"Focused" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... satisfactory to most of the members, who preserved a silence of indecision, with the single exception of Ruth, who uttered an enthusiastic affirmative vote, as a matter of course, only to shrink back perplexedly when she found angry eyes focused on her from every side. But Cicily nonchalantly announced the motion as having been carried, without troubling to ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... doubt that in England the decline in the birth-rate began about 1876-78, when the trial of Charles Bradlaugh and the Theosophist leader, Mrs. Annie Besant, on the charge of circulating "neo-Malthusian" literature, focused public attention on the possibility of birth control, and gradually brought a knowledge of the means of contraception within reach of many. In the United States statistics are lacking, but medical men and others in a ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... under MAO Zedong established an autocratic socialist system that, while ensuring China's sovereignty, imposed strict controls over everyday life and cost the lives of tens of millions of people. After 1978, his successor DENG Xiaoping and other leaders focused on market-oriented economic development and by 2000 output had quadrupled. For much of the population, living standards have improved dramatically and the room for personal choice has expanded, yet political controls ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... however, that lured me back to Labrador. There was the vision of dear old Hubbard as I so often saw him during our struggle through that rugged northland wilderness, wasted in form and ragged in dress, but always hopeful and eager, his undying spirit and indomitable will focused in his words to me, and I can still see him as he ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... At first the name scarcely reached his consciousness, but in some strange way it focused his disquiet. It was as though for a long time past he too had been indefinitely ill, and now at an exasperating touch the poisoned blood rushed to a head of pain. He felt Cosgrave plucking at his sleeve, fretfully like a sick child, ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... I'm not avoiding it," the engineer proceeded, for this was the critical minute, and he sought to have all eyes focused upon him instead of upon the activity at his back. "The sheriff represents the law here in San Mateo, and I give you plain warning that every man who attempts violence to-night will be called upon to pay the account. By to-morrow the ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... focused his attention, the crystal expanded, then became a huge window through which he could see the shores of the inland sea, then the lands to the east of the large island on which he had caused his Residence to be built. He looked ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... not specify what, if any, means had been taken to guard against fraud, its only reference in this connection being a statement that "Mr. D. D. Home frequently urged us to hold his hands and feet." But it none the less created a tremendous sensation, public attention being focused on the fact that an awkward, callow, country lad had successfully sustained the scrutiny of men of learning, intelligence, and high repute. No longer, it would seem, could there be doubt of the validity of his claims, and greater demands ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... about?" The young man's wavering attention focused itself on her now with swift completeness. He had hardly heard her, until a few moments before, when her conversation had first drifted to that ever fascinating feminine topic of foreign lords and American heiresses, then narrowed down, much to his inward ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... few. Even in cities which boast of a system of organized kindergartens, only a small portion of the children attend them. On the other hand, since practically all school children enter the grades, it is on them that an inquiry into elementary education must be focused. ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... true artist, in the crystal mirror of whose mind the universal harmony is focused and reflected, this secret of the cause and source of rhythm—that it dwells in a correlation of parts based on an ultimate simplicity—is instinctively apprehended. A knowledge of it formed part of ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... optical pyrometer is focused on the body, the temperature of which is to be measured. The rays converge in the telescope on metal cells, heating them, and thereby generating a small electric current, the voltage of which is read an a calibrated ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... Attention thus focused upon her, Libbie crawled from under the seat where she had dived, following an ostrich-like impulse to hide her head from coming danger. Her confusion was increased by the tactless comment of the operator who, seeing her "full view" for the ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... leaping from stone to stone, and stepped up so close to the falling water that the spray splashed him. It was somewhere about here, he thought, that the man, Blake, had focused his field-glass ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... bay grew sharper, and correspondingly more significant, I became distracted, and focused a strained vision on the canyon deeps. I looked along the slope to the notch where the wall curved and followed the base line of the yellow cliff. Quite suddenly I saw a very small black object moving with snail-like ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... forward and intently eyed something she saw on the verge of the ledge above. She kept her eyes focused there, and carefully felt for and caught up her rifle. She silently lifted it, took ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... If the light is properly focused, that is, if the rays are leaving the reflector in parallel lines, but the light does not strike the center of the track, ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... contemptuously. "Just wait till you see her. She will be focused by every eye-glass in Brighton when she takes the ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... of Fuji; a charm perhaps due rather to softest lucidity than to any positive tone—an atmospheric limpidity extraordinary, with only a suggestion of blue in it, through which the most distant objects appear focused with amazing sharpness. The sun is only pleasantly warm; the jinricksha, or kuruma, is the most cosy little vehicle imaginable; and the street-vistas, as seen above the dancing white mushroom-shaped hat of my sandalled runner, have an ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... special service of will-power, or propelling force, it is necessary first to test its freedom. This may be done by taking the humming tone and bringing to bear upon it a strong pressure of energy. If the tone sharpens under the strain it is not perfectly focused. If it remains mellow one may venture upon the next step, which is to practise various vowel sounds and elements of speech with concentrated energy. The sense of bearing on to the voice, or endeavoring ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... is intended for measuring spectra photographs, gratings, divided scales, or such objects which can be focused by the microscope and will allow rapid measurements of the highest possible accuracy. The measurement depends on the accuracy of the micrometer screw, which is cut and corrected with great care. The screw has a pitch of .5 mm. and diameter ...
— Astronomical Instruments and Accessories • Wm. Gaertner & Co.
... She shook him gently and begged him to speak to her, but she could get no response and under her exploring fingers his heart apparently had ceased to beat. For a few seconds she stared at the widening patch of red on his torn shirt; then her gaze shifted and focused on the rifle in the corner by the door. As she looked at the weapon her wide, fear-struck eyes narrowed and hardened with a sudden resolve. Seizing the gun, she cocked it and stepped into ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... we may chiefly ascribe to Gregory VII; the content to St. Thomas Aquinas. But the whole resultant unity is less the product of great personalities than of a common instinct and a common conviction. Men saw the world sub specie unitatis; and its kaleidoscopic variety was insensibly focused into a single scheme under the stress of their vision. The heavens showed forth the glory of God, and the firmament declared His handiwork. Zoology became, like everything else, a willing servant of Christianity; and bestiaria moralizata were written to show ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... without number, an uneasy, far-focused look into his eyes; came hours on end when he would sit, every debonaire effort at lightness abandoned, staring moodily into the fire, motionless save for his nervous hands which never seemed to rest. Joe found it harder to entice him with the ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... in a reverie: his mind's eye was shut, as his physical eye might well have been, for the optic nerve, flaccid with ennui, conveyed nothing whatever of the printed page upon which the orb of vision was partially focused. Penrod was doing something very unusual and rare, something almost never accomplished except by coloured people or by a boy in school on a spring day: he was doing really nothing at all. He was merely a ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... touch to it. The spectacle inclined one to laugh, almost making one forget for a moment that here in this spectacle one beheld the misery of war made concrete; that in the lorn state of these poor folks its effects were focused and made vivid; that, while in some way it touched every living creature on the globe, here it touched ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... permissible to say so, absolutely without restraint. I beg him to take into consideration also that the present moment might really be for her one of those in which all the essence of life, of all the past and all the present, perhaps, too, all the future, is concentrated, as it were, focused. I must briefly recall, too, the anonymous letter of which she had spoken to Praskovya Ivanovna with so much irritation, though I think she said nothing of the latter part of it. Yet it perhaps contained the explanation of the possibility of the terrible question with ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to give up the "Ghost Dance" at the bidding of the authorities, the growing suspicion and alarm focused upon Sitting Bull, who in spirit had never been any too submissive, and it was determined to order his arrest. At the special request of Major McLaughlin, agent at Standing Rock, forty of his Indian police were sent out to Sitting Bull's home on Grand River to secure his person (followed ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... her eyes as she focused on me. She took her time deciding; but from the way she snuggled up to Konnel to whisper in his ear, it looked as if she might really be stuck on him. ...
— Fee of the Frontier • Horace Brown Fyfe
... it to her bosom. Her hair, rich as Australian gold, half escaped its chignon and lay across her shoulders. She danced light as the breeze up the marble stairway, and at its climax the spotlight focused on her, covering her with the sheen of mica; then just as lightly down the steps again, so rapidly that her hair was tossed outward in a ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... of myself I joined madly in the cheering; but the boy didn't let down. Now that his enemies recognized the source of their peril, they focused upon him all their fury. They tried to destroy him. They fell upon him like animals; they worried and they harried and they battered him until I felt sick for him and for the girl beside me, who had grown so faint and pale. But his body was of my making; I had spent ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... the White Hussars, and the Tyneside Tail Twisters hunting a Sikh Regiment, till the lean lathy Singhs panted with exhaustion. Bobby was dusty and dripping long before noon, but his enthusiasm was merely focused ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... the first the constitutional convention had become a political body. Republicans controlled it, and their insistence upon unrestricted negro suffrage gave colour to the whole document, until the Democrats, demanding its defeat, focused upon it their united opposition. As a candidate for comptroller Horace Greeley likewise became an issue. Democrats could not forget his impatient, petulant, and, as they declared, unfair charges of election frauds, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... why our astronomers haven't seen anything through their big telescopes. They are focused light-years away and their field of vision is so narrow that even if UFO's did exist and littered the atmosphere they wouldn't ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... "think of the army as a sun, and of every loyal individual soldier, officer and private alike, as a ray of that sun and there is your true equality. Pershing's rank was simply the burning glass that focused our two million individual rays to a point of such equality that they could move as one. And I noticed another thing in that review, too," continued John, earnestly, "even if I was supposed to have my eyes front, I noticed that ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... and somewhere to the east of it—the only sea- mark given—a certain headland, known indifferently as Cape Adam and Eve, or Cape Jack and Jane, and distinguished by two colossal figures, the gross statuary of nature. These we were to find; for these we craned and stared, focused glasses, and wrangled over charts; and the sun was overhead and the land close ahead before we found them. To a ship approaching, like the Casco, from the north, they proved indeed the least conspicuous features of a striking coast; the surf flying high above its base; strange, austere, and feathered ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... second day of the trial Aline sat beside her husband, a dainty little figure of fear, shrinking from the observation focused upon her from all sides. The sight of her forlorn sensitiveness so touched Ridgway's heart that he telegraphed Virginia Balfour to come and help support ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... speech, her horizon suddenly expanded to take in the city and the vague picture of the reservation to the north. She realized that the eyes of the whole community were focused on her dearest friend. Up on the quiet, shaded college campus—the newspapers told her—they spoke of him contemptuously. He was a cheap politician, full of unsound economic principles, with a history of dishonest land deals behind him. It would be a shame to the community to be represented by ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... prepared for. Owing, perhaps, to the many and great events of these last years, their characters have been suddenly and completely transformed. Some ruling motive—ambition, family cares, or the mere instinctive love of study—has gathered together and focused their vague thoughts and scattered powers; has brought about the habit of reflection, and turned their thoughts towards the great problem of life; has given to all a purpose, and a path to travel, and left them no time to mourn the vanished past. We have all entered upon our second youth, with ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... uncle she stopped abruptly, feigned to be looking at the sign over his head, and when his glasses presently focused upon her, pretended suddenly to be intent upon the face of the court-house clock two ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... He focused the exit terminal in Diana's apartment. There was no way of knowing whether the focus worked or ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... focused them upon the boundary of the wood, finding that I could distinguish everything ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... crushed in. Right in the middle of the forehead, pasted there, a gray-colored, diamond shaped paper seal flaunted itself—the device of the Gray Seal. In Jimmie Dale' hand, hidden as he turned his back, the tiny combination of powerful lenses was focused on the seal. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... in connection with that which the child desires to imitate. At first, definite acts focused the most of his interest and aroused imitation, now, interest begins to attach itself to the actor as well, and the child not only desires to imitate the deed but also to emulate the doer. Out of ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... clearly treating itself to a sensation, and upon Philip were focused the eyes of all. From now he was a marked man. The President, stirred by the wishes of a large part of the people, expressed by them in divers ways, offered him reinstatement in the Army with the rank of Major, and indicated, through the Secretary of War, that ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... hand to her head. Her eyes were half open, and still he could not be sure whether they focused on him and her ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... day more eyes probably than had been trained in Peep O'Day's direction in all the unremarked and unremarkable days of his life put together were focused upon him. Persons who theretofore had regarded his existence—if indeed they gave it a thought—as one of the utterly trivial and inconsequential incidents of the cosmic scheme, were moved to speak to him, to clasp his hand, and, in numerous instances, to express ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... muttered Captain Dodge under his breath, and murmurs of admiration could be heard from all the members of the crew gathered nearby. No one spoke, however, for all eyes and all interest were focused on the feat Fred ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... changing conformation of the clouds, the far flight of a gull, the new perfume and texture of the wind that flowed over his hot temples. But as it was, the sea took him by surprise. Coming over a little rise, his eyes focused for another long, dun fold of the plain, it seemed for an instant as if he had lost his balance over a void; for a wink he felt the passing of a strange sickness. He went off a little way to the side of the road and sat down on a ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... in a profession has many blessings that the mother who remains at home never has. The mother who remains at home has a viewpoint that is often quite likely, wholly unconsciously, of course, to become small, to become narrow, to become focused upon small details; on the other hand, the mother whose mind and whose heart are so full of the affairs of the office, of the newspaper article she has just written, or the lecture she has just given or is about to give, or the meeting that ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... blinked, focused—and a great damn pyramid swam into view. I cursed and wheeled the eye in circles, scanning the surrounding country. It was flat, marshy bottom land without a bump. The only thing in a ten-mile circle was this pyramid—and that definitely wasn't ...
— The Repairman • Harry Harrison
... percentage of iodine is the unique distinctive fact in its chemistry. Discovered by Baumann in 1895, the presence of the element has focused the intelligence of chemists upon the gland, with the consequent demonstration of arsenic also in it. It was soon manifest that the secretion of the gland was dependent upon the iodine content for its activity. Active extracts of the thyroid like thyreoglobulin ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... focused his gaze at the Notch, from which the road sprang and flowed in slow undulations to a vanishing point in the blank spaces of the west. His pony, Gray Leg, head up and nostrils working, twitched back one ear as Lorry ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... shall this time select the apartment with almost sole reference to what comes through the walls. I shall enter one of those typical New York piles which O. Henry described as "paved with Parian marble in the entrance-hall, and cobblestones above the first floor," and my inquiry will be focused on things far other than Parian marble and cobblestones. I shall walk about the rooms and up and down the bowling-alleys of halls trying to make myself as sensitive to impressions as are the arms of the divining-rod ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... But the lawyer focused everyone's admiration on himself by telling them all about Switzerland, that wonderful country, that model for all small countries of the world. What social conditions, what a referendum, what ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... focused his gaze upon me, and his keen, penetrating gray eyes seemed to pierce into my soul and read my inmost thoughts. For perhaps half a minute he remained looking at me like that, then ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... from Terra showed a corresponding shift in interest at home. The discovery of the University had focused attention on the dead past of Mars; now the public was interested in Mars as a possible home for humanity. It was Tony Lattimer who brought archaeology back into the activities of the expedition ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper
... self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a host of others like them. They dwell too deep within us and are too much a part of our natures to come to our attention till the light of God is focused upon them. The grosser manifestations of these sins, egotism, exhibitionism, self-promotion, are strangely tolerated in Christian leaders even in circles of impeccable orthodoxy. They are so much in evidence as actually, for many people, to become identified with ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... become crazy over material things. We are looking only at the structure above ground. We are trying to get more smoke from the chimney. We are looking at space instead of service, at profits instead of volume. With our eyes focused on the structure above ground, we have lost sight of those human resources, thrift, imagination, integrity, vision and faith which make the structure possible. I feel that only by the business men can this foundation be strengthened ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... pushed to a spot near Betsy. He put down his now-linked Mahon machines and began to move away some of the recording apparatus focused on Betsy. ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... vast migration from the Atlantic seaboard to the interior. These were problems of territorial organization, of distribution of public lands, of inland trade, of highways and waterways, of revenue and appropriation problems that focused in the offices of the Secretaries of the Treasury and of War. And lurking behind all was the ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... render it upon his canvas is not to be explained. This impulse to immediate and concrete utterance is inspiration. And inspiration would seem to be a confluence of forces outside of the individual consciousness or will, focused at the instant into desire, which becomes the urge to creation. "The mind in creation," says Shelley, "is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... no more. He had been pacing the room, and now, while Hayes's perspiring attention was focused imploringly on Wong and McGinnis, ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... interest of what a very delightful thing it is to be for a little while so quiet that we can hear a pin drop. The second time something interferes, and the third time the children have become so well focused on listening that the little delicate sound is heard distinctly, and they beg mother to try and see if they cannot hear it again. By this time the dust is laid in the nursery, and by changing the games a little, or telling them a story first, the mother is able ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... eyebrows. "You needn't shout, Mr. Heinz. I'm not the least interested in what you do. My interest is focused completely on a collection of five thousand letters, telegrams, and visiphone calls I've received in the past three days alone. My constituents, Mr. Heinz, are making themselves clear. If the Grdznth ...
— PRoblem • Alan Edward Nourse
... effort; dismissed Drew from his mind, and focused his glance on the patient once more. Calamity Ben was moving his head restlessly from side to side, keeping up a gibbering mutter. It rose ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... jumped about searching her out. "There! now! Hold still!" cried Simpkins as they focused on the chair. ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... attention was focused on Alma Marston, who stood in the companionway clutching its sides and shrieking out her fears. The lantern showed her to him plainly. Its radiance lighted him also. He called to her several times, angrily ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... new responsibilities for us as we enter into this new international era. The whole power and will and wisdom of our Government and of our people should be focused to contribute to and to influence international action. It is intricate, continuing business. Many concessions and adjustments will ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... important to them, and they delayed longer than was their wont. Here the great cape with which the spur ends marks the division of the whole trend of the land north from that which runs more directly south toward Katatallik. There the whole force of the south-going polar streams, focused on the ice, keeps open water long after all the rest of the coast is locked in the grim grip of winter. The walrus herds seem, in the evolution of ages, to have got an appreciation of this fact ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... stationed himself in the crow's nest, and focused a telescope on the smoke. An officer, on deck, seemed to be waiting for a report ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... voice, sprang forward. He procured a chair, placed it directly before the cabinet, drew the flexible arm till the helmet rested perhaps four inches above the child's head but did not touch it, pulled forward the telescope and focused its ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... That focused attention upon the sheriff. Pan read in Matthews' eyes the very things he had suspected. And as he relaxed the mental and muscular strain under which he had waited, he ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... by sniffing movements, to a sound by cocking the head and turning the eyes towards the source of sound. The most instructive of this type of attention-reactions are those of the eyes. The eye is focused on the object that arouses attention, the lens being accommodated for its distance by the action of the little ciliary muscle inside the {250} eyeball; the two eyes are converged upon the object, so that the light from it strikes the fovea or best part of each ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... with a rush and a flutter of the heart, he knew that it was close beside him in the tent; and, when he turned over for a better hearing, it focused itself unmistakably not two feet away. It was a sound of weeping; Defago upon his bed of branches was sobbing in the darkness as though his heart would break, the blankets evidently stuffed against his ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... night. It made me quite ill to look at him. Though he was rather severe with me, I loved him, and my heart ached at his sufferings. He was so overcome by one idea that he could not even get in a passion! All his energies were focused on one point. And I knew that by speaking one little word all this suffering would cease. I could not ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... inheritance. The whole teaching of the culture of animals and plants leaves no room to question the persistency of character, and this is so grandly exemplified in the descendants of Mr. Edwards that it is interesting to see what inheritances were focused in him. ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... for a full minute before I focused my eyes enough to see, at the bottom, a thousand ...
— The Big Bounce • Walter S. Tevis
... as she was to seeing herself in motion pictures, was even more impressed than the others when observing her own actions at a time when she was wholly unconscious that a camera-man had his lens focused ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... the colonel. "Cream, no sugar. And bring a second cup as soon as I've finished with the first." Only a part of his attention was given to the waiter; the rest was focused on the instructions he was receiving. The instructions kept coming until after the coffee had been brought. ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett
... him quick to scent a story. He was not sure, of course, but the situation appeared to him at least suggestive. With the end of the play he wandered out with the crowd, edging his way close to the man and girl who had focused Gregory's attention, and following them into the street. He saw only a tall man with a certain quiet distinction of bearing, and a young and pretty girl, still flushed and excited, who went up the street a short distance and got into a small and shabby car. Bassett noted, carefully, the license ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... cautiously to the top of the divide, keeping in the coulees as much as possible, for we knew that other field-glasses would be focused on the hills. Once over the crest, we halted and watched for riders coming our way. But none appeared. Once I thought I glimpsed a moving speck on the farther bank of Lost River. MacRae brought the glasses to bear, and said it was two Policemen ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... once compelled to follow her protector's example, and before the ensuing season all her harbors were fortified and closed. In spite of the French occupation, a national reform movement had begun in this land. In Koenigsberg was formed the League of Virtue, which focused the new morality and patriotism of the masses. The pens of Fichte, Schleiermacher, and other great writers continued to build up public spirit. Stein accepted office, stipulating that the privy council should be abolished, and then freed the serfs. Among other important reforms ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... out his hands for the glasses that Blackie was offering, and focused them on the disappearing machine. Long and silently he watched her. The sun had been behind a cloud, but now one ray caught the aeroplane for a moment and turned her into a sparkling star of light. Tam put ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... demanded, staring blindly—with eyes not yet focused to the change from light to gloom—at the young man, who was sitting with the guide open on his knees, a tightly clenched fist resting on the transom at ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... had come, and now that the sun-ship was flying at a moderate speed, the ocean beneath was plainly visible; and its entire surface was covered with broken floes of ice and small, ragged icebergs. He seized a telescope and focused it below. A typical polar scene met his eyes: penguins strutted about on cakes of ice, a whale blowing ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... Harry Goldenburg dead. Was there some point he had overlooked? He knew how fatal it was in the work of criminal investigation to take anything for granted. Although the main work of the explorer was now focused on Grell, it was not entirely certain that he was the murderer. Indeed, strange as his proceedings had been, there might be some explanation that would account for them. It might be that after Grell was found the whole investigation would have ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... barrel; the necessity for access to the rods from inside that barrel; and the placement of the control booth at its outside end, the firing could only be forward, straight towards the sun on which the mirror was focused. ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., handing the mileage-books to the shortstop, focused his intellect on the C. N. & Q. timetable. "Oh, yes—you leave Union Station, Baltimore, at 7:30 A.M., arriving at Eastminster at noon; it is the only train, you can get, to make it in time for the game, so remember the ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... ran to the huge telescope and rapidly focused it where the new planet should be. Five hundred million miles beyond Neptune was a flaming path like the beam of a giant searchlight that extended exactly to the eighth solar planet. Phobar gasped. He could hardly credit the testimony of his eyes. He ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... Covenant of Works is a very old one, and it is not settled yet. It goes forever with a certain type of mind. Our criminal laws punish for the act—magistrates consider the deed. And it is only a few years ago since a judge in America focused the world's attention upon himself by refusing to punish delinquent children brought before him for their deeds. He organized the Juvenile Court, the sole intent of which is not to punish for the act, but to go back of this ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... hunt began. Tom had plotted a concentric search pattern, focused on the probable position worked out by the task-force computers. After checking his fix on the automatic navigator, Tom switched on the Damonscope and steered the Sea Hound on a gradually ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... possible that had Concha awaited Rezanov in St. Petersburg her attraction would have focused his desires irresistibly; but his mind had resigned itself to the prospect of separation for a definite period, and while it had not relegated her image to the background, her part in his life had been settled there among many ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... to be on deck, looking landward. And then at two o'clock it appeared. Far off in the northeast was a small black dot in the sky. It looked like a seabird; but it grew. In ten minutes the whole deck was excited. Every glass was focused on the growing black spot. And then it loomed up the size of a baseball; it showed colour, a dull yellow in the distance and then it swelled and took form and glowed brighter and came rushing toward us, as large as a moon, as large as a barrel, and then we saw its outlines, ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... one hand, for it was very light, Tom extended the electric flash, so that the glare would be thrown on the intruder and would leave his own person in the black shadows. Pressing the spring which caused the lantern to throw out a powerful glow, Tom focused the ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... beauty of scenery; to the outburst of spring, or the bloom of flowers, or the splendours of storms and sunsets. The indifference to nature of the Pope school was, so far, the temporary complacency of the new population focused in the metropolitan area in their own enlightenment and their contempt for the outside rustic. The love of field-sports was as strong as ever in the squire, and as soon as he began to receive some of the intellectual irradiation from the town Wit, he began to express the ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... from the distance, and her eyes focused squarely on his. "The Misfits," she said in her flat voice. "We ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... attractive advertisements, illustrated or otherwise. Find the line on which the attention is focused and measure its distance from the top and bottom. Test ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... artistically is harmony. At no other exposition have the buildings seemed to "hold together" so well; and at no other has there been the same perfect unity of artistic impression. The Chicago Exposition of 1893 focused the artistic expression of the nation at that time. It brought about the first great awakening of the country in artistic matters, and it practically revolutionized American architecture. The St. Louis Exposition of 1904, while less unified in plan, gave another great stimulus to architecture, ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... upon the child's mind can clearly be traced. Once his attention is focused upon the particular movement by unwise emphasis on the part of the parents, he loses the power to control its occurrence. This trio of common neuroses—refusal of food, refusal of sleep, and habitual involuntary movement—grows only in an atmosphere of unrest and apprehension. ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... the pro-war and anti-war camps were focused on the Capitol grounds that day. There swarmed about the grounds and through the buildings pacifists from all over the country wearing white badges, and advocates of war, wearing the national colors. ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... hung out a string of lights which winked, changed color, vanished, reappeared, and again vanished, leaving only a red light at the masthead. In a moment an answering signal-rocket was thrown up by an invisible war-ship in the direction of Fort Taylor, and instantly two powerful search-lights were focused upon a pale, whitish object, far out at sea, which looked in the bluish, ghostly glare like the mainsail of the Flying Dutchman. Before I had time to form a conjecture as to the significance of these mysterious signals and apparitions, I was startled ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... was no further comment from those who had the situation well in hand. Every scout understood, however, that a number of heavily armed men must be scrutinizing their actions from the roll; for that strong white glow was kept closely focused on the boat all the time they proceeded to drag in the anchor, and start working the push poles, with which the little hunting cabin launch was ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... while Chet aimed an instrument of gleaming chromium and glass, whose cable connections vanished in the phone panel recess. He focused it upon an artificially darkened screen above and behind the grouped figures on ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... unionism. Here was an employer who was making preparations to destroy his shops, regardless of financial loss, regardless of public opinion, regardless of everything but his right to employ and discharge whom he willed. Every great employer in the country focused his eye upon Herculaneum; every union leader did likewise. The outcome would mean a ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... to me infinitely nearer to the truth and vitality of great art. The book in which perhaps technique and life are most perfectly blended—at any rate, among the later novels—is The Ambassador. There, the skill with which a deeply interesting subject is focused from many points of view, but always with the fascinating unity given to it, both by the personality of the "Ambassador" and by the mystery to which every character in the book is related, is kept in its place, the servant, not the master, of the theme. And the climax—which ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that Christ dealt with this subject is proof conclusive that it is important, for He never dealt with trivial things. When Christ focused attention upon a theme it was because it was worthy of consideration—and Christ weighed the soul. He presented the subject, too, with surpassing force; no one will ever add to what He said. Christ used the question to give emphasis to the thought which He ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... evident at once that where individuals of the same race and hence the same temperament are associated, the temperamental interests will tend to reinforce one another, and the attention of members of the group will be more completely focused upon the specific objects and values that correspond to the racial temperament. In this way racial qualities become the basis for nationalities, a nationalistic group being merely a cultural and, eventually, a political society founded on ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... explanation, I found her conduct of a piece with the rest of her life, for every power of her mind was focused on present action, and there was something unnatural, beyond belief, and not like a feminine creature, in the manner with which she stood regarding each object in the room, and at sight of this self-control McMurtrie's talk came ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... floated a number of water wings, tied to the boat, to represent floating ice cakes. The audience applauded vigorously as the skiff drew near. At the psychological moment, when Nyoda had her camera focused for a snap a huge mosquito settled on George's extended calf. He uttered a sudden yell, brought his hand down on his leg and pitched headfirst into the water. The patriots rescued him and set him on the dock, and Professor Wheeler, who had sprung from his ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... in his narrative to get breath, and he wiped his moist brow. And now his face began to lose its cragginess. It changed, it softened, it rippled and wrinkled, and all that strange mobility focused and shone in a ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... lights, overhead lights, border lights, and front lights. The spot-lights are used to pick up the characters; sometimes I use X-ray border lights down stage overhead to pick up the costumes. These lights are not focused on the scenery at all. The other lights are worked to tone the scenery to the desired effect, either to obscure it or ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... over, and his mild eyes focused themselves on the bottle protruding from Jim's pocket. For some moments he contemplated it, and then he looked up into his ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... fill the finder; I'll try again," was my next. Then on my knees I crawled up, watching the finder till it was full of Lynx. I glanced at the beast; he was but 8 feet away. I focused and fired. ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... speaking here of historians, but may appropriately give a little space to an account of that wonderful acre or two of ground at Westminster, where for so many centuries the history of the English-speaking race has been to such an extent focused. ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... stock in which Robert Owen dealt. Robert Owen never tried to increase his sales by decreasing his price. His product was always higher than standard. "Anybody can cut prices," he said, "but it takes brains to make a better article." He focused on fineness. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... statesman of the republic and all eyes were being focused on him. His life at the moment was the fevered center of the nation's thought. That his ambitions were boundless no one who knew the man doubted. That his patriotism was as genuine and as great all knew ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... itself; but it is not, and must not be treated as, an isolated personality impervious to the mind of others. At each stage of its evolution it is the focus and expression of a larger world. A man does not value himself as a detached subject, but as the {114} inheritor of gifts which are focused in him. Man, in short, is a trustee for the world; and suffering and privation are among his opportunities. The question for each is, How much can he make of them? Something above us there must be to make us do and dare and hope, and the important thing is not one's separate destiny, ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... of a great circumambient Power grew upon him at each instant, sacramentalized, it seemed, by the solemn evening light, and evoked by this tense ardour of half a million souls, and focused behind him in one burning point. . ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... ... I warned him, but in vain! quick as lightning flash meets lightning flash, the two invisible Immortal Forces within us sprang into instant opposition,—with this difference, that while he was ignorant and unconscious of HIS power, I was cognizant and fully conscious of MINE. Mine was focused, as it were, upon him,— his was untrained and. scattered,—the result was that mine won the victory: yet understand me well, Hilarion,—if I could have held myself in, I would have done so. It was he,—he who DREW my force out ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... and left the cabin. He came back with a microfilm roll. Fitting it into the large projector he focused it on the wall and snapped ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... his neighbor, he found the dark glasses focused upon himself with such fixity that he responded with a friendly nod, and, making some trivial remark, found Mr. Mannering not at all averse to conversation. A few commonplaces were exchanged until the arrival of Mr. Rosenbaum's order, when ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... at once on it, whereupon the archies immediately opened fire. Then far above a light would twinkle out several times, which was a sign for the anti-aircraft batteries to cease fire. Everything remained still for a while, the searchlights always focused on their prey, which endeavoured to dodge out of the brilliant light, but in vain, owing to its unwieldiness. Then suddenly from out of the darkness a little object shot alongside the giant plane and spat tracer bullets into it, whereupon it instantly caught fire, ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... dampness had only blurred the writing instead of erasing it. Her attention thus engaged, she idly scrutinized more than the blurred lines. Her attitude as she sat there on the boulder slowly stiffened; her gaze focused upon the paper. ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... ago all literary and dramatic London focused its eyes on a theatre that was known as the Little Theatre. On the night of November 7th the critics might have been seen making their way along John Street with just the faintest suspicion ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... Asia and Egypt to Italy and Greece, and hence drew to itself the trade and people of the whole Mediterranean basin.[863] The northwestern Indian Ocean had a similar emporium in the ancient Dioscoridis, (Sokotra) which focused on itself the trade between Arabia ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple |
