"Focussed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... descendant of the Maules. In "The Blithedale Romance" Hawthorne stood for once, perhaps, too near his material to allow the rich atmospheric effects which he prefers, and in spite of the unforgetable portrait of Zenobia and powerful passages of realistic description, the book is not quite focussed. In "The Marble Faun" Hawthorne comes into his own again. Its central problem is one of those dark insoluble ones that he loves: the influence of a crime upon the development of a soul. Donatello, the Faun, is a charming young creature of the natural sunshine ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... the back of the building. Man after man had hurried forward, intent on passing beyond the railing, but each lead encountered the judge, formidable and forbidding, and had turned aside. Gradually the many pairs of eyes roving over the little group surrounding the outlaw focussed themselves on Slocum Price. It was in unconscious recognition of that moral force which was his, a tribute to the grim dignity of his unshaken courage; what he would do ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Talcott was too young to distinguish the intermediate tints of the moral spectrum; and her judgments were further simplified by a peculiar concreteness of mind. Her bringing-up had fostered this tendency and she was surrounded by people who focussed life in the same way. To the girls in Miss Talcott's set, the attentions of a clever man who had to work for his living had the zest of a forbidden pleasure; but to marry such a man would be as unpardonable as ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... man smiled as though in subdued mirth, and with a red pencil outlined the area. Following this his eyes rested contemplatively on the lumberman who sat still focussed on the map. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... a musical tone. With a thin disc of vulcanite as receiver, the dark heat rays which pass through an opaque screen were found to yield a note. Even the outer ear is itself a receiver, for when the intermittent beam is focussed in the cavity a faint musical tone ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... at the table, flushed with wine and the exertion of hilarity. Twenty eyes were focussed on the queer, insignificant little man in the doorway. If they had not been capable of focussing them on anything a moment before, they acquired the power to ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... large eyes grew larger for wonder at the strange fixed gaze of the physician, whose face had visibly bleached,—blanched to corpse-pallor. Silent seconds passed; and still the eyes stared—flamed as if the life of the man had centralized and focussed within them. ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... directness, Darwin disengaged Funny Face's unresisting fingers from the prune, seized it, and retired. Funny Face never knew it; his soul was far away after the blazoned wonder, and when it returned, it was not to prunes at all. They were forgotten, and his wandering eye focussed back to a bright button in the grass. Thus by strict attention to business ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... this story is spiritual as well as physical, and occupies less than a month of time, it is focussed intensely upon reality. Everything that the author permits us to see and understand is seen through a single point of life—a hole pierced in the wall between two rooms of a grey Paris boarding house. The time is most often twilight, with its romantic ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... with maps and atlases makes it difficult for us to think of the world in other terms than those of map and diagram; knowledge and science have focussed things for us, and our imagination has in consequence shrunk. It is almost impossible, when thinking of the earth as a whole, to think about it except as a picture drawn, or as a small globe with maps traced upon it. I am sure that our imagination has ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... 'shook hands with Mrs. Lorimer as she entered the cab. The order given to the driver was Euston station. Thus a lady of great personal charm, whose terrible experience has for some weeks focussed the attention of the civilised world upon the affairs of her ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... attention, fix my thought on what I am reading, and easily take in its meaning. The act of will, the effort of attention, the intending of the mind on each word and line of the page, just as the eyes are focussed on each word and line, is the power here contemplated. It is the power to focus the consciousness on a given spot, and hold it there Attention is the first and indispensable step in all knowledge. Atten. tion to spiritual things is the ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... of the junction of the side road with the avenue, when he stopped suddenly and faced me. He had manifestly gathered himself together for a great effort that was, as it were, focussed in the malignant, dominating scowl of his forbidding face. The restraint of his language added to the combined effect—consciously studied, no doubt—of coarse and ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... water, brush heaps, rocky bits of woodland, are favorite resorts. The Carolina wren decidedly objects to being stared at, and likes to dart out of sight in the midst of the underbrush in a twinkling while the opera-glasses are being focussed. To let off some of his superfluous vivacity, Nature has provided him with two safety-valves: one is his voice, another is his tail. With the latter he gesticulates in a manner so expressive that it seems to be a certain index to what is passing in his busy little brain — drooping it, after ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... the larger stream were a tributary of the lesser. This peculiarity of the river in the deltaic region, to throw off volume instead of continually receiving affluents, was unaccustomed to him, being a stranger to the locality, and for a moment it focussed his interest The next, his every faculty was concentrated on a singular phenomenon on the bank ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the agony of that first meal in the great dining room. She could have dined alone in her room; but courage had demanded that she face the ordeal and have done with it. Every eye seemed focussed upon her; and yet she had known the sensation to be the conceit ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... however, several things which you can use to help you in training your eye to distinguish values. When you look for values you do not wish to see details nor things, you wish to see only masses and relations. You must unfocus your eye. The focussed eye sees the fact, and not the relation. Anything which will help you to see outlines and details less distinctly will help you to ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... the sexual instinct. Beauty by no means comprehends the whole of the influences which make for sexual allurement through vision, but it is the point at which all the most powerful and subtle of these are focussed; it represents a fairly definite complexus, appealing at once to the sexual and to the aesthetic impulses, to which no other sense can furnish anything in any degree analogous. It is because this conception of beauty ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... indifferent to the mute questioning of the hundreds of eyes focussed on him. Our journalist wore Corporal Vinson's uniform. He had begged the authorities to let him appear in civilian clothes: demands and entreaties had been ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... disappeared through one of the many doorways, Bradford stood still for a moment before his eyes focussed to the change of light. The pillars of the hall that supported the balcony corridor of the second story were wreathed with light green vines, delicate green draperies screened the windows, the pale light coming from many Japanese lanterns and exquisitely shaded bronze lamps rather than outside. ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... that Pete's nose is an affliction, not an indication. One of them loafs across and explains to the Tribal Herald, who, next week, cries aloud that the road ought to be mended. Meantime Pete, warmed to the marrow at having focussed the attention of his tribe for a few moments, retires thirty miles up-stage, pursued by advertisements of buckboards guaranteed not to break their king-bolts, and later (which is what the tribe were after all the time) some tribal authority or ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... isolation more complete—there was a villainy of circumstances that cut these men off more completely from the rest of mankind, whose ideal of conduct had never undergone the trial of a fiendish and appalling joke. They were exasperated with him for being a half-hearted shirker: he focussed on them his hatred of the whole thing; he would have liked to take a signal revenge for the abhorrent opportunity they had put in his way. Trust a boat on the high seas to bring out the Irrational that lurks at the bottom of every thought, sentiment, sensation, emotion. It was ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... of the Prince of Wales in 1871 was historic, from the sympathy it evoked and the influence it wielded, that of the King in June 1902 was infinitely more memorable. At the latter period the attention of the whole civilized world was focussed upon the figure of the Sovereign who was about to be crowned amid scenes of unprecedented splendour; the press of the Empire and the United States was filled with the record of his movements; the representatives of the Courts of Europe had arrived or were arriving; the Prime Ministers ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... is open at its upper extremity. The rays from the object observed penetrate freely into it, and strike a concave metallic mirror—that is to say, they are focussed. From thence their reflected rays meet with a little mirror, which sends them back to the ocular in such a way as to ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... she pondered over it almost stupidly. Then she put her hand on Mr. James's shoulder and shook him; now that her sexual feelings were focussed on one man she treated all other men with a sexless familiarity that to those who did not understand might have seemed shameless and a little mad. "Am I ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... cameras are employed, the instructions proceed to state that the distance between them would be about 1/10th of the distance from the part of the object focussed. The example given is a group of portraits, and the angle, 1 in 10, is afterwards spoken of as being equivalent to an arc of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... figure rose from the water almost at their feet so suddenly that Mrs. Evans screamed. The black figure was the Monkey, who had quietly slipped into the water behind a large rock while all attention was focussed on the girls, and swimming under water came up in front of them. The new arrival on the scene turned out to be the waiter who announced that tea was ready. "We will be down immediately, Thomas," said Sahwah in her best society manner ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... Houston focussed his eyes on the man's face. "I want an explanation, Reinhardt," he said aloud. "And it better be a damned ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... some driftwood and seaweed," he said; "with my sun-glass I can soon have a bonfire." He took a piece of punk from a waterproof box that he carried in his pocket and focussed the sun's rays on it. "Run down and bring me an armful of dry seaweed and wood," he added, intent ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... the starboard bulwark, feeling his way with his bare feet, taking great pains not to stumble over any obstacle. He could make out the loom of the island over the starboard quarter, a black spot focussed in the all-pervading blackness of the night. Everything seemed to give promise of secrecy for him. The rasp of the boom-jaws, the swishing of coiled ropes on the pin-rails, and the chirping creak of the shrouds as the schooner ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... under the gaze of Paris, the young girl made a gesture towards him. A sharp, "Don't move" from the prompter brought her back to herself. She turned her head, saw the audience, with the eyes and glasses of everyone focussed upon her. It seemed to her that they must all know her secret. She tottered; and supported herself upon Athene. She must have fallen from the frame and been badly hurt, if the Duke had not caught her just in time. A cry escaped from the audience. The Marquis de ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... superlatively bad reputation which still followed him. The public would have found it hard to believe that at last Alan Massey was leading the most temperate and arduous of lives and devoting himself exclusively to one woman whom he treated as reverently as if she were a goddess. The gazes focussed upon Alan now inevitably included the girl with him, as lovely and young as ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... kosher meat, and they would have looked upon the modern distinctions between racial and religious Jews as the sophistries of the convert or the missionary. If their religious life converged to the Great Shool, their social life focussed on Petticoat Lane, a long, narrow thoroughfare which, as late as Strype's day, was lined with beautiful trees: vastly more pleasant they must have been than the faded barrows and beggars of after days. The Lane—such ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Nothing more was said as they went across the flat and toiled up the trail to the mine. Wiley walked behind and as they mounted to the shaft-house his eyes wandered restlessly about; until, at the tool-shed, they suddenly focussed and a half-crouching man stepped out. He was tall and gnarly and the point of his chin rested stiffly on the slope of his shoulder. It was Stiff Neck George and he kept a crook in his elbow as he ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... rapidly developed. His efforts culminated, after mirrors of ten, twenty, and thirty feet focal length had successively left his hands, in the gigantic forty-foot, completed August 28, 1789. It was the first reflector in which only a single mirror was employed. In the "Gregorian" form, the focussed rays are, by a second reflection from a small concave[309] mirror, thrown straight back through a central aperture in the larger one, behind which the eye-piece is fixed. The object under examination is thus seen in the natural direction. The "Newtonian," on the other ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... practical nature. He had been subconsciously prepared for the tomb to be one of unusual importance. The soothsayer's prediction had not been mere charlatanry to him. His secret thoughts were so constantly focussed on what is termed the superhuman, that Meg's wonder and horror formed only a ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... light and electric light illuminating the opera house fell with a curious distinction in tone upon the crowd which filled the building and overflowed through darkened doors and windows. Beneath the electric jets the faces were focussed to a white hush of expectancy, which mellowed into a blur of impatient animation where the dim gas flickered ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... it out aforehand by putting his ear to the ground. Only by the simplest rules of psychology can he edit rightly so that he may lead, and to the average editor of to-day, it is to be feared, psychology is a closed book. His mind is all too often focussed on the circulation and advertising, and all too little on the intangibles that will bring to his periodical the results ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... perhaps, the driver, kept their eyes focussed on the spot mentioned by Julius until the first clump of trees shut out their view of the old stone quarry ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... man's wandering gaze focussed itself; a silly laugh welled up in his throat. "It would be no strange wonder if I did not," he chuckled. "Odin has changed you greatly; your face was never so beautiful. But this once you ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... between Bergson and common sense is, precisely, how far it does go. Both sides would admit that, in this fact directly known, what is in the full focus of attention at any given moment is very limited; on the other hand both would admit that this fully focussed fact is set in a context, or fringe, with no clearly defined limits which also goes to make up the whole fact directly known though we do not usually pay much attention to it. The fact directly known being given the problem is to find out what it is and ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... the manner of old squatters when they sit apart; but the tall, spare, grey man with the thoughtful face—more like a soldier than a sheep-farmer—was not thinking much of his flocks and herds. His thoughts followed the direction of his quiet eyes, focussed upon an amber silk gown and its immediate surroundings. Mr Thornycroft was Deborah's godfather, and at forty-seven was to all the sisters quite an elderly man, a sort of bachelor uncle to the family, one with no concern in such youthful pastimes as ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... that the others all focussed their eyes on Phil's face. They knew he would not have spoken in such a strain unless he had some good reason for saying ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... faces were two square holes, from the edges of which the inside walls focussed back on two smaller, circular diaphragms. That made the two openings act somewhat like megaphone horns to still further magnify the sound which was emitted directly from this receiver without using any earpieces, and could be listened to anywhere in the room, if we chose. This was attached ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... moment the adoring eyes of the three musicians who were "hairdressers in the daytime" focussed passionately upon Miss Van Tuyn, distracted her attention. She felt masculinity intent ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... why the rustle of a woman's skirt in passing, the faint suggestion of some delicate perfume, should have focussed his attention. He saw scores of women and girls in the library every day. He passed thousands on the streets. This one, now, upon whom he gazed with a detached interest, was like many others, a girl ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the Baron returned. Almost immediately afterward the ballet girls pirouetted into the hall in a flutter of gauze, and the places at the tables were filled. No one listened to the lines; all eyes in the house were focussed on the withered, shrunken, flaccid little old Baron, who sat at Rosa's right, ignored by everyone about him as they gorged on his food ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... Skylark leaped away, Seaton focussed an attractor upon the one who had apparently signaled the attack. Rolling the vessel over in a short loop, so that the captive was hurled off into space upon the other side, he snatched the tube from ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... cottony flakes of cloud swimming steadily to the northeast. Three feet away, Casey Ryan rested on left hip and elbow and stared glumly down upon the cabin directly beneath them. Whenever his pale, straight-lidded eyes focussed upon the dusty top of the Ford car standing in front of the cabin, Casey said something under his breath. Miles away to the south, pale violet, dreamlike in the distance, the jagged outline of a small mountain range stood as if painted ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... supplies the answer. An old volume of the Sussex Miscellany, probably that for 1820, contains the full story of Owd Ben. I might have mentioned it to you, but focussed on current events. Siddle has it among his books, which, by the way, are made up largely of scientific and ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... inner pocket, surprise affording him some amusement. His interest in Sachigo had abruptly focussed ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... Masonry; it works through the powerful Masonic apparatus, and, according to the evidence which has been put in, it has obtained a substantial and masterful control over the entire Fraternity. It has focussed the raw material of Masonic hostility towards the Catholic Church; as it is anti-Christian in religion, so is it revolutionary in politics; and once more, it is ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... in utter silence, his keen eyes travelled from one visage to the next, from Henri Picquet to Victor Georgiades, to Sanchez, to Sard. His intent scrutiny focussed ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... impatiently. "My instrument does certainly magnify to a marvellous extent, but not by the old device of the simple microscope, which merely focussed a large area of light rays into a small one. So crude a process could never show an atom to the human eye. I add much to that. I restore to the rays themselves the luminosity which they lost in their passage through our atmosphere. I give them back all their visual ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... behind him, he knew for the first time the feeling of the big game man who has stalked his quarry successfully. There, five yards to the left of where he had been looking, a little stunted bush was moving—and there was no wind. Trembling with excitement he focussed his telescope on the bush, and even as he did so, he knew his vigil was over. The thing which up to that moment he had taken for a log was a man—the man, the sniper. He could see the faint outline of his face, now that ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... other eyes than hers rebuked him. It was around the walls of this room that hung those presentments of the Junta as focussed, year after year, in a certain corner of Tom Quad, by Messrs. Hills and Saunders. All around, the members of the little hierarchy, a hierarchy ever changing in all but youth and a certain sternness of aspect that comes at the moment of being immortalised, were gazing ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... in a corner with their back to it; and Jack, after trying in vain to get it over his right shoulder or his left, bent down and focussed it between his legs. This must have connected the current; for Simms turned right round and marched ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... of exaltation, I rose noiselessly and dressed myself with rapid, nervous hands. My every faculty was focussed upon a solitary point. Without and around there was nothing but shadow and uncertainty. I seemed conscious only of a shaft of light, as it were, traversing the darkness and globing itself in a steady disc of radiance on a ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... at the time when the attention of the community was focussed upon the new cause celebre! When the public prints were filled with an acrimonious discussion as to the meaning of the instructions given to the jury. If anyone chose to will his body to a purchaser, said the judge, and then go and ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... propose to dwell on the Renaissance and how Greek came in: for a number of writers in our time have been busy with the Renaissance, and have—I was going to say 'over-written the subject,' but no—it is better to say that they have focussed the period so as to distort the general perspective at the cost of other periods which have earned less attention; the twelfth century, for example. At any rate their efforts, with the amount they claim of your reading, absolve me from doing more than remind you that the Renaissance brought in the ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the half-thought, I remember, floated, like a mist, through my fading consciousness, that now perhaps—now—there was silence around me; that now, could my palsied lips find dialect, I should be heard, and understood. My whole soul rose focussed to the effort—my body jerked itself upwards. At that moment I knew my spirit truly great, genuinely sublime. For I did utter something—my dead and shuddering tongue did babble forth some coherency. Then I fell back, and all was once more the ancient ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... beams earthward. And there, in the glare, they saw a youth speeding along on a motor-cycle. In an instant Tom grabbed up the binoculars and focussed ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... its gaze, which was now directed down the aisle of the carriage, indefinitely focussed on some point outside the window. It seemed remote, entirely ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... stirred up uncomfortable recollections. In any case, much as she had admired and liked him, she would have dreaded meeting him again; and to entertain him alone for an indefinite period, with his undivided attention focussed upon her, seemed an ordeal not only to be dreaded but truly to ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... Field, however, who thought to feel for a pulse. The eager searchers from farther away had come to the place. A dozen pair of eyes or more were focussed on the man as he held his breath and felt for a ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... She whirled with the evident intention of issuing her commands direct. Kingozi's weary, slow indifference fell from him. In one bound he faced her, his chin thrust forward. His blue eyes had focussed into ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... his back to it by cool intent. He studied the play of suppressed mortification and strenuous philosophy in the swarthy face warmed by the reddening light; and admired the arduous triumph of judgment over instinct, even as a certain admiration dawned through the monocle which insensibly focussed ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... grey eyes, which had been roaming over the prospect of lake and forest, focussed ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... on Bushire, too well known to English people, but Mahommerah may have a special interest to us, and also to Russia. It is rather curious to note that it has never struck the British politician nor the newspaper writer that Russia's aims, based usually on sound and practical knowledge, might be focussed on this port, which occupies the most favourable position in the Persian Gulf for Russia's purposes. Even strategically it is certainly as good as Bandar Abbas, while commercially its advantages over the latter port ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... to resist our attack, the guns being all run out, while an attempt was being made to fix up a boarding netting on the ship's starboard, or seaward, side. I had brought my telescope along with me in the boat, believing that it might possibly prove useful, and I now focussed it upon the Indiaman with the object of getting some definite idea of the extent of the preparations being made against us. I had no sooner done so than I made the discovery that there was no netting triced up on the port or shoreward side of the vessel, the Frenchmen apparently taking ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... something drove him to do the unwelcome and the unexpected. Now he gave her a long account of the day-school that he sometimes patronized. The account was interesting, and she had often pressed him for it before, but she could not attend now, for her mind was focussed on the invisible. She discerned that Mrs. Wilcox, though a loving wife and mother, had only one passion in life—her house—and that the moment was solemn when she invited a friend to share this passion with her. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... portion be gravely endangered, the world must behold all the other sections stirring themselves to meet the emergency. Each should be a leader for the whole body, the supreme weight of which would thus be focussed upon the menaced quarter. In the process, our varied peoples would determine their common interests and a common pride of dominion, ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... minister to its instinct for the Good, the Beautiful and the True. Psychologically it is an induced state in which the field of consciousness is greatly contracted: the whole of the self, its conative power, being sharply focussed, concentrated upon one thing. We pour ourselvea out or, as it sometimes seems to us, in towards this overpowering interest: seem to ourselves to reach it and be merged with it. Whatever the thing ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... like a specter in his path was it to be wondered at that Dick resolutely turned his gaze from the allurements of the harbor and settled himself in the big chair with all his attention focussed on Bob King's radio lesson. Moreover, human nature is selfish enough to like company in its misery and were not his mother, Nancy and Walter consigned to the same fate ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... invisible lamp, Kenny wondered with his blood singing, that filled the world with golden dusk? It lay reflected in the water and in the dim and yellowed forest paths behind him. And there behind the gables of the farm, an autumn sunset focussed its softness into ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... of the three uttered a word. She was trembling so that she could not speak. There were tears in the old man's eyes. To Wayland's face had come a look. It was like the blue flash of a pistol shot. The pupils of his eyes had focussed to pin points of ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... repeaters shifted, shifted until they were focussed upon a spot midway between the belt and the rolling collar of the flannel ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... creations, and all such-like, did not comply with the conditions of my night experience. The Wehr-Wolf is but a variant of the Vampire, and so needed not to be classed or examined at all. Then it was that, thus focussed, the Lady of the Shroud (for so I came to hold her in my mind) began to assume a new force. Aunt Janet's library afforded me clues which I followed with avidity. In my secret heart I hated the quest, and did not wish ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... man on a wheel just flash past that open spot back along the trail!" he cried; and immediately every eye was focussed on the spot indicated; for coming at just such a moment ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... not ask myself; yet, nevertheless, instinct warned me that I was being inspected; that somehow or other the man was staring at me as steadily as though he and I had been face to face and his faded, sea-green eyes were focussed upon me. ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... the St. Lawrence, met and crossed the equally important lines of travel from the British Islands to the same points. This circumstance contributed to the importance of that place as a naval and commercial centre, and also focussed about it by far the larger part of the effort and excitement of the first privateering outburst from the United States. As Rodgers' bold sortie, and disappearance into the unknown with a strong squadron had ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... focussed their attention upon him, the fourth of the line, standing beside the tree brought into the house. Each of them in his own way had wrought out a work for civilization, using the woods as an implement. In his own case, the woods around him having ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... and was about to answer, when his brows suddenly contracted, his mouth set, and his eyes flashed angrily as they focussed some distant object. Following his gaze, she saw a slim, dark figure, some three fields off, walking swiftly in their direction. "It's my friend, Mr. Elias ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... imagine the struggle required to defeat this opposing power. Think of what the ordinary man has to meet and overcome to conquer the desire for Personal Aggrandizement—and then think of what the Master had to fight, with the focussed desire of the entire Race-Thought striving to express itself through Him! Truly the Sins of the World bore down upon Him with their mighty weight. And yet He knew that He had taken upon Himself this affliction ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... species of mental gruel, easy to assimilate and none too stimulating; but all the innate barbarism of humanity, all of her nervous force responded to the clashing rhythm of the Slavonic Dance, and the swift color came into her face and focussed itself in a tiny circle in either cheek, as she listened. For the moment, she was as fiercely defiant of fate as a Valkyrie ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... moved for a better view-point, the room focussed on Plimsoll, Wyatt and the three cow-chums. Then Wyatt stepped aside. There was a malicious little grin on his face. Mormon's suggestion as to his private grudge against Plimsoll was not without foundation. ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... lantern dates back to 1650, and is attributed to Professor Kircher, a German philosopher of rare talents and extensive reputation. The instrument is simple and familiar. It is a form of the microscope. The shadows cast by the object are, by means of lenses, focussed upon something capable of reflection, such as a wall or screen. No essential changes in the principles of construction have been made since the time of Kircher; but the modern improvements in lenses, lights, and pictures, have raised the character ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... even a fern-owl beats by, passing close to the eaves whence the moths issue. On the narrow waggon-track which descends along a coombe and is worn in chalk, the heat pours down by day as if an invisible lens in the atmosphere focussed the sun's rays. Strong woody knapweed endures it, so does toadflax and pale blue scabious, and wild mignonette. The very sun of Spain burns and burns and ripens the wheat on the edge of the coombe, and will only let the spring moisten a ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... The kitchen mind, focussed continually upon close personal concerns, limited in time, in means, in capacity, and in mechanical convenience, can consider only; a, what the family likes; b, what the family can afford; and, c, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... inadequate as it is, of a history of furniture from the earliest time of which we have any record, until from the extraordinary growth of the vast Roman Empire, the arts and manufactures of every country became as it were centralised and focussed in the palaces of the wealthy Romans, brings us down to the commencement of what has been deservedly called "the greatest event in history"—the decline and fall of this enormous empire. For fifteen generations, ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... rays of light reflected by the plane mirror, by virtue of a short focus system of lenses, into a cone of large aperture (reducible at will by means of an iris diaphragm mounted as a part of the condenser), which can be accurately focussed on the plane of the object. This focussing must be performed anew for each object, on account of the variation in the thickness ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... back at an extremely [Page 139] interesting point, and in consequence were unable to supply very definite information with regard to the ice-cap. They had, however, fulfilled their main object, and in doing so had disclosed problems that caused the deepest interest to be focussed upon the direction in which they ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... as a Means of Social Education.—Education is not confined to the training of the schools. It is a continuous process going on through the life of the individual or the group. It is the intellectual process by which the mind is focussed on one problem after another that rises above the horizon of experience and uses its powers to improve the adaptation now existing between the situation and the person or the group. The educational process is complex. There must be first the incitement to ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... straight at the riddle of the fellow by the test of how long he could endure a flat mute stare and return look for look unblinking. The act of smoking fortifies and partly covers the insolence. But if by chance an equable, not too narrowly focussed, counterstare is met, our impertinent inquisitor may resemble the fisherman pulled into deep waters by his fish. Woodseer perused his man, he was not attempting to fathom him: he had besides other stuff in his head. Potts had naught, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the window. On one side was the door: that formed no part of my mental picture, because it was at my back; but in the photograph it too was indistinct, as if in the very act of being burst open. The details were vague, in part—probably the picture had never been properly focussed;—but the main figures stood out with perfect clearness, and everything in the room was, allowing for the changed point of view, exactly as I remembered it in ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... the wrong. The result was a mood of pique, rather than of antagonism. Up to that time, Ethel Dent had known only unreserved approval. Weldon's occasional gravity, to her mind, suggested certain reservations. By way of overcoming these reservations, she focussed her whole attention upon Captain Leo Frazer. Across the table, Weldon, in the intervals of his talk with his hostess, could hear the low murmur ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... he would not anticipate. Drew's advent had focussed his desire to put himself, and her, to the test. Joyce had precipitated matters, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... to inform Aline that Mme. de Plougastel's errand must be akin to her own. At the moment, in the general distress and confusion of her mind, her mental vision focussed entirely on the one vital point, she found in this no matter for astonishment. The singular regard conceived by Mme. de Plougastel for Andre-Louis seemed to ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... has reached within a hair's-breadth of the third bull's-eye from the bottom. To-morrow it will surely shine through my suspect, and if the latter be a true lens it will concentrate, for several minutes, a high degree of heat at the particular spot upon which its rays are focussed. That spot I have found, by experiment, to be one of a series of small bosses set in the pivot-base of the big chair. I applied the flame of a match and immediately the metal boss began to soften. I understand now. The boss is made of a fusible alloy that melts ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... under the conditions of perspective and illusion which it imposed. Both these conditions were less well satisfied by drama, which directly "imitates action," than by the dramatic speech or monologue, which imitates action as focussed in a particular mind. And Browning's dramatic genius found its most natural and effective outlet in the wealth of implicit drama which he concentrated in these salient moments tense with memory and hope. The insuppressible alertness and enterprise ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... catch a glimpse of the water. The air was keen—not just the ordinary, unnoticed air that we breathe in and out and don't think about, but a sharp and tingling essence, as strong in the nostrils as camphor or ammonia. The sun seemed focussed upon Parnassus, and we moved along the white road in a flush of golden light. The flat fronds of the cedars swayed gently in the salty air, and for the first time in ten years, I should think, I began amusing myself by selecting ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... lady's interest appeased, she turned back to the stage, fluttering her fan to and fro. Attracted by its movement, or by the glances focussed upon her, Cornelia tilted her head upwards, recognised Guest, and whispered to her companion. Mr Moffatt's eyes travelled obediently towards the box, to fasten, not on Guest but on the man by his side. ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... nothing wrong with the machine!" he said, almost-but-not-quite shouting. "There's nothing wrong with the television! There's nothing wrong with the wiring! There must be something wrong at the other end—where the Ray is focussed! And I ...
— Stairway to the Stars • Larry Shaw
... he has been suffering from a clouded mind. Things have not been correctly focussed, as it were. And while in that condition, if he was tempted to drift into actual wrong-doing, I should imagine that self-loathing and remorse would afterwards be a worse punishment for him than you could possibly conceive ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... tangential advertising that interests me. Take, for instance, a Coles Phillips painting for some brand of silk stockings. Of course the high lights of the picture are cunningly focussed on the stockings of the eminently beautiful lady; but there is always something else in the picture—an automobile or a country house or a Morris chair or a parasol—which makes it just as effective an ad for those goods as it is for the stockings. Every now and then Phillips ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... to which their senses focussed these and other very ordinary things, their plight was responsible. It has been said that the faculty of observation is never so pronounced as when the observer is face to face with Death. Anthony and the lady were looking him in the eyes. The pair of them was, in fact, hanging ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... all around me. With my fancies focussed on my lover, I leaned back in my armchair, gazing at the rising moon. My word, at that moment ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... Nubian to draw it aside, and slower still she passed into the other room. Only a little larger than the one she had left, almost as bare, but her mind took in these things uncomprehendingly, for all her attention was focussed on the central figure ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... receive them and offer his congratulations. Leopold was now more predisposed in favor of Albert, and when a son was born he was delighted. On the birth of a second son, the King made a speech in which he publicly confirmed Albert's claim to the throne, and public attention was now focussed on the Prince ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... reluctantly, and Vince focussed it to suit his sight as he brought it to bear on one of ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... the relation of pupil and teacher, school and home, the government and discipline, the lessons taught in every subject, the environment, the proportioning of the curriculum, of physical, emotional and intellectual culture—all shall be focussed and organized upon the one significant aim ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... north. His eyes traversed skein after skein of the brilliant colorful patternings, but he was unable to find a very closely netted region. He was about to announce his discovery to Caradoc when his lense focussed on another grim menace almost ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... Forster focussed his eyes on the writing again. There was no doubt at all that it was Bentley's. They had roomed and studied together for four years at MIT, and then there had been a couple of years' post-graduate work after that. During all that time they had ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... live, Amarilly?" she asked, her eyes sparkling as she focussed them on the family. "You needn't come for the washing the first time. I will bring it myself so I can see all your little brothers. Be sure to come to the Guild next Saturday, and then I'll have the rug for you to ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... everything. It requires "mighty endurance," "hard labour," "stoutness of spirit," and "a great storm, assault, and onset" to open the Gate. In a word, the key to any important spiritual experience is intention, inward pre-perception, that holds the mind intently focussed in expectation, without which the "flash" of spiritual vision is not likely ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... "not ten minutes ago. They must be hiding in the hollows, waiting for the others to catch up," whereupon Nolan, looking daggers, had called him a scarehead, and Geordie shouted for Cawker's glass. It was sent up the stairway in less than a minute and focussed on Porphyry Point, a massive buttress overhanging the farther valley. For long seconds Geordie steadied the binocular against the staff and peered silently through. At last he said: "Some riders and two or three livery-rigs are coming, but I ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... pretty light dresses, were standing by the wood fire. On the sofa, to their left, with the light from one of the lamps focussed full on her, sat Mrs. Crofton, her bare left arm hanging over the side of the low couch. Jack, perched on the arm of a big chair, was looking at her, all his soul in his eyes. Mr. Tosswill sat some way off under a shaded reading lamp; his wife, knitting, ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... blue-print closely. Its five feet of length embraced all the west shore of the lake, from the outflowing of Roaring River to the incoming Tyee at the head. Each camp was lettered in with pencil. But her attention focussed chiefly on the timber limits ranging north and south from their home, and she noted two details: that while the limits marked A-M Co. were impartially distributed from Cottonwood north, the squares marked J.H. Fyfe lay in a solid ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and definitely malignant intelligence was focussed upon him; or was this a chimera of his imagination? Could it be that now he was become en rapport with the thought-forms created in that ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... put his hand to the Urfaust, he had no definite conception of an artistic whole in which the suggestions of the legend should be focussed in view of a determinate end. As we have it, the Urfaust consists of twenty-two scenes—those that relate the Gretchen tragedy alone having any necessary connection with each other. All the successive ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... master with his book and the three apprentices each with his repairing job. The lamp hung over the table, and smoked; it managed to lessen the darkness a little. The little light it gave was gathered up by the great glass balls which focussed it and cast it upon the work. The lamp swayed slightly, and the specks of light wriggled hither and thither like tadpoles, so that the work was continually left in darkness. Then the master would curse and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... what was going on ahead presently, possibly fearing that the excited, fat manager, who was dancing up and down, mopping his forehead with a red bandanna with one hand, and waving the megaphone with the other when not shouting through the same, might call the scene off, the boy stopped short, focussed again on the amazing picture, and got another ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... people shall sing to the President. He shall be kept reminded that we are there. He shall feel daily what America is like. America shall be focussed into melody. We shall have a literature once more and the singers, as in Greece, as in all happy lands and in all great ages, shall go singing ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the pupil is the lens of the eye, which also is adjustable by the action of a little muscle, called the "ciliary muscle". This muscle corresponds to the focussing mechanism of the camera; by it the eye is focussed on near or far objects. The eye really {195} has two lenses, for the cornea acts as a lens, but is not adjustable. The "aqueous and vitreous humors" fill the eyeball and keep it in shape, while still, being ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... original New England Puritan type, who had known me from the cradle, and to whom the elevation I had reached was as gratifying as it could possibly be to anybody. But when he saw the smile of favor focussed on me there, and me, I dare say, appearing to bask somewhat in it, the dear old man took alarm. He was apprehensive of the consequences to that youngster. And so, taking me by the hand and wrestling down his natural feelings—he was ready to cry for joy—he said: "Well, Joseph, I ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... things focussed themselves upon his brain in the moment before the whistle went; the whistle blew, the Dublin men had kicked off, Tester had fielded the ball, sent it back into touch, ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... pulled at the hand, and slowly Piers yielded. The water dripped from his shoulders. They gleamed in the strong light like a piece of faultless statuary, godlike, superbly strong. But it was upon no splendour of form that Sir Beverley's attention was focussed. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... second Miriam did not turn. She drank in the quiet "yes, yes," the hard fixed scene seemed to move. Who loved it too, the dark sky and the storm? Then she focussed her companion who was standing a little behind her, and gazed at Fraulein; she hardly saw her, she seemed still to see the outdoor picture. Fraulein made a movement towards her; and then she saw for a moment the strange grave young look in ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... the old garden, which was the pride of every pupil in Warwick Hall. The hollyhocks from Ann Hathaway's cottage had not yet begun to flaunt their rosettes of color, but the rhododendrons from Killarney were in gorgeous bloom. As Lloyd focussed the camera in such a way as to make them a background for a picture of the sun-dial, Betty heard Kitty ask: "You'll let us know early in the morning what your present is, ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... squealing sound from the communicator on which all the extra recording devices were focussed. Betsy's screen lighted up. Peculiarly curved patterns appeared on it. They shifted and changed. Noises came from her speaker. They were completely unearthly. Now they were shrill past belief, and then they were chopped into very small bits ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins |
