ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 4 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... reveres And who contemns us both, but chiefly thee So gracious and so worthy to be loved. Him then thus answer'd his illustrious son. Trust me, my father! thou shalt soon be taught That I am not of drowsy mind obtuse. But this I think not likely to avail Or thee or me; ponder it yet again; For tedious were the task, farm after farm To visit of those servants, proving each, 370 And the proud suitors merciless ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... the disposal of the ground, calculating the gradients and summit levels as if he were a railway-engineer for the time being—let him observe where the moss lies deep, and precipices rise too steep to be scrambled over; and he will be very obtuse indeed, if he is not able to chalk out for himself precisely the best way to the top. It is a good general rule to keep by the side of a stream. That if you do so when you are at the top of a hill, you will somehow or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... Mans is in the Hotel de la Prefecture, and as we heard that the famous enamel of Geoffrey Plantagenet, formerly on his tomb in the cathedral, was preserved there, we hastened to behold so interesting a remain of early art. A remarkably obtuse female was the exhibitor on the occasion, and, on my asking her to point out the treasure, she took me to a collection of Roman coins and medals, assuring me they were very old and very curious. It was impossible not to agree with her, and to regard these ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... rescuing? They'd have had him out in another minute, any way," said Staniford, fretfully. Then he brooded angrily upon the subject: "But I can tell you what: considering all the circumstances, she might very well have said something. It looks obtuse, or it looks hard. She must have known that it all came about through my trying to keep him ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... aloft vigorously). Done! Are you ready? (Crampton, who has lost his grip of the chair in his alarm at its sudden ascent, folds his arms: sits stiffly upright: and prepares for the worst. Valentine lets down the back of the chair to an obtuse angle.) ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... little delinquent blushed and hung her head, stammering a faint excuse for her slighted task, he said nothing, but slowly lifting up the lid of his desk, he placed his black ruler in a perpendicular position, letting the lid rest upon it, forming an obtuse angle with the desk. Then he piled the books in the back part, leaving a cavity in front, which looked something like a bower in a greenwood, for it was lined with baize ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... three years later, I heard of her death. The notice said "suddenly"; I was glad of that. I was glad too—basely perhaps—to be away from Grancy at a time when silence must have seemed obtuse ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... each other in the middle of the hive at nearly right angles, an edge of comb is left there; but when an obtuse angle, the edges are generally joined, making a sheet of crooked comb. It is evident where the two combs join, there must be some irregular cells unfit ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... Laurent came to the shop every evening, looking weary and unwell. A light bluish circle surrounded his eyes, and his lips were becoming pale and chapped. Otherwise, he still maintained his obtuse tranquillity, he looked Camille in the face, and showed him the same frank friendship. Madame Raquin pampered the friend of the family the more, now that she saw him giving way to ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... after, when he had become rich, the favorite of the bey, and thought of settling down, his mind reverted to her. The child had changed into a stout, heavy, sallow girl. Her intellect, never of a high order, had become still more obtuse in the torpor of such a life as dormice lead, in the neglect of a father whose whole time and thought were given to business, and in the use of tobacco saturated with opium and of sweetmeats,—the torpor of her Flemish blood ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... into the fray the moment his mother was attacked; just as a dog will attack a great beast of prey, so he hung upon the big man's fists, and would not be shaken off. He hated his father, and he longed in his heart to be a policeman when he was grown up. With his blind and obtuse courage he was particularly adapted to such a calling; but he actually became a ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... a theme composed by an ardent schoolboy on the death of Leonidas. An act of dexterous perfidy, and an act of patriotic self-devotion, call forth the same kind and the same degree of respectful admiration. The moral sensibility of the writer seems at once to be morbidly obtuse and morbidly acute. Two characters altogether dissimilar are united in him. They are not merely joined, but interwoven. They are the warp and the woof of his mind; and their combination, like that of the variegated threads ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... above all things. Ah, no, for You know that I do not at bottom. I want to hurt, to wound all living creatures, because they know how to be happy, and I do not know how. Ah, God, and why did You decree that I should never be an obtuse and comely animal such as this John Hughes is? I am so tired of being 'the great Mr. Pope,' and I want only the common ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... whirl, as hour after hour slipped on, and I still gazed, spell-bound, on these Chimeras and Typhons,—these symbols of the Destroying Principle. "Poor Vivian!" said I, as I rose at last; "if thou readest these books with pleasure or from habit, no wonder that thou seemest to me so obtuse about right and wrong, and to have a great cavity where thy brain should have the bump of 'conscientiousness' in ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... broke in upon Sir John's somewhat obtuse mind. He had no desire to expedite matters, but then he was not the principal person to be consulted, and it certainly was not for him to raise any objection, so he acted immediately on the hint ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... consider, that I, his paid servant, am an ambassador whom it is derogatory to the dignity—not of the lady to whom I have the happiness of speaking; she has no existence in his mind—but of his wife, a part of himself, to receive. You may imagine how regardless of me, how obtuse to the possibility of my having any individual sentiment or opinion he is, when he tells me, openly, that I am so employed. You know how perfectly indifferent to your feelings he is, when he threatens you ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... he sat tailor-fashion, he fairly capsized out of his perch, and toppled down on his nose—a feature, fortunately, so flattened by the hand of nature, that I question if it could have been rendered more obtuse had he fallen out of the maintop on a timber-head, or a ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... annexed,) 20. or 22. Inches long or more, and some 21/2 Inches Diameter at the steeled end, the rest being somewhat more slender. The steeled end is so shaped, as makes it most apt to pierce the Rock, the Angles at that end being still to be made the more obtuse, the harder the Rock is. This Tool is to be first held by the hand, in the place, where the Hole, to be made for the use, which shall here be shewed, is to be placed; that is, in the middle between the sides of the Rock, that is to be cut, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... style justly denominated DEBASED, to distinguish it from the former purer styles. Depressed and nearly flat arched doorways, with shallow mouldings, square-headed windows with perpendicular mullions and obtuse-pointed or round-headed lights, without foliations, together with a general clumsiness of construction, as compared with more ancient edifices, form the predominating features in ecclesiastical buildings of this kind: and in the reign of Charles the First an indiscriminate ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... the resemblance of an angel upon certain tablets." That this lady was Beatrice Portinari, as Browning supposes, Dante's devotion to her, in both "The New Life" and "The Divine Comedy," should leave no doubt. Yet the literalness of Mr. W. M. Rossetti makes him obtuse here, as he and other commentators seem to be in their understanding of Browning throughout this stanza. Browning evidently contrasts Dante's tenderness here towards Beatrice with the remorselessness of his pen in the "Inferno" ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... May to our knowledge add, but to the end, That thou mayst use thyself to own thy thirst And men may mingle for thee when they hear." "O plant! from whence I spring! rever'd and lov'd! Who soar'st so high a pitch, thou seest as clear, As earthly thought determines two obtuse In one triangle not contain'd, so clear Dost see contingencies, ere in themselves Existent, looking at the point whereto All times are present, I, the whilst I scal'd With Virgil the soul purifying mount, And visited the nether world of woe, Touching my future destiny have heard ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... was made to seem morally obtuse, cut Douglas to the quick. Even upon his tough constitution this prolonged campaign was beginning to tell. His voice was harsh and broken; and he gave unmistakable signs of nervous irritability, brought on by physical fatigue. When he rose to reply to Lincoln, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... difficult interpretation; difficult, however, only because ye have become dull of hearing[479]." (The fault, you observe, is yours. Whereas GOD made your spiritual senses sharp and quick, you have blunted their edge, and are become stupid and obtuse. It follows:)—"For when, by reason of the length of time that ye have professed Christianity, ye ought to be Teachers," (pray mark that!)—"ye have need that some one should teach you the first Principles ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... lap; or be with ease Gathered, nor harshly plucked; for death mature: This is Old Age; but then, thou must outlive Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty; which will change To withered, weak, and gray; thy senses then, Obtuse, all taste of pleasure must forego, To what thou hast; and, for the air of youth, Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reign A melancholy damp of cold and dry To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume The balm of life. To whom our ancestor. Henceforth I fly not death, nor would ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... winding stair, resembling in shape and size a draw-well, the verge of which opened on the threshold of the iron door, showed a descent which seemed to conduct to the infernal regions. The Varangian, however obtuse he might be considered by the quick-witted Greeks, had no difficulty in comprehending that a staircase having such a gloomy appearance, and the access to which was by a portal decorated in such a melancholy style of architecture, could only lead to the dungeons of the imperial ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... of his mind and of his creative fancy. He appeared at the same time as a teacher, a prophet of new ideas, and as a poet and artist. But his own countrymen hailed him in the first capacity, remaining for a long time obtuse ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... "I enter this room announcing that I have a series of discoveries, and you jump instantly to the conclusion that the first of the series exhausts my resources. Have I your permission, dear lady, to enlighten this obtuse person, if possible, by ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... of what he has to say concerning the views entertained by his British countryman at large. He has also done with the few specimens which it fell in his way to cite of objections urged against his colleagues in opinion, and which he was obtuse enough to imagine to be no objections at all. He proceeds to his main subject,—the varieties of English opinion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... Ellison's arts, for then, indeed, I should make her appear the clumsy conspirator she was not, and should merely convict myself of ignorance of such matters. Whether Mr. Arbuton was ever aware of them, I am not sure: as a man he was, of course, obtuse and blind; but then, on the other hand, he had seen far more of the world than Mrs. Ellison, and she may have been clear as day to him. Probably, though, he did not detect any design; he could not have conceived of such a thing in a person ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... their house, like James Stanhope himself, and Spencer Cowper and Lord Coningsby and young Lord Finch and Pulteney, now in his period of full devotion to Walpole. There were Whig lawyers, like Lechmere; there were steady, obtuse Whigs, like Edward Wortley Montagu, husband of the brilliant and beautiful woman whom Pope first loved and then hated. There was Aislabie, then Treasurer of the Navy, afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer, who came ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... lodge there from the want of due irritability of the membrane; and in that situation increases by new appositions of indurated animal matter, in the same manner as the stone of the bladder. This is the general cause of haemorrhage from the kidney; and of obtuse pain in it on exercise; or of acute pain, when the stone advances into the ureter. See ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... oval, with pointed recurved tip, and a large obtuse tragus; anterior central crest of nose-leaf produced in front over the top of the flat transverse front edge; hinder leaf lanceolate triangular; above sooty brown or light earthy olive-brown, paler below, some with a rufous or Isabelline ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... is obtuse and safe. Morgan was a mass of fine sensibility; his temperament was full of subtle light and shade—therefore dangerous. Plain-souled, clumsy-handed Common Sense, with perception limited to the thick outlines of character, could not have ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... proved a true prophet. Mr John Feversham was so obtuse, so unreasonable, so unpardonably preposterous, as to imagine it possible that Blanche Enville might yet marry him, though he had the prospect of a curacy, and had not the ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... said the colonel. He was conscious of very kindly feelings within himself, and believed in nearly everybody but Esther. She, he thought, might have a chance of salvation if she could be reborn, physically hideous, into a world obtuse to her. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... Jurgen and Chloris lived very pleasantly together, though Jurgen began to find his Hamadryad a trifle unperceptive, if not actually obtuse. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... masses, some or all of the endoderm cells with thick outer walls. Cones from 10 to 17 cm. long, short-pedunculate, ovoid-conic; apophyses lustrous brown-ochre or fuscous brown, elevated into thick, often reflexed, beaks with obtuse mutic umbos; seeds with large nuts and adnate striated dark gray or ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... hollow, he built his house there, and made steps to go down to it: his neighbor, who owned a rocky knoll, built his house at the top, and made stairs to go up to it. Moreover, if the land was a bit in the city, the house was made in the shape of it, and was as likely to have corners in obtuse or acute as ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... and Riley superannuated. Hay takes Darch's place as reading clerk. This is right. Hay is a gentleman, and a man of business. Met Sir Francis—which Sir Francis, you would say, for there are two who frequent the Admiralty, the obtuse and the clever. I mean the clever. 'Well, Frank, how goes on the Vernon, and how did she go off the other day? No want of water, I presume.' 'No; thank heaven for that! Why, she went off beautifully, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... or rather kennel, appropriated to the lodging of the muleteer, was a triangular garret already described, formed by the ceiling of the upper story and the roof of the house, which rose in an obtuse angle above it. Its greatest elevation was about six feet, and that only in the centre, whence the tiles slanted downwards on either side to the beams by which the floor was supported. The entrance was by a step-ladder, and through a trap-door, against which, when he reached it, Paco gave two very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... I had said, eccellenza, that she was heading across toward Ischia," answered Raoul, with an air of obtuse innocence. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... truth, by pronouncing much of the foregoing attack upon the intellectual and moral character of Burns, to be the trespass (for reasons that will shortly appear, it cannot be called the venial trespass) of a mind obtuse, superficial, and inept. What portion of malignity such a mind is susceptible of, the judicious admirers of the poet, and the discerning friends of the man, will not trouble themselves to enquire; but they will wish that this evil ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Obtuse commentators have said that the Kabalah assigns sexual characteristics to the very Deity. There is no warrant for such an assertion, anywhere in the Sohar or in any commentary upon it. On the contrary, the whole doctrine of the Kabalah is based on the fundamental ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... where the forms are set out from templates, the accuracy of the templates must be verified, and in the event of the base not being at right angles with the side, a true horizontal must be made from the corner which is higher than the other (the one therefore which has the obtuse angle) and marked within the untrue line; and all measurements, whether of feet, bars, or squaring-out lines, or levels for canopies, bases, or any other divisions of the light, must be made upwards ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... gently, for he thought Tybalt was unusually obtuse. Tybalt thought so himself before ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... erected by Diocletian between 284 and 305, 30 ft. high (but originally higher), 25 ft. wide, 14 ft deep, and 10 ft. span. On the N. side, between two attached fluted columns, is, in bold relief, a Latin cross with the arms at obtuse angles. On each side stands a prisoner, with his hands behind him, chained loosely to the cross. From the cross are suspended swords, horns, and pouches. On the south side is a similar cross, but not in such a good state of preservation. The main beam ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... the pronoun would have rendered his meaning clear to even a more obtuse man than myself. No Lady Auriols ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... me to speak more plainly than I like, Derek," she was saying, "because you make yourself so obtuse. You seem to forget that years have a way of passing, and that Dorothea is no longer ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... gallantry obliges us to make nooses to catch our happiness. We swear eternal faithfulness, and declare that we desire to pass our lives with them, and seem to await a husband's death impatiently. Let him die, and there are some provincial women obtuse or silly or malicious enough to say: 'Here am I, free at last.' The spent ball suddenly comes to life again, and falls plumb in the midst of our finest triumphs or our most carefully planned happiness. I have seen ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... old-fashioned gardens were without it at one time, but it is fast giving way to newer and more popular varieties. The canes are vigorous, stocky, and tall; spines light-red, numerous, and rather strong. Winter protection is always needed. The berries are large and very obtuse, conical, dark-red, large-grained, and covered with a thick bloom, very juicy, and exceedingly soft—too much so for market purposes. They made a dainty dish for home use, however, and our grandmothers, when maidens, gathered them in the ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... direction from one or another, and many a prayer, as before and after that hour, was urged that this bulwark of the church against her secular foes might become her obedient son. When thus exhorted or prayed for the captain's face became a study, sometimes so impenetrably obtuse, sometimes so rigid in its obstinacy, sometimes touched with shrewd amusement, and sometimes moved to tender sympathy, but never to conviction or even doubt, and as the years went on, those who loved him most, even Bradford and Alden and ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... stamping out of the scourge, Retief, came from him, the others merely contenting themselves with agreeing to his suggestions with a lack of interest which, had the old man been perfectly sober, he could not have failed to observe. However, he was especially obtuse this morning, and was too absorbed in his own impracticable theories and suggestions to notice the ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... obtuse, toothed, woolly haired, radical leaves are grayish green and somewhat rumpled like those of Savoy cabbage. From among them rise the 2-foot tall, square, branching, sparsely leaved stems, which during the second year bear small clusters of lilac or white ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... reply; "a girl of your intellect and refinement can have little in common with, these obtuse village people. They cannot understand your feelings, and you cannot possibly sympathize with theirs. Your former life must have been very different from ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... in the adjutant, at last, "you are very new to the Army, and you don't appear to realize all the facilities we have for compelling men to speak. If you remain obtuse any longer, it may be necessary for me to order you to the guard-house ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... dignity of his office, somewhat in its decorum; his mode of rescuing the oppressed has had too much the character of an escapade. But the more disciplined soldier of the Church would have erred in the opposite direction. The ear which listens only for the voice of authority becomes obtuse to the cry of suffering. The spirit which only moves to command becomes unfit for spontaneous work. Caponsacchi, standing aloof like a man of pleasure, has proved himself the very champion of God, ready to spring ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... reply to what I have said about having upon a previous occasion made the speech at Ottawa as the one he took an extract from at Charleston, says it only shows that I practiced the deception twice. Now, my friends, are any of you obtuse enough to swallow that? Judge Douglas had said I had made a speech at Charleston that I would not make up north, and I turned around and answered him by showing I had made that same speech up north,—had made it at Ottawa; made it in his hearing; made it in the Abolition District,—in ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... wrong, and declare barbarism equal with civilization. Of course, our argument is based upon the hypothesis that civilization is one thing, and barbarism another. To the mind which is so mentally and morally obtuse as not to discover the difference between these two conditions, this appeal must be in vain. But to the right-minded man, who is open to conviction of truth, who has the mental freedom to act and think independent of ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... must insist on; for, as It is well observed by Horace,[6] Ridicule has greater power To reform the world than sour. Horses thus, let jockeys judge else, Switches better guide than cudgels. Bastings heavy, dry, obtuse, Only dulness can produce; While a little gentle jerking Sets the spirits all a-working. Thus, I find it by experiment, Scolding moves you less than merriment. I may storm and rage in vain; It but stupifies your brain. But with raillery to nettle, Sets your thoughts upon their ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... initiates, adepts in esoteric lore, known to themselves but not to the world, who have had in their keeping, through the centuries, the high truths which they permit to be dimly adumbrated in the popular faiths, but which the rest of the race are too obtuse, even yet, to grasp save in an imperfect and limited degree. These hidden sages, it would seem, look upon our eager aspiring humanity much like the patient masters of an idiot school, watching it go on forever ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... ear has grown very fine, and my heart has grown very deaf. And then there is something in race. The blood of my father and the blood of my uncle is the same blood; my blood is the same as that of my father; the paternal molecule was hard and obtuse, and that accursed first molecule has assimilated ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... sides exhibited a total extinction of moral principle; the lower were practical atheists. Who can peruse the annals of the emperors without being shocked at the manner in which men died, meeting their fate with the obtuse tranquillity that characterizes beasts? A centurion with a private mandate appears, and forthwith the victim opens his veins and dies in a warm bath. At the best, all that was done was to strike ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... his frieze coat swung over one shoulder, stepped aside. A bare-legged woman, surrounded by her half-naked children, leaving the potato she was peeling in front of her door, gazed, like her husband, after the rolling vision of elegance that went by her, and her obtuse brain probably summed up the implacable decrees of ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... characteristic of David that whatever he undertook he engaged in with all his might. He was a rude, coarse boy. It was scarcely possible, with his past training, that he should be otherwise. But he was very faithful in fulfilling his obligations. Though his sense of right and wrong was very obtuse, he was still disposed to do the right so far as his uncultivated ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... sir," said the stranger, constitutionally obtuse to the pleasant drollery, "that your notion, of what is called a Great Medicine, needs correction. The Great Medicine among the Indians is less a bolus than a man in grave esteem for ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... there will always be obtuse men in the pastoral office— men who know no way of getting into a sensitive soul except by knocking in the door and walking in with their boots on; but all such men are out of their place. The souls of an average people— tied to the tasks of life, burdened by care, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... them away, and then helped the woman of the house in some things about which she was longing for assistance. Perhaps it was a dress to be cut out for herself, or some garments fitted on some of the girls, or other similar things too intricate or difficult for my obtuse mind ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... like a horse. I then fastened the gate on the inside and watched again. After long waiting the old cow came quickly round the corner and approached the gate. She lifted the latch with her nose. Then, as the gate did not move, she lifted it again and again. Then she gently nudged it. Then, the obtuse gate not taking the hint, she butted it gently, then harder and still harder, till it rattled again. At this juncture I emerged from my hiding place, when the old villain scampered off with great precipitation. She knew ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... be calculated from the presence, nature and number of the erupted teeth; from the cartilages of the ribs, which gradually ossify as age advances; from the angle formed by the ramus of the lower jaw with its body (obtuse in infancy, a right angle in the adult, and again obtuse in the aged from loss of the teeth); and in the young from the condition of the epiphyses with regard to their attachment to their ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... strengthen the cover. Each time, the mason applies the material with the most minute care, while giving the straw not a thought. In this way, I obtain, one after the other, eight closed cells whose lids are surmounted by my mast, a bit of protruding straw. What evidence of obtuse intelligence! ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... dull and backward in acquiring others. But after making every allowance for this variety in the intellectual powers of children, it is well established by experience, and repeated experiments have confirmed the fact,[9] that the very dullest and most obtuse of the children found in any of our schools, are really capable of rapid cultivation, and may, by the use of proper means, be very soon brought to bear their part in the usual exercises fitted for the ordinary children. A large proportion of the dulness so frequently complained ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... crotch, crutch, crane, fluke, scythe, sickle, zigzag, kimbo[obs3], akimbo. corner, nook, recess, niche, oriel[Arch], coign[obs3]. right angle &c. (perpendicular) 216a, 212; obliquity &c. 217; angle of 45x, miter; acute angle, obtuse angle, salient angle, reentering angle, spherical angle. angular measurement, angular elevation, angular distance, angular velocity; trigonometry, goniometry; altimetry[obs3]; clinometer, graphometer[obs3], goniometer; theodolite; sextant, quadrant; dichotomy. triangle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... penetrating, namely, that which arose from the street, ascended to salute the nostrils of the musketeer. D'Artagnan, reclining in an immense straight-backed chair, with his legs not stretched out, but simply placed upon a stool, formed an angle of the most obtuse form that could possibly be seen. Both his arms were crossed over his head, his head reclining upon his left shoulder, like Alexander the Great. His eyes, usually so quick and intelligent in their expression, were now half-closed, and seemed ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... as I now speak to you, but somebody else had told him that this truth was the fiction of a deranged imagination, and he found it more convenient and profitable to believe somebody else. But again I ask you, why were not you, also, so discreetly obtuse?" ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... enter the latter at too sharp an angle, it would carry it toward the mouth of the chimney before the chemical combustion of the carbon and oxygen was finished; and if, on the contrary, it should traverse it at too obtuse an angle, it would depress and contract it. Experience has shown that in the majority of cases the most favorable angle at which the external current of air can be led into the flame varies between 35 deg. and 45 deg.. We ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... obtuse vanity could ever have induced Bozzy to publish all this. 'Curiosity,' he declares in the preface, 'is the most prevalent of all our passions, and the curiosity for reading letters is the most prevalent ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... series of screws disposed round the circumference of the hoop. Attached to the body, which has no back, is a long neck, terminating in a flat head acting as a peg-box and bent back slightly at an obtuse angle from the neck. There are five, six or nine strings to the banjo; they are fastened to a tail-piece as in the violin, pass over a low bridge, on the body, and are strained over the nut or ridge at the end of the neck, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... wanted money for public enterprise on the mainland, the Jew of Chincoteague was first to be thought of. His credit, Masonic in its reach, extended to his compatriots in distant cities, and the politicians crossed the Sound to bring him into alliance with their parties. To personal flattery he was obtuse, except when it reached his ward, and then a melting mood came over him. At every Christmas he led himself the eloquent Oriental prayer, young Abraham responding with even a richer imagery, for his mind was alert, his schooling had been private and unintermittent, and his father's enthusiasm ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend |
