"Optic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... re-election, therefore, 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
... that Allen Fenwick only imagines he has seen the apparition which repeats itself to his fancy. "But there are grounds for the suspicion" (says Dr. Hibbert, "Philosophy of Apparitions," p. 250), "that when ideas of vision are vivified to the height of sensation, a corresponding affection of the optic nerve accompanies the illusion." Muller ("Physiology of the Senses," p. 1392, Baley's translation) states the same opinion still more strongly; and Sir David Brewster, quoted by Dr. Hibbert (p. 251) says: "In examining these mental impressions, I have ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which it is continued, and with the nerves 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 ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... layer of gray cerebral substance." In fact, the ganglionic corpuscles of each eye may be considered as constituting a little brain, connected with the masses behind by the commissure, commonly called the optic nerve. We are prepared, therefore, to find these two little brains in the most intimate relations with each other, as we find the cerebral hemispheres. We know that they are directly connected by fibres that arch ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... no anatomical defect—Dr. Custer was right about that. The eyes are perfect, beautiful gray eyes, he says, and the optic nerves and auditory nerves are perfectly functional. The defect isn't there. It's deeper. Too deep ever to ...
— Second Sight • Alan Edward Nourse
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... yelled in pain, and put his hand up to the injured optic, which began to grow black rapidly. Then he struck out wildly half a dozen times. He was growing excited, while Dick was as calm as ever. Watching his opportunity, Dick struck out with all his force, and Baxter received a crack on the nose which caused him to fall ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... had been studying phrase books, 'je vwa.' But in reality he saw with difficulty, for a spark had got into his eye, and its companion optic, wandering as usual, was ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... law by saying, for example, that a sound is audible, when it consists of vibrations within the compass of the auditory nerve; that an object is visible, when either directly or by reflection, it sends forth luminiferous vibrations within the compass of the retina and the optic nerve. Vibrations below or above that compass make no impression at all, and the object remains invisible; as, for example, a kettle of boiling water in a dark room, though the kettle is sending forth heat vibrations closely akin ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... the frenzy of youth. More uncanny-looking eyes I had never encountered,—their possessor could not be, in any sense of the word, a clubable person. Owing, probably, to some peculiar formation of the optic-nerve one felt, as one met his gaze, that he was looking right through you. More obvious danger signals never yet were placed in a creature's head. The individual who, having once caught sight of him, still sought to cultivate their owner's acquaintance, had ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... of the structure. But when I say that the eye "makes 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. Now, of course, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... arrangements 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
... it also reveals abnormal conditions and changes in every part and organ of the body. Every organ and part of the body is represented in the iris of the eye in a well-defined area. The iris of the eye contains an immense number of minute nerve filaments, which through the optic nerves, the optic brain centers and the spinal cord are connected with and receive impressions from every nerve in the body. The nerve filaments, muscle fibers and minute blood vessels in the different areas of the iris reproduce the changing conditions in the corresponding parts or ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... of a well-proportioned maturity, she had an oval face and a high forehead, well-clustered with curly auburn hair. There was a peculiarity about her eyes—black they were or a very dark brown—they had something of that cast of optic vision which was remarkable in Cosimo, "Il Padre della Patria" and in Lorenzo, "Il Magnifico," as well as in other members ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... 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 ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... before the public during the present generation who has achieved a larger and more deserving popularity among young people than "Oliver Optic." His stories have been very numerous, but they have been uniformly excellent in moral tone and literary quality. As indicated in the general title, it is the author's intention to conduct the readers of this entertaining ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... opening of a 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 ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... yer 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' your poor father ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... 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
... changes like our moon; bright little Mercury; Saturn, with his disc-like ring, his belts and satellites; leaden-looking Neptune; ruddy Mars; the stars that look to us of a night bright points of light, opened out by that optic glass, and shown to be double, triple, and quadruple. Then too the different misty nebulas; the comets and the different-coloured stars—white, blue, and green. In short, endless wonders, my boy, such as excite, awe, and teach us how grand, how ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... appearance of his face. It was as if some strong anxiety had wasted it. The cheeks were sunken, and there was a wearied, puckered expression on the brow. And it seemed to me that his eyes were strange, not only the expression, but the physical seeming, as though the optic nerves and supporting muscles had suffered strain and ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... 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 ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... green flap over his left eye, was hard at work stooping over retorts and crucibles, discovering new antipathies in acids, again risking strange explosions similar to that whereby he had already lost the use of one optic; while in the lofty lodging-houses of the neighboring streets, indigent young students from all parts of France, were ironing their shabby cocked hats, or inking the whity seams of their small-clothes, prior to a promenade with ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... deep unsounded skies Shuddered with silent stars she clomb, And as with optic glasses her keen eyes Pierced thro' ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... incomplete material of AN UNDIVIDED UNION were left among the papers of the late William T. Adams ("Oliver Optic"), and the same notes that were to complete the "Blue and Gray—On Land" series also closed the life-work of America's ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... course, it was easy for him to invent a plausible excuse for this mishap; he had run slap against a door when getting up in the dark. And, of course, nobody believed him, though only a select few understood the true origin of his damaged optic. ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... It seemed to do it slowly, lazily. Much of the debris was flung out from the mass, but raw energy of boiling vapors chased it, overtook it, and then it too was vapor. The light emitted from the vaporizing collection of bodies would have been optic nerve searing if Goil and I had not been looking at it through the screens. The vapor continued to expand and spread until it looked like ...
— Jack of No Trades • Charles Cottrell
... 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 ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... affirmed that the total loss of sight resulted from sleeping in the moonlight." [392] This was sad enough; but it was antecedently probable. No doubt a boy of thirteen who for disobedience was cast out of home in such a place as London had a hard lot, and went supperless to his open bed. His optic nerves were young and sensitive, and the protracted light so paralysed them that the morning found them closed "in endless night." This was a purely natural result: to admitting it, reason opposes no demur. But we must object, for truth's sake, to the tendency to account for natural ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... was lost in an instant from my back and neck. I dimly saw Mr. Coxwell in the ring, and endeavoured to speak, but could not do so; when in an instant intense 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 come unless we speedily descended. Other thoughts were actively entering my mind when ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... which make up the optic nerve, or nerve of sight, are branches of nerve cells in the eye, and extend into the brain stem. Light striking the eye starts nerve currents, which run along these axons into the brain stem. Similarly, the axons of the nerve of smell are branches ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... optics is the 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 ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... garish presences 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 ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... to which the mind is most directly and intimately related is the nervous system. The sense organs themselves are merely modifications of the nerve ends together with certain mechanisms for enabling stimuli to act on the nerve ends. The eye is merely the optic nerve spread out to form the retina and modified in certain ways to make it sensitive to ether vibrations. In addition to this, there is, of course, the focusing mechanism of the eye. So for all the sense ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... doubt "calculated," as 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 ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... 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 be ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... and dodging about the human ring, was indulged in by Dick, but William foiled each blow, and as the Cambridge man inadvertently rubbed his swollen eye, the Bard landed a stinging blow on the left optic of Milton and sent him into the arms of ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... call the attention of visitors to the 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 Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... devising 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... made on," and vanished at a wink, only to appear in other places; and by and by not only islands, but refulgent and revolving lights began to stud the darkness; light-houses of the mind or of the wearied optic nerve, solemnly shining and winking as we passed. At length the mate himself despaired, scrambled on board again from his unrestful perch, and announced that we had missed our destination. He was the only man of practice in these waters, our sole pilot, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... These are 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 cup are dull. This ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... and is placed in the 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; so that the nerve which comes from ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... be upset by seeming contradictions. If, however, I am aware of the medium and its nature, then I am not deceived, and what I see is "reality," since it is as natural and real for the fly to look larger through the optician's lense, as to look smaller through the optic lense. I cannot call one aspect more "real" than the other, for both are equally right and true under the given conditions. For these reasons I should object to consider Mother Juliana's "bodily showings" as hallucinations, so far as the term seems ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... 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, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... effect was produced on his countenance and his mind; enough that he saw a fine thing, but not so fine as the idea cited above; which has been between the two eyes of humanity ever since women were sought in marriage. With yonder old gentleman it may have been a ghostly hair or a disease of the optic nerves; but for us it is a real growth, and humanity might profitably imitate him in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 look ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... instantly to the exterior surface, and torrent-like contracts it back again in redoubled fury upon the brain, and leaves the countenance pale and ghastly. It deranges in a great measure the mind, and unfits it for useful action. It darts its electric fire of vengeance along the optic nerve, expands the retina, and gives to every object a magnified and false appearance, while the very eye-balls by a wild and savage glare proclaim the dreadful storm that is raging within, and pouring the poisonous streams of premature death through all the healthful ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... to be contended with are that the ethmoid cells may be mistaken for the sphenoids; that we may go too low and enter the pons and medulla; that, laterally, we may enter the cavernous sinus, and above, that we may injure the optic nerve. ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... of a thing or appearance which is perceived by the eye alone, independently of the form of the thing; subjectively, a sensation peculiar to the organ of vision, and arising from the optic nerve. ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... perceived other than the natural man. Shakespeare's men are always "a little lower than the angels;" whereas a gentleman might fittingly stand among angels as a brother. This one star never swung across the optic-glass of our great Shakespeare. That spiritual-mindedness which is life he scarcely possessed. This was his limitation. Spenser stood higher on this mount of vision. He conceived and executed a picture of pure womanhood, and, had he attempted, might have sketched a wondrous face and figure of ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... pent the whole year through, Man views the world, as through an optic glass, On a chance holiday, and scarcely then, How by ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 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 ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... 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 ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... 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, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... this kind by instant storm—one sits down awhile before it, as beleaguers say. Graham's hand is like himself, Lucy, and so is his seal—all clear, firm, and rounded—no slovenly splash of wax—a full, solid, steady drop—a distinct impress; no pointed turns harshly pricking the optic nerve, but a clean, mellow, pleasant manuscript, that soothes you as you read. It is like his face—just like the chiselling of his features: do ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Murray Grayden Casket of Diamonds Oliver Optic The Boy Railroader Matthew White, Jr. Treasure of South Lake Farm ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... about 650,000 telephones; 177 telephones/1,000 persons; progress on installation of fiber optic cable and construction of facilities for mobile cellular phone service remains in the negotiation phase for joint venture agreement local: NA intercity: NA international: international connections to other former republics ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... 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 ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... anything about it in the scientific journals. Let me give you a brief explanation: Light strikes the retina of the eye; the rods and cones pass on impulses to the bipolar cells, which send them on to the optic nerve, which goes ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... 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
... an 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 same impression and the same idea we can form ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... the skull into four regions, corresponding to what he called an ear vertebra, at the back, through which the auditory nerves passed; a jaw vertebra, in the sphenoidal region, through which the nerves to the jaws passed; an eye vertebra in front, pierced by the optic nerves, and again in front a nose vertebra, the existence of which he doubted at first. Quite rightly, he discriminated between the ordinary bones of the skull and the special structures surrounding the inner ear which he declared to be additions derived from another source. So far it cannot be ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... 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 its individuality and are its various physical qualities, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... in the fire of divine feeling, His body as a phantom. They could not admit that He lived the real life of a real man. They could not see the value of such a life. Neo-Platonism had paralysed their optic nerve. Thinkers such as the Christologians of Alexandria, imbued with the spirit of Neo-Platonism, had no motive for preserving the distinct subsistence of Christ's human nature. It was their boast that their Ideal had faced and overcome and trampled ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... the 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 that ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... the illusion is physical rather than psychical, of the sense rather than of the intelligence. It commences at night: the incubator begins by seeing nocturnal visions, often of a photopsic* character, or hearing nocturnal sounds, neither of which have any material existence, being conveyed to his optic or auricular nerves not from without, but from within, by the agency of a disordered brain. These the reason, hitherto unimpaired, combats at first, especially when they are nocturnal only; but being reproduced, and becoming diurnal, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... 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 ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... my facetious tone. She had eloquent brown eyes—the Inneses are fair, and are prone to a grayish-green optic that is better for use than appearance—and they seemed now to be clouded ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... premature explosion of a dynamite charge had been 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, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... a thin highly vascular membrane of a dark brown or chocolate color and is pierced behind by the optic nerve and in this situation is ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... to a window overlooking the Ohio canal. 'Do you see that building?' said he, pointing to a low structure on the heel path side, extending partly over the canal. I intimated that the fabric in question produced a distinct impression on the optic nerves, and inquired its use. 'Weigh-lock' he shrieked; 'go ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... God? 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
... of flesh but one of manufacture. It is placed in sensitive connection with the optic nerve, on which images are thrown by the delicate mechanism of the false eye. The sight thus obtained is almost one-half as distinct as that which is enjoyed by the ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... better known and loved by boys and girls through his pseudonym "Oliver Optic," was born July 30, 1822, in the town of Medway, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, about twenty-five miles from Boston. For twenty years he was a teacher in the Public Schools of Boston, where he came in close contact ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... scarce 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 ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... the pupil of the eye to dilate, whereas, if the person in question had only thought of the dilatation of the pupil, the mere wish to dilate it would not have brought about the result, inasmuch as the motion of the gland, which serves to impel the animal spirits towards the optic nerve in a way which would dilate or contract the pupil, is not associated in nature with the wish to dilate or contract the pupil, but with the wish to look at remote or very near objects. Lastly, he maintained that, although every motion of the ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... lying motionless for half an hour or so, waiting 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, panneling the seats of our ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... some success, as he alleged, to investigate the cause. It appeared to him "that the strong vivid light evolved from the numerous gas-lamps on the stage so powerfully stimulated the brain through the medium of the optic nerves, as to occasion a preternatural determination of blood to the head, capable of producing headache or giddiness: and if the subject should at the time laugh heartily, the additional influx of blood which takes place, may rupture a vessel, the consequence of which will be, from the effusion ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... an art to "read the mind's construction in the face." But, then, in every species of reading, so much depends upon the eyes of the reader; if they are blear, or apt to dazzle, or inattentive, or strained with too much attention, the optic power will infallibly bring home false reports of what it reads. How often do we say, upon a cursory glance at a stranger, "What a fine open countenance he has!" who, upon second inspection, proves to have ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... throwing almost the entire force of the battery into the wires at once, the load was too heavy for them. A safety fuse blew out, causing the flare and the explosion, and a piece of the soft lead-like metal had hit the red-haired lad in the eye. Tom's fist had completed the work on the other optic, and for several days thereafter Andy Foger remained in seclusion. When he did go out there were many embarrassing questions put to him, as to when he had had the fight. Andy didn't care to answer. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... acquaintance called it 'Hog's-eye.' Did decency permit I could show conclusively how Whall and Bullen are right and the mere collector wrong. It must suffice, however, for me to say that the term 'Hog's-eye' or 'Hog-eye' had nothing whatever to do with the optic of the 'man' who was sung about. I could multiply instances, but this one is typical and ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... Oliver Optic owes his popularity to a pleasant style, and to a ready sympathy with the dreams, hopes, aspirations, and fancies of the young people for whom he writes. He writes like a wise, over-grown boy, and his books have therefore a freshness and raciness ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... 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 ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... Popular, populous, public, epidemical, endemical Point Punctual Pride Superb, haughty Plenty 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 Dominical Spring Vernal Summer Estival Seed Seminal Ship Naval, nautical Shell Testaceous Sleep ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... of the eye, formed by nervous filaments spreading from the optic nerve, and serving for the perception of the ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in ...
— The Yellow Wallpaper • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... came to consciousness, hours afterward, she opened her eyes on midnight darkness, though the room was flooded with sunlight. The optic nerve had been injured, the doctor said. It was doubtful if she would ever be able ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... 1.40 grain euphthalmine inserted, and examination of eye grounds showed no optic atrophy. The right eye ground (retina) was slightly higher in color than ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... 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 boys ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... stags. Same time might prefer a tie undone or something. Trousers? Suppose I when I was? No. Gently does it. Dislike rough and tumble. Kiss in the dark and never tell. Saw something in me. Wonder what. Sooner have me as I am than some poet chap with bearsgrease plastery hair, lovelock over his dexter optic. To aid gentleman in literary. Ought to attend to my appearance my age. Didn't let her see me in profile. Still, you never know. Pretty girls and ugly men marrying. Beauty and the beast. Besides I can't be so if Molly. Took off her hat to show her hair. Wide brim. Bought to hide her face, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... of a nervous illness is well illustrated by two cases reported by Thaddeus Hoyt Ames.[39] A young woman, the drudge of the family, suddenly became hysterically blind, that is, she became blind despite the fact that her eyes and optic nerves proved to be unimpaired. She remained blind until it was proved to her that a part of her welcomed the blindness and had really produced it for the purpose of getting away from the monotony of ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... Apparently the material in the ear is like a bit of gunpowder, capable of being exploded by certain kinds of external excitation; but neither the gunpowder nor the material in the ear develops any energy other than that in it at the outset. In the same way the optic nerve has, at its end, a bit of mechanism readily excited by light vibrations of the ether, and hence the optic nerve will always be excited when ether vibrations chance to have an opportunity of setting the optic machinery in motion. And so on with the other senses. Each sensory nerve ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... Abner Dean, Assemblyman from Angel's. The loss of the Honorable Mr. Dean's right eye in an early pioneer fracas did not prevent him from looking into the dim vista of the future and discovering with that single unaided optic enough to fill three columns of the "Star." "It is not too extravagant to say," he remarked with charming deprecation, "that Indian Spring, through its own perfectly organized system of inland transportation, the confluence of its North Fork with the Sacramento River, and their ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... distinct as that of a geometrical diagram. For this reason Mr. Poe has no sympathy with Mysticism. The Mystic dwells in the mystery, is enveloped with it; it colors all his thoughts; it affects his optic nerve especially, and the commonest things get a rainbow edging from it. Mr. Poe, on the other hand, is a spectator ab extra. He ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... an 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 harder to ascend ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... need an optic glass, Which were your choice? A lens to drape In ruby, emerald, chrysopras, Each object—or reveal its shape ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... otherwise have written so 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 of composition was ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... grace the Duke, whether irresistibly carried on by the full tide of harmony, or whether to impress the strangers with a proper idea of his consequence, chose to sing his ditty to an end before addressing them, though, during the whole time, he closely scrutinized them with his single optic. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... motion were in the least affected. I can hardly tell you how thankful I was, when, after that dreary and almost despairing interval of utter darkness, some gleam of daylight became visible to him once more. I had feared that paralysis had seized the optic nerve. A sort of mist remained for a long time; and, indeed, his vision is not yet perfectly clear, but he can read, write, and walk about, and he preaches TWICE every Sunday, the curate only reading the prayers. YOU can well ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... 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
... rapidity of vibrations are distributed into different parts of the organ). But this discriminated manifold is a manifold of pitches, not of positions. How does it happen that the manifold conveyed by the optic nerve appears in consciousness as spatial, and that the relation between its elements is seen as a ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... 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
... eggs gave rise to one-eyed embryos. "When the embryos were studied the one-eyed condition was found to result from the union or fusion of the 'anlagen' of the two eyes. Cases were observed which showed various degrees in this fusion; it appeared as though the optic vessels were formed too far forward and ventral, so that their antero-ventro-median surfaces fused. This produces one large optic cup, which in all cases gives more or less evidence of its double ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... 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. The transference of motion from the paddles ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... strayed over from Tucson; 'I gives it out cold, meanin' tharby no offence to our Tucson friend—I gives it out cold that Hoppin' Harry used to be a t'rant'ler. First,' continyoos the Colonel, stackin' Harry up mighty scientific with his optic jest showin' over his glass, 'first I allows he's a toad. Not a horned toad, which is a valyooed beast an' has a mission; but one of these yere ornery forms of toads which infests the East. This last reptile is vulgar-sluggish, a anamile ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Child. This needless use of the adjective for the noun is probably supposed to be humorous, like "canine" for dog, "optic" for eye, "anatomy" for body, and the like. Happily the ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... 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 ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... title is conducive to its perusing, and its reading to anticipation. For the volume is but the first of the Old Glory Series, and the imprint is that of the famed firm of Lee and Shepard, whose name has been for so many years linked with the publications of Oliver Optic. As a matter of fact, the story is right in line with the productions of that gifted and most fascinating of authors, and certainly there is every cause for congratulation that the stirring events of our recent war ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... Anderson, Indiana, is all American, with the exception of a glass eye. The substitute optic is alien. Gary tried to enlist in the U. S. Marine Corps at their recruiting station in Louisville, Ky., but was rejected when his infirmity was discovered ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... 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 by the liquid ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... 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 ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... small heavenly space, Ringed with the tree-trunk's leafy grace, While upward grins his ghastly face As if some wild-wood Satyr, Some gnomish Ptolemy should dare Up that dark optic tube to stare, As all unveiled she floated there, Poor maiden moon, straight ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes |
