"Focussed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all such as to afford contemplative satisfaction. In such cases the word Beautiful has been brought over with the emotion of satisfied contemplation. And could we examine microscopically the minds of those who are thus applying it, we might perhaps detect, round the fully-focussed thought of that admirable but nowise shapely thing or person or proceeding, the shadowy traces of half-forgotten shapes, visible or audible, forming a halo of real aesthetic experience, and evoked by that word Beautiful whose application they partially justify. ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... obediently and scanned the west and north. His eyes traversed skein after skein of the brilliant colorful patternings, but he was unable to find a very closely netted region. He was about to announce his discovery to Caradoc when his lense focussed on another grim ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... repeaters shifted, shifted until they were focussed upon a spot midway between the belt and the rolling collar of the flannel shirt. "I'm listening, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... to relax her strained nerves. Gade concertos are a species of mental gruel, easy to assimilate and none too stimulating; but all the innate barbarism of humanity, all of her nervous force responded to the clashing rhythm of the Slavonic Dance, and the swift color came into her face and focussed itself in a tiny circle in either cheek, as she listened. For the moment, she was as fiercely defiant of fate as a ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... upward; the other, that the debtor class wished to scale them down. The radicals believed that the Supreme Court was in the control of the wealthy; the conservatives, that their opponents sought to assail the highest tribunal in the land. The peculiar circumstances preceding the year 1896, however, focussed attention on the monetary standard rather than upon the other demands of ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... and houses, I presently focussed my field-glass upon a small, finch-like bird whose coat was striped with gray and brown, and whose face, crown, breast, and rump were beautifully tinged or washed with crimson, giving him quite a dressy appearance. What could this ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... its instinct for the Good, the Beautiful and the True. Psychologically it is an induced state in which the field of consciousness is greatly contracted: the whole of the self, its conative power, being sharply focussed, concentrated upon one thing. We pour ourselvea out or, as it sometimes seems to us, in towards this overpowering interest: seem to ourselves to reach it and be merged with it. Whatever the thing may be, in this act we know it, as we cannot know it ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... live, Amarilly?" she asked, her eyes sparkling as she focussed them on the family. "You needn't come for the washing the first time. I will bring it myself so I can see all your little brothers. Be sure to come to the Guild next Saturday, and then I'll have the rug for you ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... later that his eyes focussed on the left hand view-screen. Red and yellow flames were gushing out at the bottom of the rocket, and it was beginning to tremble. Then the upper jets, the ones that furnished power for the generators, began firing. He looked anxiously at the meters; the generators were ...
— The Answer • Henry Beam Piper
... to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the St. Lawrence, met and crossed the equally important lines of travel from the British Islands to the same points. This circumstance contributed to the importance of that place as a naval and commercial centre, and also focussed about it by far the larger part of the effort and excitement of the first privateering outburst from the United States. As Rodgers' bold sortie, and disappearance into the unknown with a strong squadron had forced concentration upon the principal British vessels, the cruisers remaining for dispersion ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... circus, mebby it has a trick mule to ride—I'll never forget that one up in Kansas City," he grinned. But almost instantly a doubt arose and tempered the grin. "Huh! Mebby it's the branding chute of some gospel sharp." As he drew near he focussed his eyes on the canvas and found ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... lantern dates back to 1650, and is attributed to Professor Kircher, a German philosopher of rare talents and extensive reputation. The instrument is simple and familiar. It is a form of the microscope. The shadows cast by the object are, by means of lenses, focussed upon something capable of reflection, such as a wall or screen. No essential changes in the principles of construction have been made since the time of Kircher; but the modern improvements in lenses, lights, and pictures, have raised the character of the instrument from that of a mere toy ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... little apparent bearing on the concerns of his office; he was standing at the window of his private room, which was on the first floor of the mill, with a large field-glass at his eyes. The glass was focussed upon the Cartwrights' garden, in which sat Jessie with Emily Hood. They were but a short distance away, and Dagworthy could observe them closely; he had done so, intermittently, for almost an hour, and this was the second morning that he had ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... was almost as if his wish had been whispered to her telepathically and she had answered it. She made a charming picture, too, he thought, in the shadowy room where the pale, moving curtains in the dimness were like spirits bringing peace, and all the light focussed upon the white-haired, white-gowned woman in the high, black chair seemed to radiate ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... the contrary, is open at its upper extremity. The rays from the object observed penetrate freely into it, and strike a concave metallic mirror—that is to say, they are focussed. From thence their reflected rays meet with a little mirror, which sends them back to the ocular in such a way as to magnify ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... pockets to hide them. She walked slowly to the curtain and nodded to the Nubian to draw it aside, and slower still she passed into the other room. Only a little larger than the one she had left, almost as bare, but her mind took in these things uncomprehendingly, for all her attention was focussed on the ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... of the ideal of hard restrained living and relentless activity, and throughout a beautiful November at Venice, where chiefly we spent our honeymoon, we turned over and over again and discussed in every aspect our conception of a life tremendously focussed upon the ideal of ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... shivering in her wet clothes, she found herself wondering what magnetic quality there could be about a man that focussed a woman's attention upon him whether she willed it or no. Why should she feel an oddly-disturbing thrill at the mere physical nearness of this fair-haired stranger? She did. There was no debating that. And she wondered—wondered if ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... supporters on their way to the polls, hated the smug smiles of his committee-men at polling stations. He forgot that he did not hate England. A little black disk an inch or two in diameter if cunningly focussed can obscure the sun in heaven from human eye. There was England still behind the little black disk, though Paul for the moment ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... light and electric light illuminating the opera house fell with a curious distinction in tone upon the crowd which filled the building and overflowed through darkened doors and windows. Beneath the electric jets the faces were focussed to a white hush of expectancy, which mellowed into a blur of impatient animation where the dim gas flickered against ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... more, one who talks of his friends as if he had lost them, turns the bushel of his little-faith over the lamp of the Lord's light. Death is but our visible horizon, and our look ought always to be focussed beyond it. We should never talk as if death were the ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... small spy-glass, finding his uncle busy re-arranging some of his apparatus in the laboratory, and as he did not seem to be required, the boy took the small telescope from where it hung and made his way back again on deck, where he focussed the glass and began to scan the brig, scrutinising her rig and everything that he could command, from trucks to deck, making out the long gun covered by a great tarpaulin, and then bringing the glass to bear upon such of the crew as came within ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... and anxious rectitude of his attire the artistic interest in modern man is concentrated upon his head and hands; and upon these salient points Carriere focussed his art. Peaceful or disquieted, his men and women belong to our century. Spiritually Eugene Carriere is the lineal descendant of the Rembrandt school—but one ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... girls, but to me at any rate it is not nearly so certain that they make adult failures. It would be interesting to learn just what proportion of solitary children there is on the roll of those who have become great in our world. One thinks of John Ruskin, a particularly fine specimen of the highly focussed single son. Prig perhaps he was, but this world has a certain need of such prigs. A correspondent (a schoolmistress of experience) who has collected statistics in her own neighbourhood, is strongly of opinion not only that ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... except, perhaps, a suspense of fever in which the sick man perceives the searchlights of the world's assembled navies in act to converge on one minute fragment of wreckage—one only in all the black and agony-strewn sea. Then those beams focussed themselves. Earth as we knew it—the full circuit of our orb—laid the weight of its impersonal and searing curiosity on this Huckley which had voted that it was flat. It asked for news about Huckley—where and what it might be, and how it talked—it knew how it danced—and how it ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... as Eucken constantly insists, to stop short of this. Who can prescribe limits to the capability of consciousness when it is focussed, in the form of a conviction, on the deepest problems which press themselves upon it? There is only one objection that the empiricist can bring forward, and that is that all such ideals can never be proved to exist as things exist in space. But, as already hinted, ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... but the image was not clear to her and the telescope had to be focussed to suit her sight. The next moment she ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... of the sail is gradated to that focus. Try to copy this sail once or twice, and you will begin to understand Turner's work. Similarly, the wing of the Cupid in Correggio's large picture in the National Gallery is focussed to two little grains of white at the top of it. The points of light on the white flower in the wreath round the head of the dancing child-faun, in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, exemplify ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Means of Social Education.—Education is not confined to the training of the schools. It is a continuous process going on through the life of the individual or the group. It is the intellectual process by which the mind is focussed on one problem after another that rises above the horizon of experience and uses its powers to improve the adaptation now existing between the situation and the person or the group. The educational process is complex. ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... hard to believe that at last Alan Massey was leading the most temperate and arduous of lives and devoting himself exclusively to one woman whom he treated as reverently as if she were a goddess. The gazes focussed upon Alan now inevitably included the girl with him, as lovely and young as ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... focussed their attention upon him, the fourth of the line, standing beside the tree brought into the house. Each of them in his own way had wrought out a work for civilization, using the woods as an implement. In his own case, the woods ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... to face speculative difficulties in plenty, but the great fact remains that in Revelation steady light is focussed on the moral qualities of the divine Nature ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... is that which first focussed the public attention on the value of the system. It occurred in 1898, shortly after the present Commissioner initiated the system in India. He himself tells ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... Sinchal, 9,000 feet high, with the lightning originating around me and affording the sublimest spectacle of dazzling brilliancy, and varying in colour from the purest white light to delicious rose and blue tints. I have seen it intensified and focussed as it were within a few feet of me, and from this centre angled lines and balls of fire like strings of beads radiated in all directions. Yet the thunder which in the plains was heard pealing and roaring its loudest, was up there ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... sent a belated message to the office. It was a big "story" that was breaking and he ordered Brennan and Pardeau back to their desks with instructions to hold the galleys till he arrived shortly. Kerr could handle the present end of it. He waved his hand impatiently and focussed his undivided ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... Catia stood there, waiting until, by very force of motionless persistence, she had focussed every eye upon her person. Then, according to the mandates of the Ladies' Galaxy, she hurled her bridal bouquet down across the banister, not upon the waiting Eva Saint Clair Andrews who hankered for it lustily, but straight against the manly waistcoat of the least and the ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... of Blazing Star being entered, every man in Fort Ryan focussed his thoughts on how he might best turn the race to account, wipe out the damage of the last defeat, and recoup his loss with a double profit. They were very sorry for themselves, most of these losers; especially sorry that they, who could really enjoy money and who had actual need of so ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... focussed on a United States license hanging back of the bar. "Is that a mere frame-up, Philippi?" he demanded, walking ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... his scope. The actor-manager has sometimes undertaken a secondary role. But then it often happens, not necessarily by his deliberate endeavour, but by the mere force and popularity of his name among the frequenters of his playhouse, that there is focussed on his secondary part an attention that it does not intrinsically merit, with the result that the artistic perspective of the play is injured. A primary law of dramatic art deprecates the constant preponderance of one actor in a company. The ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... more fundamental than that. All the dress had accomplished was to set an acute accent over a development which, though already at its penultimate stage, had so far escaped the notice of Cleopatra and her mother. The picture had been present the day before, but it had not been quite perfectly focussed. The new ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... 'nicking of his man,' a method of getting straight at the riddle of the fellow by the test of how long he could endure a flat mute stare and return look for look unblinking. The act of smoking fortifies and partly covers the insolence. But if by chance an equable, not too narrowly focussed, counterstare is met, our impertinent inquisitor may resemble the fisherman pulled into deep waters by his fish. Woodseer perused his man, he was not attempting to fathom him: he had besides other stuff in his head. Potts had naught, and the poor particle he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Quite opposite, sometimes we have to meet a type of mind like that of MacDonald's student of Shakespeare, who "missed a plain point from his eyes being so sharp that they looked through it without seeing it, having focussed themselves beyond it." Assuredly there is much to learn before one can hope to understand the winding of the thread of thought which must be traced if one would follow the working of the Hindu mind. Let no one with a facility for untying mental ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... said the lookout, "not ten minutes ago. They must be hiding in the hollows, waiting for the others to catch up," whereupon Nolan, looking daggers, had called him a scarehead, and Geordie shouted for Cawker's glass. It was sent up the stairway in less than a minute and focussed on Porphyry Point, a massive buttress overhanging the farther valley. For long seconds Geordie steadied the binocular against the staff and peered silently through. At last he said: "Some riders and two or three livery-rigs are coming, but I see no men afoot." Then, turning ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... the instructions proceed to state that the distance between them would be about 1/10th of the distance from the part of the object focussed. The example given is a group of portraits, and the angle, 1 in 10, is afterwards spoken of as being equivalent to an arc of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... him; tremors crawled over and over his skin; within him a dull rage was burning—a rage directed at no one thing, but which could at any moment be focussed. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... through one of the many doorways, Bradford stood still for a moment before his eyes focussed to the change of light. The pillars of the hall that supported the balcony corridor of the second story were wreathed with light green vines, delicate green draperies screened the windows, the pale light ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... hair's-breadth of the third bull's-eye from the bottom. To-morrow it will surely shine through my suspect, and if the latter be a true lens it will concentrate, for several minutes, a high degree of heat at the particular spot upon which its rays are focussed. That spot I have found, by experiment, to be one of a series of small bosses set in the pivot-base of the big chair. I applied the flame of a match and immediately the metal boss began to soften. I understand now. The boss ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... a promise half belied by the narrow gray eyes beneath it. These were eyes which might see keenly, and would certainly see things just as they are, though they were not likely to catch any glimpse of that greater world where objects cannot be focussed sharply. Yet in them, an odd contradiction, there lurked a possibility of humorous twinkling. The man was capable perhaps of the broad tolerance of the great humorist, certainly of very acute perception ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... was handed rather reluctantly, and Vince focussed it to suit his sight as he brought it to bear on one ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... something else, with the same result. Then I wake up, so to speak, make an effort of attention, fix my thought on what I am reading, and easily take in its meaning. The act of will, the effort of attention, the intending of the mind on each word and line of the page, just as the eyes are focussed on each word and line, is the power here contemplated. It is the power to focus the consciousness on a given spot, and hold it there Attention is the first and indispensable step in all knowledge. Atten. tion to spiritual things is the first step ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... buttonhole. Some of the old fire had returned to his eyes, and his tongue had regained its once invariable knack of paying charming compliments. In his excitement and delight he departed from his rigid diet, and, his wife's attention being focussed upon George Harley, punished the champagne with something of his old vigor, and revived as a natural result many of the stories which Joan and her mother had been told ad nauseam over any number of years with so much freshness as to make them seem ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... rivalries of the political parties grew apace; and in 1797, just before the retirement of Washington at the close of his second administration, the struggle between Democrats and Federalists became focussed on the prize of the Presidency—the "Father of his Country" having declined to stand for a third term. The candidates, we need hardly say, were John Adams, who had been Vice President in Washington's administration, ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... education. It means that all phases of the process— the relation of pupil and teacher, school and home, the government and discipline, the lessons taught in every subject, the environment, the proportioning of the curriculum, of physical, emotional and intellectual culture—all shall be focussed and organized upon the one significant ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... And there, in the glare, they saw a youth speeding along on a motor-cycle. In an instant Tom grabbed up the binoculars and focussed them on the rider. ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... there have been such a thing as a broken bottle anywhere about the stack, Miss Q——? The sun came out unusually strong this morning, I noticed; and it's a well-known scientific fact that the action of the solar rays, focussed by such a medium as I have suggested, will produce ignition—provided, of course, that the inflammable material is ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... this cumbrous type. At length, however, the great reformation in the construction of astronomical instruments began to dawn. In the hands of Herschel, it was found possible to construct reflecting telescopes of manageable dimensions, which were both more powerful and more accurate than the long-focussed lenses of Cassini. A great instrument of this kind, forty feet long, just completed by Herschel, was directed to Saturn on the 28th of August, 1789. Never before had the wondrous planet been submitted to a scrutiny so minute. Herschel ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... moving-picture machine!" cried Susie, with a little gasp of enjoyment. "Or a comic opera!" she added, wrestling with her glasses to get them focussed on the moving boat. "The hero's sitting in the stern," she announced. "He's all wrapped up and there's another man holding him. I can't see anything of him but his eyes, for he's got a handkerchief or something ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... interest himself in you, you straightway enter upon a glorious career. There is, however, no royal road to advancement on the Press. Proprietors and editors simply could not afford it. Living as newspapers do in the fierce light focussed from a million eyes, fighting daily with keen competition, the instinct of self-preservation compels their directors to engage the highest talent where it is discoverable, and, failing that, the most sedulously nurtured skill. ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... bayou, called Bogue Holauba, as if the larger stream were a tributary of the lesser. This peculiarity of the river in the deltaic region, to throw off volume instead of continually receiving affluents, was unaccustomed to him, being a stranger to the locality, and for a moment it focussed his interest The next, his every faculty was concentrated on a singular phenomenon on the bank ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... hundred or more places where it should be saved. This is not concentration. Concentration means the focussing of a force; and when the mathematical faculty of the brain alone should be at work, the force is not focussed if it is at the same time flying over all other parts of the body in useless strain of innumerable muscles. Tell another man, one who works naturally, to solve the same problem,—he will instinctively and ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... of them, save, perhaps, the driver, kept their eyes focussed on the spot mentioned by Julius until the first clump of trees shut out their view of the old stone quarry and its ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... for Dolly. Two mornings were spent in the great picture gallery. Mrs. Copley's desires and expectations having focussed upon the Green vaults, were hardly able to see anything else clearly; indeed, she declared that she did not think the wonderful Madonna was so very wonderful after all; no woman could stand upon clouds in that way, and as she was a woman, ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... sleep, looked along the rifle barrel. For several seconds he could see nothing but the dead grey grass. Then a dim movement focussed his eyes. A hundred yards away the Indian was ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... he said; "you were sitting in this chair and looking at that crystal ball, which focussed the level rays of the setting sun, I suppose? Then it is ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... Peter Pupkin stood, revolver in hand, in the office of the bank, he had forgotten all about the maudlin purpose of his first coming. He had forgotten for the moment all about heroes and love affairs, and his whole mind was focussed, sharp and alert, with the intensity of the night-time, on the sounds that he heard in the vault and on ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... as a pair of Hop-o'-my-Thumbs to the Giant; had it been man-shaped we would have come less than a third way up to its knees. I focussed my attention upon the twenty-foot-wide square that was the Keeper's foot. Its surface was jewel smooth, hyaline—yet beneath it was a suggestion of granulation, of close-packed, ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... complete—there was a villainy of circumstances that cut these men off more completely from the rest of mankind, whose ideal of conduct had never undergone the trial of a fiendish and appalling joke. They were exasperated with him for being a half-hearted shirker: he focussed on them his hatred of the whole thing; he would have liked to take a signal revenge for the abhorrent opportunity they had put in his way. Trust a boat on the high seas to bring out the Irrational ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... hats, and faded away through the door into the night. Mother, with a happy smile, piloted her little brood over to an empty table, and with a graceful gesture, motioned them to be seated. Then, with expectant faces, they all looked at George. Every eye in the place was still focussed on them. The silence and air of expectation which pervaded the room was so tense that everybody jumped when George mustered up courage at last ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... it!" Bambi cried, with unpremeditated warmth, which focussed Jarvis's eyes upon her. "He'll be here only a little while, and we will reminisce. He would ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... of the sort," taking care to keep his smile focussed on the man, who although he was going in the opposite direction was able to keep his eye on Tavia. "You see they are the most suspicious set—takes a man a lifetime to know them, a woman an eternity, and then she has to depend ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... kind of tangential advertising that interests me. Take, for instance, a Coles Phillips painting for some brand of silk stockings. Of course the high lights of the picture are cunningly focussed on the stockings of the eminently beautiful lady; but there is always something else in the picture—an automobile or a country house or a Morris chair or a parasol—which makes it just as effective an ad for those goods ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... the adoring eyes of the three musicians who were "hairdressers in the daytime" focussed passionately upon Miss Van Tuyn, distracted her attention. She felt masculinity intent upon her and ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... her art is narrow—like Jane Austen's, like Sheridan's, like Pope's, like Maupassant's, like that of all writers who prefer to study human nature in its most articulate instead of its broadest manifestations. It is narrow because it is focussed, but this does not mean that it is small. Although the story of "The Age of Innocence" might have been set in a far broader background, it is the circumstances of the New York society which Mrs. Wharton knows so well that give ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... the glass, focussed it on the boats, and watched the men for long enough. The forces had been equalised by four men being sent out of Jarette's boat to take the places of the men who had returned to their allegiance, and, as I watched them, I could see that as they slaved away at the ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... bullet strike the river ahead of the boat, and send a spiral column of water shooting into the air. He put up his glasses and focussed them on the ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... first determine whether the chromatic aberration is corrected. To ascertain this the telescope should be directed to the moon, or (better) to Jupiter, and accurately focussed for distinct vision. If, then, on moving the eye-piece towards the object-glass, a ring of purple appears round the margin of the object, and on moving the eye-glass in the contrary direction a ring of green, the chromatic aberration is corrected, since these are the ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... musical tone. With a thin disc of vulcanite as receiver, the dark heat rays which pass through an opaque screen were found to yield a note. Even the outer ear is itself a receiver, for when the intermittent beam is focussed in the cavity a ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... supplies the answer. An old volume of the Sussex Miscellany, probably that for 1820, contains the full story of Owd Ben. I might have mentioned it to you, but focussed on current events. Siddle has it among his books, which, by the way, are made up largely of scientific and ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... looks at India as Francis Newman looked at it. Fifty years ago—probably longer—he put his finger on exactly the spot which to-day is the crux which most puzzles and baffles politicians. In social and intellectual questions his were the clear- sighted, far-focussed eyes that reached beyond the measures of most men's minds. He saw clearly, fifty years ago, that India was drawing ever closer and closer to an inevitable terminus. That she was beginning to recognize —every year more definitely—her ultimate destination: was beginning to realize, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... we had left it behind, the pride and grandeur of the scenery beggared description. It was as though for days we had been looking upon a mighty canvas, and while we had caught something of its splendour, now for the first time had we focussed it aright. The memory we took away was ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... individual. Now this same remark applies to all specific types. The only reason why we notice individual differences in the case of the human type more than we do in the case of any other types, is because our attention is here more incessantly focussed upon these differences. We are compelled to notice them in the case of our own species, however small they may appear to a naturalist, because, unless we do so, we should not recognise the members of our own family, or be able to distinguish ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... as though in subdued mirth, and with a red pencil outlined the area. Following this his eyes rested contemplatively on the lumberman who sat still focussed on the map. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... English people, but Mahommerah may have a special interest to us, and also to Russia. It is rather curious to note that it has never struck the British politician nor the newspaper writer that Russia's aims, based usually on sound and practical knowledge, might be focussed on this port, which occupies the most favourable position in the Persian Gulf for Russia's purposes. Even strategically it is certainly as good as Bandar Abbas, while commercially its advantages over the latter ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... confession of complete failure; it indicated the most contemptible inefficiency, since she designed the whole fabric of her life with the unique object of keeping herself amused. Nothing bored her more than to have the general attention centered on some one else, as all that evening it had been focussed on the absent ones. Not only did she miss the excitement of her contest with Christine over the possession of Riatt, but she was positively wearied by the Usshers' anxiety, by her brother's agony of jealousy and fear, and by Wickham's continual effort to strike ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... venture of faith that risks everything. It requires "mighty endurance," "hard labour," "stoutness of spirit," and "a great storm, assault, and onset" to open the Gate. In a word, the key to any important spiritual experience is intention, inward pre-perception, that holds the mind intently focussed in expectation, without which the "flash" of spiritual vision ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... required to defeat this opposing power. Think of what the ordinary man has to meet and overcome to conquer the desire for Personal Aggrandizement—and then think of what the Master had to fight, with the focussed desire of the entire Race-Thought striving to express itself through Him! Truly the Sins of the World bore down upon Him with their mighty weight. And yet He knew that He had taken upon Himself this affliction by entering upon the Life of ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the manner of old squatters when they sit apart; but the tall, spare, grey man with the thoughtful face—more like a soldier than a sheep-farmer—was not thinking much of his flocks and herds. His thoughts followed the direction of his quiet eyes, focussed upon an amber silk gown and its immediate surroundings. Mr Thornycroft was Deborah's godfather, and at forty-seven was to all the sisters quite an elderly man, a sort of bachelor uncle to the family, one with no concern in such youthful pastimes as love-making and marrying, except as a ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... atlases makes it difficult for us to think of the world in other terms than those of map and diagram; knowledge and science have focussed things for us, and our imagination has in consequence shrunk. It is almost impossible, when thinking of the earth as a whole, to think about it except as a picture drawn, or as a small globe with maps traced upon it. I am sure that our imagination has a far narrower angle—to ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... suffer for lack of food or bed, for she was not at heart an unkind woman. You could see that by looking at her vague, soft brown eyes,—eyes that never saw practical duties straight in front of them,—liquid, star-gazing, vision-seeing eyes, that could never be focussed on any near object, such as a twin or a cooking-stove. Individuals never interested her; she cared for nothing but humanity, and humanity writ very large at that, so that once the twins nearly died of scarlatina while Mrs. Grubb was collecting money ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... whose only look Is backward focussed on the Book, Neglectful what the Presence saith, Though he be near as blood ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... of efficiency. This is exactly the situation everywhere. Commonsense always grasps for those methods which quickly lead to a modest success, but which can never lead to maximum achievement. On the other hand, up to the days of modern experimental psychology the interest was not focussed on the mental operations involved in industrial life as such. Everything was left to commonsense, and therefore it is not surprising that the farmhand like the workingman in the mill has never hit upon the one method which is best, as all his ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... was keen—not just the ordinary, unnoticed air that we breathe in and out and don't think about, but a sharp and tingling essence, as strong in the nostrils as camphor or ammonia. The sun seemed focussed upon Parnassus, and we moved along the white road in a flush of golden light. The flat fronds of the cedars swayed gently in the salty air, and for the first time in ten years, I should think, I began amusing myself by selecting words to ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... legs wide apart and the hand grasping a ball as if about to throw it, a gigantic human figure a good forty feet high. The figure glittered in the sunlight, clad in a suit of woven white metal and belted with a broad belt of steel. For a moment it focussed all attention, and then the eye was wrested to another more distant Giant who stood prepared to catch, and it became apparent that the whole area of that great bay in the hills just north of Sevenoaks had been ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... spotless honesty, and of the town's just pride in this reputation. He said that this reputation was a treasure of priceless value; that under Providence its value had now become inestimably enhanced, for the recent episode had spread this fame far and wide, and thus had focussed the eyes of the American world upon this village, and made its name for all time, as he hoped and believed, a synonym for commercial incorruptibility. [Applause.] "And who is to be the guardian of this noble fame—the community as a whole? No! The ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... novels—those sheets covered with a network of writing, which were the despair of the printers. The collection is most remarkable, even when we remember the large sums of money, and the patience and ability, which have for many years been focussed on its formation. It will one day be deposited in the museum at Chantilly, near Paris, where it will be at the disposal of those who wish ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... and barely caught the lantern as it fell from her hand. The hatchet struck the deck with a sharp clang, and I felt the frightened clasp of the girl's fingers on my sleeve. Yet I scarcely realized these things, my entire attention focussed on what was now revealed writhin the chest. At first I doubted the evidence of my own eyes, snatching the bit of flaring candle from its tin socket, and holding it where the full glare of light fell across the grewsome object. ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... are careless about Him, walk all the day long in the light of His face, and He sees and marks all our else hidden evil. It needs something more than any of us can do to make the thought that we do stand in the full glaring of that great searchlight, not turned occasionally but focussed steadily on us individually, a joy and a blessing to us. And what we need is offered us when we read, 'His countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength, and I fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His hand upon me and said, Fear not! I am He that liveth and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Lord comes back," he thought to himself; and for an instant the old misery stabbed at his heart. How difficult it was to hold the eyes focussed on that far horizon when this world lay in the foreground so compelling in its splendour and its strength! Oh, he had argued with Father Francis an hour ago that size was not the same as greatness, and that an insistent external could not exclude a subtle internal; and he had believed ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... eye and focussed the other on her. "Haven't any little son—my mistake!" Then he turned the open gig-lamp on me and began again. "S'prised at you, John; little son is the most won'erful thing any father and mother could ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... the earth as to be safe from even the largest shells, was the telephone-room, the nerve-centre of the whole complicated system of defense, with a switchboard larger than those in the "central office" of many an American city. By means of the thousands of wires focussed in that little underground room, General Dubois was enabled to learn in an instant what was transpiring at Douaumont or Tavannes or Vaux; he could pass on the information thus obtained to General Nivelle at Souilly; or he could talk direct to the Ministry of War, in Paris. I might add ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... of this story is spiritual as well as physical, and occupies less than a month of time, it is focussed intensely upon reality. Everything that the author permits us to see and understand is seen through a single point of life—a hole pierced in the wall between two rooms of a grey Paris boarding house. The time is most often twilight, with its romantic penumbra, ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse |
