"Tangent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as well as out, a noble place—a house in which you incontinently lost yourself if ever you were so rash as to attempt to penetrate its mysteries alone; a house in which no one room had any sympathy with another, every chamber running off at a tangent into an inner chamber, and through that down some narrow staircase leading to a door which, in its turn, led back into that very part of the house from which you thought yourself the furthest; a house that could ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... a Painted Lady, but you're so pretty!" she smiled, as the streets ran by. Downtown and still downtown the taxi sped, past the Washington Square district, which they had explored together, shooting off at a tangent into the kind of neighbourhood where Bambi had fallen sick at the sights and the filth. They drew up before an old-fashioned house, with dirty steps and windows and curtains. It looked like a better-class citizen on the down grade, beside the ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... Cairo is about 100, by great circle, from Coon Butte, so that if the meteorite that made the crater was a member of a flock of similar bodies which encountered the earth moving in parallel lines, some of them might have traversed the sky tangent to the earth's surface at Cairo. That the spectacle spoken of in the chronicle was caused by meteorites he deems exceedingly probable because of what is said about "a great noise;'' meteorites are the only celestial ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... It's just instinctive. I may be wholly wrong in having come to you and in taking up your time, but there are two things I wanted to tell you. I could have told Donald, but if I did and his mind went off at a tangent thinking of these things he wouldn't be nearly so likely to be in condition to give his best thought to his studies. If I really made him see what I think I have seen, and fear what I know I fear, he might fail where I would ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... is indeed Satan rebuking sin. Why there are three designs here—one I've just knocked over—beastly, wasn't it?—that you left with me when you went off at a tangent to South Africa.... Really, we ought to have some continuity ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Pauillac spiralled far aloft, above the edge of the Abyss, then swept into its eastward tangent, and in swift, droning flight rushed toward the longed-for place of dreams, of rest, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... longer run, he crawled. Naked, now, and with only a few kifs still clinging to him. And the blind tangent of his flight had taken him well out of the path of ...
— Happy Ending • Fredric Brown
... in general effect to the last example is the work upon another important series of vases. Instead of the simple meandered or zigzag arrangement of parts, two of the dividing lines of the zone run tangent to the neck of the vase on opposite sides, forming arched panels and leaving upright panels between. In the example presented in Fig. 168 the arched areas are filled in with lattice-like arrangements of lines. In others we have dots, checkers, ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... accelerated velocity on the bob; until, when it reaches the centre of its swing, it is, so to speak, fully charged with kinetic energy. If, at this moment, the whole material universe, except the bob, were abolished, it would move for ever in the direction of a tangent to the middle of the arc described. As a matter of fact, it is compelled to travel through its left-hand half-swing, and thus virtually to go up hill. Consequently, the 'attractive forces' of the bob and the earth are now acting against it, and constitute ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... I WILL think about Sleep. I am determined to think (this is the way I went on) about Sleep. I must hold the word Sleep, tight and fast, or I shall be off at a tangent in half a second. I feel myself unaccountably straying, already, into Clare Market. Sleep. It would be curious, as illustrating the equality of sleep, to inquire how many of its phenomena are common to all classes, to all degrees ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... Law of Motion and the Parallelogram of Forces, instead of the earth going off at a tangent in the direction of A E, it will take a mean path in the direction of A B, its path being curved instead ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... dies she falls into the arms of the deceased and they are ready. For a moment they stand and squirm like angle-worms on a hook, and froth at the mouth, and look, as they stand there, like a pile driver that has been run into by an engine. They teeter up and down a little, and then fly off on a tangent, and they flop around in unexpected places among the other dancers, jump like a box car, bump against other couples, and at every bump they are driven closer together, until they are so near that it does seem as though ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... cheeks. She went off swiftly at a tangent. "Wouldn't it give a fellow a jar? This guy Jim Collins slips it to me confidential that he's off the crooked stuff. Nothin' doin' a-tall in gorilla work. He kids me that he's quit goin' out on the spud and porch-climbin' don't look good to him no more. A four-room flat, a little wifie, an' the ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... eagerness to excel. When he could not beat him in wrestling or putting the stone, he was fain to content himself with a display of his superiority in mental calisthenics. The very fact that a charming fillette overset his trigonometry, and set him off at a tangent, is a characteristic ending to this summer of study. Peggy Thomson in her kail-yard was too much for the fiery imagination of a poet: 'it was in vain to think of doing more good ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... matriculation, the destruction of all "Discipline," and he saw the entire justice of the insistence. It was nonsense this being in love; there wasn't such a thing as love outside of trashy novelettes. And forthwith his mind went off at a tangent to her eyes under the shadow of her hat brim, and had to be lugged back by main force. On Thursday when he was returning from school he saw her far away down the street, and hurried in to avoid her, looking ostentatiously in the opposite direction. But that was a turning-point. Shame ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... don't know what to do with father," she said. "He flies off at a tangent over the smallest things. Elizabeth dear, can you lend me twenty dollars? I'll get ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... at once why knots and "cross-grain" interfere with the strength of timber. It is due to the structural peculiarities that "honeycombing" occurs in rapid seasoning, that checks or cracks extend radially and follow pith rays, that tangent or "bastard" cut stock shrinks and warps more than that which is quarter-sawn. These same peculiarities enable oak to take a better finish ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... when they would join him; then his mind reverted to Mrs. Martha Bardell; and from that lady it wandered, by a natural process, to the dingy counting-house of Dodson & Fogg. From Dodson & Fogg's it flew off at a tangent, to the very centre of the history of the queer client; and then it came back to the Great White Horse at Ipswich, with sufficient clearness to convince Mr. Pickwick that he was falling asleep. So he roused himself, and began to undress, when ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... the "humanities" had, also, much increased of late, by an accidental bias in favor of what he supposed to be natural science. Somebody had accosted him in the street, mistaking him for a no less personage than Doctor Dubble L. Dee, the lecturer upon quack physics. This set him off at a tangent; and just at the epoch of this story, my granduncle, Rumgudgeon, was accessible and pacific only upon the points which happened to chime in with the hobby he ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... case the ordinary sights should be lost or rendered useless, tangent firing may be resorted to against ships, by pointing with the wooden dispart-sight at such part of the ship as the Tables indicate for the distance, and according to the class of gun in use ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... Professor Razzler did indeed ask him straight across the table what he thought about the final breaking of the Hindenburg line. But he asked it with that same fierce look from under his bushy eyebrows with which he used to ask Tom to define the path of a tangent, and Tom was rattled at once. He answered something about being afraid that he was not well posted, owing to there being so little chance over there to read ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... roared. A bullet flew past Morse and buried itself in a log. Next instant, clinging with both hands to Whaley's wrist, Jessie found herself being tossed to and fro as the man struggled to free his arm. Flung at a tangent against the wall, she fell at the foot of ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... the coincidences of phrase and thought in Shakspere and Montaigne. Not that such coincidences are the main or the only results to be looked for; rather we may reasonably expect to find Shakspere's thought often diverging at a tangent from that of the writer he is reading, or even directly gainsaying it. But there can be no solid argument as to such indirect influence until we have fully established the direct influence, and this can only be done by exhibiting a considerable number of coincidences. M. ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... to himself in a perplexed tone of voice. Salisbury looked out after him, and saw him maundering along the pavement, halting now and then and swaying indecisively, and then starting off at some fresh tangent. The sky had cleared, and white fleecy clouds were fleeting across the moon, high in the heaven. The light came and went by turns as the clouds passed by, and, turning round as the clear white rays shone into the passage, Salisbury saw the little ball of crumpled paper which the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... as if the fact scarcely concerned her, and Lanfear drew a breath of relief in his surprise. He asked, at another tangent: "What made you think I was ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... all, the imagination ought not to be startled any more at so many orders of infinites than at the so well-known proposition, viz., that curve lines may always be made to pass between a circle and a tangent; or at that other, namely, that matter is divisible in infinitum. These two truths have been demonstrated many years, and are no less incomprehensible than the things ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... peculiar identification with the race, man's relation to it is an exterior one. By his constitution he is above all an individual, and that is the natural line of his development. The love of woman is the centripetal attraction which in due time brings him back from the individual tangent to blend him again with mankind. In returning to woman he returns to humanity. All that there is in man's sentiment for woman which is higher than passion and larger than personal tenderness—all, that is to say, which makes his love for her the grand passion which in noble hearts it ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... Abbreviation for 'argument' (to a function), used so often as to have become a new word (like 'piano' from 'pianoforte'). "The sine function takes 1 arg, but the arc-tangent function can take either 1 or 2 args." Compare {param}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... of conservative stock, and Beatrix and Bobby had been the first of the Danes to break down the barriers of their own exclusive set. To be sure, he realized that in a city like New York it was quite possible for circles of equal choiceness to exist tangent to each other, yet in mutual ignorance of one another; but his years abroad in slower-moving countries had not prepared him for the countless agile performers clambering up and down over the social trapeze. In his father's day, society ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... his mood of irresponsible insouciance that the soberness with which he announced that it was his sister who was to join them at dinner sent Archie's thoughts darting away at a new tangent of speculation. He had so accommodated himself to the idea that the Governor was a man without ties, or with all his ties broken, that this intimation that he had a sister who was still on friendly enough terms ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... that the scraping-knife should never be a secant, and the brush always a tangent ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... reproduced its mode of action: 'The law of action appears to be that the line or axis of MAGNE-CRYSTALLIC force (being the resultant of the action of all the molecules) tends to place itself parallel, or as a tangent, to the magnetic curve, or line of magnetic force, passing through the place where the crystal is situated.' The magne-crystallic force, moreover, appears to him 'to be clearly distinguished from the magnetic or diamagnetic ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... the night we had observed a double-ringed lunar halo. The moon was almost full. From the horizon directly under the moon were innumerable radiations, not converging toward the moon but, curiously enough, the first two at a tangent to the larger halo, the others at equal intervals on ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... eye is twice as bright as it was a month ago, and your color is coming back. That is a wise proverb, 'Let well alone.' I hear she visits the sick, and some of them swear by her. If think I'd give her time to take root here; and then she will not be so ready to fly off in a tangent." ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... for believing that the development of Democracy also is, after all, not the opening phase of a world-wide movement going on unbendingly in its present direction, but the first impulse of forces that will finally sweep round into a quite different path. Flying off at a tangent is probably one of the gravest dangers and certainly the one most constantly present, in this enterprise ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... which became entangled at the outset. We began with zeal, but presently left the ropes and turned our attention to the pegs. These required driving in with a wooden mallet and a correct eye. Persons unaccustomed to such work strike the peg on one side—the mallet goes off at a tangent and strikes the striker with force ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... be seen that by drawing a line forming a tangent to the circle GHJ at F and another at E, and producing these, they will meet at point K. Consequently, as the side shaft rotates in the direction indicated, the lever L will begin to open the valve V when the cam is in the position shown in fig. 29, reach a maximum opening at K, and finally close ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... broken point of the lava bed, and at once becomes a pretty stream, glittering with great numbers of the finny tribe, which gives name to it. The circular wall which once inclosed the fountainhead is now partly broken down. Upon each side, and almost tangent, are ruins of pueblos so ancient that the traditions of present races do not reach them. They are nearly circular in form, and of equal dimension. One measured three hundred and fifteen short paces, about ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... ranks; and the pattern was a cross, a tricolor. Then they wheeled round the circle that was and was not their goal, and did it all over again; but instead of intersecting at the center circle they struck off there at a tangent, and the pattern, blue by blue divided from white by white, and all red-flecked, was two wide V's set point to point, a pattern that ran away and vanished as each thread, returning, wheeled round the circle whence ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... something in the American temperament that prevents our doing anything in moderation. If we take up an idea, it is immediately run to exaggeration and then abandoned, that the nation may fly at a tangent after some new fad. Does this come from our climate, or (as I am inclined to think) from the curiously unclassified state of society in our country, where so few established standards exist and so few are sure of their ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... measures of corn, &c., of different shapes. The Egyptians also constructed pyramids of a certain slope by means of arithmetical calculations based on a certain ratio, se-qeṭ, namely the ratio of half the side of the base to the height, which is in fact equivalent to the co-tangent of the angle of slope. The use of this ratio implies the notion of similarity of figures, especially triangles. The Egyptians knew, too, that a triangle with its sides in the ratio of the numbers 3, 4, 5 is right-angled, and used the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... "it throws the whole burden on the fellow in his senses. It doesn't require any great degree of self-sacrifice to fly off at a tangent, but it's rather a maddening spectacle to the party ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... the limit for that caliber of rifle; but the antelope turned a somersault and lay still, while its mates turned off at a tangent and tore ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... was even to be expected that Redemption should do this, and I like not to imagine it the crust and case of hell, but rather, as thus: At the birth of this same world, there was struck off from its burning mass at a tangent, a mournful satellite, to be the home of its immortal evil; the convict shore for exiled sin and misery; a satellite of strange differences, as guessed by Virgil in his musings upon Tartarus, where half the orb is, from natural necessities, blistered up by constant heats, the other half frozen ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the earth at a tangent, and as the moon is near her third quarter we are going somewhere towards her. I will ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... keep his health in a passable condition. I have had positions of some importance handed to me, which I discharged with eminent satisfaction to all concerned until I got ready to go off at some new tangent. If I did not imagine myself in the actual embrace of some grave physical or mental disease, I feared that something would in the near future attack me; and that brings me to the main topic ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... opposing racket, if it fall obliquely, or even with too great or too little force, drives it perilously wide of its mark. It can recover the safe track only by a sudden and often violent lunge of the opposing racket. The straight course is life, the tangent disease, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... the number was of much more recent date than the creation of the worlds, and could not therefore account for it. He next tried an ingenious idea, comparing the perpendiculars from different points of a quadrant of a circle on a tangent at its extremity. The greatest of these, the tangent, not being cut by the quadrant, he called the line of the sun, and associated with infinite force. The shortest, being the point at the other end of the quadrant, ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... papist; what need is there of flying off at such a tangent?" said Mr. Stillinghast, with a grim smile; "I did not mean that, but what will become of you when ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... home and refuge. The tall flag-staff came suddenly into view, and in less than four minutes they would be rushing by. Over forty miles to the hour were they flying now. Big Ben had just let out another notch as they swung into the two-mile tangent, when at the same instant he and Geordie caught sight of three or four black dots dimly bobbing in the midst of a little dust-cloud on the roadway far ahead, and almost at the same instant came from each the low cry, ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... accipiet te laeta, neque uxor optima nec dulces occurrent oscula nati praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent. non poteris factis florentibus esse, tuisque praesidium. misero misere' aiunt 'omnia ademit una dies infesta tibi tot praemia vitae.' illud in his rebus non addunt 'nec tibi earum iam desiderium rerum ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the upper part of the wild whirl, high in the sky, a black spot flew. Thrown at a tangent, it fell, growing larger and more bat-like as it fluttered down, striking the earth with a crash. It was the ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... him, maundering, to a room where no light was. He kneeled before him with a lighted torch of bear's fat and the tendons of the deer, and waving it gently to and fro, sang the ancient rune, until the eye of the Idiot, following the torch at a tangent as it waved, suddenly became fixed upon the flame, when it ceased to move. And the words of the chant ran through Grah's ears, and pierced to the remote parts of his being; and a sickening trouble came upon his face, and the lips ceased to drip, and were caught up in twinges of pain. . . . The chant ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... toward a heavy line of timber on Piedra Creek. Beyond this creek lay Long Prairie, the favourite haunt of the plover. As they were nearing the creek they heard the galloping of a horse to their right, and saw a man with black hair and a swarthy face riding toward the woods at a tangent, as if he had come up ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... you and the judge? Well, Merlin did start off at a tangent yesterday from Tanglewood. I suppose he is pining after his child, and has taken a sudden freak to rush over and see her. And as you are the staff of his age, of course, he would not think of undertaking so long a journey without the support ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... gouge on the rest so that the level is above the wood and the cutting edge is tangent to the circle or surface of the cylinder. The handle should be held ...
— A Course In Wood Turning • Archie S. Milton and Otto K. Wohlers
... subthract three f'r th' duchess, a quarther to one o'clock an' eighty miles fr'm Narragansett pier is two-an'-a-half, plus th' load-wather-line iv th' saloon companionway, akel to two-fifths iv th' differentyal tangent. Huroo! Misther Sicrety, ye can go home an' tell ye'er wife th' counthry's safe.' He has to be a smart man. A good book-keeper, as th' pote says, is th' counthry's on'y safety. He mus' be careful, too, d'ye mind. Th' honor iv th' army an' the navy ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... perceptibly nearing the moon, and evidently succumbed to her influence to a certain degree; though its own velocity also drew it in an oblique direction. From these conflicting influences resulted a line which might become a tangent. But it was certain that the projectile would not fall directly on the moon; for its lower part, by reason of its weight, ought ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... for me what I cannot do for myself. When the time comes"—he lifted his shoulders lightly—"I will do what I can. Till then...." He diverged at a tangent. "After all, the world is quite as tiny as the worn-out aphorism has it. To think that you should find me here! It's less than a week since Doggott and I hit upon this place and settled down, quite convinced we ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... never fall in love with the persons they are expected to, but invariably go off on an unknown tangent of their own, in obedience to the same law of Nature, perhaps, which causes an unusually tall girl to lose her heart to a very diminutive—though generally very ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... lay holding a hand of Nancy between his cheek and the pillow—with intervals of silence and blithe speech. His disordered mind, it appeared, was still pursuing its unfortunate tangent. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... were nearly worried out of him in trying to keep pace with his wife's vagaries. Matrimony had not cured her love for side-streets, short cuts and chance acquaintances, and she was gradually making her husband travel at a similar tangent. When they started to go to church he would find, to his amazement, that they were in the Museum. If they journeyed with a Museum for an objective they were certain to pull up in the Botanic Gardens. ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... F of the curve, fig. 70, at a distance x [v.04 p.0556] from the vertex, the horizontal component of the resultant (tangent to the curve) will be unaltered; the vertical component V will be simply the sum of the loads between O and F, or wx. In the triangle FDC, let FD be tangent to the curve, FC vertical, and DC horizontal; these three sides will ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... believing that she could turn off so suddenly at a complete tangent, spoke to her once or twice but got no other answer than a long, contented sigh. He stood for a little while trying to make out her outline in the dim corner of the room. Then he tiptoed out to the hall, possessed himself of a warm motor-rug, returned with it and ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... satellites. But her career was too terrific for these to hold to their connection. The laws of the universe forbade it. Napoleon Bonaparte de Neville lost his hold as she crashed into the sorghum patch. George Washington Marlborough tripped over an irrigation ditch, and soared away at a tangent, like a sputtering remnant of a burnt-out world. Don Juan San Diego went the wrong side of a mulberry tree, and the lasso parted with a snap. He never stopped until his momentum carried him through ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... able to carry on his work. He had an apprentice, but the apprentice has taken to another craft, and cannot make crooks. The Pyecombe crook has a curve or semicircle, and then opens straight; the straight part starts at a tangent from the semicircle. How difficult it is to describe so simple a matter as a shepherd's crook! In some way or other this Pyecombe form is found more effective for capturing sheep, but it is not ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... centripetal acceleration - and the concept of such acceleration itself - is the result of splitting circular movement into two rectilinear movements, one in the direction of the tangent, the other in the direction of the radius, and of regarding it - by a mode of reasoning typical of spectator-thinking - as composed of the two. This procedure, however, useful as it may be for the purpose of calculation, is contrary to observation. For, as we have pointed out earlier, ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... led, as he had rightly guessed, to a staircase communicating with the hall. They passed the servants' offices on the way. At the sight of the cook and the roaring fire, disclosed through the open kitchen door, Allan's mind went off at a tangent, and Allan's dignity scattered itself to the four winds of ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... is governed by authority and convention, but behind these there lies always the mystery of human nature, uncertain and elusive, and apt now and again to go off at a tangent and disturb the smooth working of organised routine. Some man or woman will appear who departs from the normal order of procedure, who follows ideals rather than rules, and whose methods are irregular, and often, in the eyes of onlookers, unwise. They may be poor or frail, and in their ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... entirely. Pascal, according to Wycherley, was a madman with an illusion about a precipice; John Howard a moral lunatic in whom the affections were reversed; Saul a moping maniac with homicidal paroxysms and nocturnal visions; Paul an incoherent lunatic, who in his writings flies off at a tangent, and who admits having once been the victim of a photopsic illusion in broad daylight; Nebuchadnezzar a lycanthropical lunatic; Joan of Arc a theomaniac; Bobby Burton and Oliver Cromwell melancholy maniacs; Napoleon an ambitious maniac, in whom the sense of impossibility ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... first-class scare when the train drew up in the squalid station, where the branch line to Haifa meets the main Hedjaz railway and the two together touch a mean town at a tangent; for a French officer in uniform boarded the train and stalked down the corridors staring hard at everyone. He asked me for a passport, which was sheer bluff, so I asked him in turn for his own authority. He smiled and produced a rubber ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... held sway over her. She spoke of endowing a hospital, of doing church work among the "slums" of the city. But no sooner had her friends readjusted their points of view to suit this new development than she was off upon another tangent, and was one afternoon seen at the races, with Mrs. Gretry, in her showiest victoria, wearing a great flaring hat and a bouquet of ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... to send Creech off on another tangent which wound up in dark, mysterious threats. Then Slone caught the name of Lucy. It abruptly killed his sympathy ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... at a tangent to describe the men in his platoon. "The best man in our lot is an ex-grocer's assistant, but in order to save us from vain generalisations it happens that the worst man—a moon-faced creature, almost incapable of lacing up his boots without ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... a tangent when I reached that point of my reflection. I had found myself involved in the Banks's drama, but what hope had I of ever seeing them again after the next day? What, moreover, was the great thing I was called upon to do? I had decided only an hour or two before that my old way of life had ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... which Fleda had forgotten he still held, upon his arm and began to walk forward gently with her. Something in the grave tenderness with which this was done reminded Fleda irresistibly of the times when she had been a child under his care; and somehow her thoughts went off on a tangent back to the further days of her mother and father and grandfather, the other friends from whom she had had the same gentle protection, which now there was no one in the world to give her. And their images did never seem more winning fair than just then,—when their place was left most especially ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... almost to the seaward edge of the great riven ice-mass. I knew there was no glacier in Stromness and realized that this must be Fortuna Glacier. The disappointment was severe. Back we turned and tramped up the glacier again, not directly tracing our steps but working at a tangent to the south-east. We ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... at a tangent. He wondered if this Patricia person could not (tactfully) be induced to take her bath after breakfast, as Agatha did? after he had his? Why, confound the girl, he was not responsible for there being only one bathroom in the house! It was necessary for him to ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... sex,—began dancing jigs. Tim next played slower, but his speed increased again as he saw the dancers warming to their work, till his bow moved so rapidly over the strings of his fiddle, and his arm and his head gave such eccentric jerks, that I half expected at any moment to see the one fly off at a tangent and the other come bounding into the middle of the room. Larry and I kept on one side, trying to look greatly interested with the performance, while we managed to have a few words now and then with some of the men, who ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... was just well over the crack when she struck a patch of rough ice and yawed suddenly. There was a severe wrench. B.J. and Reddy were prepared for it; but Heady, before he knew what was the matter, had slid off the boat on to the ice and on a long tangent into the crack ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... position, figured P' N', and it be carried in similar directions, coinciding with the dotted horizontal curve so far, as to cut the magnetic curves on the same side with it, the current will be from P' to N'. If the wire be considered a tangent to the curved surface of the cylindrical magnet, and it be carried round that surface into any other position, or if the magnet itself be revolved on its axis, so as to bring any part opposite to the tangential wire,—still, if afterwards the wire be moved in the directions indicated, ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... 'ate to 'ear of anybody dyin'," she said. "I never been in a 'ouse before where it's 'appened, an' besides she's been good to me!" Her mind wandered off at a tangent "Any'ow," she said, wiping her eyes, "I done me best. No one can't never say I ain't done me best, an' the best can't do ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... off at a tangent, ten to one Miss Clare'll be down the next day and set all straight again," was the general verdict on his ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... appeared wholly incapable of that degree of intellectual concentration which could enable him to examine a subject to its close. He would begin to talk with me seriously enough, and with a due solemnity, about the suit against him; but, in a tangent, he would dart off to the consideration of some trifle, some household matter, or petty affair, of which, at any other time, he must have known that his hearers had no wish to hear. Poor Julia confirmed the conjectures which I entertained, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... like you—the balances in your hand. This unstable equilibrium rests upon scales that are in your hands. For the food of opinion, as I began by saying, is the news of the day. I have known many a man go off at a tangent on information that was not reliable. Indeed, that describes the majority of men. The world is held stable by the man who waits for the next day to find out whether the report was true ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Jehu all right!" Mac shouted triumphantly. "It takes judgment to do the thing in style"; and the next moment, swinging round a patch of scrub, we flew off at a tangent to avoid a fallen tree, crashing through its branches and grinding over an out-crop of ironstone to miss a big boulder just beyond the tree. It undoubtedly took judgment this "travelling across country along the ridges"; ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... thus done with man's anxiety and weariness, the daily expense of spirit, and that daily river of circumstance to be swum through, at any hazard, under the penalty of shame or death. I could not but think how good was the end of that long travel; and with that, my mind swung at a tangent to my lord. For was not my lord dead also? a maimed soldier, looking vainly for discharge, lingering derided in the line of battle? A kind man, I remembered him; wise, with a decent pride, a son perhaps too dutiful, a husband only too loving, one that could suffer and be silent, one ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... steering to do, so he joined in; he was fond of variety, and he sang some lines in a high falsetto which sounded like the whistling of the gaff (with perhaps a touch of razor-grinding added); then just when you expected him to soar off at a tangent to Patti's topmost A, he let his voice fall to his boots, and emitted a most bloodcurdling bass growl, which carried horrid suggestions of midnight fiends and ghouls and the silent tomb. Still, his mates thought he was a musical prodigy; he was entranced with the ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... motionless ball of fur in the crotch of a slim forest elm. Presently it uncurled, cautiously; a fluffy ringed tail unfolded; the rounded furry back humped up, and the animal, moving slowly into the tangent foliage of an enormous oak, vanished amid ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... better than God," said Mark, going off at a tangent. He felt that there were too many points of resemblance between his own father and God to make it prudent to persevere with the discussion. On the subject of his father he always found his mother strangely uncomprehending, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... skylight, the greatest stumbling-block has hitherto been, that, in accordance with the law of Brewster, which makes the index of refraction the tangent of the polarising angle, the reflection which produces perfect polarisation would require to be made in air upon air; and indeed this led many of our most eminent men, Brewster himself among the number, to entertain ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... straight, but, for purposes of calculation, they will be assumed to be so; also, that they will act along and parallel to the lines of repose of their natural slope, and that the thrust of the earth will therefore be measured by the relation between the radius and the tangent of this angle multiplied by the weight of material affected. The dead weight on a plane, V J, due to the ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... ever know me to go off on a tangent, without some sort of a string to hold on to? I ain't goin' to swarm all alone! I never heard of such a thing. Though if I couldn't swarm, and the thing was to be done, I say I'd try it. But Savira Golding is going to be married to Sam Gallilee, ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Incidence—The angle which a line drawn from the leading to the trailing edge of the plane makes with the horizontal trailing angle between the tangent to the trailing edge of the plane and the chord or a line drawn from the ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... conversation at a tangent, for the sight of a clump of stones gave him a subject ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... and who will be particularly useful to you. Among these are Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt. You cannot know Lamb without knowing these men, and some of them are of the highest importance. From the circle of Lamb's own work you may go off at a tangent at various points, according to your inclination. If, for instance, you are drawn towards poetry, you cannot, in all English literature, make a better start than with Wordsworth. And Wordsworth will send you backwards ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... itself that he saw out of the corners of his eyes. It was the shadow that had lit upon the wife the year before, happily to lift forever; now it was settling upon the husband; and it rested with Langholm—if it did rest with him—and how could he be sure? His mind was off at a tangent. He was not listening to Steel; without ceremony he ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... sake of economy of space, our cut omits the Point and Swannanoa tunnels (the latter is the summit tunnel), but covers all of the location which is of interest to engineers, the remainder at the Swannanoa end being almost "on tangent" ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... obtained no less by the contrariety than by the harmony of circumstance. For our surroundings affect us in two ways; subtly and permanently, tinging us through and through as wine tinges water, or, by some violent neighbourhood of antipathetic force, sending us off at a tangent as far as possible from the antagonistic presence that so detestably environs us. The fact that Charlotte Bronte knew chiefly clergymen is largely responsible for 'Shirley,' that satirical eulogy of the Church and apotheosis of Sunday-school ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... influence which forced Evadne to draw conclusions in regard to life quite unlike any of his own, and very distasteful to him. He was the most conservative of men, and yet he was continually setting her mind off at a tangent in search of premises upon which to found ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the Peel Administration of course lie outside the province of this monograph; they have already been told with insight and vigour in a companion volume, and the temptation to wander at a tangent into the history of the Queen's reign—especially with Lord John out of office—must be resisted in deference to the exigencies of space. In the Peel Cabinet the men who had revolted under Melbourne, with the exception of the Duke of Richmond, were rewarded with ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Severn; in fact, he was asked to believe that the last-named river was no better than a mud heap that got flooded with brackish water twice a day. The fisherman stoutly combated this slander, and a pretty quarrel seemed imminent, when Dan went off at a tangent, and "wondered" whether any one in Newnham had espied a tall, lean, one-eared man looking at boat or stream at any time. "He's not a native of these parts," added he, by way of rounding ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... direction. They thudded against the bags continuously, while often enough a missile would strike the concrete ceiling of the chamber, and, ricochetting from it, would mushroom against the opposite wall; some even struck the walls limiting the stairway on either side, and, breaking off at a tangent and exploding from the impact, scattered strips of nickel and lead over the heads ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... wordless, space-devouring half-hour beyond this, Blount applied the brakes and dropped his passenger at the rear of the small iron-roofed building which served as the railroad station for the coal-mines. Far to the rear on the twenty-two-mile tangent the headlight of the coming train showed like a blazing star ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... accipiet te laeta, neque uxoi Optima nec dulces occurrent oscula nati Praeripere, et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent. Non poteris factis florentibus esse, tuisque Praesidium. Misero misere," aiunt, "omnia ademit Una dies infesta tibi tot praemia vitae." Illud in his rebus non addunt, "nec tibi earum Jam desiderium rerum ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... try to dodge the question at issue by leading their opponents off on a tangent. The real question, free-love, will, however, by no means be forgotten by us until the Socialists have been shown up thoroughly. Since the conspirators against family life are so fond of harping on ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... world but something that attracts attention, draws eyes, something that gives him his horrible opportunity of getting ahead of all his poor little competitors and inserting—this! It's the quintessence of all that is wrong with the world;—squalid, shameless huckstering!" He flew off at a tangent. "Four or five years ago they ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Peckaby struck his wheel with such impetus that it went off at a tangent, and he had to follow it on ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... passing over into red, and then into blue. Similar colors could also be distinguished in the mock-moons. Sometimes there are two large rings, the one outside the other, and then there may be four mock-moons. I have also seen part of a new ring above the usual one, meeting it at a tangent directly above the moon. As is well known, these various ring formations round the sun, as well as round the moon, are produced by the refraction of rays of light by minute ice crystals floating in ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... Portions of my being stirred that had never stirred before, and things ancient and inexplicable rose to the surface and beckoned me to follow. I felt as though I were about to fly off, at some immense tangent, into an outer space hitherto unknown even in dreams. And so singular was the result produced upon me that I was uncommonly glad to anchor my mind, as well as my eyes, upon the masterful personality of the doctor at my side, for there, I realised, I could ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... this clearer. Draw a line from the laya center in the sun to that in the earth. Draw a narrow ellipse, with this line as its major axis, and shade it. At each end of the axis strike the beginning of an ellipse that will be tangent. If positive energy is along the shaded ellipse, negative energy is in each field beyond—earth and sun. This is a very crude illustration of a fundamental statement elaborated to the most minute detail in explanation of all astronomical phenomena; ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... enemy, bands of whom were constantly passing them in their flight before the Mountain-men. His anxieties, however, were groundless, for no sooner did any of the Raturans set eyes on Zeppa, than, with howls of consternation, they diverged at a tangent like hunted hares, and coursed away homeward on the ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... peaceably, mollifying Miss Gallifer. Without explaining who Letty was she insisted on her right to remain. If Miss Gallifer was mystified, it was no more than Miss Towell was, or anyone else who touched the situation at a tangent. To that Barbara was indifferent, while ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... legally speaking nolens volens. When my brothers and I emerged at last, we could just distinguish Flora waiting on the horizon of a braeland, her figure well thrown out against the sky, her pony curveting round and round, which was Flora's pet pony's way of keeping still. Away at a tangent from the proper line of march, Archie on his steed was being rapidly whirled. As soon as we came within sight of our sister, we observed her making signs in Archie's direction and concluded to follow. Having duly signalled her wishes, Flora disappeared over the brow of the hill. ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... non domus accipiet te Iaeta, neque uxor Optima, nee dulces occurrent oscula nati Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent: Non poteris factis florentibus esse, tuisque Praesidium: misero misere" aiunt, "omnia ademit Una dies ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... seemed to strike off at a tangent. She spoke with a lightness that appeared to conceal a hint of pain. "They say the mounted police are the guides, philosophers and friends of the people up North. They say you have to do everything, from feeding babies to reading the ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... tain, ting, teg> (touch): (1) tact, contact, intact, intangible, attain, taint, stain, tinge, contingent, integrity, entire, tint; (2) tactile, tactual, tangent, distain, attaint, attainder, integer, disintegrate, contagion, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor |
