"Ocular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seemed to feel that the revolver covered him, and none would make the attempt, for they had ocular demonstration before them of the deadly aim of the eye ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... belief, the Sarsen Trilithons were erected first, followed by the foreign stones. The building of the group was continuous and no gap separates the Trilithon from the foreign upright. Of this abundant ocular proof was forthcoming in 1901, when the foundations of the great Trilithon were laid bare, and the leaning upright restored to its original perpendicular position. When the ground was opened it was found that each upright had been ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... "It will be mighty mean, though, if she does array herself against my wife, for Madam Kelsey is quoted everywhere, and even Mrs. Lane, who lives just opposite, dare not open her parlor blinds until assured by ocular demonstration that Mrs. Kelsey's are open too. Oh, fashion, fashion, what fools you make of your votaries! I am glad that I for one dare break your chain and marry whom I please," and feeling more ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... amused at the dispute, professed a strong desire to know the facts of the case; and the Emperor, declaring that it was clearly impossible to get at the truth in any other way, invited Mrs. M—— to settle the controversy by letting down her hair, and giving ocular demonstration of its being her own. The lady, whereupon, drew out the comb and the hairpins that held up her hair, and shook its heavy and shining masses all over her shoulders, thus giving conclusive proof of the tenure by which ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... at the corners should be made thicker than the others by a fiftieth of their own diameter, because they are sharply outlined by the unobstructed air round them, and seem to the beholder more slender than they are. Hence, we must counteract the ocular deception by ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... by symbols- in which all conceptions, especially those of the relations of quantities, are represented in intuition by signs; and thus the conclusions in that science are secured from errors by the fact that every proof is submitted to ocular evidence. Philosophical cognition does not possess this advantage, it being required to consider the general always in abstracto (by means of conceptions), while mathematics can always consider it in concreto ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... supposed to be an elle long; with a white ring, as it were, of scales about it. The scales along his backe seem to be blackish, and so much as is discovered under his bellie, appeareth to be red; for I speak of no nearer description than of a reasonable ocular distance. For coming too neare it, hath already beene too dearely payd for, as ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... of breathing, laboured up a long flight of steps, till we came to the place where the wonderous chest stood. 'THERE, (said Cateot, with a bouncing confident credulity,) THERE is the very chest itself.' After this OCULAR DEMONSTRATION, there was no more to be said. He brought to my recollection a Scotch Highlander, a man of learning too, and who had seen the world, attesting, and at the same time giving his reasons for the authenticity of Fingal:—'I have heard all that poem when I was young.'—'Have ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... myself a novice, am slow in perceiving that he does not know the way into the heavens, and is merely bent that I should admire his skill to rise like a fowl or a flying fish, a little way from the ground or the water; but the all-piercing, all-feeding, and ocular air of heaven that man shall never inhabit. I tumble down again soon into my old nooks, and lead the life of exaggerations as before, and have lost my faith in the possibility of any guide who can lead me thither where I ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to it in the world; and not because they only were admitted to see Christ after his resurrection: for the fact is otherwise. The gospel indeed, concerned to shew the evidence on which the faith of the world was to rest, is very particular in setting forth the ocular demonstration which the apostles had of the resurrection; and mentions others, who saw Christ after his resurrection, only accidentally, and as the thread of the history led to it. But yet it is certain, there were many others, who ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... cedar jugular scholar calendar secular dollar grammar tabular poplar pillar sugar jocular globular mortar lunar vulgar popular insular Templar ocular muscular nectar similar ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... cheer?" He did not answer me. Even in that supreme moment it was not difficult to discern that William had been looking on the wine when it was red, and had not confined himself to mere ocular observation. I tried to make him remember he was an Englishman, that the honour of our country was in our hands, and that we should die with the courage and dignity befitting our race. These were strange consolations and exhortations for me to offer in such an extremity, but, ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... Conclusions, or matters of unconfutable Science; I have produced nothing here, with intent to bind his understanding to an implicit consent; I am so far from that, that I desire him, not absolutely to rely upon these Observations of my eyes, if he finds them contradicted by the future Ocular Experiments of other and ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... one universal language: the ocular—not Volapuk nor Esperanto is as intelligible ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... tube length distance from the end of the nosepiece to the eyeglass of the ocular. This is the measurement referred to in speaking ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... wrong there, as it has been on some other questions. Toad-in-the-hole might be sleeping, but dead he was not; and of that we soon had ocular proof. One morning in 1812, an amateur surprised us with the news that he had seen Toad-in-the-hole brushing with hasty steps the dews away to meet the postman by the conduit side. Even that was something: how much more, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... not very long afterward that we had ocular demonstration of the value that extra spurt of speed might prove to be; for while we were still plugging along in the direction of the firing, we suddenly sighted two craft coming slowly in our direction. They proved to be the Kasagi ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... said she, "I can bear it no longer: I do not pretend to be so handsome as some others; but as for the defects that villain charges me with, I dare say, my dear Hobart, there is no woman more free from them: we are alone, and I am almost inclined to convince you by ocular demonstration." Miss Hobart was too complaisant to oppose this motion; but, although she soothed her mind by extolling all her beauties, in opposition to Lord Rochester's song, Miss Temple was almost driven to distraction by rage ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... often puzzled and scandalized him by his waywardness. Fits of deep melancholy alternated with bursts of Spanish boastfulness, utterly astonishing to the modest and sober-minded Englishman, who would often have fancied him inspired by usquebaugh, had he not had ocular proof of his ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... and his own superstitious vassal believes it with more assurance than his own personal identity. But the filling up and the concealment of the old apertures in the nunnery, by the order of the Roman Priests are scarcely less powerful corroborative proof of Maria Monk's delineations, than ocular and palpable demonstration. ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... in human nature that Natt should resist the temptation to show his cronies by ocular demonstration what a knowing young dog he could be if he liked. Natt never tried ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... almost the same instant the roving eyes of the Senora seemed to catch sight of him. He came over and spoke to the de Moches, standing with them several minutes. I fancied that not for an instant did she allow the gaze of any one else to distract her in the projection of whatever weird ocular power nature had endowed her with. If it were a battle of eyes, I recollected the strange look that I had noted about those of both Whitney and Lockwood. That, however, was different from the impression one got of the Senora's. I felt that she would have to be pretty clever to ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... and cupping is well performed, though the doctor occasionally, by separating the fibrine from the blood in a basin of water by his side, and exhibiting it, pretends that he has extracted something more than blood. He can thus explain the rationale of the cure by his own art, and the ocular demonstration given ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... day when Babalatchi's suspicions were confirmed by ocular demonstration, Dain and Nina had remained longer than usual in their shady retreat. Only Almayer's heavy step on the verandah and his querulous clamour for food decided Mrs. Almayer to lift a warning cry. Maroola leaped lightly over the ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... blind. Its pointed fore part, which we hesitate to call a head, bears absolutely no trace of any optical apparatus; and the same with every other part of the body. There is nothing but one bare, smooth, white skin. And this sightless creature, deprived of any special nervous points served by ocular power, is extremely sensitive to the light. Its whole skin is a sort of retina, incapable of seeing, of course, but able, at any rate, to distinguish between light and darkness. Under the direct rays of a searching ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... always to get the weather-gage of your patient. I mean, to place him so that the light falls on his face and not on yours. It is a kind of, ocular duel that is about to take place between you; you are going to look through his features into his pulmonary and hepatic and other internal machinery, and he is going to look into yours quite as sharply to see what you think about his ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... [Footnote] *Arago's ocular micrometer, a happy improvement upon Rochon's prismatic or double-refraction micrometer. See M. Mathieu's note in Delambre's 'Histoire de l'Astronomie au ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... clearly found to be guilty, the public mind would easily overlook any doubts that might exist as to the regularity of the court in the just sentence that would overtake acknowledged criminals. Thus, if Booth himself and a party of men clearly proved, by ocular evidence or confession, to have aided him, were here tried and condemned, and, as a consequence, executed, not much stress, we think, would be laid by many upon the irregularity of the mode by which they should reach ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... when we aim at rendering them too conspicuous. Faith is an infused, not a natural, knowledge; it is not a human science, but a divine light, by means of which we see things which, in the natural order, art invisible to us. If we try to teach it as human sciences are taught, by ocular demonstrations and by natural evidence, we deceive ourselves; Faith is not to be found where human reason tries only to support itself by the experience ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... somewhere that Scotsmen and Chinamen understand each other better than any other nationalities on the globe do, but this was the first time he had had a first-hand ocular demonstration that the Chinaman appreciated the Doric of Robbie Burns, when delivered with the ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... Cowley's Enchanted Isle, for, we having had a sight of it upon several points of the compass, it appeared always in so many different forms; sometimes like a ruined fortification; upon another point like a great city," etc. No wonder though, that among the Encantadas all sorts of ocular deceptions and ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... Hollister nursed this fear which so depressed him, watching the slow return of his wife's vision, listening to her talk of all they could do together when her sight was fully restored. From doubt of ocular treatment she changed to an impatient desire of whatever benefit might lie in professional care. A fever of impatience to see ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... on a scale so magnificent in this sublime region that ocular deceptions of this character abound, and it requires time and practice to judge of those measurements which have been rendered familiar in other scenes. In like manner to the bark under the rocks of Savoy, there lay another, a heavy-moulded ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... than in despatching a messenger to you. And also, on account of the reverence due to you, I determined to make no report of expenses before sending to you something which might please you, and by ocular proof should give witness to its cost. On account, then, of all these things, so great a delay ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... another look at the contents of the bag, hoping that he had been deceived by some ocular delusion, but the second examination brought him no comfort. He sank back, feeling in a state of mental and ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... our list,—adding, 'it has done more,—it has given us the probable prospect of the discovery of another. We see it as Columbus saw America from the shores of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis, with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration.'—These expressions are not reported in any of the papers which profess to give an account of the proceedings, but I appeal to all present whether they were ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... pain, and mortified at the result of his ocular proof of Juno's incapability of biting, still more mortified at having so far forgotten himself as to utter an oath, and altogether discomfited by the ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... back! What do ye think o' that, ey?" said the sportsman—levelling his gun, throwing back his head, closing his sinister ocular, and stretching out his legs after the manner of the Colossus of ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... upper parts grayish tawny; ocular stripe pale; skull, rostrum, nasals, and upper incisors ...
— The Baculum in the Chipmunks of Western North America • John A. White
... to music, to bear upon which leg he chose to dictate, and in fact to do more than I shall venture to state, as were I to give an accurate description it must appear an exaggeration, having met with several Englishmen who with myself have declared they never could have believed, had they not had ocular demonstration, that a horse could have been taught to do that which the animal in question has nightly exhibited at Franconi's. When the owner did return, he claimed the half of the value the horse had fetched, but the riding-master pleaded ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... and fear shuts the mouths of those whom the same fortune might gain to his favor in the support of his testimonies. Therefore, when it comes to proof there is always a lack of witnesses for innocence; while on the contrary there is for tyranny an oversupply of ocular witnesses of things that they have never seen or heard. When some stranger goes to a village to trade where he does not have the guaranteed patronage of many powerful relations, in the case of any neglect that is shown him in courtesy or in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... been apt to think, that the young ladies and Mr. Lovelace were of longer acquaintance than of yesterday. For he, by stealth as it were, cast glances sometimes at them, when they returned; and, on my ocular notice, their eyes fell, as I may say, under my eye, as if they could ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... gifted were sent to Heliopolis, where flourished, in the great "Hall of the Ancients," the most celebrated medical faculty of the whole country, whence they returned to Thebes, endowed with the highest honors in surgery, in ocular treatment, or in any other branch of their profession, and became physicians to the king or made a living by imparting their learning and by being called in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... poor fellow's speech about the beetle's being "the index of his fortune." Upon the whole, I was sadly vexed and puzzled, but at length, I concluded to make a virtue of necessity—to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to convince the visionary, by ocular demonstration, of the fallacy of ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... though I am at present busied in writing—those few Observations I have accumulated in my Peregrinations, Sir; yet the Ambition I aspir'd to, of being an ocular and aurial Witness of your Singularity, made me trespass ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... they expressed it) of God's people. That the reader may fully understand the incidents of this narrative, it will be necessary that he and we travel back some hundred and fifty years, and some miles from the farm-house of Auchincairn, that we may have ocular demonstration of the curious contrivances to which the love of life, of liberty, and of a good conscience, had compelled our forefathers to have recourse. That cairn which appears so entire and complete, of which the stones ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... once, when the Bishop made a visit to the Justice, the latter, contracting the muscles of his face into an air of more than usual severity, assured the Bishop, that, since their last disputation, besides his Lordship's strong reasons, he had met with no less proof than ocular demonstration, to convince him of the real existence of ghosts. "How!" says the Bishop, "ocular demonstration! Well, I have preached, I have printed, upon the subject; but nothing will convince you sceptics but ocular ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... custard. This is so extraordinary that I scarcely expect to be believed; and I would not have related it upon my own single testimony, but Mr. Banks, Dr. Solander, and most of the other gentlemen have had ocular demonstration of its truth, and know that I ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... delight may be imagined when he had ocular evidence that he had at length succeeded in tracing the mysterious Niger down to the ocean, by seeing before him two vessels, one the Spanish slaver, the other the English brig on board which he fully expected to receive the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... our passage between the Fork and the Pike. On one of our fine days I saw the scene of Davies's original adventure by daylight with the banks dry and the channels manifest. The reader has seen it on the chart, and can, up to a point, form his opinion; I can only add that I realized by ocular proof that no more fatal trap could have been devised for an innocent stranger; for approaching it from the north-west under the easiest conditions it was hard enough to verify our true course. In a period so full of new excitements ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... be, the look of the daguerreotype; and he has admirably done so. But if Albert Durer had drawn the wall between those towers, he would have represented it with all its facts distinctly revealed, as in Fig. 1; and in many respects this clear statement is precious, though, so far as regards ocular truth, it is not natural. A modern sketcher of the "bold" school would represent the tower as in Fig. 3; that is to say, in a manner just as trenchant and firm, and therefore ocularly false, as Durer's; but, in all probability, which involved entireness ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Filippello. He answered thus:—"You have adjured me by her to whom I dare not deny aught that you may ask of me; my riddle therefore I will presently read you, provided you promise me that neither to him nor to any one else will you impart aught of what I shall relate to you, until you shall have ocular evidence of its truth; which, so you desire it, I will teach you how you may obtain." The lady accepted his terms, which rather confirmed her belief in his veracity, and swore that she would not tell a soul. They then drew a little apart, that they might not ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... animal's skin, because it implies a decline and deadening of the vital and healthy power of the skin. But all reasoning about this impression is rendered difficult, by the host of associated ideas connected with it; for the ocular sense of impurity connected with corruption is infinitely enhanced by the offending of other senses and by the grief and horror of it in its own nature, as the special punishment and evidence of sin, and on the other hand, the ocular delight in purity is mingled, as I before observed, with the love ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... Annie Donaldson. Yet instead of one hour, Annie generously allowed Mr. Arlington nearly to triple the time. How he was occupied during all this time, I cannot tell, though that he did not spend all of it in drawing I had ocular demonstration. ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... was elated The Oskaloosa Kid was at once relieved and terrified. Relieved by ocular proof that he was not a murderer and terrified by the immediate presence of the two who ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... presented to him, took their revenge, by repeating in every direction fables they had gleaned from the gondoliers for a few pence—viz., that Lord Byron was a misanthrope and hated his countrymen. Mr. Hoppner, who was an ocular witness of the life which Lord Byron led at Venice, and whose testimony is so worthy of respect, told Moore how much annoyance Lord Byron endured from English travellers, bent on following him everywhere, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... abandoned hope. The bare possibility that his friend is deliberately deceiving him—though such a deception would be a thing so monstrously wicked that he can hardly conceive it credible—is a kind of hope. He furiously demands proof, ocular proof. And when he is compelled to see that he is demanding an impossibility he still demands evidence. He forces it from the unwilling witness, and hears the maddening tale of Cassio's dream. It is enough. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... They not only have appeared to me, but were as real to my ocular vision as any other external physical object which I ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... Little Netta White, having deposited Baby White in the mud at the lowest corner of the Court for greater security, is waiting upon them—a temporary handmaiden, relieving, by means of variety, the cares of permanent nursehood. Mrs White is up to the elbows in soap-suds, taking at least ocular and vocal charge of the babe in the mud, and her husband is—"drunk, as usual?" No—there is a change there. Good of some kind has been somewhere at work. Either knowingly or unwittingly some one has been "overcoming evil with good," ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... time in the Lateran, then drove to the Coliseum, where I found a long procession of penitents, their figures and faces totally concealed by their masks and peculiar dress, chaunting the Via Crucis. I then examined the site of the Temple of Venus and Rome, and satisfied myself by ocular demonstration of the truth of the measurements which gave sixty feet for the height of the columns and eighteen feet for the circumference. I knew enough of geometrical proportion to prove this to my own satisfaction. On examining the fragments which remain, each fluting ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... is hitherto known the burden is invariably borne by the male. In the inheritance of colour-blindness (p. 117) we have already discussed an instance in which the defect is rare, though not {176} unknown, in the female. Sex-limited inheritance of a similar nature is known for one or two ocular defects, and for several diseases of the nervous system. In the peculiarly male disease known as haemophilia the blood refuses to clot when shed, and there is nothing to prevent great loss from even a superficial scratch. In its general trend the inheritance of haemophilia is not ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... was meditating on these things, an angel from the Lord said to me, "You shall presently see, and be convinced by ocular demonstration, what is the nature and quality of that infernal love." Then suddenly the earth opened on the left, and I saw a devil ascending from hell, with a square cap on his head let down over his forehead even to his eyes: his face was ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... performed by the observer A and his assistant B. A is in a dark room, lies on a chair having the eye at the ocular and can easily look over 2 deg. in declination. The assistant sits in the room below, separated by a board ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier
... we must not, I think, deny migration in general; because migration certainly does subsist in some places, as my brother in Andalusia has fully informed me. Of the motions of these birds he has ocular demonstration for many weeks together, both spring and fall: during which periods myriads of the swallow kind traverse the Straits from north to south, and from south to north, according to the season. And these vast migrations ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... sailed through, where lands had been supposed to exist. In tracing the route of the Resolution and Adventure, throughout the South Atlantic, the South Indian, and the South Pacific Oceans that environ the globe, and combining it with the route of the Endeavour, we receive what may be called ocular demonstration, that Captain Cook, in his persevering researches, sailed over many an extensive continent, which, though supposed to have been seen by former navigators, at the approach of his ships, sunk into the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... with so many ocular demonstrations of the practicability of the Morse telegraph, and with the reports of the success of other telegraphs abroad, the popular mind, as reflected in its representatives in Congress, should have remained ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Buchanan's age. Did you look at the watermark of the MS.? If the Manuscript be of undeniable antiquity, I consider it as a great curiosity, and most worthy to be published. But I believe nothing else than ocular inspection will satisfy most cautious antiquaries....—Yours, my dear Sir ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... and cheering to me, namely, the ocular proof which I possessed that the books which I had disposed of were read, and with attention, by those to whom I sold them; and that many others participated in their benefit. In the streets of Aranjuez, and beneath the mighty cedars and gigantic elms and plantains which ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... thou prove my love a whore;— [Taking him by the throat.] Be sure of it. Give me the ocular proof; Or, by the worth of man's eternal soul, Thou hadst been better have been born a dog Than answer my ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... its demands appeased?—when does conscience raise a barrier against its further progress? It is a state difficult to believe. Could I have listened with an ear of credulity to the tale of Thompson—could I have borne to listen to it with patience, had I not witnessed an act of turpitude that ocular demonstration could only render credible—had I not been prepared for that act by the tone, the manner, the expressions of the minister, when we passed an hour together, ignorant of each other's presence? It was a dreadful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... accomplishments speak for themselves, in the posthumus memorabilia of his travels published by Lord L., had seen an array of objects in the desert, which facts immediately succeeding demonstrated to have been a mere ocular lusus, or (according to Arab notions) phantoms. During the absence from home of an Arab sheikh, who had been hired as conductor of Lord Lindsay's party, a hostile tribe (bearing the name of Tellaheens) ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... subsequent period, when the mind is in a passive state, these impressions may suddenly revive owing to the phenomenon of recurrence. This observation may afford an explanation of some of the phenomena connected with ocular phantoms and hallucinations not traceable to any disease. In these cases the psychical effects produced appear to have no objective cause. Bearing in mind the numerous visual impressions which are being unconsciously made on the retina, it is not at all unlikely ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... partners had partaken of a sufficient quantity of nerve tonic, Mr. Gibney suddenly recollected that he had to go over to Market Street and redeem the sextant which he had pawned several days before. And since McGuffey knew, from ocular evidence, that Mr. Gibney was "flush," he decided to accompany the mate and preserve him from temptation. There was safety in numbers, he reasoned. Captain Scraggs said he thought he'd go back to the Maggie. He had forgotten to ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... with a bent wire and a piece of crab meat. Century after century they had sat there unchanging. Sat there all day long, and had been lucky to catch half as many fish as I had done in fifteen minutes. And glaring ocular demonstration did not shake his faith in the methods of his ancestors. I began to understand the hopeless discouragement with which my host talks of the "Native Question." The Arabs are starving off because the French have ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... Vanslyperken was a mass of snow on the windward side of him before she had finished, which she did, by pulling down her worsted stockings, and showing the wounds which she had received as her portion in the last night's affray. Having thus given ocular evidence of the truth of what she had asserted, Babette then delivered the message of her mistress; to wit, "that until the dead body of Snarleyyow was laid at the porch where they now stood, he, Mr Vanslyperken, ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... gaze. It was his lofty aristocratic stare; and he expected to see the glittering lights that peeped through the dark chink between brim and collar shut up under its rebuke. But nothing of the kind took place, and the ocular exercises of the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Why prepare for eight or ten friends, more than sufficient for twenty or thirty visiters? "Enough is as good as a feast," and a prudent provider, who sensibly takes measure of the stomachic, instead of the SILLY ocular, appetite of his guests, may entertain his friends, three times as often, and ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... least two satisfactory records of the material were taken. When the disc had made a single revolution—a record of some ten or fifteen stanzas—the recorder was fed inward to a new circle on the disc. After the records were taken, a microscope with either 2 or 4 Leitz objective and a micrometer ocular was substituted for the recorder. The phonograph recorder was raised and drawn back to its starting point, and the disc came back to its original position. The microscope was focussed, and adjusted by the screw of the shoe until it had the ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... and on the structure of the eye, has most kindly undertaken for me this investigation with the aid of the many ingenious mechanisms of modern science, and has published the results.[15] He shows that during violent expiration the external, the intra-ocular, and the retro-ocular vessels of the eye are all affected in two ways, namely by the increased pressure of the blood in the arteries, and by the return of the blood in the veins being impeded. It is, therefore, certain that both the arteries and the veins of the eye are more ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... so, Philip, I believe," replied Krantz; "for I too have had ocular proof of the correctness of a part of your history. Remember how often I have seen this Phantom Ship—and if your father is permitted to range over the seas, why should you not be selected and permitted to reverse his doom? I fully believe ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... droves With him that solitary roves, And man of all the chief; Fair on whose face, and stately frame, Did God impress his hallowed name, For ocular belief. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... now satisfied herself, by ocular demonstration, that her English guest, even if he was the devil, had neither horn, hoof, nor tail, that he could bear the sign of the cross without changing his form, and that, when he spoke, not a puff of sulphur came out of his mouth, began to take courage, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... it; yet would not his sister cease urging him to resent it as became a man sensible of his dishonour, that is, to rid himself, by such ways as the law puts it in the power of a husband so injured, to get rid of her; and imagining that an ocular demonstration of her crime, would make a greater impression on him, than any report could do, she set about contriving some way to bring him where his own eyes might convince him of the truth of what he had been so often told:—but how to prevail on him ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... moment had lost their companion. She felt irresponsive and feared she should pass with this easy cosmopolite for a stiff, scared, English girl, which was not the type she aimed at; but wasn't even ocular commerce overbold so long as she hadn't a sign from Nick? The elder of the strange women had turned her back and was looking at some bronze figure, losing her shawl again as she did so; but the other stood where their escort had quitted her, giving all her attention ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... cross, and her feet hanging out, as the bed is made too short for her upon principle. Round her waist she occasionally wears a band with iron points turning inwards; on her breast a cross with nails, of which the points enter the flesh, of the truth of which I had melancholy ocular demonstration. Then, after having scourged herself with a whip covered with iron nails, she lies down for a few hours on the wooden bars, and rises at four o'clock. All these instruments of discipline, which each nun keeps in a little box beside her bed, look as if their fitting place would ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Pilot's Bride; but Fritz, of course, expressed doubts of the bird having any such fabulous existence when it was pointed out to him while illustrating "flight without motion," as its graceful movement through the air might be described. Now, he had ocular demonstration of the fact that the albatross not only rests its weary feet on solid earth sometimes, but that it also builds a nest, and, marvellous to relate, actually ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... table is set in the houses where the boarders proper flatter their acquaintances that they sleep. It must be so, for the entire male population is constantly eating in the oyster-cellars. Indeed, if ocular evidence may be relied on, the best energies of the metropolis are given to the incessant consumption of "half a dozen raw," or "four fried and a glass of ale." The bar-rooms and eating-houses are always ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... him as he did with an interest which, so far as I was concerned, was of a distinctly new and original sort. Whether or not I had been the victim of an ocular delusion I could not be sure. It was incredible to suppose that he could have disappeared as he had seemed to disappear,—it was also incredible that I could have imagined his disappearance. If the thing had been a trick, I had not the faintest notion how it had been worked; ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... asked myself a hundred times; but, Charles Holland, the judgment, the feelings, and all the prejudices, natural and acquired, must succumb to actual ocular demonstration. Listen to me, and do not interrupt me. You shall know all, and ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... for there was no such mark to be found upon the poor corpse. It was just at this moment that the news came to me in my country retreat that I had been found dead, and I flew up to London to give ocular proof to my poor distracted parents that I was alive. Mother, who had been the only one not to identify the drowned girl, confessed to me that she was so like me that just for a second she, too, was deceived. You see, they knew I had not been very ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... have declared that, "it is a sublime state of mind to which whole sects have aspired, and some individuals appear to have attained."[A] The histories of great visionaries, were they correctly detailed, would probably prove how their delusions consisted of the ocular spectra of their brain and the accelerated sensations of their nerves. BAYLE has conjured up an amusing theory of apparitions, to show that HOBBES, who was subject to occasional terrors, might fear that a certain combination of atoms agitating his brain might so disorder ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... anything that should not be further divulged: but one must respect private Letters. Carlyle's proves a droll instance of even so shrewd a man wholly mistaking a man's character from his Letters: had now that Letter been two hundred years old! and no intelligent Friend to set C. right by ocular Demonstration. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... head, regarding her thoughtfully as she gathered the torn pieces of manuscript and tucked them into the pocket of her jacket—ocular evidence of the success of her mission. She reminded him of Lizzie Connolly, though there was less of fire and gorgeous flaunting life in her than in that other girl of the working class whom he had seen twice. But they were on a par, the pair of them, in dress and carriage, and he smiled with inward ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... with a very friendly reception, and had the good fortune to prevail upon the Indians to deliver me their furs upon the spot, which formed a very heavy load for both myself and men. We met our opponents in returning; but though they had ocular proof of my success, they nevertheless ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... Becky seated at the piano, Lady Steyne listening in a dream of old memories, the other women chattering at a distance, when the jarring doors are thrown open and the men return. It is all over in half a page, but in that glimpse the story is lifted forward dramatically; ocular proof, as it were, is added to Thackeray's account of Becky's doubtful and delicate position. As a matter of curiosity I mention the one moment in the later episode, the evening of those strangely ineffective ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... honest fellow. I will tell you nothing of the result of the observations I have made upon him; for, from what I have learnt at the minister's, there is something going forward which will soon give you ocular demonstration of his worth; till then keep the idea you have formed of him in your bosom, and tell me what is your opinion of Count C., ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... magnificence about the tumble-down ruins of the konak, toying with their roses in silence. They seem contented and happy in their isolation from the great busy outer world, and, impressed by their universal appreciation of a flower, it occurs to me, on the impulse of ocular evidence, that it would be the greatest pity to disturb and corrupt these people by attempting to thrust upon them our Western civilization—they seem far happier ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... great and sudden Change, made in them; not that there is need of any Parenchyma to fill up these Muscles considering what hath been said. Mean while, I humbly conceive, that if it be in any part of a Muscle, their Ingenuity, that plead for it, will put them upon some experiments, to bring it to Ocular Demonstration, either in Living or Dead Muscle, any kind of flesh, raw, rosted, boyl'd, or in what they can best make it out. And when I shall be convinc'd of an Errour in what I have discoursed, I shall beg pardon for giving ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... crime; and that no evidence of any fact shall be received, if a higher degree of evidence of the same fact can possibly be obtained. Hence, a copy of no instrument is admitted, if the original be in existence; no hearsay witness is received, if ocular testimony can be produced. The rigorous examination of every circumstance offered to be proved has excited the surprise of intelligent Protestants. Miracles, which to them seemed proved to the utmost degree of demonstration, have, to their surprise, been rejected. Whatever there ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... but proof of it, ocular proof, that I may justify my dealing with him to the world, and ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... condition was so frightful that Squire Wenzel could not help hesitating to pronounce them the ones belonging to Kohlhaas. In case they were to be taken from the knacker not-withstanding, and an attempt made to restore them to good condition in the stables of the knights, an ocular inspection by Kohlhaas would first be necessary in order to establish the aforesaid circumstance beyond doubt. "Will you therefore have the goodness," he concluded, "to have a guard fetch the horse-dealer ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... that I dropped "The Rescue" not to give myself up to idleness, regrets, or dreaming, but to begin "The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'" and to go on with it without hesitation and without a pause. A comparison of any page of "The Rescue" with any page of "The Nigger" will furnish an ocular demonstration of the nature and the inward meaning of this first crisis of my writing life. For it was a crisis undoubtedly. The laying aside of a work so far advanced was a very awful decision to take. It was wrung from me by a sudden conviction ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... rose seemingly to fetch his valuables and ran away, thus leaving the Wali no proof that he had been there in Moslem law which demands ocular testimony, rejects circumstantial evidence and ignores such partial witnesses as the policeman who accompanied his Chief. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... appeared to hesitate, I offered myself to conduct and introduce him. Upon this he hesitated still more, and at last said that the fact was that his mind was so fully made up on the subject, and his conviction that these documents are forged is so complete, that no amount of ocular evidence would shake it, and he should only conclude that the author of these fabrications was a ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... the lips of the man who told it to me. Had you seen, as I did, the fire of truth in those gray eyes; had you felt the ring of sincerity in that quiet voice; had you realized the pathos of it all—you, too, would believe. You would not have needed the final ocular proof that I had—the weird rhamphorhynchus-like creature which he had brought back with him from ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... harbour, to the exclusion of the Lantaro frigate, then at the anchorage. This money was sent to Ancon, on the pretence of placing it in safety from any attack by the Spanish forces, but possibly to secure it for the further purposes of the Protector. The squadron having thus ocular demonstration that its arrears could be paid, but were not, both officers and men refused longer to continue in a service which had brought ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... have occurred, might either proceed, when there was no intention to fabricate, from intertwining the fantastic threads which sometimes stream upon the waking senses from the land of shadows, or be caused by those ocular hallucinations of which medical science has supplied full and satisfactory solution. There is no argument which so long maintained its ground in support of witchcraft as that which was founded on the confessions ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... to prevent the building from falling into a ruinous state (as shown by the ocular testimony of the commissioners, assisted by competent advisers whom they instructed to survey the fabric), be paid for by a true tithe, to be rendered by all priors, provosts, and agents directly subject to the monastery. This tithe is to be placed in the hands ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... commonest sights is to see a lady in the front of her house, or in the front-room, wide open to the street, sitting in a tub washing herself. I never saw a place where the cleanliness of the fair sex was established on such unimpeachable ocular evidence. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... delight cum f'nent. Have ye ne'er a drap among the whole o' yees?" Receiving an answer in the negative, he turned about with a Kilkenny, "It don't signify," and toddled for the door, which he left open, to await Tommy's return. Redman knew Daley's propensity too well, and having ocular proof that he had wet t'other eye until it required more than ordinary effort to make either one stay open, he declined recognising ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... rivers, or the other, which if too restricted may be referred to the States for amendment, securing still due measures and proportion among us, and providing some means of information to the members of Congress tantamount to that ocular inspection, which, even in our county determinations, the magistrate finds cannot be supplied by any other evidence? The fortification of harbors was liable to great objection. But national circumstances furnished some color. In this case there is none. The roads of America ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... since his death, and here he will stay till the last of the twenty years has become a thing of the past. Two or three times every year Mr. Winter, Sir Mark's lawyer, comes over to Deepley Walls to satisfy himself by ocular proof that Sir John's instructions are being duly carried out. This he has a legal right to do in the interests of his client. Sometimes he is conducted to this room by Lady Chillington, sometimes by me; but even in his case her ladyship will not relax her rule of not having the room ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... of ocular fascination. The accused and the accusers were brought into the presence of the examining magistrate, and the supposed witch was ordered to look upon the afflicted persons; instantly upon coming within the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... investigation, which lasted for a long time—a very long time; for the doctor analyzed and explained each symptom, and the more studious of the assistants wished to join practice to theory, and have an ocular assurance of the state of the patient. As a consequence of this cruel scene, Jeanne experienced an emotion so violent that she had a severe nervous attack, for which Dr. Griffon gave an additional prescription. ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... caution has saved you the excitement of the scene I have imagined, but it puts me to the necessity of substituting a hurried description for the ocular satisfaction I had proposed to send you. Who would have supposed, thirty years since, that one Maga would not be enough for the world, and that New York would be the seat of its flourishing double! Yet it is now twelve years since its twin ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... his loss, that on the anniversary of his death, all his subjects struck out one of their front teeth; and the whole nation have in consequence acquired a sort of whistle in speaking. Chinau had even had the above words tattooed on his tongue, of which he gave me ocular demonstration; nor was he singular in this mode of testifying his attachment. It is surprising that an operation so painful, and which occasions a considerable swelling, should not ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... I knew, living at the moment, during the absence of her husband, with a few servants in a very solitary house, never rested until she had placed eighteen doors (so she told me, and, indeed, satisfied me by ocular proof), each secured by ponderous bolts, and bars, and chains, between her own bedroom and any intruder of human build. To reach her, even in her drawing-room, was like going, as a flag of truce, into a beleaguered fortress; at every ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... 1: A written description can never convey so true an idea of anything, as an ocular inspection. I will therefore say that it will afford me much pleasure to show any member of the profession the apparatus I am about ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... thus sets forth before himself in this and in all his other studies: 'We are not magisterial in opinions, nor have we dictator-like obtruded our conceptions: but, in the humility of inquiries or disquisitions, have only proposed them to more ocular discerners. And we shall so far encourage contradiction as to promise no disturbance, or re- oppose any pen, that shall fallaciously or captiously refute us. And shall only take notice of such whose experimental and judicious knowledge shall be employed, not to traduce or extenuate, but ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... incredible to those that had not ocular proof of its verity, but these soon were convinced. Was not Messer Guido Cavalcanti riding through the city gates, whither all were now running, and was not Messer Dante by his side, and your humble servant who writes these lines, and ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... seen in Europe prior to the seventeenth century, there were but few opportunities of correcting the popular fallacy by ocular demonstration. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... at that. "I don't require ocular evidence, alma mater. I have always been able to read ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... roots and kumara; fish they never saw, and the only flesh he then partook of was human. But I will no longer dwell on this humiliating subject. Most white men who have visited the island have been sceptical on this point; I myself was before I had "ocular proof." Consequently I availed myself of the first opportunity to convince myself of the fact. I have reflected upon the subject, and am thoroughly satisfied that nothing will cure the natives of this dreadful propensity but the introduction of many varieties of animals, ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... superannuated eggs. The Eye-witness closed the window with an undignified bang, and retired into the depths of his chamber, where he remained until after the election. Owing to a dimness of vision, resulting from the eggs-cruciating condition of his ocular organs, the occupation of the Eye-witness was from that moment gone. And to this fact must be attributed his inability to state, with any certainty, whether the Right Party has succeeded in putting the Right Man in the Right Place; but he rather ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... that served to add force to the class of omens we are considering. The monsters guarding the approaches to temples and palaces[658] were but one form which this popular belief assumed, and when a colt was observed to have a lion's or a dog's claw, an ocular demonstration was afforded which at once strengthened and served to maintain a belief that at bottom is naught but a crude and primitive form of a theory of evolution. In a dim way man always felt the unity of the animal world. Animals resembled ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... asked why, if the supermen exist, those who are in incarnation do not come out into the world and give us ocular evidence of the fact. It is pointed out that they could speedily convince the world by a display of superphysical force. But they are probably not in the least interested in convincing anybody of their existence. They are interested in raising the ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... had opportunity to admire his abilities as a navigator. On many occasions I observed that he was very cautious in all his proceedings; that he took nothing for granted, and was only convinced of a fact when properly certified by ocular demonstration. ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... remains in his eye, it acquires an amount of harmony, in behoof of an intrinsic harmony resident in the organ itself, which exerts proportionately modifying influences on all things that enter within it; and of the nervous harmony, and the beautifully apportioned stimuli of alternating ocular spectra. 3rd. There is a resolution of discord effected by the instrument itself, inasmuch as its effects are homogeneous. All these harmonizing influences are equally true of the painting; and though we have no longer the homogeneous ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... inconspicuous victims lay for hours in whatever spot they happened to be killed; but the court required ocular demonstration that the leaders of the Huguenots who had been most prominent in the late wars were really dead. Accordingly the naked corpses of Soubise, of Guerchy, of Beaudine, d'Acier's brother, and of others, were dragged from all quarters to the square in front of ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird |
