"Geometric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Organisms in Some Geometric Ratio through Reproduction. It is a law of life that every species must increase so that the number of offspring exceeds the number of parents if the species is to survive. If the offspring only equal in number the parents, some of them will die before maturity is reached or will ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... well as Cardan, is a more perfect master of logarithms than Napier, could explain the laws of physical astronomy better than Newton, and rival La Grange in the management of the differential calculus. But as, unluckily, the world which he visits, and in which we live, is neither a geometric world nor an algebraic world, a world of conic sections or fluxions; but a world of plains and mountains, of lakes and rivers, of men and women, flesh and blood—he finds his knowledge of little or no avail. He takes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... of a special kind, was formidable in its mass; three belts fifty feet deep wound about it in an inextricable mass in the form of a series of triangles and other geometric designs. The trenches themselves were constructional works of art; switch lines were thrown out as an extra precaution; in front of the most important strategical positions, machine-gun posts and strong points abounded in unlimited ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... mathematics he was greater Than Tycho Brahe or Erra Pater; For he, by geometric scale, Could take the size of pots of ale; Resolve by sines and tangents straight, If bread or butter wanted weight; And wisely tell what hour o' th' day The clock ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... which brings the arriving traveler lands at the Martian National Airport, it swoops gracefully over the nearby city in a salute. The narrow ribbons, laid out in geometric order, gradually grow wider until the water in these man-made rivers becomes crystal clear and sparkles in the reflection of ...
— Mars Confidential • Jack Lait
... like substances requiring like conditions, to bring its atoms into that state of equilibrium where crystallization can occur. If we examine crystals carefully we find, not only that nature has here provided geometric forms of marvelous beauty and exactness, with faces of polish and quoins of acuteness equal to the work of the most skillful lapidist, "but that in whatever manner or under whatever circumstances a crystal may have been formed, whether in the laboratory of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... for the first group of contacts, through his instruction in objects, home geography, numbers, and geometric form. For the second group of contacts Pestalozzi had developed only oral language, and to this Herbart now added the two important studies of literature and history, and history with the emphasis on the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... for the lack of symmetry in the shapes of trees. Branches grow only where their leaves can get the light. Account for the pith in many tree stems not being in the geometric centre. Account for the rapid growth in height made by young trees in the woods. Their light supply is chiefly from above, and they stretch up toward it as rapidly as possible. Dim light causes rapid growth at the expense, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... a great globe [A], graduated with meridians and parallels; we estimated that three men would hardly be able to embrace its girth.... A second instrument was a great sphere [B], not less in diameter than that measure of the outstretched arms which is commonly called a geometric pace. It had a horizon and poles; instead of circles it was provided with certain double hoops (armillae), the void space between the pair serving the purpose of the circles of our spheres. All these were divided into ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... vertical bands of red (hoist side), blue, and red; centered on the hoist-side red band in yellow is a five-pointed star above the national emblem (soyombo—a columnar arrangement of abstract and geometric representations for fire, sun, moon, earth, water, and the ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the Casa del Bambini at Milan constructed under one of the windows a long, narrow shelf, upon which she placed the little tables containing the metal geometric forms used in the first lesson in design. But the shelf was too narrow, and it often happened that the children in selecting the pieces which they wished to use would allow one of the little tables ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... rise of ground well above the principal exhibit palaces, and its majestic dome surmounted by a gilded figure of "Victory," the first "Victory" to take the form of a man, was visible from most any part of the grounds. The grouping of the exhibit palaces was geometric in arrangement, in shape like an open fan, the ribs of the fan being the waterways and plazas between which the ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... turned to the dollar and began to study it, turning it slowly round, counting the scratches this way and that, making geometric figures of them. Four heads peered over his shoulder as he worked silently with ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... off and they rolled into a broad space like the baked top of a gigantic cake, sugared with an infinity of tents arranged in geometric figures over its surface. The train came to an uncertain stop, and the sun and the poles and the trees faded, and his universe rocked itself slowly back to its old usualness, with Anthony Patch in the centre. As the men, weary and perspiring, crowded ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... evolutions might be considered a lapse from practicalness characteristic of the particular officer. They took up a good deal of valuable time, and on any drill-ground manoeuvres are less a matter of geometric precision than of professional aptitude and eye judgment. The same mistake could scarcely be addressed at that time to the other parts of the Academy curriculum. Either as foundation, or as a super-structure in which it was sought ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... three equal, vertical bands of red (hoist side), blue, and red; centered on the hoist-side red band in yellow is the national emblem ("soyombo" - a columnar arrangement of abstract and geometric representation for fire, sun, moon, earth, water, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... wills are accurately conterminous and identical. Wheresoever the two coincide, there is strength for us; wheresoever they diverge, there are weakness and certain ruin. These two wills ought to be like two of Euclid's triangles, or other geometric figures, the one laid upon the other, and each line and curve and angle accurately corresponding and coinciding, so that the two ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Association); 1878: Composite Portraits (Nature, May 23, and Journal of Anthropological Institute); 1879: Psychometric Experiments (Nineteenth Century, and Brain, part vi.); Generic Images (Nineteenth Century; Proceedings of Royal Institution, with plates); Geometric Mean in Vital and Social Statistics (Proceedings of Royal Society); 1880: Visualised Numerals (Nature, Jan. 15 and March 25, and Journal of Anthropological Institute); Mental Imagery (Fortnightly Review; Mind); 1881: Visions of Sane Persons (Fortnightly Review, and Proceedings ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... I state with the certainty of a geometric truth, but I have no time now. Enough if I give you an ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... number of inventions have been made in the last century. There are several reasons. Since every discovery or advance in knowledge increases our chance of obtaining more, it becomes cumulative, and our progress is in geometric instead of arithmetical ratio. Public interest and general appreciation of the value of time have also effectively assisted progress. At the beginning of each year the President, the Governors of the States, and the Mayors of cities publish a prospectus of the great improvements needed, contemplated, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... requirement, of geometric base in interior design which, coupled with our natural delight in yielding or growing forms, has maintained through all the long history of decoration what is called conventionalised flower design. We find this in every form or method of ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... Cross-stitch, Darning: Make an original border design on square paper using any two geometric units, or a conventional flower or animal form. Apply the design to a towel in crochet, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... ruins for more than an hour. The carvings on the walls were in the form of geometric designs and cabalistic symbols, giving no clue to the ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi
... issue are (1) absolute identity in appearance of all notes of the issue; (2) adequate protection by properly-selected colours against photographic reproduction; and (3) high-class engraving comprising geometric lathe work and well-executed vignettes. In addition it is important that the design of the note should be striking and pleasing to the eye, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... He was handed over by a black porter to a smart slave-girl, who guided him up, through cloisters and corridors, to the large library, where five or six young men were sitting, busily engaged, under Theon's superintendence, in copying manuscripts and drawing geometric diagrams. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... powers of the soul are perfect and plumed for flight, she dwells on high, and in conjunction with divine natures governs the world. In the Timaeus, he manifestly asserts that the demiurgus implanted these dianoetic forms in souls, in geometric, arithmetic, and harmonic proportions: but in his Republic (in the section of a line in the 6th book) he calls them images of intelligibles; and on this account does not for the most part disdain to denominate them intellectual, as being the exemplars ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... the geometric centre of his being, Colonel Pennington stretched his legs, rolled his head from side to side, and snorted violently several times like a buck. After the sixth snort he felt so much better that a clear understanding of the exact nature ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... with an exquisite casing of inlaid work, so minute sometimes that thirty-live or forty pieces may be counted in the space of a square eighth of an inch. I have counted four hundred and twenty-eight distinct pieces on a square inch of a violin, which is completely covered by this exquisite detail of geometric designs, in Mosaic." ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... man he said he was. Of middle height and geometric breadth, his figure was a regular trapezium with the greatest of its parallel sides formed by the line of his shoulders. On this line attached by a robust neck there rose an enormous spheroidal head. The head of what animal did it resemble from the point of view of passional analogy? The head of ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... such consummate grace and perfection of detail can belong to so early a date. Many dated examples belonging to later years in the century, which seem to indicate a steady growth from the simplest pointed lancets to the elaborately cusped arches which were themselves the prelude to the Geometric period, are adduced as evidence of the improbability of the Early English style having, so to say, grown suddenly to perfection at Ely. Numerous instances may, however, be found in other great minsters, where a similar difficulty has been encountered. The probable explanation ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... mamma will come!" said Constance, with a comical, fidgety shake of herself; "when I think of those greenhouses I lose my self-command. And the park! Fleda, it's the loveliest thing you ever saw in your life; and it's all that delightful man's doing; only he wont have a geometric flower-garden, as I did everything I could think of to persuade him. I pity the woman that will be his wife she wont have her own way in a single thing; but then he will fascinate her into thinking that his way is the best so it will do just as well, ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... later and the better the work, the more slender became the columns, until at last they were merged into the Gothic multiple-columned piers. The carving upon the arch-mouldings is, to a great extent, geometric, consisting of numerous facets cut in the stone, lozenges, etc.; the so-called dogtooth moulding is a very favorite form of decoration. All these carved mouldings were picked out in color, usually ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various
... of cross-stitch and the somewhat geometric kind of pattern to which it lends itself are shown in the ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... both land and water. Here on the land was a picture of a castle and there on the water a ship. The shore of the land was not drawn as are maps with which we are in these days familiar, but was cut up in curious geometric forms which surely could not faithfully represent the true lines of the shore. Towns were shown, but only on the shoreline, their names printed in by hand in such small letters as would require a magnifying glass to read them. Crossing ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... protective mimicry is more explicitly stated by Dr. Darwin in his earlier book, The Loves of the Plants, and, as Krause states, though Roesel von Rosenhof in his Insekten-Belustigungen (Nurnberg, 1746) describes the resemblance which geometric caterpillars, and also certain moths when in repose, present to dry twigs, and thus conceal themselves, "this group of phenomena seems to have been first regarded from a more general point ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... the silence of the other; each resolved instantly to procure that silence at any cost. Von Staden reached for his hip pocket, but before he could draw his automatic pistol and cover the skipper, Michael J. Murphy had hurled ten pounds of code book into the geometric centre of the supercargo's face. It was the first weapon his hand closed over, and he did not disdain it. The instant it landed and von Staden reeled before the blow, Murphy came out of his state-room with a scuttering rush and ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... top to bottom and all the front was down. In a single second one saw all the seared cellules of its rooms, the geometric path of the flues, and a down quilt like viscera on the skeleton of a bed. In the upper story an overhanging floor remained, and there we saw the bodies of two officers, pierced and spiked to their places round the table where they were lunching when the lightning fell—a ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... this room the widow added one of those commonplace mahogany sofas with the Egyptian heads that Jacob Desmalter manufactured by the gross in 1806, covering them with a silken green stuff bearing a design of white geometric circles. Above this piece of furniture hung a portrait of Bridau, done in pastel by the hand of an amateur, which at once attracted the eye. Though art might have something to say against it, no one could fail to ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... a Stem proper is; and what makes it stiffer, or hollower, than we like it;—how, to wit, the gracious and generous strength of ash differs from the spinous obstinacy of blackthorn,—and how the geometric and enduring hollowness of a stalk of wheat differs from the soft fulness of that of a mushroom. To which end, I will take up a piece of study, not of black, but white, thorn, written last ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... the gems, many of them are silicates of metals. Now glasses are also silicates of various metals, but unlike gem minerals the glasses are not crystalline but rather amorphous, that is, without definite geometric form ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... the ceremonial life of the Indian. In earliest times this blanket was undecorated, a plain field of white; then color was introduced on the white field in stripes of herring-bone pattern typifying raven's tail, because similar to the vanes of the tail feathers; and later the elaborate geometric designs of present day blankets developed. These designs are first painted upon a pattern board the size and shape of those which are to appear upon the blanket, and it is from this pattern board that the squaw weaves her pattern. But although the woman (Figure 7) does weave the ...
— Aboriginal American Weaving • Mary Lois Kissell
... surveyor in determining the limits of one's farm, the architect in planning a house, the builder in planning his estimates, and the several master workmen who do the carpentry, masonry, and finishing, are all dependent upon geometric truths. Bleaching, dyeing, calico-printing, gas-making, soap-making, sugar-refining, the reduction of metals from their ores, with innumerable other productive industries, are dependent upon chemistry. Agriculture, ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... or elements of reality. Literally they are nothing but simple symbolic notations. To wish to make integral factors of them would be as strange an illusion as that of seeing in the co-ordinates of a geometric point the constitutive essence ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... crowded with stars; the Milky Way crossed its immense blue concavity. The geometric figure of the Great Bear glittered very high. Arcturus and Vega shone softly in ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... here. Our own acceptance is upon a carved, geometric thing that, if found in a very old deposit, antedates human life, except, perhaps, very primitive human life, as an indigenous product of this earth: but we're quite as much interested in the dilemma it made ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... daughter of the great Emperor Shah Jehan, is a gem of architecture, a dainty bungalow of pure white marble. The roof is a low dome with broad eaves, and the walls are slabs of thin marble perforated in geometric designs like the finest lace. The inscription calls her "Heavenly Minded," and reminds us that "God is the Resurrection and the Life;" that it was her wish that nothing but grass might cover her dust, because "Such a pall alone was fit for the lowly dead," and closes with ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... set out to be, properly and rightly—a compact, sensible jury. One sees this same instinct magnificently displayed in every other phase of nature—in the drifting of sea-wood to the Sargasso Sea, in the geometric interrelation of air-bubbles on the surface of still water, in the marvelous unreasoned architecture of so many insects and atomic forms which make up the substance and the texture of this world. It would seem as though the physical substance of life—this ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... window. In neat, geometric spacing on either side of the transport there were fighter jets. There was another flight above and farther away. Joe saw, suddenly, a peeling-off of planes from the farther formation. They dived down through the clouds. He never knew what ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... of algebra, a comparatively abstract division of mathematics, by the union of its less abstract divisions, geometry and arithmetic—a fact proved by the earliest extant samples of algebra, which are half algebraic, half geometric—we go on to observe that during the era in which mathematics and astronomy were thus advancing, rational mechanics made its second step; and something was done towards giving a quantitative form to hydrostatics, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... of the Italian as well. Some of these places combine or interchange the menus of French, Italian and Swiss chefs, a piquant entree, or shellfish served bordelaise, being followed by a paste like lasagne, spaghetti or tagliarini, or by those geometric ravioli whose delights are in inverse ratio to their square. If you want fare of the realm the dining rooms and grills of the hotels are at your service, as are the restaurants along Market, Powell and other streets. The cafeteria has ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... are beginning to spring up, the eye is charmed by old brown houses roofed with red tiles, often standing tree-shaded in a bountiful flower garden, and always preserving their own lines of frontage and their own angle of gable, with delightful indifference to the geometric scale of ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... French invention are a complete family, made in brass and with conical tubes pierced according to geometric relation, so that the sarrusophone is more equal than the oboe it copies and is intended, at least for military music, to replace. Being on a larger scale, the sarrusophones are louder than the corresponding instruments of the oboe family. There are six sarrusophones, from the sopranino in ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... house opposite Gallatin Park and made little German cakes,—a huge house which an unknown architect had taken unusual pains to make pretentious and hideous, for it was Rhenish, Moorish and Victorian by turns. Its geometric grounds matched those of the park, itself a monument to bad taste in landscape. The neighbourhood was highly respectable, and inhabited by families of German extraction. There were two flaxen-haired ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... not-to-be-despised praise which is due to patience and perseverance. In this way only can such a restricted form of artistic expression become in the least degree interesting. The designs usually associated with the "civilized" practise of this work are, generally speaking, of the kind known as "geometric," that is to say, composed of circles and straight lines intersecting each other in complicated pattern. Now the "variety" obtained in this manner, as contrasted with the dignified monotony of the savage's method, is the note which marks a weak desire ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... streams. It was first discovered by some miners, shortly after the establishment of the Villa do Principe. In working for gold in the rivulets of Milho Verde and St. Goncalzes, they discovered some pebbles of geometric form, and of a peculiar hue and lustre. For some years these pebbles were given as pretty baubles to children, or used as counters for marking the points of their favourite game of voltarete. At last an officer, who had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... and sequence of the notes. The decorative art of most savage tribes, for instance, is nearly all of totemic origin, and the decayed and degraded forms of snake, bird, bear, fish, may be traced in the most apparently empty geometric patterns;—but what does this discovery tell us of the essentially decorative quality of such patterns or of the nature of beauty of form? The study of the Gothic cathedral reveals the source of its general plan and of its whole scheme of ornament in detailed religious symbolism. Yet a complete knowledge ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... symbol and utmost achievement; and whether in the coronets of countless battlements worn on the brows of the noblest cities, or in the Lombard bell-tower on the mountains, and the English spire on Sarum plain, the geometric majesty of the Egyptian maid became glorious in harmony of defence, and sacred ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... brother; Goodge—letters to be paid for. It's all like the bits of mosaic that those antiquarian fellows are always finding in the ruins of Somebody's Baths; a few handfuls of coloured chips that look like rubbish, and can yet be patched into a perfect geometric design. I'll hunt up a file of the Times at the Burton Institution, and find out this Haygarth, if he is to ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... written down, provided it involve only two variables, x and y, represents some curve in a plane; a curve moreover that can be drawn, or its properties completely investigated without drawing, from the equation. Thus algebra is wedded to geometry, and the investigation of geometric relations by means of algebraic equations is called analytical geometry, as opposed to the old Euclidian or synthetic mode of treating the subject by reasoning consciously directed to the subject by help ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... the Caucasus type, see illustration, p. 351; compare the Kabistan with the Persian piece—which has the floral and which the geometric figures? ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... more than once to note with a kind of aghast dismay those trophies of feminine industry, the quilts; some were of the "log cabin" and "rising sun" variety, but others were of geometric intricacy of form and were kaleidoscopic of color with an amazing labyrinth of stitchings and embroideries—it seemed a species of effrontery to dub one gorgeous poly-tinted silken banner a quilt. But already it bore a blue ribbon, and its owner was the richer by ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... sticks of wood should be used in this dance, one for each dancer. Pouches are required made of brown cloth, with broad bands or straps long enough to pass over the shoulder and chest and to let the pouches hang at the back. Both pouches and straps should be ornamented with geometric designs painted in red, yellow, blue or green; two or three of these colors should be combined in each design. The corn carried within the pouches can be represented by rounded chips, little stones or, when possible, by the corn ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... himself, before he was fairly caught in the mesh of his own imagination, was well aware that his subject demanded something of the nature of a tour de force. He had to give physical, geometric embodiment to a far-reaching scheme of abstract speculation and thought,—parts of it very reluctant to such a treatment. The necessities of the epic form constrained him. When Satan, on the top of ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... may be almost imageless. They may be a great terror, for example, of a purely geometric figure—a figure from pure geometry, or an example of pure mathematics. Or they may have no image, but only a sensation of smell, or ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... illustrations is the instinct of the honey bee. It builds its cells in exact geometric form and we compute, by Calculus, that the form it uses produces the greatest capacity in proportion to the amount of material used. Who taught the bee to build its cell, displaying greater knowledge than that ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... eighteen thousand, and it is eleventh in point of size among the cathedrals of the world. Considering St. Patrick's in its artistic aspect Miss Henderson, in "A Loiterer in New York," has said: "Renwick considered it his chief work; and the cathedral holds high rank as an example of the decorated, or geometric, style of Gothic architecture that prevailed in Europe in the thirteenth century, and of which the cathedrals of Rheims, Cologne, and Amiens are typical.... The modern French and Roman windows, which, to the eye of the later criticism, impair the beauty ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... great a mathematician has to say of geometry and the “mathematical mind,” compared with the naturally acute mind (“l’esprit de finesse”), betwixt which he draws an interesting parallel. The fragment on the “Mathematical” or “Geometric Mind” was, with the exception of a brief passage given by Des Molets {165} in 1728, originally published, although with numerous suppressions, in Condorcet’s edition of the ‘Pensées.’ It appeared for the first time in its complete form, and under its proper title, in Faugère’s edition, along ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... step of Corson's looks like a final plunge; a fatal fall; a hopeless retrogression. But we must not judge prematurely. "Man advances; but in spiral lines," said Goethe. The river goes forward, in spite of its eddies. You can complete a geometric circle from a minute portion of its curve; but not a human cycle. We can not predict the final issue of a human life until the last sigh ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... psychologists have a strong case here, as {182} they would have also in regard to the liking for machinery. Still, the mathematical individual would not be convinced, for he would testify that numbers, etc., made a direct appeal to him. Numbers, geometric forms, and algebraic transformations are fascinating to him, and there is something beautiful, to his mind, in the relationships that are discovered. The same could be said of the liking for plant or animal life that appears in the "born biologist". If the objects of the world make a direct ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... philosophy of the Orientals. According to the beliefs of the Cabalists and Gnostics, demons were the cause of disease. These sects interrogated evil spirits to find out where they lurked, and exorcised them with the help of charms and talismans. Various geometric figures and devices were held to have power against evil spirits. One of these figures was the device of two triangles interlaced thus [Symbol: David's Star]. This was used as a symbol of God, not only by Cabalists and Gnostics, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... Count. "And it is the same with their pictorial art. We blame the Orientals for their chill cult of geometric designs, their purely stylistic decoration, their endless repetitions, as opposed to our variety and love of floral, human, or other naturalistic motives. But by this simple means they attain their end—a direct appeal. Their art, like their music, goes straight to the senses; it is not deflected ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... conception, and parturiency, manifests and expands itself in the sexless individuals (which are always in this case the great majority of the species), as instincts of art, and in the construction of works completely detached and inorganic; while the geometric regularity of these works, which bears an analogy to crystallization, is demonstrably no more than the necessary result of uniform action in ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... inches wide and is often so long that it passes twice round the body, the outer end being fastened to the coil beneath it by two strings. This form of belt is sometimes ornamented with simple straight-lined geometric patterns carved into the belt, but it is never coloured. The process of manufacture is as follows: they cut off a strip of bark large enough for one, two, three, or four belts, and coil it up in concentric circles, like the two circles of the belt ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... positivism may arise. Then it will be the common privilege, "rerum cognoscere causas"; the word supernatural will have no sense; superstition will be a dimly understood trait of the early race; and where now we perceive an appalling Mystery, everything will be lucid and serene as a geometric demonstration. Such an epoch of Reason might be the happiest the world could know. Indeed, it would either be that, or it would never come about at all. For suffering and sorrow are the great Doctors of Metaphysic; ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... the hooded twin lenses. At first he was dazzled and confused by the rapidly whirling light-images, but these quickly resolved into geometric figures, an inconceivable number of them, extending off into limitless space in a huge arc, revolving and tumbling like the colored particles in an old-fashioned kaleidoscope. Cubes, pyramids and cones of variegated hues. Swift-rushing spheres and long slim cylinders ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent
... with a fantastic cresting above the roof cornice. In the centre of the second story is a niche with a figure of S. Blaise, flanked by two rectangular windows on each side. The piano nobile has two ogee-headed windows with geometric tracery, flat decorated archivolt, and slender shafts on the outer and inner surface of the jamb, and a three-light window in the centre, made up to a square head with quatrefoils in the fashion of the Ca d'Oro at ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... demonstrable fact that musical sounds weave invisible patterns in the air. Architecture, correspondingly, in one of its aspects, is geometric pattern made fixed and enduring. What could be more essentially musical for example than the sea arcade of the Venetian Ducal Palace? The sand forms traced by sound-waves on a musically vibrating steel plate might easily suggest architectural ornament ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... of sand, where from space to space were planted, like so many oases in a desert, clumps of giant reeds. By a strange but natural caprice these beds of rustling verdure were cut in an infinity of well-defined geometric forms. Seen from an eminence and at a distance, this arrangement gave a singular effect. In the midst of these native garden-beds were cut distinct and narrow alleys, where the drifting sands were packed like artificial ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... exact social importance or advantage may be, it seems that every man in Bontoc who has the right to the emblem shows his appreciation of the privilege, since nine-tenths of the men wear the chak-lag'. It consists of a series of geometric markings running upward from the breast near each nipple and curving out on each shoulder, where it ends on the upper arm. The accompanying plates (CXLIII to CXLIX) give an excellent idea of the nature and appearance of the Igorot tattoo — of course, reproductions ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... natural or inventive. Natural ornament confines itself to the rendition in decorative design of forms chosen from nature, either animate of inanimate. Inventive ornament consists of elements not derived from any natural source. It is usually geometric in character; that is, it is rendered in patterns and masses expressed in ...
— Applied Design for Printers - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #43 • Harry Lawrence Gage
... that her face is unbeautifully round. She can enhance her charms and apparently decrease the too spherical cut of her countenance by adopting the mode illustrated in No. 27. The angular bows on the hat, the geometric lines of the broad hat-brim, the precise cut of the lapels on the corsage, the neat throat-band and V-shaped vesture—all insinuate in a most engaging way a dignity and fine, high-bred poise totally obliterated by the circular ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... held, a result of rhetorical studies alone; it reveals rather a native good sense tempered with a neoteric interest in psychology and a neoteric exactness in formal composition. And yet the passage exhibits a great advance upon the geometric formality of the Ciris. The incident is not treated episodically as it might have been in Vergil's early work. The pattern is not whimsically intricate but is shaped by an understanding mind. While its art ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... over a large garden, we left the rich colouring of the geometric beds to discover what should make the wondrous glow of crimson on a border far away; and to our surprise it proved to be a clump of the Indian Pink, which had been sown as an annual with other annuals, and was there shining in ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... lines; but by dint of much research, much thought, much study, he has come to doubt the object for which he is searching. In his hours of despair he fancies that drawing does not exist, and that lines can render nothing but geometric figures. That, of course, is not true; because with a black line which has no color we can represent the human form. This proves that our art is made up, like nature, of an infinite number of elements. Drawing gives ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... admiration of the genius of the artist; indeed, no ready money could purchase coats that we have seen—coats that a real love of the subject, and working upon long credit, for a high connexion, could alone have given to the world—coats, not the dull conceptions of a geometric cutter, spiritlessly outlined upon the shop-board by the crayon of a mercenary foreman, but the fortunate creation of superior intelligence, boldly executed in the happy moments ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... They are in admirable proportion on paper, but they are out of proportion when seen in stone. Now such architects as the men who designed Beauvais and Bourges were geniuses. They were not tied hard and fast by rule of compass. They worked from a definite geometric plan, but deviated from it where their taste and feeling for beauty taught them that such deviation was advisable. Now at Beauvais and at Bourges the exact, proportions have been abandoned. For instance, at Bourges, to be exact, each of the two side ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... short jacket which, after fingering it doubtfully, Travis decided was made of felt. It was elaborately decorated with highly colorful embroidery, and there was no mistaking the design—a heavy antlered Terran deer in mortal combat with what might be a puma. It was bordered with a geometric pattern of beautiful, oddly familiar work. Travis smoothed it flat over his knee and tried to remember where he had seen its like before ... a book! An illustration in a book! But which book, when? Not recently, and it was not a pattern known ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... feature was too evident not to be improved by such active and ardent worshippers as the Freemasons. Thus originated Gothic tracery, which afterwards branched out into such sumptuous and unrestrained luxury as we find in the Decorated styles of England, the Flamboyant of France, the late Geometric of Germany. Thus were the masons true to the zealous and passionate enthusiasm of their religion. They used foliations, not on account of their subjective significance, as the Greek artists did, but on account of their objective and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Issues of scalability and modularity * Geometric growth of the Internet and the role played by layering * Basic functions sustaining this growth * A library's roles and functions in a network environment * Effects of implementation of the Z39.50 protocol for information retrieval on the library system * ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... of mensuration reminds one of the disputes between French critics as to whether the unity of time meant thirty hours, or twenty-four, or twelve, or the actual time that it took to act the play; or of the geometric method of the "Saturday papers" in the Spectator. Addison tries "Paradise Lost" by Aristotle's rules for the composition of an epic. Is it the narrative of a single great action? Does it begin in medias res, as is proper, or ab ovo Ledae, as Horace has said that an ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... previous evening, and, moreover, seeing them all in so lively a mood, I did not hesitate to join in the conversation: nor did I succeed so very badly, considering the strangeness of it all; for like the bee that has been much hindered at his flowery work by geometric webs, I began to acquire some skill in pushing my way gracefully through the tangling meshes of thought and phrases ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... was apparent; nor could he make sense out of any combination of letters. He knew that there were certain codes whereby the two progressions, arithmetical and geometric were employed in their composition, but this seemingly answered to none of them. He went over the list again, comparing them with the marked letters as found in the note. Yes, they were identical. He had copied ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... unlike those of Cliff Palace, inasmuch as they are above ground, not subterranean. The mortar used in pointing shows the impress of human hands; no trowels were used. The walls exhibit many stones incised with complicated designs, largely geometric; some may be mason's marks; others are decorative or symbolic. These designs indicate a marked advance over those in Far View House; in fact they are far more complicated and artistic than ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... to remind him of himself? Would he see the man of 212 B.C., at all connected with the men of 1843 A.D.? Yes. In Prussia, Austria, France, England, America, in every city of every civilized nation, he would find the lever, the pulley, the mirror, the specific gravimeter, the geometric demonstration; he would trace the influence of his mind in the power-loom, the steam-engine, in the building of the Royal Exchange, in the Great Britain steam-ship; he would find an application of his well-known invention, the subject of a patent, an important auxiliary to navigation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... sensations spent themselves in the thickening obscurity which enveloped her; a dusk now filled with pale geometric roses, circling softly, interminably before her, now darkened to a uniform blue-blackness, the hue of a summer night without stars. And into this darkness she felt herself sinking, sinking, with the gentle sense of security of one upheld from beneath. Like a tepid ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton |
