"Ocular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them? 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, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... botanists, having to 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 ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... 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 ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... arrived at dawn of day. I met with a very friendly reception, and had the good fortune to prevail upon the Indians to deliver me their furs upon the spot, which formed a very heavy load for both myself and men. We met our opponents in returning; but though they had ocular proof of my success, they nevertheless went on ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... uniformitie of his subscriptions through both Volumes, evident by ocular inspection above the ordinarie custome of most famous Notars, delivers the same from all ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... through the air, is a thing very different, as to the evidence it admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the womb. The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon day, to all Jerusalem at least. A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; and as the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... 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
... don't require ocular evidence, alma mater. I have always been able to read you with ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... framework of the window through which the prospect is presented that seems to be receding; of course, the uniformity of the objects visible, and the faint light in which they are beheld, materially assist this ocular deception; but the hint thus thrown out may serve as a convenient peg on which passengers may hang a theory of their own, and thus beguile the tedium of their journey in default of more ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... longer: I do not pretend to be so handsome as some others; but as for the defects that villain charges me with, I dare say, my dear Hobart, there is no woman more free from them: we are alone, and I am almost inclined to convince you by ocular demonstration." Miss Hobart was too complaisant to oppose this motion; but, although she soothed her mind by extolling all her beauties, in opposition to Lord Rochester's song, Miss Temple was almost driven to distraction by rage and astonishment, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... to himself: "Well, that is a noble, straightforward, honest fellow, and will do yet, if he'll only get a wife. He's not one of those asses who have made up their minds by book that the world is square, and won't believe it to be round for any ocular demonstration. He'll find out what shape the world is before long, and behave as such, and ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... I look at 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 at the others with conclusive ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... rights, reason, and freedom of one of her majesty's subjects? He would probably find that functionary inditing a private letter to the English Secretary of State, giving the minister a graphic account of the rare doings of yesterday, and assuring the minister, from his own personal and ocular experience, that a member of one of the highest orders of the British peerage carried in the procession a lighted taper after two angels with amaranthine flowers ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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 International Congress. ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... widow! True, he succeeded in transmitting to his acquaintances a vague idea that he was doing well and waxing financially from strength to strength! But the idea was too vague, too much in the air. And save by a suit of clothes, he never gave ocular proof that he had money to waste. He could not. It was impossible for him to compete with even the more modest of the bloods and the blades. To keep a satisfactory straight crease down the middle of each leg of his trousers was all he could accomplish with the money regularly at his disposal. ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... simplicity "I'll make Dr. Johnson a convert" (to the view then still largely 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 death, was ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... stood Etienne de Malville, eager to see the end of his hated rival, and to make sure, by ocular ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... prolix, Mr Vanslyperken was a mass of snow on the windward side of him before she had finished, which she did, by pulling down her worsted stockings, and showing the wounds which she had received as her portion in the last night's affray. Having thus given ocular evidence of the truth of what she had asserted, Babette then delivered the message of her mistress; to wit, "that until the dead body of Snarleyyow was laid at the porch where they now stood, he, Mr Vanslyperken, ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... 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 times ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... is only a question of time and money, the 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 ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... 1: A written description can never convey so true an idea of anything, as an ocular inspection. I will therefore say that it will afford me much pleasure to show any member of the profession the apparatus I am about to describe, at ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... 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 that ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Your prince shall be for the present a thoroughly honest fellow. I will tell you nothing of the result of the observations I have made upon him; for, from what I have learnt at the minister's, there is something going forward which will soon give you ocular demonstration of his worth; till then keep the idea you have formed of him in your bosom, and tell me what is your opinion ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... effect of the laryngoscope was to throw the whole subject into almost hopeless confusion by the introduction of all sorts of errors of observation, each claiming to be founded on ocular proof, and ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... 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 ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... advancing the business rather than in despatching a messenger to you. And also, on account of the reverence due to you, I determined to make no report of expenses before sending to you something which might please you, and by ocular proof should give witness to its cost. On account, then, of all these things, so great a delay has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... accented by sculpture;" on the other hand, in solid coloured 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 colour, and of colour only; a fact ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... 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, "knocked its two daylights into one," ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... asked answered.—"He that knoweth, but answereth not a question from temptation, anger or fear, casteth upon himself a thousand nooses of Varuna. And the person who, cited as a witness with respect to any matter of ocular or auricular knowledge, speaketh carelessly, casteth a thousand nooses of Varuna upon his own person. On the completion of one full year, one such noose is loosened. Therefore, he that knoweth, should speak the truth without concealment. If virtue, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... f'nent. Have ye ne'er a drap among the whole o' yees?" Receiving an answer in the negative, he turned about with a Kilkenny, "It don't signify," and toddled for the door, which he left open, to await Tommy's return. Redman knew Daley's propensity too well, and having ocular proof that he had wet t'other eye until it required more than ordinary effort to make either one stay open, he declined recognising his ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... But he has not abandoned hope. The bare possibility that his friend is deliberately deceiving him—though such a deception would be a thing so monstrously wicked that he can hardly conceive it credible—is a kind of hope. He furiously demands proof, ocular proof. And when he is compelled to see that he is demanding an impossibility he still demands evidence. He forces it from the unwilling witness, and hears the maddening tale of Cassio's dream. It is enough. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... announcement of this "permanent life of tissues" that caused such a furor in Paris last summer, and several eminent scientists to demand ocular demonstration, because "the discovery, if true, constituted the greatest scientific advance of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... cheer?" He did not answer me. Even in that supreme moment it was not difficult to discern that William had been looking on the wine when it was red, and had not confined himself to mere ocular observation. I tried to make him remember he was an Englishman, that the honour of our country was in our hands, and that we should die with the courage and dignity befitting our race. These were strange consolations and exhortations for me to offer in ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... speech about the beetle's being "the index of his fortune." Upon the whole, I was sadly vexed and puzzled, but at length I concluded to make a virtue of necessity—to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to convince the visionary, by ocular demonstration, of the fallacy of the ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... Shakspere, M. Michelet detects in him a most extraordinary mare's nest. It is this: he does "not recollect to have seen the name of God" in any part of his works. On reading such words, it is natural to rub one's eyes, and suspect that all one has ever seen in this world may have been a pure ocular delusion. In particular, I begin myself to suspect that the word "la gloire" never occurs in any Parisian journal. "The great English nation," says M. Michelet, "has one immense profound vice"—to wit, "pride." Why, really, that may be true; but we have a neighbour not ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... state of civilization as their forefathers had been in earlier times. The history and monuments of ancient Egypt have many accounts and representations of musical instruments, and remains of these have lately been discovered, so that we have ocular demonstration both of their existence ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... 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 ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... piscatorial soul I, nevertheless, insisted, and the capture of two quarter-pounders with a red palmer, and several short rises, rewarded my efforts in his interests. If he has not received my counsel, and laid it to heart, it will not be because he did not have ocular demonstration of the virtues of fly-fishing. I was not surprised to hear that these club fish were not free risers at the fly, for both ponds were swarming with half-inch and one-inch fry, as tempting as our own minnows, ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... receaved in France in any causes whither civil or criminal: only wt this difference that for one man their most be 2 women, id est, wheir 2 men being ocular witnesses of a murder wil condemne a man, their most be 4 women, under which ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... the probable prospect of the discovery of another. We see it as Columbus saw America from the shores of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis, with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration.'—These expressions are not reported in any of the papers which profess to give an account of the proceedings, but I appeal to all present whether they ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... had a hand in it. A human caricature in broken boots addressed me as I lay on the beach (writing with a stylographic pen and blotting the sheets with the sand), and besought me to buy sprigs of lavender. He proved to me by ocular demonstration that he had no money in his pockets; whereupon I proved to him by parity of reasoning that I had none in mine either. However, I remembered me of a penny postage-stamp (unlicked), and tendered it diffidently, and he received it with disproportionate benedictions. Later in ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... informant, the power of the Sheikh has immensely increased since the days of the first expedition. The Sheikh has now more than 100,000 cavalry, and a great quantity of muskets. Certainly I have ocular proof that Zinder, an important province, has been added to the territories of this most powerful prince. I may as well mention, that my authority is Omer Wardi. His father, Mohammed Wardi, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... How! Give me but proof of it, ocular proof, that I may justify my dealing with him to the world, and share ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... and asked his Brother's leave to do it. And if Poland got its fate from the circumstance, it was by accident, and by the fact that Poland's fate was drop-ripe, ready to fall by a touch.—Before going farther, here is ocular view of the shrill-minded, serious and ingenious Henri, little conscious of being so fateful a man:—PRINCE HENRI IN WHITE DOMINO. "Prince Henri of Prussia," says Richardson, the useful Eye-witness cited already, "is one of the most ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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
... the panic was 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 one was ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... reason for it! Now, this boat was found, half-burnt, lying on a lonely bit of coast a few weeks after the Rosana foundered. This is a thing which I may remark is not generally known; but I happen to have had ocular demonstration of it. The boat was a smart built one, with her name in gold leaf on the bows. Tranter was the captain of the Rosana, and he liked to have things nice. Now, why should this boat have been found half-burnt on the coast, but with ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... supposed," muttered J.C., as he watched her cross the street and enter Dr. Kennedy's gate. "It will be mighty mean, though, if she does array herself against my wife, for Madam Kelsey is quoted everywhere, and even Mrs. Lane, who lives just opposite, dare not open her parlor blinds until assured by ocular demonstration that Mrs. Kelsey's are open too. Oh, fashion, fashion, what fools you make of your votaries! I am glad that I for one dare break your chain and marry whom I please," and feeling more amiably ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... tints and glimmering hues of accidental and complementary color indescribably elegant. The floor of the sea rises like a golden carpet in gentle incline to the surface; but this incline, experience soon teaches, is an ocular deception, the effect of refraction, such as a tumbler of water and a spoon can exhibit in petty. It is perhaps the first observable warning that you are in a new medium, and that your familiar friend, the light, comes to you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... hither, sir?" said she. "But I need not ask. You have come to satisfy yourself by ocular demonstration that your prisoner has not flown up the chimney. You need not trouble yourself to remain—I ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... 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 ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... the reader to resist the suasion of his own experience so evoked and represented. Such a method of appeal may be called psychological, in the sense that it relies for success on the total movement of the reader's life and mind, without forcing a detailed assent through ocular demonstration or pure dialectic; but the psychology of it is a method and a resource rather than a doctrine. The only doctrine aimed at in such philosophy is a general reasonableness, a habit of thinking straight ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... remarkable towering head-dresses, and their peculiar stuff gowns, tricked off with gay flowers and ribbons, instead of striking me as merely ridiculous, had an appearance that was both ghostly and awe-inspiring. My fancy seemed to glean from their yellow withered faces and blinking eyes, ocular proof of the fact that they had succeeded in establishing themselves on at least a good footing with the ghosts who haunted the castle, as it derived auricular confirmation of the same fact from the wretched French which ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... 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
... "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 ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... adjusted. Political economists say that capital sets towards the most profitable trades, and that it rapidly leaves the less profitable and non-paying trades. But in ordinary countries this is a slow process, and some persons who want to have ocular demonstration of abstract truths have been inclined to doubt it because they could not see it. In England, however, the process would be visible enough if you could only see the books of the bill brokers and the bankers. Their bill cases as a rule are full of the bills ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... route of the Resolution and Adventure, throughout the South Atlantic, the South Indian, and the South Pacific Oceans that environ the globe, and combining it with the route of the Endeavour, we receive what may be called ocular demonstration, that Captain Cook, in his persevering researches, sailed over many an extensive continent, which, though supposed to have been seen by former navigators, at the approach of his ships, sunk into the bosom of the ocean, and, "like the baseless fabric ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... 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 to believe ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... smooth knee inside of his; her arms slid around him like lightning; he felt himself rising into the air, descending—there came a crash, a magnificent display of ocular fireworks, and nothing further concerned him until he discovered himself lying flat on the floor and heard somebody sobbing ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... the Neapolitans permit even foreigners to contribute to the good cause, is desirous that they should do him the honour of accepting a thousand louis, which he takes the liberty of offering. Having already, not long since, been an ocular witness of the despotism of the Barbarians in the States occupied by them in Italy, he sees, with the enthusiasm natural to a cultivated man, the generous determination of the Neapolitans to assert their well-won independence. As a member of the English ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... his friends, by a pack of dogs, who had spontaneously sequestered themselves in the mountainous and woody regions, and from thence committed many atrocious acts of depredation on the neighbouring herds and flocks. I shall take this opportunity of mentioning what from experience and ocular testimony I have observed respecting the nature of dogs. A dog is in general sagacious, but particularly with respect to his master; for when he has for some time lost him in a crowd, he depends more upon his nose than upon his eyes; and, in endeavouring to find him, he first looks about, ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... has been so recently concluded that it is not necessary to enter at any length into a consideration of the Japanese Army. The history of that war gave ocular demonstration to the European nations, however incredulous they may previously have been on the subject, that Japan was in fact a great military Power. In the course of that war she put in the field somewhere about 700,000 men, conveyed them across the sea to a foreign country, and showed throughout ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... 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 burning of the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... glance, ken [Scot.], coup d'oeil [Fr.]; glimpse, glint, peep; gaze, stare, leer; perlustration^, contemplation; conspection^, conspectuity^; regard, survey; introspection; reconnaissance, speculation, watch, espionage, espionnage [Fr.], autopsy; ocular inspection, ocular demonstration; sight-seeing. point of view; gazebo, loophole, belvedere, watchtower. field of view; theater, amphitheater, arena, vista, horizon; commanding view, bird's eye view; periscope. visual organ, organ of vision; eye; naked eye, unassisted ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... explain the common stories of phantoms by attributing them to ocular illusion, aided or not aided by the imagination or by particular conditions of the bodily or mental health. The eye, of course, is never quite proof against deception, but there needs some little material ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... as it has been on some other questions. Toad-in-the-hole might be sleeping, but dead he was not; and of that we soon had ocular proof. One morning in 1812, an amateur surprised us with the news that he had seen Toad-in-the-hole brushing with hasty steps the dews away to meet the postman by the conduit side. Even that was something: ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... is—half-past eleven. Good Heavens! The post will be here at twelve. 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 ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... had seen the Captain take a through ticket for Rouen, and he saw the train leave the terminus. This he held to be ocular demonstration of the fact that Captain Paget was really going to ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... distinguish the cabins and barracoons of King Dingo Bingo, peeping out from among the green trees. The barque looked no larger than a little boat, and although she appeared very near the river's mouth, that was also an ocular deception, for we knew that she was more than a mile ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... when I point out that I dropped "The Rescue" not to give myself up to idleness, regrets, or dreaming, but to begin "The Nigger of the Narcissus" and to go on with it without hesitation and without a pause. A comparison of any page of "The Rescue" with any page of "The Nigger" will furnish an ocular demonstration of the nature and the inward meaning of this first crisis of my writing life. For it was a crisis undoubtedly. The laying aside of a work so far advanced was a very awful decision to take. It was ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... After killing it, we lay bare its viscera, examine their colour, form, dimensions, and connections; then we dissect the organs in order to ascertain their internal nature, their texture, structure, and function; then, not content with ocular anatomy, we have recourse to the perfected processes of histology: we take a fragment of the tissues weighing a few milligrammes, we fix it, we mount it, we make it into strips of no more than a thousandth of a millimetre thick, we colour it and place it under the microscope, we examine it with ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... hardly in human nature that Natt should resist the temptation to show his cronies by ocular demonstration what a knowing young dog he could be if he liked. Natt never tried to ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... language of ancient theology. They were the most obvious method of instruction; for, like nature herself, they addressed the understanding through the eye; and the most ancient expressions denoting communication of religious knowledge, signify ocular exhibition. The first teachers of mankind borrowed this method of instruction; and it comprised an endless store of pregnant hieroglyphics. These lessons of the olden time were the riddles of the Sphynx, tempting the curious by their quaintness, but involving the personal ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... though I am at present busied in writing—those few Observations I have accumulated in my Peregrinations, Sir; yet the Ambition I aspir'd to, of being an ocular and aurial Witness of your Singularity, made me trespass on your ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... was meditating on these things, an angel from the Lord said to me, "You shall presently see, and be convinced by ocular demonstration, what is the nature and quality of that infernal love." Then suddenly the earth opened on the left, and I saw a devil ascending from hell, with a square cap on his head let down over his forehead even to his eyes: his face was full of pimples ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Sir Robert was therefore again singled out for royal vengeance: his library was put under sequestration; and the owner forbidden to enter it. It was in vain that his complete innocence was vindicated. To deprive such a man as COTTON of the ocular and manual comforts of his library—to suppose that he could be happy in the most splendid drawing room in Europe, without his books—is to suppose what our experience of virtuous bibliomaniacs will not permit us to accede to. In consequence, Sir Robert declared to his friends, "that they ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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
... declared in high terms, that if this affair concerned you, he would not listen to it. I attempted to remonstrate upon this injustice, when he passionately broke forth into new and horrible charges against you, affirming that he had them from authority as indisputable as ocular demonstration. I was then certain of some ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... 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.
... Indeed, we had ocular proof of their dangerous position, for there were seven or eight wrecks upon them, and the small islands of sand were crowded with masts, spars, chests, interspersed with human bones bleaching in the powerful sun. On one of the islands we discovered the remains of the British ship Letitia, which ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... construction—not geometrical, but by symbols- in which all conceptions, especially those of the relations of quantities, are represented in intuition by signs; and thus the conclusions in that science are secured from errors by the fact that every proof is submitted to ocular evidence. Philosophical cognition does not possess this advantage, it being required to consider the general always in abstracto (by means of conceptions), while mathematics can always consider it in concreto (in an individual intuition), ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... of 'epigenesis' is derived from Harvey: following by ocular inspection the development of the new being in the Windsor does, he saw each part appear successively, and taking the moment of 'appearance' for the moment of 'formation' he imagined ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... wall of the rectum. The man occasionally experienced sexual excitement, followed by an emission into the rectum. The burning pain complained of in the rectum and about the anus was due to the irritation caused by the urine. The man would not allow an ocular inspection of the interior of the rectum. Unfortunately, the details of this very ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... yet improve the standard which I celebrate, to greater and more speedy exaltation? Bud your laurel on the black-cherry stock to what height you please: This I had from an ocular testimony, who was more than somewhat doubtful of such alliances; though something like it in Palladius speaks ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... the day, to let in the light, and air: and as for the window itself, with the exception of a few panes of glass in the centre, here and there patched with brown paper, it was almost wholly made up with squares of wood—giving ocular proof that glass was of a very ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... Jonas upon Berlin—for he exercises everywhere a sapient observation on men and things—are of dim tumidly insignificant character, reminding us of an extinct Minerva's Owl; and reduce themselves mainly to this bit of ocular testimony, That his Prussian Majesty rides much about, often at a rapid rate; with a pleasant business aspect, humane though imperative; handsome to look upon, though with face perceptibly reddish [and perhaps snuff on it, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... remarking very accurately the spot, inquired into the cause of it, and getting an exact 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 ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... 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 ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... balloonist would have been greatly embarrassed in deciding, at the battle of Waterloo, whether it was Grouchy or Bluecher who was seen coming up by the Saint-Lambert road; but this uncertainty need not exist where the armies are not so much mixed. I had ocular proof of the advantage to be derived from such observations when I was stationed in the spire of Gautsch, at the battle of Leipsic; and Prince Schwarzenberg's aid-de-camp, whom I had conducted to the same point, could not deny that it was at my solicitation the prince was prevailed ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... express the superlative degree of the impossible, we said "I can no more do it than I can fly." But the irrepressible spirit of man was not to be daunted by a priori demonstrations of impossibility. One day there came the rumour that the thing had been achieved, followed soon by ocular demonstration; and now we rub shoulders every day with men who have outsoared the eagle, and—alas!—carried death and destruction into ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... well know that the path of this army from Whitemarsh to Valley Forge might have been tracked by the blood of footprints, and that not a boot or shoe had since been issued by the commissaries: who are well apprised of the nakedness of the troops from ocular demonstration; whom I myself informed of the fact that some brigades had been four days without meat, and were unsupplied with the very straw to save them from sleeping on the bare earth floors of the huts, so that one-third of this army ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... took all opportunities of being 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 ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... in circulation through the South) was that Lee was driving us from the State in the most demoralized condition and that in the South-west our troops were but little better than prisoners of war. Seeing our troops moving south was ocular proof that a part of her information was incorrect, and she asked me if my news from Sherman was true. I assured her that there was no doubt about it. I left a guard to protect the house from intrusion ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... that capital sets toward the most profitable trades, and that it rapidly leaves the less profitable and non-paying trades. But in ordinary countries this is a slow process, and some persons, who want to have ocular demonstrations of abstract truths, have been inclined to doubt it because they could not see it. The process would be visible enough if you could only see the books of the bill-brokers and the bankers. If the iron-trade ceases to be as profitable ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... 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 ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... sacramentals, the avoidance of notoriously injurious follies such as beginning work on Friday, the observance of such matters as wearing Principium Evangelii secundum Joannem on the person, and the paying of ocular deference to Saint Christopher on rising—these precautions and others like them are usually a sufficient safeguard. [I am afraid it is impossible to clear Sir John wholly of the charge of superstition. The "Beginning of the Gospel according ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... 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 for me to say ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... reflexes absent. The sense of pain to pin pricks was almost nil on the arms, and diminished on the face. Strength poor in the arms even when there was evidently great effort made. (Several of these functional findings, however, have varied from time to time in the ensuing years.) Hearing normal. Ocular examination showed hypermetropia 1.5 D. R. and L. with marked astigmatism. Fields and color vision normal. Left pupil about twice the size of the right. (A competent oculist could find no evidence of organic ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... by the Romans.—That the Romans used egg-cups, and of a shape very similar to our own, the ruins at Pompeii and other places afford ocular demonstration. Can you tell me by what name ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... been the famous Nancy Dawson, or any one else, who captivated the English king. Some such way seems dramatic, and speaks to the Eye. The audience will enter into the Friend's surprise, and into the perplexity of his situation. These Ocular Scenes are so many great landmarks, rememberable headlands and lighthouses in the voyage. Macbeth's witch has a good advice to a magic [? tragic] writer, what to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... "The percentage with ocular defects was fairly constant in all the schools, but the percentage with defective vision was very variable—i.e., many children with normal eyes were ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... importance: it is sufficient for us to know that it has been effected in our time, and can be effected again. I am anxious to repeat the voyage, for the purpose of ascertaining some facts, about which I have been lately speculating; and I wish, besides, to afford you ocular demonstration of the wonders I have disclosed; for, in spite of your good opinion of my veracity, I have sometimes perceived symptoms of incredulity about you, and I do not wonder ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... not regard the eyes of the Crustacea as limbs, and therefore admit no ocular segment; on the other hand I count in the median piece of the tail, to which the character of a segment is often denied. In opposition to its interpretation as a segment of the body, only the want of limbs can be cited; in its favour we have the relation ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... had its dear original 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
... 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, made ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... this, Dr. Johnson good-naturedly agreed; and though troubled with a shortness of breathing, laboured up a long flight of steps, till we came to the place where the wonderous chest stood. 'THERE, (said Cateot, with a bouncing confident credulity,) THERE is the very chest itself.' After this OCULAR DEMONSTRATION, there was no more to be said. He brought to my recollection a Scotch Highlander, a man of learning too, and who had seen the world, attesting, and at the same time giving his reasons for the ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... about the power that snakes have to charm birds and animals, which, to say the least, I always treated with the coldness of scepticism, nor could I believe them until convinced by ocular demonstration. A case occurred in Williamsburgh, Massachussets, one mile south of the house of public worship, by the way-side, in July last. As I was walking in the road at noon-day, my attention was drawn to the fence by the fluttering and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... 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 are the best in the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... not made." So persons of feeble frame, stimulated by disease or frenzied by passion, have put forth preternatural and prodigious muscular strength. By what we call "clairvoyant" power life calls up in intelligent perception things going on far beyond ocular vision. By what we call "telepathic" power life communicates intelligence with life separated by miles of space. Such are some of the powers that have been discovered, and fully attested, but not explained, as ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... In order to furnish 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 ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... as the bed is made too short for her upon principle. Round her waist she occasionally wears a band with iron points turning inwards; on her breast a cross with nails, of which the points enter the flesh, of the truth of which I had melancholy ocular demonstration. Then, after having scourged herself with a whip covered with iron nails, she lies down for a few hours on the wooden bars, and rises at four o'clock. All these instruments of discipline, which each nun keeps in a little box ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... loaf in lazy magnificence about the tumble-down ruins of the konak, toying with their roses in silence. They seem contented and happy in their isolation from the great busy outer world, and, impressed by their universal appreciation of a flower, it occurs to me, on the impulse of ocular evidence, that it would be the greatest pity to disturb and corrupt these people by attempting to thrust upon them our Western civilization—they seem far happier than ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... time, 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 merely the idle spectators ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... else but gross negligence or deceit.(1250) He was afraid lest the ill example set by London should influence the rest of the kingdom. He expressed himself as willing to bear the expense of finding two or three honest persons in each ward, if required, to join the constable in an "ocular view." But in spite of every precaution fraudulent returns continued to flow in, and the collection of the tax ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... allow to be peculiarly their own. No other mountains that I have ever seen bear any resemblance to their character; their summits shoot in the most fantastic and spiring peaks to a height that astonishes, and, when viewed from an elevated situation, almost induce the belief of an ocular deception." ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... great charm of these horizontal bars to the Arabian mind): and again they are valuable in their suggestion of the natural courses of rocks, and beds of the earth itself. And to all these powerful imaginative reasons we have to add the merely ocular charm of interlineal opposition of color; a charm so great, that all the best colorists, without a single exception, depend upon it for the most piquant of their pictorial effects, some vigorous ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... 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 credence; latterly a traveller hardly dare assert anything. Le Vaillant and Bruce, ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... (a) Ocular Inspection.—Blood-stains on dark-coloured materials, which in daylight might be easily overlooked, may be readily detected by the use of artificial light, as that of a candle, brought near the cloth. Blood-spots when recent are of a bright red colour if arterial, of a purple hue if venous, ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... her up to the orlop deck, succeeded, as the boatswain's letter shows, after a voyage of nine weeks, in bringing his command to the Cape. A letter from Capetown, written on March 1, 1790, tells us she arrived there "eight days ago in a situation not to be credited without ocular proofs. She had, I think, nine feet of water in her when she anchored. The lower gun-deck served as a second bottom; it was stowed with a very great weight equally fore and aft. To this, and to the uncommon strength of it, Captain Riou ascribes his safety. Seeing an English ship with a signal ...
— "The Gallant, Good Riou", and Jack Renton - 1901 • Louis Becke
... which have fresh-water lakes and streams. They are 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 they were ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... storms, disturbing, probably at an immense height above the surface, clouds which must be utterly unlike the clouds of Mars or the Earth in material as well as in form and mass. These markings enabled us to follow with clear ocular appreciation the rapid rotation of this planet. In the course of half-an-hour several distinct spots on different belts had moved in a direct line across a tenth of the face presented to us—a distance, upon the scale of the gigantic image, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... The final ocular demonstration of the passage of the blood from the arteries to the veins was not to be made until four years after Harvey's death. This process, which can be observed easily in the web of a frog's foot by the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... consequent noise of breaking up the meeting, you'd thought the inhabitants of the infernal regions had broke loose. For my part, I went contentedly home and finished my tea, but was soon informed what was going forward. Not crediting it without ocular demonstration, I went and was satisfied. They mustered, I'm told, upon Fort Hill, to the number of about two hundred, and proceeded, two by two, to Griffin's wharf, where Hall, Bruce and Coffin lay.... The latter arrived at ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... 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 ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... by saying, that it 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 ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... 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 ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... is deceptive and cannot be estimated as under other skies. The far-off mountains are brought near and made to glow in a halo of mellow light. Manifold ocular illusions appear in the mirage and deceive the uninitiated. An indefinable dreamy something steals over the ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... of flowers, there appears to me a striking analogy to the character of human beauty. They afford an ocular demonstration, in the pleasure with which we contemplate their particular forms, that the pleasure, we receive from the beauty of the human form, originates from mental character: witness the charm of the infant, innocence of the snow-drop, of the ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... taken into account. We must remember that the particles of gold in the stone may be enveloped with a film of auriferous sulphide, by which they are protected from the solvent actions of the mercury. The sulphurisation of the gold gives no ocular manifestation by change of colour or perceptible increase of weight, as in the case of the formation of sulphides of silver, lead and other metals, on account of the extremely superficial action of the sulphur, and hence probably the existence of the ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... now 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 ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... Tickit how long a space of time she supposed there might have been between the two sets of ocular quiverings she had experienced? Mrs Tickit, though minutely circumstantial in her reply, had no settled opinion between five seconds and ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Parallax the same morning was creditable to his ingenuity. Nothing better, perhaps, was ever devised to deceive people, apparently by ocular evidence, into the belief that the earth is flat—nor is there any clearer evidence of the largeness of the earth's globe compared with our ordinary measures. On the Hoe, some ninety or a hundred feet above the sea-level, he had a mirror suspended in ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... it presents to the eye of the learner a condensed but comprehensive view of the whole science, may be properly considered an "Ocular Analysis of the English language." By referring to it, the young student is enabled to apply all his definitions and rules from the very commencement of his parsing. To some, this mode of procedure may seem rather tedious; ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... 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 ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... southwards held by the sultan's forces, the next, El Areesh, being an Egyptian outpost. I was desirous of visiting that place had time allowed, not only for the satisfaction of curiosity on the above account, but in order to get some idea from ocular inspection whether the little winter stream or Wadi there could ever have been the divinely-appointed boundary of the land promised to Abraham and his seed for ever. My prepossession ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... 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 ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... part of Mayo or Galway is the Land League more perfectly organised than in Clare, yet the farmers in that county are confessedly well off. There are some of course towards the sea, in the direction of Loop Head, who are poorly off, but the great majority are by no means in evil case. Ocular demonstration of this fact is supplied by the numerous farmhouses of the better class with which the country is studded. These are not merely large cabins, but houses, some of which are whitewashed. The haggards are full of corn-stacks, the rich pastures ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... The impressions, which ocular demonstration, and personal investigation occasion upon visiting this uncultivated country, are so different from those excited in any other district of the globe, and so powerful, that the mind is naturally led to meditation on the means of its improvement and on the mode by which it may ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... Furlong had 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 ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... had not participated in the fact presented by ocular demonstration. She turned about comfortably to greet Wilfrid, uttering the inspired remark: "Ye look red ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... With the thought, she sped across the space between her and Marquis, who—I really cannot say WHICH concerning such a dog—was fortunately not very far from the door. Feeling him a little safer now that she stood by his side, she resumed her ocular search for the panther, or any further sign of his proximity, but with one hand on the dog's collar, ready in an instant to seize it with both, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... of delight may be imagined when he had ocular evidence that he had at length succeeded in tracing the mysterious Niger down to the ocean, by seeing before him two vessels, one the Spanish slaver, the other the English brig on board which he fully expected to receive the assistance he ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... Words: optics, optician, ocular, oculary, oculate, oculifonn, ophthalmology, ophthalmologist, ophthalmic, optometry, ophthalmostat, optometrist, chatoyant, chatoyment, cynosure, orbit, strabismus, rheum, ophthalmoscope, ophthalmoscopy, astigmatism, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... [Footnote] *Arago's ocular micrometer, a happy improvement upon Rochon's prismatic or double-refraction micrometer. See M. Mathieu's note in Delambre's 'Histoire de ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... 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 all her attention to his sudden sociability ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... eastern states, the general feeling is quite different. The appearance of a deer in the Hudson River itself, or a moose in a Maine village is a signal, not for a wild chase and cruel slaughter, but for a general effort to save the animal from being hurt, or killed. I know this through ocular proof, at least half a dozen lost and bewildered deer having been carefully driven into yards, or barns, and humanely kept and cared for until they could be shipped to us. Several have been caught while swimming in the Hudson, bewildered ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... microscope on the 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 |
