"Optic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well-formed, with the promise of a well-proportioned maturity, she had an oval face and a high forehead, well-clustered with curly auburn hair. There was a peculiarity about her eyes—black they were or a very dark brown—they had something of that cast of optic vision which was remarkable in Cosimo, "Il Padre della Patria" and in Lorenzo, "Il Magnifico," as well as in other members of ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... said the one-eyed gentleman, fixing his single sound optic upon us with an intensity which made it glow like one of the coals in the grate before us, "did you ever hear how I met ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... sufficiently short and not too short, they directly affect the optic nerve and are known as light waves; they may be so short as to be inappreciable by the eye, yet possess the power of determining chemical change, when they are known as actinic waves; they may be also so long as to be inappreciable by the eye, when they ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... BILLEE, we're going to chuck you over, So prepare for a bath in the Irish Sea." When BILL received this information, His dexter optic winked he. ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... optic at Editor Westbrook of the Minerva Magazine, and deflected him from his course. He had lunched in his favorite corner of a Broadway hotel, and was returning to his office when his feet became entangled in the lure of the vernal coquette. Which is by way ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... cent, anyway,' sez Simon. Well, now, that jest about broke Otis up in business. 'It ain't a girl sled,' sez he, 'and its name ain't "Snow Queen"! I'm a-goin' to call it "Dan'l Webster," or "Ol'ver Optic," or "Sheriff Robbins," or after some other big man!' An' the boys plagued him so much about that pesky girl sled that he scratched off the name, an', as I remember, it ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... in a low, sweet voice. "Brave Child with the Vitreous Optic! Thou who pervadest all things and rubbest against us without abrasion of the cuticle. ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... of is and was, Things incomplete and purposes betrayed Make sadder transits o'er thought's optic glass Than ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... time, of course, the story of her fate had got across to England, and was being read and retold by each man or woman after his or her own fashion. The papers mentioned it, as seen through the optic lens of the society journalist, with what strange refraction. Most of them descried in poor Herminia's tragedy nothing but material for a smile, a sneer, or an innuendo. The Dean himself wrote to her, a piteous, ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... held the materials. We found that these men could remain at work forty-eight seconds at a time. When they emerged, their eyes were always red and starting; the effect of the violent strain upon the optic nerve which the use of the sight under water produces. We had some skilful divers among our own sailors, who, although they could not have attempted this work, were able to inspect what was done by the Wahuaners, and to report ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... light is a sensation produced upon our optic nerve by the vibrations of ether, comprising between 400 and 756 trillions per second, undulations that are ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... new series of books from the pen of Oliver Optic is bound to arouse the highest anticipation in the minds of boy and girl readers. There never has been a more interesting writer in the field of juvenile literature than Mr. W. T. Adams, who, under his well-known ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... be bounded less perfectly and less distinctly, than the group; for it is like a fragment cut out of the optic scene of the world. However the painter, by the setting of his foreground, by throwing the whole of his light into the centre, and by other means of fixing the point of view, will learn ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... pathetically laments. For folly, egotism, vanity, conceit, and stupidity, he had an amazing eye. He could not, owing to his short sight, read men's faces across the floor of the House, but he did not require the aid of any optic nerve to see the petty secrets of their souls. His best sayings have men's weaknesses for their text. Sir William's book gives many excellent examples. ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... man laughed heartily at the success of his stratagem, and polished and fondled the great eye until that optic seemed to grow sore ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... presented. They resembled the real cities seen on the coast of Holland, where towers, and battlements, and spires, "bosomed high in tufted trees," rise on the level horizon, and are seen floating on the surface of the sea. Among the optic deceptions noticed by Captain Scoresby, was one of a very singular nature. His ship had been separated by the ice, from that of his father for some time; and he was looking for her every day, with great anxiety. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... pent the whole year through, Man views the world, as through an optic glass, On a chance holiday, and scarcely then, How by persuasion ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... question had only thought of the dilatation of the pupil, the mere wish to dilate it would not have brought about the result, inasmuch as the motion of the gland, which serves to impel the animal spirits towards the optic nerve in a way which would dilate or contract the pupil, is not associated in nature with the wish to dilate or contract the pupil, but with the wish to look at remote or very near objects. Lastly, he maintained that, although every motion of the aforesaid ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... only vicious, treacherous and superstitious, but they are childlike and simple, as the following incident will show:— After the Indians came back from Fort Pitt, one of them found a glass eye; that eye was the favorite optic of Stanley Simpson, who was taken a prisoner there by Big Bear. He brought it with him for one of his brother Indians who was blind in one eye, imagining with untutored wisdom that if it gave light to a white man, it should also to a red, and they worked at it for a time, but they could not get ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... the working of the muscles, nor of the electrical and chemical changes set up by the movement in muscles and nerves, nor need he elaborately calculate the distance of the object by measuring the angle made by the optic axes; he wills to take hold of the thing he wants, and the apparatus of his body obeys his will though he does not even know of its existence. So is it with the man who prays, unknowing of the creative force ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... could endure them without trouble now, though his head ached faintly. Raynor, testing his light tolerance, had assured him that he could endure anything the Lhari could, without permanent damage to his optic nerves, though he would have headaches until ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... before the public during the present generation who has achieved a larger and more deserving popularity among young people than "Oliver Optic." His stories have been very numerous, but they have been uniformly excellent in moral tone and literary quality. As indicated in the general title, it is the author's intention to conduct the readers of this entertaining series "around the world." As a means to this end, the hero of ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... believing that the beasts think."[40] If the beasts can properly be said to see at all, "they see as we do when our mind is distracted and keenly applied elsewhere; the images of outward objects paint themselves on the retina, and possibly even the impressions made in the optic nerves determine our limbs to different movements, but we feel nothing of it all, and move as if we were automata."[41] The sentience of the animal to the lash of his tyrant is not other than the sensitivity of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... face, look hard at, look intently; strain one's eyes; fix the eyes upon, rivet the eyes upon; stare, gaze; pore over, gloat on; leer, ogle, glare; goggle; cock the eye, squint, gloat, look askance. Adj. seeing &c v.; visual, ocular; optic, optical; ophthalmic. clear-eyesighted &c n.; eagle-eyed, hawk-eyed, lynx-eyed, keen- eyed, Argus-eyed. visible &c 446. Adv. visibly &c 446; in sight of, with one's eyes open at sight, at first sight, at a glance, at the first blush; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the best means of obviating the present danger, while the persons whom he beheld glimmered before him, less like distinct and individual forms, than like the phantoms of a fever, or the phantasmagoria with which a disease of the optic nerves has been known to people a sick man's chamber. At length they assembled in the centre of the apartment where they had first appeared, and seemed to arrange themselves into form and order. A great number of black torches were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... optic nerve paresis and granulated lids for 22 years, tried everything in vain, wrote to you as a last resort and was cured in two months."—Mrs. E. ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... Jaw's got his optic on you for something," said Miss Leaks, the stenographer. "Maybe he wants you to pussy-foot around in Shields' shoes and do ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... the true nervous elements of the retina "the layer of gray cerebral substance." In fact, the ganglionic corpuscles of each eye may be considered as constituting a little brain, connected with the masses behind by the commissure, commonly called the optic nerve. We are prepared, therefore, to find these two little brains in the most intimate relations with each other, as we find the cerebral hemispheres. We know that they are directly connected by fibres that arch round through ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... snorted the country Sherlock, getting on his knees and peering into the depths, but just then Bunch handed him a handful of hard mud which located temporarily over Harmony's left eye and put his optic on the blink. ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... glance of your eyes. Understand his mystic significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret it; do but look at him, and he is contented. May we not well cry shame on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor boon; which will waste its optic faculty on dried Crocodiles, and Siamese Twins; and over the domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, a live Dandy, glance with hasty indifference, and a scarcely concealed contempt! Him no Zoologist classes ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... position: we do not see with our outward eye any more than we do with spectacles. The apparent ocular apparatus is but the passive, unconscious instrument to transmit images thrown through it upon a fine interior fibre, the optic nerve; and even this does not take cognizance of the object, but is only another conductor, carrying the image still farther inward, to the intellectual nerves of the brain; and not until it reaches them do we see the object, not until then is its individuality and are its various physical qualities, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... to; but these may surely be attributed to an exaggerated activity of that particular side of Cardan's imagination which was specially prone to seize upon some figment of the brain, and some imperfectly apprehended sensation of the optic nerve, and fashion from these materials a tale of marvel. Delusions of this sort were common in reputed witches, as Reginald Scot writes—"They learne strange toongs with small industrie (as Aristotle and others affirme)."[258] The other charge preferred by Naude as to the pretended cure of ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... expressions that I have painted to satiety. I make them dress again and let them go. Indeed, I can no longer see anything new, and I suffer from this as if I were blind. What is it? Is it fatigue of the eye or of the brain, exhaustion of the artistic faculty or of the optic nerve? Who knows? It seems to me that I have ceased to discover anything in the unexplored corner that I have been permitted to visit. I no longer perceive anything but that which all the world knows; I do the things that all poor painters ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... none over my limbs. As in the case of the arms, all muscular power was lost in an instant from my back and neck. I dimly saw Mr. Coxwell in the ring, and endeavoured to speak, but could not do so; when in an instant intense black darkness came over me, and the optic nerve lost power suddenly. I was still conscious, with as active a brain as whilst writing this. I thought I had been seized with asphyxia, and that I should experience no more, as death would come unless we speedily descended. Other thoughts were actively entering ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... dear to our young people. Such favorites as Pansy, Louisa M. Alcott, Oliver Optic, Eugene Field, etc. The game is played ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 5, February 3, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... progressive stage which is to become much more intense. In this case there follow spasmodic contractions of the muscles, trembling in all the limbs, a total numbness in the feet and hands, partial paralysis of the optic and auditory nerves. I can no longer see, I can hardly hear: vertigo ... almost swooning...." Such was the effect ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... "nitrous powder" or "smutty grain" for "gunpowder," and "optic glass" or "optic tube" for the telescope or "perspective," are instances of the approximation. A certain number of these circuitous phrases are justified by considerations of dramatic propriety. When Raphael ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... a quarter of the whole population perished by the scourge; while that at the Hotel des Invalides in Paris was only a notable one of the many which have occurred during the present century. At such times it is as if the optic nerve of the mind throughout whole communities became distorted, till in the noseless and black-robed Reaper it discerned an angel of very loveliness. As a brimming maiden, out-worn by her virginity, yields half-fainting to the dear sick stress of her desire—with ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... lead to a crude understanding of anatomy in general. The first Greek anatomist, however, who is recognized as such, is said to have been Alcmaeon. He is said to have made extensive dissections of the lower animals, and to have described many hitherto unknown structures, such as the optic nerve and the Eustachian canal—the small tube leading into the throat from the ear. He is credited with many unique explanations of natural phenomena, such as, for example, the explanation that "hearing is produced by the hollow bone behind the ear; for all hollow things ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... about 650,000 telephones; 177 telephones/1,000 persons; progress on installation of fiber optic cable and construction of facilities for mobile cellular phone service remains in the negotiation phase for joint venture agreement local: NA intercity: NA international: international connections to other former republics of the USSR are by landline ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... be all the better for the delay," Peg grumbled, as he clenched one fist furiously, and used the other hand to feel of his injured optic. "Besides, I don't feel fit to fight right now, with this bunged-up eye. But just wait till the right time comes, and see what you get then for ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... announcement of a new series of books by Oliver Optic will delight boys all over the country. When they further learn that their favorite author proposes to 'personally conduct' his army of readers on a grand tour of the world, there will be a terrible scramble for excursion tickets—that is, the opening volume of the 'Globe ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... rearrange themselves and pass to the brain by a double path. Those that convey sensations of pain and of temperature pass by the spino-thalamic route by way of the tract of Gowers and the fillet to the optic thalamus; those that are concerned with the muscular sense, the joint sense, and tactile discrimination pass up the posterior columns in the tracts of Goll and Burdach to the nuclei gracilis and cuneatus in the medulla, whence they pass ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... hand of Omnipotence to imitate the faculties and actions of a man, and to impose a perpetual illusion on the senses of his friends and enemies. Articulate sounds vibrated on the ears of the disciples; but the image which was impressed on their optic nerve eluded the more stubborn evidence of the touch; and they enjoyed the spiritual, not the corporeal, presence of the Son of God. The rage of the Jews was idly wasted against an impassive phantom; and the mystic scenes of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... pain, and put his hand up to the injured optic, which began to grow black rapidly. Then he struck out wildly half a dozen times. He was growing excited, while Dick was as calm as ever. Watching his opportunity, Dick struck out with all his force, and Baxter received a crack on the nose which caused ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... it was only a darker blue. Watho, with the help of Falca, took the greatest possible care of her—in every way consistent with her plans, that is, the main point in which was that she should never see any light but what came from the lamp. Hence her optic nerves, and indeed her whole apparatus for seeing, grew both larger and more sensitive; her eyes, indeed, stopped short only of being too large. She was a sadly dainty little creature. No one in the world except those two was aware of the being of ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... who have not read some of the writings of this famous author, whose books are scattered broadcast and eagerly sought for. Oliver Optic has the faculty of writing books full of dash and energy, such as ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... of the Book of Job came from a strange land and of a strange parentage. 5. The optic nerve passes from the brain to the back of the eyeball, and there spreads out. 6. Between the mind of man and the outer world are interposed the nerves of the human body. 7. All forms of the lever and all the ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... he that put out one of the kingdom's eyes by clouding our mother university; and (if this Scotch mist farther prevail) he will extinguish the other. He hath the like quarrel to both, because both are strung with the same optic nerve, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... domestic stories, Mr. William T. Adams (Oliver Optic) made his mark even before he became so immensely popular through his splendid books for the young. In the volume before us are given several of these tales, and they comprise a book which will give them a popularity greater than they have ever before enjoyed. They are written ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... conditions so different from our own, the activities of Nature would have to translate themselves under other forms. And doubtless the elementary bodies would not be found there in the same proportions. Consequently we have to conclude that organs and senses would not be the same there as here. The optic nerve, for instance, which has formed and developed here from the rudimentary organ of the trilobite to the marvels of the human eye, must be incomparably more sensitive upon Neptune than in our dazzling solar luminosity, in ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... therefore, wakened on election morning with the damaged optic swollen shut and sadly discolored. Realizing that this unfortunate condition would not win votes, Mr. Hopkins remained at home all day and nagged his long-suffering spouse, whose tongue ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... away. Steve's lips quivered as he put his hand on the old man's heart. He kept it there a long time. Then he said huskily, "He's gone!" At the words the sound eye of the victim popped open with a suddenness that made my heart throw a somersault. It was as sane, calm, and undisturbed an optic ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... The optic deception of the rarefied and transparent atmosphere of these elevated plains is truly remarkable. One might almost fancy oneself looking through a spy-glass; for objects often appear at scarce one-fourth of their real distance—frequently much magnified, and more especially ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... small, and is placed in the upper surface of the head; whilst in others there is no visible external orifice whatever. However perfect the sight of fishes may be, experience has shown that this sense is of much less use to them than that of smelling, in searching for their food. The optic nerves in fishes have this peculiarity,—that they are not confounded with one another in their middle progress between their origin and their orbit. The one passes over the other without any communication; so that the nerve which comes from ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... contains three agents: The optic or visual, the palpebral or pupil, and the eyebrow agent. Each of these has its peculiar sense, and we shall ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... flavour of the cherry guava, but has a most evil reputation. Some assert that this fruit is subject to a certain disease (a kind of vegetable smallpox), and that if eaten when so affected is liable to induce paralysis of the optic nerves and cause blindness and even death. Blacks, however, partake of the fruit unrestrictedly and declare it good, on the authority of tradition as well as by present appreciation. They do not pay the slightest respect to the injurious repute current ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Fiber-optic cable - a multichannel communications cable using a thread of optical glass fibers as a transmission medium in which the signal (voice, video, etc.) is in the form of a ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was in the optic nerve; there was no external inflammation. Under the [33] best surgical advice I tried different methods of cure,—cupping, leeches, a thimbleful of lunar caustic on the back of the neck, applied by Dr. Warren, of Boston; and I remember spending that ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... Fenwick only imagines he has seen the apparition which repeats itself to his fancy. "But there are grounds for the suspicion" (says Dr. Hibbert, "Philosophy of Apparitions," p. 250), "that when ideas of vision are vivified to the height of sensation, a corresponding affection of the optic nerve accompanies the illusion." Muller ("Physiology of the Senses," p. 1392, Baley's translation) states the same opinion still more strongly; and Sir David Brewster, quoted by Dr. Hibbert (p. 251) says: "In examining these mental impressions, I have found that they follow the motions of ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which gemmed and gilt the grass in a sunny afternoon's drive near the blue lake, between the low oak-wood and the narrow beach, stimulated, whether sensuously by the optic nerve, unused to so much gold and crimson with such tender green, or symbolically through some meaning dimly seen in the flowers, I enjoyed a sort of fairy-land exultation never felt before, and the first drive amid the flowers gave me anticipation ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... longer or shorter train of other thoughts, which end in a volition and an act—the loosing of the greyhound from the leash. These several thoughts are the concomitants of a process which goes on in the nervous system of the man. Unless the nerve-elements of the retina, of the optic nerve, of the brain, of the spinal cord, and of the nerves of the arms, went through certain physical changes in due order and correlation, the various states of consciousness which have been enumerated would not make their appearance. So that in this, as in all other intellectual operations, we ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... necessary, and I don't dare talk with a chemist, of course. But I'm progressing, and before many weeks I wager the country will ring with the fame of Beriah Sellers' Infallible Imperial Oriental Optic Liniment and Salvation for Sore Eyes—the Medical Wonder of the Age! Small bottles fifty cents, large ones a dollar. Average cost, five and seven cents ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... be entire brain. This it is not; but a conception of this nature will bring you near a comprehension of what it is. A luminous body imparts vibration to the luminiferous ether. The vibrations generate similar ones within the retina; these again communicate similar ones to the optic nerve. The nerve conveys similar ones to the brain; the brain, also, similar ones to the unparticled matter which permeates it. The motion of this latter is thought, of which perception is the first undulation. This is the mode by which ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... which was serious. A charge of buckshot had been fired at close range, from a clump of bushes by the wayside, and the charge had taken effect in the side of the face. The sight of one eye was destroyed beyond a peradventure, and that of the other endangered by a possible injury to the optic nerve. A sedative was administered, as many as possible of the shot extracted, and the wounds dressed. Meantime a messenger was despatched to Sycamore for Fetters, senior, who came before morning post-haste. To his anxious inquiries the doctor could give no very ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... age of the optic nerve in literature. For how many centuries did literature get along without a sign of it? However, I'll consider ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he had realized that his optic nerves, punished and preyed upon by constant and unwholesome brilliancy, were nearing the point of collapse, and that all the other nerves in his body, frayed and fretted, too, were all askew and jangled. Cognizant of this he still could see no hope of relief, since his fears ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... size of the occipital lobes is in proportion to the size of the optic tracts, and that the occipital lobes are the centers ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... nerve connections between the brain and the hand, the brain and the foot, or the brain and the trunk are cut off, the mind henceforth realizes nothing of that part except as the sense of sight reports upon it; for the optic nerves relate the hand and mind, through this sense, as truly as the motor nerves which carry the mind's message for motion to the hand, and the sensory nerves which carry back to the mind the hand's pain. But let the optic nerve be inert, ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... was a common practice, especially in the case of junior princes not required as heirs. A deep perpendicular incision was made down each corner of the eyes; the lids were lifted and the balls removed by cutting the optic nerve and the muscles. The later Caliphs blinded their victims by passing a red-hot sword blade close to the orbit or a needle over the eye-ball. About the same time in Europe the operation was performed with a heated metal basin—the well known bacinare (used by Ariosto), as happened to Pier ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Crinoline, and in an incredibly short space of time had rolled its carmine tendrils into slim cylinders, and inserted them within their lips. The external ends suddenly ignited as though by spontaneous combustion; but in reality that result was effected by the simple process of deflecting the optic ray. Clouds of roseate vapour, ascending to the dome of the canopy, partially obscured the sumptuous contours of these celestial invaders; while a soft crooning sound, indicative of utter contentment, or as Professor Nestle of the Milky Ray has more prosaically explained it, due ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... purple, which changes under the influence of light, somewhat in the same way that the film on a photographic plate does, thus forming pictures, which are translated by the rods and cones and telegraphed along the fibres of the optic nerve to the brain. Naturally, all parts of the retina are not equally sensitive to light; its centre, which is directly opposite the pupil of the eye, is far the most so, while those around the rim of the cup are dull. This is why, when you are looking, say at some one's face across the ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... 'behold, His bulky bags are filled with gold. See with what joy he counts it o'er! That sum to-day hath swelled his store.' 80 'Were I that man,' the peasant cried, 'What blessing could I ask beside?' 'Hold,' says the god; 'first learn to know True happiness from outward show. This optic glass of intuition—— Here, take it, view his true condition.' He looked, and saw the miser's breast, A troubled ocean, ne'er at rest; Want ever stares him in the face, And fear anticipates disgrace: 90 With conscious guilt he saw him start; Extortion gnaws ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... suspense as to the fate of our still surviving companions. Mr. Roper had received two or three spear wounds in the scalp of his head; one spear had passed through his left arm, another into his cheek below the jugal bone, and penetrated the orbit, and injured the optic nerve, and another in his loins, besides a heavy blow on the shoulder. Mr. Calvert had received several severe blows from a waddi; one on the nose which had crushed the nasal bones; one on the elbow, and another on the back of his hand; besides which, a barbed spear had entered his groin; ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... owner made some slight movement, it literally flashed as if sending forth scintillations of light, giving to his countenance a weird, strange aspect, emphasised by the peculiar fixed stare of his left optic, which suggested that it was doing the fixed, quiet, patient work of its master, while the other searched and flashed and sought for fresh subjects upon which its fellow might gaze. Whatever value ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... through the darkness wondering whether a foe one cannot see is following each movement with a rifle. Neither is there any chance of hitting back in such cases; for it is my opinion, from watching a stricken deer, that at short ranges the blow comes almost simultaneously as the optic nerve records the flash and before the ear has caught the explosion. All this I considered as I flattened myself against the wall—for I was by no means braver than my fellows—and presently, yard by yard, wormed myself along it until ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... come by it. When the flame was removed, Dick saw the doctor's face, and the fear came upon him again. The doctor wrapped himself in a mist of words. Dick caught allusions to "scar," "frontal bone," "optic nerve," "extreme caution," and the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... for him to invent a plausible excuse for this mishap; he had run slap against a door when getting up in the dark. And, of course, nobody believed him, though only a select few understood the true origin of his damaged optic. ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... impunity that one suddenly releases a person, locked up for years in a dark room and drives him into dazzlingly-lighted spaces without a guide, a philosopher, or a friend by his side to lead him on the way. The mental, as well as the physical optic has to gradually become accustomed to so complete a change, and this fact was not sufficiently taken into consideration by all the detractors of the young monarch, when he, to speak very familiarly, leaped over the saddle in his anxiety to secure for ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... figures may seem, however formless the shadows, to him the outline is as clear and distinct as that of a geometrical diagram. For this reason Mr. Poe has no sympathy with Mysticism. The Mystic dwells in the mystery, is enveloped with it; it colors all his thoughts; it affects his optic nerve especially, and the commonest things get a rainbow edging from it. Mr. Poe, on the other hand, is a spectator ab extra. He analyzes, he ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Superb, haughty Plenty Copious Pitch Bituminous Priest Sacerdotal Rival Emulous Root Radical Ring Annular Reason Rational Revenge Vindictive Rule Regular Speech Loquacious, garrulous, eloquent Smell Olfactory Sight Visual, optic, perspicuous, conspicuous Side Lateral, collateral Skin Cutaneous Spittle Salivial Shoulder Humeral Shepherd Pastoral Sea Marine, maritime Share Literal Sun Solar Star Astral, sideral, stellar Sunday Dominical Spring Vernal Summer ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... the structure. But when I say that the eye "makes use of" light, I do not merely mean that the eye is capable of seeing; I allude to the very precise relations that exist between this organ and the apparatus of locomotion. The retina of vertebrates is prolonged in an optic nerve, which, again, is continued by cerebral centres connected with motor mechanisms. Our eye makes use of light in that it enables us to utilize, by movements of reaction, the objects that we see to be advantageous, and to avoid those which we see to be injurious. Now, of course, as ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... related is the nervous system. The sense organs themselves are merely modifications of the nerve ends together with certain mechanisms for enabling stimuli to act on the nerve ends. The eye is merely the optic nerve spread out to form the retina and modified in certain ways to make it sensitive to ether vibrations. In addition to this, there is, of course, the focusing mechanism of the eye. So for all the sense organs; ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... tuned to vibrate in harmony with the ether-waves set in action by the sun are nerve-ends that are connected with the brain center devoted to sight. "If," says Professor James, "we could splice the outer extremities of our optic nerves to our ears, and those of our auditory nerves to our eyes, we should hear the lightning and see the thunder, see the symphony and hear ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... second buttons of his coat, and the other raised in that gesture with which the orator stills the sea of discontent, he stepped forward, and turning slowly about, brought his eyes to bear on the contumacious Bolum. He indicated the target. Every optic gun in the room was levelled at it. The upraised hand, the potent silence, the solemn gaze of a hundred eyes was too much for the old man to bear. Slowly he swung back on two legs of his chair, caught the rungs again with the projecting soles, turned his eyes to the ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... Horatio Alger, Jr., whose keen insight into the minds of the boys of our country has enabled him to write a series of the most interesting tales ever published. This line also contains some of the best works of Oliver Optic, another author whose entire life was devoted to writing books that would tend to interest and ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... things. All parts and organs of living bodies have, or have had, a purpose. Nature is blind, but she knows what she wants and she gets it. She is blind, I say, because she is all eyes, and sees through the buds of her trees and the rootlets of her plants as well as by the optic nerves in her animals. And, though I believe that the accumulation of variations is the key to new species, yet this accumulation is not based upon outward utility but upon an innate tendency to development—the push of life, or creative evolution, as Bergson names it; not primarily because the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... recently (reported in the Lancet), in a speech at University College, pointed out the close connection of the optic and auditory nerves with regard to cases ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... without, and full of marrow within; they proceed from the brain, and carry the animal spirits for sense and motion. Of these some be harder, some softer; the softer serve the senses, and there be seven pair of them. The first be the optic nerves, by which we see; the second move the eyes; the third pair serve for the tongue to taste; the fourth pair for the taste in the palate; the fifth belong to the ears; the sixth pair is most ample, and runs almost over all the bowels; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... no anatomical defect—Dr. Custer was right about that. The eyes are perfect, beautiful gray eyes, he says, and the optic nerves and auditory nerves are perfectly functional. The defect isn't there. It's deeper. Too ...
— Second Sight • Alan Edward Nourse
... thin highly vascular membrane of a dark brown or chocolate color and is pierced behind by the optic nerve and in this situation is firmly adherent to ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... is the study of perception by means of the sense of sight. We see things in the external world through the medium of light which they direct upon our eyes. The light strikes the retina, and causes a sensation. The sensation brought to the brain by means of the optic nerve becomes the condition of the representation in consciousness of certain objects distributed in space.... We make use of the sensation which the light stimulates in the mechanism of the optic nerve to construct representations concerning the existence, form, and condition ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... took us all by surprise by making me this proposal—to take the management of the estate, and become a kind of private secretary to him. You know he gets rheumatism on the optic nerve, and is almost blind at times. He would give me L300 a year, and do up the house at the home farm, rent free. What do you say to ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be considered as the sentinel which guards the pass between the worlds of matter and of spirit, and through which all their communications are interchanged. The optic nerve is the channel by which the mind peruses the hand-writing of Nature on the retina, and through which it transfers to that material tablet its decisions and its creations. The eye is consequently the principal seat of the supernatural. When the indications of the marvellous are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... for place, and dodging about the human ring, was indulged in by Dick, but William foiled each blow, and as the Cambridge man inadvertently rubbed his swollen eye, the Bard landed a stinging blow on the left optic of Milton and sent him into the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... [392] This was sad enough; but it was antecedently probable. No doubt a boy of thirteen who for disobedience was cast out of home in such a place as London had a hard lot, and went supperless to his open bed. His optic nerves were young and sensitive, and the protracted light so paralysed them that the morning found them closed "in endless night." This was a purely natural result: to admitting it, reason opposes no demur. But we must object, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... Shepard to take them off his hands. The wherewithall to purchase was wanting; but Mr. Shepard, conscious of what he was doing, decided to buy them, giving the firm's notes in payment. These plates included those of Oliver Optic's "Boat Club Series," in six volumes, and those of the "Riverdale Stories" in twelve volumes. Mr. Lee approved the transaction, and the firm at once brought out a new edition of both series. They met with ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... was a mere optic illusion; others that he who looked through such a tube did it at the peril of his soul—it was but a delusion of Satan. Galileo converted a few of the unbelievers who had the courage to look through his telescope. To the others he said, he hoped they would see those ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... intervening medium. Just as a photographic plate receives a different impression of a cluster of stars when a telescope is part of the intervening medium, so a brain receives a different impression when an eye and an optic nerve are part of the intervening medium. An impression due to this sort of intervening medium is called a perception, and is interesting to psychology on its own account, not merely as one of the set of correlated particulars which is the physical ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... counterpart a certain amount of astral matter, it does not retain the same particles for more than a few seconds at a time, and consequently there is nothing corresponding to the specialization of physical nerve-matter into optic or auditory nerves, and so on. So that though the physical eye or ear has undoubtedly always its counterpart of astral matter, that particular fragment of astral matter is no more (and no less) capable of responding to the vibrations which produce ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... wise doctors, after they had first consulted their books: "it is only the electrifying of the optic nerve." ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... either my arms or my legs. As in the case of the arms, so all muscular power was lost in an instant from my back and neck. I dimly saw Mr. Coxwell, and endeavoured to speak, but could not. In an instant intense darkness overcame me, so that the optic nerve lost power suddenly; but I was still conscious, with as active a brain as at the present moment whilst writing this. I thought I had been seized with asphyxia, and believed I should experience nothing more, as death would come unless we speedily descended. Other thoughts ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... the superior Fiend Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, Behind him cast. The broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe. His spear—to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great ammiral, were but a wand— He walked with, to support ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... rather than psychical, of the sense rather than of the intelligence. It commences at night: the incubator begins by seeing nocturnal visions, often of a photopsic* character, or hearing nocturnal sounds, neither of which have any material existence, being conveyed to his optic or auricular nerves not from without, but from within, by the agency of a disordered brain. These the reason, hitherto unimpaired, combats at first, especially when they are nocturnal only; but being reproduced, and becoming diurnal, the judgment ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... a Fish, a Reptile, a Bird, a Mammal, and a Man. In each case the letter A marks a side view, and the letter B a top view. The small italics throughout signify the following homologous parts: m, medulla; cb, cerebellum; op, optic lobes; cr, cerebrum and thalamus; ol, olfactory lobes. The series shows a progressive consolidation and enlargement of the brain in general, and of the cerebrum and cerebellum in particular, which likewise exhibit continually advancing structure ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... plans were destined to a terrible defeat. Towards the end of the year 1839, still in the full vigour of his health and intellect, he suffered a paralysis of the optic nerve; and that eye, which for so long a term had kindled with critical interest over the volumes of so many literatures and so many languages, was doomed to pursue its animated course no more. Considering the bitterness of such a calamity to one whose powers were ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... which stood furniture for which Anthony had no use, and many crates in which his machines and phials came to him; this floor was seldom visited, except by the man, who sometimes came to put a box there; and the spiders had it to themselves; except for a little room where stood an optic glass through which on clear nights Anthony sometimes looked at the moon and stars, if there was any odd misadventure among them, such as an eclipse; or when a fiery-tailed comet went his way silently in the heavens, coming from none might say whence ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and generation. Indeed, I have heard her call the attention of visitors to the strong similarity about the brow and eyes which our second son David bears to his great-grandfather, High Sheriff Plunkett, and I do not question in the least that she believes the cast in the old gentleman's optic never to have existed save in the original portrait-painter's imagination. I must admit that, notwithstanding the changes made by local talent in my ancestor's physiognomy, I am occasionally struck myself ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... ONE - a fiber-optic submarine cable link encircling the continent of Africa. Arabsat - Arab Satellite Communications Organization (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia). Autodin - Automatic Digital Network (US Department of Defense). CB - citizen's band mobile radio communications. cellular telephone system - the telephones ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... garish presences that flaunt The obvious possession of today, To wear with me the spectacles that haunt The optic sense with wraiths of yesterday— These cobbled shores through which the traffic streams Have been the stage-set of successive towns, Where coffined actors postured out their dreams, And harlot Folly changed her thousand gowns. This corner-shop was Bull's Head Tavern, When names ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... about it; he wondered whether the little eddy looked as it used to look, and whether caddis-worms and young mosquitoes were really as sweet and tender as he used to think they were. Then he thought some other things; but as the salmon's mind is located in the optic lobes of his brain, and ours is in a different place, we cannot be quite certain what his ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... way out," agreed Jack, when they were in the corridor. "Now I've got to get some vinegar and brown paper for this optic or ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... a transverse section through the head of an embryo of the approximate age of the one just described; it passes through both forebrain, fb, and hindbrain, hb; through the extreme edge of the optic vesicles, ov, and through the anterior end of the notochord, nt. It is just cephalad to the anterior end of the pharynx and to the hypophysis. The chief purpose in showing this section is to represent the two large head-cavities, hc. The origin of these cavities may be discussed ...
— Development of the Digestive Canal of the American Alligator • Albert M. Reese
... eminence in the midst of the valley, from the top of which we could command the whole plain, and observe the relation of 140 the different parts to each other, and of each to the whole, and of all to each. She then gave us an optic glass which assisted without contradicting our natural vision, and enabled us to see far beyond the limits of the Valley of Life; though our eye even thus assisted permitted us only to behold a light and 145 a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sad ado—how far my mother's suspicions wronged my father; for the eye of jealousy (and what loving woman ever lived that was not jealous?) has its optic nerve terminating not in the brain but in the heart, which was not constructed for the reception of true vision—I never knew. Later, long after the curtain of green earth had been rolled down upon the players, I spoke once on the matter with Doctor Hal, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... endeavours to prove that the blindness of cave animals is no evidence of the influence of darkness in causing degeneration of the eyes. He refers to experiments by Uhlenhuth, who transplanted eyes of young Salamanders into different parts of their bodies where they were no longer connected with the optic nerves. These eyes underwent a degeneration which was followed by a complete regeneration. He showed that this regeneration took place in complete darkness, and that the transplanted eyes remained normal when the Salamanders were kept in the dark for fifteen months. Hence the ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... they were just emerging from the stratum of Old Cap Collier, Nick Carter, the Kid-Glove Miner, and the Steam Man into "Ivanhoe," "Scottish Chiefs," and "Cudjo's Cave." They had passed out of the Oliver Optic, Harry ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... with alacrity. In the hobo's one uninjured optic shone a momentary gleam of intelligence, as he continued to stare at Gully, like a dog at its master. The gleam was reflected in a pair of shadowy, deep-set eyes, unblinking ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... extreme. The painter's eye must be admirably subtle. Light becomes the sole subject of the picture; the interest of the object upon which it plays is secondary. Painting thus conceived becomes a purely optic art, a search for harmonies, a sort of natural poem, quite distinct from expression, style and design, which were the principal aims of former painting. It is almost necessary to invent another name for this special art which, clearly pictorial though ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... "calculated," as well he might, that this taste of his quality would be quite sufficient for a little eighteen—gun sloop, close under his lee; but the fight was not to be so easily taken out of Deadeye, although even to his optic it was now high ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... She swallowed. What he'd said was largely without meaning. Actually, it wasn't even right. The evidence so far was that the nerves of smell were more sensitive than the optic nerves or the auditory ones, while nerves to bundles of muscle were less sensitive still. But Lockley wasn't concerned with accuracy just now. He wanted ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... as you possibly can, and also tell me whether you will send me one of those books which you want criticised. I am eleven years old. I like to read very much—history, travel, and adventure being my favorites. The books I like specially are Oliver Optic's works for travels, and G.A. Henty's works for historical facts and thrilling adventures. ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... turned slightly to the left and began to get the rest—the great levelled creature upon the darkened floor. Skag kept his imagination down until his optic nerves actually brought him the picture. The long thin sweep was the mother's tail, yet she was not crouched. Skag saw her sprawled paws extended toward him. She lay upon ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... overlooking the Ohio canal. 'Do you see that building?' said he, pointing to a low structure on the heel path side, extending partly over the canal. I intimated that the fabric in question produced a distinct impression on the optic nerves, and inquired its use. 'Weigh-lock' he shrieked; 'go and ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... cambric handkerchief rubbed the sinister orb into a state of roseate irritation—externally—but there is neither mote, nor sand, nor dust, nor chaff, nor speck, nor fly,—Green or otherwise—nor particle of solid opaque matter floating in it. 'Tis, indeed, pure optic illusion on the Widow's part, illusion born, perchance, partly of fear, partly of pique. There is nothing, my dear paternal Uncle, but one lambent, feverish fire, deliciously attractive, even in its angry heat, fascinating even whilst ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... were all manner of strange things whose shape and name I knew not, but little was there save old rolls of parchment to betoken a Churchman's dwelling. A great table held bottles of many shapes of glass and earthenware, and optic glasses and tools lay intermingled. I caught the gleam of much bright steel on settle and shelf—chain-mail, targe, dagger, helmet, and sword. A great warrior's complete equipment, tunic and hose of mail, shield, ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... advantage the majority of man's actions are responses to their adequate stimuli. As Sherrington has stated, the greater part of the brain has been developed by means of stimuli received through the special senses, especially through the light ceptors, the optic nerves. ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... the crossing of the fibres, and on the side of which we observe the origins of many nerves. Above the medulla we observe the pons Varolii, just above which we observe the fibres ascending to each hemisphere under the name of crus cerebri, or thigh of the cerebrum. Next we see the optic nerves crossing on the median line, the olfactory nerve, running under the front lobe, which is separated by the fissure of Sylvius from the middle lobe. There is also a glimpse of the corpus callosum at its anterior ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... staring out at the street, apparently. Really he saw nothing. Undoubtedly an image of blurring foliage, cast-iron, cement, and turf, with sunshine smeared over all, flickered upon the retinas of his eyes; but the brain did not accept the picture from the optic nerve. Martin Pike was busy with other visions. Joe Louden had followed him back to his hidden deeds and had read them aloud to him as Gabriel would read them on Judgment-day. Perhaps THIS was ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... If you deny the susceptibility of a temperament like his, you deny the whole operation of externals upon character and action. You deny, for example, the success of the Roman Catholic Church which relies, for its moral effects, upon such optic appeals to the senses, and upon the ease with which transitory feelings can be transmuted into axioms of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... point of view," said Mr. Queed, "is a moral—not an optic one. These acts which confer benefits on others," he continued, "so peculiarly commended by your religion, are conceived by it to work moral good to the doer. The eyes (which you use synecdochically ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... and blue sea!), excellence of climate, warmth, dryness and clearness of air; and in all manner of household goods and stuff, care, order, daintiness of habits, leisure and affluence. All things these which, quite as much as any peculiarity of optic function, give for the healthy mind a sort of restfulness, of calm, of virtue, and I might almost say, of regal or priestly quality to white; a quality which suits it to the act of restoring our bodies with food and wine, above all, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee |
