"Obliquity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the instrument. 5thly. That if we now make one of the two horizontal axes less and the other greater than the vertical axis, the instantaneous pole will separate from the axis of the instrument, and the axis will incline more and more till the spinning can no longer go on, on account of the obliquity. It is easy to see that, by attending to the laws of motion, we may produce any of the above effects at pleasure, and illustrate many different propositions by ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... to Rowland, something acutely touching in this humble petition. He had always felt a sort of imaginative tenderness for poor little unexplained Giacosa, and these words seemed a supreme contortion of the mysterious obliquity of his life. All of a sudden, as he watched the Cavaliere, something occurred to him; it was something very odd, and it stayed his glance suddenly from again turning to Mrs. Light. His idea embarrassed him, and to carry off his embarrassment, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... leaders along the Rio Grande during this period there sprang up many factional differences from various causes, some personal, others political, and some, I regret to say, from downright moral obliquity—as, for example, those between Cortinas and Canales —who, though generally hostile to the Imperialists, were freebooters enough to take a shy at each other frequently, and now and then even to join forces against Escobedo, unless we prevented them by coaxing or ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... approaching to black; the hair being jet-black, coarse and rather inclined to be frizzy. Projecting jaws and teeth, thick lips, low narrow foreheads, and broad flat noses are the features characteristic of the tribe. The eyes are often bright and full, and no obliquity is observable in the opening ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... virtue?" Upon this he approached the pawnbroker: it was long before he could obtain a hearing, and he did not find civility. The man was unwilling to part with a valuable pledge so soon, or perhaps he hoped to retain it eventually; or it might be, that the obliquity of his nature disqualified him for respectful behaviour. A pawnbroker is frequently an important witness in criminal proceedings: it has happened to me, therefore, afterwards to see many specimens of this kind of banker; they sometimes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... sufficient one; that it protected you from the temptation to so scandalous a vice. Work faithfully, and you will put yourselves in possession of a glorious and enlarging happiness: not such as can be won by the speed of a horse, or marred by the obliquity ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... in reference to this. Observe that the line of the eaves, if continued, would intersect the top of the gable chimney. The dwelling and the tree then form a focus for the converging lines of sidewalk and roof, thus qualifying the vertical effect of the building on the right. As the obliquity of the composition is still objectionable, we decide to introduce a foreground figure which will break up the line of the long sidewalk, and place it so that it will increase the influence of some contrary line, see Fig. 59. We find ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... tusks. The author of Headlong Hall[640] makes a grand error, which is quite high science: he says that Laplace proved the precession of the equinoxes to be a periodical inequality. He should have said the variation of the obliquity. But the finest instance is the following: Mr. Warren,[641] in his well-wrought tale of the martyr-philosopher, was incautious enough to invent the symbols by which his savant satisfied himself Laplace[642] was right on a doubtful point. And ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... reactions of feeling, nothing which so much attracts it as a firmness and strength of will beyond itself. Naturally, the adored figures in the popular women's fiction are always of the 'strong man' type, in feminine eyes. And here we come to a most extraordinary obliquity of the feminine eye. ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... the water but drawn cautiously and rapidly up again, when a red drop at plus 42 degrees indicated that the fluid had risen to that point or above it. At this period the daily visits of the sun were very short and, owing to the obliquity of his rays, afforded us little warmth or light. It is half-past eleven before he peeps over a small ridge of hills opposite to the house, and he sinks in the horizon at half-past two. On the 28th Mr. ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... by men of any other class or profession. And if it be true, as many of these have claimed, that deceit and falsehood are a duty, on the part of a God-loving teacher, toward those persons who, through weakness, or mental incapacity, or moral obliquity, are in the relation to him of wards of love, or of subjects of guardianship, there is no profession in which there is more of a call for godly deception, and for holy falsehood, than the Christian ministry. If it be true that a lie, ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... have before us the Pantheon, the strangest and the least easy to name of the edifices of Pompeii. It is not parallel to the Forum, but its obliquity was adroitly masked by shops in which many pieces of coin have been found. Hence the conclusion that these were tabernae argentariae, the money-changers' offices, and I cannot prove the contrary. The two entrance ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... brother-in-law,' said the late Ioan Bratianu when speaking on the Transylvanian question, 'it is no affair of mine; but when he raises a knife against his wife, it is not merely my right to intervene, it is my duty.' It is difficult to account for the obliquity of vision shown by so many Rumanian politicians. 'The whole policy of such a state [having a large compatriot population living in close proximity under foreign domination] must be primarily influenced by anxiety as to the fate of their brothers, and by the duty of emancipating ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... intention to decry this single-mindedness that is habitually put in evidence by the dynastic statesmen. Nor should it be taken as evidence of moral obliquity in them. It is rather the result of a peculiar moral attitude or bent, habitual to such statesmen, and in its degree also habitual to their compatriots, and is indispensably involved in the Imperial frame of mind. The consummation of Imperial mastery being ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... a singular example of poetic, or rather unpoetic obliquity; we should never have done were we to attempt to point out all its absurdities and contradictions. Why, for instance, does Orestes fruitlessly torment his sister by maintaining his incognito so long? The ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... was ashamed to show himself at neighborhood gatherings. All the people about Gentryville feared Lincoln's caustic wit, and disliked him for it, although they were greatly impressed with his ability exhibited thereby. Lincoln recognized his moral obliquity, and curbed his propensity for satire, which was a case of that "exercise of natural faculty" which affects all gifted persons. And when he left that region he visited all the neighbors, and asked ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... did not stop. The harpoon had evidently not penetrated into any vital part of the body. They could even observe, by the increased obliquity of the line, that the animal, instead of returning to the surface, was ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... protruded two dreadful yellow teeth that resembled the tusks of a boar. The woman was long-faced, high cheek-boned, red-haired, and freckled all over like a toad. The boy resembled his hideous mother, but with the addition of a villanous obliquity of vision which rendered him the most disgusting object in this ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... creatures of mere rash impulse. There was a time in fact, wasn't there? when we rather enjoyed each other's dim depths. If I wanted to fawn on you," she went on, "I might say that, with such a comrade in obliquity to wind and double about with, I'd risk losing myself in the mine. But why retort or recriminate? Let us not, for God's sake, be vulgar—we haven't yet, bad as it is, come to THAT. I CAN be, no doubt—I some day MUST be: I feel it looming at me out of the awful future as an inevitable ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... voices, and strange hands Reach through the dusk and pluck me by the skirts. There is a voice which sounds like words from home, But, as I stumble on to reach it, seems To leap from rock to rock. Oh! if it is Willing obliquity of sense, descend, Heal all my wanderings, take me by the hand, And lead me homeward through the shadows. Let me not by my wilful acts of pride Block up the windows of thy truth, and grow A wasted, withered thing, that ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... connected with the numerous family of "the Smalls," who, according to Christopher North, form the predominant portion of mankind. In appearance, the doctor was short-necked and puffy, with a sodden, pasty face, wherein were set eyes whose obliquity of vision was, in some measure, redeemed by their expression of humor. He was accounted a man of parts and erudition, and had obtained high honors at his university. Rigidly orthodox, he abominated the very names of Papists and Jacobites, amongst which heretical herd he classed his companion, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... may have magnified, or the expedient boldness of the romancer too voluptuously emblazoned, but which more than one grave annalist has calmly commemorated.[4] We shall not, however, venture to decide the nice question which oscillates between an obliquity and a loss of vision. The Spanish word "tuerto" means, ordinarily, "blind of one eye." And there is an answer which M. Mignet probably considers apocryphal, as he does not allude to it, said to have been made by Perez to Henry IV. of France, who expressed surprise that he should be ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... night he had intended to see Mr. Swancourt again, but the sharp rebuff of the previous evening rendered such an interview particularly distasteful. Perhaps there was another and less honest reason. He decided to put it off. Whatever of moral timidity or obliquity may have lain in such a decision, no perception of it was strong enough to detain him. He wrote a note in his room, which stated simply that he did not feel happy in the house after Mr. Swancourt's sudden veto on what he had favoured a few ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the tube, was let down slowly into the water, but drawn cautiously and rapidly up again, when a red drop at 42 deg. indicated that the fluid had risen to that point or above it. At this period the daily visits of the sun were very short, and owing to the obliquity of his rays, afforded us little warmth or light. It is half past eleven before he peeps over a small ridge of hills opposite to the house, and he sinks in the horizon at half past two. On the 28th Mr. Hood, in order to attain an approximation to the quantity of terrestrial ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... indignation, and esteem'd it such a Lordly Prelacy, that he declaimed against it, and became (if possible) more enemy both to him and the Church, than he was before. The rectitude of his nature therefore made him not a fitt instrument to struggle with the obliquity of those times; and he had this infirmity likewise, that he beleived those forward instruments, which he employed, followed the zeal of their own natures, when they did but observe that of his: for as soon as difficulty or danger appeared, his petty instruments shrunk to nothing, ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... undertaking could be carried into effect. Who in France would dare to risk such a sum—especially for three, volumes in octavo? He would be ruined, if he did."[2] I quote these passages simply to shew under what extraordinary obliquity of feeling those gentlemen must have set down to the task of translation and abuse—of THAT VERY WORK, which is here admitted to contain such splendid representations of the "bibliographical, antiquarian, and picturesque" beauties ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of wooden type with a jackknife—one of them a picture of Higgins wading out into the creek in his shirt, with a lantern, sounding the depth of the water with a walking-stick. I thought it was desperately funny, and was densely unconscious that there was any moral obliquity about such a publication. Being satisfied with this effort I looked around for other worlds to conquer, and it struck me that it would make good, interesting matter to charge the editor of a neighboring country ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... subject-matter pumped into them by recitations, etc., and to merely accept, while boys are more inspired by being told to do things and make tests and experiments. In this, girls are often quite at sea. One writer speaks of a certain feminine obliquity, but hastens to say that girls in these schools soon accept its code of honor. It is urged, too, that singing classes the voices of each sex are better in quality for the presence of the other. In many ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall |
