"Ocular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... elaborate collections from countries not so well explored as Europe—when the forms in question, or one of the two, are as yet unnamed? Does he introduce as a new species every form which he cannot connect by ocular proof with a near relative, from which it differs only in particulars which he sees are inconstant in better known species of the same group? We suppose not. But, if he does, little improvement for the future upon the state of things revealed in the ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... Andromache's lament over her living son is much more heart- rending than that of Hecuba for her dead one. The effect of the latter is, however, aided by the sight of the little corpse lying on Hector's shield. Indeed, in the composition of this piece the poet has evidently reckoned much on ocular effect: thus, for the sake of contrast with the captive ladies, Helen appears splendidly dressed, Andromache is mounted on a car laden with spoils; and I doubt not but that at the conclusion the entire scene was ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... to his time-tables and his new note-book, and for the rest of the trip Jimmy devoted himself to his wheel, with occasional ocular excursions in the direction of Mr. ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... by the arm. "Look, Major," he cried, indicating a vivacious Austrienne at no great distance from where they stood, "isn't that a dainty morsel?" Carter turned to see that the woman was freely indulging in an ocular conversation with ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... Words: optics, optician, ocular, oculary, oculate, oculifonn, ophthalmology, ophthalmologist, ophthalmic, optometry, ophthalmostat, optometrist, chatoyant, chatoyment, cynosure, orbit, strabismus, rheum, ophthalmoscope, ophthalmoscopy, astigmatism, optography, blear, blear-eyed, bleary, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... soon as the useful word shall have penetrated the intellectual demesne of the Marshall Advance. The evidence that the house is haunted is of two kinds: the testimony of disinterested witnesses who have had ocular proof, and that of the house itself. The former may be disregarded and ruled out on any of the various grounds of objection which may be urged against it by the ingenious; but facts within the observation of all are material ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... altercations on the subject of ghosts. The bishop was a zealous defender of the reality of them; the justice was somewhat sceptical. The bishop one day met his friend, and the justice told him that since their last conference on the subject, he had had ocular demonstration, which had convinced him of the existence of ghosts. "I rejoice at your conversion," replied the bishop; "give me the circumstance which produced it, with all the particulars:— ocular demonstration, you say?"—"Yes, my lord; as I lay last night in my bed, about the twelfth hour, I ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... of no great importance at present," observed their friend, "it can boast of three things—its heroic defence against the Spaniards, of which I will give you an account by-and-by as we walk round the ramparts; of its cleanliness, of which you have ocular proof; and of the vast amount of excellent cheese which it exports; indeed, it is said to do more business in cheese than any other town in the world. There are also two or three quaint and curious buildings which are worthy of ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... sailing. Commentaries, conveyed in a whisper, were continual. Her glances, shot athwart, frequently exclaimed—'Oh la!' and the fan, half concealing their significance, often enough increased the interjection to—'Oh fie!' The remarks of Miss, ocular and oral, were very pointed, and it must be owned that she was a great master of the subject. Whenever the tone of libertine gallantry occurred, she was ready with—'There! That's you! There! There you are ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... burglar solar cedar jugular scholar calendar secular dollar grammar tabular poplar pillar sugar jocular globular mortar lunar vulgar popular insular Templar ocular muscular nectar similar tubular altar (for ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... of that easy-going and democratic community, but he feared to make the girl at his side conspicuous; so he contented himself by uncovering gravely to the women and waving debonairly to the men. This constituting ocular evidence that he was not a ghost or a man who bore a striking physical resemblance to one they mourned as dead, the men ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... can see but with the vision of genius. Suddenly starting from a proposition, exactly and sharply defined, in terms of utmost simplicity and clearness, he rejected the forms of customary logic, and by a crystalline process of accretion, built up his ocular demonstrations in forms of gloomiest and ghastliest grandeur, or in those of the most airy and delicious beauty—so minutely and distinctly, yet so rapidly, that the attention which was yielded to him was chained till it stood among his wonderful creations—till ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... Albert to find, on a visit he paid to the Valleys but a little before granting their emancipation, that the Vaudois were not the monsters he had been taught to believe. I have been told, that to this very day they carry their dead to the grave in open coffins, to give ocular demonstration of the falsehood of the calumnies propagated by their enemies, that the corpses of these heretics are sometimes consumed by invisible flames, or carried off by evil spirits before burial. But now all these disabilities are at an end. ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... believe not one of them. But when we pass from the evidence of truth, in which they are so wanting, to the evidence of fraud and collusion by which many are so characterized, we shall have less wonder at the general spread of infidelity in times somewhat later, on all subjects not susceptible of ocular demonstration. Where a system claimed to be received as a whole, or not at all, it is hardly to be wondered at that when some portion was manifestly wrong, its own requirements should be complied with, and the whole rejected. The system which required an implicit belief in ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... 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
... information of the trades, characters, families, and circumstances of the unhappy sufferers, he immediately assumed the person and name of one of them; and burning some part of his coat and hat, as an ocular demonstration of his narrow escape, he made the best of his way to places at some distance, and there passed for one who had been burnt out; and to gain credit, showed a paper signed with the names of several gentlemen in the neighbourhood of the place where ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... drunk with reverence, as it ought to be. Into the principal parlour of this place entered two strangers, who found themselves, as is always the case in such hostels, the object, not of fluttered curiosity or pert inquiry, but of steady, ceaseless, devouring ocular study. They had long coats down to their heels, and carried under each coat something that looked like a stick. One was tall and dark, the other short and red-haired. They ordered a pot of ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... particular with his eyes, through which he conveyed a thousand tender protestations. She saw and inwardly rejoiced at the humility of his looks; but, far from rewarding it with one approving glance, she industriously avoided this ocular intercourse, and rather coquetted with a young gentleman that ogled her from the opposite box. Peregrine's penetration easily detected her sentiments, and he was nettled at her dissimulation, which served to confirm him in ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... indescribable. One lady, my next neighbor, whom personally 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 sixth step ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... of Funes is as follows: 'A/ juicio de testigo ocular no es ma/s admirable la sangre fria de sus capellanes' ('Historia Civil del Paraguay', book iii., ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... Latin I should think not likely to occur to a Scotsman of 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 ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... bound heavenward; and I, being 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 ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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 ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... books? Can these also be wholly annihilated, and so of a sudden, as I pretend? What shall I say in return of so invidious an objection? It ill befits the distance between your Highness and me to send you for ocular conviction to a jakes or an oven, to the windows of a bawdyhouse, or to a sordid lantern. Books, like men their authors, have no more than one way of coming into the world, but there are ten thousand to go out of ...
— English Satires • Various
... 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 the ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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. ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... I had better wait for it." On waking his first thoughts were for his letters, and almost before he had finished reading them he had begun to think of what the mid-day delivery would bring him. To see the boy pass and so have ocular proof that there was nothing for him seemed to lighten his disappointment. He saw him waste his time with the doctor's horse and then with the maid-servant, and if the old ladies were not about he would stand talking many minutes with their servants. Then he visited the short line of cottages, ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... argument it might be added in the case of this particular axiom (for the assertion would not be true of all axioms), that the evidence of it from actual ocular inspection is not only unnecessary, but unattainable. What says the axiom? That two straight lines can not inclose a space; that after having once intersected, if they are prolonged to infinity they do not meet, but continue to diverge from one another. How can ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... knows so well as the Secretary, who opens and reads the letters, what a set is made at the man marked by a stroke of notoriety. Oh the varieties of dust for ocular use, offered in exchange for the gold dust of the Golden Dustman! Fifty-seven churches to be erected with half-crowns, forty-two parsonage houses to be repaired with shillings, seven-and-twenty organs to be built with halfpence, twelve hundred children to be brought up on postage stamps. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... 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 ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... to see her safely as far as Rutland Street, occupy himself for an hour, and come back for her. They went by cab, which was dismissed in Hampstead Road. Widdowson did not turn away until he had ocular proof of his wife's admittance to the house where Miss Vesper lived, and even then he walked no farther than the neighbouring streets, returning about every ten minutes to watch the house from a ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... it is this," said Simon Basset one night in the village store. He raised the index-finger of his right hand, pointed it at the company, shook it authoritatively as he spoke, as if to call ocular attention also to his words. "Ef Abel Edwards did make 'way with himself any other way than by jumping into the Dead Hole, what did he do with his remains? He couldn't bury himself nohow." Simon Basset chuckled dryly and looked ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... popularly call waking realities. Hence when the images of persons whom he knows to be dead appear to him in a dream, he naturally infers that these persons still exist somewhere and somehow apart from their bodies, of the decay or destruction of which he may have had ocular demonstration. How could he see dead people, he asks, if they did not exist? To argue that they have perished like their bodies is to contradict the plain evidence of his senses; for to the savage still more than to ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... was supposed to be specially cared for by its patron Saint, and when circumstances permitted it there was a religious procession, which was intended to impress on the minds of the faithful the virtue of the intercessors by ocular demonstration. Vast sums of money were expended from time to time in adornment of the images, the adoration of which seemed to be tinctured with pantheistic feeling, as if these symbols were ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... vague notion that it was like a sort of religious transformation-scene, millions of miles away, up somewhere in the sky. He, on the contrary, knew that the spirit-world was all around him, because he had had ocular as well as intuitive demonstration of ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... both you and Hilderman have had ocular demonstration of it," I remarked. "It is so much more convincing, and will help you to go into the matter without any feeling that we are out on ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... glaucoma, irido-choroiditis, and all deep inflammations of the eye in which the ocular tension is increased, also in certain cases of flap extraction already alluded to, the operation of iridectomy as originally proposed by Von Graefe will ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... 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 to describe, at ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... color, and even the slaves, have on numerous occasions given ocular demonstration of their attachment to this country. Large numbers of them were distinguished for their patient endurance, their ardent devotion, and their valorous conduct during our revolutionary struggle. ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... some of whom were ocular witnesses of the elections both of Leo IV. and Benedict III., make no mention whatever of the circumstance; and it is well known that at Athens, where she is stated to have studied, no such school as the one alluded to existed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... facilities being ample, and the inducements abundant. Intelligently and successfully to consummate such a purpose is an education in itself. The tourist will find all previous study enhanced in value by ocular demonstration, which imparts life and warmth to the cold facts of the chroniclers, besides which a vast store-house of positive information is created which time cannot exhaust. Perhaps the majority of travelers ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... fool! I suppose she said you were the first and last. The last you certainly were. There are limits even to the speed of American girls; but the first, my boy! You are more like the twelfth, to my ocular knowledge. Here comes Dubois the poet. He can tell you something about Miss Semiramis. Eh! Dubois, you know Miss ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... Mr. Pawling. The subject of their conversation was investments; and it bored her. At five she returned to the house to receive a certain Mr. Skidder—known in her childhood as Blinky Skidder, in frank recognition of an ocular peculiarity—a dingy but jaunty young man with a sheep's nose, a shrewd upper lip, and snapping red-brown eyes, who came breezily in and said: "Hello, Palla! How's the girl?" And took off ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... was commonly believed that wine and malt were rendered absolutely indispensable in the West Indies, by the exhausting nature of the climate. But facts disprove the truth of this notion. "I am happy to say that I can now present this large assembly with ocular demonstration of the fallacy of the popular opinion. I need only point you to the worthy occupants of this platform. Who are the healthiest among them? The cold water drinkers—the teetotallers! We can assure you that we have not lost a pound of flesh, by abandoning our cups. We have tried the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... 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 ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... teeth. From between them, upon every proper occasion, issued a voice of surpassing clearness, melody, and strength. In the matter of eyes, also, my acquaintance was pre-eminently endowed. Either one of such a pair was worth a couple of the ordinary ocular organs. They were of a deep hazel, exceedingly large and lustrous; and there was perceptible about them, ever and anon, just that amount of interesting obliquity ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... least emotion at 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 ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... story. He says that Helius, the son of Vulcan, king of Egypt, resolving to cause his father's laws against adultery to be strictly observed, and having been informed that a lady of the court had an intrigue with one of the courtiers, entered her apartment in the night, and obtaining ocular proof of the courtier's guilt, caused him to be severely punished. He also tells us that the similarity of the name gave birth to the Fable which Homer was the first to relate, with a small variation, and which is here copied by Ovid. Libanius, deploring ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... who, motionless in his seat, and concealed, as we have said, by the corner of the bench, from seeing or being seen, did nevertheless keep his eyes firmly fixed on the ground, as if determined that, by no possibility whatever, would he be an ocular witness of the shame of ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... any man not to know the colour of Elfride's hair. In women who wear it plainly such a feature may be overlooked by men not given to ocular intentness. But hers was always in the way. You saw her hair as far as you could see her sex, and knew that it was the palest brown. She knew instantly that Knight, being perfectly aware of this, had an independent standard of ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Congress to go to cutting down mountains and bridging of 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
... is essentially a gossip; an oral, ocular, imaginative, common-place book: a pot pourri mixed from the hortus siccus of education, and the greener garden of internal thought that springs in fresh verdure about the heart's own fountain; a compound of many metals flowing from the mental crucible as one—perchance ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... campaign, within the city of Philadelphia, and to cover from depredation and waste the states of Pennsylvania, Jersey, &c. But what makes this matter still more extraordinary in my eye is, that these very gentlemen, who were well apprised of the nakedness of the troops from ocular demonstration, who thought their own soldiers worse clad than others, and advised me, near a month ago, to postpone the execution of a plan I was about to adopt, in consequence of a resolve of Congress for seizing clothes, under strong assurances ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... ocular evidence of the value of this line of verification, I have had the following series of drawings prepared. Another and equally striking series might be made of the products of artificial selection in the case of plants; but it seems to me that the case of animals is more ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... what passed in conversation, encouraged not the notion, or I should have 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 not stand ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... commander, who seemed by expression of his visage to be always on the look-out for something in the extremest distance' and to have no ocular knowledge of anything within ten miles, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... of two kinds, the black kayman, and the proper crocodile. The latter is said never to attack live creatures, but to devour only carrion, and is therefore not considered dangerous. Of the correctness of this opinion I had once ocular proof. I was walking at Queda along the coast, and looking at a number of children swimming and sporting in the water. On a sudden, I observed a large crocodile proceed towards them from a creek. Terrified at the idea of the danger ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... called on Diana, and that lady, suddenly transfigured, walked calmly over the water, and kissed the feet of her demon, who incontinently vanished. Inspired by a sense of deficiency, the doctor says that the visit to the Mammoth Cave terminated without any further incident. He was not an ocular witness of what he relates in this instance, but he received it from the lips of Diana, and the lips of Diana, in the opinion of all honourable men, would be preferable to the eyes of ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... vision, amaurosis, spots before the eyes, with other forms of ocular weakness, are common results of this vice. The same degeneration and premature failure occur in the organs of hearing. In fact, sensibility of all the senses becomes in some ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... school-books, the frequent use of the blackboard, on which the teacher is not always careful to make the size of the characters he traces proportionate to the distance at which they have to be read, are so many causes of ocular fatigue. The visual keenness of a given eye, says Doctor Leprince, decreases rapidly when the intensity of the light falls below a certain limit. The pupil, working with insufficient light, repairs the defective keenness of which this is ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... of science I've evidence ocular. A heart of one chamber they call unilocular, And in a sharp frost, or when snow-flakes fall floccular, Your wise man of old wrapp'd himself in a Roquelaure, Which was called a Wrap-rascal when folks would be jocular. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... false charge. On the contrary they are very actively useful creatures, and the humane naturalist, Mr. Waterton, says that "if this useful bird caught his food by day instead of hunting it by night, mankind would have ocular demonstration of its utility in thinning the country of mice, and it would be protected and encouraged everywhere. It would be with us what the ibis was with the Egyptians." The ibis is a bird that was found so useful ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... maliciously violated their territory, flinging a shell into their ground and an insult into their face. They are quite sincere in this belief. I want to remove that impression, and there's nothing like an ocular demonstration. I like the Russians. One of my best friends ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... judgment of pictures which goes by the pleasure of the eyes, and tastes a picture with the eyes as wine and good cooking are tasted by the tongue. I believe this ocular appreciation is nearer to the essential nature of art than the literary or intellectual appreciation of it. Vide Titian's pictures, which never have anything to say to the intellect, but are a feast ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... small engraving in my pocket Pope's Homer, and reverent study of the Horse Guards. And though I believe that most boys collect their ideas from more varied sources and arrange them more carefully than I did; still, whatever sources they seek must always be ocular: if they are clever boys, they will go and look at the Greek vases and sculptures in the British Museum, and at the weapons in our armouries—they will see what real armour is like in lustre, and what Greek armour was like in form, and so put a fairly true image together, but still ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... 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 mirages ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... judged from clinical symptoms, indirect fractures of the base such as we are accustomed to meet in civil practice in connection with fractures of the vault were decidedly rare, and, as has already been mentioned, ocular evidence of extensive fissures extending from perforating wounds of the vertex was wanting, except in the extreme cases classed under heading I. For these reasons I am inclined to ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... omnibus-box, where our music-loving Prince is happily congratulating himself on another little FIFE being added to the harmonious Royal Band, while the loyal public is mightily pleased thus to have it proved to ocular demonstration, that the subtle villain, Influenza, has been baulked in his traitorous attempt on the Royal Personage, and they sincerely hope that the insidious poisoner, being thus arrested in his course, may, with all his treacherous bacilli, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... surname of The Pounder, or Bruiser. I tell thee this, because I intend to tear up the next oak or holm tree we meet; with the trunk whereof I hope to perform such wondrous deeds that thou wilt esteem thyself particularly happy in having had the honour to behold them, and been the ocular witness of achievements which posterity will scarce be ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... he reads and believes about any animal against the bad things that he actually sees. The man who witnesses the theft of his cherries by robin or catbird, or the killing of a quail by a marsh hawk, feels that here he has ocular proof of harm done by the birds, while as to the insects or the field mice destroyed, and the crops saved, he has only the testimony of some unknown and distant witness. It is only natural that the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... 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, ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... but the girl's eyes turned back to the ladies who for the 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 ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... leave Norway without making some inquiries after the monsters said to have been seen in the northern sea; but though I conversed with several captains, I could not meet with one who had ever heard any traditional description of them, much less had any ocular demonstration of their existence. Till the fact is better ascertained, I should think the account of them ought to be torn out of ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... How! Give me 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
... "I do not doubt but the New Zealanders are still cannibals in heart; for, so late as 1832, when Mr. Earle was there, he unfortunately had ocular proof of the fact. He had been residing with them some months, when a chief claimed one of his (Mr. Earle's) servants, stating she was a runaway slave. He tied her to a tree and shot her through the heart, and his men prepared an oven and cooked her. Mr. Earle heard of it, and hastened ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... attributed. This peculiarity shows itself in the dreams of childhood, which exceed in the distinctness of their images those which come in later life. It shows itself, too, in the frequency with which, even when awake, the active organs perceive unreal sounds, or in the dark, at night, conjure up ocular spectra; and then not merely colours, but distinct shapes, which pass in long procession before the eyes. This power fades away with advancing life; except under some conditions of disease, the occasional appearance of luminous objects in the dark is the only relic with most of us of the gift of ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... apparition of the night before was an ocular delusion of my fancy sporting with the dark outlines of our cupboard, and if its horrid eyes were nothing but a pair of inverted teacups, I had, at all events, the satisfaction of having launched the poker with admirable effect, and in true "fancy" phrase, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... then, is not subject to the intellect. We cannot demonstrate or coldly discover it; we cannot weigh or measure it. Further to illustrate this 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 ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... without confessing anything, finally made admissions by which he implicated Charles V. and his two generals, Antonio di Leyva and Ferdinando di Gonzago. No affair was ever more solemnly debated. Here is what the king did, in the words of an ocular witness:— ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... 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 it is not easy ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... 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 ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... stage and disappeared; and it throve with growing validity in the latest old age of the fortunate parties. Ballanche believed, after the death of his mother, that he saw her, several successive mornings, enter his room, and ask him how he had passed the night. This ocular illusion affords us an affecting glimpse of his heart. He wrote to his friend, "Antiquity confides its weariness and grief to us, without doubt, to beguile us from our own." "Had Orpheus never met Eurydice, his existence would have remained incomplete; and, in place ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... have 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 you ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... or arm, or one side of the body is not moved, or both sides may be affected; when the paralysis is bilateral, the absence of movement is more liable to be overlooked. The infant may suffer from convulsions; there may be paralysis of certain of the ocular muscles, and inequality of the pupils; sometimes there is blindness. Persistent rigidity of the limbs, with turning of the thumbs towards the palm, is present in some cases. Lumbar puncture may reveal the presence of blood corpuscles in the cerebro-spinal fluid, and ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... remember, of course, 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)
... 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 bosom of the ocean, and, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... Sir John Chillington has remained 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 ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... Proclamation of the Governor of the State of New York, to prevent sending provisions to the enemy. The accounts I have recently received on that subject from the States of Jersey and Connecticut, give me more pain than I can express. They are positive, and from people who had ocular demonstration; they prove, that the enemy's fleet could not have quitted New York for some time, if they had not received immense quantities of provisions, living and dead. This commerce is carried on regularly and openly, as if it were peace, or ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... currents, but the sand is blown from the beach directly up the steep bank, where it is one hundred and fifty feet high, and covers the original surface there many feet deep. If you sit on the edge, you will have ocular demonstration of this by soon getting your eyes full. Thus the bank preserves its height as fast as it is worn away. This sand is steadily travelling westward at a rapid rate, "more than a hundred yards," says one writer, within the memory of inhabitants ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... to be done? If a continuous field of ice lay 150 miles off the southern coast of Spitzbergen, what would be the chance of getting to the land by going further north? Now that we had received ocular proof of the veracity of the Hammerfest skipper in this first particular, was it likely that we should have the luck to find the remainder of his story untrue? According to the track he had jotted down for me on the chart, the ice ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... arranged, Anne, the French bonne, met them at the station to take Effie home. Geoffrey noticed that she looked smarter and less to his taste than ever. However, she embraced Effie with an enthusiasm which the child scarcely responded to, and at the same time carried on an ocular flirtation with a ticket collector. Although early in the year for yellow fogs, London was plunged in a dense gloom. It had been misty that morning at Bryngelly, and become more and more so as the day advanced; but, though it was not yet four o'clock, ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 to explain ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... disapproval; but in the case of persons 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 that just death which all good ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... of the ocular (eye) muscles.—The vision becomes double, the eyelids do not act normally, may droop. The eye may not move in every direction as ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... tongue; Should leave to levity, to dolour, The unproficient English scholar; Should give the very stranger dread, Of gibberish, that ne'er was read; That ne'er was heard, without derision, Eschewing ocular revision. ...
— A Minniature ov Inglish Orthoggraphy • James Elphinston
... poor guests get indigestions. 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 ten ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... obtaining that Rowley's poems were written in the fifteenth century) and he pointed to the "Wondrous chest".' '"There" said he 'with a bouncing confident credulity "There is the very chest itself"!' After which 'ocular demonstration', Boswell remarks, 'there was no more to be said.' It was to such men as these that Chatterton read his 'Rouleie's' poems. Another of his audience was Mr. Barrett, a surgeon, who collected materials for a history of Bristol, which, when published after the boy-poet's ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... opinion that he had received into his stomach as much at the time as was consistent with his safety, the transgressor was sent back to prison, and the business resumed the two following days. After three very hearty but unpleasant meals, I am convinced by ocular proof that every leaf of the book was actually swallowed." Lon. Pa. ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... 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. And if it were not enough, has he not sometimes seen a handkerchief spotted ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... proving the truth of his assertions, till the poor creature shrieked out with agony. He then tore down her eye-lids, to exhibit the healthiness of her eye-balls; and wrenched open her mouth, to prove, by ocular demonstration, that he practised no deception in speaking of her age. The old woman herself examined her all the time, and haggled, as to the price, like a butcher when purchasing an ox in the cattle market. ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... as for 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
... ingenuity, and what a comical account he had written of it to her mother, such, as Amy told him, deserved to be published in a book of good advice to young ladies, to show what they might come to if they behaved well. However, she was glad to have ocular demonstration of the success of the cookery, which she had feared might turn out uneatable; and her gentle feelings towards Philip were touched, by seeing one wont to be full of independence and self-assertion, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... kitchen table and plugged in the substage illumination. Then, while the others watched, he selected a well slide, took his pipette, and captured a drop from the jar of pool water. The drop went into the well slide. He put on a cover glass, then applied his eye to the ocular. ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... see no harm in it, since no law of the land is violated. Neither does the Court hold it beneath the dignity of its office to witness this little trial of skill between gentlemen. Further speaking, the Court does not here pass upon questions of law, but sits rather as jury in matters of ocular evidence, with the simple duty of determining whether certain flying objects fall upon this or the other side of that certain line marked out as the boundaries. Gentlemen, I am, a—hem, yours with great pleasure." If there was a twinkle in his eye it was a very solemn one. I venture to say ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... west. Yet all this trade is conducted through a narrow canal, so congested with boats that there are innumerable delays. Even when the boats reach the waters of the bay, the remaining channel is shallow for lack of dredging, and launch-progress is very slow. We had ocular proof of this latter evil; but we ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... Mrs. Cochran and Mrs. Livingston to dine with me to-morrow; but am I not in honor bound to apprise them of their fare? As I hate deception, even where the imagination only is concerned, I will. It is needless to premise, that my table is large enough to hold the ladies. Of this they had ocular proof yesterday. To say how it is usually covered, is rather more essential; and this shall be ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... These I shall state. First of all, a man not otherwise interested in the several advantages of the colleges has, however, in all probability, some choice between a small society and a large one; and thus far a mere ocular inspection of the list will serve to fix his preference. For my part, supposing other things equal, I greatly preferred the most populous college, as being that in which any single member, who might have reasons for standing aloof from the general habits of expense, of intervisiting, etc., ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... may be a foolish whim, but I do crave—ocular evidence for my belief that those books were written and were published. I want to see them all ranged along goodly shelves. A few days ago I sat in one of those libraries which seem to be doorless. Nowhere, to the eye, was broken the array of serried volumes. Each door was flush ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... which is supposed to dim the eye, seemed to improve the ocular views of Joel Newschool amazingly, for he had been enabled in his late years to see that a vast difference of caste existed between those that tilled the soil, wielded the sledge hammer, or drove the jack-plane, and those that were ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... definition is, 'painting accented by sculpture;' on the other hand, in solid colored statues,—Dresden china figures, for example,—we have pretty sculpture accented by painting; the mental purpose in both kinds of art being to obtain the utmost degree of realization possible, and the ocular impression being the same, whether the delineation is obtained by engraving or painting. For, as I pointed out to you in my Fifth Lecture, everything is seen by the eye as patches of color, and of color only;—a fact which the Greeks knew well; so that when it becomes a question in the dialogue ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... There is no longer room for doubt. Ocular proof I can now offer in the shape of five living eggs of this gigantic bird. All measures have been taken to hatch these eggs; they are now in the vast incubator. It is my plan to have them hatch, one by one, under the very eyes of the ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... any communication from me on the subject must be superfluous. And now that I have taken up my pen in compliance with your wish, what can I tell you that you have not perhaps conveyed to yourself by ocular inspection, and better than I can ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... 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
... get a word in, Aaron continued, "I say, Pearl, go to the other end of the ship, and tell your Coromantee friends that it is all a humbug that I am not the Sultan Cocoloo; farther more, that I have not a feather in my tail like a palm branch, of the truth of which I offer to give them ocular proof." ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... and new points of view emerged, so that the printed statements bear little resemblance to the lectures of which they pretend to be reports. Such transformations are inevitable when one attempts to make a written report of what was essentially an ocular demonstration, unless every one of the numerous ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... friend, and entering on the subject of a passion which he said he had long entertained for her, he expressed his wonder at finding it interfered with by so noble a gentleman, especially as it was returned by the princess with a fervour of which the other, if he pleased, might have ocular testimony. "Greatly astonished at this news was Ariodante. He had received all the proofs of his mistress's affection which it was possible for chaste love to bestow, and with the greatest scorn refused ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... Macquarie to lose no time in fitting out a second expedition, which should have the elucidation of this point for its principal object. This expedition was also entrusted to my direction. I had scarcely a doubt of ultimate success, and set out with a confidence which nothing short of ocular demonstration could destroy. The result of our voyage down the Macquarie River, and the conjectures which naturally arose in my mind founded upon observations of its apparent termination, together with our subsequent journey to ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... 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, and at length commenced her story, which, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Though they stink yet they sting. (He wags his head with cackling raillery) Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ocular. (He sneezes) Amen! ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... for us both. I can now exercise this employment only upon hearsay, or, at most, written evidence; and therefore shall exercise it with great lenity and some diffidence; but when we meet, and that I can form my judgment upon ocular and auricular evidence, I shall no more let the least impropriety, indecorum, or irregularity pass uncensured, than my predecessor Cato did. I shall read you with the attention of a critic, not with the partiality of an author: different ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... in safety, and just in time too, for the north-west wind rushed down upon us, as if to dispute our right to intrude on its dominion. Hastily securing the tents, we hurried in to change our boots, and to see whether our feet were frost-bitten or not; for it was only by ocular proof that one could be satisfied of their safety, sensation having apparently long ceased. I shall not easily forget my painful feelings, when one gallant fellow of my party, the captain of the sledge, exclaimed, "Both feet gone, sir!" and sure enough ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... been staying in the enemy's camp, was not, it may be supposed, in a sweet temper to receive him. O'Grady looked thunder as Furlong entered, and eyeing him keenly for some seconds, as if he were taking a mental as well as an ocular measurement of him, he saluted ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... little trip to the Alps, I find the copies of the libretto of "Lohengrin" which you have kindly sent to me, and have every reason to rejoice heartily at the remarkable care with which you have had it done. This is another ocular proof of the sympathy with which you have gone to work in everything concerning my last opera, and I must not omit to express my warmest thanks to you. Your last letter, in which you kindly enclosed the honorarium for my "Lohengrin," ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... supersede the idolatry, but not the piety, of the pagan. Our God is a household God, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man's dwelling; let men look to it when they rend it lightly and pour out its ashes. It is not a question of mere ocular delight, it is no question of intellectual pride, or of cultivated and critical fancy, how, and with what aspect of durability and of completeness, the domestic buildings of a nation shall be raised. It is one of those moral duties, not with more impunity ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... told the provincial that the college is in a bad state, ocular demonstration will prove the contrary; everything goes on in an orderly way. The archduke receives Holy Communion every Sunday. He is burning with desire to reinstate the Catholic religion, and he labours for the conversion of ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... progress in inventions, to which science may look forward, is suggested. The men of the City of the Sun "have already discovered the one art which the world seemed to lack—the art of flying; and they expect soon to invent ocular instruments which will enable them to see the invisible stars and auricular instruments for hearing the harmony of the spheres." Campanella's view of the present conditions and prospects of knowledge is hardly less sanguine than that of Bacon, and characteristically he confirms ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... prominent results already obtained in past years, in the dyeing department of the Yorkshire College, where it has been our custom to expose to light and other influences the patterns dyed by our students. Further, I wish to give you an ocular demonstration of the action of light or dyed colors, by means of these silk, wool, and cotton patterns, portions of which have been exposed for 34 days and nights on the sea coast near Bombay, during the month ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... the Seer, the inhabitants of Jupiter will not cultivate the sciences, which they call darkness; those of Mercury abhor the expression of ideas by speech, which seems to them too material,—their language is ocular; those of Saturn are continually tempted by evil spirits; those of the Moon are as small as six-year-old children, their voices issue from the abdomen, on which they crawl; those of Venus are gigantic in height, but stupid, and live by robbery,—although ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... seen ghosts. They not only have appeared to me, but were as real to my ocular vision as any other external physical object which I saw ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... this chap's ancestors had begun to fish off these rocks 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 stolen ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... up or down, as to where God is and where he is not, where his right hand, where before and where behind him; or as to whether the world is full of his glory. No such questions were asked, and there was the ocular demonstration of immortality, tangible and intelligible to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... grimly at his comrade; and twisting out one more look—a kind of ocular screw—under the influence of which the blind man feigned to undergo great anguish and torture, bade him, in a softened tone, approach, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... obtained, the quack at once sets his moral rack to work. Everything will be said not only to confirm the patient's fears, but to increase them. A pretended examination of urine will be made, and he will be gravely told that the quack's worst fears are confirmed, ocular demonstration being offered the dupe. The effect of this ordeal may be imagined. The unfortunate victim believes that he has received "confirmation, strong as proof of holy writ," of his dangerous condition. Glibly the quack ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... been deafened against truth, by the clamours of sinister conspirators against the monarchy instead of the monarchs; if all these circumstances, I repeat, do not completely acquit the Queen, argument, or even ocular demonstration itself, would be thrown away. Posterity will judge impartially, and with impartial judges the integrity of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... cherished 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 ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... encouraged to exhibit to the Royal Society, an ocular proof of the reasonableness of my theory by a sphere of iron, on which a small compass moved in various directions, exhibiting no imperfect system of magnetical attraction. The experiment was shown by Mr. Hawkesbee, and the explanation, with which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... the topographer, and accordingly has an opportunity to name the regions according to real peculiarities rather than chance suggestions. The future map will be significant of the past history as well as of the ocular features of the landscape. Mr. Powell gives careful sections of the strata in the Plateau Province, where they are about 46,000 feet thick. Few persons imagine the vast amount of work, exploration, and comparison which such drawings embody. The beds form a series of groups unlike ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... by those who only know a little; but by those who are well informed, you probably would be. The fact is from a too ready credulity, we have now turned to almost a total scepticism, unless we have ocular demonstration. In the times of Marco Polo, Sir John Mandeville, and others,—say in the fifteenth century, when there were but few travellers and but little education, a traveller might assert almost anything, and gain ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the universal grief for 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 be attended with ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... impressive and solemn nature occur both in private and public life, which seem to add ocular testimony to an intercourse betwixt earth and the world beyond it. For example, the son who has been lately deprived of his father feels a sudden crisis approach, in which he is anxious to have recourse to his sagacious advice—or a bereaved ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... 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, ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... whither he next directed his steps, he received much information respecting the northeast of Asia. He ascertained the existence of this cape; all doubts, he says, being now solved, not by calculation, but by ocular demonstration. Its latitude and longitude, are well ascertained: he places this cape half a degree more to the northward than Baron Wrangel; but it is doubtful whether he himself reached it, and if ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... pretensions of several modern simplifiers, contrivers of machines, charts, tables, diagrams, vincula, pictures, dialogues, familiar lectures, ocular analyses, tabular compendiums, inductive exercises, productive systems, intellectual methods, and various new theories, for the purpose of teaching grammar, may serve to deceive the ignorant, to amuse the visionary, and to excite the admiration of the credulous; but none ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... only food they then had consisted of fern 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 ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... us that he had been half an hour looking for the next street. The better to convince myself of the density of the mist, I extended my arm to its full length and tried to count my fingers. From ocular evidence alone, I certainly could not have told whether I had four, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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 low bamboo fence, and made his way stealthily through ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... within the cognisance of themselves. The particulars of that matter will not be set forth in documentary form, but only through process of myself acting as plaintiff and petitioner, and producing none but ocular evidence." ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... 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 ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... urgently required 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
... presented herself to my embraces. I kissed it and hung it where it is the last object which I see at night, and the first on which I open my eyes in the morning. She died when I completed my sixth year; yet I remember her well, and am an ocular witness of the great fidelity of the copy, I remember too a multitude of the maternal tendernesses which I received from her, and which have endeared her memory to me beyond expression. There is in me, I believe, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... branch, from the branch to the bough and from the bough, by a no less angular path, to go back home. It is useless to rely upon sight as a guide on this long and erratic journey. The Processionary, it is true, has five ocular specks on either side of his head, but they are so infinitesimal, so difficult to make out through the magnifying-glass, that we cannot attribute to them any great power of vision. Besides, what good would those short-sighted lenses be in the absence ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... have had an ocular demonstration of the operation of this law on the widest scale possible. I don't claim that nonviolence has penetrated the 360,000,000 people in India, but I do claim it has penetrated deeper than any other doctrine in an ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... the relation attributed to Tonti, has fallen into some obvious errors respecting La Salle's expedition to the Illinois River. Hennepin, an ocular witness, is assuredly the best authority, corroborated, as his narration is, by the relation and letters ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... against the logical deductions of occult science. And it ought to be unnecessary to insist that nothing can be adduced, on purely logical grounds, against the facts themselves. In the domain of the physical world it can never be proved by logic, but only by ocular demonstration, whether or no there is such an animal as a whale; similarly, supersensible facts can be known only through ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... calculation" was a good one, he said, and it only failed of success because he, Driscol, happened to have a remarkably sharp sight for all tracks, both of horses and men. To this proposition, supported by ocular evidence, the regulators assented, and Driscol stock, previously somewhat depressed by sundry good causes, forthwith rose in the regulator market to a ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... thinks her lady friends have taken as much dessert as they wish, she catches the eye of the principal among them; an interchange of ocular telegraphing takes place, the hostess rises, and with her all the company rise; the gentlemen make a passage for the ladies to pass; the one who is nearest to the door opens it, and holds it open until all the ladies have passed out of ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... without understanding. His perception ran swiftly outwards, as through concentric circles, yet he was not sure whether it were outwards or inwards that he went. The roar of London, with its flight of ocular visions, sank behind him, and without any further sense of mental travel, he found himself perceiving his own home, whether in memory, imagination, or fact he did not know. But he perceived his mother, in the familiar lamp-lit room, ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson |
