"Optic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... turned slightly to the left and began to get the rest—the great levelled creature upon the darkened floor. Skag kept his imagination down until his optic nerves actually brought him the picture. The long thin sweep was the mother's tail, yet she was not crouched. Skag saw her sprawled paws extended toward him. She lay upon ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... that, it did so," said Davis, touching the optic tenderly. But Kildare was answering a question ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... object augments or diminishes to the eye or imagination from a comparison with others, the image and idea of the object are still the same, and are equally extended in the retina, and in the brain or organ of perception. The eyes refract the rays of light, and the optic nerves convey the images to the brain in the very same manner, whether a great or small object has preceded; nor does even the imagination alter the dimensions of its object on account of a comparison with others. The question then is, how from the ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... violently; tears, which usually announce the end of the paroxysm, often indicate only a progressive stage which is to become much more intense. In this case there follow spasmodic contractions of the muscles, trembling in all the limbs, a total numbness in the feet and hands, partial paralysis of the optic and auditory nerves. I can no longer see, I can hardly hear: vertigo ... almost swooning...." Such was the effect of music ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... it; we cannot weigh or measure it. Further to illustrate this position: we do not see with our outward eye any more than we do with spectacles. The apparent ocular apparatus is but the passive, unconscious instrument to transmit images thrown through it upon a fine interior fibre, the optic nerve; and even this does not take cognizance of the object, but is only another conductor, carrying the image still farther inward, to the intellectual nerves of the brain; and not until it reaches them do we see the object, not until then is ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... dear to our young people. Such favorites as Pansy, Louisa M. Alcott, Oliver Optic, Eugene Field, etc. The game is played by the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 5, February 3, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... thin highly vascular membrane of a dark brown or chocolate color and is pierced behind by the optic nerve and in this situation is firmly adherent to ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... It was evident that when the eye was completely turned in the swordfish could not see at all. Probably this was for close battle. The muscles were very heavy and strong, one attached at the rim of the eye and the other farther back. The optic nerve was as large as the median nerve of a man's arm—that is to say, half the size of a lead-pencil. There were three coverings over the fluid that held the pupil. And these were as thick and tough as isinglass. Most ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... hull, two of them provided with hammers to drive in the nails, while the third held the materials. We found that these men could remain at work forty-eight seconds at a time. When they emerged, their eyes were always red and starting; the effect of the violent strain upon the optic nerve which the use of the sight under water produces. We had some skilful divers among our own sailors, who, although they could not have attempted this work, were able to inspect what was done by the Wahuaners, and to report ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... iris was darker than formerly. The eyelashes and eyebrows were partly burnt, but in appearance, at least, the old penetrating look appeared to have undergone no change. If he could no longer see, if his blindness was complete, it was because the sensibility of the retina and optic nerve was radically destroyed by the fierce heat of ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... Webster's Farm, to steal a march on the napping enemy. The napping enemy, however, was alive to the propriety of utilising but one eye in the lap of "Nature's soft nurse." He could not see much with the open optic, but he could hear with the one ear he had taken the precaution of keeping open also. Of the good sense of this precaution Mr. Peakman was somewhat abruptly apprised by the crack and blaze of a hundred Mausers. Nothing daunted he returned the salute right ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... of inducing sleep by wearying out the optic nerve of the eyes, by making the patient fix them upon a certain spot for a time, generally situated where it is a little wearisome for the eyes to find it. The fatigue thus induced spreads from the ocular muscles to the system, causing ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... BRAIN, which has just received, through the optic nerve, a conception of the lovely vision in brass buttons. The heart is ordered to pump more blood to the head of the young girl, to supply mental ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... be bounded less perfectly and less distinctly, than the group; for it is like a fragment cut out of the optic scene of the world. However the painter, by the setting of his foreground, by throwing the whole of his light into the centre, and by other means of fixing the point of view, will learn that he must neither wander beyond the composition, nor omit ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... with the thermometer at seventy-two degrees, embroidering all kinds of fancy patterns,—some on muslin, some on satin, and some with colored worsteds on canvas,—inhaling the poisonous dyes, straining the optic nerves, counting threads and stitches, hour after hour, until utterly exhausted. I spoke to one poor victim of the fallacy of Christmas presents, and of her injuring her health in such useless employment. "What can I do?" she replied, "I ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... service, coupled with the startling proposition that this rheumatism resulted, just previous to his application, in blindness. Upon medical examination it appeared that his blindness was caused by amaurosis, which is generally accepted as an affection of the optic nerve. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... said Peter, rallying a little. "Ever since an operation on my eyes they sometimes misbehave themselves. It's neuralgia of the optic nerve. Sometimes it pains me badly. Don't mind me. It will be all right in a minute ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... the unusual fruit of the raid—unusual because when the boatswain and others had rushed to recover what they thought was their captain's mangled body, they discovered their leader unmarred by the blast but stone-blind from the shock. An injured optic nerve, the San Francisco specialists had said, a ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... much. With scenes, when I think, what certitude did I want more?—scenes being the root of the matter, especially when they bristled with proper names and noted movements; especially, above all, when they flowered at every pretext into the very optic and perspective of the stage, where the boards diverged correctly, from a central point of vision, even as the lashes from an eyelid, straight down to the footlights. Let this reminiscence remind us of how rarely in those days the real stage was carpeted. The difficulty ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... out of commission and her stricken men in the hospital; but by the time the specialists had diagnosed the trouble as amblyopia, from some sudden shock to the optic nerve—followed in cases by complete atrophy, resulting in amaurosis—another ship came into Honolulu in the same predicament. Like the other craft four thousand miles away, her deck force had been stricken suddenly and at night. Still another, ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... to the remotenesses and 'minutiae' of vegetable terms,—the same entireness of subject. You have quincunxes in heaven above, quincunxes in earth below, and quincunxes in the water beneath the earth; quincunxes in deity, quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in bones, in the optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in petals, in every thing. In short, first turn to the last leaf of this volume, and read out aloud to yourself the last seven paragraphs of Chap. v. beginning with the words 'More considerables,' &c. But it is time for me to ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... are sufficiently short and not too short, they directly affect the optic nerve and are known as light waves; they may be so short as to be inappreciable by the eye, yet possess the power of determining chemical change, when they are known as actinic waves; they may be also so long as to be inappreciable by the eye, when they may be heat-producing ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... given organ of the physical body must always have as its counterpart a certain amount of astral matter, it does not retain the same particles for more than a few seconds at a time, and consequently there is nothing corresponding to the specialization of physical nerve-matter into optic or auditory nerves, and so on. So that though the physical eye or ear has undoubtedly always its counterpart of astral matter, that particular fragment of astral matter is no more (and no less) capable of responding to ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... Mostyn, while counters were being distributed, explained to the company on scientific principles why the room was comfortable, expatiating upon the effect of yellow and brown upon the retina, and some curious facts relating to the optic machinery of water-fleas, as lately discovered by a ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... head, and Dick explained briefly how he had come by it. When the flame was removed, Dick saw the doctor's face, and the fear came upon him again. The doctor wrapped himself in a mist of words. Dick caught allusions to "scar," "frontal bone," "optic nerve," "extreme caution," and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... to hear it because the only nerve-ends tuned to vibrate in harmony with the ether-waves set in action by the sun are nerve-ends that are connected with the brain center devoted to sight. "If," says Professor James, "we could splice the outer extremities of our optic nerves to our ears, and those of our auditory nerves to our eyes, we should hear the lightning and see the thunder, see the symphony and ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... the face, look hard at, look intently; strain one's eyes; fix the eyes upon, rivet the eyes upon; stare, gaze; pore over, gloat on; leer, ogle, glare; goggle; cock the eye, squint, gloat, look askance. Adj. seeing &c v.; visual, ocular; optic, optical; ophthalmic. clear-eyesighted &c n.; eagle-eyed, hawk-eyed, lynx-eyed, keen- eyed, Argus-eyed. visible &c 446. Adv. visibly &c 446; in sight of, with one's eyes open at sight, at first sight, at a glance, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... roan," says one, or "Here comes Kit Jenkins with her flea-bit gray. I wonder who's on the bay alongside of her," remarks another, and each of these observations is taken quite as a matter of course. With a wide and empty field of vision, and with trained, unspoiled optic nerves, the plainsman is marvelously penetrating of glance. Hence, Mrs. McFarlane was perfectly certain that not one but several of her neighbors had seen and recognized Berrie and young Norcross as they ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... was accepted with alacrity. In the hobo's one uninjured optic shone a momentary gleam of intelligence, as he continued to stare at Gully, like a dog at its master. The gleam was reflected in a pair of shadowy, deep-set ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... which come off from it: of the segments of which it is composed—the olfactory lobes, the cerebral hemisphere, and the succeeding divisions—no one predominates so much over the rest as to obscure or cover them; and the so-called optic lobes are, frequently, the largest masses of all. In Reptiles, the mass of the brain, relatively to the spinal cord, increases and the cerebral hemispheres begin to predominate over the other parts; while in Birds this predominance is still more marked. The brain of the lowest Mammals, ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... interest and delight. (But Lord bless you the second reading will fetch it!) And just think!—I had Sol Smith Russell in my mind's eye for the old detective's part, and hang it he has gone off pottering with Oliver Optic, or else ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whether the little eddy looked as it used to look, and whether caddis-worms and young mosquitoes were really as sweet and tender as he used to think they were. Then he thought some other things; but as the salmon's mind is located in the optic lobes of his brain, and ours is in a different place, we cannot be quite certain what his thoughts ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... lens of the eye (C). Inside the sclerotica, and next to it, comes the choroid coat; and inside that again is the retina, or curved focussing screen of the eye, which may best be described as a network of fibres ramifying from the optic nerve, which carries sight sensations to the brain. The hollow of the ball is full of a jelly-like substance called the vitreous humour; and the cavity between the lens and the cornea is full ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... Willie. There's a place in the brain stem called the isthmus, no cell masses, just bundles of fibers running up and down. Almost all the nerves come off below that point; and the few that don't can be spliced together, except the smell nerves and optic nerve. Ever notice I can't smell, Willie? And they transplanted my eyes with the brain—biggest trick ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... accessible German Courts, especially the likely or well-disposed: Mainz, Koln, Trier, these, the three called Spiritual, lie on our very route; then Pfalz, Baiern, Sachsen:—we will tour diligently up and down; try whether, by optic machinery and art-magic of the mind, one cannot bring ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... diameter perhaps twelve feet—with a high conical roof. The roof had an inner lining of wood, and through a hole in it—where a panel had been slid back—a large optic-glass, raised on a pivot-stand, thrust its nose out into the night. Close within the door stood an oaken press, and beside it, on a tripod, a brazier filled with charcoal and glowing. A truckle-bed, a chair, and two benches made up the rest of the furniture: and of ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... medium. Just as a photographic plate receives a different impression of a cluster of stars when a telescope is part of the intervening medium, so a brain receives a different impression when an eye and an optic nerve are part of the intervening medium. An impression due to this sort of intervening medium is called a perception, and is interesting to psychology on its own account, not merely as one of the set of correlated particulars which is the physical object of which ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... you possibly can, and also tell me whether you will send me one of those books which you want criticised. I am eleven years old. I like to read very much—history, travel, and adventure being my favorites. The books I like specially are Oliver Optic's works for travels, and G.A. Henty's works for historical facts and thrilling adventures. ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... not in all cases quite clear and definite. The tela aranea is said to take its origin from the retina, the retina from the optic nerve, and the latter from the rethi (rete, network) involving the substance of the brain. The cornea arises from the sclerotic tunic, the uvea and secundina take their origin from the pia mater, and the conjunctiva from a thin pellicle or membrane which covers the exterior ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... because your normal condition is sympathetically attuned to the vibrations of starlight. Your consciousness is located in your brain, and so long as those vibrations continue to strike with sufficient force upon the optic nerve, you will be conscious of the light. But suppose the machinery of your body were finer—suppose your senses were absolutely in accord with those vibratory movements, instead of only partially so—do you not know that the starlight would ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... older, it was only a darker blue. Watho, with the help of Falca, took the greatest possible care of her—in every way consistent with her plans, that is, the main point in which was that she should never see any light but what came from the lamp. Hence her optic nerves, and indeed her whole apparatus for seeing, grew both larger and more sensitive; her eyes, indeed, stopped short only of being too large. She was a sadly dainty little creature. No one in the world except those two was aware of the being of the little bat. Watho trained ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... need an optic glass, Which were your choice? A lens to drape In ruby, emerald, chrysopras, Each object—or reveal its shape Clear outlined, past ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... undergoing rapid modernization and expansion, especially with cellular telephones domestic: additional digital exchanges are permitting a rapid increase in subscribers; the construction of a network of technologically advanced intercity trunk lines, using both fiber-optic cable and digital microwave radio relay is facilitating communication between urban centers; remote areas are reached by a domestic satellite system; the number of subscribers to mobile cellular telephone service is growing rapidly international: international service ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... is a sensation produced upon our optic nerve by the vibrations of ether, comprising between 400 and 756 trillions per second, undulations that are themselves ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... to install fiber-optic cable and construct facilities for cellular telephone service is in the implementation phase domestic: NA international: international connections to other former Soviet republics are by landline or microwave radio relay and to other countries by satellite and by leased connection through ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... a doin'; an' yer all upset—an' look at yer eye! I brought in a little bit of stike for ter-morrer's dinner; you just cut a bit off an' put it over yer optic, that'll soon put it right. I always used ter do thet myself when me an' ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... section through the head of an embryo of the approximate age of the one just described; it passes through both forebrain, fb, and hindbrain, hb; through the extreme edge of the optic vesicles, ov, and through the anterior end of the notochord, nt. It is just cephalad to the anterior end of the pharynx and to the hypophysis. The chief purpose in showing this section is to represent the two large head-cavities, hc. The origin of these cavities may be discussed ...
— Development of the Digestive Canal of the American Alligator • Albert M. Reese
... wakened on election morning with the damaged optic swollen shut and sadly discolored. Realizing that this unfortunate condition would not win votes, Mr. Hopkins remained at home all day and nagged his long-suffering spouse, whose ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... should end, in contemplating herself only in the infinite pettinesses of her life. Herself and God, her confessor and the weekly wash, her preserves and the church services, and her uncle to care for, absorbed her feeble intellect. To her the atoms of life were magnified by an optic peculiar to persons who are selfish by nature or self-absorbed by some accident. Her perfect health gave alarming meaning to the least little derangement of her digestive organs. She lived under the iron ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... Baxter, in their still more arduous and long-drawn task. At last the eagle-eye of the squatter counted Bob's ten, accompanied by his spare horse, as he tailed the lot toward his camp; and the same aquiline optic tallied-off an aggregate of thirty-six to Baxter and Donovan— who, to my own private knowledge, had entered the paddock with thirty-four. This disposed ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... white between the blue sky and blue sea!), excellence of climate, warmth, dryness and clearness of air; and in all manner of household goods and stuff, care, order, daintiness of habits, leisure and affluence. All things these which, quite as much as any peculiarity of optic function, give for the healthy mind a sort of restfulness, of calm, of virtue, and I might almost say, of regal or priestly quality to white; a quality which suits it to the act of restoring our bodies with food and wine, above all, to the act of spiritual ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... new series of books from the pen of Oliver Optic is bound to arouse the highest anticipation in the minds of boy and girl readers. There never has been a more interesting writer in the field of juvenile literature than Mr. W. T. Adams, who, under his well-known pseudonym, is known and admired by ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... to come short, perspiration was streaming, and an unlucky blow on the nose set another stream flowing, while, all at once, a dab in the eye made the optic flinch, close its lid from intense pain, and refuse to open again, so that one-eyed like a regular old Cyclops, and panting like the same gentleman from the exertions of using his hammer— two in this case, and natural—Marcus ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... Mr. Bond, a bankrupt metal-broker, who had two hobbies—farming and astronomy; and, as Hogarth approached the yard- gate, he saw Mr. Bond, his two daughters, his servants, grouped round an optic tube mounted on a tripod. He asked permission to get the account-book, got it, in a few minutes was again passing through, and, as he went by, bowing his thanks, Mr. Bond said: "But—have ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... is taken to our brain, it is always collected in vats, so to say, intended for the use of one of our senses, and for that reason, a certain series of ideas, preferable to others, are aroused. Thus we see when the optic nerve is excited, and hear when those of the ear are moved. Let us here remark that taste and smell are rarely experienced in dreams. We dream of flowers, but not of their perfume; we see a magnificently arranged table, but have no perception of the ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... long time. Then he said huskily, "He's gone!" At the words the sound eye of the victim popped open with a suddenness that made my heart throw a somersault. It was as sane, calm, and undisturbed an optic as ever ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... well he might, that this taste of his quality would be quite sufficient for a little eighteen—gun sloop, close under his lee; but the fight was not to be so easily taken out of Deadeye, although even to his optic it was now high time to ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... of the auditory nerve and paralysis of the optic nerve are not necessary to ensure deafness and blind- 194:12 ness; for if mortal mind says, "I am deaf and blind," it will be so without an injured nerve. Every theory op- posed to this fact (as I learned in metaphysics) would 194:15 ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... considerable power over those of the neck, but none over my limbs....I dimly saw Mr. Coxwell in the ring, and endeavoured to speak, but could not do so; when in an instant black darkness came over me, and the optic nerve lost power suddenly. I was still conscious, with as active a brain as whilst writing this. I thought I had been seized with asphyxia, and that I should experience no more, as death would ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... - a fiber-optic submarine cable link encircling the continent of Africa. Arabsat - Arab Satellite Communications Organization (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia). Autodin - Automatic Digital Network (US Department of Defense). CB - citizen's band mobile radio ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... same time, one of the greatest obstacles to the view that it is essentially primitive and not merely a degenerate creature, is the entire absence of the paired organs of special sense, olfactory, optic and auditory, which are so characteristic of the higher vertebrates. Although it is true that there is a certain amount of gradation in the degree of development to which these organs have attained in the various orders, yet it is hardly sufficient to enable the imagination to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... ever comes when I have to depend on the thing I won't get astray; for truth to tell it would be no fun to find oneself lost on these upper reaches of the great Saskatchewan. Sit right down here, and squint your optic over this set of hen-tracks, made by the ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... to our sensibility, which needs to be just touched on here, is known by the name of the specific energy of the nerves. One and the same nerve-fibre always reacts in a precisely similar way, whatever the nature of the stimulus. Thus, when the optic nerve is stimulated in any manner, whether by light, mechanical pressure, or an electric current, the same effect, a sensation of light, follows.[27] In a usual way, a given class of nerve-fibre is ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... extraordinary string of anatomical, medical, scientific, and Talmudic questions about the optic nerves; the teeth; why a man lowers his head when thinking over things he has never known, but raises his head when thinking over what he once knew but has forgotten; the physiology of the digestive organs, the physiology of laughter; why a boy eats more than a man; why it is ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... as ether is physical matter, etheric sight depends upon the sensitiveness of the optic nerve while spiritual sight is acquired by developing latent vibratory powers in two little organs situated in the brain: the Pituitary body and the Pineal gland. Nearsighted people even, may have etheric vision. Though unable to read the print in a book, they may be able ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... riveted on that slight figure before him, as though he wished to absorb it through the optic nerves and hold it in his brain forever. He understood the situation perfectly. His brain worked slowly, but he had a keen sense of the values of things. This girl represented an entirely new species of humanity to him, but he knew where to place her. The prophets of old, when an angel first ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... optic Machine, by the Means of which are represented, on a Wall in the Dark, many Phantasms and terrible Appearances, but no Devil in all this, only that they are taken for the Effects of Magic, by those that are not acquainted with ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... manifestations or disabilities directly attributable to syphilis infection:— (i.) Affecting nervous system—e.g., gumma, locomotor, G.P.I., &c. (ii.) Affecting ear, eye, &c. (special senses)—e.g., optic atrophy, &c. (iii.) Affecting respiratory system—e.g., syphilitic laryngitis, &c. (iv.) Affecting digestive system—e.g., syphilitic stricture of rectum, &c. (v.) Affecting circulatory system—e.g., syphilitic angina, aneurism, &c. (vi.) Affecting spleen ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... Greek anatomist, however, who is recognized as such, is said to have been Alcmaeon. He is said to have made extensive dissections of the lower animals, and to have described many hitherto unknown structures, such as the optic nerve and the Eustachian canal—the small tube leading into the throat from the ear. He is credited with many unique explanations of natural phenomena, such as, for example, the explanation that "hearing is produced by the hollow bone behind the ear; for all hollow ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... of animal bodies is inhabited by animalcules. They have been found in the blood of the frog and the salmon, and in the optic fluid of fishes. Organic beings are found in the interior of the earth, into which the industry of the miner has made extensive excavations, sunk deep shafts, and thus revealed their forms; likewise, the smallest ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... attached the highest form of consciousness we know; but consciousness itself has neither parts nor magnitude. And consciousness itself is essentially greater than the very vastness which appals us, seeing that it embraces and envelops it. Enormous depths of space are pictured in my brain, through my optic nerve; and what eludes the magic mirror of my retina, my mind can conceive, apprehend, make its own. It is not even true to say that the mind cannot conceive infinity—the real truth (if I may for once ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... has not much to commend it as a place of residence. It is neither clean nor well built, while sights and smells the reverse of agreeable are constantly distressing the optic and olfactory nerves. And yet there are perhaps few places where an artist could find more charming subjects for his pencil—curious bits of architecture mingling with Nature in its most beautiful and grandest aspects, fine touches ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... use of" light, I do not merely mean that the eye is capable of seeing; I allude to the very precise relations that exist between this organ and the apparatus of locomotion. The retina of vertebrates is prolonged in an optic nerve, which, again, is continued by cerebral centres connected with motor mechanisms. Our eye makes use of light in that it enables us to utilize, by movements of reaction, the objects that we see to be advantageous, and to avoid those which we see to be injurious. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... child who stretches out his hand and grasps an object need not understand anything of the working of the muscles, nor of the electrical and chemical changes set up by the movement in muscles and nerves, nor need he elaborately calculate the distance of the object by measuring the angle made by the optic axes; he wills to take hold of the thing he wants, and the apparatus of his body obeys his will though he does not even know of its existence. So is it with the man who prays, unknowing of the creative force of his thought, of the living ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... a patch on the better eye," said the Doctor, "and he shall only be allowed to speculate with the imperfect optic. You must know, this fellow has always seen the greatest number, and the most hideous apparitions; he has not the courage of a cat in such matters, though stout enough when he hath temporal antagonists before him. I have placed ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... intelligence in the land. We have seen a highly intellectual and world-weary man, a cynic whose heart was somewhat imbittered by its large experience of human nature, take up one of Oliver Optic's books and read it at a sitting, neglecting his work in yielding to the fascination of the pages. When a mature and exceedingly well-informed mind, long despoiled of all its freshness, can thus find pleasure in a book for boys, no additional words ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... the hallucination, or are there various possible sorts of causes? Now defects in the eye, or in the optic nerve, to speak roughly, may cause hallucinations from without. An injured external organ conveys a false and distorted message to the brain and to the intelligence. A nascent malady of the ear may produce buzzings, and these may develop into hallucinatory ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... refection thrift, economy sleepy, soporific slumberous, somnolent live, reside rot, putrefy swelling, protuberant soak, saturate soak, absorb stinking, malodorous spit, saliva spit, expectorate thievishness, kleptomania belch, eructate sticky, adhesive house, domicile eye, optic walker, pedestrian talkative, loquacious talkative, garrulous wisdom, sapience bodily, corporeal name, appellation finger, digit show, ostentation nearness, propinquity wash, lave handwriting, chirography waves, undulations shady, umbrageous fat, corpulent ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... reads from above downwards, and represents diagrammatically the brain of a Fish, a Reptile, a Bird, a Mammal, and a Man. In each case the letter A marks a side view, and the letter B a top view. The small italics throughout signify the following homologous parts: m, medulla; cb, cerebellum; op, optic lobes; cr, cerebrum and thalamus; ol, olfactory lobes. The series shows a progressive consolidation and enlargement of the brain in general, and of the cerebrum and cerebellum in particular, which likewise exhibit continually advancing structure in respect of convolution. ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... have you know, Something of a boxing pro., So he knew the golden maxim: "He who eyes his man best whacks him." Shorty, when he saw the grim Optic that was turned on him, Thinking Jimmy's fist looked hard Prudently remained on guard. Canny Hun! And who can blame Longshanks if he did the same? But our hero, irritated, Grassed the third ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... pent the whole year through, Man views the world, as through an optic glass, On a chance holiday, and scarcely then, How by persuasion ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... the smallest fraction of a second withdrawn my gaze from Captain Lenoir's eyes, or allowed the barrel of my pistol to waver a hair's-breadth from his larboard optic, for I knew that if I did he would be upon me like lightning. But although he dared not move his limbs he was not afraid to use his tongue, angrily demanding what I meant by perpetrating such an ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... time he had been the best-dressed man in Sydney, giving the glad and glassy optic to every flapper whose clocked silk stockings caught his fancy. Some girl must have jilted him, and this was his revenge on the fluffy things, the choice of a life where none of them could feast their eyes on his immaculate masculine eligibility. ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... study of perception by means of the sense of sight. We see things in the external world through the medium of light which they direct upon our eyes. The light strikes the retina, and causes a sensation. The sensation brought to the brain by means of the optic nerve becomes the condition of the representation in consciousness of certain objects distributed in space.... We make use of the sensation which the light stimulates in the mechanism of the optic nerve to construct representations concerning the existence, form, and condition of external ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... building layers of communication protocols, as BESSER pointed out. By layering both physically and logically, a sense of scalability is maintained from local area networks in offices, across campuses, through bridges, routers, campus backbones, fiber-optic links, etc., up into regional networks and ultimately into national ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... little man laughed heartily at the success of his stratagem, and polished and fondled the great eye until that optic seemed to grow sore ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... On the other hand, when a limb is not used, as by Eastern fanatics, or when the nerve supplying it with nervous power is effectually destroyed, the muscles wither. So again, when the eye is destroyed the optic nerve becomes atrophied, sometimes even in the course of a few months.[734] The Proteus is furnished with branchiae as well as with lungs: and Schreibers[735] found that when the animal was compelled to live in deep water the branchiae ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... over the pitiful condition of the Armenians under Moslem rule, but has nothing to say anent her own awful record in India. It were well for John Bull to get the beam out of his own eye before making frantic swipes at the mote in the optic of the Moslem. The oppression of the children of Israel by the Egyptian Pharaohs, the Babylonian king and Roman emperors were as nothing compared to that suffered by the patient Bengalese at the hands of Great Britain. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... eye, n. optic. Associated Words: optics, optician, ocular, oculary, oculate, oculifonn, ophthalmology, ophthalmologist, ophthalmic, optometry, ophthalmostat, optometrist, chatoyant, chatoyment, cynosure, orbit, strabismus, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... in the animal economy for the production and loss of heat are themselves probably regulated by the central nervous system, there being a thermogenic centre—situated above the spinal cord, and according to some observers in the optic thalamus. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... that flaunt The obvious possession of today, To wear with me the spectacles that haunt The optic sense with wraiths of yesterday— These cobbled shores through which the traffic streams Have been the stage-set of successive towns, Where coffined actors postured out their dreams, And harlot Folly changed her thousand gowns. This corner-shop was Bull's Head Tavern, When ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... influence of darkness in causing degeneration of the eyes. He refers to experiments by Uhlenhuth, who transplanted eyes of young Salamanders into different parts of their bodies where they were no longer connected with the optic nerves. These eyes underwent a degeneration which was followed by a complete regeneration. He showed that this regeneration took place in complete darkness, and that the transplanted eyes remained normal when the Salamanders were kept in the dark for fifteen months. Hence the development of ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... which gemmed and gilt the grass in a sunny afternoon's drive near the blue lake, between the low oak-wood and the narrow beach, stimulated, whether sensuously by the optic nerve, unused to so much gold and crimson with such tender green, or symbolically through some meaning dimly seen in the flowers, I enjoyed a sort of fairy-land exultation never felt before, and the first drive amid the flowers gave me anticipation ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... who have not read some of the writings of this famous author, whose books are scattered broadcast and eagerly sought for. Oliver Optic has the faculty of writing books full of dash and energy, such as healthy ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... to chuck you over, So prepare for a bath in the Irish Sea." When BILL received this information, His dexter optic winked he. ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... exquisitely white and perfect teeth, a pale, clear complexion, and the reputation of being a most sensible woman. She was not a beauty, but she was good- looking; the weak points in her face being her eyes, which were mere inexpressive optic organs, and her mouth, which, when shut, seemed too much shut, just as if it were compressed by an effort of the will or by a spring. These, however, Zachariah thought minor matters, if, indeed, he ever noticed them. "The great thing was, that she was"— sometimes this and sometimes ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... referred to; but these may surely be attributed to an exaggerated activity of that particular side of Cardan's imagination which was specially prone to seize upon some figment of the brain, and some imperfectly apprehended sensation of the optic nerve, and fashion from these materials a tale of marvel. Delusions of this sort were common in reputed witches, as Reginald Scot writes—"They learne strange toongs with small industrie (as Aristotle and others affirme)."[258] The other charge preferred ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... like an electric shock that I must have lost my reason. In a few moments, however, this terror subsided; I felt certain that my thoughts were rational, and concluded that it was some affection of the optic nerve. But in a very few seconds I discovered by internal sensations that I was in motion, in a rapid, irregular, and accelerating motion. Awful horror again seized me; I screamed out a despairing cry ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... is in an almost rudimentary state, and is covered by a tendinous membrane and skin. In the common mole the eye is extraordinarily small but perfect, though many anatomists doubt whether it is connected with the true optic nerve; its vision must certainly be imperfect, though probably useful to the animal when it leaves its burrow. In the tucutuco, which I believe never comes to the surface of the ground, the eye is rather larger, but often ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... strong similarity about the brow and eyes which our second son David bears to his great-grandfather, High Sheriff Plunkett, and I do not question in the least that she believes the cast in the old gentleman's optic never to have existed save in the original portrait-painter's imagination. I must admit that, notwithstanding the changes made by local talent in my ancestor's physiognomy, I am occasionally struck myself with the strong resemblance ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... defective eyesight, so called, are in reality defective brain. The mechanism of the eye may be perfect, the retina and the optic nerve may faithfully perform their duties, but if the brain behind the eye be defective, the comprehension of the object or some of its properties is lost to the intelligence of the individual. Some people are "color blind." Their eyes are good enough, but they don't see colors; ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... strong and frequent. In seven minutes he breathed deeply, the eyelids closed, the pulse sank. In eight minutes he began to snore, but heard when called to. In nine minutes the eyes were suffused; the optic axes were directed upwards and outwards. At the end of twelve minutes a tooth was extracted, when he uttered an exclamation and laughed. On his return to himself, he said that he had felt the laceration, or tear, but had experienced no pain. He thought he had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... past he had realized that his optic nerves, punished and preyed upon by constant and unwholesome brilliancy, were nearing the point of collapse, and that all the other nerves in his body, frayed and fretted, too, were all askew and jangled. Cognizant of this he still could see no ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... The optic or visual, the palpebral or pupil, and the eyebrow agent. Each of these has its peculiar sense, and we shall ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... size of the occipital lobes is in proportion to the size of the optic tracts, and that the occipital lobes are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... fiery way, while the next, as its owner made some slight movement, it literally flashed as if sending forth scintillations of light, giving to his countenance a weird, strange aspect, emphasised by the peculiar fixed stare of his left optic, which suggested that it was doing the fixed, quiet, patient work of its master, while the other searched and flashed and sought for fresh subjects upon which its fellow might gaze. Whatever value such ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... Fiber-optic cable - a multichannel communications cable using a thread of optical glass fibers as a transmission medium in which the signal (voice, video, etc.) is in the form of a coded ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... months of a certain year a grim bandit infested the Texas border along the Rio Grande. Peculiarly striking to the optic nerve was this notorious marauder. His personality secured him the title of "Black Eagle, the Terror of the Border." Many fearsome tales are on record concerning the doings of him and his followers. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... the best means of obviating the present danger, while the persons whom he beheld glimmered before him, less like distinct and individual forms, than like the phantoms of a fever, or the phantasmagoria with which a disease of the optic nerves has been known to people a sick man's chamber. At length they assembled in the centre of the apartment where they had first appeared, and seemed to arrange themselves into form and order. A great number of black torches were successively lighted, and the scene became distinctly visible. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... William Fraser so pathetically laments. For folly, egotism, vanity, conceit, and stupidity, he had an amazing eye. He could not, owing to his short sight, read men's faces across the floor of the House, but he did not require the aid of any optic nerve to see the petty secrets of their souls. His best sayings have men's weaknesses for their text. Sir William's book gives many excellent ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Copious Pitch Bituminous Priest Sacerdotal Rival Emulous Root Radical Ring Annular Reason Rational Revenge Vindictive Rule Regular Speech Loquacious, garrulous, eloquent Smell Olfactory Sight Visual, optic, perspicuous, conspicuous Side Lateral, collateral Skin Cutaneous Spittle Salivial Shoulder Humeral Shepherd Pastoral Sea Marine, maritime Share Literal Sun Solar Star Astral, sideral, stellar Sunday ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... errors of judgment; for it is not with impunity that one suddenly releases a person, locked up for years in a dark room and drives him into dazzlingly-lighted spaces without a guide, a philosopher, or a friend by his side to lead him on the way. The mental, as well as the physical optic has to gradually become accustomed to so complete a change, and this fact was not sufficiently taken into consideration by all the detractors of the young monarch, when he, to speak very familiarly, leaped over ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... yesterday that she's been expecting to hear of a second wedding any day, as when one took place it always meant three, though she couldn't "fetch the third couple together, even in her mind's eye," which I have found to be usually a capacious and well filled optic. ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... The optic nerve has power so keen, That ev'ry object by it seen Is stamped upon the brain; But they of sluggish mental mold No vivid photograph will hold, And ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... were destined to a terrible defeat. Towards the end of the year 1839, still in the full vigour of his health and intellect, he suffered a paralysis of the optic nerve; and that eye, which for so long a term had kindled with critical interest over the volumes of so many literatures and so many languages, was doomed to pursue its animated course no more. Considering the bitterness of such a calamity to one ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... way out," agreed Jack, when they were in the corridor. "Now I've got to get some vinegar and brown paper for this optic or I'll ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... as they are pigmented; that the operation wounds the iris, allows pigment to escape, and thus permits of proliferation. We may accept this, and yet ask why it takes on a form of growth familiar to us only in connection with epiblast? The reply is: "Young cells when put into the optic cup always become transparent, no matter what their origin; it looks as if this were due to a chemical influence, exercised by the optic cup or ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... arms or my legs. As in the case of the arms, so all muscular power was lost in an instant from my back and neck. I dimly saw Mr. Coxwell, and endeavoured to speak, but could not. In an instant intense darkness overcame me, so that the optic nerve lost power suddenly; but I was still conscious, with as active a brain as at the present moment whilst writing this. I thought I had been seized with asphyxia, and believed I should experience nothing more, as death would come unless we speedily descended. Other thoughts were entering my ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... considered as the sentinel which guards the pass between the worlds of matter and of spirit, and through which all their communications are interchanged. The optic nerve is the channel by which the mind peruses the hand-writing of Nature on the retina, and through which it transfers to that material tablet its decisions and its creations. The eye is consequently the principal ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... account of the anatomy of the brain is fuller than that of any of his predecessors, but he does not appear to have well understood the inferior recesses, and his description of the nerves is confused by regarding the optic as the first pair, the third as the fifth, and the fifth as the seventh. The ancients believed the optic nerve to be hollow for the conveyance of the visual spirit, but Vesalius showed that no such tube existed. He observed the elevation and depression of the brain during respiration, but being ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... had ceased when the superior Fiend Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, Behind him cast. The broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe. His spear—to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great ammiral, were but a wand— He walked with, to ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... the East blinding was a common practice, especially in the case of junior princes not required as heirs. A deep perpendicular incision was made down each corner of the eyes; the lids were lifted and the balls removed by cutting the optic nerve and the muscles. The later Caliphs blinded their victims by passing a red-hot sword blade close to the orbit or a needle over the eye-ball. About the same time in Europe the operation was performed with a heated metal basin—the well known bacinare (used by Ariosto), as happened to Pier ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... (chromatophores) and the skin. But what makes the pigment-cells change? The fact that a blind flat-fish does not change its colour gives us the first part of the answer. The colour and the pattern of the surroundings must affect the eye. The message travels by the optic nerve to the brain; from the brain, instead of passing down the spinal cord, the message travels down the chain of sympathetic ganglia. From these it passes along the nerves which comes out of the spinal cord and control the skin. ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... upper surface of the head; whilst in others there is no visible external orifice whatever. However perfect the sight of fishes may be, experience has shown that this sense is of much less use to them than that of smelling, in searching for their food. The optic nerves in fishes have this peculiarity,—that they are not confounded with one another in their middle progress between their origin and their orbit. The one passes over the other without any communication; ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... announcement of a new series of books by Oliver Optic will delight boys all over the country. When they further learn that their favorite author proposes to 'personally conduct' his army of readers on a grand tour of the world, there will be a terrible scramble for excursion tickets—that ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... was accompanied by a stinging blow, one on the ear, one on the eye and one on the nose. The second made the bully's left optic black, and the third caused the blood to spurt freely. Then Andy landed another blow on Ritter's mouth, leaped to the ground, and shoved the ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... "hem!—I trust I don't intrude. Feel it my obligation to pay my respects, to—hem! to welcome you as a neighbor—as a neighbor. Arthur Bimby, humbly at your service—Arthur Bimby, once a man of parts though now brought low by abstractions, gentlemen, forces not apparent to the human optic, sirs. Still, in my day, I have been known about town as a downy bird, a smooth file, and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... from it, something, I cannot tell what, made me turn and cast a glance to the farther end of the room, when I saw, or seemed to see, a tall figure reaching up a hand to a bookshelf. The next instant, my vision apparently rectified by the comparative dusk, I saw no one, and concluded that my optic nerves had been ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... Thou hast no hue That man's frail optic sense can view; No sound the ear hears; odour none The smell attracts; all taste is gone At thy appearance; where doth fail A body, how can touch prevail? What even the brute beasts comprehend— To think thee such, I ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... the rising of the chase, his fingers would be plying at their task, like an old lady knitting. Like an experienced old-wife too, his digits had become so expert and conscientious, that his eyes left them alone; deeming optic supervision unnecessary. And on this trip of ours, when not otherwise engaged, he was quite as busy with his fingers as ever: unraveling old Cape Horn hose, for yarn wherewith to darn our woolen frocks; with great patches from the skirts of a condemned reefing jacket, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... kept soaked in a colored fluid called the retinal purple, which changes under the influence of light, somewhat in the same way that the film on a photographic plate does, thus forming pictures, which are translated by the rods and cones and telegraphed along the fibres of the optic nerve to the brain. Naturally, all parts of the retina are not equally sensitive to light; its centre, which is directly opposite the pupil of the eye, is far the most so, while those around the rim of the ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... at the pupils yourself, count; there is not the least susceptibility to the light; there is a paralysis of the optic nerve. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... mystic significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret it; do but look at him, and he is contented. May we not well cry shame on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor boon; which will waste its optic faculty on dried Crocodiles, and Siamese Twins; and over the domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, a live Dandy, glance with hasty indifference, and a scarcely concealed contempt! Him no Zoologist classes among the Mammalia, no Anatomist dissects with care: when did we see any injected ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... deny the susceptibility of a temperament like his, you deny the whole operation of externals upon character and action. You deny, for example, the success of the Roman Catholic Church which relies, for its moral effects, upon such optic appeals to the senses, and upon the ease with which transitory feelings can be transmuted into axioms of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... his toll, and lifts the bar That shuts the road to sun and star. If Venus only comes to time, (And prophets say she must and shall,) To-day will hear the tinkling chime Of many a ringing silver dime, For him whose optic glass supplies The crowd with astronomic eyes,— The ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... waves. This gradual augmentation of the impression made upon the wader is exactly analogous to the augmentation of light when we approach a luminous source. In the one case, however, the coarse common nerves of the body suffice; for the other we must have the finer optic nerve. But suppose the water withdrawn; the action at a distance would then cease, and, as far as the sense of touch is concerned, the wader would be first rendered conscious of the motion of the wheel by the blow of the paddles. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... centuries elapsed before the truth of this sagacious conjecture was unquestionably demonstrated. Selenography, as a branch of observational astronomy, dates from the spring of 1609, when Galileo directed his "optic tube" to the moon, and in the following year, in the Sidereus Nuncius, or "the Intelligencer of the Stars," gave to an astonished and incredulous world an account of the unsuspected marvels it revealed. In this remarkable little book we have the first attempt ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... "office," the only one on the river. I had heard so much about it from others, as well as from F., that I really did expect something extra. When I entered this imposing place the shock to my optic nerves was so great that I sank helplessly upon one of the benches, which ran, divan-like, the whole length (ten feet!) of the building, and laughed till I cried. There was, of course, no floor. A rude nondescript, in one corner, on which was ranged the ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... sitting on the branches, I hear them sing, and they fly and mate and build their nests in the branches; I see a dun-coloured aboriginal she-female, mongolianee, petite, squat-faced, And she has a cast in her sinister optic and a snub nose but her heart is true; And I gaze into her heart (which is true), and I find that she is musing (as indeed I often muse) on ME, Me Prononce, Me Imperturbe, ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... morbid in her misfortune. She carried it high aloft, with loud sounds and free gestures, made it flutter in the breeze as if it had been the flag of her country. It consisted mainly of a big red face, indescribably out of drawing, from which she glared at you through gold-rimmed aids to vision, optic circles of such diameter and so frequently displaced that some one had vividly spoken of her as flattening her nose against the glass of her spectacles. She was extraordinarily near-sighted, and whatever they did to other objects they magnified immensely the kind eyes behind them. ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... extraordinary glare. I do not believe that any human being ever lived whose eyes habitually wore that expression: only by a violent effort could the expression be produced, and then for a very short time, without serious injury to the optic nerves. The eyes were made as large as possible; and the thing after which the poor fellow had been struggling was that peculiar look which may be conceived to penetrate through the beholder, and pierce his inmost thoughts. I never beheld the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various |
