"Focussed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... image was not clear to her and the telescope had to be focussed to suit her sight. The next moment she shuddered ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... radicals believed that the Supreme Court was in the control of the wealthy; the conservatives, that their opponents sought to assail the highest tribunal in the land. The peculiar circumstances preceding the year 1896, however, focussed attention on the monetary standard rather than upon the other ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... air made visible by surcharge and heaviness of sunbeams, pressed together till you can see them in themselves and not reflected. The cloud slants down the sloping wood, till in a moment it is gone, and the beams are now focussed in the depth of the narrow valley. The mirror has been tilted, and the glow has shifted; in a moment more it has vanished into space, and the dream has gone from the wood. In the arms of the wind, vast bundles of mist ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... and Gray he led the way up to the landing before Kazmah's apartments. It was vaguely lighted by two police-lanterns. Four men were standing there, and four pairs of eyes were focussed upon the stair-head. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... treaty-makers Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson focussed the "fierce light" that beat about the proceedings. But it was Smuts, in the shadow, who contributed largely to the mental power-plant that drove the work. Lloyd George had to consider the chapter he wrote in the great instrument as something in ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... acute accent over a development which, though already at its penultimate stage, had so far escaped the notice of Cleopatra and her mother. The picture had been present the day before, but it had not been quite perfectly focussed. The new frock had focussed ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... at a glance. The reality was too solid for a longer dream. Thoughtless, over-confident as her fantasy had been, she had the sense which a child has when a running man comes threateningly near—of a great shape, of unexpected size and dangerousness, looming out of the focussed picture, and setting all previous conceptions at nought. Here was this giant house, and Madam lying dead in it, and servants who would resent her appearance, and Gaga; and Sally was such a little girl in the ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... sympathetic to the American mind. It embodied, in a radical form, the spirit of Protestantism as distinguished from its inherited doctrines; it was autonomous, undismayed, calmly revolutionary; it felt that Will was deeper than Intellect; it focussed everything here and now, and asked all things to show their credentials at the bar of the young self, and to prove their value for this latest born moment. These things are truly American; they would be characteristic of any young society with a keen and discursive intelligence, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... 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 a brilliant ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... extent or shallowness of Paracelsus' claim is a matter of quite secondary interest. We are concerned with the poet's presentment of the man—of that strange soul whom he conceived of as having anticipated so far, and as having focussed all the vagrant speculations of the day into one startling beam of light, now lambently pure, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... of a movement in every cot. Eyes were all front, gazing in the direction of a golden-haired beauty, who blushed a deep pink when she realised how many pairs of eyes from the train were focussed on her. Soon horny hands were being kissed in her direction. Shyly, she sent a kiss or two back, and then retired to ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... and barely caught the lantern as it fell from her hand. The hatchet struck the deck with a sharp clang, and I felt the frightened clasp of the girl's fingers on my sleeve. Yet I scarcely realized these things, my entire attention focussed on what was now revealed writhin the chest. At first I doubted the evidence of my own eyes, snatching the bit of flaring candle from its tin socket, and holding it where the full glare of light fell across the grewsome ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... 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 them on the rider. ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... neighbourhood. Without hoping that anything would result from the manoeuvre, I followed the count one night, in the company of my friend, Professor Pesca, to the theatre. The professor did not recognise Fosco, but when the count, staring round the theatre, focussed his glasses on Pesca, I saw a look of unmistakable terror come over his countenance. He at once rose from his seat and left the place. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... and be an efficient sentry. If he did, he would challenge mice and shoot at cloud-shadows and bring the deuce of a commotion about his ears. And this Doggie, who did not lack ordinary intelligence, realized. So he strove to think of other things. And the other things all focussed down upon his Doggie self. And he never knew what to make of his Doggie self at all. For he would curse the things that he once loved as being the cause of his inexpiable shame, and at the same time yearn for them with an ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... a feeling of restiveness, an impulse to throw off the German yoke, had been gradually displaying itself in the Press, in commercial circles, and in the Duma. These aspirations and strivings were focussed in the firm resolve of the Russian Government, under M. Kokofftseff, to refuse to renew the Treaty of Commerce which was enabling Germany to flood the Empire with her manufactures and to extort a ruinous tribute from the Russian nation. Two years more and the negotiations ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Mr. Dinwiddie focussed his eyes, then stumbled to his feet and caught Clavering by the arm. "Yes," he muttered. "Get me out of this and take me where I can get ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Sphinx. "There's 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
... his binoculars upon the sternmost ship, which was also coming along at a great rate, and gradually lifting above the horizon. About half the length of her masts—two of them—was now showing; and as Mildmay focussed his lenses upon them an ejaculation ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... satisfactory; and this is a very different thing from the result of truly pictorial rendering with its constructive appeal, its sense of ensemble, its presentation of an idea by means of the convergence and interdependence of objects focussed to a common and central effect. To this impressionism is absolutely insensitive. It is the ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... out of the poor-house." Bergstein's voice had grown as soft as an Oriental's. "I buried him at my own expense. It's hard on her—she's got a little girl who was always ailin'—sickly from the first." He fumbled at his scrubby black beard, his rat-like eyes focussed ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... one can in a few moments compel it to be calm. This is not done by a word simply. Nor is it done by hypnotism. It is by the exercise of power. One feels the spirit of peace as definitely as heat is perceived on a hot summer day. The power can be as surely used as the sun's rays can be focussed and made to do work, ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... a famous jeweller. Separated from him by only the thickness of plate-glass was the wealth of princes. Looking beyond that display, his attention focussed on the interior of an immense safe, to which a dapper French salesman was restoring velvet-lined trays of valuables. Lanyard studied the intricate, ponderous mechanism of the safe-door with a thoughtful gaze not altogether innocent ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... that way, focussed his glasses upon the object and saw what had happened. A horse had fallen with its rider, the two lying together, the man pinned under the horse. A black horse which he recognized, and a big, red-faced cowpuncher with gray eyes ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... on, and as, through the spring and summer of 1918, we held a line across Palestine to the north of and covering Jerusalem and Jaffa, railway development proceeded apace, being focussed on Ludd. In spite of the difficulties of railway engineering in the mountains, the broad gauge line was carried from Ludd through Junction Station right up to Jerusalem. Well-constructed narrow gauge lines were laid down between Ludd and Jaffa, and between railhead and various ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... had left it behind, the pride and grandeur of the scenery beggared description. It was as though for days we had been looking upon a mighty canvas, and while we had caught something of its splendour, now for the first time had we focussed it aright. The memory we took away was that ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... rivalries of the political parties grew apace; and in 1797, just before the retirement of Washington at the close of his second administration, the struggle between Democrats and Federalists became focussed on the prize of the Presidency—the "Father of his Country" having declined to stand for a third term. The candidates, we need hardly say, were John Adams, who had been Vice President in Washington's administration, and Thomas Jefferson, the former being the standard-bearer ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... being adjusted and focussed upon the portrait, Miss O'Donoghue halted abruptly with a ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... system in question is not yet presented to us as a finished system. Its author manifests a plain desire to classify his problems. And he is certainly right in proceeding so: there is a time for everything, and on occasion we must learn to be just an eye focussed upon being. But that does not at all exclude the possibility of future works, treating in due order of the problem of human destiny, and perhaps even in the work so far completed we may descry some attempts to bring this future ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... 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 a cold, ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... 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 penumbra, darkening into the obscurity ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... chest heaved spasmodically; his breath came in dry gasps. Howard stooped over him and called to him softly. The eyes flew open and, after a heavy gathering of the brows bespeaking the effort made, focussed ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... that luck! I'll shore take it in. If it's a circus, mebby it has a trick mule to ride—I'll never forget that one up in Kansas City," he grinned. But almost instantly a doubt arose and tempered the grin. "Huh! Mebby it's the branding chute of some gospel sharp." As he drew near he focussed his eyes on the canvas and found that his fears ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... significance it stands for the chemistry of the middle ages. The idea of transmutation, in the country of its origin, had a philosophical basis, and was linked up with the Greek theories of matter there current; thus, by supplying a central philosophical principle, it to some extent unified and focussed chemical effort, which previously, so far as it existed at all, had been expended on acquiring empirical acquaintance with a mass of disconnected technical processes. Alchemy in this sense is merely an early phase of the development ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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 ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... 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 ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... he told me more than elsewhere I could have learnt; it was the cynical manner in which he conveyed his information. He had a way of telling me of monstrous things as if they were purely normal and natural to a properly focussed eye, and as if any monstrousness they might present to me were due to some distortion imparted to them solely by the imperfection of my ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... never have permitted a child to suffer for lack of food or bed, for she was not at heart an unkind woman. You could see that by looking at her vague, soft brown eyes,—eyes that never saw practical duties straight in front of them,—liquid, star-gazing, vision-seeing eyes, that could never be focussed on any near object, such as a twin or a cooking-stove. Individuals never interested her; she cared for nothing but humanity, and humanity writ very large at that, so that once the twins nearly died of scarlatina while Mrs. Grubb was collecting ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... I focussed the lens on the flush-cut surface of closely-rolled leaf, and explored every part of ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... use of this stern gangway the landing party would be enabled to attain the bank without the necessity of pushing their way through the crowd of idle loungers forward. And the passage had just been accomplished, for, as my eyes focussed the scene, they recognized the spare figure of the deputy disappearing over the crest—a vague glimpse, but sufficient. At the same instant hands above began to draw ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... such far-ranging meditations gave place to considerations immediate and concrete, Iglesias' whole mind being focussed to arrive at the facts of the case. And this was far from easy. For alarm stalked those usually self-secure and self-complacent rooms and glass and mahogany-walled corridors; men looking up from their desks as he, Iglesias, passed, with anxious faces, or moving with hushed ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... 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 upon her and ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... 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 yard or two around it; but ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... 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 are ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... only a fraction of what the cost is at the present time; and as the city was the resort of the wealthy and cultured few, the artists were surrounded by the stimulus of critical appreciation and of patronage. Their work, their dreams, were the theme of literary discussion, and focussed the attention of the polite world. Their studios were among the important interests to every visitor in the Eternal City. In those days the traveller did not land with his touring car at Naples, make "the run" ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... 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, ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... 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 sign ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... with the lightning originating around me and affording the sublimest spectacle of dazzling brilliancy, and varying in colour from the purest white light to delicious rose and blue tints. I have seen it intensified and focussed as it were within a few feet of me, and from this centre angled lines and balls of fire like strings of beads radiated in all directions. Yet the thunder which in the plains was heard pealing and roaring its loudest, was ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... pistol and waited expectantly and at last Blount breathed heavily and assented. 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 glanced ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... suddenly a black 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 and promptly dove off the rock, the others following ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... were at once focussed on the stately gray stone building that stood in the center of a wide stretch of green campus, shaded by great trees. At various points of the campus were situated smaller buildings which Mabel Ashe ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... cards that were left in front of Hone, not uttering a single word. He sat motionless, too, Teddy Duncombe, who had paired with his hostess, standing by his side. He was not looking in her direction, but by some mysterious means she knew that his attention was focussed upon herself. She was convinced in her secret soul that, though he hid his anxiety, he was closely watching every card in the hope that he might ultimately pair ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... Miss Joliffe focussed the card. There were only two words printed on it, only "Lord Blandamer" in the most unpretending and simple characters, but their effect was magical. Doubt and suspicion melted suddenly away, and a look of radiant surprise overspread her countenance, such as ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... sat, tilted a little forward, blank gaze focussed on the snowy window; Drina, standing, leaned back into the hollow of his arm, absently ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... and Ward forget the amazement of that moment. They were in a place which looked not unlike a huge laboratory. Then they saw it was a lofty room containing a variety of strange mechanisms. But it was not on these their eyes focussed. Confronting them in odd wheelchairs, with hairless heads projecting from tubular containers like the one they had seen encasing the man at the control board of the submarines, were all of ...
— The Heads of Apex • Francis Flagg
... 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 ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... softness of flesh, yet firmly carved. She lifted her head gradually, her eyes sweeping past the spot where Dellarme had lain dying, where Feller had manned the automatic, where Stransky had thrown Pilzer over the parapet. He saw the glance arrested and focussed on the flag of the Grays, which was floating from a staff on the outskirts of the town, and slowly, glowingly, the light rippling on its folds ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... brain. Weak and reeling, I went out through the broken window and down the street, seeking to escape, instinctively and gropingly, from the awful shambles. And thereafter I lived nightmare. My memory of what happened in the succeeding hours is the memory one would have of nightmare. Many events are focussed sharply on my brain, but between these indelible pictures I retain are intervals of unconsciousness. What occurred in those intervals I know not, and ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... Rothenstein brightly focussed him. 'Yes, I do,' he replied after a moment, with pride rather than effusion—pride in ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... in you, you straightway enter upon a glorious career. There is, however, no royal road to advancement on the Press. Proprietors and editors simply could not afford it. Living as newspapers do in the fierce light focussed from a million eyes, fighting daily with keen competition, the instinct of self-preservation compels their directors to engage the highest talent where it is discoverable, and, failing that, the most ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... them. We are offered a plant in the soil, not a flower cut from its stem. Every man is rooted to the soil, touches through his senses the physical, and through his mind and heart the spiritual, order of his time; all these influences are focussed in him, and according to his capacity he gathers them into his experience, formulates and expresses them. The greater and more productive the man, the wider his contact with and absorption of the life of his time. For the artist stands nearest, not farthest ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... events based upon and outflowing from that one "single moment" or moments. The dreams of the objective become the realities of the subjective existence.... The reward provided by Nature for men who are benevolent in a large systematic way, and who have not focussed their affections on an individual or speciality, is that, if pure, they pass the quicker for that through the Kama and Rupa Lokas into the higher sphere of Tribhuvana, since it is one where the formulation of abstract ideas and the consideration of general principles ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... after came the day of the Crisis, the day of the Fadden Dance. It would have been a crisis anyhow, but it was complicated in Ann Veronica's mind by the fact that a letter lay on the breakfast-table from Mr. Manning, and that her aunt focussed a brightly tactful disregard upon this throughout the meal. Ann Veronica had come down thinking of nothing in the world but her inflexible resolution to go to the dance in the teeth of all opposition. She did not know Mr. Manning's handwriting, and opened his letter and read some lines ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Bosinney had put himself completely in the wrong. How on earth a fellow could make such an ass of himself Soames could not conceive; but he had done so, and all the rancour and hidden jealousy that had been burning against him for so long was now focussed in rage at this crowning piece of extravagance. The attitude of the confident and friendly husband was gone. To preserve property—his wife—he had assumed it, to preserve property of another kind he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... moral education. It means that all phases of the process— 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 of ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... ambition 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 ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... ten 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
... These three men now 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 disappeared, ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... of the long 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 ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... he said; "you were sitting in this chair and looking at that crystal ball, which focussed the level rays of the setting sun, I suppose? Then it is plain enough—you ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... circumstances gave an unwonted significance to the simple occupation in which he was employed, and focussed his mind expectantly upon the event which, in the fuller life he had left, would have been accepted as ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... attempts have been made to explain the doubling of the canals merely as effects of refraction or reflection; and it has even been suggested that it may arise from the telescope not being accurately focussed. ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... on which his attention was focussed stood against the wall, the young man sitting in the corner between November and the woman. Of two tables between it and P. Sybarite's, one was vacant, the other occupied by a brace of hatchet-faced male intimates ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 against ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... Peter Pupkin stood, revolver in hand, in the office of the bank, he had forgotten all about the maudlin purpose of his first coming. He had forgotten for the moment all about heroes and love affairs, and his whole mind was focussed, sharp and alert, with the intensity of the night-time, on the sounds that he heard in the vault and on the back-stairway of ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... another now, came by them again. This time he halted, and his companions with him, for just a moment, to address his mother. She turned; there was an exchange of greetings, in which Mistress Hortensia standing rigid as stone—took no part. A silence fell about; quizzing-glasses went up; all eyes were focussed upon the group. Then Rotherby and his ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... several questions which Helen May wanted to ask, but she only gave him a hasty, imploring glance which Starr did not see at all, since his eyes were focussed on the pinnacle. She ran to the pinto and scared him so that he jumped away from her. Starr heard and glanced impatiently back at her. He saw that she had managed to get the reins and was mounting with all the ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... after an uneasy night, came on deck, glass in hand, to search the shore, and try to make out some sign of the fugitives; but just as he had focussed his glass, he caught sight of some one doing the very same thing, and going softly to the bows he found that the officer busy with the glass was Bosun Jones, who ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... 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
... country was focussed on North Carolina. In the early summer President Wilson telegraphed to Governor Bickett: "I need not point out to you the critical importance of the action of your great State in the matter of the suffrage amendment." The Governor replied in part: "I hope the Tennessee Legislature ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... complete failure; it indicated the most contemptible inefficiency, since she designed the whole fabric of her life with the unique object of keeping herself amused. Nothing bored her more than to have the general attention centered on some one else, as all that evening it had been focussed on the absent ones. Not only did she miss the excitement of her contest with Christine over the possession of Riatt, but she was positively wearied by the Usshers' anxiety, by her brother's agony of jealousy and fear, and by Wickham's continual effort ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... 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, for some five hundred years, did this decay, this vast revolution, proceed to its ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... along the Lierre-St. Catherine-Waelhem sector, against which the Germans at first focussed their attack, were impressive and awesome beyond description. Against a livid sky rose pillars of smoke from burning villages. The air was filled with shrieking shell and bursting shrapnel. The deep-mouthed roar of the guns in the forts and the angry ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... 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 ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... certain that they make adult failures. It would be interesting to learn just what proportion of solitary children there is on the roll of those who have become great in our world. One thinks of John Ruskin, a particularly fine specimen of the highly focussed single son. Prig perhaps he was, but this world has a certain need of such prigs. A correspondent (a schoolmistress of experience) who has collected statistics in her own neighbourhood, is strongly of opinion not only ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... novels—those sheets covered with a network of writing, which were the despair of the printers. The collection is most remarkable, even when we remember the large sums of money, and the patience and ability, which have for many years been focussed on its formation. It will one day be deposited in the museum at Chantilly, near Paris, where it will be at the disposal of those who wish to study ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... telephone, Elsie sighed deeply. Mr. Graham's name 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 ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... Kennington to-day come to see better sights than carts and banners. Surrey cricket has focussed itself at Kennington; rather curiously, it has happened that Surrey plays cricket to-day on no other ground. Kent and Sussex, two neighbours, play their county matches on three grounds or four; Surrey, which has traditions ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... stood there, waiting until, by very force of motionless persistence, she had focussed every eye upon her person. Then, according to the mandates of the Ladies' Galaxy, she hurled her bridal bouquet down across the banister, not upon the waiting Eva Saint Clair Andrews who hankered for it lustily, but straight against the manly waistcoat of the least and the pinkest one of ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... their 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 ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... as usual, 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 ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... in the light of His face, and He sees and marks all our else hidden evil. It needs something more than any of us can do to make the thought that we do stand in the full glaring of that great searchlight, not turned occasionally but focussed steadily on us individually, a joy and a blessing to us. And what we need is offered us when we read, 'His countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength, and I fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His hand upon me and said, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... cruiser's quarter-deck the officers lined the starboard rail. Their interest was focussed ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... where the opalescent river plunged down in the flaming fall. Ray chose convenient boulders for shelter and quickly we flung ourselves flat. Ray replaced the fired cartridges in the rifle and leveled it across the rock before him. I unslung the binoculars and focussed them. ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... brains of the telephone men were focussed upon this problem—how to reduce the expenditure on copper. One uncanny device, which would seem to be a mere inventor's fantasy if it had not already saved the telephone companies four million dollars or more, is known as the "phantom ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... allowed a fair amount of outdoor exercise which, after my close confinement, proved to be a delightful shock. But, above all, I was again given an adequate supply of stationery and drawing materials, which became as tinder under the focussed rays of my artistic eagerness. My mechanical investigations were gradually set aside. Art and literature again held sway. Except when out of doors taking my allotted exercise, I remained in my room reading, writing, or drawing. This room ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... in the West, too. Both Louisville and Cincinnati were seriously threatened, and the battle of Chickamauga was another field of slaughter, even though it was shortly redeemed by Chattanooga. But the attention of the country was necessarily focussed chiefly on the limited territory that lay between Washington and Richmond. In that region nothing permanent or decisive had been accomplished in the period of more than two years, and it is small wonder that the President ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... 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
... her face to her father frankly and said: "I realize that, father. Don't concern yourself about that. But I see Grant some way, eating the locusts and wild honey in the wilderness, calling out to a stiff-necked generation to repent. His eyes are focussed on to-morrow. He expects an immediate millennium. But he is at least looking forward, not back. And the world back of us is so full of change, that I am sure the world before us also must be full of change, and maybe sometime we shall arrive at ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... 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 ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... Board doesn't find much more college-endowing to do. We made only one or two gifts. But we are trying to get the country school task rightly focussed. We haven't done it yet; but we will. Buttrick and Rose will work it out. I wish to God I could throw down my practical job and go at it with 'em. Darned if I couldn't get it going! though I say it, as shouldn't. And we are going pretty soon to begin with the medical ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... relax her strained nerves. Gade concertos are a 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 flying ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... 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 thought. Most ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... sources of revenue have been interfered with or abolished. The sources of revenue are to some extent remarkable, and it is possible that some of them might be altogether abolished if public attention became focussed upon them. Export duties are levied only on tin, the great product of Sungei Ujong, and gutta-percha. The chief import duty is on opium, and in 1879 this produced 4,182 pounds, or about one-fourth of the whole revenue. Besides this fruitful ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... of something else, with the same result. Then I wake up, so to speak, make an effort of 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 first step to ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... emphasize must never be lost sight of, if we wish to face the future with confidence. All our measures must be calculated to raise the efficiency of the army, especially in attack; to this end all else must give way. We shall thus have a central point on which all our measures can be focussed. We can make them all serve one purpose, and thus we shall be kept from going astray on the bypaths which we all too easily take if we regard matters separately, and not as forming parts of a collective whole. Much of our previous omissions and commissions would have borne a quite ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... minutes of speedy flying, Bob, idly scanning the sky through the glass, focussed upon a tiny speck in the distance. All three had clamped on their radio receivers and hung the transmitters by straps across their shoulders. Speaking into the ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... a sudden thrill of alarm pass over him, even before he had focussed the glasses upon Jimmy's so-called "cloud." He suspected what it might prove to be, and the very thought of being caught out on the ocean by a fog gave him ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... in 1914 from the Office of the Local Government Board, over which he then presided, 'that few, if any, conferences held in London in recent years have done more good for the cause of social progress than the Industrial Remuneration Conference of 1885. The Conference focussed public opinion and sympathy upon a large number of important questions, which have since made greater headway than they would have done if the Conference had not taken place. I have the highest opinion of the value of its work, and of the good influence it exercised in stimulating ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... commendable form, and good work can be done by this instrument, which is made by Ross, London. The stand carries the body-tube, and at the lower end is placed the objective, so called, because the image of the object (which rests upon the stage as shown) under examination is first focussed by it and conveyed along ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... the wood more in my gun: so that it was difficult to keep the hand off it, though the rabbits would not come out; and the shadowless recess grew like a furnace, for it focussed the rays of the sun. The heat on the sunny side of a thick hedge between three and four in the afternoon is almost tropical if you remain still, because the air is motionless: the only relief is to hold your ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... the attention and interest of the universe have been largely focussed on the marvellous achievements of the human intellect. Discoveries, inventions, advanced methods and great strides of progress in countless directions are the boast and pride of modern times. There is no disputing this, nor is there any doubt but that a great wave of scientific accomplishment, ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... opposite, sometimes we have to meet a type of mind like that of MacDonald's student of Shakespeare, who "missed a plain point from his eyes being so sharp that they looked through it without seeing it, having focussed themselves beyond it." Assuredly there is much to learn before one can hope to understand the winding of the thread of thought which must be traced if one would follow the working of the Hindu mind. Let no one with a facility for untying ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... imposed morality on a non-moral universe, anthropomorphizing everything, transferring into the great remorseless mechanism the ethical ideals that governed the conduct of man to man. Religion, like art, focussed the universe round man, an unimportant by-product: it was bad science turned into good art. And it was his own race that had started the delusion! "And Abraham said unto God: 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?'" ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... we were as a pair of Hop-o'-my-Thumbs to the Giant; had it been man-shaped we would have come less than a third way up to its knees. I focussed my attention upon the twenty-foot-wide square that was the Keeper's foot. Its surface was jewel smooth, hyaline—yet beneath it was a suggestion of granulation, of close-packed, ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... 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. For a moment they widened in unmistakable recognition, before, ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... verandah with the most persistent, unwinking, gimleting stare I ever saw. It was really unpleasant, not only to hear a Babel of talking, of which, judging from the constant repetition of the words wahine haole, I was the subject, but to have to eat under the focussed stare of twenty pair of eyes. My folding camp-knife appears an object of great interest, and it was handed round, inside and outside the house. When I retired about seven, the assemblage was still ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... destiny, God, or whatever we choose to call it, and the wilful rebel, victim of his own passions; not, as in the Roman State and family, between the man who performs religious duties and the man who wilfully neglects them—between pius and impius; but between the universal law of love, focussed and concentrated in the love of Christ, and the sleep, the darkness, the death of a world that will not ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... bear a child, that, for the need of the educative, elevating companionship of family mates is consumed by self, inheriting that vicious selfishness, which he by his birth defeated, and finding all the forces of nature focussed on his defect, like a pack of hounds that turn and rend an ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... 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
... $150,000 have been sold for $40,000. If the islands were annexed, and the duty taken off, many of these struggling planters would clear $50,000 a year and upwards. So, no wonder that Mr. Phillips's lecture was received with enthusiastic plaudits. It focussed all the clamour I have heard on Hawaii and elsewhere, exalted the "almighty dollar," and was savoury with the odour of coming prosperity. But he went far, very far; he has aroused a cry among the natives "Hawaii for the ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... 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. Wyatt had been glad to find excuse for severing relations with the gambler. He had ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... conviction that I could not do otherwise than believe in him. But in the morning, in my own flat, I woke to a different atmosphere, and as I lay in bed and recalled the things he had told me, stripped of the glamour of his earnest slow voice, denuded of the focussed shaded table light, the shadowy atmosphere that wrapped about him and the pleasant bright things, the dessert and glasses and napery of the dinner we had shared, making them for the time a bright little world quite cut off from every-day realities, I saw it all as frankly incredible. "He ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... The scattered rays of this wonderful gospel are focussed in the transcendental teaching of the last of the ethical prophets, Waldo Emerson. In him the truth shines forth as the sun. We have seen the germ of the doctrine in the fourteenth and fifteenth century mystics, its resurrection in the noble school of German idealism which grew out of the teaching ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... with a tale of this kind. He had never forgotten that the little girl was to be a woman, and he had never forgotten that this tall, lithe creature, the present Marjory, was a woman. He had been entranced and confident or entranced and apprehensive according' to the time. A man focussed upon astronomy, the pig market or social progression, may nevertheless have a secondary mind which hovers like a spirit over his dahlia tubers and dreams upon the mystery of their slow and tender revelations. The professor's secondary mind had dwelt always with his daughter and ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... and an alert, inquiring face had come down from the day coach. He wound the film key and focussed for a closer exposure, but no one noticed him. At that moment all interest centered on the man who was hurt. "Well," said the conductor at last, having looked the group and the situation over, "what's ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... Inducer, stood on his trial for a serious offence, and the eyes of the political world were focussed on the jury. The offence, it should be stated, was serious for the Government rather than for the prisoner. He had blown up the Albert Hall on the eve of the great Liberal Federation Tango Tea, the occasion on which the Chancellor of the Exchequer was expected to propound his new theory: ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... is where you 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
... 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 ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... of it, the past is not only focussed there, in a man's soul, it IS there. How could it be reflected from there if it were not there? All things that he has ever seen, known, felt, believed of the surrounding world are now within him, have become part of him, in part are ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... Bogue Holauba, as if 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 Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... kind of 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 ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... the mind of the gazer all the horror seemed focussed in that calm statement, those ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... highest degree of efficiency. This is exactly the situation everywhere. Commonsense always grasps for those methods which quickly lead to a modest success, but which can never lead to maximum achievement. On the other hand, up to the days of modern experimental psychology the interest was not focussed on the mental operations involved in industrial life as such. Everything was left to commonsense, and therefore it is not surprising that the farmhand like the workingman in the mill has never hit upon the one method which ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... 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 fire. He ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... reserved, appeared 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 so ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... watchers on the hill had focussed their glasses on the scene, the Lucifer discharged her first shell on the fort on Girdleness. They saw the blaze of the explosion gleam through the smoke that already hung thick over the low building. ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... front line who gave way first, but always the reserves:—they, the reserves, watched bloodshed in cold blood until they could stand it no longer and so took to their heels whilst the fighting men were still focussed upon victory. Not the enemy in front but the friends behind are the men who spread despondency ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... very 20th August which had originally been fixed for their departure. The thought of this narrow escape turned the recollection of that scene at the Barriere Blanche into a perfect nightmare, which focussed, so to speak, all the frenzied horror conceived by Alfieri for the French Revolution, for ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... negatively; there was, patently, nothing in him to create an active response. His short heavy body was faultlessly clothed; his heavy face, with its moustache twisted into points, the clouded purple of his cheeks contradicted by the penetration of a steadily focussed gaze, expressed nothing more than a niceness of balance between self-indulgence, tempered by exercise, games in open air, and a far from negligible administration of ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... was at heart and would be till he died, the form in which environment of younger years had moulded him: less French than Parisian, sharing the almost insular ignorance of life in the provinces characteristic of the native boulevardier; to whom the sun is truly nothing more or less than a spotlight focussed exclusively on Paris, leaving the rest of France in a sort of crepuscular gloom, the world besides steeped ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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
... the match out the open top of the window, then paused in his tracks with the cigarette two inches from his mouth—which fell faintly ajar. His eyes were focussed upon a spot of brilliant color on the roof of a ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... old, her mind singularly fresh and young. She was tall, straight, spirited, and under the neat glossy-white hair was a noble face, somewhat long, somewhat slim, a little pallid, but with firm chin and large forehead and living large black eyes set among sharp lines of lids. The whole woman was focussed in the eyes, sparkled there, lived there, deep, limpid, quick, piercing. Her pallor changed ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... not 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 ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... kept coming in from all the societies and public bodies in the kingdom, and at every philanthropic function in which any member of royalty took part during the next twelve-month it gave pith to all the speeches and focussed the applause. Its influences extended to every department of public life; it affected politics, trade, public holiday, art, science; it invaded literature, increased the circulation of the newspapers, and ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... 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 properties, and turn them ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie |
