"Geometric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he continued to look, something else seemed to take form above that wall. A design this time, that swirled and writhed in the ribbons of radiance and rapidly coalesced into strange geometric features, without definite line or detail. A colossal face, a face of indescribable power and evil, it was, staring ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... she, then, whom he had seen!.... He was handed over by a black porter to a smart slave-girl, who guided him up, through cloisters and corridors, to the large library, where five or six young men were sitting, busily engaged, under Theon's superintendence, in copying manuscripts and drawing geometric diagrams. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... proportion on paper, but they are out of proportion when seen in stone. Now such architects as the men who designed Beauvais and Bourges were geniuses. They were not tied hard and fast by rule of compass. They worked from a definite geometric plan, but deviated from it where their taste and feeling for beauty taught them that such deviation was advisable. Now at Beauvais and at Bourges the exact, proportions have been abandoned. For instance, at Bourges, to be exact, each of the two side aisles should ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... Goodge—letters to be paid for. It's all like the bits of mosaic that those antiquarian fellows are always finding in the ruins of Somebody's Baths; a few handfuls of coloured chips that look like rubbish, and can yet be patched into a perfect geometric design. I'll hunt up a file of the Times at the Burton Institution, and find out this Haygarth, if he is to ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... furnished with a wooden block, which caught the fragments of bullets fired at it, and its displacement was recorded by a rod moved by the bob (The Book of the Rifle, by the Hon. T.F. Fremantle, p. 336). An improved ballistic pendulum in which the geometric method of suspension is introduced has been used by A. Mallock, to determine the resistance of the air to bullets having a velocity up to 4500 F/S. (Proc. Roy. Soc., Nov. 1904). A ballistic pendulum, carried by a geometric suspension ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... leagues in length, and nine in breadth; the soil is barren, but intersected by numerous streams. It was first discovered by some miners, shortly after the establishment of the Villa do Principe. In working for gold in the rivulets of Milho Verde and St. Goncalzes, they discovered some pebbles of geometric form, and of a peculiar hue and lustre. For some years these pebbles were given as pretty baubles to children, or used as counters for marking the points of their favourite game of voltarete. At last an officer, who had been some years at Goa, in the East Indies, arrived in the Commarca: he was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... three equal, vertical bands of red (hoist side), blue, and red; centered on the hoist-side red band in yellow is the national emblem ("soyombo"-a columnar arrangement of abstract and geometric representation for fire, sun, moon, earth, ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... nature, and in conjunction with the easy moveability of the microscope-barrel suggests a meaning akin to that of dreams of skating and sliding, which are usually sexual. From the standpoint of symbolics, the geometric forms and relative positions of cover-glass and microscope suggest allusions to the generative powers of nature—like the phallicism of the ancient Egyptian religion, whose sacred emblems of sexual objects still confront the explorer and the tourist. Here, the 'stage' of the microscope refers obviously ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... seeing in history innumerable instances of the fact that the size of any army does not coincide with its strength and that small detachments defeat larger ones, obscurely admits the existence of this unknown factor and tries to discover it—now in a geometric formation, now in the equipment employed, now, and most usually, in the genius of the commanders. But the assignment of these various meanings to the factor does not yield results which accord with ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... once—it is undeniable that Cavendish Square is in the zone of influence of Regent's Park, and that Harley and Wimpole Streets, which run side by side north from it, never pause to breathe until they all but touch its palings. Once in Regent's Park, how can Topography—the geometric fallacy apart—ignore St. John's Wood? And once St. John's Wood is admitted, how is it possible to turn a cold shoulder to Primrose Hill? Cross Primrose Hill, and you may just as well be out in the country ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... be natural or inventive. Natural ornament confines itself to the rendition in decorative design of forms chosen from nature, either animate of inanimate. Inventive ornament consists of elements not derived from any natural source. It is usually geometric in character; that is, it is rendered in patterns and masses expressed ...
— Applied Design for Printers - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #43 • Harry Lawrence Gage
... brow,—but as it would seem to us, were we of their stature. From the height of a dome more colossal than that of St. Peter's at Rome waxen walls descend to the ground, balanced in the void and the darkness; gigantic and manifold, vertical and parallel geometric constructions, to which, for relative precision, audacity, and vastness, no human structure is comparable. Each of these walls, whose substance still is immaculate and fragrant, of virginal, silvery freshness, contains thousands of cells, that ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... annually in prevailing power as in bewildering variety. Every Christian drawn from Hinduism and added to the fold of Christ becomes, in himself, a force to draw and to win others to Christ. This power has already become the main agency in the growth of the church, and its efficiency is to grow in geometric ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... he said he was. Of middle height and geometric breadth, his figure was a regular trapezium with the greatest of its parallel sides formed by the line of his shoulders. On this line attached by a robust neck there rose an enormous spheroidal head. The head of what animal did it resemble from the point of ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... not artistic and that her face is unbeautifully round. She can enhance her charms and apparently decrease the too spherical cut of her countenance by adopting the mode illustrated in No. 27. The angular bows on the hat, the geometric lines of the broad hat-brim, the precise cut of the lapels on the corsage, the neat throat-band and V-shaped vesture—all insinuate in a most engaging way a dignity and fine, high-bred poise totally obliterated by the circular style of dress erroneously adopted ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... astronomical and geological. I think I may claim to have shown that there are some analogous features of terrestrial rock-structure to serve as guides towards a natural and intelligible explanation of the strange geometric markings discovered during the last thirty years, and which have raised this planet from comparative obscurity into a position of the very first rank both in astronomical ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... in this connection the following two facts. One of them is that the magnitude of the terms of any geometric progression whose ratio (no matter how small) is 2 or more will overtake and surpass the magnitude of the corresponding terms of any arithmetical progression, no matter how large the common difference of the latter may be. The other fact to be noted is that the greater the ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... about 3 or more inches wide and is often so long that it passes twice round the body, the outer end being fastened to the coil beneath it by two strings. This form of belt is sometimes ornamented with simple straight-lined geometric patterns carved into the belt, but it is never coloured. The process of manufacture is as follows: they cut off a strip of bark large enough for one, two, three, or four belts, and coil it up in concentric circles, ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... characters, the name of the maker or owner. A few rise somewhat above the ordinary level, having handles of some elegance, and being painted with designs and patterns, generally of a geometrical character. A vase about six inches high, found at Jerusalem, has, between horizontal bands, a series of geometric patterns, squares, octagons, lozenges, triangles, pleasingly arranged, and painted in brown upon a ground which is of a dull grey. At the top are two rude handles, between which runs a line of zig-zag, while at the bottom is a sort of stand or base. ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... it is impossible to lay down any rule for it except for named substances, like substances requiring like conditions, to bring its atoms into that state of equilibrium where crystallization can occur. If we examine crystals carefully we find, not only that nature has here provided geometric forms of marvelous beauty and exactness, with faces of polish and quoins of acuteness equal to the work of the most skillful lapidist, "but that in whatever manner or under whatever circumstances a crystal may have been formed, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... peep into view. By day the water slushed under the feet of the cattle, and ran merrily in the draws of the rolling country. By night it froze into marvellous frost-work; daintier and more intricate of pattern than any made by man. Overhead, flocks of wild ducks in irregular geometric patterns sailed north at double the speed of express trains. With their mellow "Honk—honk," sweetest sound of all to a frontiersman's ears, harbingers of Spring indeed, far above the level of the ducks, amid the very clouds themselves, ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... inside there was plenty of room for one but hardly enough for two. Borasdine and I were of equal height, and neither measured a hair's breadth less than six feet. When packed for riding I came in questionable shape, my body and limbs forming a geometric figure that Euclid never knew. Notwithstanding my cramped position I managed to doze a little, and contemplated an essay on a new mode of triangulation. We rattled our bones over the stones and frozen earth, and dragged and dripped through the mud to the first station. As we reached ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... one-to-one correspondences between simple notions and more complicated ones, or between the well-explored fields of research and fields less known. Thus, by means of the mechanism employed in analytic geometry, algebraic theorems are made to yield geometric ones, and vice versa. In geometry we get at the properties of the conic sections by means of the properties of the straight line, and cubic surfaces are studied ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman
... the weight on the geometric centre of his being, Colonel Pennington stretched his legs, rolled his head from side to side, and snorted violently several times like a buck. After the sixth snort he felt so much better that a clear understanding of the exact nature of the ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... (Nature, May 23, and Journal of Anthropological Institute); 1879: Psychometric Experiments (Nineteenth Century, and Brain, part vi.); Generic Images (Nineteenth Century; Proceedings of Royal Institution, with plates); Geometric Mean in Vital and Social Statistics (Proceedings of Royal Society); 1880: Visualised Numerals (Nature, Jan. 15 and March 25, and Journal of Anthropological Institute); Mental Imagery (Fortnightly ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... is a solidified mechanical theorem. The surveyor in determining the limits of one's farm, the architect in planning a house, the builder in planning his estimates, and the several master workmen who do the carpentry, masonry, and finishing, are all dependent upon geometric truths. Bleaching, dyeing, calico-printing, gas-making, soap-making, sugar-refining, the reduction of metals from their ores, with innumerable other productive industries, are dependent upon chemistry. Agriculture, ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... quicksilver quickness from one outline into another as square and triangle and spheres changed places. Their shiftings were like the transformations one sees within a kaleidoscope. And in each vanishing form was the suggestion of unfamiliar harmonies, of a subtle, a transcendental geometric art as though each swift shaping ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... Cross-stitch, Darning: Make an original border design on square paper using any two geometric units, or a conventional flower or animal form. Apply the design to a towel in ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... too may have first been learnt through outer observation, yet it remains true that for the discovery of the fact expressed by it - valid for all plane triangles - no outer experience is needed. In both cases we find ourselves in the domain of pure geometric conceptions (length and direction of straight lines, movement of a point along these), whose reciprocal relationships are ordered by the laws of pure geometric logic. So in the theorem of the Parallelogram of ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... widow added one of those commonplace mahogany sofas with the Egyptian heads that Jacob Desmalter manufactured by the gross in 1806, covering them with a silken green stuff bearing a design of white geometric circles. Above this piece of furniture hung a portrait of Bridau, done in pastel by the hand of an amateur, which at once attracted the eye. Though art might have something to say against it, no one could fail to recognize the ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... realized in the functions of generation, conception, and parturiency, manifests and expands itself in the sexless individuals (which are always in this case the great majority of the species), as instincts of art, and in the construction of works completely detached and inorganic; while the geometric regularity of these works, which bears an analogy to crystallization, is demonstrably no more than the necessary result of uniform action in a ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... second I observe a letter from Mr. Hazlitt—alleging two passages from the 403rd and 421st pages of his Political Essays as substantially anticipating all that I had said. I believe that he has anticipated me: in the passage relating to the geometric and arithmetic ratios, it is clear that he has: in the other passage, which objects to Mr. Malthus's use of the term perfection, that he has represented it under contradictory predicates, it is not equally clear; for I do not ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... ascertaining what a Stem proper is; and what makes it stiffer, or hollower, than we like it;—how, to wit, the gracious and generous strength of ash differs from the spinous obstinacy of blackthorn,—and how the geometric and enduring hollowness of a stalk of wheat differs from the soft fulness of that of a mushroom. To which end, I will take up a piece of study, not of black, but white, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... course, its perfected symbol and utmost achievement; and whether in the coronets of countless battlements worn on the brows of the noblest cities, or in the Lombard bell-tower on the mountains, and the English spire on Sarum plain, the geometric majesty of the Egyptian maid became glorious in harmony of defence, and sacred with precision ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... describing witnessed the evolution of algebra, a comparatively abstract division of mathematics, by the union of its less abstract divisions, geometry and arithmetic—a fact proved by the earliest extant samples of algebra, which are half algebraic, half geometric—we go on to observe that during the era in which mathematics and astronomy were thus advancing, rational mechanics made its second step; and something was done towards giving a quantitative form to hydrostatics, optics, and harmonics. In each ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... silent, looking out at the long flares of the constantly passing automobile headlights, shifting in vast geometric demonstrations against the darkness. Now and then a bicycle wound its nervous way among these portents, or, at long intervals, a surrey or buggy plodded ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... agreed that his name was ridiculous, romantic and unreasonable. It seemed to challenge public opinion. Most names in the West were without any picturesqueness or colour; they were commonplace and almost geometric in their form, more like numbers to represent people than things of character in themselves. There were names semi-scriptural and semi-foreign in Askatoon, but no name like Orlando Guise had ever come that way before, and nothing like the man himself had ever ridden ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... psychologists have a strong case here, as {182} they would have also in regard to the liking for machinery. Still, the mathematical individual would not be convinced, for he would testify that numbers, etc., made a direct appeal to him. Numbers, geometric forms, and algebraic transformations are fascinating to him, and there is something beautiful, to his mind, in the relationships that are discovered. The same could be said of the liking for plant or animal ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... del Bambini at Milan constructed under one of the windows a long, narrow shelf, upon which she placed the little tables containing the metal geometric forms used in the first lesson in design. But the shelf was too narrow, and it often happened that the children in selecting the pieces which they wished to use would allow one of the little tables to fall to the floor, thus upsetting with great ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... letter was exceedingly helpful in the sick room of a thousand years ago. The Greek letters "Alpha" and "Omega" had reached England almost as soon as Christianity had, and the old-time doctor triumphantly used them in his pow-wows. Geometric figures in a handful of sand or seeds would prophesy the fate of the ills—and do we not to this day tell our fortune in the geometric figures made by the dregs in our tea-cups? Paternosters, snatches of Latin hymns, bits of early Church ritual were used by quacks of the olden days for much ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86 |
