"Visual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the language of man, and in that of nature. The sound 'sun', or the figures 's', 'u', 'n', are purely arbitrary modes of recalling the object, and for visual mere objects they are not only sufficient, but have infinite advantages from their very nothingness 'per se'. But the language of nature is a subordinate 'Logos', that was in the beginning, and was with the thing it represented, and was the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... he was in no way violating his friendly relations with the Empire, but that he had a quarrel with Theodorid, king of the Visigoths. As he wished to be kindly received, he had filled the rest of the letter with the visual flattering salutations, striving to win credence for his falsehood. In like manner he despatched 186 a message to Theodorid, king of the Visigoths, urging him to break his alliance with the Romans and reminding him of the battles to which they had ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... it was a novelty to me then, however, and I entered into it with much zeal and curiosity. I wanted to see how the lambs would behave, and also how the parasites would enjoy it. A boy's mind is eager for all kinds of visual information. ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... Visual signalling is effected at night in the Morse code by means of a lamp fitted with an easily-moved shutter, which passes or cuts off the light at the will of the operator. Readers who know the Morse code might well go to the trouble of constructing in duplicate the simple apparatus ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... irregularly; indeed, the lack of muscular adjustment is such that movements of the eye likely to alarm the parents are regularly observed in very young infants. Furthermore they cannot focus images which fall upon their eyes. The retina, which receives visual impressions, has reached such development at birth, however, that sensations of light can be perceived. For example, if a lamp is suddenly flashed before the face of a newly born baby it cries. From this and similar evidence, indicating ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... the world where the lovers of the sublimities of nature can drink in such visual feasts as at Geneva. Since railways have shortened distance and cut through mountains, there is no more fashionable rendezvous for the world of art than the suburbs of the Swiss capital. During the summer ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... the principal object, with the hills of Malvern, Which, here barren, and there cultivated, here all chalk, and there all verdure, reminded me of How hill, and gave Me an immediate sensation of reflected as well as of visual pleasure, from giving to my new habitation some resemblance of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... conversation and the invention of stories, as a result in part of the second difference; and to think well of people and to be easily reconciled to them as a result of the third.' Thorndike finds the chief differences to be that the female varies less from the average standard, is more observant of small visual details, less often color-blind, less interested in things and their mechanisms, more interested in people and their feelings, less given to pursuing, capturing and maltreating living things, and more ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... communication, and therefore education, is dialogical in nature, will use every tool in the accomplishment of his purpose. When the question needs to be raised, he may use the discussion method or perhaps some visual aid. When an answer is indicated, he may give a lecture or use some other transmissive resource. But his orientation to his task is based on his belief that his accomplishments as a leader are dependent ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... home. She sat for some time in silence; for the bell did not ring again, and the fool spoke no more; till the dews began to fall, when she rose and went home, followed by her companion, who passed the night in the barn. From that hour Elsie was furnished with a visual image of the rest she sought; an image which, mingling with deeper and holier thoughts, became, like the bow set in the cloud, the earthly pledge and sign of the fulfilment of heavenly hopes. Often when the wintry fog of cold discomfort and ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... that, where extraordinary refraction takes place laterally or vertically, the visual angle of the spectator is singularly enlarged, and objects are magnified, as if seen through a telescope. Dr. Scoresby, a celebrated meteorologist and navigator, mentions some curious instances of the effects of refraction seen by him ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... stars. These data give us some idea of the extent of the motions which, divided into infinitely small portions of time, proceed without intermission in the great chronometer of the universe. If for a moment we could yield to the power of fancy, and imagine the acuteness of our visual organs to be made equal with the extremest bounds of telescopic vision, and bring together that which is now divided by long periods of time, the apparent rest that reigns in space would suddenly disappear. We should see the countless host of fixed stars moving ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... sought safety at the polls. While all foreign elements were grouped together, indiscriminately, in the mind of the nativist, the Irishman unfortunately was the special object of his spleen, because he was concentrated in the cities and therefore offered a visual and concrete example of the danger of foreign mass movements, because he was a Roman Catholic and thus awakened ancient religious prejudices that had long been slumbering, and because he fought back ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... his face to the ceiling, and the boys held their mouths open that their teeth might not clack together. They closed their eyes: instinct bade them give heed to visual magnetism. Roldan immediately wanted to cough, Adan to scratch his nose. The next few moments were the most agonised of their lives. They felt the priest lift his hands and pass them slowly along the ceiling, they felt those eyes searching every crevice. Then they felt him grip ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... some months, by erections. In 37 per cent, of the cases there had been no actual sexual experiences (either masturbation or intercourse); in 23 per cent, there had been masturbation; in the rest, some form of sexual contact. The dreams are mainly visual, tactual elements coming second, and the dramatis persona is either an unknown woman (27 per cent, cases), or only known by sight (56 per cent.), and in the majority is, at all events in the beginning, an ugly or fantastic ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... course, was intentional—in case enemy ears were listening. Actually, the small fleet was to use a variant on the tin can shield which protected the Platform. It would be most effective if visual observation was impossible. The fleet was seven ships in very ragged formation. Most improbably, after the long three-gravity acceleration, they were still within a fifty-mile globe of space. Number Four loitered behind, but was being brought up by judicious bursts ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... thou understand'st. How oft And many a time I've told thee, Jupiter, That lustrous god, was setting at thy birth. Thy visual power subdues no mysteries; Mole-eyed, thou mayest but burrow in the earth, 90 [629:1]Blind as that subterrestrial, who with wan, Lead-coloured shine lighted thee into life. The common, the terrestrial, thou mayest see, With serviceable cunning knit together ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... rules of pronunciation. These rules are not to be formally taught in the first and second years, but pointed out by examples, so that the visual and auditory ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... that this world wholly is miraculous. He sees what, as we said once before, all great thinkers, the rude Scandinavians themselves, in one way or other, have contrived to see: That this so solid-looking material world is, at bottom, in very deed, Nothing; is a visual and tactual Manifestation of God's-power and presence,—a shadow hung-out by Him on the bosom of the void Infinite; nothing more. The mountains, he says, these great rock-mountains, they shall dissipate themselves "like ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... was done!" The wondering exclamation forced itself from Thorpe's unready lips. He bent forward a little, and took a new visual hold, as it were, of his ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... on which Mr Asterias had caught a glimpse of a female figure on the sea-shore, which he had translated into the visual sign of his interior cognition of a mermaid, Scythrop, retiring to his tower, found his study preoccupied. A stranger, muffled in a cloak, was sitting at his table. Scythrop paused in surprise. The stranger rose at his entrance, ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... H. The medical museum: modern developments, organization and technical methods based on a new system of visual teaching. London: Wellcome ...
— History of the Division of Medical Sciences • Sami Khalaf Hamarneh
... leaps from that postulate to the assertion that, if we admit a minimum, we cannot, or ought not to, exclude a maximum! There are plays which do not, and there are plays which do, set forth to give as nearly as possible an exact reproduction of the visual and auditory realities of life. In the Elizabethan theatre, with its platform stage under the open sky, any pictorial exactness of reproduction was clearly impossible. Its fundamental conditions necessitated very nearly[4] ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... 'his emblematic intellect, his never-failing tendency to transform into shape, into life, the feeling that may dwell in him. Everything has form, has visual excellence: the poet's imagination bodies forth the forms of things unseen, and his ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... clothed, manifestly two-legged male differs absolutely from the usually long-haired, colour bedizened, much beskirted female. Were the structural differences between male and female really one half as marked as the artificial visual differences, they would be greater than those dividing, not merely any species of man from another, but as great as those which divide orders in the animal world. Only a mind exceedingly alert and analytical can fail ultimately ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... under the azure sky. Beautiful and lonely hills they were, eloquent of toil, expressive with the brown squares in the green, the lowly homes of men, the long lines of roads running everywhither, overwhelmingly pregnant with meaning—wheat—wheat—wheat—nothing but wheat, a staggering visual manifestation of vital need, of ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... went on. "Instead of reading rows of figures from the computer's printer ... you actually see the war being fought. Complete visual and auditory hallucinations. You can watch the progress of the battles, and as you change strategy and tactics you can see ...
— The Next Logical Step • Benjamin William Bova
... what appears to have been an auditory organ, a single round drum at the back of the head-body, and eyes with a visual range not very different from ours except that, according to Philips, blue and violet were as black to them. It is commonly supposed that they communicated by sounds and tentacular gesticulations; this is asserted, for instance, in the able but hastily compiled pamphlet (written evidently ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... had not far to travel; and they did not go far when they crossed over, for the Oliphantsfontein camp blocked the way. The Boers were awake, but the audacity of the raid would appear to have deprived them for the moment of their visual senses. The Light Horse drew quite close ere the propriety of halting was suggested to them. The suggestion was naturally expected to issue in the first instance from the cannon's mouth; but the guns said nothing, and their silence emboldened our fellows to persist in their breach of ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... Orleans, was on board the "Clifton." He took passage in her to the city. No one who has ever looked upon that unique countenance can ever forget it; and as his glance rested for a moment upon us, each one conceived himself to be the special object of the General's regard; for owing to his peculiar visual organs, that distinguished individual seems to possess the Argus like faculty of looking steadily at several persons at one and the same time. With the pride that apes humility, or perhaps with the eccentricity of genius, he affected, upon the occasion, a rough costume; ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... the grounds Dalgetty and Elena crouched in the long stiff grass and looked at the place they must enter. The man had had to lower his visual sensitivity as they approached the light. There were floodlights harsh on dock, airfield, barracks and lawn, with parties of guards moving around each section. Light showed in only one window of the house, on the second story. Bancroft must be there, pacing and peering out into the ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... I told you last week of my dilemma after the destruction of the microscope. Its loss and the impossibility of replacing it, led me into still bolder plans than merely the visual examination of this minute world. I reasoned, as I have told you, that because of its physical proximity, its similar environment, so to speak, this outer world should be capable of supporting life identical with ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... we enjoyed a marvellously clear atmosphere for work of this sort, and amongst the first thoughts of my father was to provide the most satisfactory means for the continuance of our stellar photography. Besides our visual telescope we had a photographic telescope which was used, instead of connecting the visual lens on one and the same instrument, ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... quaintness or grotesqueness of tone is a means for satisfying the thirst for supernal beauty. Hence the musical lyric is to Poe the only true type of poetry; a long poem does not exist. Readers who respond more readily to auditory than to visual or motor stimulus are therefore Poe's chosen audience. For them he executes, like Paganini, marvels upon his single string. He has easily recognizable devices: the dominant note, the refrain, the "repetend," that is to say the phrase which echoes, with some variation, a phrase or line ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... Verrian would have thought she was a very reticent person or a secret person—that is, mentally frank and sentimentally secret; possibly she was like most women in that. What he was sure of was that the visual impression of her which he had received must have been very vivid to last so long in his consciousness; all through his preparations for going down to afternoon tea her face remained subjectively before him, and when he went ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Grub-street attic to let,—-not so much as a joint-stool left in it; my hand writes, not I, from habit, as chickens run about a little when their heads are cut off. Oh for a vigorous fit of gout, colic, toothache—-an earwig{} * in my auditory, a fly in my visual organs; pain is life,—-the sharper the more evidence of life; but this apathy, this death! Did you ever have an obstinate cold, a six or seven weeks' unintermitting chill and suspension of hope, ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... light which imprint an image on the prepared plate are not exactly the same as those which are chiefly concerned in the production of the image on the retina of the human eye. A reflecting mirror, however, brings all the rays, both those which are chemically active and those which are solely visual, to one and the same focus. The same reflecting instrument may therefore be used either for looking at the heavens or for taking pictures on a photographic plate which has been substituted ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... occasion to take alarm at this doctrine as if it condemned us to solitary confinement, and to ignorance of the world in which we live. We see and know the world through our eyes and our intelligence, in visual and in intellectual terms: how else should a world be seen or known which is not the figment of a dream, but a collateral power, pressing and alien? In the cognisance which an animal may take of his surroundings—and surely all animals take such cognisance—the subjective ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... the foot of the table, metal visual lids closed as he waited for instructions. Rhoda considered him unthinkingly, then snapped back to attention. "Nothing more, Max, go to the kitchen and disconnect until you ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... are other items which she remembers reading the day before; and the only explanation seems to be that her eyes then inattentively observed, so to speak, the death-item, which forthwith fell into a special corner of her memory, and came out as a visual hallucination when the peculiar modification of consciousness induced ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... haughtily. "We in psychology have found certain stimuli productive of consistent human response. Especially true in tactile sensation, this, however, is not as true in the auditory and visual." ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll
... Sarts more nearly we came to a longish stretch of highway, which the French had cleared of visual obstructions in anticipation of resistance by infantry in the event that the outer ring of defenses gave way before the German bombardment. It had all been labor in vain, for the town capitulated after the outposts fell; but ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... Films shall purge the visual Ray, v. 5, 6.] And on the sightless Eye-ball pour the Day. 'Tis he th' obstructed Paths of Sound shall clear, And bid new Musick charm th' unfolding Ear, The Dumb shall sing, the Lame his Crutch forego, And leap exulting ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... in such a place that the visual ray did not strike the upper part of the man's body; and, despite the baron's efforts, he was unable to see the face of this friend—he judged him to be such—whose boldness ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... Not even the dots and whorls and specks that are technically called "Visual noise" occurred. A level of mental alertness niggled at him; for nearly twenty-four years it had been a busy little chunk of his mind. It was that section that inspected the data for important program material and decided which was trivial and which ...
— Instinct • George Oliver Smith
... conceived as the image of the Shakti of patriotism in the days when Bengal was praying to be delivered from Mussulman domination. What other province of India has succeeded in giving such wonderful visual expression to ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... who called himself Stanley Martin had carefully plotted the orbit of this particular planetoid and then let his spaceboat coast in without using any detection equipment except the visual. It had been ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... so intent on his visual image, he did not notice that the Borden place was behind him now, and he was passing the avenue that led ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... I have tried to develop a complete theory of visual art. I have put forward an hypothesis by reference to which the respectability, though not the validity, of all aesthetic judgments can be tested, in the light of which the history of art from palaeolithic days to the present becomes intelligible, ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... himself to what he conceived to be a more fitting mood, but whilst he struggled with himself the inner door of the room in which he sat was suddenly torn open, and Annette stood before him. He could not have believed, without that actual visual revelation, that such a wreck could have been achieved in so small a space of time. Whatever of spirituality, whatever of youthful foolish espieglerie the face had held, had vanished. The visage was like a mask—and a mask of death. There was a splash of purplish crimson beneath either eyelid, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... that show a very large proportion of late wood it may be noticeably more porous and weigh considerably less than the late wood in pieces that contain but little. One can judge comparative density, and therefore to some extent weight and strength, by visual inspection. ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... existence, vox el praiterea nihil. It is true the schoolmaster asserted that he occasionally caught passing glimpses of him; but that was because he had been himself nearly spiritualized by affliction, and his visual ray purged in the furnace of domestic tribulation. By and by Neal's voice lessened, got fainter and more indistinct, until at length nothing but a doubtful murmur could be heard, which ultimately could scarcely be distinguished from a ringing ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... we hear her say, 'So you thought you would leave me, little bird.' After a few minutes the bird again disappears anew, but almost immediately reappears. The patient complains from time to time of a pain in the head at a point corresponding to what has been described in this book as the visual centre (some distance above and slightly posterior to the ear)." The magnet also has the same effect in suspending the real perception. One of the patients was shown a Chinese gong and striker, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... but it was the approaching night I did not like. Why are we so much more in fear of unseen things at night than during the day? Whence comes the spell of dread that night brings beneath its black wing? Does darkness affect the nerves of a blind man as it does that of one with his full visual powers? I think not. Probably day and night are but as one to the blind. Then why does darkness bring a certain awe ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... it. They do see it, because the intellectual process, the process of comprehending the reasons symbolised by these figures and these signs, confers upon them a sort of pleasure, such as an artist has in visual symmetry. Take a science of which I may speak with more confidence, and which is the most attractive of those I am concerned with. It is what we call morphology, which consists in tracing out the unity in variety of the infinitely diversified structures of animals and plants. ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... suffice to quote a passage from the writings of St. Chrysostom. "The eyes," he says, "are beautiful and useful for seeing, but if they would attempt to see without light, all their beauty and visual power would avail them nothing. Thus, too, the soul is but an obstacle in its own way if it endeavors to see ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... those words. We shall see this more plainly when we come to transcribe some of Sir Philip Sidney's work. There is no irreverence in it. Nor can I take it as any sign of hardness that Raleigh should treat the visual image of his own anticipated death with so much coolness, if the writer of a little elegy on his execution, when Raleigh was fourteen years older than at the presumed date of the foregoing verses, describes him truly ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... question, Do you like to work with the Graflex with a Smith doublet, visual quality lens? I really believe it would be difficult to find a more satisfactory outfit. It is a companion always ready and willing to do everything that either comes your way or you go after. Working at F 4.5, the lens gives you the opportunity of getting ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1921 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... "But I have had floating illusions, just before I fell asleep, or when I was sensible of not being quite awake, which seemed to differ from dreams. They were not so dramatic, but they were more pictorial; they were more visual than the things ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... load; again they threw themselves, exhausted, upon it. Now, as he eyed the panorama below, it seemed to have suffered a subtle change, indefinable and odd. Although but a few minutes had elapsed, the coast mountains no longer loomed clear against the horizon, and his visual range appeared foreshortened, as though the utter distances had lengthened, bringing closer the edge of things. The twin peaks seemed endlessly distant and hazy, while the air had thickened as though congested with possibilities, lending ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... the dull flash of swirling waters and the amorphous blotch of hull. Slowly her hand tightened again; and then, as he looked he caught above the deck an impression of something moving. It seemed to be something that was revealing itself to the instinct rather than to their visual senses. ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... about to appear very inconsistent. In the previous sections I have said that all figures in Flatland present the appearance of a straight line; and it was added or implied, that it is consequently impossible to distinguish by the visual organ between individuals of different classes: yet now I am about to explain to my Spaceland critics how we are able to recognize one another by the sense ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... whether we will or not: the third and grand road is the head itself, which requires the eye and the ear to help it; and two other assistants, which we call memory and application; so you see we have the visual, then the aural, and then the mental roads—three hard words which you don't understand, and which I shan't take the trouble to explain to such an animal as you are; for I never throw away pearls to swine, as the saying is. Now, then, Mr Keene, we must come to another part of our ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... activities of the eyes in seeing and of the body and head in striking are perfected in a few trials. An infant requires about six months to be able to gauge with approximate accuracy the action in reaching which will coordinate with his visual activities; to be able, that is, to tell whether he can reach a seen object and just how to execute the reaching. As a result, the chick is limited by the relative perfection of its original endowment. The infant has the advantage of the multitude of instinctive tentative reactions and of the experiences ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... of curiosity but the gate was too far away for him to do more than catch a word now and then. It was also out of Sarah Jane's visual line, so she knew nothing of the ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... of the tree comes to the brain, and is there seen. Now the brain may be impressed, and respond by natural vision, from an internal as well as from an external communication. We see this in cases of visual aberrations, the instances of which given in books, and clearly authenticated, are innumerable. Things are distinctly seen in a room which have no existence in nature; and the illusion is so perfect that it seems impossible ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... reflex present, but somewhat slow. Slight inequality of pupils, right distinctly larger than left. Color sense normal. No contraction of visual field. Slight horizontal nystagmus in both eyes on extreme outward rotation of the eyeballs. (Pupils equal and normal ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... science and history and art serves to reveal the real child to us. We do not know the meaning either of his tendencies or of his performances excepting as we take them as germinating seed, or opening bud, of some fruit to be borne. The whole world of visual nature is all too small an answer to the problem of the meaning of the child's instinct for light and form. The entire science of physics is none too much to interpret adequately to us what is involved ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... him for days into the streets in quest of his vanished courage. A fever stiffened him, he worked on with the blind obstinacy of an artist who dives into his entrails, to drag therefrom the fruit that tortures him. His long rest in the country had endowed him with singular freshness of visual perception, and joyous delight in execution; he seemed to have been born anew to his art, and endowed with a facility and balance of power he had never hitherto possessed. He also felt certain of progress, and experienced great ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... eventually gathered together); but most of the sketches were Mr. Boughton's, and the charming, amusing text is altogether his, save in the sense that it commemorates his companion's impressions as well as his own—the delightful, irresponsible, visual, sensual, pictorial, capricious impressions of a painter in a strange land, the person surely whom at particular moments one would give most to be. If there be anything happier than the impressions of a painter, it is the impressions of two, and the combination is set forth with ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... same introtraction (pardon the coinage) upon itself. It ebbs inwards, so to speak, from all the contents that were given in what may be called its primary sphere. It represents itself, in its organ, as a minute visual sensation, out of, and beyond which, are left lying the great range of all its other sensations. By imagining the sight as a sensation of colour, we diminish it to a speck within the sphere of its own sensations; and as we now regard the sense as for ever enclosed within this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... see it, just as though it had been transmitted to the brain by the optic nerve, but everything came at once, so the impression of sight was confused. The result in the brain, however, was clear and permanent. The only drawback is that you haven't the visual memory of what you have learned, and that sometimes makes it hard to use your knowledge. You don't know whether you know anything about a certain subject or not until after you go digging around in your brain ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... drew near Laurel Lodge—the name was the choice of a former tenant—the work of the day had begun in real earnest. Instinctively slackening his pace, he went by the house with his eyes fastened on the hedge opposite, being so intent on what might, perhaps, be described as a visual alibi for Bassett's benefit, in case the lad still happened to be there, that he almost failed to notice that Hartley was busy in his front garden and that Joan was standing by him. He stopped ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... introduction of the dry plate and the gelatine film, a new start was made. These photographic plates were very sensitive, were easily handled, and indefinitely long exposures could be made with them. As a result, photography has superseded visual observations, in many departments of astronomy, and is now carrying them far beyond the limits that would have been deemed possible a few ...
— The Future of Astronomy • Edward C. Pickering
... which varied from the one in which she had previously met him, with all the wide difference between a Baptist parson and an earth-soiled, uncouthly-dressed digger of gutters! Anna E. Surratt, Emma Offutt, Anna Ward, Elize Holohan, Honora Fitzpatrick, and a servant, attest to all the visual incapacity of Mrs. Surratt, and the annoyance she experienced therefrom in passing friends without recognition in the daytime, and from inability to sew or read even on a dark day, as well as at night. The priests of her church, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... gems, which cannot otherwise be seen, observations in urine and blood not otherwise to be seen. We make artificial rainbows, halos, and circles about light. We represent also all manner of reflections, refractions, and multiplications of visual beams of objects. ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... frisking and the slow interview with two purposes, by visual, oral and written tests determining the amount of suggestibility to hypnotic conditioning plus the quicker giving of a card to denote a ...
— Take the Reason Prisoner • John Joseph McGuire
... considerable share of the fool and profligate was naturally engrafted in his character. A large black mark, in the shape of a half-moon, appeared to have been strongly indented by hard knuckles, below the left visual organ,—ornaments that are as frequently to be seen upon the inhabitants of St. Giles's, as rings are upon the visitors of St. James's. His ruffianly country dress, clownish manners, broad dialect of canny Yorkshire, ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... *Visual Sensations.*—The visual sensations include those of color and those of a general sensibility to light. Proof of the existence of these types of sensation is found in color blindness, a defect which renders the individual unable to distinguish certain colors when he is still able ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... and a patch of white on a black ground looks whiter, than elsewhere. As the blackness and the whiteness must really be the same, the only assignable cause for this is a difference in their actions upon us, dependent upon the different states of our faculties. It is simply a visual antithesis. ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... Martin there is a something less than visual accuracy and something more than a gift of translation. There is a distinguished interpretation of mood coupled with an almost miniature-like sense of delicate gradation, and at the same time a something lacking as to a sense of physical form. In the few specimens of Martin to be seen there is, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... man's dressing room, pointed out to us by some employee passing through the hall, was empty. I led the way into Marilyn's quarters, but again no one was about. In each case Kennedy made a quick visual search for the towel, without result. We did not dare linger and run the risk of giving away our trick; then, too, Kennedy was nervously anxious to look through ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... visual and prandial preoccupations inhibit her from a lively interest in the surrounding Babel of speech in mingled Spanish, Dutch, German, English, Italian, and French, all at the highest pitch, for a few rods away the cathedral bells were saluting Heaven ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... To begin with, its eyes are set too prominently on the skull, and the eyelids are clipped and blear, (41) and afford no protection to the pupils. (42) Naturally the sight is indistinct and purblind. (43) Along with which, although asleep, for the most part it does not enjoy visual repose. (44) Again, its very fleetness of foot contributes largely towards dim-sightedness. It can only take a rapid glance at things in passing, and then off before perceiving what the particular object ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... a time when the general health and vigour appear to have been at their optimum, the extreme prostration, and the comparatively sudden recovery are found in both. In the cyclic vomiting of children, it is true, little complaint is made of headache, the visual aura is absent, and the vomiting is ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... picturesqueness into a partisanship for the class making a special appeal, is not surprising. But truth in art is largely a matter of selection; and if Mr. Cable has sinned in the gleaning, it was undoubtedly because of visual limitation, rather than a ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... exactly that of Uccello's achievement to Giotto's. What the scientist who paints—the naturalist, that is to say,—attempts to do is not to give us what art alone can give us, the life-enhancing qualities of objects, but a reproduction of them as they are. If he succeeded, he would give us the exact visual impression of the objects themselves, but art, as we have already agreed, must give us not the mere reproductions of things but a quickened sense of capacity for realising them. Artistically, then, the naturalists, Uccello ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... Vertebrata. It is, of course, open to any one to deny that the eye in either case could have been developed through the natural selection of successive slight variations; but if this be admitted in the one case it is clearly possible in the other; and fundamental differences of structure in the visual organs of two groups might have been anticipated, in accordance with this view of their manner of formation. As two men have sometimes independently hit on the same invention, so in the several foregoing cases ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... is related of a French ophthalmic surgeon, that a distinguished patient applied to him for relief from a visual defect; the surgeon advised him to go into the country and look out upon the green fields. The green color with its soothing effect soon brought about a restoration of vision. What I wish to illustrate by this anecdote is that children should ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... simultaneous with visual perception, D'Artagnan had already forgotten when he descended the first steps of the staircase. Some morsels of paper were spread over the stairs, and shone out white against the dirty stones. "Eh! eh!" said the captain to himself, "here are some of the fragments ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is not analogous to our bodily senses, in that it is not affected in so constant and uniform a manner. The sky appears blue to every man, unless he have some visual defect, but an absurd situation is not "taken" by all. In the senses no ratiocination is required, whereas the ludicrous does not come to us directly, but through judgment—a moment, though brief and unnoticed, always elapses in which we grasp the nature of the circumstances ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... had been studying the wall, his eyes travelling from the right to the left of the frieze, and then from the left to the right again. It was noticeable that his lips moved slightly at each stage of this laborious visual journey. "Forty-seven." "Forty-nine." "Forty-eight." Stokes was immensely interested in that compelling frieze. He counted and recounted the number of figures in the Greek fret with painful iteration. Apparently ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... mind)—under this strong sensuous influence, we are restless because invisible things are not the objects of vision; and metaphysical systems, for the most part, become popular, not for their truth, but in proportion as they attribute to causes a susceptibility of being seen, if only our visual organs were sufficiently powerful. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... forever. Young though he was, it would have been contrary to his grave and rather melancholy disposition to lose his heart at first sight to any woman, and it was neither love, nor love's forerunner, that overcame him as he gazed at the Queen. It was a purely visual impression, like that of being dazzled by a bright light, or ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... condition of the roads covered by an unusual fall of snow which was now melting under the breath of a warm breeze from the south. On the way they pass "between the two hills a telegraph making signals." This was, of course, a semaphore by means of which visual ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... ever calls into being—despair alone urged me, after long irresolution, to uplift the heavy lids of my eyes. I uplifted them. It was dark—all dark. I knew that the fit was over. I knew that the crisis of my disorder had long passed. I knew that I had now fully recovered the use of my visual faculties—and yet it was dark—all dark—the intense and utter raylessness of the Night that endureth ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... development. What do we find? Why, we find just what you are prepared to expect after considering the above disregard. We find that, whereas at the beginning of school life the percentage of school children suffering from visual defects is relatively small, that percentage increases as we ascend the grades. In other words, the regular, systematic work of our schools is all the time weakening the eyes—all the time causing serious visual defects. Gulick and Ayers came to this conclusion ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... spectacle, phenomenon, panorama, vista, gapeseed, cynosure; (Colloq.) great number, many, multitude, great quantity. Associated Words: optics, optical, optic, ocular, optician, caligo, astigmatism, perimeter, perimetry, amaurosis, visual, visualize, apparition. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... stations and one R.N. Base W.T. station will be provided at Suvla Bay, four naval ratings will be attached to each station as visual signalling personnel. One of these military pack W.T. stations will be disembarked with the second brigade to land, and will act as a base station pending the arrival of the R.N. Base wireless station. The second military pack ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... about boys. To a critical eye—had it watched Jeb now walking this way and that as a restive animal—the fruit of their labor would without doubt have been pronounced satisfactory; yet only in a visual sense could he have been called animal. So far as concerned temperament he was merely a fretful peri locked up in a cage of flowers—for how in the name of all creation had it been possible for Miss Sallie and Miss Veemie, sole proprietresses ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... deal. In proportion to the delays which the tradesman has had to contend with in procuring payment of the account, is the degree of laxity with which he may expect to be favoured in the examination of the items; especially if he have not omitted the visual means of corrupting the fidelity of the servants. The accuracy of a bill of old date is not in general very easily ascertainable, and it would seem to be but an ungracious return for the accommodation which the creditor has afforded, if ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... communication between the patient and myself. Having taken a pinch of snuff, I was about to give my other infallible remedy a fair trial, when the patient opened his eyes. But, gracious heaven! what eyes! The visual orb was swoln, blood-shot, troubled and intolerably dull. At the same moment, some incoherent expressions fell from the unfortunate gentleman. After a reference to the kidneys, he seemed to wish for something to be found in the coal-hole, or the cider-cellar; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... passing. The thirty thousand miles between us and the enemy was cut to ten thousand; to five. The ship was soon visible to the naked eye. Its visual movement, for all this time measurable only as a drift upon the amplified images of our instruments, now was obvious. We could see it plunging forward, could see that probably we would cross its bow. Within fifty miles? We hoped ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... narrating these adventures with wonderful eloquence, working up his descriptive sketches with such intuitive perception of the picturesque points that the whole was thrown forward with a positively illusive effect, like matters of your own visual experience. In fact, they were so admirably done that I could never more than half believe them, because the genuine affairs of life are not apt to transact themselves so artistically. Many of his scenes were laid in the East, and among those seldom-visited archipelagoes of ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... has never been fully studied, namely, the relation between it and declamation. As we know, music is a language which may delineate actual occurrences by means of onomatopoetic sounds. By the use of more or less suggestive sounds, it may bring before our minds a quasi-visual image of things which we more or ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... intellectual nature: but they have failed in the attempt. They have endeavoured to confer on them an agency they do not possess, and have given the mind a dominion over them that it cannot exert.[3] Ideas are the memorial phantasms of visual perception, a largess bestowed, perhaps exclusively, on the sense of sight, and this bounty contributes essentially to the acquirement and retention of knowledge. They are the unfading transcripts of vision, and they exhibit the original picture to the retrospect of memory. ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... They begged insistently that other methods of eclipses and fixed stars be sought, not taking into account, as we have said, that these are causes for great delay; for the consideration of such eclipses, and the movement of the moon, and its visual conjunction with any fixed star, and all other like mathematical considerations can at present be of no advantage to us, because of our being limited to such a brief period as two months, in examining and determining this matter. From this [the short time] it is ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... the loudness of the cataract, so this harmony of the whole universe in its intensely rapid movement is so loud that men's ears cannot take it in, even as you cannot look directly at the sun, and the keenness and visual power of the eye are overwhelmed by its rays." While I marvelled at these things, I ever and anon cast my eyes ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... Homeric, without the metre or the singing of Homer, but with all the sincerity, rugged truth to nature, and much more of piety, devoutness, reverence for what is forever High in this Universe, than meets us in those old Greek Ballad-mongers. Singularly visual all of it, too, brought home in every particular to one's imagination, so that it stands out almost as a thing ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... on the roof of the Palace, holding the Spear of State, with Firkked's head impaled on the point, while a Terran technician aimed an audio-visual recorder. ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... hard-fighting Covenanters were tossed out, and the rest remained at home to distribute the prey; the lax party had the organization and held the Church; the strict party suffered disintegration and were banished. But such a view is only superficial; yea, it is a visual illusion. ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... others along the Appian Way; though, even in this case, the beautiful chambers must have been shut up in darkness. Had there been windows, letting in the light upon the rich frescos and exquisite sculptures, there would have been a satisfaction in thinking of the existence of so much visual beauty, though no eye had the privilege to see it. But darkness, to objects of sight, is annihilation, as ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... already been explained, it is not sufficient in drawing to concentrate the attention on copying accurately the visual appearance of anything, important as the faculty of accurate observation is. Form to be expressed must first be appreciated. And here the science of teaching fails. "You can take a horse to the fountain, but you cannot make him drink," and in art you can take the student to the point ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... *varied. Finally, the accompanying change in effect (conviction by evidence) is to be tested. The last procedure requires discussion; the rest is self evident. In our business isolation is comparatively easy, inasmuch as any individual statement, any visual impression, any effect, etc., may be abstracted without difficulty. Much harder is the determination of its value. If, however, we clearly recognize that it is necessary to express the exact value of each particular source of evidence, and that ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... our thoughts, the knowledge of our desolation. And it would be incredible to an inhabitant of cities, to one among a busy throng, to what extent we succeeded. It was as a man confined in a dungeon, whose small and grated rift at first renders the doubtful light more sensibly obscure, till, the visual orb having drunk in the beam, and adapted itself to its scantiness, he finds that clear noon inhabits his cell. So we, a simple triad on empty earth, were multiplied to each other, till we became all in all. We ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... oblong patch, placed high upon his back, and who always reminded me of a man with a blister of Spanish flies, stuck between his shoulders. Another whom I frequently met had the hollow of his eyes tattooed in two regular squares and his visual organs being remarkably brilliant, they gleamed forth from out this setting like a couple of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Virgin, wonderfully clothing herself in Mesmerean Cagliostric Occult-Philosophy, has inspired them to jot down instructions and predictions for a much-straitened King. To whom, by Higher Order, they will this day present it; and save the Monarchy and World. Unaccountable pair of visual-objects! Ye should be men, and of the Eighteenth Century; but your magnetic vellum forbids us so to interpret. Say, are ye aught? Thus ask the Guardhouse Captains, the Mayor of St. Cloud; nay, at great length, thus asks the Committee of Researches, and not the Municipal, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... visual organs are generally quite rare. It is well-known that among some of the lower animals, e.g., the turkey-cocks, buffaloes, and elephants, the color red is unendurable. Buchner and Tissot mention a young boy who had a paroxysm if he ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... by FREEMAN concerned the electronic format itself. For instance, in a school environment it is often difficult both for teachers and students to gain a sense of what it is they are viewing. They understand that it is a visual image, but they do not necessarily know that it is a postcard from the turn of the century, a panoramic photograph, or even machine-readable text of an eighteenth-century broadside, a twentieth-century printed ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... they intended to carry me, dragged me, as it were, through the crowd that was divided into two parties, both of which professed themselves my friends, by crying out Tiyo no Tootee. One party wanted me to go to Otoo, and the other to remain with Towha. Coming to the visual place of audience, a mat was spread for me to sit down upon, and Tee left me to go and bring the king. Towha was unwilling I should sit down, partly insisting on my going with him; but, as I knew nothing of this ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... it is disconcerting, it is imposing, but it absolutely lacks that insinuating quality that convinces us, and it almost always fails to please us at first. In the first place, it shocks our logical sense and that habitual visual rectitude that loves clear forms, lucid ideas, and clearly formulated boldness; something warns us that our imagination as well as our reason will be only half satisfied and that even the mind that is most easily won over will not submit till the last and ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... when my reverie became deeper, the ruins surrounding me appeared to vanish from my sight, the light of the moon became more intense, and the orb itself seemed to expand in a flood of splendour. At the same time that my visual organs appeared so singularly affected, the most melodious sounds filled my ear, softer yet at the same time deeper and fuller than I had ever heard in the most harmonious and perfect concert. It appeared to me that I had entered ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... editorial effigies. And here a choice between two was offered,—the one a profile (entirely black) cut by Doyle, the other a portrait painted by a native artist of much promise. The first of these seemed wanting in expression, and in the second a slight obliquity of the visual organs has been heightened (perhaps from an over-desire of force on the part of the artist) into too close an approach to actual strabismus. This slight divergence in my optical apparatus from the ordinary model—however ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... he would tell me that Art was a mere interweaving Of hues and designs; he had done what he could to expel All thoughts and all visual objects, for these were deceiving, And I told him, so far as an ignorant layman could tell, He ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... difference between the objects should strike the eye at once; for that reason larger objects are used, and the necessary visual power presupposes a previous preparation (provided for in the exercise ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... schools are very capable in realizing visual imagery. They can see the visual image very readily with its colour, form, and movement. They can arrange the objects in the picture with ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... representing still-nature, or mere momentary states of objects in motion, a picture truly drawn, truly coloured, and which is either very large to correct the divergence of light and convergence of visual axes, or if small, as viewed through a glass, would affect the retina exactly as the realities. But the desideratum still remained of being able to paint motion. Now this too has been recently accomplished, and in many cases with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... axioms to be repeated by the physician, while compounding and giving them to the patient. On the second line of the first page of our manuscript, it is stated that it came from Sais. A large portion of this work is devoted to the visual organs. On the twentieth line of the fifty-fifth page begins the book on the eyes, which fills eight large pages. We were formerly compelled to draw from Greek and Roman authors what we knew about the remedies ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... noticed that one of the blinds was partially drawn down, her heart sank. Nor did the secret of this suspicious visit long remain her exclusive property. As if revealed by those mysteriously subtle oral and visual faculties observed in savage tribes, by which they divine the approach of their enemies or their prey, two days had not elapsed before the tongue of every chaperon was tipped with the story of the four-wheeler and the half-drawn blind, but it ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... glow is from sodium vapor rockets fired from Wallops. The rockets allow visual measurement of meteorological data. People around here are used to seeing them to the southeast, over Wallops. When I saw that sightings had been made over Swamp Creek at the time of sodium shots, I got an idea. It wasn't ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... one thing and memorising an illogical system of visual images—for that is what reading ordinary English spelling comes to—is quite another. A man can learn to play first chess and then bridge in half the time that these two games would require if he began by attempting simultaneous ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... in his approach, crouching along the bank and finally creeping bent double within casting distance. Then, as he freed his fly, he saw Joan, like a queen of the pool reigning motionless and silent. She moved and no fish was likely to rise after within the visual radius of her sudden action. Thereupon the angler in the man cursed; the artist in him drew a short, sharp breath. He scrambled to his feet and looked again upon a beautiful picture. The plump, baby freshness of Joan's face had vanished indeed, and there was ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... men, what strange exaltation there was in the general suggestion of Berkeley's thought! The mind, the source of all that is; the impressions on the senses, merely the speech of the Eternal Mind to ours, a Visual Language, whereof man's understanding is perpetually advancing, which has been indeed contrived for his education; man, naturally immortal, king of himself and of the senses, inalienably one—if he would but open his eyes and see—with all that is Divine, true, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... somewhat uncouth by convulsive cramps, by the scars of that distemper which it was once imagined the royal touch could cure, and by a slovenly mode of dress. He had the use only of one eye; yet so much does mind govern and even supply the deficiency of organs, that his visual perceptions, as far as they extended, were uncommonly quick and accurate. So morbid was his temperament that he never knew the natural joy of a free and vigorous use of his limbs; when he walked, it was like the struggling gait of one in fetters; when he rode, he had no command or direction ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... then was the alphabet of the Martial tongue—an alphabet not arbitrary, but actually produced by the vocal sounds it represented! The elaborate machinery modifies the rough signs which are traced by the mere aerial vibrations; but each character is a true physical type, a visual image, of the spoken sound; the voice, temper, accent, sex, of a speaker affect the phonograph, and are recognisable in the record. The instrument wrote, so to speak, different hands under my voice and under Esmo's; and those who knew him could identify ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... a gaz, Weighs the vast orbs of heaven, bestrides the sky, Walks on the windows of an insect's eye; Turns then to self, more curious still to trace The whirls of passion that involve the race, That cloud with mist the visual lamp of God, And plunge the poniard in fraternal blood. Here fails his light. The proud Titanian ray O'er physic nature sheds indeed its day; Yet leaves the moral in chaotic jars, The spoil of violence, the sport of wars, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow |
