"Tangent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that truest epithet for monarch-man must be the tangent from which my Pegasus shall strike his hoof for the next flight. Who does not writhe while reading details of cruelty, and who would not rejoice to find ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... myself. I agree that man is pre-eminently a creative animal, predestined to strive consciously for an object and to engage in engineering—that is, incessantly and eternally to make new roads, WHEREVER THEY MAY LEAD. But the reason why he wants sometimes to go off at a tangent may just be that he is PREDESTINED to make the road, and perhaps, too, that however stupid the "direct" practical man may be, the thought sometimes will occur to him that the road almost always does lead SOMEWHERE, and that the destination it leads to is less important than the process ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... direction 80 mm. and under right angle 60 mm. The lower part is constructed similar to our Comparator A1201. The top slide carries a divided circle for measuring position angles. The circle is arranged similar to a position micrometer. It is fitted with quick gear motion and tangent screw and the two verniers read to 1-100 degree. The microscope has variable magnifying power and is provided with reversing eye piece. This machine has been furnished for and is in use at Yerkes, Lick ...
— Astronomical Instruments and Accessories • Wm. Gaertner & Co.
... asunder midway, were fitted flush to a Norwegian cliff, beetling precipitately over the whirlpool; then tilt the sledge with its furred inmate over the slope, let it skim with quicker impetus the smoking ice, let it touch that beetling edge, and, leaping from the tangent, let it dart through the air, let it strike the eddying waters, be sucked hurriedly down that hoarse black throat, wind among the roots of the everlasting hills, and split upon the loadstone ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Light Machines Unstable. The Application of Power. The Supporting Surfaces. Area not the Essential Thing. The Law of Gravity. Gravity. Indestructibility of Gravitation. Distance Reduces Gravitational Pull. How Motion Antagonizes Gravity. A Tangent. Tangential Motion Represents Centrifugal Pull. Equalizing the Two Motions. Lift and Drift. Normal Pressure. Head Resistance. Measuring Lift and Drift. Pressure at Different Angles. Difference Between Lift and Drift in Motion. Tables ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... a curious object for analysis. It is not for the eye a very easy form to grasp. We bend it or we leave it. Unless it passes through the centre of vision, it is obviously a tangent to the points which have analogous relations to that centre. The local signs or tensions of the points in such a tangent vary in an unseizable progression; there is violence in keeping to it, and the effect is forced. This makes the dry and stiff quality ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... the worse for me," retorted the Colonel. And as men gravitate toward their leading grievance, he went off at a tangent, "What do you think my feelings must be, to see my son, my only son, spooning the daughter of my only enemy; of a knave who got on my land on pretense of farming it, but instead of that he burrowed under the soil like a mole, sir; and now the place is defiled with coal dust, the roads are black, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... that had torn father from the stern of the motor boat," continued Polly Jarley. "It may have been a big root of the same tree, under water, that had proved the finish of the boat. For nobody ever saw the Bright Eyes again. She just ran off at a tangent, into the middle of the lake, somewhere, we suppose, and filled ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... who had noticed how very little David's heart had been in his work were amazed to see the reckless courage he displayed. Round and round the mill he flew, keeping the outside stock from flying off at a tangent, and soothing and quieting the beasts nearest to him with his voice. The "run" was over as suddenly as it commenced, and the men, breathless and exhausted, stood around the ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... theological tangent. A great artist has bequeathed us his beliefs,—drawn and painted in many works, with every patient, virile, expressive power at his command. There has been enough and to spare of shrieks or scoffs. A little humility and a little study is in place, too. ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... off 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 ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... the hospital sent her mind flying off at a tangent. Even the stage gave way for the moment to this new and all-absorbing occupation. Never in her life had she done anything so interesting. The escape from home, the personal contact with all those nice, jolly boys, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... parchment with a seal dangling from it, which I assumed was some obsolete firman. The result was truly amazing, and the scene had some real humour in it. With profound salaams, the Turks unhanded me, helped me to mount, and, as I rode off at a tangent with Andreas at my horse's head, called after me what sounded like friendly farewells. When we were back among the Russians—I don't remember seeing much of the Servians later on that day—Andreas explained that he had passed ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... been fairly started in their cowed progress when Chum was off at a tangent, deserting his six charges and bearing down with express train speed on a stray wether that had paused in his escape to nibble at a line of early ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... suis, et nos concedemus illis ex regnis nostris res, quibus destituuntur. Rogamus itaque vos Reges et Principes, et omnes quibus aliqua est potestas in terra, vt viris istis nostris, transitum permittatis per regiones vestras. Non enim tangent quicquam ex rebus vestris inuitis vobis. Cogitate quod homines et ipsi sunt. Et si qua re caruerint, oramus pro vestra beneficentia, eam vos illis tribuatis, accipientes vicissim ab eis quod poterunt rependere vobis. Ita vos gerite erga eos, quemadmodum cuperetis vt nos, et subditi nostri, nos ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... are made equal for the lines C and F. In the neighbourhood of 550 mm the tangent to the curve is parallel to the axis of wave-lengths; and the focal length varies least over a fairly large range of colour, therefore in this neighbourhood the colour union is at its best. Moreover, this ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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
... arrangement, of which, were it worth while to go into its details, we should need some further diagrams to make it quite clear. Nor is it worth while to go into the description of various minor points of refinement about the gun mounting, such as the very exposed long tangent scale seen in the figure, by which the elevation or depression is read off, nor the still more exposed and rather ricketty arrangement by which the rear sight is arranged to rise and fall with the gun, and allowance for dispart ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... Snowbird scaling swiftly upward, mile after mile; but the long tangent at which he had started to clear the summit of Katahdin did not prove sufficient, and by and by they found themselves within a very few yards of the rocky side of ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... 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 ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... I call a GOOP! A Co-tangent harmonious Loop You appear to be facing due South But O what have you ...
— The Purple Cow! • Gelett Burgess
... to dispute the passage of an intruder. The old foreman noticed the boyish figure and delayed the meeting, reining in to critically examine cattle which he had branded some three months before. With diligent intent, the greeting was kept pending, the wayfarer riding away on a tangent and veering back on his general course, until Dell's suspicion was aroused. The return of Priest was so unexpected that the boy's eyes filled with tears, and the two rode along until the grove was ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... warning. One of the little ones followed her on the instant, jumping squarely in his mother's tracks, his own little white flag flying to guide any that might come after him. But the second fawn ran off at a tangent, and stopped in a moment to stare and whistle and stamp his tiny foot in an odd mixture of curiosity and defiance. The mother had to circle back twice before he followed her, at last, unwillingly. As she stole back each time, her tail was down ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... a very pleasant ride, and clattered up its one long street to the principal hotel; but Mr. Fosbrooke whipped into the yard to the left so rapidly, that our hero, who was not much used to the back seat of a dog-cart, flew off by some means at a tangent to the right, and was consequently degraded in ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... 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 ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... code, nor yet binding through the stern behest of mechanical necessity, but a law which finds definition at every moment, and at every moment also marks a direction of progress, being as it were the shifting tangent to the ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... 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 ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... rope 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 ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... ran Market Street, a bias cut across the city that was to be. Market Street is about all that saved that city from making a checker-board of its ground-plan. Market Street flew off at a tangent and set all the south portion of the town at an angle that is rather a relief than anything else that I know of. Who wants to go on forever up one street and down another, and then across town at right angles, as if life were a treadmill and there were no hope ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... none had the ordinary heroism to intervene, and I with ever increasing rapidity was borne helplessly down the declivity towards the gates of Hyde Park Corner, when, by the benevolence of Providence, the anterior wheel ran under a railing, and I flew off like a tangent into the comparative security of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... "If Moa wants to try and put sense into your head—I hope she does. Bring him to the lounge when you are finished, Moa. Come, Prince—Hahn will need us." He chuckled grimly. "Hahn seems to fear we will plunge into this asteroid like a wild comet gone suddenly tangent!" ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... is to make its flight by zigzags. The hunters arrange themselves a short distance apart. As quickly as one of them starts a rabbit, a second Indian runs as fast as he can along a line parallel with the course taken by the animal. Presently the rabbit sees the second Indian, and dashes off at a tangent. By this time the third hunter has come up and gives the quarry another turn. After the third or fourth zigzag, the rabbit is surrounded, and the hunters quickly close in ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... 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 Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... 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
... 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 to a comprehension of the poets against whose influence Wordsworth ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... A B H express algebraically the value of the sine, co-sine, tangent, and co-tangent of angle A in terms of a, b, and h, they being the altitude, base, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... close to this great wall of ice, for two weeks, without seeing any evidence of a current of any kind, until there came on a storm from the northwest that drove a great deal of ice around the great ring; but it seemed to keep rather clear of the great wall of ice and to go off in a tangent toward the south. The lead showed no bottom at one hundred fathoms, even within a quarter of a mile of ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... Frona's team, to take the trail left by him and the baron. The dog went on bravely, scrambling over, floundering through, and sometimes swimming; but when she had gained the farthest point reached by them, she sat down helplessly. Later on, she cut back to the shore at a tangent, landing on the deserted island above; and an hour afterwards trotted into camp minus the grub-pack. Then the two dogs, hovering just out of range, compromised matters by devouring each other's burdens; after which the attempt was given over and ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... 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 super insidet una." Quod ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... 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 is ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... given a considerable amount of attention to the development of the "white" and "yellow" race hostility on the Pacific slope; but his chief interest at that time had been the negro. He went to Washington and thence south; he visited Tuskegee and Atlanta, and then went off at a tangent to Hayti. He was drawn to Hayti by Hesketh Pritchard's vivid book, WHERE BLACK RULES WHITE, and like Hesketh Pritchard he was able to visit that wonderful monument to kingship, the hidden fastness of La Ferriere, the citadel built a century ago by the "Black Napoleon," the ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... 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 ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... sloped down, and a rushing river glimmered before us. We struck off at a tangent and followed its course to the north, stumbling in muddy rifts, slipping on seaweed, beginning to be blinded by a fine salt spray, and deafened by the thunder of the ocean surf. The river broadened, whitened, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... the Moon. It had by this time turned over considerably under the influence of attraction, but its own original motion still followed a decidedly oblique direction. The consequence of these two forces might possibly be a tangent, line approaching the edge of the Moon's disc. One thing was certain: the Projectile had not yet commenced to fall directly towards her surface; its base, in which its centre of gravity lay, was still turned away ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... time, you could hear, going leisurely. There would be a long lath of sunlight, numberless atoms swimming in it, slanting from a corner of the window to brighten a patch of carpet. Two flies would be hovering under the ceiling. Sometimes they would dart at a tangent to hover in another place. I used to wonder what they lived on. You felt secure there, knowing it was old, but seeing things did not alter, as though the world were established and content, desiring no new thing. I did not know that the old house, even then, quiet and still ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... difficulty: the leader refuses the ribbon laid before him; the cut end makes him distrustful. Failing to see the regular, uninterrupted road, he slants off to the right or left, he escapes at a tangent. If I try to interfere and to bring him back to the path of my choosing, he persists in his refusal, shrivels up, does not budge, and soon the whole procession is in confusion. We will not insist: the method is ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... than a 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
... element of a curve is very near being a straight line. And the smaller it is, the nearer. In the limit, it may be termed a part of the curve or a part of the straight line, as you please, for in each of its points a curve coincides with its tangent. So likewise "vitality" is tangent, at any and every point, to physical and chemical forces; but such points are, as a fact, only views taken by a mind which imagines stops at various moments of the movement that generates ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... the great defect of those who have no accurate mathematical knowledge; they cannot concentrate their minds with the same degree of intensity upon the work which lies before them. Their thoughts fly off at a tangent, as mine do very often; but then I have not been classed yet in the Tripos; and, O male poetical sycophant, you may be right ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... 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
... and made for a second light which he had seen starting. Jeffrey rode on alone, unslinging his rifle and driving madly. His horse, already unnerved by the wild dash down the hill, now saw the fire and started to bolt off at a tangent. Jeffrey fought with him a furious moment, trying to force him toward the fire and the man. Then, seeing that he could not conquer the fright of the horse and that his man was escaping, he threw his leg over the saddle, and leaping free with his ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... grade, And coast on the tangent mile, While the Driver toys with the throttle-bar, And gathers ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... in the air had the effect of sending the old fellow off at a tangent. His bent was evidently discursive, and all thoughts of his late religious controversy seemed to pass from ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... contradiction to any distinct source, but it has haunted me all my life. I could almost suppose it was mechanical, and that the imposition of a piece of duty-labour operated on me like the mace of a bad billiard-player, which gives an impulse to the ball indeed, but sends it off at a tangent different from the course designed by the player. Now, if I expend such eccentric movements on this journal, it will be turning this wretched propensity to some tolerable account. If I had thus ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... speech she 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 ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... 38th guns, shooting down men and horses. The 38th behaved splendidly, but all their officers were killed or wounded, a number of gunners, and many horses. Two guns were for a time in the hands of the Boers, who, I believe, removed the tangent sights. It appears that the M.I. escort of the Battery, owing, I suppose, to some misunderstanding, retreated. The situation was saved by Captain Budworth, of our Battery, who collected and brought up some mounted infantry, whether ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... and wondered 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
... did you 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 ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... chair, but with his eyes on a small ripe round melon—"in real harmony with what surrounds me. You ARE. I take it too hard. You DON'T. It makes—that's what it comes to in the end—a fool of me." Then at a tangent, "What has he been doing in London?" ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... magnet of my heart was here," he answered half-playfully, half-tenderly. "When that is gone, I shall be likely to fly off in a tangent again." ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... youngster," said he, with a significant twinkle in his eye which made the other two chaplains grin, I could see, at some joke they had between them. "I'll try and call on your father, if I can find time before he leaves Portsmouth. Tell him when you get back, that old Tangent asked after ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... have married well. I'm sure her friends have tried hard enough for her. But what can you do with a girl who throws herself at the heads of ineligibles, and when one trots out an unexceptionable PARTI and does one's best to bring them together, goes off at a tangent and lets the whole thing drop through. You know how it was with....' ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... coloured cloths and gorgeous jewellery. But they were only too ready to help me without any of these inducements; and in an incredibly short time at least twenty catamarans, each containing one or two men, put off from the shore in my wake and made directly towards the ship, whilst I struck off at a tangent so as to head her off. I now see that without doubt we must have presented a very formidable appearance to the people on the vessel as we paddled over the sunlit seas, racing one another, yelling, and gesticulating like madmen. Of course, the people ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... 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 the couch where ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... began anew, apparently at a tangent, "wouldn't consider it. I was glad. I'd like to forget it, go back. There might ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... him tightly to his clotted breast. We were, of course, alarmed a second time for the man's safety, and by great exertions tried to release him from his perilous condition; but our efforts were not a little crippled by the legs of the Norwegian, which he flung violently about at every possible tangent; and one arm, moving with the rapid oscillating motion of a steam-engine, brought the fist in sharp contact with the other Norwegian's chest, and threw him, head over heels, into the identical pool whence he had himself but ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... suddenly at a tangent. The tentacles of this crime octopus, of which Danglar seemed to be the head, reached far and into most curious places to fasten and hold and feed on the progeny of human foibles! She could not help wondering where the lair was from which emanated the ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... 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
... to regard the nearing picture, till at length their glances met for a moment, when she demurely sent off hers at a tangent and gave him the benefit of her three-quarter face, while with courteous completeness of conduct he lifted his hat in a large arc. Marty dropped behind; and when Fitzpiers held out his hand, Grace touched it with ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Forrest," continued Harcourt, "brush up your mathematics. At what angle, and with what degree of force, should we have swooped down there on a tangent, when the horses ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... passages on the basement floor, which 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 ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... shall speak no further; indeed, I do not understand how I happened to be led into this line of discourse, for it is quite at a tangent with the subject I had in ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... 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. A call on a friend usually ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... I went off my course on this tangent about the birds, that little Jenny stepped in just as father and mother were getting to loggerheads about my going on board the Saint Vincent, the old lady saying she couldn't possibly spare me, and that he, to put it mildly, was not ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... a better conductor of electricity than water at the same temperature." Certain phenomena connected with the administration of electric baths having forced upon me some doubts in this respect, I made very careful experiments, both with and without the aid of the galvanometer (Bradley's Tangent), to satisfy these. Without wearying the reader with details, I will state that the result of my experiments leaves no room for doubt that water at the temperatures stated—and still more so at 98 1/2 deg.—is superior to the human body as a conductor of electricity. I do not ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... the sensible animal will instantaneously check his impetuosity, 'prop,' and swing round at a tangent." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... was so completely a star of a confined orbit, that his ideas seldom described a tangent to their ordinary revolutions. He was so much accustomed to hear of England ruling colonies, the East and the West, Canada, the Cape, and New South Wales, that it was not an easy matter for him to conceive himself to be without the influence of ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... the earth at a tangent, and as the moon is near her third quarter we are going somewhere towards her. ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... room to do this, and as he paused on the threshold there was a sudden crash. Part of the air pump seemed to fly off at a tangent, and a second later had smashed down on the Cardite motor. This stopped in an instant, and the projectile began falling. Fortunately it was but a short distance above the moon's surface, and came down with a jar, which did not ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... off at a tangent. "By next winter, with everything hummin' an' shipshape, what's the matter with us makin' a visit to Carmel? It'll be slack time for you with the vegetables, an' I'll be able ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... low to avoid the bullets he sped at a tangent in the opposite direction, for the timber of Wheeling Hill. The Indians afoot could not catch him, no bullet caught him; he would make it—he would make it; there he goes, up the hill. ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... with the holding of any more remunerative job and consumes most of one's time in trying to 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 ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... off at a tangent, "to see Peter Auber, at the India House," or, "could not wait an instant; they were to meet Josh: Alexander ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... 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
... a tangent. "I'd rather die in Delirium Tremens," he cried, "than be a Crampton or ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... opportunity is afforded you, Virginia, for mental discipline. I can see that Miss Kingsley has taken a fancy to you. She is not a person who goes off at a tangent. She must have discerned capabilities for culture in you, or she would never have invited you to one of her entertainments. To you, who are accustomed to society fine speeches that mean nothing, it will probably occur that she is asking you on my account. Nothing ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... pale sky, and about half the apparent size of the moon. The object-glass of the instrument was divided into squares, and she passed rapidly across the field of the telescope, sailing, as it were, in ether; by the slightest motion of a tangent-screw of great length, we were able to bring her back as often as we liked, to the centre of the field. This mechanical process might, however, have been rendered unnecessary, had the machinery attached to ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... pavimentis equitantes undique turmas? proh pudor! o mores, o tempora! forsitan olim exercens operam curvo Moderator aratro inveniet mixtis capitum fragmenta galeris relliquias pugnae, et mentem mortalia tangent. me sacer Aegidius Musarum fana colentem aegide defendit, perque ignea tela, per hostes ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... 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 ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... 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. Chasles, ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... subject of it had had time to cast aside her fur cloak, to fasten upon her slender, arched feet, clad in dainty, laced boots, a pair of steel skates, with tangent blades, and without either grooves or straps, and to dart out upon this miniature sheet of water with the agility of a person accustomed to skating on the ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... the dog we felt the solid ground under foot and were off once more at a tangent from ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... curved line cut the central line, were measured. At each intersection (according to the inventor) the velocity could be deduced. The motion at any intersection being compounded of the greatest velocity of the fork, while passing through the midpoint of the vibration and the velocity of recoil, the tangent made by the curve with the straight line represents the ratio of the velocity of the fork to the velocity of recoil. If a be the amplitude of vibration, considered constant, v the velocity of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... enthusiasm, but not enthusiasm in a straight line. We are impotent in directing it, like a boy with a toy engine. How carefully the child sets it off, how soon it goes off the rails! So youth is wrecked. The slightest obstacle sends it off at a tangent. The vital force expended in a wrong direction does evil instead of good. You know the story of Atalanta. It has always been misread. She was the type not of woman but of youth, and Hippomenes personated age. He was the slower runner, but he won the race; and yet how beautiful, ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... essential characteristic of this instrument was the manner of producing tones. Upon the ends of the keys were brass pieces called "tangents," of a triangular shape, of such form that when the key was pressed, the tangent pushed the wire and so produced the tone. As it remained in contact with the wire as long as the key was held down, there was nothing like what we now call a singing tone. The instruments were very small, in shape like a square piano, but of three or four octaves compass; the ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... Galors was upon him, Prosper slid his left foot from the stirrup and slipt round his horse almost to the belly, clinging with his shield arm to the bow of the saddle. The spear struck his shield at a tangent and glanced off. It was a bad miss for Galors, since horse and man drove down the incline and were floundering in the brook before they could stay. Prosper whipped round to see Galors mired, was close on his quarter ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... is capable of testing to approximate accuracy up to 200 ohms, and to measure roughly up to 2,000 ohms. Mr R. Anderson's apparatus is also very handy, consisting of a case containing three Leclanche cells, and a galvanometer with a "tangent" scale and certain standard resistances. Some useful articles on the protection of buildings from lightning will be found in Arms and Explosives, July, August, and September 1892, and by Mr ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... knew that I should be reproached with indolence and even cowardice. I knew that I should be supposed to be one of those consistently impracticable people who insist on going off at a tangent when the straight course lies before them. That I should be relegated to the class of persons who have failed in life through some deep-seated defect of will. The worst of a serious decision of the kind is that, whichever step one takes, one ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... instrument constructed by the Italian Cristofori, who devised a mechanism for striking the strings with hammers. In the older instruments—the clarichords and harpsichords—the strings were either snapped by means of crow's quills, or pushed with a tangent. The new hammer action not only brought a better tone out of the string, but enabled the pianist to play any note loud or soft at pleasure; hence the name piano-forte. But the pianoforte itself required ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck |
