"Oblique" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked down upon the scene below. Near at hand were the trenches of the Germans. He could see officers and men moving about in them and almost in front of him a well-hidden machine gun was traversing No Man's Land in an oblique direction, striking the British at such an angle as to make it difficult for ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the world depended on the spot. Fell Arcite like an angry tiger fared, And like a lion Palamon appeared: Or, as two boars whom love to battle draws, With rising bristles and with frothy jaws, Their adverse breasts with tusks oblique they wound With grunts and groans the forest rings around. So fought the knights, and fighting must abide, Till Fate an umpire sends their difference to decide. The power that ministers to God's decrees, And executes on earth what Heaven foresees, Called Providence, or ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... slightly oblique, of suspended expression with which she received the words encouraged ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... imparted to it, and of the angle at which its advancing under surface would meet the air. The inventor claimed to have produced a steam engine of extreme lightness as well as efficiency, and for the rest his machine consisted of a huge aero-plane propelled by fans with oblique vanes, while a tail somewhat resembling that of a bird was added, as also a rudder, the functions of which were to direct the craft vertically and horizontally respectively. Be it here recorded that the machine did not cross ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... admitted through a half-inch hole, put the mirror at an oblique angle; you can arrange it so as to throw half a dozen bright spots on the ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... intimate the country of the statuary, who, in all probability, was an Athenian. This kind of wit was very much in vogue among our own countrymen about an age or two ago, who did not practise it for any oblique reason, as the ancients above-mentioned, but purely for the sake of being witty. Among innumerable instances that may be given of this nature, I shall produce the device of one Mr. Newberry, as I find it mentioned by our learned Camden in ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... circle and deviate from this precedent; the rather as we have something real to do, and are come together, I am sure, in all plain fellowship and straightforwardness, to do it. We have no little straws of our own to throw up to show us which way any wind blows, and we have no oblique biddings of our own to make for anything ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... form, structure and mode of dissemination of some serotinous species are obvious evidence of an evolution among the species of remarkable taxonomic range. A form new among Coniferae appears, the oblique cone, and a new condition, the serotinous cone, both appearing at first alone and, finally, ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... but it was just as the old man was making a bound, and though it struck, its power of penetration was not sufficient, in an oblique blow, to make it pierce the tough skin, and to the boys' horror they saw the blunt wooden weapon fall to the earth. The next instant the kangaroo was upon Shanter, grasping him with its forepaws and hugging him tightly ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... unimaginative—they cling passive to the old planet, content to be whirled round in the purposeless dance of the heavenly bodies. Others are chronic sufferers from divine discontent—they open their eyes with critical intent, they are always conscious of the oblique, the unrighteous, the worthless in their surroundings. They have a sense of power, a will to change things. To them the world is a lump of dough, to be shaped and trimmed ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... the carina and passing down the left bronchus, the relatively great distance from the carina to the upper-lobe bronchus is noted. The spur dividing the orifices of the left upper- and lower-lobe bronchi is oblique in direction, and it is possible to see more of the lumen of the left upper-lobe bronchus than of its homologue on the right. Below this are seen the lower-lobe bronchus and ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... timber arches to each truss, and the truss is supported on them by connecting them to the verticals by short cross pieces notched into the posts, and resting on the upper surface of the arches. It is a very stiff bridge, and similar to the one at Bellows Falls, both having their axis oblique to the channel of the stream they cross. The timbers could hardly be procured now, except at ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower
... of glass, the gurgling of the liquid, the pop of the soda-water cork had a preternatural sharpness. He came back carrying a pink and glistening tumbler. Mr. Ricardo had followed his movements with oblique, coyly expectant yellow eyes, like a cat watching the preparation of a saucer of milk, and the satisfied sound after he had drunk might have been a slightly modified form of purring, very soft and deep in his throat. It affected Schomberg unpleasantly as another example of something ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... north, afforded a series of positions, the right flank of these positions, resting, as Stuart had ascertained, on no natural obstacle, was open to a turning movement. Furthermore, in rear of the Fifth Corps, and at an oblique angle to the front, ran the line of supply, the railway to West Point. If Porter's right were turned, the Confederates, threatening the railway, would compel McClellan to detach largely to the north bank of the Chickahominy in order to recover or ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the workman, doubtless daunted by the difficulties of his task, had abandoned it unfinished. It is, however, easy to tell what it was meant for. The skull is low and flat, the nose but slightly prominent, the eyes are oblique, and neither the mouth nor the chin are finished. The magnificent collection of the Marquis de Vibraye contains a little figure from Laugerie, representing a nude woman without arms. Thin and stiff, she is chiefly remarkable for the exaggerated size of the sexual organs, and ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... are, perhaps, the two oblique ones approaching from Ludgate Hill and from Cannon Street. The upward view from the churchyard on the south side by the angle of nave and transept gives the proportions of the lower stages of the dome ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... perpendicular line starting from that part in the heavens which is our zenith strikes those obliquely who are fifty degrees beyond the equinoctial line: whence it appears that we are in the direct line, and they, in comparison with us, are in the oblique one, and this situation forms the figure of a right-angled triangle, of which we have the direct lines, as the ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... tubercle (or palate) of the lip is a remarkable character." But he, too, has failed to note the equally remarkable palate of the ragged orchid, just described, both provisions having the same purpose, the insurance of an oblique approach to the nectary. In H. flava this "tubercle," instead of depending from the throat, grows upward from the lip, and, as we look at the flower directly from the front, completely hides the opening to ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... to develop his hobbies and weak side. I think it possible, however, that Livingstone, with an unsuitable companion, might feel annoyance. I know I should do so very readily, if a man's character was of that oblique nature that it was an impossibility to travel in his company. I have seen men, in whose company I felt nothing but a thraldom, which it was a duty to my own self-respect to cast off as soon as possible; a feeling of utter incompatibility, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... intense sympathy with their unexampled triumph, had again swelled their ranks, and would probably act with the force of a vortex to draw in their simple countrymen from the Caspian. The question, therefore, of preoccupation was reduced to a race. The Cossacks were marching 5 upon an oblique line not above 50 miles longer than that which led to the same point from the Kalmuck headquarters before Koulagina; and therefore, without the most furious haste on the part of the Kalmucks, there was ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... the word he is a decent member of society. A certain natural pedantry aids him in this, which harmonizes with his money-making neurosis,—a degenerated imaginativeness seeking expression in financial adventure. Taking him all in all, he is so intensely repulsive to me—with his eyeglass, oblique eyes, long legs, and sallow, hairless face—that I doubt if I am capable of judging him objectively. Nevertheless I am quite sure that unless he loses his own money I shall not lose mine. But I put it down, in all sincerity, that I would rather he lost the money, his senses, his life, and went ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... are quickly sold to the market-men. The snapper slowly appears and disappears, leaving scarcely a ripple; and the hunter cautiously approaching usually takes him by the tail. The terrapin, on the contrary, is quick, and will descend in an oblique direction, so that a hand-net is needed unless he happens to come up near by. If he is near enough the man jumps for him. The time for hunting is the still hour ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... would have insisted on marrying her. Nettie was not indifferent to him. An impersonal feeling had attracted him to her—a resentment of her treatment by the larger part of Salem, particularly the oblique admiration of the men. His supersensitiveness to any form of injustice had driven him into the protest of calling and accompanying her, with an exaggerated politeness, about the streets. It had not been difficult; she was warm-blooded, ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... five oblique bands of blue (hoist side), yellow, red, white, and green (bottom) radiating from the bottom of the ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... method. It were well, then, to inform MR. SHADBOLT, that in perspective, planes parallel to the plane of delineation (in this case, the glass at back of camera) have no vanishing points; that planes at right angles to plane of delineation have but one; and that planes oblique have but one vanishing point, to the right or left, as it may be, of the observer's eye. This premised, let the subject be a wall 300 feet in length, with two abutments of one foot in front and five feet in projection, and each placed five ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... Lo! Baltimore becomes the first emprise, When Gilmor's scandal shock'd the men at Guy's: "To horse, to horse," our hero drunk exclaims, "I'll crush rebellion—give the town to flames." The faithful groom the pawing steed attends, The maudlin Cyclops all oblique ascends; But ere the lambent flames consume the town, The Cid unhorsed, like Bacchus, topples down. Old Juno's goose erst saved imperial Rome, But Rebel whisky saves the Rebels' home. Next comes the dismal ...
— The American Cyclops, the Hero of New Orleans, and Spoiler of Silver Spoons • James Fairfax McLaughlin
... was thick with dust, and a remarkable array of miscellaneous objects was shrouded in the same grey covering. Then I perceived, standing strange and gaunt in the centre of the hall, what was clearly the lower part of a huge skeleton. I recognized by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after the fashion of the Megatherium. The skull and the upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and in one place, where rain-water had dropped through a leak in the roof, the thing itself ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... shows the six muscles attached to the eye. The Superior Rectus Muscle pulls and directs the eye upward; the Inferior Rectus, downward; the External and Internal Rectus Muscles pull the eye to the right and left; the Oblique Muscles move the eye slantwise in ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... cascades of silver-lustrous Chinese silks and waves of tinsels which an oblique sunbeam shot through with luminous beads; while portraits of every era, in frames more or less tarnished, smiled through ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... One of his aides, who just then rode up, rescued the Governor from his perilous position and conveyed him home, when it was found that the principal bone of his right leg, above the knee, had sustained an oblique fracture, and that the limb had also received a severe wound from being bruised against a sharp stone, which had cut deeply and lacerated the flesh and sinews. Notwithstanding these serious injuries, and the shock which his nervous ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... own person, but a great enemy to the opposite vice in all others, fired at this information. He desired Mr Blifil to conduct him immediately to the place, which as he approached he breathed forth vengeance mixed with lamentations; nor did he refrain from casting some oblique reflections on Mr Allworthy; insinuating that the wickedness of the country was principally owing to the encouragement he had given to vice, by having exerted such kindness to a bastard, and by having mitigated that just and wholesome ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... is accomplished by the expert horseman. Galloping after the bull, the rider seizes the animal's tail, giving it a turn round his own wrist, and then again urges forward his horse till both are at full speed, when, suddenly turning in an oblique direction, by a powerful jerk—from the impetuosity imparted by their rapid speed— the bull is brought to the ground. Here, too, the horse, knowing what is about to be done, starts forward at the proper moment, and assists in accomplishing the work. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... simplest and best remedy in this case is the application of a chimney-pot, which is a hollow truncated cone of earthenware placed upon the top of the flue. The intention of this contrivance is, that the wind and eddies which strike against the oblique surface of these covers may be reflected upwards instead of blowing down the chimney. The bad construction of fire-places is another cause of smoking chimneys; and this case will lead us to the consideration of the methods of increasing the heat and diminishing the consumption ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... it seemeth likely that they should come by the Northwest, [Marginal note: True both in ventis oblique flantibus, as also in ventis ex diamentro spitantibus.] because the coast whereon they were driuen, lay East from this our passage, And all windes doe naturally driue a ship to an opposite point from whence it bloweth, not being otherwise guided by Arte, which the Indians do vtterly want, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... not to disturb their beautiful business. You were even complaining of one single whistling blackbird [Merle; means also a whistling or hissing fellow.] pastorally perched on your book— what shall I say then of the croaking of that host of ravens and of obliques hiboux [Oblique owls; the term is repeated afterwards, and evidently refers to some joke, or else to some remark of Lenz's.—Translator's note.] that spreads like an "epidemic cordon" all the length of the scores of my Symphonic Poems?—Happily I am not made of such stuff as to ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... Mark smiled at this oblique compliment, but he felt well assured that Bob meant all for the best. After a short pause, he resumed the discourse ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... fine-cut and taken to fat Havanas, which he smoked audibly, in plethoric wheezes. Good living had left his body stout and his breathing slightly asthmatic. He sat looking down at his massive knees; his oblique study of Copeland, apparently, had yielded him scant satisfaction. Copeland, in fact, was making paper fans out of the official note-paper in front ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... a path oblique to the room and paced to and fro, struggling with intolerable vast impressions. The things he had derived from the cylinders and the things he had seen, conflicted, confused him. It seemed to him the ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... inebriate, and the hauling off to captivity of the three braves of the black dragon on a yellow ground, and the tying of them together back to back by their pigtails, and driving of them into our lines upon a newly devised dying-top style of march that inclined to the oblique, like the astonished six eyes of the celestial prisoners, for straight they could not go. The humour of gentlemen at home is always highly excited by such cool feats. We are a small island, but you see what we ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the edges of the stamps in sharp points. This is called perce en scie or saw-tooth perforation. When this perforation is very fine it is called serrate. There is still another form of rouletting, which we also show you. It is called rouletting in oblique parallel cuts and consists of a row of short cuts placed obliquely and parallel to each other. Stamps thus rouletted have a very ragged edge when torn apart. This roulette was only used in Tasmania ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... position so that I could act in concert with Davis's division, which he wished to post on my right in the general line he desired to take up. In obedience to these directions I deployed on the right of, and oblique to the Wilkinson pike, with a front of four regiments, a second line of four regiments within short supporting distance, and a reserve of one brigade in column of regiments to the rear of my centre. All this time the enemy kept up a heavy artillery and musketry fire on ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... substantial place of defence, according to Greek tactics. Its deep foss is cut in the solid rock, and furnished with subterranean magazines for the storage of provisions. The three piles of solid masonry on which the drawbridge rested, still stand in the centre of this ditch. The oblique grand entrance to the foss descends by a flight of well-cut steps. The rock itself over which the fort was raised is honeycombed with excavated passages for infantry and cavalry, of different width and height, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of the eye nor from the stimulus of light. On examining the eye by looking straight into it through the pupil, the anterior wall of the capsule appeared opaque in its whole extent, and of a color and luster like mother-of-pearl. On looking from the temporal side in an oblique direction into the pupil, there was visible in the anterior wall of the capsule a very small perpendicular cleft of about one line ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... past endurance by the situation, Judith permitted herself some oblique hints and suggestions, on the heels of which she left to prepare his breakfast. Returning to the sick-room with the bowl of broth, she met the strange, unexpected, unsolicited reply to all these withheld demands. Creed greeted her with a ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... heart-shaped, with a serrate margin and a petiole about as long as the blade, sometimes longer; base of leaf not oblique 4. Idesia. ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... Bey shot him an oblique glance. "That's easy. That plane that tried to clobber us, and these others that have been trying to search us out, aren't really Reunited ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... general now against fat Tom; especially as the small wound made by the heavy ball of Harry's rifle was plainly visible, about a hand's breadth behind the heart, on the side toward which he had aimed; while the lead had passed directly through, in an oblique direction forward, breaking the left shoulder blade, and lodging just beneath the skin, whence a touch of the knife ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... thanks God that he is. I don't think he has enough vanity to make a fool of himself with it, but the simple truth is he cannot help knowing that he has a wide and lively intelligence, and it pleases him to know it, and to be reminded of it, especially in an oblique and tangential sort of way, so as not ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and driven away from them a good many honest people, whom they have allured and led aside by their good words and fair-set speeches; and yet it is pretty obvious they have included the present rulers in their bond, and taken them in an oblique and clandestine way, by swearing to the relative duties contained in the fifth commandment, seeing they acknowledge them as their civil parents. Again, as their bond is supposed to reduplicate upon the national covenants, and so to bind to every article in them, by native consequence, they ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... ruined upon one hand; the working-man—he who consumed it—was ruined upon the other. But between the two, the great operators, who never saw the wheat they traded in, bought and sold the world's food, gambled in the nourishment of entire nations, practised their tricks, their chicanery and oblique shifty "deals," were reconciled in their differences, and went on through their appointed way, jovial, contented, ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... Impish hands plucked at her garments, dragged her hair. She was hurried this way and that, bruised, torn, and tossed helpless upon a sea of liquid brass. Through vast avenues lined with yellow, immobile Chinese faces she was borne upon a bier. Oblique eyes looked into hers. Knives which glittered greenly in the light of lamps globular and suspended in immeasurable space, were hurled at ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... bending 7. Endwise compression of a short column 8. Failures of a short column of green spruce 9. Failures of short columns of dry chestnut 10. Example of shear along the grain 11. Failures of test specimens in shear along the grain 12. Horizontal shear in a beam 13. Oblique shear in a short column 14. Failure of a short column by oblique shear 15. Diagram of a simple beam 16. Three common forms of beams—(1) simple, (2) cantilever, (3) continuous 17. Characteristic failures of simple beams 18. Failure ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... descending from on high, take root as soon as their extremity touches the ground, and appear like shrouds and stays supporting the mainmast of a line-of-battle ship; while others, sending out parallel, oblique, horizontal and perpendicular shoots in all directions, put you in mind of what travellers call a matted forest. Oftentimes a tree, above a hundred feet high, uprooted by the whirlwind, is stopped in its fall by these amazing cables of nature, ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... heart which has been boiled, the arrangement of the fibres is seen to be different. All the fibres in the parietes and septum are circular, as in the sphincters; those, again, which are in the columns extend lengthwise, and are oblique longitudinally; and so it comes to pass that when all the fibres contract simultaneously, the apex of the cone is pulled towards its base by the columns, the walls are drawn circularly together into a globe—the ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... the oblique cases, especially in nouns imparasyllabic, when we have an antient term transmitted to us either from the Greeks or Romans. The nominative, in both languages, is often abridged; so that, from the genitive of the word, or from the possessive, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... was now up, and its oblique rays set the waves dancing with a myriad points of fire. Above us the rock cast its shadow into the green depths below, making them seem still greener and deeper. To my left I could see the shining sands of Polkimbra, still ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Butler and the whole rig of them would have been cut off from their supplies, would have had to fight a battle for which they were not prepared, with their right made into a new left, and their old left unexpectedly advanced at an oblique angle from their centre, and would not that have been the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... to impose her law upon all, instead of setting her at defiance, it would be better to struggle with her and conquer.... I understand the indignation of contempt, and the wish to crush, roused irresistibly by all that creeps, all that is tortuous, oblique, ignoble.... But I cannot maintain such a mood, which is a mood of vengeance, for long. This world is a world of men, and these men are our brothers. We must not banish from us the divine breath, we must love. Evil must be conquered by good; and before all things ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her coming to thank him in person. The morning after the conversation just narrated, Newman reverted to his intention of meeting Mademoiselle Noemie at the Louvre. M. Nioche appeared preoccupied, and left his budget of anecdotes unopened; he took a great deal of snuff, and sent certain oblique, appealing glances toward his stalwart pupil. At last, when he was taking his leave, he stood a moment, after he had polished his hat with his calico pocket-handkerchief, with his small, pale eyes ...
— The American • Henry James
... or five young men who lounged there this afternoon were of a type known to shady pool-parlours. Hats found no favour with them; all of them wore caps; and their tight clothes, apparently from a common source, showed a vivacious fancy for oblique pockets, false belts, and Easter-egg colourings. Another thing common to the group was the expression of eye and mouth; and Alice, in the midst of her other thoughts, had ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... is rising, the blue sky is fading a little below; in the nearest Paris suburb the windows are shining in the oblique rays of the setting sun. It will soon be night, and upon this carpet of dead leaves, which crackle under the poet's tread, other leaves will fall. They fall rarely, slowly, but continually. The frost of the night before has blighted them all. Dried up and ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... women—that is why I like you," he once said to Madame de Bernieres. What the Madame's reply was, we do not know, but probably she was not displeased. If a woman knows she is loved, it matters little what you say to her. Compliments by the right oblique are construed into lavish praise when expressed in the right tone of voice by the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... shown an "Oblique Halving Joint," where the oblique piece, or strut, does not run through (Fig. 28, 3). This type of joint is used for strengthening framings and shelf brackets; an example of the latter is shown at Fig. 48. A strut or rail of this type prevents movement or distortion to a ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... this with her right hand, with her left she threw out of the centre of the vortex a portion of sand and water at every revolution. She then put in a little fresh water, and as the quantity of sand was now much diminished, she held the calabash in an oblique direction, and made the sand move slowly round on the line AB, while she constantly agitated it with a quick ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... before it had been a week in its new quarters. Its strength, even before it was half grown, was great. It would drag along a large sweeping-brush, or a warming-pan, grasping the handle with its teeth, so that the load came over its shoulder, and advancing in an oblique direction, till it arrived at the point where it wished to place it. The long and large materials were always taken first, and two of the longest were generally laid crosswise, with one of the ends of each touching the ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... a bulldog, shall sit forever in the moonlight hand in hand; or that America shall become a dandy, shave the chin-whisker, wear a Latin Quarter butterfly tie of red, white, and blue, and thrum a banjo to a little brown lady with oblique eyes and a fan, all day long; just so long will the bulldog snarl, the flaxen-haired maiden look sulky, the chin-whisker become stiffer and more provocative, and the fluttering fan seem ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Cigales have been working successively at the same point, the distribution of the punctures is confused; the eye wanders, incapable of recognising the order of their succession or the work of the individual. One characteristic is always present, namely, the oblique direction of the woody fragment which is raised by the perforation, showing that the Cigale always works in an upright position and plunges its rostrum downwards in the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... in a vise. His short nose, and fair hair, and reddish beard and moustache made him look all the more like a goat because he was small and thin, and his tarnished yellow eyes caught you with that oblique look which Virgil celebrates. How came he, in spite of such obvious disadvantages, to possess really exquisite manners and a distinguished air? The problem is solved partly by the care and elegance of his dress, and partly by the training given him ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... told Boswell that he loved most 'the biographical part of literature.' Ante, i. 425. Goldsmith said of biography:—'It furnishes us with an opportunity of giving advice freely and without offence.... Counsels as well as compliments are best conveyed in an indirect and oblique manner, and this renders biography as well as fable a most convenient vehicle for instruction. An ingenious gentleman was asked what was the best lesson for youth; he answered, "The life of a good man." Being again asked what was the next best, he replied, "The life of a bad one."' Prior's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... of less than the full weight have been provided—solid shot of 70 pounds for the 100-pounder, with the front end "chilled." Such projectiles, though not suited for long ranges, will be effective at 1,000 yards or less, and are well calculated to act against oblique ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... and Air then Quicksilver: whence an oblique Ray out of Glass, will pass into water with very little refraction from the perpendicular, but none out of Glass into Air, excepting a direct, will pass without a very great refraction from the perpendicular, nay any oblique Ray under thirty degrees, will not be admitted into the Air at all. And Quicksilver will neither admit oblique or direct, but reflects all; seeming, as to the transmitting of the Raies of Light, to be of ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... in examples 2 and 3 to be the oblique case of the first pers. pron., and treats it as "a ludicrous expletive." It is difficult to say how he would have parsed example ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... whom she had looked in a day or two after the dinner, laid down her crochet-work and turned abruptly from her oblique survey of Fifth Avenue. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... shop; and he bought something to eat. He encountered men on horseback; every now and then he saw women and children seated on the ground, motionless and grave, with faces entirely new to him, of an earthen hue, with oblique eyes and prominent cheek-bones, who looked at him intently, and accompanied him with their gaze, turning their heads slowly like automatons. ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... to your Cartesians, everything is performed by an impulsion, of which we have very little notion; and according to Sir Isaac Newton, it is by an attraction, the cause of which is as much unknown to us. At Paris you imagine that the earth is shaped like a melon, or of an oblique figure; at London it has an oblate one. A Cartesian declares that light exists in the air; but a Newtonian asserts that it comes from the sun in six minutes and a half. The several operations of your chemistry are performed by acids, alkalies and subtile matter; but attraction ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... northern border at the 120th meridian, and a point at that spot is called the State Line Point. The latitude parallel of this northern entrance is 39 deg. 15". The boundary line goes due south until about 38 deg. 58" and then strikes off at an oblique angle to the southeast, making the southern line close to Lakeside Park, a few miles east of ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... Consequently, at this writing he is sixty-three years old. He is big and looks awkward, because his dusty-gray clothes do not fit, and he walks with a slight stoop. When he wants clothes he telephones for them. His necktie is worn by the right oblique, his iron-gray hair is combed by the wind. On his cherubic face usually sits a half-quizzical, pleased smile, that fades into a look plaintive and very gentle. The face is that of a man who has borne ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... supporting it upon the earth, as the bodies of other quadrupeds are supported by their legs. Hence, if the animal be placed on the floor, its belly touches the ground. The wrist and ankle are joined to the fore-arm and leg in an oblique direction; so that the palm or sole, instead of being directed downwards towards the surface of the ground, as in other animals, is turned inward towards the body, in such a manner that it is impossible ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... with the controlling influence of the jets cut, had yawed slightly and was now traveling crabwise. The meteor on its own course, a trifle oblique to that of the ship, struck almost directly the slender spring steel spine, the frightful energy of the impact transmuted on the instant into a heat that vaporized several feet of the nose and spine before the dying shock caused an anguished ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... with an almost miniature-like sense of delicate gradation, and at the same time a something lacking as to a sense of physical form. In the few specimens of Martin to be seen there is, nevertheless, eminent distinction paramount. He was an artist of "oblique integrity": He saw unquestionably at an angle, but the angle was a beautiful one, and while many of his associates were doing American Barbizon, he was giving forth a shy, yet rare kind of expression, always a little symbolic in tendency, with the mood far more ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... Frederick had taken up his place before the four columns had all reached Borne. As soon as they were in readiness there, they were ordered to march with all speed as far as Radaxford, thence to march in oblique ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... fastened to one side of the canoe. The paddles used for propulsion have handles three or four feet long, with round blades. The paddlers sometimes make their stroke on but one side of the canoe, sometimes on both. When they paddle over one side only, the stroke of the oar through the water is oblique, maintaining a ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... more northern Esquimaux dogs are not only extremely like the grey wolves of the Arctic circle in form and colour, but also nearly equal them in size. Dr. Kane has often seen in his teams of sledge-dogs the oblique eye (a character on which some naturalists lay great stress), the drooping tail, and scared look of the wolf. In disposition the Esquimaux dogs differ little from wolves, and, according to Dr. Hayes, they are capable ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... contrasts of light and shade, the cheeks hollow up to the inner angle of the eye, the projecting cheek-bones, the massive, protuberant jaw, the sinuous, mobile lips, pressed together as if attentive, the large, clear eyes, deeply sunk under the broad, arched eyebrows, the fixed, oblique look, as penetrating as a rapier, and the two creases which extend from the base of the nose to the brow, as if in a frown of suppressed anger and determined will. Add to this the accounts of his contemporaries[1135] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... intelligence was not made public till next day. Carleton says, that the troops, when drawn up for the attack, supposed the purpose was to fire a feu-de-joie for the conclusion of the war. The enterprize, therefore, though successful, was needless as well as desperate, and merited Dryden's oblique censure. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... face of the Alps, there is a series of small hills scattered like the sea sands, which the patient vine-dresser has planted with vines, and which form amongst themselves, at their base, oblique valleys, narrow and sinuous ravines, interspersed with small verdant meads. These meadows have each their thread of water, which filters down from the mountains: willows, weeping birch, and poplars, show the course and conceal the bed of the streams. The sides and tops of these hills only bear ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... ragged hole into some hollow place behind. But for this MacIan's cell was the duplicate of Turnbull's—a long oblong ending in a wedge and lined with cold and lustrous tiles. The small hole from which the peg had been displaced was in that short oblique wall at the end nearest to Turnbull's. That individual looked at it with ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... spouting house, to be connected with the main elevator by a belt gallery above the C. & S. C. tracks. A hundred yards to the westward, up the river, the Belt Line tracks crossed the river and the C. & S. C. right of way at an oblique angle, and sent two side tracks lengthwise through the middle of the elevator and a third along the south side, that is, the side ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... Christ's blood, as is clear from what was said above (Q. 76, AA. 1, 2, 3). But in the form of the consecration of the bread, the body of Christ is expressly mentioned, without any addition. Therefore in this form the blood of Christ is improperly expressed in the oblique case, and the chalice in the nominative, when it is said: "This is the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... made no mistake. He beckoned to Big Bob Jeffries to try for goal. It was an oblique slant, and only a clever kicker could succeed, with that baffling wind against him. Big Bob looked once in the direction of the grandstand as if to draw inspiration. Most people believed he must know some girl, whose encouragement he sought; ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... other groups of natural masonry, and other wondrous forms. One wall is smooth as polished granite, red and white veins zigzagging across it like mysterious characters in the handwriting of God. In another place the whole face is rusty brown, as if of solid iron. Here and there the oblique strata suggest the daring architecture of the Titans. At the next turn we are met by the portal of a Gothic cathedral, with its pointed gables, its clustered basaltic columns. Out of the dingy wall shines now and again a golden speck like a glimpse of the Ark of the ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... its injustice and its want? As this thought came to him he turned his head and gazed at the city through the huge window, whence it stretched away, ever present, ever living its giant life. And at that hour, under the oblique sun-rays of the winter afternoon, all Paris was speckled with luminous dust, as if some invisible sower, hidden amidst the glory of the planet, were fast scattering seed which fell upon every side in a stream of gold. The whole field was covered with it; for the endless chaos of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... shekarry I ever had was a Nepaulee called 'Mehrman Singh.' He had the regular Tartar physiognomy of the Nepaulese. Small, oblique, twinkling eyes, high cheekbones, flattish nose, and scanty moustache. He was a tall, wiry man, with a remarkably light springy step, a bold erect carriage, and was altogether a fine, manly, independent fellow. ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... opponents falls to leeward of the enemy's centre and van it will expose itself to a fatal concentration. His own view of the proper form of attack from windward is to bear down upon the van or weathermost ships of the enemy in line ahead on a course oblique to the enemy's line. In this way, he points out, you can concentrate on the ships attacked, and as they are beaten you can deal with the next in order. For so long as you keep your own line intact and in good order, regardless of your rear being at first ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... advance against it, the column would be swept by the fire of their guns and musketry, without being able to make any adequate return against the concealed foes, General Graham determined to turn it by working round its flank. Accordingly, after a halt, the column continued its march in an oblique direction across ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... anxious than otherwise he might have been. She certainly deserved not the harsh name of imbecile or idiot, but she was different from all other children; she felt more acutely than most of her age, but she could not be taught to reason. There was something either oblique or deficient in her intellect, which justified the most melancholy apprehensions; yet often, when some disordered, incoherent, inexplicable train of ideas most saddened the listener, it would be followed ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... up from his desk a well-stuffed and tightly sealed legal-sized envelope. He turned to the Japanese, as if for approval or permission, and Dr. Ichi, without removing his bright, oblique eyes from Martin's face, inclined his head in agreement with that unspoken communication. The lawyer faced Martin again, but the latter had the feeling that, despite Smatt's heavy voice and forceful personality, it was the silent little Dr. Ichi ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... manuscripts; ramis crassis rigidis angulatis leviter pubescentibus, phyllodiis oblongo-lanceolatis mucronatis oblique binerviis viscido-punctatis basi obsolete glandulosis, capitulis 1-2 axillaribus, pedunculis lanatis, bracteolis rigidis acutis pubescentibus ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... is the presence in close proximity to the nerve of the Ligament of the Pad (Percival), or the Ligament of the Ergot (McFadyean). This is a subcutaneous glistening cord originating in the ergot of the fetlock, passing in an oblique direction downwards and forwards, and crossing over on its way both the digital artery and the posterior branch of the ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... the second or third summer after Waterloo. I find it necessary to relate the circumstances, because they are such as could not have occurred unless under a singular combination of accidents. In those days, the oblique and lateral communications with many rural post-offices were so arranged, either through necessity or through defect of system, as to make it requisite for the main north-western mail (i.e., the down mail) ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... faces wore a quiet half-smiling expression, barely human, and that seemed to me to spell "killing" quite distinctly and without any evil intent, like the expression on a Greek head I have only once seen, a youthful combatant—a cheery unintrospective look, a tough round neck, raised chin, oblique eyes, and the least smile on lips just parted. One young woman had that kind of face too; the rest were just as good in expression as outsiders. They were employed grinding millets in hand quirns, hard work, I'd think; the top stone they turn round, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... and sported over the grass, were still getting nearer to the edge of the grove; but as they advanced in an oblique direction, they were not likely to approach the point where the young hunters were stationed. These thought of moving farther along, so as to meet them; and were about starting to do so, when an object appeared that caused them ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... of obedience within the Order.[163] It rendered every member a tool in the hands of his immediate Superior, and the whole body one instrument in the hand of the General. The General's responsibility for the oblique acts and evasions of moral law, committed in the name of this virtue, was covered by the sounding phrase, 'Unto ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the sternmost life-line to take a quick, oblique step toward the port lines. At that very instant a huge comber climbed aboard over the stern, the great bulk of water lifting Dave as though he ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... construction of buckle for fastening the ends of cotton and other bale bands; it consists in a buckle having a permanent seat for one end of the bale band, a central opening, into which the other end of the band is entered through an oblique channel, and a bar offsetting from the plane of the buckle, notched or recessed to prevent lateral movement of the band, and connecting the free ends of the buckle on each side of the oblique channel ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... volume might be written on the symbolic import of the primary relations and dimensions of space—long, broad, deep, or depth; surface; upper, under, above and below, right, left, horizontal, perpendicular, oblique:—and then the order of causation, or that which gives intelligibility, and the reverse order of effects, or that which gives the conditions of actual existence! Without the higher the lower would want its intelligibility: without the lower the higher could ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... road, near a battery of artillery, and although completely flanked at one time by the giving away of the troops on the right, gallantly stood their ground, though suffering terribly; they and the battery, keeping up a well-directed fire, to the right oblique, until the enemy gave way. General Lee now appeared on our left, leading Hood's Texas Brigade. We joined our brigade on the right of the plank road, and again advanced to ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... for the diurnal coffee and liqueurs; while the few remarks that he had contributed to the conversation during the meal had not been in the direction of abstract conceptions of life. As he strayed away, with his vague oblique step, and the stoop that suggested the habit of dodging missiles, Vibart, who was still in the age of formulas, found himself wondering what life could be worth to a man who had evidently resigned himself to travelling with his back to ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... phrase in her duet so cleverly that the stalls burst into universal applause. Nana was silent at this, and her face grew grave. Meanwhile the count was venturing down a passage when Barillot stopped him and said he would make a discovery there. Indeed, he obtained an oblique back view of the scenery and of the wings which had been strengthened, as it were, by a thick layer of old posters. Then he caught sight of a corner of the stage, of the Etna cave hollowed out in a silver mine and of Vulcan's forge in the background. ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... it in resentment, was it in disdain? thinking of him in his true aspect as a false lover, believing him to have worn a false semblance, justly despising him for an attempt to play upon her. Was this possible? He thought (with that oblique sort of literary tendency of his) of Hamlet with the recorder. Can you play upon this pipe?—and yet you think you can play upon me! As a matter of fact there could nothing have been found in heaven or earth less like Hamlet than Chatty Warrender; but a lover has strange ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... time, And weep like a soft cloud in April's bosom Upon the sleeping eyelids of the plant, So that perhaps it dreamed that Spring was come, 190 And crept abroad into the moonlight air, And loosened all its limbs, as, noon by noon, The sun averted less his oblique beam. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... this time, we have been behind French troops, and only helping our own people by oblique fire when necessary. Our horses have suffered heavily too. Bonfire had a light wound from a piece of shell; it is healing and the dear old fellow is very fit. Had my first ride for seventeen days last night. We never saw horses but with the wagons ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... been furtively licking his lips and casting oblique glances at the bread and cheese, fell to at a nod from me. Murphy and Elerson joined him, bolting huge mouthfuls. I ate sparingly, having little appetite left after the sights I had seen in that lonely house on ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... a remarkable quantity of galeres or physalides, (physalis pelasgica) which arranged, for the most part, in straight lines, and in two or three files, cut at an angle the direction of the waves, and seemed at the same time to present their crest or sail to the wind, in an oblique manner, as if to be less exposed to its impulse. It is probable that these animals have the faculty of sailing two or three abreast, and of ranging themselves in a regular or symetrical order; but had the wind surprised these, so arranged on ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... highest society. Then he turned, and advanced into the room with such determination that the very ends of his quaintly old-fashioned bow necktie seemed to bristle with unspeakable menaces. The movement was so swift and fierce that Mr Verloc, casting an oblique glance, quailed inwardly. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... look for Him the more He gives Himself gloriously to us; and Christ declares 'Seek and ye shall find,'—the Church says 'Seek and ye shall not be tolerated'! How are we to reconcile these two assertions? We do not reconcile them; we cannot; it is a case of double sight,—oblique and perverted psychic vision. Christ spoke plainly;—the Church speaks obscurely. Christ gave straight commands,—we fly in the face of them and openly disobey them. Truth can always be 'discussed,' and Truth ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... requires a different and particular operation, in a mill made for that purpose. This mill is constructed of two large flat wooden cylinders, formed like mill-stones, with channels or furrows cut therein, diverging in an oblique direction from the centre to the circumference, made of a heavy and exceedingly hard timber, called lightwood, which is the knots of the pitch pine. This is turned with the hand, like the common hand-mills. After the rice is thus cleared of the husks, it ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... him an oblique glance. The Indian seldom looks the white man in the face, but it was obvious that Bright Sun was not afraid of the leader. Conway, as well ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... wild Indians in the mountains of Butuan, located in the province of Caragha, called Manobos. [28] They have kinky hair, oblique eyes, a treacherous disposition, brutish customs, and live by the hunt. They have no king to govern them nor houses to shelter them; their clothing covers only the shame of their bodies; and they sleep where night overtakes them. Finally, they are ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... 3. Oblique Fracture of Tibia; with partial Separation of 6 Epiphysis of Upper End of Fibula; and Incomplete Fracture ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... Julia, who had been remarkably quiet all day, left the principal group of riders, and, casting aside to Monsieur de Lucan an expressive glance, she urged her horse slightly forward. He overtook her almost immediately. She cast upon him again an oblique glance, and abruptly, with her bitterest ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... a buffalo would gain handsomely upon Aggo, and be just at the point of laying hold of him, when off Aggo would hop, a good furlong, in an oblique line, wide out of his reach; which bringing him nearly in contact with another of the herd, away he would go again, just as far off ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... carried as close as five hundred to six hundred yards to the British line, but it would appear also towards its rear; rather, probably, that the British had advanced relatively to her, owing to her course being oblique ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... oblique movement was to bring the phalanx and his own wing nearly beyond the limits of the ground which the Persians had prepared for the operations of the chariots; and Darius, fearing to lose the benefit of this arm against the most important parts of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... girl was Eurasian. Asiatic features predominated, with the exception of her eyes, which were more round than oblique, from which circumstance Peter could surmise that her Aryan blood, provided she was a half-caste, came from her mother's side; the predominance of the Mongolian in her features being due to an Asiatic ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... principles humanity, as if in obedience to a sovereign order, never goes backward. Like the traveller who by oblique windings rises from the depth of the valley to the mountain-top, it follows intrepidly its zigzag road, and marches to its goal with confident step, without repentance and without pause. Arriving at the angle of monopoly, the social genius casts backward a melancholy glance, and, in a moment of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... he had passed the ponds and had traversed in an oblique direction the large clearing which lies on the right of the Avenue de Bellevue, and reached that turf alley which nearly makes the circuit of the hill, and covers the arch of the ancient aqueduct of the Abbey of Chelles, he caught sight, over the top of the brushwood, of the hat on which ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo |
