"Tangent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at a tangent to a certain issue troubling his legal conscience. He had not wavered in the usual assumption of omniscience, but he was by no means sure that he had given right advice. Well! Without that power to decide and hold to decision in spite of misgiving, one would never have been fit for one's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... just well over the crack when she struck a patch of rough ice and yawed suddenly. There was a severe wrench. B.J. and Reddy were prepared for it; but Heady, before he knew what was the matter, had slid off the boat on to the ice and on a long tangent into the crack ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... weeks, without seeing any evidence of a current of any kind, until there came on a storm from the northwest that drove a great deal of ice around the great ring; but it seemed to keep rather clear of the great wall of ice and to go off in a tangent toward the south. The lead showed no bottom at one hundred fathoms, even within a quarter of a mile ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... beat into Annie's cheeks. She went off swiftly at a tangent. "Wouldn't it give a fellow a jar? This guy Jim Collins slips it to me confidential that he's off the crooked stuff. Nothin' doin' a-tall in gorilla work. He kids me that he's quit goin' out on the spud and porch-climbin' don't look good ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... "Discipline," and he saw the entire justice of the insistence. It was nonsense this being in love; there wasn't such a thing as love outside of trashy novelettes. And forthwith his mind went off at a tangent to her eyes under the shadow of her hat brim, and had to be lugged back by main force. On Thursday when he was returning from school he saw her far away down the street, and hurried in to avoid her, looking ostentatiously in the opposite direction. But that was a turning-point. ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... creek lay Long Prairie, the favourite haunt of the plover. As they were nearing the creek they heard the galloping of a horse to their right, and saw a man with black hair and a swarthy face riding toward the woods at a tangent, as if he ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... from the shape and size of the oval, seen when the skull was viewed from above, looking vertically down upon it. Camper took as the basis of his theory of the gradations of different genera of mammalia, the angle formed by a line drawn from the aperture of the ear to the base of the nose, and a tangent to the forehead and jaw. Considering the increasing size of this angle to be the distinctive mark of intellectual superiority, he viewed a negro as an intermediate animal between an European and an ape. But Mr Owen has shown that the observations ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... there remained but to wait. But the projectile was perceptibly nearing the moon, and evidently succumbed to her influence to a certain degree; though its own velocity also drew it in an oblique direction. From these conflicting influences resulted a line which might become a tangent. But it was certain that the projectile would not fall directly on the moon; for its lower part, by reason of its weight, ought to be ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... uf de hill, an' no lebel country—nothin' but a leanin'-ober river-bank forty foot high. "Burlman Rennuls, whar you gwine?" Don't know whar. But ober we pitches a-whirlin' [throwing out one of the revolving fists at a tangent]—down we draps into water full forty foot deep, kerslash; de rocks a-pitchin' in arter us thick as hail. [Audience: "Laws-a-marcy!" "Goodness gracious!" "Hoo-weep!" (with a whistle). After an ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... of my heart was here," he answered half-playfully, half-tenderly. "When that is gone, I shall be likely to fly off in a tangent again." ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... co-ordinate and living power by right of Christ's institution and express promise, I go along with them; but I soon discover that by the church they meant the clergy, the hierarchy exclusively, and then I fly off from them in a tangent. ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... peculiar identification with the race, man's relation to it is an exterior one. By his constitution he is above all an individual, and that is the natural line of his development. The love of woman is the centripetal attraction which in due time brings him back from the individual tangent to blend him again with mankind. In returning to woman he returns to humanity. All that there is in man's sentiment for woman which is higher than passion and larger than personal tenderness—all, that is to say, which makes his love for her the grand passion ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... and a rushing river glimmered before us. We struck off at a tangent and followed its course to the north, stumbling in muddy rifts, slipping on seaweed, beginning to be blinded by a fine salt spray, and deafened by the thunder of the ocean surf. The river broadened, whitened, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... had a vague sort of idea that a woman who was not very pretty must be unhappy and feel the inward pang of having missed her fate. I was oftener, therefore, with her than with Noemi, because I saw that she was melancholy. So I allowed my first love to go off at a tangent, just as, later in life, I did in politics, and in a very bungling sort of way. Once or twice I noticed Noemi laughing to herself at my simple folly. She was always nice with me, but at times her manner was slightly sarcastic, and this tinge of irony, which she made no attempt ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... First he thought of his friends, and wondered when they would join him; then his mind reverted to Mrs. Martha Bardell; and from that lady it wandered, by a natural process, to the dingy counting-house of Dodson & Fogg. From Dodson & Fogg's it flew off at a tangent, to the very centre of the history of the queer client; and then it came back to the Great White Horse at Ipswich, with sufficient clearness to convince Mr. Pickwick that he was falling asleep. So he roused himself, and ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Russian mountain, hewn asunder midway, were fitted flush to a Norwegian cliff, beetling precipitately over the whirlpool; then tilt the sledge with its furred inmate over the slope, let it skim with quicker impetus the smoking ice, let it touch that beetling edge, and, leaping from the tangent, let it dart through the air, let it strike the eddying waters, be sucked hurriedly down that hoarse black throat, wind among the roots of the everlasting hills, and split upon the loadstone of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... behind him; here a little bustling creature ducks and dives, coquetting first on this side, then on that; until finally turning two or three somersets, it almost reaches the earth; but soon rises at a tangent, and sails far up into the bright blue firmament. Look! the air is full of them! It is a charming amusement, this kite-flying of the boys. We greatly affect it, even now, although we are 'out of our 'teens!' There ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... getting Miriam, lead-dog to Frona's team, to take the trail left by him and the baron. The dog went on bravely, scrambling over, floundering through, and sometimes swimming; but when she had gained the farthest point reached by them, she sat down helplessly. Later on, she cut back to the shore at a tangent, landing on the deserted island above; and an hour afterwards trotted into camp minus the grub-pack. Then the two dogs, hovering just out of range, compromised matters by devouring each other's burdens; after which the attempt was given over and ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... the day removes the orient vault, The rustic peasant leaves his humble home, And when the sun with fiercer tangent strikes, Fatigued and parched, he sits him in the shade; Then plods again with hard, laborious toil, Until black night the hemisphere enshrouds. And then he rests. But I must ever chafe At morning, noon-day, evening, and at night. ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... of Tharon as El Rey thundered down toward him. Then Buford, riding midway of the sweeping line, fired and the boy dropped his gun, swayed and clung to his saddle horn as his horse bolted and tore off at a tangent to the right, away ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... that the elevation of the latter above the horizon is greater than that of the line of aim: an allowance for the dispart is consequently necessary in determining the commencement of the graduations on the tangent scale, by which the required elevation is given to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... one who suddenly remembers. "Bless my soul alive!" she said, going off at a tangent; "ain't you done them ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... at a tangent, "to see Peter Auber, at the India House," or, "could not wait an instant; they were to meet Josh: ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... I should admire them immensely," remonstrated Vixen, "if I could see them in their native country. But I don't know that I have ever thoroughly appreciated them in a hothouse, hanging from the roof, and tumbling on to one's nose, or shooting off their long sprays at a tangent into awkward corners. I'm afraid I like the bluebells and foxgloves in our enclosures ever so much better. I have seen the banks in New Park one sheet of vivid blue with hyacinths, one blaze of crimson with foxgloves; ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... wordless, space-devouring half-hour beyond this, Blount applied the brakes and dropped his passenger at the rear of the small iron-roofed building which served as the railroad station for the coal-mines. Far to the rear on the twenty-two-mile tangent the headlight of the coming train showed like a blazing star ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... Countess Rudolf's kindness, as you may perhaps suppose)—"and a pretty old suit it is by this time! for I was young, a mere child, in fact, when it began, ha, ha!—By the way," she continued, flying off at a tangent, "they advised us to put an end to the suit by arranging a match between me and Karpathy. I was young then, as I have said—a mere child, ha, ha!—but I would not entertain the idea, ha, ha! I made a mistake, no doubt; for how rich should I not have been now, a good ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... but I never remember being so struck with a contrast as when at one moment Praxagora pictured the beauty of a well-regulated home, and the tender offices of woman towards the little children, and then shot off at a tangent to fierce invectives against the Bible and religion, which seemed so utterly uncalled for that no adversary who wanted to damage the cause could possibly have invented a more ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... General Breckinridge, the late secretary of war of the Confederacy, alias Colonel Cabell, and his aide, Colonel Wilson,—a pleasant encounter for both parties. Mr. Benjamin had been in the neighborhood, but, hearing that the enemy were in Madison, had gone off at a tangent. We were fully posted as to the different routes to the seaboard by General Finnegan, and discussed with him the most feasible way of leaving the country. I inclined to the eastern coast, and this was decided on. I exchanged my remaining horse with General Finnegan for a better, giving him ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... fly off at a tangent. It is a perfectly natural thing to speak of. Hardly anybody ever sends ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... of fur in the crotch of a slim forest elm. Presently it uncurled, cautiously; a fluffy ringed tail unfolded; the rounded furry back humped up, and the animal, moving slowly into the tangent foliage of an enormous oak, vanished amid ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... of 1860, as everybody knows, the society of Washington city was composed of two distinct circles, tangent at no one point. The larger, outer circle whirled around with crash and fury several months in each year; then, spinning out its centrifugal force, flew into minute fragments and scattered to extreme ends of the land. The smaller one—the inner circle—revolved sedately in its accustomed grooves, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... recently held an enthusiastic debate as to whether the American soldiers should be known as "Sammies" or "Battling Christians." The thought gagged him. He dropped the newspaper, yawned, and let his mind drift off at a tangent. He wondered why Gloria had been late. It seemed so long ago already—he had a pang of illusive loneliness. He tried to imagine from what angle she would regard her new position, what place in her considerations he would continue ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... joyfully obeyed. The pony ran off at a sharp angle to inspect a lamp-post on the opposite side of the way, and then went off at a tangent to another lamp-post on the other side. Having satisfied himself that they were of the same pattern and materials, he came to a stop apparently absorbed in meditation. 'Will you go on, sir,' said the old gentleman, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... philosophic breadth of view with which he regarded his subject at any time, and the desire of getting to the bottom of each subsidiary problem arising from it, that made him for many years seem constantly to spring aside from his own subject, to fly off at a tangent from the line in which he was assured of unrivalled success did he but devote to it his undivided powers. But he was prepared to endure the charge of desultoriness with equanimity. In part, he was still studying the whole field of biological science before he would ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... wheel the Maggie shot off at a tangent and the hawsers slacked immediately. In the twinkling of an eye Mr. Gibney had cast them off, and as the ends disappeared with a swish over the stern he ran back to the pilot house, rang for full ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... at a tangent for the dark shadow of the trees. At the edge of the timber ensued another long wait, with Rathburn uncommunicative, moodily pacing restlessly back and forth. The horses had another excellent opportunity to rest and the fagged animals ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... through and through up to my knees; and I had repeatedly run into willow-clumps, which did not tend to make me any drier either. At last I became convinced that in bolting the horses must have swerved a little to the south, so that in starting up again we had struck a tangent to the big bend north, just beyond Bell's farm. If that was the case, we should have to make another turn to the right in order to strike the road again, for at best we were then simply going parallel to it. The trouble was that I had nothing to tell me the directions, ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... that the development of Democracy also is, after all, not the opening phase of a world-wide movement going on unbendingly in its present direction, but the first impulse of forces that will finally sweep round into a quite different path. Flying off at a tangent is probably one of the gravest dangers and certainly the one most constantly present, in ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Cycloid. Conoid. Conic Section. Ellipsoid. Epicycloid. Evolute. Flying Buttress. Focus. Gnomes. Hexagon. Hyperbola. Hypothenuse. Incidental. Isosceles. Triangle. Parabola. Parallelogram. Pelecoid. Polygons. Pyramid. Rhomb. Sector. Segment. Sinusoid. Tangent. Tetrahedron. Vertex. ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... clump of early pedestrians stood in the street to gaze, and two women—wives, doubtless, of railway hands who had learned what was in progress—were out on the porch of a cottage to see us pass. And it must have been a sight worth seeing, for we were running at 70 miles an hour now, with 60 miles of tangent ahead of us. At Butler, seven miles beyond, we passed a Wabash train on a parallel track, which made great show of travelling fast. Perhaps it was doing so—moving, perchance, at 40 miles an hour. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... of a curve is very near being a straight line. And the smaller it is, the nearer. In the limit, it may be termed a part of the curve or a part of the straight line, as you please, for in each of its points a curve coincides with its tangent. So likewise "vitality" is tangent, at any and every point, to physical and chemical forces; but such points are, as a fact, only views taken by a mind which imagines stops at various moments of the movement ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... stand erect and whirl round on his heels till momentum was obtained, and then—let go. The missile would fly like a bullet, and woe betide any one who stood in its way. The performance precluded any kind of aim; the stone was hurled off at any chance tangent: and it was bad luck rather than any kind of malice that guided one three-pound boulder through the window, across the kitchen, and into a portrait of Judas de Beer which hung on the wall not half a dozen feet from the slumbering ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... a tangent. "By next winter, with everything hummin' an' shipshape, what's the matter with us makin' a visit to Carmel? It'll be slack time for you with the vegetables, an' I'll be ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... in general effect to the last example is the work upon another important series of vases. Instead of the simple meandered or zigzag arrangement of parts, two of the dividing lines of the zone run tangent to the neck of the vase on opposite sides, forming arched panels and leaving upright panels between. In the example presented in Fig. 168 the arched areas are filled in with lattice-like arrangements of lines. In others we have dots, checkers, ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... lines has more variety and is therefore more picturesque than the tangent its equivalent. The simplest definition of picturesqueness is variety in unity. The lines of the long road in perspective offer easy conduct for the eye, but it finds a greater interest in threading its way over ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... the conversation at a tangent, for the sight of a clump of stones gave him a subject ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... like you—the balances in your hand. This unstable equilibrium rests upon scales that are in your hands. For the food of opinion, as I began by saying, is the news of the day. I have known many a man go off at a tangent on information that was not reliable. Indeed, that describes the majority of men. The world is held stable by the man who waits for the next day to find out whether the report was true ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... at a tangent, leaving Jeffreys, cool in body and mind, to await his return. To an ordinarily excitable person, the position was a critical one. The water was numbing; the ice at the edge of the hole was rotten, and ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... recent date than the creation of the worlds, and could not therefore account for it. He next tried an ingenious idea, comparing the perpendiculars from different points of a quadrant of a circle on a tangent at its extremity. The greatest of these, the tangent, not being cut by the quadrant, he called the line of the sun, and associated with infinite force. The shortest, being the point at the other end of ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... low to avoid the bullets he sped at a tangent in the opposite direction, for the timber of Wheeling Hill. The Indians afoot could not catch him, no bullet caught him; he would make it—he would make it; there he goes, up the hill. He was safe—but ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... midst of the cavern a great arena had been left bare, and thousands of turbaned men squatted round it in rings. At the end where the river formed a tangent to them the rings were flattened, and at that point they were cut into by the ramp of a bridge, and by a lane left to connect the bridge with the arena. The bridge was almost the most ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... Ishmael? you and the judge? Well, Merlin did start off at a tangent yesterday from Tanglewood. I suppose he is pining after his child, and has taken a sudden freak to rush over and see her. And as you are the staff of his age, of course, he would not think of undertaking so long a journey without the support of your company. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... vertical plunger-type pump beneath the other end. Heavy, flat chains were secured to a sector at each end of the working beam and to the engine and pump piston rods in such a way that the rods were always tangent to a circle whose center was at the beam pivot. The weight of the reciprocating pump parts pulled the pump end of the beam down; the atmosphere, acting on the open top of the piston in the steam cylinder, caused the engine end of the ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... fact scarcely concerned her, and Lanfear drew a breath of relief in his surprise. He asked, at another tangent: "What made you think I was ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... way to help, later. And, anyway, just to look at me is proof that you don't have to get ground up in the hopper like everybody else or shut the door of the industrial squirrel-cage on yourself in order not to starve. Perhaps that'll give some cleverer person the courage to start out on his own tangent." ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... musical method. This latter worthy had easy steering to do, so he joined in; he was fond of variety, and he sang some lines in a high falsetto which sounded like the whistling of the gaff (with perhaps a touch of razor-grinding added); then just when you expected him to soar off at a tangent to Patti's topmost A, he let his voice fall to his boots, and emitted a most bloodcurdling bass growl, which carried horrid suggestions of midnight fiends and ghouls and the silent tomb. Still, his mates thought he was a musical prodigy; he was entranced with the ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... and the pattern was a cross, a tricolor. Then they wheeled round the circle that was and was not their goal, and did it all over again; but instead of intersecting at the center circle they struck off there at a tangent, and the pattern, blue by blue divided from white by white, and all red-flecked, was two wide V's set point to point, a pattern that ran away and vanished as each thread, returning, wheeled round the circle whence the ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... lengths are made equal for the lines C and F. In the neighbourhood of 550 mm the tangent to the curve is parallel to the axis of wave-lengths; and the focal length varies least over a fairly large range of colour, therefore in this neighbourhood the colour union is at its best. Moreover, this region ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... A thrust at tangent to the surface. Once past whatever this barrier was, they could skim the surface and come back to land on the proper site. They backed the ship farther out into space. They made their thrust with full ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... she could turn off so suddenly at a complete tangent, spoke to her once or twice but got no other answer than a long, contented sigh. He stood for a little while trying to make out her outline in the dim corner of the room. Then he tiptoed out to the ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... /n./ Abbreviation for 'argument' (to a function), used so often as to have become a new word (like 'piano' from 'pianoforte'). "The sine function takes 1 arg, but the arc-tangent function can take either 1 or 2 ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... him tightly to his clotted breast. We were, of course, alarmed a second time for the man's safety, and by great exertions tried to release him from his perilous condition; but our efforts were not a little crippled by the legs of the Norwegian, which he flung violently about at every possible tangent; and one arm, moving with the rapid oscillating motion of a steam-engine, brought the fist in sharp contact with the other Norwegian's chest, and threw him, head over heels, into the identical pool whence he had himself but ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... of age; and her father's small legacy gave her a measure of independence. But how could one set about getting married in the face of open opposition? And—how keep the truth from Roy? Or tone it down, so that he would not go off at a tangent straightaway? ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... shall strictly correspond with the fact; but, from the parallax, as derived from observation (and if this cannot be depended on certainly, no magnitudes in astronomy can), we find, that the moon does not fall from the tangent of her orbit, as much as the theory requires. As this is of vital importance to the integrity of the theory we are advocating, we have made the computation on Newton's own data, except such as were necessarily inaccurate at ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxoi Optima nec dulces occurrent oscula nati Praeripere, et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent. Non poteris factis florentibus esse, tuisque Praesidium. Misero misere," aiunt, "omnia ademit Una dies infesta tibi tot praemia vitae." Illud in his rebus non addunt, "nec tibi earum Jam desiderium rerum super insidet una." Quod bene si videant animo dictisque sequantur, Dissolvant ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... and was incapable of stirring effects beyond those which sprang from pure emotionality. The tone was produced by a blow against the string, delivered by a bit of brass set in the farther end of the key. The action was that of a direct lever, and the bit of brass, which was called the tangent, also acted as a bridge and measured off the segment of string whose vibration produced the desired tone. It was therefore necessary to keep the key pressed down so long as it was desired that the tone should sound, a fact which must be kept in mind if one would understand ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... which is based on the Post Office pattern resistance coil, and is capable of testing to approximate accuracy up to 200 ohms, and to measure roughly up to 2,000 ohms. Mr R. Anderson's apparatus is also very handy, consisting of a case containing three Leclanche cells, and a galvanometer with a "tangent" scale and certain standard resistances. Some useful articles on the protection of buildings from lightning will be found in Arms and Explosives, July, August, and September 1892, and by ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... of the pink-and-silver morning Margaret went back to her work, Gardley riding by her side, and Bud riding at a discreet distance behind, now and then going off at a tangent after a stray cottontail. It was wonderful what good sense Bud ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... Law of Motion and the Parallelogram of Forces, instead of the earth going off at a tangent in the direction of A E, it will take a mean path in the direction of A B, its path being curved instead ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... on another tangent. "Suppose it is true?" she asked herself. "Suppose he has fallen sick away up there, miles and miles from ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... one and there a one, I correct him of my own private and personal knowledge, when he frankly admits that I am right; and after casually explaining how he does occasionally mistake the Countess of DUNNOYER for Lady ELIZABETH MARTIN, he goes off at a tangent, and picks out several other distinguished-looking personages, numbering them as "first to right," "second to left," and so forth, as if in a collection of wax-works, giving to each one of them a name and a history. His acquaintance with the private life of the aristocracy ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... a theological tangent. A great artist has bequeathed us his beliefs,—drawn and painted in many works, with every patient, virile, expressive power at his command. There has been enough and to spare of shrieks or scoffs. A little humility and a little study is in place, too. For the rest, let us not ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... the nearing picture, till at length their glances met for a moment, when she demurely sent off hers at a tangent and gave him the benefit of her three-quarter face, while with courteous completeness of conduct he lifted his hat in a large arc. Marty dropped behind; and when Fitzpiers held out his hand, Grace touched it ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... his eye which made the other two chaplains grin, I could see, at some joke they had between them. "I'll try and call on your father, if I can find time before he leaves Portsmouth. Tell him when you get back, that old Tangent asked ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... did you ever know me to go off on a tangent, without some sort of a string to hold on to? I ain't goin' to swarm all alone! I never heard of such a thing. Though if I couldn't swarm, and the thing was to be done, I say I'd try it. But ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... then turn on the smallest and sharpest possible flame of the blast lamp. The tube is next taken in both hands and held horizontally above the flame so that the scratch is exactly over it. The tubing is now rotated rapidly about its axis, and lowered so that the flame is just tangent to its lower side. After about ten seconds of heating, it is removed from the flame and the hot portion quickly breathed upon, when it will generally crack apart very nicely. Care must be taken to hold the tube at right angles to the flame during the heating, and to rotate it so that only a narrow ...
— Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing • Francis C. Frary
... that gives him his horrible opportunity of getting ahead of all his poor little competitors and inserting—this! It's the quintessence of all that is wrong with the world;—squalid, shameless huckstering!" He flew off at a tangent. "Four or five years ago they made this ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... off at a tangent, ten to one Miss Clare'll be down the next day and set all straight again," was the general verdict ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... vertical angle, and multiply its natural tangent by the distance between instrument and foot of object; the ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... root of a number, which has none in common arithmetic. After all, the imagination ought not to be startled any more at so many orders of infinites than at the so well-known proposition, viz., that curve lines may always be made to pass between a circle and a tangent; or at that other, namely, that matter is divisible in infinitum. These two truths have been demonstrated many years, and are no less incomprehensible than the things we ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... a sudden emergency the sensible animal will instantaneously check his impetuosity, 'prop,' and swing round at a tangent." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Not content with this, they seized on some luckless men who were descending the steps, and clasping them with their powerful right arms, spun them around like so many tops and sent them whizzing off at a tangent. Loud bursts of laughter greeted this performance, and the stout river maidens returned to their dance ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... will make this clearer. Draw a line from the laya center in the sun to that in the earth. Draw a narrow ellipse, with this line as its major axis, and shade it. At each end of the axis strike the beginning of an ellipse that will be tangent. If positive energy is along the shaded ellipse, negative energy is in each field beyond—earth and sun. This is a very crude illustration of a fundamental statement elaborated to the most minute detail in explanation of all astronomical ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... in the vertical position, figured P' N', and it be carried in similar directions, coinciding with the dotted horizontal curve so far, as to cut the magnetic curves on the same side with it, the current will be from P' to N'. If the wire be considered a tangent to the curved surface of the cylindrical magnet, and it be carried round that surface into any other position, or if the magnet itself be revolved on its axis, so as to bring any part opposite to the tangential wire,—still, if afterwards the wire be moved in the directions indicated, the ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... room to do this, and as he paused on the threshold there was a sudden crash. Part of the air pump seemed to fly off at a tangent, and a second later had smashed down on the Cardite motor. This stopped in an instant, and the projectile began falling. Fortunately it was but a short distance above the moon's surface, and came down with a jar, which did not ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... all. It denotes an over-sensitive, over-cautious, timid person. It also indicates a highly nervous, easily excited individual, one who has little control over himself or his temper, who is easily put out over trifles, and liable to do the most erratic things, or fly off at a tangent when irritated. Such people are always in trouble, generally fighting or quarrelling with those about them and over things that are of no consequence. They are likewise so easily wounded in their feelings, that even a look or an imagined slight will put them out ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... to dispute the passage of an intruder. The old foreman noticed the boyish figure and delayed the meeting, reining in to critically examine cattle which he had branded some three months before. With diligent intent, the greeting was kept pending, the wayfarer riding away on a tangent and veering back on his general course, until Dell's suspicion was aroused. The return of Priest was so unexpected that the boy's eyes filled with tears, and the two rode along until the grove was reached, ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... we met the hounds unexpectedly; when you were mounted on your favourite Wildfire, and appeared to have imbibed some of his spirit, for you went off at a tangent, crying out, 'Come along, papa!' and cleared the hedge at the roadside, crossed Slapperton's farm, galloped up the lane leading to Curmersfield, took the ditch, with the low fence beyond at Cumitstrong's ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... not see the beauty of the valley, but as, far below, he saw Judith trot up to the Day's corral, he was smitten suddenly by his sense of loneliness. Too bad of Jude, he thought, always to be flying off at a tangent like that! A guy couldn't offer the least criticism of her fool horse, that she didn't lose her temper. Funny thing to see a girl with a hot temper. Ordinary enough in a man, but girls were usually just mean and spitty, like cats. A guy ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... said he, "tell me what on earth has sent Edgington off on this tangent. He's the man who first suggested to me that I ought to run. It was his scheme. He's my lawyer and my friend. What does ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... story of the auto. Most likely, said they, it was a late Store delivery van. I had imagined so much. They paid detestable tribute to my imaginative powers. Married people are like this. With disconcerting abruptness, they wheel round together and go off at some incalculable tangent, serenely unconscious of any need for explanation. They made matters worse by harping on my imagination. And they capped all by declaring that I was a bad man and hoped I would keep my evil thoughts to myself ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... [Footnote: Cf. Mill, Utilitarianism, chap. 2: "When people who are tolerably fortunate in their outward lot do not find in life sufficient enjoyment to make it valuable to them, the cause generally is, caring for nobody but themselves."] It is saner, less likely to be veered off on some tangent of morbid and ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... unwary rabbit allowed the dogs to get between himself and the earths. Too late the rabbit started up from the leaf he had been nibbling, and headed for his burrow. Tara bounded forward and cut off his retreat. Wheeling then at a tangent, the rabbit flew toward the far end of the orchard, where there was a gap in the fence. Tara was after him like the wind, her puppies excitedly galloping in her wake, yapping with delight. Half-way across the orchard Tara overtook the bunny, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... growing stack, caught it with his pitchfork and threw it on, with a sideways twist, to the man on the lower end who got further and further along as he packed the sheaves, so that the thrower had to increase the tangent of his twist at every throw. Each of the men caught and tossed and placed, always to the moment, with the unending flow of machinery. And again —so often before, but never so keenly as now—was Ishmael struck with the pattern of it all.... This could not surely ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... figure how to do it. Normally, before the crushing acceleration, he would have recognized the difficulty in a flash. Now his confused mind had to labor through steps that sometimes took him off on a wild tangent. ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... that, with the single exception of that one woman who tried to poison him, nobody but one man—this particular one man—has ever made any attempt to harm the boy. Fanatics, like those Cingalese, cleave to an idea to the end, Mr. Narkom; they don't cast it aside and go off at another tangent. You have heard what Lady Chepstow says the native women told her: the boy was sacred; their priests had commanded them to appease Buddha by doing homage to him until the tooth was found, and the tooth has not been found up to the present day! That means that ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... ponies were almost spent, and any resolute hand could have impelled them away from the carriage-pole with which the roans threatened to impale their wretched sides. The front wheel, however, made him heroic, going off at a tangent into a cloth-merchant's shop, and precipitating a clash while he still clung to the reins. The door flew open on the under side and Hilda fell through, grasping at the dust of the road; while the driver, discovering that his seat was no longer horizontal, ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Newton, suspecting that the influence of the earth's attraction, gravity, may extend as far as the moon, and be the force that causes her to revolve in her orbit round the earth, calculated that, by her motion in her orbit, she was deflected from the tangent thirteen feet every minute; but, by ascertaining the space through which bodies would fall in one minute at the earth's surface, and supposing it to be diminished in the ratio of the inverse square, it appeared that ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... indeed! The snow fell steadily and I tramped on over the joint signature of the girl and the rabbit. Near the lake they parted company, the rabbit leading off at a tangent, on a line parallel with the lake, while his pursuer’s steps pointed ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... dancing jigs. Tim next played slower, but his speed increased again as he saw the dancers warming to their work, till his bow moved so rapidly over the strings of his fiddle, and his arm and his head gave such eccentric jerks, that I half expected at any moment to see the one fly off at a tangent and the other come bounding into the middle of the room. Larry and I kept on one side, trying to look greatly interested with the performance, while we managed to have a few words now and then with some of the men, who were ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... mode of action: 'The law of action appears to be that the line or axis of MAGNE-CRYSTALLIC force (being the resultant of the action of all the molecules) tends to place itself parallel, or as a tangent, to the magnetic curve, or line of magnetic force, passing through the place where the crystal is situated.' The magne-crystallic force, moreover, appears to him 'to be clearly distinguished from the magnetic or diamagnetic forces, in that it causes neither ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... completely a star of a confined orbit, that his ideas seldom described a tangent to their ordinary revolutions. He was so much accustomed to hear of England ruling colonies, the East and the West, Canada, the Cape, and New South Wales, that it was not an easy matter for him to conceive himself to be ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... I wouldn't set my whole pack of dogs on 'em till they would be torn to pieces. I'd give 'em hunting! But excuse me, Mr.—Mr.—What's-your-name; I've gone away from the pint, which I always do fly off at a tangent and lose my bearings whenever I hear that lady accused. Now, sir, what had you to tell me to my advantage?" inquired the farmer, drawing a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... began and stopped abruptly. He went off at a tangent to ask for information about these Babble Machines. For the most part, the crowd present had been shabbily or even raggedly dressed, and Graham learnt that so far as the more prosperous classes were concerned, in all ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... Portions of my being stirred that had never stirred before, and things ancient and inexplicable rose to the surface and beckoned me to follow. I felt as though I were about to fly off, at some immense tangent, into an outer space hitherto unknown even in dreams. And so singular was the result produced upon me that I was uncommonly glad to anchor my mind, as well as my eyes, upon the masterful personality of the doctor at my side, for ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... each, which impresses the mind with the most distinct idea of parallelism. Neither are any of the lines actually straight and unbroken; on the contrary, they are all made up of the most exquisite and varied curves, and it is the imagined line which joins the apices of these—a tangent to them all, which is in reality straight.[40] They are suggested, not represented, right lines; but the whole volume of cloud is visibly and totally bounded by them; and, in consequence, its whole body is felt to be dragged out and elongated by the force of the tempest ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... basket maker's grief sent the insane man off on another tangent. "Don't you worry about me. Helen and John and their mother worry a lot about me. They think I'm going ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... him in trying to keep pace with his wife's vagaries. Matrimony had not cured her love for side-streets, short cuts and chance acquaintances, and she was gradually making her husband travel at a similar tangent. When they started to go to church he would find, to his amazement, that they were in the Museum. If they journeyed with a Museum for an objective they were certain to pull up in the Botanic Gardens. A call on a ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... steam tight. The head is screwed in and soldered, and the yoke, G, which receives the connecting rod pin, is screwed into the head. The connecting rod, H, is of steel with brass ends. The lower end, which receives the crank pin, is split, and provided with a tangent screw for taking up wear. The crank pin is secured in the crank disk, I, by a nut on the back. The eccentric rod, J, is of steel, screwed at its lower end into an eccentric strap of cast or wrought ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... this frailty I shall speak no further; indeed, I do not understand how I happened to be led into this line of discourse, for it is quite at a tangent with the subject I had in mind—namely, the ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... of dirty but fascinating ragamuffins she became an interested tangent, a silent observer. Here I had my first meeting with her. I was not of her class, neither was I to the alley born, but sailed in the sane mid-channel that ameliorates the distinction between ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... in, but he said I should not encourage the kid in his crazy thinking. "Joey's heard everybody talking about those stars moving, the radio newscasters blared about it, so he's excited too. But he's got a lot more imagination than most people, because he's a cripple, and he could go off on a crazy tangent because he's upset about Charlie. The thing to do is give him a logical explanation instead of letting him think his fantasy ...
— To Remember Charlie By • Roger Dee
... people is governed by authority and convention, but behind these there lies always the mystery of human nature, uncertain and elusive, and apt now and again to go off at a tangent and disturb the smooth working of organised routine. Some man or woman will appear who departs from the normal order of procedure, who follows ideals rather than rules, and whose methods are irregular, and ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... madman with an illusion about a precipice; John Howard a moral lunatic in whom the affections were reversed; Saul a moping maniac with homicidal paroxysms and nocturnal visions; Paul an incoherent lunatic, who in his writings flies off at a tangent, and who admits having once been the victim of a photopsic illusion in broad daylight; Nebuchadnezzar a lycanthropical lunatic; Joan of Arc a theomaniac; Bobby Burton and Oliver Cromwell melancholy maniacs; ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... twinty-nine, subthract three f'r th' duchess, a quarther to one o'clock an' eighty miles fr'm Narragansett pier is two-an'-a-half, plus th' load-wather-line iv th' saloon companionway, akel to two-fifths iv th' differentyal tangent. Huroo! Misther Sicrety, ye can go home an' tell ye'er wife th' counthry's safe.' He has to be a smart man. A good book-keeper, as th' pote says, is th' counthry's on'y safety. He mus' be careful, too, d'ye mind. Th' honor iv th' army an' the navy is at stake. Wan or th' ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... for these public residences so that they may give their entire time to operas, theatres, balls, receptions and levees, and they are in a perpetual whirl, like a whip-top, spinning round and round and round very prettily until it loses its equipoise and shoots off into a tangent. But the difference is, in one case it is a top and in the other ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... familiar to you all. Permit me, therefore, by a kind of geometrical construction which I once ventured to employ in London, to give you a notion of the magnitude of this man. Let Newton stand erect in his age, and Young in his. Draw a straight line from Newton to Young, tangent to the heads of both. This line would slope downwards from Newton to Young, because Newton was certainly the taller man of the two. But the slope would not be steep, for the difference of stature was not excessive. The line would form what engineers call ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... every mood of a man without study or effort, unless they are remarkably gifted. Many a wife has neglected her mind, body and powers and when some woman with developed powers enters her marriage orbit, she flies off at a tangent, admits defeat and gets a divorce without putting forth an effort to win back the husband ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... has said anything or done anything. It's just instinctive. I may be wholly wrong in having come to you and in taking up your time, but there are two things I wanted to tell you. I could have told Donald, but if I did and his mind went off at a tangent thinking of these things he wouldn't be nearly so likely to be in condition to give his best thought to his studies. If I really made him see what I think I have seen, and fear what I know I fear, he might fail where I would give almost anything ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... contiguity, contact, proximity, apposition, abuttal^, juxtaposition; abutment, osculation; meeting, appulse^, rencontre^, rencounter^, syzygy [Astr.], coincidence, coexistence; adhesion &c 46; touching &c v.. (touch) 379. borderland; frontier &c (limit) 233; tangent; abutter. V. be contiguous &c adj.; join, adjoin, abut on, march with; graze, touch, meet, osculate, come in contact, coincide; coexist; adhere &c 46. [cause to be contiguous] juxtapose; contact; join (unite) 43; link (vinculum) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... I claim the sole credit of it. Father and mother both saints. I am a moral tangent, flying off between them. Well, we are friends ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... velocity of descent; the following is an example of such a device which was successfully employed in a chute of the above dimensions, 400 ft. long and having a drop of 110 ft. This chute had a maximum inclination of 45 and its lower end curved to a horizontal tangent, running into the storehouse. Near the bottom of the chute a horizontal strip was nailed across the upper edges and to it was nailed the upper end of a 20 ft., 112-in. board, the lower end of which ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... the switch and turned to the intercom. "Control deck to radar bridge. Do we have a clear tangent ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... long before the chairman of the committee on the judiciary (one of the effects of the resolution was entirely to change the coloring of all testimony throughout the vast Republic of Leaplow) made his report on the subject-matter of the resolution. This person was a Tangent, who had a besetting wish to become a Riddle, although the leaning of our house was decidedly Horizontal; and, as a matter of course, he took the Riddle side of this question. The report, itself, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... staggered: ere he could recover at this thunderbolt of Gallicism, Denys went triumphant off at a tangent, and stigmatized all monks as hypocrites. "Do but look at them, how they creep about and cannot ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... impulse, or tangential wheel (so called because the driving stream of water strikes the wheel at a tangent) is best adapted to situations where the amount of water is limited, and the head is large. Thus, a mountain brook supplying only seven cubic feet of water a minute—a stream less than two-and-a-half inches deep flowing over a weir ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... weariness, the daily expense of spirit, and that daily river of circumstance to be swum through, at any hazard, under the penalty of shame or death. I could not but think how good was the end of that long travel; and with that, my mind swung at a tangent to my lord. For was not my lord dead also? a maimed soldier, looking vainly for discharge, lingering derided in the line of battle? A kind man, I remembered him; wise, with a decent pride, a son perhaps too dutiful, a husband only too loving, one ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... meditations. First he thought of his friends, and wondered when they would join him; then his mind reverted to Mrs. Martha Bardell; and from that lady it wandered, by a natural process, to the dingy counting-house of Dodson and Fogg. From Dodson and Fogg's it flew off at tangent, to the very centre of the history of the queer client; and then it came back to the Great White Horse at Ipswich, with sufficient clearness to convince Mr. Pickwick that he was falling asleep: so he aroused himself, and began ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... and at once becomes a pretty stream, glittering with great numbers of the finny tribe, which gives name to it. The circular wall which once inclosed the fountainhead is now partly broken down. Upon each side, and almost tangent, are ruins of pueblos so ancient that the traditions of present races do not reach them. They are nearly circular in form, and of equal dimension. One measured three hundred and fifteen short paces, about eight hundred feet, in circumference. They were of stone; but the walls have crumbled, ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... don't know what to do with father," she said. "He flies off at a tangent over the smallest things. Elizabeth dear, can you lend me twenty dollars? I'll get ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... struck his wheel with such impetus that it went off at a tangent, and he had to follow it on ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... but, my dear sir, do not let us fly off at a tangent to morality or philosophy; these have nothing to do with the present purpose. You have before you all the papers relative to this transaction. Now, will you do me the favour, the service, to look them over, and try whether ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... does. Bring him to the lounge when you are finished, Moa. Come, Prince—Hahn will need us." He chuckled grimly. "Hahn seems to fear we will plunge into this asteroid like a wild comet gone suddenly tangent!" ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... The tangent-sight on the standard of their machine-gun is always at 200, and they have not altered the range for three months. Occasionally at night the N.C.O. seizes the traversing-handles, and with his thumb on the button slowly sweeps ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... line offers a curious object for analysis. It is not for the eye a very easy form to grasp. We bend it or we leave it. Unless it passes through the centre of vision, it is obviously a tangent to the points which have analogous relations to that centre. The local signs or tensions of the points in such a tangent vary in an unseizable progression; there is violence in keeping to it, and the effect is forced. This makes the dry and stiff quality of any long ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana |
