FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • More 'Elliptic' Quotes from Famous Books

... their inclinations, few had the hardihood to absent themselves from meeting, still less to ride out for pleasure, or to stroll through the woods or upon the bank of the river. A steady succession of vehicles— "thorough-braced" wagons, a few more stylish carriages with elliptic springs, and here and there an ancient chaise—tended from all quarters to the meeting-house. The horses, from the veteran of twenty years' service down to the untrimmed and half-trained colt, knew what the proprieties of the day required. They trotted soberly, with ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... which about twenty can still be made out, some few standing, others lying broken upon the ground. This outer circle enclosed a second of similar shape but lesser diameter, within which again were taro elliptic circles, the outer consisting of ten or twelve sandstone blocks some twenty-two feet high, standing in pairs, each pair united by a slab laid horizontally across, so as to form a trilithon. The inner ellipse was formed ...

— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... (syn C. brachypoda).—Himalayas, China and Japan, 1827. This is an exceedingly handsome species, of tabulated appearance, occasioned by the branches being arranged almost horizontally. The leaves are of large size, elliptic-ovate, and are remarkable for their autumnal tints. The elder-like flowers appear in June. They are pure white and arranged in large cymes. C. macrophylla variegata is a distinct and very ornamental form ...

— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster

... cannot be confidently asserted that any comet ever visible will not return. They may all belong to the solar system; but some will certainly be gone thousands of years before their fiery forms will greet the watchful eyes of dwellers on the earth. A comet that has an elliptic orbit may have it changed to [Page 128] parabolic by the accelerations of its speed, by attracting planets; or a parabolic comet may become elliptic, and so permanently attracted to the system by the retardations of attracting bodies. A comet of long period may be changed to one of short ...

— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren

... entitled to the same apology; namely, that he is never obscure from any confusion of thought, but, on the contrary, from too keen a perception of the truth, which may have seduced him at times into too elliptic a development of his opinions, and made him impatient of the tardy and continuous steps which are best adapted to the purposes of the teacher. For the fact is, that the laborers of the Mine (as I am accustomed to call them), or those who dig up the metal of truth, are seldom ...

— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... space. After 6.45 P.M. it moved backwards, or from the window, till [page 430] 10.40 P.M., when the last dot was made. Here, then, we have a distinct heliotropic movement, effected by means of six elongated figures (which if dots had been made every few minutes would have been more or less elliptic) directed towards the light, with the apex of each successive ellipse nearer to the window than the previous one. Now, if the light had been only a little brighter, the epicotyl would have bowed itself more to the light, as we may safely conclude from the previous trials; there would also have ...

— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... accurate power of movement, no doubt, lies in the motor impulse radiating in all directions, and whichever side of a tentacle it first strikes, that side contracts, and the tentacle consequently bends towards the point of excitement. The pedicels of the tentacles are flattened, or elliptic in section. Near the bases of the short central tentacles, the flattened or broad face is formed of about five longitudinal rows of cells; in the outer tentacles of the disc it consists of about six or seven rows; and ...

— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... that view. I assume and admit that as to a large part of Modern Geometry and of the Theory of Numbers, there is no present probability that these will find any physical applications. But among the remaining parts of Pure Mathematics we have the theory of Elliptic Functions and of the Jacobian and Abelian Functions, and the theory of Differential Equations, including of course Partial Differential Equations. Now taking for instance the problem of three bodies—unless this is to be gone on with by the mere improvement ...

— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... Latin verses upon the rapture of returning home, and to have breathed out his life in the anguish of thus reviving the images which for him were never to be realized.... The reader must not fancy any flaw in the Latin title. It is elliptic; revisere being ...

— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... her dark hair in elliptic waves, bound with glittering chains of pearl. Her eyes ...

— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin

... explained the doctrine of the sphere and the apparent motions of the planets, but they had no instruments capable of measuring angular distances. The ingenious epicycles of Ptolemy prepared the way for the elliptic orbits and laws of Kepler, which, in turn, conducted Newton to the discovery of the laws of gravitation—the grandest scientific discovery in ...

— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... an intelligible word. For, unfortunately, the villains of the piece plotted without any regard to dramatic fitness or to my interests. Immersed in a subject with which they were all familiar, they were allusive, elliptic, and persistently technical. Many of the words I did catch were unknown to me. The rest were, for the most part, either letters of the alphabet or statistical figures, of depth, distance, and, once or twice, of time. The letters of the alphabet recurred often, ...

— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... is solid, deeply radicating, swollen at the base or bulbous, floccose or mealy at the top, white; veil thin, floccose, or mealy, white, soon lacerated and attached in fragments to the margin of the pileus or evanescent. The spores are broadly elliptic, 7.5-10u ...

— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard

... degree. Then he said boldly that it was impossible that so good an observer as Tycho could have made a mistake of eight minutes, and added: "Out of these eight minutes we will construct a new theory that will explain the motions of all the planets." And he did it, with elliptic orbits having the sun in a ...

— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... analytical investigation of planetary disturbances, the disturbing force is usually divided into a radial and tangential force; the first changing the law of gravitation, to which law the elliptic form of the orbit is due. The radial disturbing force, therefore, being directed to or from the centre, can have no influence over the first law of Kepler, which teaches that the radius vector of each planet having the sun as the centre, describes equal areas in equal times. ...

— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... Megachile when cutting her neat ellipses out of the delicate material for her wallets, the robinia-leaves? What mental pattern guides her scissors? What system of measurement tells her the dimensions? One would like to picture the insect as a living pair of compasses, capable of tracing an elliptic curve by a certain natural inflexion of its body, even as our arm traces a circle by swinging from the shoulder. A blind mechanism, the mere outcome of its organization, would alone be responsible for its geometry. This explanation would tempt me if the large ...

— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... niches for statues surrounded by coupled columns resting on finely sculptured pedestals. The central or main niche is flanked on either side by quaintly contrived blank windows; and between the columns, at the depth of the recesses, are simple pilasters sustaining the elliptic arches, which serve to top and span the niches, the latter to be occupied by statues of the great creators and interpreters of the drama in every age and country. The finest Concord granite, from the best quarries in New Hampshire, is the material used in the entire facade, ...

— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... Silesia, lies in elliptic shape, spread on the top of Europe, partly girt with mountains, like the crown or crest to that part of the Earth;—highest table-land of Germany or of the Cisalpine Countries; and sending rivers into ...

— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... geometry and reflexion to understand how from the gravity of the planets, which bears them towards the sun, combined with some whirlwind which carries them along, or with their own motive force, can spring the elliptic movement of Kepler, which satisfies appearances so well. A man incapable of relishing deep speculations will at first applaud the Peripatetics and will treat our mathematicians as dreamers. Some old Galenist will do ...

— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz