"Compasses" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a difficulty in understanding how ideas can be causes, which to us seems to be as much a figure of speech as the old notion of a creator artist, 'who makes the world by the help of the demigods' (Plato, Tim.), or with 'a golden pair of compasses' measures out the circumference of the universe (Milton, P.L.). We can understand how the idea in the mind of an inventor is the cause of the work which is produced by it; and we can dimly imagine how ...
— Sophist • Plato
... to a creek, and pointed out the place where he had crossed. Jackey said "I threw him down one fellow compass somewhere here." It was immediately found, it was one of Kater's prismatic compasses, the name Chislett, London, engraved on the back. Jackey then went to a place where he "plant him sextant," but the flood had been over the spot and washed it away. When returning I found the trough for an artificial horizon washed upon the banks of the creek, this had been left with the ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... were cleaned with a hoe and broom; it looks as if it had been brushed. The little beds that stand out so sharply against the yellow gravel of the walks look, not as if they had been dug by a cord, but as if they were drawn on the ground with a ruler and compasses, the box edging has the air of being daily attended to by the most accurate barber in town with comb and razor. And yet the blue coat which, if one stands on the piazza, one may see twice daily stepping into the little garden and every ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... the air like a burgee. Next thing I knew we was scooting back towards Dillaway's, with the sail catching every ounce that was blowing. Jonadab was braced across the tiller, and there, behind us, was the Honorable Philip Catesby-Stuart, flat on his back, with his blanket legs looking like a pair of compasses, and skimming in whirligigs over the slick ice towards Albany. HE hadn't had nothing to hold onto, you understand. Well, if I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have b'lieved that a human being could spin ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... swollen feet." A person with no recognized position, but one who occasionally does inferior work of this nature for us, recently surprised Kin Yen without warning, and found him in his sumptuously appointed picture-room, busy with compasses and tracing-paper. About the place were scattered in elegant confusion several of his recent masterpieces. From the subsequent conversation we are in a position to make it known that in future this refined and versatile person will confine himself entirely to illustrations of processions, funerals, ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
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