"Focus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mind free of disease. Furthermore, we talk of objects as things of secondary importance and the mind as everything. Now I am firmly convinced that the mind of man, so far from being a thing apart from the objects that form its environment, is, in fact, nothing else but a mirror or focus upon which objects register their impressions and that all the thinking in the world is done not really by the mind but by the objects that form our thoughts and the reasons, utterly divorced from what we call human ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... hypermetropia, or morbidly long sight: in this affection, the organ, instead of being spherical, is too flat from front to back, and is often altogether too small, so that the retina is brought too forward for the focus of the humours; consequently a convex glass is required for clear vision of near objects, and frequently even of distant ones. This state occurs congenitally, or at a very early age, often in several children of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... her knees, at the window, and prayed for strength, wisdom, and courage. She could realise absolutely nothing. She had thought so much and so continuously, that all mental vision was out of focus and had become a blur. Even his dear face had faded and was hidden from her when she frantically strove to recall it to her mental view. Only the actual fact remained clear, that in a few short minutes she would be taken to the room where he lay. She would see the face she had not ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... warehouses crowded with goods, and the women and children of our present factory towns. By fixing our attention on people instead of things, we should almost certainly secure more and better things; but, regardless of cost, we must change the focus of our attention. ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... things in the rest of the world seem tame and inconsequential by comparison. I am not purposing to describe them. By good fortune I had not read too much about them, and therefore was able to get a natural and rational focus upon them, with the result that they thrilled, blessed, and exalted me. But if I had previously overheated my imagination by drinking too much pestilential literary hot Scotch, I should have ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... multitudinous knowledges, its aroused conscience, its spurred and yet thwarted sympathies, its new incitements to egotism also, and new tools and appliances for egotism to use,—placed, as it were, in the focus of a vast whispering-gallery, where all the sounds of heaven and earth came crowding, contending, incessant upon his ear? One sees at a glance how the serious thought and poetry of Greece cling to a few master facts, not being compelled to fight always with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... is the way with morbid impulses, the moment she ceased to be alone. The first word was sufficient to take her out of herself, to recall her to her normal state, and to readjust her view of life, setting it back to the proper focus. But still she looked out at the world from a low level, if healthy; a dull, dead level, the mean temperature of which was chilly, while the atmosphere threatened to vary only from stagnant apathy to boisterous discontent, positive, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... progress. We are still childishly pleased when we see the further subdivision of labor going on, because the quantity of the output is increased thereby, and we apparently are unable to take our attention away from the product long enough to really focus it upon the producer. Theoretically, "the division of labor" makes men more interdependent and human by drawing them together into a unity of purpose. "If a number of people decide to build a road, and one digs, ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... processes to hurried growth of the overstimulated brain. The result is a type of child with a puny body and an excitable brain,—the neurotic. The young eye, for example, is too flat (hypermetropic)—made to focus only on objects at a distance. Close application to print, or even to weaving mats or folding bits of paper accurately, causes an overstrain on the eye, which not only results in the chronic condition known as myopia,—short-sightedness,—so common ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... treatment,—not of Marlborough, whom he regarded only as he would have done a pair of military boots or a holster-pistol of superior excellence, for the uses that were in him,—but of the Kaiser Karl his own sublime self, the heart and focus of Political Nature; left in this manner, now when the sordid English and Dutch declined spending blood and money for him farther. "Ungrateful, sordid, inconceivable souls," answered Karl, "was there ever, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... save matches, and holding the mirror in one hand and the burning-glass in the other, I worked myself into a suitable position for the experiment. Babemba and the witch-doctor were arguing so fiercely that neither of them seemed to notice what I was doing. Getting the focus right, I directed the concentrated spark straight on to Imbozwi's greased top-knot, where I knew he would feel nothing, my plan being to char a hole in it. But as it happened this top-knot was built up round something of a highly ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... eyes, seen on the evening of our arrival, after a fifteen miles' walk, and, seen, too, in the glow of a singularly angry-looking evening sky, Livorno Bay, with its derelict barque to focus one's gaze, presented a spectacle almost terrifying in its desolation. Years must have passed since anything edible could have been found on board the Livorno. Yet I hardly think I should exaggerate if I said ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... sought deeply, through her reasoning powers, to find a means whereby she might be instrumental in helping out of their difficulties her several friends whom she so dearly loved. She believed that she had succeeded in hitting upon a scheme which would, at least, bring things to a focus. She was sure that, if she could bring all the parties together under one roof, matters would straighten themselves without much outside assistance. Jack and Sally owned a beautiful country place, within easy motoring distance of the city, ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... soldier's life, and used to war; on the other, he was supercilious as regards the provincials, opinionated on every subject connected with the narrow limits of his professional practice, much disposed to fancy the British empire the centre of all that is excellent in the world, and Scotland the focus of, at least, all moral excellence in that empire. In short, he was an epitome, though on a scale suited to his rank, of those very qualities which were so peculiar to the servants of the Crown that were sent into the colonies, as these servants estimated themselves in ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... were holding Eva close to the floor, while now from the fire god's eyes a blinding glare of flame blazed forth, the two rays converging and scorching the very ground as they traveled slowly nearer and nearer, in their fatal focus, to ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... a passionate gesture, "To gather the straying thoughts of men into one burning focus—and turn THAT fire on ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... some time gaining the proper focus, but when I once had the distant vessel caught fairly in the lens, ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... aera as contemporary with Croesus and Solon (B.C. 570,) about a century after Psammeticus (Psamethik 1st) threw Egypt open to the restless Greek.[FN233] From Africa too the Fable would in early ages migrate eastwards and make for itself a new home in the second great focus of civilisation formed by the Tigris-Euphrates Valley. The late Mr. George Smith found amongst the cuneiforms fragmentary Beast-fables, such as dialogues between the Ox and the Horse, the Eagle and the Sun. In after centuries, when the conquests of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Sainte-Beuve, thinks he can trace a marked rise even in Bossuet's style from the moment he became a courtier of Louis XIV. The King brought men together, placed them in a position where they were induced and urged to bring their talents to a focus. His court was alternately a high-bred gala and a stately university. If we contrast his life with those of his predecessor and successor, with the dreary existence of Louis XIII and the crapulous lifelong debauch of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... that he spoke. At the same instant the stunned eyes found their focus—and found her beside his stirrup, leaning wide from her seat in sweet concern, one gloved hand resting on the pommel of ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... Inn that she had conceived as a project so unimaginably fine? Who were these shadow people that came and went there? Who was she? Why with all her vitality and all her hungry yearning for life and adventure couldn't she even believe in her own substantiality and focus? Wasn't life even real enough for a creature such as she to ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... indecision whether Hume or Buckle will weigh heavier on his page. Or if one of them looks up from his desk in a blurred near-sighted manner, it is because his eyes have been so stretched upon the distant centuries, that they can hardly focus on a room. If a scholar chances to sneeze because of the infection, let it be his consolation that the dust arises from the most ancient and respected authors! Pages move silently about with tall dingy tomes in their arms. Other tomes, whose use is past, they bear off ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... unburdened his soul would she be able, she knew, to focus his complete attention ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... former happy home in safety; my second, to jump up, clap my hands, shout, and run up and down the deck, with no other object in view than that of giving vent to my excited feelings. Then I went below for the telescope, and spent nearly ten minutes of the utmost impatience in vainly trying to get a focus, and in rubbing the skin nearly off my eyes, before I discovered that having taken off the large glass to examine the phosphoric water with I had omitted ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... colonies of Spain, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands, and that the people here, who can obtain what land they choose and till it without rent, should not grumble at paying this small tax to the mother country. However it be, I fear that troubles will come, and, this place being the head and focus of the party hostile to England, my husband, feeling himself out of accord with all his neighbors, saying a few loyal gentlemen like himself, is thinking much and seriously of selling our estate here and of moving away into the new countries of the West, where he will be free from ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... of his former gentility about Barnet's appearance and bearing to protect him from this; the police, too, had other things to think of that night, and he was permitted to reach the galleries about Leicester Square—that great focus ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... dressed persons. Vance heard himself called by name. He had forgotten the London world,—forgotten, amidst his midsummer ramblings, that the London season was still ablaze; and there, stragglers from the great focus, fine people, with languid tones and artificial jaded smiles, caught him in his wanderer's dress, and walking side by side with the infant wonder of Mr. Rugge's show, exquisitely neat indeed, but still in a coloured ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... audiences. Such questions of chance influence of trifles upon the greater events of life is a constant theme of speculation among the pragmatics; no petty detail is overlooked in the possibility of its portentous consequences. Walter Shandy's hyperbolic philosophy turned about such a focus, the exaltation of insignificant trifles into mainsprings of action. Shandy ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... absolute of the roycean type (similarly sterile) by its pragmatic treatment of the problem of knowledge. As the views of knowledge, reality and truth imputed to humanism have been those so far most fiercely attacked, it is in regard to these ideas that a sharpening of focus seems most urgently required. I proceed therefore to bring the views which I impute to humanism in these respects into focus as briefly as ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... bark just enough to come to the first light under coating, which is somewhat moist. With a lead pencil make an outline of the inscription to be burnt on the tree and bring, the rays of a large magnifying glass not quite to a fine focus on the same. The tree will be burnt along the pencil marks, and if the glass is not held in one spot too long, the inscription will be burnt in as evenly as if it had been written. —Contributed by Stewart H. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... had left me in one of the two enormous rooms that were allotted to me, I threw myself into an arm-chair and tried to focus the extraordinary imaginative impression which this ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... a stereoscopic pair of photographs, they are placed at the same distance from the eyes as the length of the focus of the lens used in producing them, then without doubt the distance between the eyes, viz. about two and a quarter {228} inches, is the best difference between the two points of view to produce a perfectly natural ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... which beats upon the throne is as a rushlight in comparison with the electric glare which our newspapers now focus upon the public man in Lee's position. His character has been subjected to that ordeal, and who can point to a spot upon it? His clear, sound judgment, personal courage, untiring activity, genius for war, absolute devotion to his State, mark him out as a public man, as a patriot to be forever ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... in order to keep the pictures from running off their canvases onto the floor while being painted. But with people, his first likes and dislikes were definite and usually final, and this quality of personal consistency had come to a fixed focus on Helen Maitland. ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... chiefesses and common women without distinction, this king has made the Hawaiian nobility, the present alii say, bastard and dishonored. The chiefs descended from Keawe conceal their origin, and are by no means flattered when reminded of it. From Keawe down, the genealogies become a focus of disputes, and it would be really dangerous for the rash historian who did not spare the susceptibilities ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... alone, and rather late; Rebecca had come some time before with one of her girl mates who had stopped for her. Barnabas, slender and handsome in his best suit, advancing with a stern and almost martial air, tried not to see Charlotte Barnard; but it was as if her face were the natural focus for his eyes, which they could not escape. However, Charlotte was not talking to Thomas Payne; he was not even very near her. He was already in the top of a cherry-tree picking busily. Barney saw his trim dark ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... pried his thoughts away from aborigines and heat, and tried to focus his mind elsewhere. He didn't understand psionic processes, he thought; but then, nobody did, really, as far as he knew. ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... woman's eyes seemed to grow small in her wrinkled face, as if directing themselves with effort upon something minute. They looked straight into the eyes of her daughter, but had a more distant focus. The fixed gaze continued for nearly ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... hand in acknowledgment, and rolled his cigar from corner to corner of his mouth. "Oh, I've lost a lot more in my time, Judge, but with a squint in my eye! But I'm doing this with no astigmatism. I've got the focus." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the north, on this Red Sea littoral, is a province of much more importance, the Hejaz, in which are situate the most holy of cities in the Moslem world, Mecca and Medina. To Christians, the Hejaz is forbidden ground. To Mahomedans, it is the focus of pilgrimage from all parts of the world. The Sultan of Turkey, as the ruler of Mecca, is looked up to by the Sunni or orthodox Mahomedans in all lands as the spiritual head of their Church. Though rulers ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... the amphitheatre now sees the Emperor re-enter his box and take his place as Androcles, desperately frightened, but still marching with piteous devotion, emerges from the other end of the passage, and finds himself at the focus of thousands of eager eyes. The lion's cage, with a heavy portcullis grating, is on his left. The Emperor gives a signal. A gong sounds. Androcles shivers at the sound; then falls on his knees ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... Webster approaches nearest to Shakespeare. Webster's greatest play, The Duchess of Malfi (acted in 1616), and The White Devil, which ranks second, show the working of a master hand, but Webster's genius comes to a focus only in depicting the horrible. He loves such gloomy ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... in which a sensitive and poetical man is made or marred; the crisis in which a sentiment is replaced by the passions—in which love for some real object gathers the scattered rays of the heart into a focus: out of that ordeal he might pass a purer and manlier being—so Maltravers often hoped. Maltravers then little thought how closely connected with his own fate was to be that passage in the history of the Italian. Castruccio contrived ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... observation of fine detail, it is absolutely necessary to stop down the aperture to a very large extent, by reducing it to about 12 inches in diameter or even less. The big telescope is thus really converted into a small one of long focus. ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... or opening in the foliage of a large tree that overtopped its fellows in the distance. In the centre of this rift I perceived a white spot, but could not, at first, distinguish what it was. Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I again looked, and now made it out ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... the flower she resembled, well rooted among the rocks of principle and truth. She was the youngest and the pet of the household, and yet the "petting" was not of that kind that develops selfishness and wilfulness, but rather a genial sunlight of love falling upon her as a focus from the entire family. They always spoke of her as "little Sis," or the "child." And a child it seemed she would ever be, with her kittenish ways, quick impulses, and swiftly alternating moods. As she developed into womanly proportions, her grave, businesslike ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... hundred-pound arms, trying to focus the telescope that swiveled over the panel. As the field cleared, he could see that the plume was flaring unevenly, flickering red and orange along one side. Quietly and viciously, he was talking ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande
... eyes repeatedly focus above the level of the other man's eyes, you make the impression that you are an idealist rather than a practical person. What you say will not seem to him to apply directly to his case. He will not feel the personal, or man-to-man contact of your thoughts. Sometimes, ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... administration. He induced the Athenian people to expend on the decoration of Athens a larger part of its ample revenues than was ever applied to this purpose in any other state, either republican or monarchical. Of the surpassing skill with which he collected into one focus the rays of artistic genius at Athens, no stronger proof can be afforded, than the fact that no subsequent period, through the patronage of Macedonian or Roman princes, produced works of equal excellence, Indeed, it may be said that the creations of the age of Pericles are the only ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... bring to you the fact and the substance. I have lifted up the curtain and flooded it with the light of day. You shall have the fact for your senses. Tomorrow I shall explain it all. I shall deliver my greatest lecture; in which my whole Me has come to a focus. It is not spiritualism nor sophistry. It is concrete fact and common sense. The subject of my lecture tomorrow will be: 'The ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... about the only thing I could do, at the time—the only thing, that is, that I wanted to do. It seemed like I couldn't get away fast enough." It was brazen of him, she thought, to treat it all so coolly. "And out here," he added thoughtfully, "I could get the proper focus on Myrt—which I couldn't do ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... trying to get his train of thought to focus once more on the submarine problem. But for some reason the business with the microphone and the speaker in the next room ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... which personifies under one figure every social revolution is an illusion. It springs from that tendency to hero worship, ineradicable in the heart of the race, which leads every nation to have an ideal, the imagined author of its prosperity, the father of his country, and the focus of its legends. As has been hinted, history is not friendly to their renown, and dissipates them altogether into phantoms of the brain, or sadly dims the lustre of their fame. Arthur, bright star of chivalry, dwindles into a Welsh subaltern; the Cid Campeador, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... be said of Coleridge, in the phrase which he used of Nelson, that he was "heart-starved." Tied for life to a woman with whom he had not one essential sympathy, the whole of his nature was put out of focus; and perhaps nothing but "the joy of grief," and the terrible and fettering power of luxuriating over his own sorrows, and tracing them to first principles, outside himself or in the depths of his sub- consciousness, gave him the courage to ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... not exactly a Paradise yet, though it is in a fair way of becoming one. It is a spot of some fifty acres reclaimed from the scrubbiest part of Wormwood Scrubbs, and made the focus of a club of working men, of whom I am very proud indeed to be one. Indeed, I do not see why throughout the remainder of this article I should not use the first person plural. I will. Well, then, we secured this spot, and we have got in the ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... luxurious sensation. When I had no more ticks to make, I folded all my bills up uniformly, docketed each on the back, and tied the whole into a symmetrical bundle. Then I did the same for Herbert (who modestly said he had not my administrative genius), and felt that I had brought his affairs into a focus ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... their own and dwarfed their activities. There was no bitterness in Mrs. Wilcox; there was not even criticism; she was lovable, and no ungracious or uncharitable word had passed her lips. Yet she and daily life were out of focus: one or the other must show blurred. And at lunch she seemed more out of focus than usual, and nearer the line that divides life from a life that may be of ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... will be seen a wonderful volcanic tract. So vast, in fact, that Professor Johnstrup has termed it the Fire Focus of the North. To the north-east, again, is found a large lake, called 'Myvata,' or 'Midge Lake,' with a volcanic range of mountains which stretch from north to south; the most famous of these are 'Leivhnukr,' and 'Krafla,' which, after ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... happens, however, that a lantern slide 31/4 by 31/4 has to embrace the whole of a picture contained in a much larger negative, so that recourse must be had to the camera, and the picture reduced with the aid of a short focus lens to within the lantern size; this is what is called making a transparency by reduction in the camera. Both cases are the same, however, so far as the process being simply ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... realization of my hopes, the utter, the inevitable defeat of the minions of pride, prejudice, caste. Nor would such consummation of hopes affect me only, or those around me. Nay, even I was but the point of "primitive disturbance," whence emanates as if from a focus, from a new origin, prayer, friendly and inimical, to be focused again into realization on one side and discomfiture on the other. My friends, my enemies, centre their hopes on me. I treat them, one with earnest endeavor for realization, the other with supremest indifference. ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... first and second volume," said a tall, long-chinned, short-sighted blue, dressed in yellow, peering into my face, as if her eyes were magnifying glasses, and she was obtaining the true focus of vision, "but you fall off in your last, which is all about that ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... erected, the equipment is provided, the course of study is arranged and administered, and the teacher employed. The child is major, and all else is subsidiary. In the general scheme even the teacher takes secondary place. Teachers may come and go, but the child remains as the focus of all plans and purposes. The teacher is secured for the child, and not the child for the teacher. Taxpayers, boards of education, parents, and teachers are all active in the interests of the child; and all school legislation, to be important, must have the child as its ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... number of witches live here, who won't let it rain." Africans in general are sufficiently superstitious, but those of Tette are in this particular pre-eminent above their fellows. Coming from many different tribes, all the rays of the separate superstitions converge into a focus at Tette, and burn out common sense from the minds of the mixed breed. They believe that many evil spirits live in the air, the earth, and the water. These invisible malicious beings are thought to inflict much suffering on the human race; but, as they have a weakness for beer and a craving ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... that such only exist by sufferance of their mighty neighbors, and must be subservient in trade policy and military policy to retain even a nominal freedom; and that an independent Ireland would by its position be a focus for the intrigues of powers hostile to Great Britain, and if it achieved independence Great Britain in self protection would be forced to conquer it again. They consider that security for industry and freedom for the individual can best be preserved in Ireland by the maintenance of the ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... had caught the word "Vorspielen" being bandied about the long tea-table, and had gathered that there was to be an informal playing of "pieces" before Fraulein Pfaff. She welcomed the event. It relieved her from the burden of being in high focus—the relief had come as soon as she took her place at the gaslit table. No eye seemed to notice her. The English girls having sat out two meal-times with her, had ceased the hard-eyed observation which had made the long silence of the earlier repasts ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... and swung back to the microscope. Then he gave up as his tired eyes refused to focus. "Why don't ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... said before, we think that a good lens requires no "actinic" focus to find. In a properly constructed lens the chemical and visual foci are identical; and we would ourselves not be troubled with the use of one in which they differed. Our advertising columns will point out to you where such a lens man be procured. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... purchased of a peddler, and differing in color from its natural mate, perpetually getting out of focus ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... from ten to twelve seconds, accompanied by a rumbling noise. The line of disturbance was from north to south, striking the Mendips, and traversing parts of the shires of Somerset and Gloucester. 'The chief focus of oscillation was at Cheddar, where the hill is said to have waved to and fro during several seconds; and in the alluvial flat or marsh below Cheddar, some houses had the plaster of the ceilings ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... two focus points are the stoniest of Joan of Arc and Bastille Day. Both furnish abundance of colorful detail and incident upon which to build the pupils' conceptions of the spirit and ideals of the French people. In the case of Bastille Day, correlation ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... And bade them loose his chain. The boar from that day forward Still followed in her train; Nor ever to the wildwood Attempted to return, But in the focus of Desire Preferred to ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... noise from the walled end of the passage. A moment later a blinding ray of light swung in, to focus upon them. ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... merely passive to the action of the various light-waves, and becomes active, and active in a more or less complicated way; turning its differently sensitive portions to meet or avoid the stimulus, adjusting its focus like that of an opera glass, and like an opera glass, turning it to the right or left, higher ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... generally; it doesn't stand up on its hind legs and rear around and call attention to itself—couldn't if it should try. But it's here and there and everywhere in America, just the same. A railroad car with one drunken fool in it gives you the idea. You focus on him and say, 'What a beastly shame!' and you entirely overlook the other fifty-odd people in the car who are quietly minding their ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... the commonwealth, Brambletye was the focus of many a cavalier conspiracy. "From its not being a place of any strength or notice, it was imagined that Brambletye might better escape the keen and jealous watchfulness, which kept the protector's eye ever fixed upon the strong holds ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... government's reluctance to publicize economic data limit the amount of reliable information available. State-owned industry produces nearly all manufactured goods, and the regime continues to devote its focus on heavy and military industries at the expense of light and consumer industries. Economic conditions remain stagnant at best and the country's deepening economic slide has been fueled by acute energy shortages, poorly maintained and aging industrial facilities, and a lack ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... conservation of the received law and order should presumably best be effected under cover of a collusive peace of the defensive kind, which is designed to retain those national discrepancies intact that count for so much in the national life of today, both as a focus of patriotic sentiment and as an outlet for national expenditures. This plan would involve the least derangement of the received order among the democratic peoples, although the plan might itself undergo some change in the ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... the ballroom, save where it was cleft by a great stairway. As they stood looking over the railing, 'twas like looking down upon an immense concave opal, peopled by the gorgeously apparelled. Myriad tints seeming to assimulate and focus wherever the eyes rested. Gilt bewreathed pillars, mouldings, shimmering satin, lights, jewels, flowers, ceiling, gallery and parquetry appeared like a homogeneous mass of opal. Mistress Katherine could not speak, her perturbed spirit was silent, she held to Janet and the curtain that ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... curtain, the stage projected into a wide "apron," as it was called, lined on either side by boxes filled with spectators; and the house was so inadequately lighted that almost all the acting had to be done within the focus of the footlights. After the curtain rose, the actors advanced into this projecting "apron" and performed the main business of the act beyond the ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... in another way. It is not operated by light, at least not by light alone. A certain temperature must be attained, and that temperature suffices in complete darkness. Nevertheless, I find that on exposing to a very concentrated spectrum (collected by a lens of short focus) a slip of paper prepared as above (that is to say, by washing with the mixed solutions, exposure to sunshine, washing and discharging the uniform blue color so induced, as in the last article), its whiteness is changed to a brown over the whole region of the red and orange rays, but ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... captain; "always the result. Never mind," he continued, speaking through his closely set teeth; "our turn will come one of these days." And then with his telescope tightly nipped beneath his arm he would tramp up and down the quarter-deck, pausing now and then to focus his glass, take a peep through, close it again with a ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... gardeners and farmers had few fertilizers other than animal manure and compost. These were always considered very valuable substances and a great deal of lore existed about using them. During the early part of this century, our focus changed to using chemicals; organic wastes were often considered nuisances with little value. These days we are rediscovering compost as an agent of soil improvement and also finding out that we must compost organic waste materials to recycle ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... trough between the two ends of the instrument. In using the instrument the lamp is placed at a distance of at least 200 mm. from the end; the observer seats himself at the opposite end in such a manner as to bring his eye in line with the tube J. The telescope is moved in or out until the proper focus is secured, so as to give a clearly defined image, when the field of the instrument will appear as a round, luminous disk, divided into two halves by a vertical line passing through the center, and darker on one half of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... have had occasion to think closely on that question. We have had occasion to review the public records of Christendom; and beyond all doubt the public conscience, the international conscience, of a people, is the reverberation of its private conscience. History is but the converging into a focus of what is moving in the domestic life below; a set of great circles expressing and summing up, on the dial-plate, the motions of many little circles in the machinery within. Now History, what may be called the Comparative History ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... This focus spread its fires and gained new partizans every day; it attacked the power of Napoleon in the opinion of all Germany, extended itself into Italy, and threatened its complete overthrow. It was already easy to see that, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... commonly associated in the mind with the thought of the pre-existence and rebirth of the soul will disappear if we do not lose sight of the fact that the soul is a center of consciousness, which is always consciousness somewhere, but which very gradually shifts its focus from plane to plane. Its permanent home is in that body of filmy matter drawn about the ego in the higher levels of the heaven world. From that point it sends energies outward and draws about itself in the lower levels of the mental world a body, or vehicle of consciousness, that is not permanent ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... presented the little disk to the face of the glowing luminary. Quivering with excitement lest a sudden cloud should interpose, a moment passed before I could hold the lens steadily enough to concentrate a burning focus. At length it came. The little thread of smoke curled gracefully upwards from the Heaven-lighted spark, which, a few moments afterwards, diffused with warmth and ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... Start the humming tone as indicated in the first lesson, and maintain the same focus while forming certain elements. Take the syllable n-o-m, allowing no break while going from n, the nares sound, to the vowel sound of o, and returning to the nares sound of m. This is perhaps the best element to begin upon, because of its definiteness, ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... the place save that it was away up in the north- west, on one of the higher reaches of the Enyong Creek, and a two days' journey for her by water. The lads lived at a town called Ikpe, an old slave centre, that had been in league with Aro, and the focus of the trade of a wide and populous area. It was a "closed" market, no Calabar ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... Every regiment has its club, and, what is odd, the navy furnishes many crack players. It is the favorite par excellence at all schools, colleges and universities; every county, every town and every village has its local club; while the I Zingari and its host of rivals serve to focus the ubiquitous talent of All England. The public enjoy it, merely as spectators, to such a degree that a grand match-day at Lord's is only second in point of enthusiasm to the Derby Day. Special trains carry thousands, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... focus of the concentrated artillery fire, and he had already lost fifty men and some valuable officers, his line remained firm and unshaken. It devolved upon him now to meet the great charge which was to decide the fate of the day. It would have been difficult to find ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... old dad would stare if I could only have him in Dawson for a day. He'd never be able to get things just in focus any more. He would be knocked clean off the pivot on which he's revolved these thirty years. Seems to me every one's travelling on a pivot in the old country. It's no use trying to hammer it into their heads there are more points of view than one. If you don't just ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... this pavilion I stood alone, happy to have got clear away from those terrible beasts and the gaze of their steadfast eyes. As I stood there, I became conscious of the fact that the nebulous light of the place was concentrating itself into a focus on the columned wall opposite to me. It grew there, became intenser, and then spread, revealing, as it spread, a series of moving pictures that appeared to be scenes actually enacted before me. For the figures in the pictures were living, and they ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... cue to haul off and stand staring at us. We all withdrew to easier pistol range, for contrary to general belief, close quarters almost never help straight aim, especially when in a hurry. There is a shooting as well as a camera focus, and each ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... vast amphitheatre of sward, whose walls banked out the narrow sky above. And here, in the focus of the huge ring, an object appeared which stirred strange melancholy in Lancelot,—a little chapel, ivy-grown, girded with a few yews, and elders, and grassy graves. A climbing rose over the porch, and iron railings round the churchyard, told of human care; and from the graveyard ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... with. Nor throughout the day did weather conditions or tempers improve. All day long the sky was heavily overcast with dense, low-hanging, dark gray clouds, which, while wholly obscuring the sun, seemed to focus its rays upon us like a vast burning-glass; wherefore it was expedient for the two pajama-clad passengers to keep well within the shelter of the bridge-deck awning. Toward sunset, a dense black wall of cloud settled upon the western horizon, aft of us. But suddenly, just at the moment the ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... before the select committee raised by the English House of Commons, that the use of the locomotive-whistle as a fog-signal was first suggested by Mr. A. Gordon, C.E., who proposed to use air or steam for sounding it, and to place it in the focus of a reflector, or a group of reflectors, to concentrate its sounds into a powerful phonic beam. It was his idea that the sharpness or shrillness of the whistle constituted its chief value. And it is conceded that Mr. C.L. Daboll, under the direction of Prof. Henry, and at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... can hold a book so near your eyes as not to be able to read a word of it; hold it off further, and get the right focus, and you can read beautiful. Now the right distance to see a colony, and know all about it, is England. Three thousand miles is the right focus for a political spy-glass. A man livin' here, and who never ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... drinking-water conducted in pipes, laid for the purpose from a spring about a mile and a quarter distant, whilst other piping carries water to the end of the pier for the requirements of shipping. This improvement, the present salubrity of the town (once a fever focus), and its latest Spanish embellishments, are mainly due to the intelligent activity of its late Governors, Colonel (now General) Gonzalez Parrado, and the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... at the strap across his breast, took a little field-glass from the case, adjusted the focus, and levelled it ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... material naught, Focus of light infinitesimal, Sum of all things by sleepless Nature wrought, Of which ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... because of a fairly recent afternoon spent in an English garden with English friends. The question of pronunciation came up. Now you will readily see that with them and their compactness, their great public schools, their two great Universities, and their great London, the one eternal focus of them all, both the chance of diversity in social customs and the tolerance of it must be far less than in our huge unfocused country. With us, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, is each a centre. Here you ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... the geographical focus of our Negro population, but in many other respects, both now and yesterday, the Negro problems have seemed to be centered in this State. No other State in the Union can count a million Negroes among its citizens,—a population as large as the slave population ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... nautical ephemeris for this day. The morning was cloudy, with rain; but towards noon the weather cleared up, and I had the satisfaction to observe the eclipse with a refracting telescope of forty-six inches focus, and a power of about two hundred. The beginning took place at 1h 12' 37.8" of apparent time, and the end at 3h 36' 11.8". So soon as the observation was concluded, the tents and astronomical instruments were carried on board, the launch was hoisted in, and everything prepared for going ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... not been in my unnatural position for many minutes before I began to suffer agonies, agonies not only physical but mental; for standing there like some prisoner of the Inquisition, it came to me how this dismantled apartment must be the focus of the dreadful forces of Hassan ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... their look or behavior should excite the suspicions of their companions, make them the focus of inquisitive observation and whispered remark, the diplomate passed again into the hall, sweeping along in advance of them when they deserted their curtained recess, and would have joined the rest of ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... of arrangement or assimilation which might unite all my scattered knowledge. Oh, how different if I had had one definite object which, like the lens, should concentrate all the scattered rays to one focus. I met with this remark of Sir Egerton Bridges to-day; it applies to me exactly: "I have never met with one who seemed to have the same overruling passion for literature as I have always had. A thousand others have pursued it with more principle, reason, method, fixed ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... unable to get the proper focus on events, the foreman blundered stupidly about the place searching cursorily, and cursing the helplessness ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... forget the electric thrill which went through my whole being at this instant. I seemed to see lines radiating from every part of the globe, converging to a focus where that plain, awkward-looking man stood, and to hear in spirit a million prayers, 'as the sound of many waters,' ascending ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... almost feel the steadily-growing pull of his mindless enemy in the distant sky. Floating and kicking his way over to the Tele-screen, he quickly switched the instrument on. Rotating the control dials, he brought the blinding white image of the onrushing solar disk into perfect focus. Automatically he adjusted the two superimposed polaroid filters until the proper amount of light was transmitted to his viewing screen. They really built ships and filters these days, he reflected wryly. Now if they could only form a rescue squad ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... the focus of the eyes often causes a strain on the brain in the effort to adjust them. This sometimes causes epilepsy, and we have known many cases cured by the use of spectacles made to correct this inequality. In all cases of this disease, ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... her, or at least to look, the girl was gone again. And something in the way she stood there a few feet beyond, and stared down into his eyes so steadfastly in silence, made him shiver. The moonlight was behind her, but in some odd way he could not focus sight upon her face, although so close. The gleam of eyes he caught, but all the rest seemed white and snowy as though he looked ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... warrior, clad in steel, save the beautifully-formed head, which was covered only by his own luxuriant raven curls. In a better light it could not have been placed, particularly in the evening; the rays, condensed and softened, seemed to gather up their power into one focus, and throw such an almost supernatural glow on the half face, give such an extraordinary appearance of life to the whole figure, that a casual visitant to that chamber might well fancy it was no picture but reality on which he gazed. But no such emotion was at work in the bosom of Nigel ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... set aside. But, remember, it is but for an hour. The wise man will be he who quickest lights his candle; the wisest he who never lets it out. Tomorrow, the next moment, he, a poor, darkened, blurred soul, may need it again to focus the Image better, to take a mote off the lens, to clear the mirror from a breath with which the ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... that graveled him most, to start with, was not this, but the price he had fetched! He couldn't seem to get over that seven dollars. Well, it stunned me so, when I first found it out, that I couldn't believe it; it didn't seem natural. But as soon as my mental sight cleared and I got a right focus on it, I saw I was mistaken; it was natural. For this reason: a king is a mere artificiality, and so a king's feelings, like the impulses of an automatic doll, are mere artificialities; but as a man, he is a reality, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of a species of maternal idolatry; centered in her child Louis Marie as rays gathered up into a focus, were all her hopes, her aspirations, her ideas of the future. If she could be assured she would live to see her son leading the armies of the empire, ruling in the cabinets of state or worshipped ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... instant after he spoke there was a cessation of firing, and then came a whole broadside of great guns and small-arms concentrated in one focus, crashing among our rigging. Several of the shot told—the head of the mainsail was riddled, and down came our peak, the halyards shot away in two places. The smugglers were not long in discovering our disaster and the advantage ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... station alarm over my bunk. I'll say this, the Navy boys know their business. When the sirens screamed, the crew secured ship and blasted off before I had finished reading the report. As soon as my eyeballs unsquashed back into focus I read it through, then once ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... grow at a point of junction between the bone proper and an overlying layer of gristle or cartilage, known as the zone of ossification. It is upon this zone of ossification that the various growth influences appear to focus and concentrate their efforts, among them the internal secretions. After growth has been finished, that is, after adolescence, these zones of ossification close, so that growth is no longer possible unless they become reactivated. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... steady and continuous growth. From month to month, and from year to year, as aeroplane constructors and pilots have continued at their tasks, overcoming technical difficulties and personal risks, the interest of ordinary people has grown perceptibly. Even before the war—which has done so much to focus attention on flying—the attitude of scepticism and apathy had been greatly changed. When the London Aerodrome at Hendon was established, there were shrewd men in the city, men who are ordinarily very sound in their conclusions, who declared the public would never ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... to this, he wears the lens of his heart upon his sleeve, and will adjust it so as to focus the groups around him—it may be a pair of lovers, or some tired mother, or happy child, or lonely wayfarer, or a waif—he will often get a picture of joy, or sorrow, or hope—life dramas all—which will not only enrich the dull hours of travel, but will leave imprints on the mind which can be ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... terrible dread, the girl forced her eyes to focus upon the gruesome form, and the next instant she uttered a quick little cry of relief. The man's hat had fallen off and lay at some distance from the body. She could see a shock of thick black hair, and noticed that he wore a cheap cotton shirt that had once been white. ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... In order to focus the attention of the would-be guides upon certain important essentials, the questions started ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... "by suggesting questions which help to detect the passion, and strangeness and dramatic contrasts of life." And not only to bring suggestions, but repose, by granting to eyes wearied with minute concerns the contrasts of vast times and spaces, the majestic idea of the Whole; to change the focus and variously dispose the ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... earlier and the impossible events of the past day kept whirling around in his head. He would think about it some other time, right now all he wanted to do was let his overworked circuits cool down, if he only had something to read, to focus his attention on. Then, with a start, he remembered the booklet. Everything had moved so fast that the earlier incident with the truck driver ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... are too tender to endure his own lustre reflected and doubled on the focus of your burnished brass. He dreads the fate of Milton, "blasted with excess ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... the accommodation of all travelers. Each one of you who reaches the lower end of this valley should take the Mountain Trolley and spend a season at those schools. They occupy some of the grandest buildings in the world. Focus your glasses ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... sat smoking, listening to what was said in the listless way that lunatics listen, unable to focus his attention, but gathering in his addled brain that he was being discussed. I watched him as one does a caged tiger, guessing at the beast's thoughts and thankful that it can prey ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... an engineer (section D of the Public Works Department) and I have to make an important measurement in connexion with the Apothegm of the Bilateral which runs to-night precisely through this spot. My fingers now mark exactly the concentric of the secondary focus whence the Radius Vector should be drawn, but I find that (like a fool) I have left my Double Refractor in the cafe hard by. I dare not go for fear of losing the place I have marked; yet I can get no further without ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... been discovered, among other things, that in oblique refraction light is separated into colors. Therefore, any small portion of the convex lens of the telescope, being a prism, the rays proceed to the focus, separated into prismatic colors, which make the image thus formed edged with a fringe of color and indistinct. But, fortunately for the early telescope makers, the degree of this aberration is independent of the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... a cause of trouble. Had there been no extra business-pressure caused by the war, there would have been some other focus for their misunderstandings. They would have quarreled over clothes and aviation, Aunt Emma and Martin Dockerill, poverty and ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... point where the circumstances of the moment make the epoch such as to focus the life of the parish in ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... conjecturing the period. The volcanic action can be traced from Castel Sardo, where it has formed precipices on the northern coast, to the vicinity of Monastir, a distance southward of more than 100 miles; its central focus appearing to have been about half-way between Ales, Milis, and St. Lussurgiu, where, as Captain Smyth remarks, “the phlægrean evidences are particularly abundant.” The action was principally confined to the western ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... District of Columbia, the seat of this powerful Federal Government, and in the city of Washington, the metropolis of the United States. Here are concentrated as it were into one focus, the associations of the past, connected with the great struggle for independence, and the memory of those names and events which already belong to history. Whatever may be our political principles, or the opinions of those who like myself ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... last—by no direct exertion of my own, but by turn after turn of things to which I blindly gave my little help—the mystery of my life was solved. Many things yet remained to be fetched up to focus and seen round; but the point ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... was in apogee. His bank, as I have said, was coming to be more than a mere bank; it was now the focus of many miscellaneous enterprises. Several of these were industrial companies; prospectuses bearing his name and that of his institution constantly came my way. Some of these undertakings were novel and daring, but most of them went through; and he was more likely to use his associates ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... he expected to be an architect, and that mother liked it. He had an idea, which he had imparted to her, of an arch; it must be made of black marble, with gold veins, and ought to stand in Egypt, with the word "Pandemonium" on it. The kitchen was the focus of interest to him, for meals were prepared at all hours for comers and goers. Temperance told me that the mild and indifferent mourners were fond of good victuals, and she thought their hearts were lighter than their stomachs when they went away. She presided there ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... in the Memoir the focus of the Egyptian question changes; attention is centred on the diplomatic questions arising out ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... second great method of securing clairvoyant en rapport relations with the astral plane. How the crystal, magic-mirror, etc., serves to focus the psychic energy of the clairvoyant person. The crystal serves the purpose of a psychic microscope or telescope. How crystals tend to become polarized to the vibrations of their owner. Why crystals should be preserved ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... obviously apt to outstrip his spoken words; but even in the course of speech his ideas would crystallise, quite palpably to the listener, and the sentence that began by throwing out a shadowy idea would culminate in a definite project, as the image comes into focus under the lens, and with as much ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... back over the misty, half-forgotten years and not see a few that stand out clear and golden, sharp-cut against the sky-line of memory? Years that we wish we could live again, so that we might revel in every full-blooded hour. For we so seldom get the proper focus on things until we look at them through the clarifying telescope of Time; and then one realizes with a pang that he can't back-track into the past and take his old ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... brother had ever threatened the distribution of the territory of Capua, and it is, therefore, probable that in this case he did not contemplate a large agricultural foundation, but rather one that might serve better than the existing village to focus the commerce of the Campanian plain. But the revenue from the domain, and the jealousy of Rome's old and powerful rival, which might be awakened in all classes, were strong weapons in the hands of his opponents, and the renewal of Capua was destined to be ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... netting to some metal uprights and struggling to focus his mind on what he was doing enough to forget that Delight Hathaway was on the other side of the partition when from the window above the bench he saw Cynthia Galbraith come rolling up to the gate in her runabout, accompanied by a strikingly ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... of semi-consciousness in which she realized nothing but the strong holding of his arms. She even vaguely wondered after a time whether this also were not a dream, for other fantasies began to crowd about her. She rocked on a sea of strange happenings on which she found it impossible to focus her mind. It seemed to have broken adrift as it were—a rudderless boat in a gale. But still that sense of security never wholly left her. Dreaming or waking, the force of his personality ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... guard against, despite of all our precautions, be introduced amongst us, measures better calculated for the destruction of a community, could scarcely be devised, than the ancient quarantine regulations; for they certainly would convert every house proscribed by their mark, into a den and focus of the most concentrated pestilential contagion, ensuring fearful retribution upon those who had thus so blindly shut them up. The mark alone, besides being equivalent to a sentence of death upon all the inmates, ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... friend concluded that his "true Mount Sinai" was the focus and origin of this volcanic region; and that the latter was the "great and terrible wilderness" (Deut. i. 19) through which the children of Israel were led on their way to mysterious Kadesh-Barnea. Thus, too, he explained the "pillar of the cloud by day," and the "pillow ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... welcome, of course, and the varied mechanism explained to him. As the crowning "treat," he was given a peer through the celebrated instrument. It was leveled at the moon, or, rather, arranged to have that orb in its focus at the time. The visitor was appalled, as well as wondering at the view, and slowly withdrew by the trap-door. But when the astronomer resumed his observations and calculations he was interrupted by the same sedate and ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... after development unless I felt otherwise disposed; but that as I was to treat them as under suspicion, so must they treat me, and that every act I performed must be in the presence of two witnesses; nay, that I would set a watch upon my own camera in the guise of a duplicate one of the same focus—in other words, I would use a binocular stereoscopic camera and dictate all the conditions ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... king was the vice-king. Yet they had seen their beloved viceroy, Iturrigaray, deposed by a conspiracy of Spanish shop-keepers, which had organized itself in that focus of Mexican trade, the Parian. All this was bewildering to the nation. All New Spain was astonished to see a power sufficiently potent to arrest the vice-king emanate from such a quarter. And not only had they witnessed this, but they had also seen this same officer, whose person ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... any of the four plain walls of the office; there was no focus of outer-world sunlight on the desk there. Yet the five disks set out on its surface appeared to glow—perhaps the heat of the mischief they could cause ... had ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... were now gathered the Prince, Raasay, and Miss Flora. To me as a focus came all eyes. I got to my feet in ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... an exclamation and switched on his electric torch, trying to focus the circle of light upon that particular window. There was nothing there. Only, it seemed to me that something, incredibly swift and silent, flashed down one of the bewildering turns to which our attic is addicted. But when we ran forward, the passage was empty. We brought ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... Richard straightened his bowed shoulders somewhat and his sallow cheek flushed. "Here at last I may serve you somewhat, Martin," said he and, turning his back to the sun, he set the instrument to his eye and began moving the three vanes to and fro until he had the proper focus and might obtain the sun's altitude; whereby he had presently found our present position, the which he duly pricked upon the chart. He now showed me how, by standing out on direct course instead of following the tortuous windings of the coast, we could shorten our ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... The War had unrolled a map of the Union, he said, and hung it in every man's house. There was a universal shifting of attention, if not always from the province or section to the image of the nation itself, at least a shift of focus from one section to another. The clash of arms had meant many other things besides the triumph of Union and the freedom of the slaves. It had brought men from every state into rude jostling contact with one another and had developed a new social and human curiosity. It ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... awakened to the realization that the roots of his malady lie deep in his own nature, his own organism, his own habits. To blame everything upon the capitalist and the environment produced by capitalism is to focus attention upon merely one of the elements of the problem. The Marxian too often forgets that before there was a capitalist there was exercised the unlimited reproductive activity of mankind, which produced the first overcrowding, the first want. This ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... face with his arms, and with the lion, tiger and leopard the arms come in for fearful punishment. It is the way of carnivorous beasts to attack each other head to head and mouth to mouth, and this same instinct leads these animals to focus their initial attacks upon the heads and faces of their ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... the center of our book, the hub where all the spokes of evidence focus and unite, clearly revealing the unity, power and purpose of the Wheel of Revolution which now is rolling through the minds and wills of American radicals. To make this complex plot simple, it has been ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... motherhood for children alone, or merely in connection with this proposed Bureau. I urge you, indeed, to employ it in all conceivable ways. Be the mothers of men and women as well as of little children—the mothers of communities—the mothers of the state. And as a focus to these energies and disinterested activities, let us pray Washington to give ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... Forge from New York with a mingled sense of pleasure and the feeling that his place was unsupportably empty. The loneliness of which he had been increasingly conscious seemed to have its focus in his house. The following morning he walked restlessly down the short, steep descent to the Forge, lying on its swift water diverted from Canary Creek. Unlike a great many iron families of increasing prosperity, the ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... any one of them, he is sure to disgust the rest; if he select particular men from among them all, it is a hazard that he disgusts them all. Those who are left out, however divided before, will soon run into a body of opposition; which, being a collection of many discontents into one focus, will without doubt be hot and violent enough. Faction will make its cries resound through the nation, as if the whole were in an uproar, when by far the majority, and much the better part, will seem for a while as it ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... any direction, I waited. With deafening explosions the shells exploded in a small street behind me. The Germans were evidently trying to smash up the old Flemish town hall, which was in the corner of the market-place, so I decided to fix my focus in its direction. But though I waited for over an hour, nothing else happened. The Germans had ceased firing for that morning at least. Not till I had gone to my cafe did I realise the danger I had exposed myself to, but somehow I had seemed so confident that I should not get hit, that to film ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... Woodford talked of the trial, beginning perhaps to regret that his niece must go to the very focus of Roman influence in England, where there seemed to be little scruple as to the mode of conversion. Would it be possible to alter her destination? was his thought, when he rose the next day, but loyalty stood in the way, and that ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in itself during times when judicial murders were common, would have excited nothing more than passing interest had not the national sentiment been so aroused by the chaotic conditions. As it was it served to focus attention on the general maladministration over which Yuan Shih-kai ruled as provisional President. "What is my crime?" had shrieked the unhappy revolutionist as he had been shot and then bayonetted to death. That query was most easily answered. ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... the issues between Houses, and I come to that between Parties. Great changes in a community are very often unperceived; the focus of reality moves from one institution in the State to another, and almost imperceptibly. Sometimes the forms of institutions remain almost the same in all ceremonial aspects, and yet there will be one institution ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... the spot he had already suggested as the focus of attention, and they both saw, with the quick-sightedness of men accustomed to live by the chase, the cause ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... hand, Washington was for many (to me) good reasons highly objectionable. Especially because it is the political capital of the country and focus of intrigue, gossip, and slander. Your personal preferences were, as expressed, to make a new department east adequate to my rank, with headquarters at Washington, and to assign me to its command—to remove my family here, and to avail myself of its schools, etc.; to remove ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... little idol; and absolutely now, while she stuck a long pin, a trifle fallaciously, into her hat—she had, with an approach to irritation, told her maid, a new woman, whom she had lately found herself thinking of as abysmal, that she didn't want her—she tried to focus the possibility of some understanding between them in consequence of which ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Always the child of impulse, and careless of appearance and opinion, she felt her thoughts, none too cheerful or optimistic that morning during her long walk down the avenue, drawn by the expression upon the legless man's face to a sudden focus of triumph and solution. She struck the palm of one small workman-like hand with the back of the other, and ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... lofty chamber wherein I stood on that fateful afternoon. Liszt, with his powerful profile, the profile of an Indian chieftain, lounged in the window embrasure, the light streaking his hair, gray and brown, and silhouetting his brow, nose, and projecting chin. He alone was the illuminated focus of this picture which, after a half-century, is brilliantly burnt into my memory. His pupils were mere wraiths floating in a misty dream, with malicious white points of light for eyes. And I felt like a disembodied ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker |
